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Should I include a grad student who only duplicated my calculations as an author on an article?
I recently received a request from another researcher in my area, who is guest editing a volume of a mid-level physics journal.  He wanted me to submit an article for the special issue dealing with our research area.  I agreed to submit something by the end of the summer.  I told him that I would produce an article about my current research, providing a careful conceptual discussion of some previously published work, as well as some recent (but not particularly exciting) advancements that have not previously been published.  The number of researchers in this area is not especially large, and acceptance of my article is a virtual certainty.
At about the same time as I got the invitation, I had a graduate student come to me, wanting to do research.  He started working with me on the same topic that I will cover in my (mostly review) article.  This student is, as another professor put it, "not as bright as he thinks he is."  He is qualified to get a Ph.D., but it is very unlikely that he will have a career in academia.  He has been doing calculations for me, but so far, he is only duplicating results that I have already completed myself.  (I hope that, by the fall, he will be able to start producing new results.)
My question is:  Does it make sense to include him as an author on the paper I am going to submit at the end of September?  He should have completed some calculations by then that have not previously been published.  However, all those calculations will be duplications of things that I have already done myself.  I could write the paper without his input at all, which suggests against making him an author.  On the other hand, he is exerting significant effort checking my own calculations, and if I had not done all the calculations before, he would be making a minor but meaningful contribution to the paper.  The student knows that he is, thus far, only duplicating my previous work, so I don't think he has any expectation of being included as an author on any publications including it.  However, I admit that I feel uneasy setting a student to re-do my own unpublished work, with the intention of publishing it without adding him as a co-author.
This specific publication is unlikely to make a real difference for either of us, professionally.  I have more than enough publications in top journals to be promoted to the next level, and, as I said, this student is extremely unlikely to have a long-term career in academia.  So, in the absence of any compelling outside pressure one way of the other, I am wondering whether I should include my student as a author on this upcoming publication.

I think it is easily possible to rationalize either direction, so you'll need some further inputs to decide.
Just to reiterate things you already know: on one hand, the computations are already done, and do not depend on your student's computations. You already knew the answers (though it's nice to get corroboration). I myself often give preliminary projects of a similar sort to my students, in part because I know with near-certainty how they'll turn out, but/and will be educational and technique-improving for the students.
On the other hand, having a student corroborate does add a layer of certainty. This is a good thing, and, if not heroic or glamorous, is definitely legitimate "work" in this business.
So, to my perception, especially if neither of you is on any sort of razor's edge about careers, it is entirely up to you. (Obviously even without the co-authorship you'd thank your student for the substantial effort to corroborate your calculations?...)
This also does remind me of a similar quandry with PhD students: I hesitate to suggest any thesis project that I don't "feel" (in some amorphous way, but with considerably technical bulwarking) will work... because I'm aware of techniques that will get one most of the way there. The main point of such a thesis is getting up to speed on those "standard techniques", at which point the execution of them is relatively easy. One might ask "how can this earn a PhD?", and a big part of the answer is that (in my mind) conception of a project (by a relative expert) is wildly different from execution of that project (whether by a novice or not). That is, to imagine that something is within current human possibilities is very different from actually doing the thing!!!  Thus, even if/when I can imagine that a PhD student's project will turn out ok, I do not ask or insist on authorship. They did the work!
Another point is that, all other things the same, generosity is probably better than stinginess, especially if one is not "in need" oneself.

There does not seem to be much arguments pro or against including him.
But when in doubt, it's probably better to include the student them not.
I've been in that situation myself and I've decided to include the student. The arguments I used to convince myself to include him were as follows:

I could not really find any argument against including him;
If I include him, he would be much more motivated in future works with me; whereas if I don't, he may get a little frustrated when he realizes that I published a paper exactly on the topic we were discussing without inviting him;
It looks good to whoever is looking at your interaction with students (graduate committee, department, etc) that you are publishing with them;
As the student should be learning to write his own papers, it's probably good that he starts doing this on a paper where he is not the main author.

So for me it was a win-win situation.
Of course, by include him I mean that you should invite him and have him help in writing the paper.

I have been a student in this situation so I'll chime in to offer a different perspective than the other posters.
I don't think you should add him as an author unless he adds to the paper in some way, however you also should be open to him about this. Tell him straight up that if he can contribute something worth while to the paper you will add him as a coauthor. This should motivate him a lot more.
For my honours project my supervisor showed me a paper he was working on and said if I can add to it significantly I would become a coauthor. This really motivated me and I ended up doing far and above what he expected for an honour's project. It was a great learning experience also in regards to what is actually required for academic research.
If I was in your student's shoes I would just want you to be open about this. Tell him that so far he hasn't done anything new and wont be a coauthor, but that you're more than willing to add him if he does contribute something.

I would go against including him because of the following reasons:

If he is included now, then he would think that he can earn a paper just by doing some calculation. Perhaps this one is a pessimist version of the the answer by @ShakeBaby.
Since you are assuming that he is not interested in academia, he might not be willing to be a full time researcher (this includes an assumption and of course the inferred mentality of the student in question), so including him would pull him down.
Again, he might think that the coauthors' contribution is actually not so substantial and important to be called as 'coauthor', this again would reflect his future visions.
I would definitely go with a formal ACKNOWLEDGEMENT in my manuscript rather than including him as a coauthor.

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How to search the publication fee of a journal
What's the correct place on a journal webpage to show the publication fee?

Wherever they wish or perhaps only through direct contact.

Why do you think there is a general answer? Or are you designing a new journal and want design advice?

@SolarMike They won't write explicitly on the website?

@Buffy I can't find any place telling the publication fee, of any journal

I guess it may depend on your area of research, but in the humanities and social sciences, never publish in a journal that asks for a publication fee.

"wherever they wish" means anywhere on the website if they wish to.... But they can choose not to as well... which is why I also put "only through direct contact" - is there a language issue somewhere?

@SolarMike If it's written on their website, how would they call it or under what category usuallly?

Here are some charges for physics journals.
Note: dated 2014

Great thanks. Info about other physics or materials, engineering journals will be welcome

source: Stack Exchange

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sort: votes


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how to bring into full play what was prepared during faculty interviews
A faculty interview is short, whether it be a skype one or an onsite one. Esp for the former, as interviewers have tight and non-negotiable time limits, it's so short that there's little space beyond answering the interviewers' direct questions. In a short interview, as one invariably improvises, no matter how well they were prepared, it seems. Many rehearsed lines (not necessarily the exact wording, but topics planned to highlight) are forgotten. How to bring into full play what was prepared?

A faculty interview is short, whether it be a skype one or an onsite one. --- Apparently this is very field and/or country dependent, because I've had 15 to 20 (possibly more) onsite interviews, and each lasted a full day with various people (pretty much all day with the committee chair, who shepherded me around), and most of them included a car tour of the town (sights to see, possible places to live, etc.), at least a couple of meals (lunch and dinner, at least one of which was at a moderately nice restaurant), meeting with some math students, Dean/Provost meeting, HR/Benefits meeting, ...

My department had an hours-long discussion at a recent faculty retreat, where we eventually agreed to reduce our faculty interviews from two full days (breakfast through dinner) to "only" a day and a half.  This is utterly standard in the US, at least in computer science. On the other hand, European faculty interviews do tend to be much shorter.

I imagine you have seen a politician interviewed on TV where they don't actually answer the questions of the interviewer but keep saying the lines they have prepared regardless of what they were asked.  Does that make you want to vote for that politician?

@Alexander Woo: ... but keep saying the lines they have prepared regardless ... --- Unfortunately it seems to me a reasonable assumption that this works sufficiently well and sufficiently often to be a useful strategy, otherwise politicians would not have continued doing this for decades (centuries? millennia?).

@AlexanderWoo good point. do u think i should learn from the politicians

Don't overthink it.
In a skype interview, you're right, it is mostly their questions. Answer them directly, and maybe keep 2 points in mind that you really want to make when they give you a chance to lead the conversation for a few minutes.
For on-site interviews, it's a long day or two, and you'll have plenty of opportunities to say the things you want to say.
I suggest you trust that the important things will come to light during the interview. If you forget one or two things you wanted to say, that omission is very unlikely to determine the success or failure of your interview. The overall picture that the department gets of you is much more important -- is your research strong? does it fit well with the department? will you be a good teacher? a good colleague? I suspect that the "rehearsed lines" will be less important, in the scheme of things.

great answer. what if i should've said about my pedagogy when asked about teaching experiences, but i ended up forgetting to say. they never asked about pedagogy in particular

Then don't worry about it. If you really feel there's an important element of your pedagogy that they should know, send a short note letting them know. But my best guess is that it won't affect your application in any significant way.

"In a short interview, as one invariably improvises, no matter how well they were prepared, it seems."
I disagree.  If you practice enough, you can give prepared answers.  Just like any other kind of performance, interviewing needs to be practiced.  More practice will lead to better results.

