text:
At a loss after enrolling into PhD programme
I am currently into my first semester into my PhD program and at this point I am just at a loss. At universities like mine, we can enroll into PhD programs after graduating with a Bachelors and bypass obtaining of Masters first. The advice that I got from several seniors and professors were that the content will just be more advanced than the Bachelors program, apart from the >10 hours of research per day. I was used to looking at screens for 14-18 hours at a stretch so I thought I would be fine going into it.
My motivation for going into PhD was to research on what I liked, which was cryptography and cybersecurity, and to hopefully have something of impact to society. The other reason was to dream of wearing the gown in 4 years.
Now I am into my eighth week and I have 3 coursework projects, 3 research projects, 2 courses that I have to teach. I feel that I do not have enough time to do any work and I do not even have the mood or motivation to do any work nowadays. I know that most of the time people will just tell each other to walk around and breathe in some air, but I feel that the method of reliving myself has long expired.
I hate to say this but I am quite stubborn at times with my decision and think that I will be able to persevere through, as I did during my undergraduate years but I believe that I cannot hold on to this any longer. Other friends of mine who also enrolled into PhD (albeit different courses in the same university) have told me that I look more mentally drained than usual during our lunches. My parents also are quite sad at the sight of me staring into screens the whole day not knowing what I'm supposed to do next. Passing on family outings have also taken a toll on me since I do regret not spending enough time with them during the final year of my undergraduate study and do not want it to be commonplace. I have seriously been contemplating this thought of withdrawal for about 2 weeks now and recently teared up while bringing this topic up with my mum. I feel that my mental state has been shattered and cannot see anything ahead.
I've talked with my family and they will support my decision if I do withdraw from the program. I am currently on scholarship so my estimated cost will be upwards of $10k that I will have to pay back to the university. My parents don't mind this and encourage me to borrow from the bank in the meantime while I work full-time.
My workplace I would say is far from ideal but in my country, in our local university, I don't really feel home at all. Our lab has a capacity of 100+ people but 95% of our office are non-locals and you can imagine where most of them are from, I don't want to speculate things about them here. My professor is somewhat decent but he has close to 60 PhD students under him in my office alone, and it becomes very difficult to talk about issues like this. My professor wants me to be in the lab every weekday but I don't see myself doing any constructive work. In fact, I am more tired at my desk than if I work from home. Hence, you could infer that I suffer in silence in the lab.
The constant stress and worry from all these factors is weighing me down and I think that I am starting to have a recurrence of panic attacks again from the time before I started my undergraduate studies. I have just made an appointment to see the councilor but I'm really afraid for myself and to bring this up to my professor. I would really appreciate some advice from the community on how to approach this and move on.

A prof with 60 PhD students? Um... Is that a prof in the European sense, where he is head of a group of other faculty that would be called profs in USA? Is he really the direct faculty supervisor of 60 PhD students? That seems fantastic.

"staring into screens the whole day not knowing what I'm supposed to do next"
Given how much work you said you have to do, this raises an alarm bell with me. It could be read two ways: Either (a) that you don't know how to do the work that you have. In which case, seek help from your supervisor immediately; or (b) you are unprepared in terms of time management and project management skills - which is a common problem for people who have not left the education system since they were kids, and so whose first experience of not being told what to do is a PhD.

(actually, third possibility, straightfoward depression. But you've already signed up to see a counsellor.)

Why are you passing on social activities? You should be striking a balance between your PhD and also your studies...

@Poidah The word "break" doesn't really exist in my university. Weekends are used to catch up on other work and you're expected to check your phone in case your prof asks you to do more work (that may not be relevant to your research). And I currently have 2 projects that need to be completed, where they tell you what needs to be implemented. The How to start, requirements, and expected results are not mentioned, so I'm lost and going in blind. Not to mention that I'm currently on scholarship and very worried that I'll not hit the grade. So this in a way puts me in an unstable position.

@puppetsock He's the direct faculty supervisor of 60 PhD students. This more or less happens in our university (Asian) when the prof is extremely popular, and we're from the computer science faculty. Whether he is able to devote his time to understand what everyone is doing, I would say no for me personally, but I can't speak for the other students.

Well.. WELCOME TO A PHD!
Sadly all that work is normal and it's only getting worse. Doing 4 essays overnight is not uncommon, research will be tossed away by professors, you wont have time for friends or family, and your health will deteriorate and you will loss/gain weight. All unless you can somehow automate things (a dictation software helps A LOT), or you can externalize the homework, which is not ethical and might not even be legal.
Oh! and your research and enthusiasm is meaningless. You could have the cure for all types of cancers but if your references are not in proper APA it all has no value. Thats academia. You are not there to research, you are there to document properly a research. (Im already expecting this answer to be downvoted a lot as it touches many sensible fibers)
In my PHD I ended up with a horrible lower-back damage that send me to the orthopedist-traumatologist, a friend got facial paralysis, around 30% of those who entered dropped, and the ones who managed to  take  it lightly was because they didnt have much responsibilities, work in bureaucracy and had people to do their HW for them, or similar.
A PHD is a big commitment that frankly isn't worth for many people, but a lot of people realize it only after enrolling. But hey, if you are stubborn then you already have the proper character trait for it, you just need to accept the cost of opportunity, which is that you have to set aside basically all else besides work.
If you are ready to drop, perhaps you should enter an MBA instead, the workload is almost just as bad but at least you don't have to worry about research and it's not so academically oriented, which might be more motivating. Also speak with your professor and negotiate sending your HW by mail as being in the lab is an impossibility for you, or at least negotiate only going  a couple days and the rest work at a distance.

I'm sure that what you describe does happen, but it is not normal in any setting that I've encountered, and definitely should not be normal in any setting.Telling new PhD students that this is what they should expect does not feel helpful.

It is actually (and sadly) quite normal, in developing countries at least. Like grants not existing and the researcher having to pay for their PHD, or number of publications regardless of their usability counting for researcher's 'prestige'. It's simply a reality around the world. That's why I mentioned it was bound to touch sensibilities and be downvoted. But it's a honest answer even if blunt and such directness is more help than encouraging hopeful white lies.

@deags it is however, not what the norm should be and telling someone "this is it, deal with it" is the incorrect way of fighting a wrong situation.

What a norm 'should' be is subjective when presented with the evidence of what it actually is. This is not about fighting a wrong situation. It's about explaining what is really happening, whether it irks what some people feel. In this case, the situation OP described matches reality around most of the world.