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questions for the candidate to ask during a skype faculty interview
What questions for the candidate to ask during an initial skype faculty interview? In the field of physical sciences.

This was asked recently but seems to have disappeared - shame...

Found this one : https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/128041/72855

no, opposite question

Same... q that the candidate asks... If one q was about what the interviewers should ask then that would be opposite...

not really. interviewers ask how u r gonna teach. candidate cant ask this

not a duplicate

The interviewers can answer all the suggested questions in the answer given in the proposed duplicate... QED.

Figure out what they want from you and ask it indirectly back.
For example if their research competence is in topic A of subfield B then say that you would be really keen to work A of subfield B (both in slightly different words but with the same meaning) and if there is sufficient critical mass at the department to do this and/or if the facutly would see it positive if you work on this topic.
You should basically feed them back (via questions using a slightly different wording) what they want you to be.
You can of course also ask some real questions on what you want to know but I guess you dont need a recommendation for that as you will know what you want to know.


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strategy of a maths/science chalk talk interview
1.Candidate is to teach 1 out of several topics given. Should there not be any preferrential topic to be taught in the eye of the interviewers? Is there any disadvantage not to choose the hardest topic?
2.In a real classroom, it's better to make the class interactive and ask students to come on the board to solve hands on problems. But as part of the interview, there's little time to do this. I can surely ask quick questions to the audience. How to balance between interactivity and time limit?

Is that really a chalk talk in your field, because in the fields I am aware of chalk talks are about future funding plans without slides. This sounds more like a teaching demo.

yes, a teaching chalk demo, not funding related

If you already know which topic is the most desirable one to the selection committee (perhaps, it's a subject they are not offering right now or willing to commit to a full-time instructor instead of a part-time one), I suggest choosing that topic. Also, if you know that your teaching material and/or approach for a specific topic is relatively unique and could be of interest to students (e.g., applied discussion of theories or real-world case studies), you might go that way. Other than those, I suggest sticking to the topic with which you're most comfortable.
I think Observing time limits during interviews is important and neglecting them could make you nervous. So engaging with the audience is OK as long as you don't waste time or enter into a heated discussion.

Good luck with your interview.

Candidate is to teach 1 out of several topics given. Should there not be any preferential topic to be taught in the eye of the interviewers? Is there any disadvantage not to choose the hardest topic?

I find it unlikely that they are suggesting "worse topics" to see whether you know to avoid them -- that does not sound like a good faith effort to learn about the candidates' teaching skills.  I think you should assume good faith, which in this situation means that they are equally open to a talk on all the topics they gave you.  Having made that assumption, I think you should rule out topics on which you have less than complete mastery (if any), and among the remaining topics you should think a bit about what kind of talk you would or could give.  Then you should pursue the topic on which you feel you can give the best talk.
In my experience (in a mathematics department at a large research university), when your teaching is being observed / evaluated, it is usually for courses that serve the broadest teaching needs of the department.  E.g in a mathematics department this would often be calculus.  It tends to be taken as a given that if you have a PhD in subfield X, that you will do well (or well enough) in teaching an advanced course on topic X.  The reason for this is that in more advanced courses the students are (generally!) more interested, more independent and more mature, and so they need (or so we tend to think) more of a subject area expert than someone with mastery of particular teaching techniques. So I see no particular advantage in selecting the most advanced topic unless you really think that (i) this is a subject the department needs a new hire to teach, (ii) you know the subject extremely well and (iii) other candidates may not.

In a real classroom, it's better to make the class interactive and ask students to come on the board to solve hands on problems. But as part of the interview, there's little time to do this. I can surely ask quick questions to the audience. How to balance between interactivity and time limit?

I think it's definitely awkward to try to interact with the people who are hiring you as though they were students in your course.  On the other hand, "How to balance between interactivity and time limit?" is a question that is just as important when you are actually teaching a course!  If you are being given a full class period, I would plan out a full lecture, including time to do whatever interactive activities you think best.  You might say "At this point I would ask the students to spend a couple minutes trying to solve X" and then see to what extent the faculty interviewing you want to play along.  If you are being given less time, you have to plan accordingly, and you may want to ask what the expectations are given that you have less than a full lecture to give.

excellent thx. u convince me that im better off teaching topics in calculus. the teaching chalk talk~half an hr. there'll b real students sitting there. given that time limit and setting, is there any specific advice from u?


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budget allocation in research grant applications
How to find about info about proportions of different categories in budget in grant applications? For instance, how much put in travel, how much put in RA fees etc.

That will depend on the individual project.

Schools often have a "proposal development teams/depts.". You send them a list of the items/RA/equipment etc., and they put together a budget. This is usually an iterative process.

Apart from asking your institution's research support unit (if there is one) as suggested in other answers, try to get in touch with colleagues with grants similar to yours (in terms of grant call, scale of the funding and scientific area) and see if they can show you their budget. In my experience when I was new to grant requests, this was the single most helpful thing that helped me tune my budget.

but some school research support units just give official answers according to rules, without giving useful individual feedback. afterwards, they reject our internal grant applications saying that the budget isn't reasonable

If you are lucky your University has a research support unit, which you tell what you need and they create the budget for you, then tell you what parts of that budget that funding agency has and has not funded in the pasted, what items you might have forgotten etc. After some back and forth you get the final budget.

but some school research support units just give official answers according to rules, without giving useful individual feedback. afterwards, they reject our internal grant applications saying that the budget isn't reasonable


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strategy of publication fee for a junior faculty member in math/phys fields
Most good journals don't charge a mandatory publication fee. Many open access only journals aren't that good and accept papers easily. For a junior faculty member who has much money for publication in the budget, it's a good chance to boost the number of publications by resorting to open access journals. Is it a good strategy, how should they organize/allocate the money? What should they think about before publishing on open access only journals that aren't among the top ones?

For math, I don't know of more than 1 reputable journal that charges a fee.  Journals that charge a fee aren't 'not among the top ones' - they are (with that exception) among the bottom ones, or predatory.  To me, a large number of not-so-good papers makes you look worse, not better; when I evaluate candidates, papers in bottom-tier journals beyond the first one or two have negative value.

You ask for a strategy.  A strategy to achieve what goal?

If the goal is to get promoted, ask your department chair.  Don't listen to the opinions of people not familiar with your university.

@AnonymousPhysicist makes sense

@AlexanderWoo makes sense

If your T&P Committee is worth their salt, they'll see through tons of crappy publications. As a new faculty member, it is difficult to live with the pressure of needing to publish as you are setting up your career. However, publications are evaluated by your peers, with the hope that they advance the field. Simply publishing to get numbers up is a bad idea. Instead, you should focus on publishing quality research. Ostensibly, as a PhD student you learned how to perform this research and became an expert in your field. As such, it is now your job to prove it, and set up and continue a career of research excellence.
If you publish great results in low-tier journals, you've wasted those good results on something that people will never read. If you publish bad results in low-tier journals, your T&P committee will see through it and realize that you're trying to pad your paper count. Either way, it doesn't seem like low-tier journals are the answer...
Note: low-tier and low-circulation are NOT the same thing. If your field is highly specialized the "the important journal" may be very small indeed. Low-tier is...well, what you said - easy to get into because the standards are not high.

"you've wasted those good results on something that people will never read"  People keep claiming that prestigious journals are read more frequently, but I still do not believe it.  People decide what to read based on search results.

Academic journals have not had meaningful "circulation" in decades.  Libraries buy subscription journals in bulk.

thanks, though there are always people publishing on not-so-good journals, for there's little space for all to publish on good journals.

@feynman I think "not so good" and "predatory" are very different things. My interpretation of your question was that you would be submitting research to what is essentially a for-sure acceptance, pay-to-play journal. Every field certainly has its top-tier, mid-tier, low-tier, and crap journals, and low-tier stuff isn't always bad

@MichaelStachowsky right that's the point of my question. How should we understand low-tier stuff isn't always bad?

@feynman Oh, I see. As it is written you aren't asking about low-tier but predatory journals. At least that's how most of us interpreted that. I think the answer is that the experts of the field know which journals are high and low tier, so your T&P committee would evaluate that. If you publish a ton of bad results in low-tier journals that's a problem, but lots of small, useful, incremental results in low-tier journals and some great results in high tier would look different

Publishing in low quality journal is never a good strategy.  Other researchers will read your grant applications and your PTR file and the first thing they will look for is journal name recognition, in particular if you publish in the journal they publish in.  Even a few "good papers" drowned in a see of bad papers will not impress anyone.
Open access doesn't imply predatory and many universities or conglomerate of universities now have deals to reduced or 0 APC in gold open access journals.  Universities are unlikely to strike such a deal with predatory publishers so one way to "vet" open-access journal is to see if indeed your institution has some deal with the publisher.  It's not a hard-and-fast rule of course but the number of deals so negotiated between publishers and institutions is increasing.
Although superficially discouraging, there's actually a benefit in submitting to a top (or at least reasonably good) journal: the process will function as an initial quality assessment of your work.  If your submission is systematically desk rejected in topical journals, you're in trouble and it's likely any referee for a grant or on some tenure committee would likely reach the same conclusion as to the quality of that particular piece of work.  Even if the paper is rejected at the referee level, you are likely to get (not in all cases but at least a majority of the time) constructive comments on the contents, and you can take it from there.  The disadvantage of this is that you need to do extra work to get it published but most communities are now increasingly aware of papermills so publishing multiple papers with only tiny variations in contents is not necessarily optimal either.
Certainly where I work papers in predatory journals are automatically struck off the CV and reflect very poorly on any candidate.  Candidates for promotion or tenure are pretty systematically asked to explain their choice of journals, and candidates can have a very difficult time defending such publishing practices.


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Publish papers with multiple affiliations
Somebody has two affiliations A and B. This person is paid and actually employed by affiliation A; not paid by B but honorarily employed by B. If this person publishes papers on math/phys fields, should affiliation B be put on the paper as well? Could this increase the chance of B employing this person in the future as a wild guess?

What is "honorarily employed"?

Related and possible duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/148367/20058

@BryanKrause somebody is a faculty member of somewhere but isn't paid by them, nor do they physically work there

Rerlated, possibly helpful: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/171418/etiquette-for-institutional-affiliation-if-you-changed-institutions-during-the-r/171446#171446

many thanks for all the suggestions answers. What I really care about is: Could this offer me any benefit or increase the chance of B employing this person in the future as a wild guess?


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to tell the reputation of the publisher that publishes books
It's easier to tell the reputation of a journal because we publish journal papers most of the time.How to tell the reputation of the publisher that publishes books? Some publishers reach out to published papers to be published again by them as book chapters in their books. Is this normal?

what is normal, in your opinion?

"Some publishers reach out to published papers to be published again by them as book chapters in their books. Is this normal?" --- No. This is usually a predatory style of publishing. Avoid.

@EarlGrey normal in my view is sth acceptable in academia, then i'll do it

@Dilworth thanks for the tip but this publisher says it's ok to do so. I can't tell who's right

@feynman, the publisher which is probably predatory would clearly say it's okay to do so, because of their predatory nature.

To complement EarlGrey's excellent answer, the answer is in the question itself:
to "tell the reputation of the publisher" observe if it "reaches out to published papers to be published again by them as book chapters in their books" --- if the answer is "yes", then it's normally of low reputation.

The easiest way is as follows:

Go to your preferred library;
look for available titles from that publisher;
pick one book dealing with a topic you a have some familiarity;
judge it for yourself.

Please note: "go to your preferred library" can be the digital version, i.e. checking out ebooks or writing an email to your library asking if they can provide you books from that publisher on a certain topic.

they could say we can't view full texts of their books without paying or subscribing. All I can see are their titles of chapters.

@feynman It is customary for libraries to buy books, so there is nothing special.
Book publisher are for profit companies, or they have at least to cover their expenses and employees, so they cannot afford to do things for free.
If a publisher makes it really hard for people to read their books, I would say "the publisher do not really want people to read their books". Fair enough, there is a market for everyone, one of the biggest thing of capitalism is great at separating fools from their money, I personally prefer to make people less fool than they are. Reading books help, so...

@feynman: if your university library is decent, and has not paid for access to any of this publisher's books, that is a really bad sign.

+1 for go to the library. And, if you're lucky you can also ask the librarian for help!


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how scopus recognizes which papers are mine
I didn't create a scopus ID, but scopus is able to recognize and collect all my publications even though I have multiple affiliations. How is that possible?

Presumably it uses your name, affiliations, and field(s). It might also use the dates of publication, names of collaborators, etc.
It doesn't sound very surprising to me that it can do this with reasonably high accuracy. If your name is unusual, then that on its own would be enough.
Also, Scopus is not perfect and does makes mistakes.

But how can they recognize and tell that different publications
by different affiliations have connections and thus were published by the same person

As I said, it probably uses other information and not just your name. And it does not always get it right.

Purpose of my question is exactly where this other Information comes from

It comes from the publications.


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Where to check free of charge the impact factors of all journals
Where can one check free of charge the impact factors of all journals? jcr.clarivate.com seems to be one but it's not open to those with no subscription. Many other sources only show other metrics but not impact factors.

Is it at all clear that there is such a place where you can check for free? Clarivate is putting a substantial effort into their product, they may simply not be interested to have it available for free.

ok that makes sense, but just wonder if there's anything free out there to make things easier

Are you looking for journals for your future publications? Many journals publish their impact factor on their website. Isn't that enough?

yes and no, some new journals don't show impact factors yet some others that aren't SCI index don't have them either

Several years ago, I used the following links to find impact factors for free:
https://becker.wustl.edu/resources/databases/isi-journal-citation-reports
https://admin-apps.webofknowledge.com/JCR/JCR
But now it seems these redirect to the one mentioned in the OP, and I can't access them in the Wayback machine. Similarly, the link below no longer works:
https://jcr.incites.thomsonreuters.com/JCRJournalHomeAction.action
It seems there's been some push to monetize impact factor. For mathematics, the following still works:
https://www.scijournal.org/math-journal-impact-factor-list.shtml
There are also alternatives to impact factor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCImago_Journal_Rank
https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php
In practice, what I do nowadays is that, if the fourth link above doesn't list the impact factor for the journal I am considering, and if this is important for some reason, then I just google the name of the journal plus "impact factor" and usually find that the journal has listed it. But overall, I think it's appropriate to move away from "impact factor" as a way to measure anything at all, especially if JCR is trying to monetize it.


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To publish previous papers in books
People are invited to publish in new books papers that were already published in SCI indexed journals. Some say it depends on the agreement and if there's transferred exclusive rights. Is it usually allowed by SCI indexed journals to publish their previous papers elsewhere say in new books?

Why would one want to do this?

why would feynman want to do this?

Do you mean an actual, honest invitation or just the usual, countless junk invites for junk books based on junk scraping?

@MisterMiyagi can't tell if they are honest or not. Sometimes they come reach out after  we submit a paper

If you hold copyright then you can publish or republish. But if you have given a broad license to the world, then so can others. And CC-BY requires only citation.
The author pages at SCI suggest that the author retains copyright, but the open science aspects suggest that a broad license is given.
The value to SCI comes at the beginning when authors cover the costs of publication. They don't expect to be "sole providers" of the information.
But if you are getting requests to republish, take care that you are dealing with someone reputable. Odd, but you can give your copyright to someone else after publishing open access, but the license previously given is still valid and the new copyright owner can't withdraw it.
And, I'd suggest not following up with anyone who later asks you for money to republish.

sorry I still don't get the answer. So the answer for SCI indexed journals is: it depends?


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acknowledgments in publications
Some people write acknowledgments in publications stating clearly whose funding belongs to whom, like A thanks this funding and B thanks that funding. Why don't they just put all funding together without stating individual authors and write it as: we thank all funding. Is there any difference between these approaches?

What exactly are you wondering about? Clearly stating which funding belongs to whom communicates that whereas a blanket statement does not. (As the question basically already says itself. )

is it good to just thank all funding without stating individual authors

Lots of funding agency require acknowledgments, sometimes in specific form that one cannot change so to preserve uniformity of recognition; it is a condition of the grant that you acknowledge them in a specific way.  For instance, some funding agencies require that you write the grant number or project number.
It is also perfectly possible (and also happens not infrequently) to have one author funded from several sources because different agencies have different rules on the use of funds.  Thus, the visit of person A to person B might be funded from a different pot than the research program of person A.  There might be some special program that provides access to — say — computing resources or data sets.
From an accountability perspective (public or private), clarity and specificity are essential for people to understand the mission of a funding agency, and it would be misleading to suggest that all researchers involved have received support from this or that organization.  If some funding is targeted to women, does it make sense to suggest that men may have received funding by lumping all acknowledgements together?  What if the funding is targeted to young scholars but there are senior and junior researchers on the project?  What is there are two young scholars but only one of them is funded by given agency?

Different funding sources have different requirements for grant acknowledgments. For example, the Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) at the US Department of Energy funds so-called Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) for which it provides a detailed document about "Acknowledgments of Support". This document includes the following excerpts requiring a high degree of specificity:

The practice of simply presenting a list of supporting agencies in a shared acknowledgement is not acceptable because it is impossible to discern the research BES funded with respect to research funded by other agencies. In addition, this type of acknowledgement suggests that there could be overlap in the work supported by federal agencies, which would be illegal.