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What should I do if I think that my former supervisor has published our results without citation or acknowledgment?
A few years ago I worked in a lab as a visiting researcher (something like internship). As the result, I had to write a short report which at that moment didn't look like a proper paper.
Recently I've discovered that my supervisor literally 3 months after my leave decided to present a conference paper with the results of, well, our work (at least I think that these two documents contain the same idea).
I do prefer to keep my old works and emails so that I can always check and find something. It seems that I sent a copy to my supervisor and the paper was submitted approximately one month later.
Since it's not so common, I've asked my former supervisor already and I've got a reply "What are you talking about?". Now I'm confused and feel a bit stupid because I might be wrong as well.
I've checked related questions:
Is it plagiarism for my thesis advisor to publish a paper using content from my thesis without citation?
What should I do if my master's advisor used a figure from my thesis in a publication without citation or acknowledgment?
and I need to clarify my problem a bit. The idea of the project came from my supervisor, I was needed as a person to read a lot of papers and to do a lot of routine calculations (6 months(!)).
Is there anything I can do now? It's not like I care now about a conference paper, however, at that moment I was looking for a PhD position and all professors kept asking me about my publications and results of my internship.
And I've sent that letter already.

"at least I think that these two documents contain the same idea" what makes you think that and why are you not sure?

Since your report is not a proper paper, I am not sure you deserve citation. But, I would mention your name in the acknowledgement section if I were your supervisor because you did 6 months tedious work.

@BPND we planned to establish some math relations and both documents contain them. However, since I'm not a pure mathematician as my supervisor, I can miss something important which changes the picture.

@scaaahu That sounds reasonable. So, when a person deserves citation in this case?

@BPND I decided to read it properly. At least one subsection (about a page) of that paper basically contains some results from my report. Not really great, notations have been changed, however, I'm sure because I spent at least a month deriving that damn equation.

@scaahu If I take my idea from someone else, I attribute it to him. Whether I take it out of a "proper" paper or not has nothing to do with that.

Another question for you Vladimir:  What exactly do you want to achieve?  If you want this to be an official authorship during your upcoming/ongoing PhD applications, it is very unlikely to happen.  The publisher may not allow author changes (where the only option is paper retraction); if a change is possible, it's going to at least require the written permission and agreement of all current authors that it is deserved.  Your contributions had better be very clear.  Even if it was changed, it is unlikely to be in time, and you risk alienating your former coworkers and boss.

I think it is a meaningful alternative question: how can you use this is your phd or job interviews. Maybe being cited or acknowledged in a conference presentation is not the strongest way. Depending on field, but maybe a warm recommendation from that prof mentioning your contribution is more useful.

People's work on a publication is attributed in two main ways: authorship and in the acknowledgement section. Here, you need to know if your contribution was significant enough for an authorship (it sounds like it wasn't), and whether your work actually appeared in these publications.  There are a number of resources and guides regarding authorship: one, for example here. The typical defining factor is making an intellectual contribution. The information you have provided suggests that you do not deserve an authorship, but probably should have been noted in the acknowledgements.
In my opinion, this is not worth making a fuss over. In my experience, admission committees are unlikely to care about whether you appeared in this section or not. They care whether you were an author on a paper, and how your reference letters discuss you and your work. You will have the latter, as long you don't burn any bridges. In your discussions with potential advisors, demonstrate an understanding of why the project was important, and detail how you assisted the main researchers.
Citing your project write-up is unlikely to be appropriate - and plagiarism would probably only come into play if they copied and pasted your text without your permission.

I see the significance of the contribution different now, in the light of OPs latest comment (posted after your answer) to the original question: "At least one subsection (about a page) of that paper basically contains some results from my report. Not really great, notations have been changed, however, I'm sure because I spent at least a month deriving that damn equation."

@BPND - I'm still inclined to believe it is not significant enough, but for anyone not directly involved it's probably going to be difficult to make the best judgement call.  But the fact that it was difficult for him or took him a long time doesn't make it a contribution; it also depends on how he is using the word derived and what it entails.

Addressing the reason for the question first ... You could include a copy of your properly date+time stamped report and the publication that contains your same results in follow ups that ask for details about your achievements during your internship. Before you proceed though, be aware that, in any real disputes on this issue, if your report cannot be properly back-certified to the date of your internship, and if your report is not really containing anything of true relevance to the publication, you have not much to stand on and indeed perhaps have every reason to be dismissed as unreliable or out of touch with your situation.
As to what should go next, you certainly must first assure the reliability of your stand before you start projecting (mistaken) actions on to your previous advisor. The levels of recognition for work done move from the lowest verbal "thank you" to the highest co-authorship, and each stage typically is associated with respectable discussions done in advance of each step. With the exception perhaps of the first "thank you for helping on this", consider that each successive step to the next level is a business transaction -- you provide your services in exchange for something specific in return.
All said, should this come down simply to a desire for proper appreciation to help you move forward in your career, consider that a well-framed, positive letter of recommendation from your previous mentor written in a way that clearly supports the importance of your efforts to help obtain published results can mean more than a (bland) acknowledgement in a paper.

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Asking to get paid for academic research work
I am currently a student working for a professor full time over the summer on science / engineering research projects. My first meetings with this professor took place during the spring semester. During these meetings, the professor agreed to hire me and agreed (in speech only) to pay me for my work. No specifics were ever discussed and the remark about paying me was made casually. I have signed no financial paperwork of any kind at any time. If I were to get paid, I would almost certainly be paid minimum wage. After this meeting, payment for my work, which I have been doing most of the summer, has never been brought up again by the professor or anyone around them.
I have not brought this issue up to the professor because:

The experience working on the projects I am being assigned is metaphorically worth its weight in gold to me right now. It is both work I am intensely interested in pursuing, and also a great resume experience listing for potential future employers.
I am in a financial situation that allows me to offer my time for free. Since this is my first experience working on academic research, I did not want to be turned down by the professors I asked because of money. I also will almost certainly need to ask this professor for a letter of recommendation for future internships to very selective companies in the same industry as this professor. I also know this professor regularly communicates with high ranking industry professionals who work at the same companies as I want to apply to. Thus, my relationship to this professor is of paramount importance above all else.
I will almost certainly be working for this professor through the end of the next academic year (however, I will have to work part time during the school year since I am a student). I have considered the possibility that it might be wiser to wait until I have worked for this professor longer before asking to be paid for my work. As far as the feedback on work I have already performed, I seem to produce results that are on par or better than they are expecting, and I deliver my results on or ahead of schedule.

All of this said, I still would like to get paid (however small an amount it may be) for this position since I am working full time and, when I was hired, the professor I work for did (again, verbally only) say I would get paid. I feel like I am in an awkward position here, and I am unsure what the best way bring this topic up is. How should I bring this up to professor if at all?