BES recognizes that some publications may bring together results from several projects, as well as from other collaborators, and may include work funded by other funding agencies. In cases where research was supported by multiple programs or agencies, the acknowledgement sections should explicitly delineate which parts of the reported research were specifically supported by the EFRC as well as the other funding sources.

As you brought up DOE, I thought I would point out that we have had a PI get called out by DOE specifically for including all his funding sources.  This PI was basically told, do not do this again.  They also want to know the relative proportion of DOE funding, so they suggested saying things like "mostly funded by DOE" or something like this to show that it is the main reason the paper was published.  This obviously feels different than listing 10 funding sources on the paper, which diminishes their role.  I've not seen any other agency reach out like this before.

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin interesting.  At the other end, I was on a grant committee (not DOE) where one reason (of many) for sinking the proposal was the team had a history of not properly acknowledging funding sources.

@ZeroTheHero -- we have a lot of PIs, even at the R01 I work for, who do not properly acknowledge funding, and I don't understand why.  I keep trying to remind them, "don't you want this to go on your RPPR?"  I wish more emphasis was made on this behavior in grad school.  Some PIs are rockstars on the topic, and others just don't get it.  There's no obvious pattern where I can figure out why it's confusing to a large swath of researchers.

They're likely identifying which money funded which author. A is thanking the funding that paid A. B is thanking the funding that paid B.

This answer looks a restatement of my question without answering?

@feynman If they thank all funding together, then it is not possible to identify which funding paid who from the acknowledgement/disclosure.

"it is not possible to identify which funding paid who from the acknowledgement/disclosure" why does this matter?

@feynman Why wouldn't it?

As an additional argument: The usual form helps to judge conflict of interests.
Imagine a paper for a clinical study of some new drug with three authors. One author works for the company hoping to sell the drug, one has a grant from NIH, one from NHS. One author  might be motivated to present results in favor for his employer. The others two have grants and might have corrected overly optimistic statements.
If they just thanked the three sources of funding, a reader could not be sure whether everybody got funding from the drug company.

Could you please explain this? If I know which of the authors was funded by which grant, how would that help me to know if the overly optimistic statement in the paper is due to a conflict of interests on the part of one of the authors? Doesn't it assume that different parts of the paper are written by different people and clearly separated? Or do you assume that the presence of a co-author who is not directly funded by a pharmaceutical company would somehow eliminate or at least "dilute" the bias of the other co-author(s)? I don't think it works that way.

Authors discuss and review the content of the paper. If one is overly optimistic and stretching above and beyond scientific arguments, co-authors discuss this. If they are funded by an independent source, such behavior is even more likely to happen.

This is just one possible scenario, which is based on the assumption that all authors are willing to follow the principles of good scientific practice and are open to criticism. In such situations, problems are not expected. This scenario does not work in the case of a deliberate misconduct. Say, author A funded by X used equipment owned by author B who is funded by Y. Author B is biased and would not accept the criticism. Author A knows that criticizing B would deprive him of the possibility to use his equipment. So he has a conflict of interests despite not being funded directly by Y.

Formally this should not make any difference. It is only important to mention all funding sources. However, when there are too many, it may look confusing. Someone may wonder why so many different grants are funding a single research project. Therefore as long as the journal allows it, adding detail can do no harm, just like with author contributions.
P.S. For clarity: Adding funding sources to acknowledgements serves one very practical purpose, which you seem to overlook entirely. They are processed by bibliometric databases so that you can search WebOfScience or similar bibliometric portals for papers resulting from a particular grant. This is what is actually done by referees who are reviewing new grant applications (especially continuation proposals) or evaluate candidates for faculty positions. As long as bibliometric databases are unable to break this information down by author, adding it to the paper is of very limited use. That is why I said that it would do no harm, but for purposes of statistics it makes little difference and is therefore not (formally) required. Funding agencies know anyway whom a particular grant belongs to and who of the authors specifically benefits from it. More often than not this information is also made public.
You should also be aware that the allocation of grants to authors is not always unambiguous. For example, I may be the only applicant for a grant, but my PhD student may be funded by that grant, perhaps only partially (often without even knowing that the grant exists). Another postdoc working in another lab and funded by another professor's grant could benefit from doing some measurements in my lab using equipment bought with my grant. Should they be listed on my grant as well? Should I be listed on the other professor's grant because I benefit from his postdoc doing work in my lab for our joint paper? In a large collaboration, this can get so entangled that splitting the funding contributions by author becomes impossible or too difficult to explain.

It certainly can make a formal difference in the sense that some funding agencies require specificity in the acknowledgements.

This is not good advice.  In some cases multiple funding sources are truly in play, but by taking the lazy approach and listing all funding, you violate individual sponsored award terms and conditions.  Additionally, US federal law states that they cannot fund the same research twice.  If you suggest there is so much overlap in your funding, then it appears you may be acquiring funding without fully disclosing on your current and pending documents, which require overlap statements.  This is actually a very big deal, and if DOJ thinks a PI is scamming the government, they could prosecute.

It is quite normal to have multiple funding sources in one paper, which does not imply double funding. The paper may report data obtained in different labs using different techniques that were funded by their different grants. Therefore it is a good idea to specify which author was funded by which grant.

My answer is not advice. It is a de facto standard (at least in my field) to list all funding sources in the acknowledgements, and only a minority of papers would provide details. This is due to the requirement of funding agencies that their grants be acknowledged. There is no formal requirement to break this down by author, whether you like it or not. I wrote that doing this is actually good practice. Still, at the end of the day this information is lost anyway in any bibliometric database such as WebOfScience or alike.


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does conference presentation topic need approval from PI
I want to present a piece of work done with a former PI in a conference. If I go to this conference, I use my own funding. Do I need this PI's approval to allow me to present this work in that conference? I need answers considering the 2 different scenarios: the work is either published or not published yet.

In case the work is already published, I would generally assume that everybody on this planet is allowed to talk about it, provided that the material is properly attributed. On the other hand, submitting previously published work to a conference is only possible, if the conference does not count as a publication itself (e.g., a typical computer science conference with published proceedings would be ruled out).

That would depend on a few things, including your field. What is the custom there? If the PI is, or should be, a co-author then you would need it, ethically, I think. S/he might have other plans. If the work is partly theirs, then you need it in some places legally, if I interpret other answers on this site correctly, and ethically in any case.
I'm depending on your use of the words "with a former PI" here. To me that implies they have some contribution to the work that requires acknowledgement, hence approval.
But, for political purposes and keeping good relations for the future, you should probably seek it in all cases.

In this kind of scenario, it depends on the level of privacy and contribution of the PI to the conference material.
Another case is maybe it will be more beneficial if you just try to get the approval from your formal PI (taking the bull by the horn), which now depends on them if they approved it or not...
You are free to present it.


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after-study work under an OPT
In the US, an F1 STEM student can have an OPT after graduation and work without a work visa for up to 3 years. But the work has to be related to the major of F1. How to determine if the work is counted as being related to the F1 major?

Many cases are quite clear cut - someone graduating with a physics PhD getting a physics postdoc is obviously fine, for example. Generally, I think the answer is to be reasonable. If you (who's the person most familiar with the details about both your degree and job) struggle to come up with a reasonable explanation as to how the job is related to the degree, using skills developed during the degree, and at the right level, well, it probably wouldn't count. Note that you need to provide that motivation when listing the employer in the SEVP portal. If you're uncertain, or if this is a less clear cut case, do discuss it with the International Office at your university. They'll have a good idea about where the line tends to be drawn.
It's also useful to have a letter from your employer or academic advisor outlining how your job duties relate to the degree. Unlike the brief motivation for the SEVP portal, this letter is for later - either future visa applications (e.g. for the STEM OPT extension) or for being readmitted to the US after travel abroad.
Finally, note that I used the postdoc example since we're on Academia. For nonacademic jobs, and further OPT questions, you might get better answers at Expatriates Stack Exchange.


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approval for adding figures for comparison into our own publications in phy/eng fields
In physical and engineering sciences it is common to compare with figures generated by other publications. Then it's said we need to get people's approval when adding their figures into our own publications. For example, for comparing theoretical and experimental data I wonder why we need this approval. This is so common and if we need to do it all the time it is quite annoying and time consuming especially when we need to compare with different publications then imagine that we need to contact multiple people for approval for our own publication.
Why can't we just cite their publication and say that this figure is from their publication?
Is asking people's approval for inserting their figure restricted to the scenario when we need to reproduce a figure for example superimposing their figure with our own then we need their approval or do we need approval for just adding their original figure without changing the contents at all?

Do you mean if we only need to reproduce the data without reproducing the image we don't need to ask for their approval?

Citations get you "academic" permission; acknowledging the ideas of others permits you to use them. This is the backbone of shared human knowledge, we wouldn't get anywhere without it.
When you reuse a figure, you're not asking for academic permission, you're asking for copyright permission. In the olden days, this was primarily getting permission from a journal who had exclusive rights to print that figure.
These days, though, a lot of things are release with more permissive licenses like Creative Commons licenses. These would permit you to reuse without asking permission, as long as you follow all the rules for use under that license, which often includes releasing your own work based on it under the same license.
If something is released under such a license and you can comply with the terms, then the innovation you're looking for already exists.

Thank you. Can I understand this way? If I need to publish my papers with these reproduced images I need to get the copyright for publishing them in more or less the original form then I need to ask for the permission from the original authors?  Then in the other case where I don't need to reproduce their images but I just need to use their published data, do I still need their permission?

@feynman Most often you would actually need permission from the journal, who likely has at least a semi exclusive license from the authors for the figures. But yes you could start by asking the authors. Just using public data does not require permission. Take meta analyses, for example; these take estimates from many studies and combine them in a principled way. For a meta analysis to be valid it's crucial to include all possible studies, and it's definitely not required to get permission from the authors.


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Culture of conferences and registration fees
In some countries (EU?) registration fees have to be paid in advance, online only and nonrefundable, while in other countries participation can be decided at the last minute and registration fees can always be paid onsite. In the former conference fees are usually higher and don't even include meals, but in the latter they are cheaper and always include meals each day.  It appears that those who insist on receiving registration fees in advance show too strong an indication of earning money? What is the dynamics and mechanism of this cultural thing behind all this?

I don't think there are general rules for this in any country. I have attended a large number of conferences in several EU countries and have met all kinds of different things in each of the countries in which I visited enough conferences. Rather obviously, this thing is not uniform within any country, so you shouldn't suggest it is. It may be possible to find statistical differences in this respect between countries, but that's probably because some people just copy what has happened in other conferences they know, often in the same country.

I agree with xLeitx, these "norms" are totally foreign to me. My conferences rarely have meals, and I've never paid on site (usually because it's much more expensive). Perhaps, name a field?

This does not match my experience. All of the conferences I've ever attended required advanced registration (especially for any accepted papers; at least one author must register), and discounts for early-bird registration. The offered 'refreshments' varied from just tea and coffee, small snacks, one full meal, to all lunch provided (and some other combinations). The deciding factor was usually size: smaller conferences usually provide more food. But, while I enjoy "free" food, I tend to go to conferences to hear about cool new research, meet interesting people, not primarily to eat.

@feynman Are you sure the conference you're looking at isn't predatory?

@JoeyEremondi not at all there are many like these

@AzorAhai-him-  Mathematical, physical, engineering sciences. Usually math charges less or no money

I think the distinction is much more about the size of a meeting...workshop...conference...congress than about what country that might be in.

@feynman Not saying that conferences don't have fees, but a conference that doesn't get you anything for those fees (e.g. no food)

As I wrote in a comment, a lot of generalisations in this question make no sense to me and are inconsistent with my (fairly extensive, by now) experience attending conferences.

Most conferences do expect advance registration, but this is simply a necessity of conference planning rather than an attempt to extract more value. It's impossible to organise a conference if you don't know whether you will have 50 or 150 attendees. This is not only true for conferences in Europe, but everywhere in the world.
Similarly, I am not sure I have ever attended a conference that did not offer at least basic catering as part of the registration fee (often bad catering, granted, but this was again not correlated to where the conference was hosted).
It may well be that conferences in Europe are expensive in comparison to some other locations (e.g., in Asia), but this is simply because the price level in Europe also tends to be fairly high. It's more expensive to rent rooms, pay the salary of technicians, and buy food in Europe than it is in India.

In any case, (scientific) conferences are basically never for-profit. The budget is usually configured to make a small profit, which then goes to some umbrella organisation (e.g., IEEE) in exchange for insurance in case the conference makes a loss (which does sometimes happen). There isn't really any incentive for the conference organisers to maximise this profit - as long as it's above 0, everybody in the organisation team is roughly equally happy. They do not get to keep the spoils of a particularly (financially) successful edition anyway.
Of course, people can and do have discussions about how to specifically configure the budget within the constraints of aiming for a black zero plus epsilon. Do you want minimal expenses and minimal registration fees, or do you want the conference to be a more lavish experience (with a higher price tag)? Or do you want more expensive registrations for senior members to support cheap student registrations? These are all fair questions, but they are, again, not particularly location-dependent.
If you see differences in pricing, I suspect one of two things will be the reason:

Differences in price level of the hosting country. As I said above, some countries are just a lot more expensive than others. Conference tickets will reflect this, at least to a degree.
Differences in price level based on the size of the conference. Strangely enough, there is a "diseconomies of scale" effect for conferences - they get more expensive to do the larger they get. Small workshops can be organised almost for free, and it's often possible to do them without asking for any registration fee. For a smaller conference (say, 100 participants), you can still do them cheaply. You can often use cheap university halls, you have lots of options for catering and can select a low-cost one, and one or two industrial sponsors may account for a significant part of the costs. For a large conference (say, 2000 participants), the per-person costs skyrocket - there may only be one or two options in your city where you can even physically host your event, and they are going to make you pay dearly for the privilege. Same for catering - if you have any choice at all, the choices will be limited, and none of them will be particularly cheap. Sponsorships you can attract will now mostly be a drop in the bucket for your event. Since your entire budget is much larger, you need to aim for a higher profit since otherwise even a few percent less income may be financially disastrous for the hosting organisation. You now need the support from a professional event planner, and they do not work for free. You need to cover your liability with insurances, etc. In short, you have lots of costs that do not come up with smaller events. Registrations need to pay for these costs.

As an example, I recently came back from the RNA society meeting at the Edinburgh conference centre. Prices for this start at £40 per delegate per day, but this is only for the use of one of the 16 spaces. This conference used 10 of those spaces and was for 5 days. Those prices don't include any catering.

@IanSudbery I assume you mean this as an example of a conference without catering? Because 40 pounds per day seems very cheap for what I assume to be a large event?

This is what the EICC charged the RNA society just for venue hire (and if guess it was at least twice that - £40 a head isbthe cheapest package with only one room, not 10). The conference in total was £1200, but included some catering.

Non-profit management is a career like any other; managers of non-profits get paid for what they do for the finances of the non-profit they work for, and get their next job based on their past success. So, at the level of the actual people making these decisions, with the exception of smaller societies run directly by academics, those are the incentives.

Especially for small conferences (say 20 to 50 people) there are also large differences in what the host university offers or charges for. Often lecture halls are free but there are cases where the professor/ department hosting the conference have to pay the university to use them. At the other end, some universities may throw in some catering for free or a reduced rate deal for local hotels if you organise a conference there. At that end there may be cultural differences between countries.

@BryanKrause I have been involved in the organisation of four small to medium sized conferences, under the umbrella of IEEE or ACM. Not once have I even met somebody from these organisations aside from a handful of emails. It may be true that they would prefer conferences to be (more) profitable, but they have absolutely no impact on any organisational decisions that me or other chairs take. I do not work for IEEE or ACM, there are few things I care less about as a conference chair than their bottom line.

@xLeitix That's a pretty different (non-profit) business model than when the non-profit itself is running the conference.

@BryanKrause This may be, but at least in CS I am struggling to think of a single well-reputed academic conference that's run by an organisation, and not by volunteers (professors) which change yearly. Things may be different in the life sciences, though.

I'm curious what field you're in, 2,000 is not particularly "large" to me (for a "conference").

@AzorAhai-him- Software engineering. I understand that conferences in other fields can be much larger (and much smaller in others). That said, I don't think it truly matters that much. Even with "only" 1000 - 2000 people you already need a large conference or exhibition hall and professional support, similar to a 5000 people event. You can't run it the same way as a 150 person event.

@xLeitix for sure. I was just curious.

To add to the size considerations, there is also the question of salaries. For a small, single room workshop organized locally at some university, there is generally no need to hire any additional helpers. Even the catering could be a store bought cake and coffee from the department's coffee machine, arranged by the local secretary. Of course effectively everyone is still paid, just not from a conference related source of money.

@xLeitix - In the parts of life-sciences I am accusomed to, conferences are organised by the societies themselves directly. However "the socieites directly" is still a bunch of academics, as the societies are generally run by academics, with perhaps a small number of paid administrative assistants. That may well be different for something like the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG), whose conferences have ~8,000 delegates, and plenaries take place in stadiums.

You list all the reasons why larger conferences are more expensive (which matches my experience), so I'm a bit puzzled why you still describe this as strange.  And if conferences get truly huge, then the conference itself will drive hotel prices up.

@gerrit Most stuff gets cheaper per person the more people you can distribute the fixed costs over. I find it counter-intuitive that that's really not true for conferences.