Given that payment was offered but just not followed up on, it is entirely possible that this professor does not realize that he never got around to the paperwork for paying you. (I say this having seen that exact scenario play out more than once.)
I would recommend just bringing it up casually, e.g.: "When we spoke in May, you mentioned the possibility of payment. Is that something we can arrange now?"

thank you for your response. In the event that the professor says no for reasons other than lack of funding, I am curious how to proceed. The scenario that I think is possible (but very unlikely at this point), is that the professor sees my work as good experience for me, and helpful for their long term research, but I am ultimately not considered to be worth minimum wage, and so they refuse. It would still be in my interest to continue working for free for the reasons listed above, but I feel such an interaction would fundamentally change how this professor sees me. Am I over t...

... thinking this scenario?

@ShakespeareTheCat I was in a similar situation once. I wasn't able to get paid by that professor, so I reduced my commitment to his lab to something that was manageable in my schedule. You are overthinking it, but also don't feel bad about telling your professor not getting paid means you can only dedicate X hours to their lab.

@ShakespeareTheCat Unless this professor is generally an unreasonable person (you would know better than me if this was the case, having worked with this prof for a while now), I wouldn't worry about that.

"Am I over thinking this scenario?" - Yes I think you are. If the professor can't or won't offer to pay you, then it's up to you whether it is worth while for you to keep working (and learning) for free. It's also possible you could ask for course credit, which may or may not seem valuable to you (this is common in US universities, no idea about elsewhere). In none of these circumstances should the professor think any differently of you, they'll be judging you based on your work and how they feel your work positions you for more research in the future.

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I have experience in one area but I don't have a good relation with my supervisor. How can I show this experience when applying for a PhD?
I have this particular situation, where I started one thesis during my master's about X topic (which I love). I was asked to wait around 4 months while the base code was ready to work, but when the time arrived, the program was buggy and poorly coded. However, I studied all the theoretical background that they coded, and then debugged the software for around 3 months, but in the end, it never worked.
This professor was very helpful while I was debugging it, but when I decided not to continue with the project as it looked like the debugging was never going to end, he became angry and behaved as if the project failure was my fault... I was the one who should've been pissed off after more than half a year wasted in that project...
In any case, I graduated with another thesis and now I am looking for a PhD, in that X topic... I found a very interesting one very related to the thesis I was doing before, and I would like to include in the motivation letter, my background and the experience I got while I was debugging (in fact I learned more about the topic while debugging, than reading the theory).
What would be the best way to mention this project without backfiring at me, or being asked for a reference from that professor who will definitely not recommend me?
Thanks!


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What is the correct year to use in the reference list?
I am wondering what would be the correct year to use for this book?:
http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/9195
On the page it says 2014, and on google scholar I see that other people have used 2014. But inside the book as can be seen here
link,
it says copyright 2015. What year should I put for it?

Use the one which will not create any problem during the citation. In this context, I will use 2014 as the year.

You can find this in books which are published at the end of a year. For instance, if books are published in November or December, publisher will state this year as publication year in their online catalogue. But the publisher has also assigned such a published book for the following year, because it will be mainly promoted and distributed to libraries, book stores etc in the next year.  Here is another example of 2 different years of publication of a book: publisher website states 2016 and google books shows in the book 2017  In case you have read the book and not the few pages on google books, I would say the year in the book is more reliable and would cite it as 2015.


text:
Evaluating the Sensitivity and Specificity of Various AI Detection Tools in Academic Settings
I'm researching the effectiveness of AI detection tools in identifying AI-generated text, especially in the context of academic integrity. Specifically, I'm interested in understanding the sensitivity and specificity of the following tools:

Unicheck.com
Originality.ai
Contentatscale.ai
Gowinston.ai
Undetectable.ai

My primary question is whether any scientific studies or empirical data are available that evaluate these tools' accuracy in differentiating between human-written and AI-generated text. In this context, sensitivity would refer to the tool's ability to correctly identify AI-generated content, while specificity would relate to correctly recognizing human-generated content.
Given the increasing use of AI in generating academic texts, it's crucial to understand how reliable these tools are in maintaining academic integrity. I'm particularly interested in:

Any peer-reviewed studies that have tested these tools.
Data on false positive/negative rates.
Comparative analyses of these tools against others in the market.
Personal experiences or anecdotal evidence from the academic community regarding using these tools.

Note that sensitivity and specificity suffer from all the same major problems as accuracy. Better to work with probabilistic than hard 0-1 classifications, and if these really need to be compared to a threshold, then select this threshold with a lot of care.

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US university scholarship for international students
what the US universities look for for giving scholarship?Can an international student get scholarship from US universities through sat exam?

The very top (mostly private) universities will decide which students to admit without considering the financial circumstances of the students or their families.  Then they will look at the student's family's financial situation and cover whatever the student's family is unable to pay.
Slightly less top universities will consider your financial circumstances in making admission decisions, but will admit you (and provide a combination of scholarships and loans sufficient to pay for your education) if you are sufficiently better than their average student.  (How much better is sufficient depends on the financial circumstances of the university, and in particular whether they really need tuition to cover their expenses or cover much of their expenses using interest from prior very large donations.)
The universities that are well off enough to subsidize their international students in this manner almost all do admissions holistically.  That means, for a competitive candidate, someone will take some time to get a complete picture of you as a person from all your application materials and decide on your application on that basis.  They are interested not only in your academic abilities, but also want to consider how much you will contribute to the university community (both academically and socially) as well as how much you are likely to make a contribution to society (and hence to the fame of the university) after your studies.  Note your likely contribution to the university community may depend on who else is already on campus and who else is applying that year.  If you are a good bassoon player, this will help you more in a year when a bassoon player is graduating and only one other bassoon player is applying than in a year when two bassoon players enrolled the previous year and three others are applying.  (It is quite common at top US universities for people to participate in activities unrelated to their studies, so students may continue to play the bassoon in the university orchestra even if they are not interested in further musical studies.)
To make such a judgement, a university will look not only at your standardized test scores, but also at your complete school records, recommendations from your teachers, your activities outside of school, and your responses to the (longer or shorter) essay questions on their application.  If your country regularly sends students to the university in question, someone at the university will be familiar enough with cultural norms in your country to interpret these other parts of your application appropriately.  If not, they will try to learn what they can.
Doing admissions in this way is time consuming and expensive, but if a university is using substantial resources to subsidize its students' education, then it will find it worthwhile to spend some extra resources in trying to get the students it wants.


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Can I hide my master degree permanently?
I am doing an undergraduate masters (4 year course) in Cambridge and end up having a first class honour in the BA and upper second class in the Mxxx. I have emailed the uni to abandon my fourth year result but seems that it is too late to withdraw. Can I just destroy the degree letter and hide my Master degree?

I don't understand - what is the intent of this?

Try and get a little perspective. A 2:1 is not a poor grade- especially not in a Master's degree from Cambridge.

I second @astronat's comment -- speaking as someone with a 2:1 in the BA and a "merit" (=low-ish first) in Part III. Obviously it depends what jobs or further courses you intend to apply for, but my advice would be: if you are asked for your degree classification, give it honestly; if you are not asked for it, you may or may not wish to include it.

I'm still unsure of the intent of the OP - I'm speaking as an American student.

My understanding is that a four-year undergraduate master's degree is just that: You do one (combined) degree and get the Mxxx; you don't come out after four years with a BA and an Mxxx. Accordingly, unless you manage to withdraw after three years, there is no BA to fall back on and your Mxxx is your only degree (and thus your only degree grade).

@owjburnham I'm not sure Part III works like that: https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/postgrad/mathiii although http://www.camdata.admin.cam.ac.uk/structure-undergraduate-courses-cambridge#graduate seems to suggest that there is no overall degree classification (which was news to me)

Hide it from whom? The only scenario I can see is that you want to omit it from your CV. But if you do that, how are you going to explain the one year gap?
It's also worth noting that you didn't get "a first class honour in the BA". You may have got first class honours in one or more years of the Tripos, but your degree certificate will say merely that on a certain date, in a congregation holden (sic) in the Senate House, you were admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Not that my employers have asked to see the certificate.
Finally, "permanently"? Don't make rash decisions which you might regret. In two years you'll be able to graduate MA and that (in Cambridge terms, at least) is a higher degree than the MMath/MEng/etc. You can put MA (Cantab) as your postnominal letters on your CV and hide the Mxxx that way, although it will still make sense to mention it as an explanation for what you were doing this past year.


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A time frame for a faculty position application application in UK
Let us imagine that I am uploading the application for a faculty position (e.g. lecturer) in a university in UK today. What to expect next? Should I wait for their reply anyway or only in the case that my application is in a short list? How long might it take to get an email from them (weeks, months etc)?
Thanks!

In my experience English and Welsh[1] universities will notify all applicants shortly after the shortlist has been decided upon, either with a positive or negative response. Moreover, this decision is typically quite fast, around 2weeks - 2months.
[1] I have insufficient experience with North-Irish universities, and have applied to Scottish universities and never received a response at all.

Normally, shortlisting happens a week or two after the application submission deadline. If you are shortlisted, you will be invited to an interview. If you are not invited to an interview within a month after the application deadline, it is safe to assume you are not shortlisted, but the University does not want to let you know until the appointment is made (which may happen a few months later).
The interview can be scheduled from a few weeks to a few months after the shortlisting date. After the interview, the decision is normally made within a week. If you don't hear from them after 2 weeks, it is safe to assume you are not the first candidate, but the University does not want to let you know until the appointment is made.
It is not unusual to never hear back from a University if your application is unsuccessful. Generally speaking, standards for professional communication in the UK academia are surprisingly low.


text:
my professor said she would like to write a recommendation for me and when I told her the deadline, she didn't reply any more
Last week, I wrote my professor a email and asked her whether she would like to write a recommendation for me. She seems quite positive and asked when would be the submit time. I replied promote about the deadline would be in two weeks. Since then she didn't reply any more. I asked early this week whether she need extended time to write the reference letter. She still didn't reply. The deadline will be next week. So does the submit time didn't work for her? how can I do now?

Go and ask in person. Maybe offer solutions for any problems that might come up.

She may be busy and/or away from her email. In this time of year many researchers go on conferences, some even on vacation. Try to phone her or meet her in person.

some even on vacation, the shocking world of vacation in July.

@Sara Next time, tell the deadline in in the initial e-mail.

Two weeks is very tight; how many letters did you ask her to write?  Was it for multiple schools / grants?
A month's notice, at the minimum, is typical for multiple letters - she seems unwilling / unable to meet those deadlines.  But, try again, and good luck.

I do not agree with this answer. Many people in academia who have had to write references/recommendations before typically have templates at hand, so it does not take more than 15 minutes for them to write a standard reference/recommendations. Even if there is some new, specific information which needs to be included, it should not take more than 30 minutes to put something together.

@101010111100 although many profs may have templates I stand by my answer in speculating (since that's all we can really do for now) that this particular prof may feel that two weeks is too tight, if the OP were asking for multiple letters that each need to be tweaked a little.

@101010111100 I have written many LORs and they usually take me somewhere between one hour and three hours (sometimes spread out over multiple days to give me a chance to correct and polish the letter). I find your presumption that writing an LOR takes only 15 minutes (and "should not take more than 30 minutes") rather annoying. IMO a professor who writes such a letter in 15 minutes is either insanely busy and/or doesn't care very much about their student.


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How should i present a theory for a contradiction arise from current result?
Currently i have almost finished my research in medical physics( Ms.c). We investigate a postulate and came with a contradiction. I have include all my result in the result and discussion section.  Duse to this contradiction i have investigated further and found some evidence.
But this new evidence and its principles were not included in the aim and the objective of the thesis. Because these new principles and finding arise from the previous findings.
Is it okey to explain the new principles and their physics in the result and discussion section?
 or do i need to go back to the start and make my own hypothesis again?
Thanks
Manoj

For what to include in your Ms.c. thesis, ask your advisor.

The idea that you can't include information because it wasn't among the project's original aims seems absurd to me.  But maybe conventions are so different between medical physics and mathematics that what looks absurd to me is perfectly standard for you.  So I have to agree with @GEdgar that you need to ask your advisor.

In statistical studies it is easy to get bogus results by looking at the data first, then formulating your result.  Only the details of the situation could tell us whether this is one of those situations.

Thanks for your comments and it was a contradiction and included in my thesis, which led to start new research .


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How detailed should a methodology be presented?
I am writing a manuscript dedicated to the classification of natural processes occurring worldwide. In this study, I create a composite model involving a classifier, i.e. a Neural Network model, that will be used to process the classification. The study discusses which variables, related to the observed natural processes, are more important for the classification procedure (e.g., weight matrices are described and discussed).
To explain the method, I briefly give an overview of machine learning (principles) in 3 sentences and relate it to my study. In addition, I also explain what are neural networks, and the explanation is made in the appendix (3 pages). For both, machine learning and neural network, I use a citation pointing directly to a book.
Is it preferable to leave a citation inside my manuscript so that the reviewer just takes a look at the cited book to understand how neural networks work, or can I explain the concept in the appendix (but in this case I use different citations for detailing the explanations)?

Is it a standard method or something novel and less known?