As a former Executive Chair and Finance Chair for an IEEE conference, I can say that there's no rules to this, and it will often depend on the venue.  My experiences are in USA/Asia, not that EU, and we generally just try to break even and it's often far from a money making proposition.  We had a conference where "the mouse" is and we back calculated that it was 7USD per cup of coffee, which is quite the surprise.   We generally discount early registrations so we can get a head count for the venue, and also food is never included unless you want to pay to go to a networking dinner.  I do generally try to get a budget to pay for undergraduate student travel, but that largely depends on how much the venue will cost.
As far as cultural dynamics, we would never expect to feed anyone outside of some pastries, coffee, and tea.

It is interesting that the labour cost in the usa is also as high as in the eu, but the former just makes even

One thing that hasn't been mentioned (at least not explicitly) is demand management, and holding people to their registrations.
In my field conferences, the number of people that can fit in the venues is limited, and they often fill up or "sell out", as it were. For many conferences that open registriations 2-3 months before the conference, they will fill up within a week of opening registrations. If some one registers, and then doesn;t turn up, they deny some one else, who may have turned up, that space.  Making people pay up front is a good way to ensure that if some one registers, they will definately turn up.

In my field, the cheapest conferences are small to mid-sized, society-organised conferences that are hosted by universities and don't include meals. These are sometimes not well run and the facilities are not always ideal, with parallel sessions being held in different buildings.
University-hosted conferences that do include meals are usually a little more expensive.
Conferences involving more than a couple of hundred participants don't work well without proper convention centre facilities, so they usually cost more. If meals are included (which most do), it's a little more again. If the conference dinner or a field trip on the side are included in the registration, that adds to the cost, too (but means that participants can get their employers to pay for these perks). If the conference is not organised by volunteers through a society, but by a professional event management company, that adds significantly to the cost. Event-management company conferences are sometimes legitimate, but sometimes predatory, so make sure you know the good conferences in your field.

Well, what I really don't understand is why anybody would choose to go to a conference with a registration fee in the first place unless he or she is desperate in their job search or have an insatiable lust for publicity. The old hospitality rule which predates the recorded history is that the host pays all invited guest expenses. If you cannot do it, don't organize a meeting in the first place.
We have been running a small 2-day conference at Kent State (Informal Analysis Seminar; about 30 to 60 participants) for a number of years and we have never required any "registration fees". Moreover, we provided all participants with free lunch, the end of conference dinner, paid all expenses and occasionally a honorarium to the invited speakers and lodging and transportation to a noticeable part of participants. Granted, the lunch was not ordered from the best restaurant in Barcelona with overnight air delivery and we made tea and coffee ourselves in big pots, but we have managed to stay within our resources, so it is possible if you really want it. For bigger conferences, one is not, of course, obliged to pay the expenses to people who came without invitation, but if somebody invites me as a speaker and tells me that I should pay for my trip, lodging  and meals myself (forget about the registration fee!), I consider it as a direct insult and usually do not bother even to respond to such an outlandish offer.
Of course, the current culture is different, but I find trying to live by the old rules that predate the so called "modern civilization" to make more sense than trying to adjust to the latest cultural and political fads that rotate like a weathervane in a tempest.
Just my two cents, as usual. Feel free to downvote :-)

"Well, what I really don't understand is why anybody would choose to go to a conference with a registration fee in the first place unless he or she is desperate in their job search or have an insatiable lust for publicity." This appears to be highly field dependent- all the major conferences in mine have at least a (nominal) fee to cover costs, and have for decades.

"unless he or she is desperate in their job search or have an insatiable lust for publicity." You seem to be an expert in other people motivations and other fields conventions.


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corresponding author not as the last author in physics or engineering
I'm talking in the context where alphabetical author listing is not applied. Some corresponding authors put themselves in the middle of the author list, what is the logic behind this? This happens often when a more senior author (than the corresponding author) is the put in the last position, but who is not a corresponding author.

"This happens often when a more senior author (than the corresponding author) is the put in the last position, but who is not a corresponding author." Isn’t that an answer to your question already?

another reason might be that the first author will leave the institution soon and will not be reachable by their department email adress.

https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4473/197929, second bullet point?

@MisterMiyagi  I think that's more of a phenomenon than an answer.

@feynman I don’t see why. The ordering "most senior last" seems like a perfectly valid ordering - which means the corresponding author isn’t necessarily last.

One potential answer is the existence of "transformative agreements" between some institutions and some publishers. Part of these agreements is often that authors from these institutions do not pay (individually) to publish their work as open access in the publisher's journals. Often the eligibility of a manuscript under these agreements is determined by the affiliation of the corresponding author.
Consequently, a group of authors may decide to make the collaborator with access to one of these agreements the corresponding author (especially in fields where no particular prestige is associated with the status of "corresponding author").

Yes, even in fields where the author ordering is based on contribution and/or seniority, corresponding author is often based on unrelated practical considerations, of which this is an important example.

Another possibility is that one author might be in a country where corresponding authorship is valued highly.

@Anyon  if so why is the corresponding author not at the last?

@feynman because the last author is the senior author, and if the corresponding author is not the senior author, they aren't going to be listed last.

@feynman Were they a PI or supervisor of the project? If not, then they conventionally wouldn't get the coveted last author spot. But if the corresponding author asterisk isn't worth much to the last author (sometimes all it gives you is more spam emails...), why not give it to an author working in a context where it's valued?

@Anyon they are perhaps not PIs otherwise they'll be listed corresponding.

@WhatTheDuck 'if the corresponding author is not the senior author, they aren't going to be listed last.' why is this?

@feynman Because the senior author is listed last. They are listed last because, in fields where authorship is not alphabetic, the last author in the list is understood to be the "supervisor" of the project (and many of the authors towards the back end of the list are similarly understood to be in supervisory roles on large author lists.) The corresponding author could be any of the authors and appear anywhere in the author list.  (1/2)

@feynman So the corresponding author will not be the last author listed, unless they are ALSO the senior author, in which case they are listed last because they are the senior author, not because they are the corresponding author. The corresponding author does not have to be the senior author. They could be an extremely junior member of the group. They could have contributed the least to the project. As such, the person designated to be the corresponding author can appear anywhere in the author list. (2/2)

Corresponding author is a job, not an honor. Authors can choose the most relevant person to handle inquiries about the paper. This is the PI in some fields, where the research is done under the direction of such a person and is the logical choice.
It is also common in such fields for the PI to be listed on most papers produced by the group, even when their direct participation in the individual paper is small (or even nonexistent).
So Corresponding Author as last author is just the intersection of those two common practices.
But the authors of a paper are free to choose the person they feel best able to handle those inquiries and they are also free to choose author order. So, across different fields and different traditions you will find a variety of things. Don't make assumptions. The two ideas are actually independent, even if they intersect in many cases.

Yes, looking at some of mine over the years we have a real mix (applied physics).  The corresponding author might be the first author (even if a postgrad), the first author's PI, the PI of the lead group on the grant, etc. Some journals are now grouping authors by institution (Phys. Rev. Res. for example) which does even strange things to ideas around the relative importance of authors

The convention in my field is the PI is the corresponding author and last on the author list. When there are multiple corresponding authors because of a collaboration, as is often the case, it is generally understood that the one listed last has the most authority over the project (typically their group spearheaded it).
At least in my field, when I have encountered a scenario of the lead PI not being the last author (when the last author was not even listed as corresponding "*") it was typically due to a deference to authority. My postdoctoral advisor was a huge figure in multiple fields. He would however collaborate generously, providing resources and contributing to the writing of manuscripts with earlier-career faculty. He would often decline any corresponding author status, but the others would often place him last on the list anyway as a sign of respect.

So this kind of respect does exist as I guessed, assuming that the last person is the authority regardless of whether they are the corresponding author.  Or could it be for another reason:  when no asterisk is used for the corresponding author, then the last author is assumed to be the corresponding author, then the last author in this case benefits from this?

@feynman "benefits" is a loaded word. At the time, my advisor was pushing 1000 publications (regularly in Science and Nature) and vying for Kavli/Wolf/Nobel. The only benefit is I guess my advisor felt good that he was appreciated by his collaborators. I think on his end inclusion on the paper was only a means to justify grant resources in support of the project, and less so on the personal gain end of things. I am so far off (currently mid-career, 6 figure papers, no global prizes on the horizon now or likely ever) where he was at that point that I really can't speak to his perspective on it.

R1NaNo if your advisor funded the paper, why wasn't he the corresponding author or even one of the co-corresponding

@feynman largely because he did not want to detract from the amount of credit the younger collaborator would get for that paper.

I'm pretty sure in physics & engineering, authors are listed by contribution. The first author does more work than the second author, who does more work than the third author, and so on.
Therefore, the question is kind of moot. The author order is fixed, the only question is who the most appropriate corresponding author is. Quite often that's the PI, because they're the most "static" person who can be expected to be working on similar problems for a long time. But it doesn't have to be: since the first author did most of the work, they're also the person best-positioned to answer questions on it (at least in the short term). In the end it's a question for the authors to decide.