This is extremely dependent upon the journal you are submitting to (and who the audience of that journal is) and the roll of the dice on who your reviewers will be. Where one reviewer believes that it is critical to demonstrate that you have met your assumptions for regression with the inclusion of residual plots and formal tests, another (and equally as qualified) will state that such inclusions only add clutter to the methods. And finally, you might have an editor come in and say that it should be included but moved as an addendum. Even scanning prior journal articles is not always the best indicator (though its a very good one) because editors change and reviewers are different.
Your best bet is to go with what you feel is correct and allows for the clearest replication of your methods. If this involves going into the mechanics of back propagation and what a sigmoid is, then so be it. If, as you have stated, that you feel that a reference will suffice, then thats ok as well.
To give an example, I have two papers coming out this fall where-in both use the same method to calculate a statistic. Paper one, the reviewer felt that I should explain, in detail, how that statistic is calculated due to probable reader unfamiliarity. In paper two, the reviewer accepted the simple citation of "this statistic was calculated in the manner described in _____(XXXX)".
So, in summation, it depends, and you should use your educated determination as someone with knowledge of the literature to guide you.


text:
Removing a co-author when re-submitting a manuscript
My colleague is an expert in biology. Using his data, I have developed a new algorithm that could change the way we explore data in general (not only in biology). I wrote a manuscript explaining the algorithm and submitted it to a highly ranked computer sciences-related journal.
Later, I got comments from peer-reviewers asking for a major revision. Basically, they ask to test my algorithm on benchmark data, other than those related to biology. This is apparently important to compare my results with those obtained from similar algorithms.
At this point, I think of changing the way the paper has been written so that it doesn't focus much (or not at all) on the biologic data since they were only used to test the algorithm. To this end, I also think of removing the name of my co-author (the biologist) - he essentially helped describing/interpreting a bit the results, nothing more. We discussed the eventuality that I remove his name already but he doesn't care too much if I do so as I am already involved in another project with him (biology-oriented).
Can I remove the name of someone when re-submitting a manuscript? I planned to contact the main editor directly about it prior to re-submitting.

While you can, I'm not sure you should:  See https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/102020/19607 and https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/173692/19607 and https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/73490/19607

In my opinion: "describing/interpreting a bit the results" is definitely enough contribution to be a coauthor (particularly if that was the choice upon the first submission). If somebody's contributions made a manuscript noticeably better than it would have otherwise been, it's a sign that they deserve authorship.

You are not doing it behind his back and for a good reason, and it is not standing in the way of further collaborative work with him (and he may not be all that fussed about having a pub in that particular theory-oriented journal). Just explain it all to the editor the way you have here. Editors are almost always happy to go with whatever the author group decided between themselves, as long as you vouch for the definitive "author contributions" list.

As @Buffy's answer says, it is probably acceptable, given that it seems you are intending to revise into a fundamentally different paper, where your colleague's contribution is no longer really present.
However: are you sure you are correctly interpreting the feedback given? We can't know the specifics here, but in general testing a novel algorithm against benchmark data as well as using it in a real-life application should both be interesting. So I would perhaps even test with the editor whether they do really seek a revision that replaces the biological data or would merely prefer adding the benchmark data. In the latter case, I assume your colleague would stay a co-author noncontroversially. Of course, perhaps the feedback is already clear on this point.
Finally, I've been lucky that I've worked in fields and with employers who haven't applied absurd algorithms to judge research productivity and given only "partial credit" for co-authors. So I've been free to be generous with co-authorships. In particular, in interdisciplinary work, I've routinely worked with people in other fields where we've co-authored (with permuted order, perhaps) multiple articles each adapted to the priorities and writing conventions of our respective disciplines. We've included each other as coauthors since we actively intellectually collaborated on doing the research as a whole, irrespective of precisely whose data or written words were front and centre in each article. So I would put the bar pretty high to remove a collaborator as coauthor -- basically, you have to feel you did the real work for the article without them, merely inspired by your previous collaboration.

which sorts of fields are those? It sounds really great!

@Hirek: math, appied economics, business, and psychology (interdisciplinary). In top-tier North American educational institutions, industry, and independent institutes, who care more about evaluations of your work (and to be less rosy, who you know and what is the reputation of where you've published) than counting papers, authors, or citations.

Given what you say, it seems acceptable to remove them provided that you assure yourselves that the resulting paper has no fundamental intellectual contributions from the other person remaining. That might be easy or hard to do, but seems possible here.
A supporting point is that they are both comfortable with it and also willing to continue collaboration with you on future projects. The paper sounds sufficiently different that their contribution may not rise to the level of authorship.
I do, strongly, suggest that you write a nice acknowledgement section, thanking them for help on earlier versions of the paper.
You will probably (both) need to assure the editor that this is the appropriate path. If they strongly object, then re-think it.

A couple of considerations in addition to what has been posted so far:

Many journals do not allow for changes in the author list during the revision process, with or without the co-author's approval. It is prudent to have a conversation with the Editor-in-Chief about your plan first.
It is possible that the Editor-in-Chief sees the changes you plan to make as so significant that the paper should be withdrawn and re-submitted as a new manuscript. If you don't want this to happen you are kind of walking a fine line - you want to convince the EiC that your changes are sufficient to make the biology co-author unnecessary, but not so significant that the earlier reviews you have already received are invalidated (one of the assumptions of peer review is that revisions are indeed revisions of the same idea / paper, not a completely different paper with different framing and different goals - and your description sounds dangerously close to the latter).

Personally, I would be a bit concerned about this discussion backfiring on you in unexpected ways. It's not unusual for peer review to inspire you with new and better ways to do the same kind of work, or give you ideas how to achieve your original goals in a much better way. However, what one typically does then is to finish the current iteration of the work, and then start working on the improvement afterwards and submit it as a new paper (e.g., as a generalisation that builds on your earlier biology case, in your example). This is particularly true since the editor asked for a revision (rather than a rejection), which indicates that they do see value in the current iteration of the work.

This is my experience as well. If the changes are so significant they require a change in authorship, likely the process will be restarted.

I wouldn't do that. That coauthorship doesn't look granted for free, considering the history of the manuscript. Unless the paper was rejected, but it does not seem to be the case. And personally, even resubmitting what would look a different paper I would likely maintain that person in the coauthor list.


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Transparency about candidates selection for a post-doc position
I recently applied to some post-doc positions at well-ranked universities whose number of candidates is usually not so large (ca. 15, at most 50). Usually, the recruitment process consists of a formal interview, and sometimes, a pre-informal one where candidates are first "filtered".
I'm not aware about the main procedure after such interviews conducted with candidates. I got only 1 feedback from a university being totally transparent on this procedure; i.e. you get a document showing (1) the candidates selected and those non-selected, (2) their ranking in the selection, and (3) comments about the selections made. This makes me think, is it authorized in general as an unsuccessful applicant to request feedback on the outcome of my application? I wish decisions taken were more transparent so that unsuccessful candidates could at least situate themselves in the pool.

In the US, at least, giving information to one candidate about another would probably be illegal on privacy grounds. They can give you some feedback on your own shortcomings, at least, but giving comparative information starts to reach the red zone.

Rules, regulations and customs vary a lot between different countries and institutions. Generally, candidates are informed that Universities are not able to provide feedback for candidates who were not shortlisted for the role. Candidates who were shortlisted and interviewed can have some feedback, but the quality differs widely. In my experience, the most detailed feedback I received from a nordic University, containing about three sentences from the Panel about each candidate. The least useful feedback I received so far consisted of one sentence:

Unfortunately, you were not successful, because we found a more suitable candidate.

In about 1/3 of cases I received no feedback at all even when I asked for it post-interview.
I have to say that currently the post-interview feedback tends to be rather useless, and in most cases it is a mockery of the transparent approach. I suspect that HRs are just too cautious that a frustrated candidate might submit a legal complaint, and are trying to "protect the University" by not saying anything specific or useful.
My experience mostly covers UK/EU. As I said the situation in the US might be different.

There is also the privacy issue. A lot of the candidate selection boils down to making comparisons between candidates and it is hard if not impossible to give meaningful feedback about this process without invariably leaking information about the other candidates without their consent.

@mlk I am not sure about it. All EU is bound by the same GDPR, but nordic Universities find it possible to say much more than let's say UK ones. Privacy laws are important, but too often they are used as an excuse to withhold all information whatsoever, which seems unhelpful and lazy approach to me.

Maybe not for a post-doc, but I would be really irritated if it became public knowledge that I had applied for a job - that could have repercussions if I didn't get it.

@DmitrySavostyanov There are many more laws than just the GDPR (which is more about data storage than disclosure anyway) and most of them are national and thus different everywhere. To give an extreme example that comes to mind regarding privacy: In Scandinavian countries anybodies tax returns can be requested by anybody else. Passing a similar law in Germany on the other hand would likely be impossible without abolishing the constitution first, as privacy of such information is literally considered a human right by German courts.

@JonCuster Not convinced either. The list is sent to other candidates, who likely have already met each other during the interviews. References are already collected at this stage, including the reference from candidates' Head of Department.

The assumption that candidates have met each other, or that references have been collected, seems to be a local one. When I hire a post-doc, reference checks are only done once a decision to (attempt) to hire is made, precisely to keep applications private. And I would never tell any candidate the names of other candidates. Your mileage clearly varies.

@JonCuster Even if we agree that sending the full list around is a problematic option, there is still no good explanation why HRs in so many places are so rarely willing to send unsuccessful candidates any helpful and meaningful feedback, such as (for example) their position in the list, or the reason why they were not selected (e.g. the selection category they were marked low on).

Why do you believe there even is a 'position in the list' that has been uniquely determined? I certainly don't make a uniquely ordered list, even of the final choices - there is top choice, then the others. Telling somebody they are #9 on the list at best asks for arguments about why they aren't #8. In any event, my HR folks would freak out if I sent out such a list...

@JonCuster I believe that there are ways of providing a meaningful and useful feedback to unsuccessful candidates, and I believe HRs are not always doing their best to achieve it. I also believe they use "privacy" as a silly and childish excuse. I believe the real reasons may be lack of compassion and motivation to help people, because "they are not our employees, so why should we bother". The same with transparency -- HRs rarely make a meaningful attempt to achieve it, it's mostly smoke and mirrors to create an appearance.

I work at a Nordic university and HR lets me carry out postdoc selection pretty much at my own discretion. I have done it in different ways, included "you were not selected but please let me know if you would like feedback". This sometimes backfires because some of the weakest candidates get very argumentative about why they didn't get selected. The strong candidates usually welcome the feedback. This is if I "open" the position. For postdocs, my department also allows me to just "recruit" someone, with no selection process whatsoever (handy if you already have a strong candidate lined up).

Where I am (germany),

Telling other candidates who else applied would clearly violate the privacy rights of the other candidates.
For some hiring procedures candidates may be able to gather that knowledge for a shortlist of candidates, e.g. if the procedure includes a day of public lectures by the candidates - however, even these are often sufficiently separated in time that the candidates don't usually meet.
The hiring committee AFAIK doesn't usually bother to rank candidates except maybe the top 2 - 3 in case they're afraid the top one may not accept the offer.
The feedback on rank that could be given would then be e.g. "you were in the top 8" (in case the first round of deciding whom they'd be OK to hire and whom they would not want to hire had lead to 8 people of whom then then pick their first choice)
Administration is often very much afraid of people suing for a job. Thus, the hiring committee is likely forbidden by the legal department to give any kind of  useful feedback: regardless of whether the one suing for a job is right or not, this material would give them an advantage at court, and possible encourage them to sue (which, even if the court decides against them, is costly for the institution).


text:
Publishing tables in a paper
I am doing some economic estimates of natural resources which require to develop some models. To construct the models, I had to aggregate data from the literature, which are represented in 3 different tables (3 pages). I have 2 other tables where I present general statistics (median, average, SD, min, and max) of these data (2 pages). The median and SD are important for the model development.
Should I includes the 3 tables of data either (1) in the text, (2) in the appendix, or (3) as supplementary data that will certainly be available online from the journal's website?

Where you include the tables is entirely dependent upon how important the information within the tables is for the text.
Three pages of tables are a lot. An average paper is somewhere between 5 and 20 pages, so three pages of pure table in between the rest certainly disrupts the text, which speaks against option (1). Option (2) will force the reader to go to the appendix, depending on how important it is that they actually read the table. If you could extract the key information in text form, you could simply reference the large table and put it into the appendix. Supplementary data is more likely to be overlooked by people reading your article, as they are separate documents that can be found on the journal web page. Therefore, I would only choose option (3) if the actual values in the table are unimportant and the statistics can be extracted in form of text or a smaller table.
You say there are two additional tables that are important for your model. It sounds like these are a case for the appendix. Again, depending on the importance of actual values, they also might better fit into the supplementary data.


text:
Which limits to draw for speculations in an scientific publication?
Let's take an example from geology.
I describe an area (A) using a topographic map not really well detailed (50m of resolution). In this area, I study variably-sized shapes of geologic structures (e.g., volcanoes). I have also from A, an area B that is way more detailed (1m-resolution) and it has been described by direct observations (on the field).
Now, I want to do analyzes of structures within A, given the knowledge from B, and check if similar structures of B are observable in the entire area A (not covered by B) so that the observation is extrapolated over the low-resolution data. I make a description of this in a little section of a paper.
The description is important to make probabilistic estimates. The aim of the paper I have in mind, deals with estimates of (1) where are the wanted structures, and (2) what shape do they have in the entire A.
Problem:
I cannot publish all of what has been done in B (yet), but just enough details (some are published already) to make the main structures wanted being characterized in A.
I want to publish the estimates done within A, but by using low-resolution data, which means, discriminating less characterizable structures; they can still be distinguished though.
Questions:
By doing (a) extrapolation of descriptions, and (b) general estimates on low-resolution data, should I fear about doing to much "speculations"?
I am more concerned about (a) than (b), because for the latter, the results are debatable and the method used is totally new and worthy for research in general.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's about research in a particular field, not about academia in general.