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sequence of middle authors in physics or engineering fields
There is a paper of multiple authors from several institutions:
student, ..., author, author,..., PI corresponding author.
The middle authors have equal contributions and are not corresponding authors. Among the middle authors, there's a senior author who's a big deal in a more generic field. Is there any strategy of ordering the middle authors?

I outlined one approach in this answer. Would that be suitable or are you trying to optimize for something specific?

The link posted by @Anyon summarizes the general approach. Start at the ends and work your way in. Lead authors (students and postdocs) at the front, correspond authors (PIs) at the back. Senior contributors (other faculty) closer to the PIs, other students/postdocs closer to the student/postdoc lead authors. The perceived order depending on how many authors is usually based on degree of contribution.... a lot of the times that is hard to assign, but the good news is that it is mostly meaningless outside of the minds of people obsessed with author order.

If  you are asking "how was it done?" then you need to ask them. If you are asking "how should it be done?" then this is a duplicate.

You have a similar question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/213700/corresponding-author-not-as-the-last-author-in-physics-or-engineering

@Coder yes, but that can't help answer this one directly

@Anyon thanks that's quite helpful


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how to find conferences that allow sit-in's
For faculty lack of funding, how to find conferences that allow people to sit in without paying? For those that don't allow officially, will they check attendees' badge?

In many cases, I'd think a better approach would be to write to the conference organizers, explain your circumstances, and ask nicely for a waiver of the registration fee.

how likely is it to get waived?

Impossible to estimate overall.  But especially for a conference that isn't huge and whose organization is relatively informal: if (1) you are someone who would benefit from attending, and whose presence would improve the conference; and (2) you can explain why the fee is significantly more of a hardship for you than for the average attendee; then I would think that organizers would tend to consider your request favorably.

Never seen a conference with « registration fee is xxx, but free to anyone... »

At most conferences one will easily enter the room where the talks of interest are given. I've seen a "steward-esses service at gate" just in few congress, and by the way it wasn't rigorous. But the status of intruder may be beneficial for a young person, only. It borders issues as respect and etiquette. Definitively contact the organisers as for the comments above.

I fully agree to Alchimista's comment, but there seems to be a "not" missing ("may not be beneficial")

How are you gonna get there and live?

At first glance, this question reads a bit like "How to find markets where goods can be taken for free by anyone who doesn't have a stall on the same market?" Now, the dynamics of academic publishing and funding do make it such that almost every conference attendee also "has a market stall", but still I wonder whether the question should be rephrased to be more descriptive of the underlying problem rather than the assumed solution (i.e. the typical XY situation).

It’s very field-dependent. In applied math, I’ve never been to a conference where I needed to wear my badge to get in.  But at big engineering conferences there is serious security and they’re quite vigilant.

I can't answer how to find conferences as this will depend heavily on the field (or even subfield) that you are in. However, in many fields there are websites/mailing-lists where conferences are announced.
As for finding conferences that will allow you to attend for free. Your starting point will always be the conference announcements. There are several options:

Some conferences/meetings will not charge registration fees at all. These are usually smaller meetings (< 100 attendees).
Some conference organisers may be willing the waive a fee if you ask nicely. (You are asking for a favor, so be nice!). Some points to consider if doing this.

Smaller conferences are more likely to waive your fee. For big conferences, (part of) the organisation is often out sourced to a commercial company, making a waived fee less likely.
For the same reason, look for conferences that are hosted by a university or research center, rather than at a commercial conference venue. (Again organisers are then more likely to have the flexibility to waive a fee.)
Conferences organisers are significantly more likely to waive a fee if they feel your presence will be an enhancement to the meeting. It helps, for example, if they have heard of your work before and it fits with the goals of the meeting. So look for conferences organised by people that you have interacted with scientifically. At the very least, have a plausible reason for wanting to attend this particular conference.
Look for conferences that are somewhat local. Flying half-way across the globe for a conference does not lend your appeal for a waived fee much credence. In particular, avoid conference that would require you apply for a travel visa. (There are just too many people for Visa invitation letters for conferences.)

I have to say that I can't remember ever having my badge checked at any conference. In fact, by the second day, i've often lost my badge. What does sometimes happen is having your badge checked to get onto the campus in the first place. Also, people often have greeters at the door during registration.
I've "sat in" on plenty conferences before when they have been happening on my campus anyway. I'm not sure I'd risk travelling to one on that basis though.

It depends on the conference. In recent years, the College Art Association, an annual conference for art historians and artists, has instituted a "Pay-What-You-Wish" option. This was instituted after many adjuncts, students, and others expressed their inability to pay fees to attend an integral conference in their field. I mention this in case you are a member of an organization that holds conferences. As a member, you may be able to make your voice heard through elections and other ways that can foster a greater awareness of the high costs of attending conferences for underfunded faculty members. Hope this helps.

Sounds like a great option Parever. Might be possible for OP to slant their work or presentations to such forums if cost is an issue.

There are a lot of reasons why conferences generally don't allow people to just wander in to sessions without notice or registration. They need some way to assure that the venue will be safe for attendees and an open door policy doesn't permit that. There are liability issues, I assume.
If you just try it, you may get by for a while, but will probably be "caught" and escorted out, probably by police, in the US, anyway.
But there is a "low cost option" for students at all levels. Most ACM conferences, and possibly many others, depend on student volunteers to do some of the work of running the conference, including checking badges at the doors to sessions - both large ones and small.
Here is an example: https://recsys.acm.org/recsys19/volunteers/
You can look for similar things at other conferences, or just search. This was turned up by googling "Student volunteers at ACM conferences".
Note, however, that travel and lodging are not covered. Many volunteers are from local universities, making it moot, and some students who need to travel share rooming and even car travel. Some conferences arrange sharing of hotel rooms (evidence is from other questions on this site).

"assure that the venue will be safe for attendees and an open door policy doesn't permit that" - at least in applied CS, I have yet to see a conference whose entrance controls would be in any way strict enough to protect against an actual security risk. In the rare cases where the welcome desk is actually on the way to the conference rooms (often not the case, e.g. in open compounds such as on university campuses with sessions spread across several buildings, or in conference hotels/centres where the welcome deso may be hidden away in a separate room) and permanently crewed after, say, ...

... the first regular conference day, it always seemed like it would be easy to mingle with the crowd flowing in, without the absence of a badge really sticking out. (Also, I'm not convinced I should actually feel any safer if an event only allows registered people in, if anyone can register on site at any time if they can pay the fee.)

@O.R.Mapper, my experience is that student volunteers monitor the doors of meeting rooms, checking badges. It isn't as strict as, for example, entrance to a sports arena, of course. But you will stand out, both to the volunteers and to other attendees, if you don't have a badge. And "open door" is a bit different from "not so strict".

Association conferences sometimes have scholarships or low cost opens as others have mentioned. Also, there may be sponsoring organisations for the conference that you might be able to approach. Otherwise, sometimes offering to volunteer or help organize is an option as well.
"Sitting in" is very against the culture and intention of the conference. Conferences though expensive are usually run as a lost. Venue hire, staff, etc are all very expensive and basically that is what all the money goes to. Most of the presenters are likely to self-fund their travel except the famous keynotes, etc.

for faculty to volunteer, is that weird? helping organize sounds good, but can one just email the organizers saying that they want to help organize and get the fee waived?

Totally reasonable. Emailing organizers.

Conferences might give a discount for people from developing countries, for students, and for people who are  early in their career.  Otherwise discounts are not given.  Even attendees who are invited to receive a cash award usually do not get free admission.

Not to forget: volunteer! Volunteers may be permitted to sit in a number of selected sessions or days.

The only place I have seen volunteering as an option is AAAS, which is not a scientific conference.

Volunteering is a common practice in AI/ML conferences

Volunteering is a common practice at a lot of IEEE conferences.

is volunteering an option for faculty?

I would advise against crashing sessions. In my field (CS/ML/AI) organizers may be sticky about registration. I suppose that you can just try and wander in and sit down at sessions. However, you may well be asked by the organizing staff to leave if you don’t have a badge. Since the objective of attending a conference is to a great extent mingling and networking, getting thrown out will have the opposite effect.
If you have a paper/workshop paper (the latter is much easier to get accepted), then you can talk with organizers about the option of a discount which they may give depending on your circumstances. If you’re willing to volunteer they may offer a discount for example.
As an aside, conference fees seem to be rising dramatically over the years, which I think is a serious issue.