The legitimacy of such extrapolations is, as far as I know, among the topics studied by statisticians.  If I'm right about that, it would be good to ask a statistician about your extrapolations, both to check how valid they are and also, if they are valid, to get some citable support for their validity.


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Journal submission cover letter: length and references
I wrote a cover letter that takes 2 pages: 1 for the main text explaining the purpose of the research and why it is important, and 1 consisting of my name and institutional details plus references.
1) Should a cover letter be of 1 page maximum in general?
It is not mentioned the journal's website. If this is the case, I guess I should play with the font size and line spacing.
2) Is it ok to include two citations to emphasize my writing?
I included the two references right after mentioning my institutional details.

Are you citing your own work or that of others?

I am citing the work of others.

Depends upon the journal's guidelines. Also, some journals have gone away from cover letters and only use online submission forms.

@RichardErickson Some online submissions forms still have an entry for "Cover letter" (I think I already submitted articles without writing anythin).

Please specify your field.  Different fields have different customs.

I think you should shoot for a one page cover letter, but it's not a requirement. The goal of the cover letter is to convince the editor that the submission is suited for their journal, and send it out to reviewers, so your first priority is to make the editor read the letter with a positive mind. This is usually easier with a shorter letter, but as I said, it's not an absolute requirement.
If your letter summarizes the results, discusses the potential readership, and also explicitly addresses e.g. significance criteria, it may be harder to fit it on one page. If fluff content like author names, affiliations*, etc. spill over on the next page, I wouldn't worry about it. If you fill the next page with more text, I'd start trying to cut down on it, if at all possible. What you shouldn't do is to play with margins and font sizes. That's very transparent, and doesn't improve e.g. word count and the reader's willingness to put in the time.
*I've never put affiliations in cover letters, as it is in the paper and submission systems anyway. Maybe this varies from field to field, and between single and double blind journals.

Shouldn't "explaining the purpose of the research and why it's important" be in the paper's abstract and introduction rather than in the cover letter? I'm accustomed to cover letters of the form "Dear [Editor's name], I would like to submit the [enclosed in the old days / attached nowadays] paper, [title of paper], for publication in [name of journal].  Sincerely, [name of author]".

Many journals now require that the authors indicate how their contribution meets the "significance" and "subject matter" criteria of the journal as part of the cover letter.

Well, I find it important to explain briefly why the editor should consider my work. It is often mentioned in the author guide of journals I consider to publish in.

I have always written short cover letters (say, half a page). Something like

Dear [Editor / editor's name],
We are pleased to submit the enclosed manuscript entitled [blahblah].
  We believe it brings [blahblahblah] and has some applications in
  [blahblah].
Best regards,
[your name], on behalf of the co-authors

Adding references is IMHO far too detailed! If the editor wants more details, he/she can read the abstract or the whole article.
You might want to specify your research field to get more specific answers.

Some journals explicitly require that the authors explain in a cover letter why their manuscript should be published in the journal (because it meets certain criteria, or a generic explanation of the significance of the submission). I regularly have submitted to at least three such journals.

@aeismail Then the OP should specify if that's the present situation. Also, you might have seen that my suggestion does include a generic explanation of the signification of the submission... We believe it brings [blahblahblah]

Why all the downvotes?


text:
Publishing a paper without supervisor
I recently wrote a scientific article (let's say, about a methodology for predictive analyzes) I would like to submit. The article is beneficial for my PhD as it has close relationship with another paper I am currently writing.
However, I am concerned about its publication:

I don't want to put the name of my supervisor since he has (almost) no knowledge about what I wrote about. I barely think he can even provide constructed critics (if he checks the paper), and I am very unsatisfied about his way of not doing research (only participating to conferences) and taking appropriation of others work. I know, this is probably common in academia but I am the type of person working 8-10 hours everyday (week-end included) to get the job done (plus to get recognition).
To develop the methodology, I needed to learn and implement some mathematical models (and related algorithms) over the last 4 months. However, I have started everything from scratch, which means I am not an expert with 10 years of experience that can accurately see if the work I did requires strong modifications or not.

I am not quite sure about publishing alone since I don't think an editor would be convinced to do it that way. I was thinking about looking for a scientist (in conferences possibly) with whom I can work with so that he could make a proper review about my work (and add his name on it). I am not quite sure about this though, I don't think someone can steal my research (if we consider worse case of doing this).
My supervisor proposed me a post-doc already, I don't really want to envenom our relationship but let's say this is the type of person who (probably) doesn't care about recognition (thus having his name on papers). I may be wrong though.
My question is, do you think I should accept publishing with my supervisor or consider an alternative option?

Though this should have already taken place, I strongly suggest you to discuss publication protocols and expectations within your group with your advisor, ASAP.

On one hand, you seem to have a research advisor who is quite supportive of you; he has already offered you a post-doctoral position when you finish.  On the other hand, you are concerned that he tends to attach himself to, and take credit for, work on which he is only peripherally involved.  This places you in something of a quandary, since your advisor has not made a meaningful contribution to your paper.
However, I would suggest that you show your advisor the paper to get his feedback.  Even if that feedback is not useful in terms of the content of the manuscript, your advisor probably has a good understanding of how papers should be written, and where they should be submitted.  Moreover, when other scholars are evaluating work done by graduate students, you are not going to be significantly penalized for having your advisor as a co-author.   Having a paper that is co-authored by your advisor, but with you as the first authors, is not going to be perceived as that different from  a single-author publication.
Perhaps your advisor will make some useful comments, but he will decline to be an author on the paper.  (This happened to me, in my interactions with my advisor, more than once.)  You seem to think that your author is not likely to be magnanimous in this way, which is, in the abstract, unfortunate.  However, as I stated above, having you advisor as a co-author is unlikely to be counted against you in a significant way, and maintaining a good relationship with your advisor (for whom you man continue working as a post-doc) can be extremely important for a future research career.  So I do not think that you have much to lose by showing your paper to your advisor and getting the advantage of your advisor's guidance.

I am not quite sure about publishing alone since I don't think an
  editor would be convinced to do it that way

In principle what matters for a paper being accepted is the content, not the authors. If your paper is good and is a relevant contribution to the field, there's a good chance an editor will accept it, single author or not.
So if you feel that your paper is good as it is, go ahead and submit, you don't need another author. In the worst case it will be rejected but the reviews will provide you with the expertise that you (may) lack; then you can improve the paper based on the reviewers advice and submit it again later.
As others said, you need to talk to your advisor so that they don't feel sidelined. If your description is accurate, they are very likely to give you the green light.
During my PhD I wrote several papers on my own and published them as single author, since my advisor didn't participate.