I’ve never seen an official list of such conferences: who would register if it were advertised you can go for free?  In addition going to a conference for the actual talks kinda misses the point: a conference is not an obligation to go to every talk, but an occasion to meet people so short of avoiding contact, the first thing people will ask is who are you, your affiliation etc and will rapidly discover you are not registered.
It is not pleasant as an organizer to see people crashing the conference: there is a real cost to organizing an event and common courtesy would be to ask the organizers for a discount or a free registration: the worse possible scenario for you is to travel somewhere and be blacklisted from the event after getting there and arranging accommodation.

"the first thing people will ask is who are you, your affiliation etc and will rapidly discover you are not registered" - how is that supposed to happen? On the (very!) few occasions where I, being an attendee myself, was given a full list of attendees at all, I certainly had better uses for my time than checking whether everyone I had talked to is on the list (and I would probably have assumed omissions in the list to be errors in there rather than "stowaway attendees", anyway).

@O.R.Mapper That's supposed to happen when you meet someone you've never met... as in "Hello my name is xxx, and I'm from yyy."

@O.R.Mapper That is why conferences give out name tags, which tell everyone your name, your affiliation, and the fact that you are registered.

@ZeroTheHero: I'm pretty sure the OP is capable of indicating these facts regardless of whether or not they have registered.

@JeffE: Granted, some people introduce themselves by holding up their name tag - but others just state their name and affiliation in dialogue, at which point most people probably wouldn't pay attention to a name tag. And should some attendee really ask, would they really feel compelled to verify a statement like "Oh, stupid me has forgotten the tag in the hotel room, I was going to go fetch it right after the next session during lunch break"? Doubtful.

But would you be "blacklisted" or just told you need to go downstairs and register? One could always claim they intend to register, but were running late and really wanted to catch this talk already underway.

@O.R.Mapper You're making this too complicated.  If you don't have a name tag (and you're not famous), conference organizers can reasonably assume that you are not registered.  This is in fact the only access control mechanism I've ever seen at any conference—guards at the doors who wouldn't let anyone in without a name tag.  (You left your name tag in your hotel room?  Good thing you're staying at the conference hotel, then; go upstairs and get it.)

@JeffE: I do not deny the access control mechanism you outline works. It's just my observation that it often just isn't done that way. I have been to various conferences where conference helpers were scarce enough so several rooms had to share a single helper (who was usually busy getting the projectors to work with attendees' devices). And I have attended conferences where I had tucked away my name tag in my front pocket most of the time and have never been asked to show it. Also, a conference hotel is only a thing if the conference does take place in a hotel, and these often seem to be ...

... on the expensive side (thus avoided by a fair portion of attendees).

@O.R.Mapper Like I said, it's the only access control mechanism I've ever seen (and only at expensive conferences at hotels!) Most conferences have no (de facto) access control at all, and nobody notices or cares, because the number of freeloaders is too small to bother worrying about.

@JeffE: Ah, seems like we actually agree then.


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grant application review request
If reviewers get requests for reviewing grant applications from people they know personally, what should they do if they don't know how to comment, as the proposals are good, but don't want to quit either?

It is not quite clear what you are asking. Could you clarify, maybe by using more than one run-on sentence?

Not clear what you mean. Also people I know personally ranges from relatives to barely met at a conference people. I imagine that in some cases there could a positive bias but that should be mainly a concern for the funding agency. What do you exactly are asking for?

What does "but don't want to quit either" mean?

We cannot answer this question because the correct answer depends on exactly how you know the person.  Ask yourself if you can write a fair review.  Only review if the answer is yes.

The question seems pretty clear to me.

Once you've been in a field for long enough, essentially every proposal and paper is from someone who you know personally to some degree. That's unavoidable and knowing someone does not, in itself, constitute a conflict of interest.
The question that the funding agency will want to know about is whether you feel conflicted in writing an honest and fair review -- or, maybe more importantly, whether an external observer might wonder whether you might be conflicted in writing an honest and fair review. In other words, do you (or might someone think that you do) stand to gain something by writing a good or bad review?
If you conclude that you might be biased, or that someone else might think that you're biased, then you should decline to review. Otherwise, there is no reason to decline a review just because you know the author.

If you believe that you can treat this review as you would any other, honestly and fairly, then there is no obstacle. Otherwise don't do it. Don't review for your spouse or for your worst enemy.
However, the person or organization that requested the review should first be notified that you know the person. If you have any personal relationship with them, beyond superficial knowledge, then reveal that.  You don't want charges of bias to later be made, so defer the decision to the person who asked.


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funding for current Master's students in the USA
If one didn't obtain any funding before being admitted into a Master's program, is it hard to find funding in the middle of the Master's? Are RAs and TAs strictly reserved of PhDs? Any funding other than RAs and TAs?

In many (I daresay most) departments, funding for Masters students is fairly hard to come by, especially for students in Masters-specific programs (rather than students who are in programs that are expected to roll into a PhD).
There are a number of reasons for this, ranging from Masters students being unlikely to produce much in an RA position before they move on to Masters students actively being used as an source of income for the department (this is especially common for professional-type Masters programs).
It may still be possible to find funding - I occasionally hire Masters students for short term projects etc. but it's definitely more difficult.

@ Fomite i have no personal experience applying for an RA. let's say i'm doing a MS, but if i (with PhD in another field) go to my PhD department for an RA, will professors b happier to offer me an RA, as i have very strong track record in that field?

@feynman Maybe? Though given you're no longer a student in said department, there are incentives against that as well.

@ Fomite i mean i go to the department in my new school. but this department is in the same discipline of my phd

@feynman Same problem - you’re not going to be around long, and they need that support for their students


text:
Home university with full research funding or prestigious university with teaching / research assistantship?
I have been accepted to a PhD at a top 10 university. I have also been offered a position at my home university, which is ranked about 50th-60th for the subject. At the top university, I currently do not have a scholarship, though I would be able to fund myself through research and teaching assistantships. At my home university, I would get a scholarship for the first year of classes and then a good salary for four years of pure research. At the top university, my supervisor is one of the top researchers in his field, but I would not be part of a research group. At my home university, the research group I would be in is dynamic and large, and has some very good professors. At the top university, I would be working in the field I have been focusing on so far. At my home university, it would be in a related but different field. Which seems like the best bet? There are aspects of both options I like, but I feel too inexperienced to make the right choice. Thanks for your advice.

What do you mean by "top researchers in his field, but I would not be part of a research group"? How can you do a phd in his group without being part of it?

I don't think this question can be answered as it requires one to predict the future.  For example, your relationship with your supervisor could sour.  He/she may leave the university, etc.  The environment at either universities may not be ideal.  These are just some of the many factors that could derail you.

Are you as interested in the related field as the one you've been working in?

@Prof.SantaClaus: I agree that it is a very specific question. Paul Garrett's answer does address the more objective part of it.

@lordy: he is in various research groups but I would not explicitly be part of any of them.

@ Elizabeth Henning: Yes, apart from the fact that I know what it's like to do research in the field I've been working on, and thus am more certain about my interest.

In general, to be perceived as a hanger-on, a marginal person, at a high-status place is definitely limiting... while being a star and highly appreciated at a lower-status place (while admittedly not as good as being "star at high-status place") is generally perceived as a good thing, with upper bounds as yet unclear. (Here I speak from a U.S. perspective, where things are not as centrally organized/controlled as, e.g., in France or China...)
That is, in the U.S., it is generally understood that, though of course a trajectory that leads directly to high-status situations is the simplest, there are many "second chances". Perhaps this is less so in more overtly and officially hierarchical settings. And, indeed, as things get more crowded in academe, the second chances in the U.S. are fewer and fewer, but they do still exist.
... not to mention the psychological impact of being told daily that you're marginal. Oof. Not helpful. Better to be told daily that you're doing great. Or is that a matter of taste? :)

I seem to remember seeing a paper somewhere that concluded that the top students from OK schools had better research productivity and better career trajectories than the OK students from top schools. So that would be objective evidence in support of your opinion.


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Can a professor ask you to get a medical clearance from your doctor
My professor asked me to get a medical clearance from my dictor stating that I am free from my medical ailment. Can a professor do that?

Gonna need a lot more details.... I can certainly imagine instances where safety would require a professor to ask about medical issues (e.g., traveling to remote areas)...if this in a classroom setting, then I'm surprised any professor would want to go into the legal minefield of medical issues, but whether they "can" do that is another matter, depends on the specifics....

Yes, the institution has a responsibility to all students and faculty in terms of infectious things and it is probably in the detail of the enrolment form you signed somewhere...
I have seen situations where students were told to not come to class and stay in their rooms until the Doctor cleared them - this was when europe had a "flu / respiratory " bug a while back...
Students are also sometimes required to provide proof of sickness, or death of a relative, when asking for repeat exams or assessments. Had one case where the student photocopied a medical certificate and changed the dates - got caught because the signature was identical on 5 certificates - size, position on the paper etc etc