I remember having a problem with this too, however, whilst you are the one doing the actual experimental work, you wouldn't be in a position to even be doing it if it wasn't for your supervisor applying for the grant funding, giving you office space, access to equipment et cetera. His going to conferences is important for his status in the community that you work in, giving him the chance to network, develop research ideas that will become grant proposals and fund PhD students and post-doc positions. His time has been well and truly served in a lab setting, and off the top of my head I can think of very few group leaders who actually spend any real time in the lab.
Furthermore, I don't think it would be wise to try and get your methodology published without your supervisor even getting to see it. He still has presumably many, many years more experience in your field than you do and will probably surprise you with the knowledge he has banked over the years.
To summarise, run it by your supervisor and get his feedback and I would have his name on the paper, as if it wasn't for him then you wouldn't be in a position to write the thing in the first place.

-1, I am sorry I think this is an academically an unethical call. I agree that many a times a researcher will have to add a non contributing advisor due to the things you mentioned, but this is far from being  an ethical situation. Maybe junior researchers need to accept this reality of academia, but we dont have to celebrate it.


text:
Sharing a research proposal when applying for funds
When you apply for funds from a research council for a postdoc position, and the potential host is a university/organization that you don't know, do you share your research proposal with the PI of that university/organization beforehand?
I want to avoid plagiarism, so I'm planning to have a quick chat with the PI only, or simply apply for funds first, and discuss with the PI later if I get the grant.

If you expect plagiarism, you're applying to the wrong place or mingling with wrong people...

If you don't share the proposal with the prospective host, you are missing out on the chance of getting feedback from them. Detailed expert feedback on a grant application is not easy to get, and very useful.
If I would distrust a colleague so much that fear of them stealing my ideas outweights this potential benefit, I'd be very, very reluctant to consider them as a postdoc mentor.

Seconding the answer by Arno, I'd like to add that if I'm an academic staff member at the host institution, I want to know in detail what a postdoc is going to do in "my" group before any non-reversible actions are taken. To the very least, I want our research interests to be aligned (to some extent), and to verify this, I'd absolutely need to read a proposal of the applicant.
If I learn that the applicant does not trust me enough to show me their proposal, that would be a clear no.


text:
Correcting small errors in text/picture after publication?
I got a manuscript published in November 2018 (Elsevier) and realized after reading it again today that an error has been introduced, after proofreading/publishing, in one of the equations I wrote; they have added a "Â" right after "f(x)=" which is nonsense. Is it conceivable to ask for correction now?
Also, two of the texts describing patterns in the legend of a graph were interchanged; this one is my mistake (prior to publishing).

Typically, it is difficult/impossible to correct this kind of mistakes after formal publication. The 'traditional' reason is that there are now printed copies of your article in libraries around the world, and the online copy should coincide with them. Today there are online-only journals, for which this reason is less compelling, so you might want to ask, but I wouldn't be surprised if the journal answered that it's their policy not to change anything.
For something more major, you would issue an erratum / corrigendum, but for typos and small mistakes there isn't a good solution.


text:
Why do professors give talks on published work without their coauthors present at the seminars?
They simply say that it is joint work with somebody.
Is it primarily because one is a better speaker than the other?  Like, do some professors publish a lot but choose to stay behind the scenes and let their coauthors present the work?

So you want the whole research team to show up at every talk? Who has the time for that?

@JonCuster And not only the time, but,  frequently, the funding to bring  the whole team to a conference.

Does this question evoke imagery of 8-12 identically-dressed researchers standing in front of an audience, speaking in perfect unison for anyone else? Or just me?

This would also be highly impractical for a collaboration of a thousand people, all of whom are listed as authors on the paper. In fact several of these people might be giving talks in different rooms at the same time.

In my field, it's traditional for the least experienced coauthor (usually a student) to give the talk at the conference where the paper is published. Otherwise, how would they get any exposure, or even learn to give good talks?

What would be the benefit of having all the authors present?

Because some of the co-authors (like me) have responsibilities or preferences that make it difficult to travel to conferences?  Or because we're back at the lab doing productive work instead of spending several days hanging around hotels and airline terminals?  Or because research grants don't extend to paying for flights, hotels, and conference fees for several people?

Can I downvote this question? When the CEO or head engineer introduces a new product, do they invite the whole team, or the whole factory?

I share @Thomas's question. If something costs time and/or money, it won't happen unless there is a positive enough benefit. The question seems to assume that the default should be all authors present, unless there is some specific reason for an author to be absent. Why?

The only time I was in a situation like this, I was giving a talk on something else I had been working on and there was only enough money at my two co-author's university for one of them to attend the conference.

There are cases where none of the authors can manage/afford to join the seminar.

An incomplete list:

Because they're invited to give a talk, and their coauthor(s) aren't.
Because their coauthor(s) can't afford to travel to every talk they give on that piece of research.
Because their coauthor(s) are busy with other things.
Because this way they and their coauthor(s) can disseminate their ideas more widely, by giving more talks for the same overall investment of time.
Because the work is interdisciplinary, and the conference at which the work is being presented is devoted to some of the disciplines involved but not all of them, so attending would be irrelevant for the coauthor(s).

(Thanks to the commenters who suggested further additions.)

Great list. Another one is that different authors may be expert at different aspects and the conference is only relevant for one of the authors)

Also: Because the work was interdisciplinary, and the conference has little to do with one author's field of work but a lot with another's.

Also: Because in certain disciplines (physics), it's entirely normal to have hundreds of coauthors.

@chrylis - True, but only in narrowly restricted subfields of physics (e.g.  experimental work in particle physics done at large accelerators). Even in the field of high-energy physics, most work seems to be theoretical (with a handful of authors), with only a few experimental papers (with hundreds of authors). For example, take a look at the Journal of High Energy Physics.

The point being, no physicist would be surprised to see hundreds of authors in experimental papers coming out of CERN, but a mere seven authors on a computational modeling paper (seen recently in my department) would be quite surprising. And hundreds of authors on an experimental paper in anything but high-energy physics would be pretty unusual.

@Obie2.0 All of my personal experience is in HEP, and I've been on page 5 of a 7-page author list in 8-point type. ;-)

@chrylis - Ah, very nice. Well, you probably know that outside of HEP and related fields, even within physics, that would be pretty uncommon. Or even in HEP in theory papers, I believe.

@Obie2.0 Sure, but reductio ad absurdum works well as an answer here!

Even without the absurdity of HEP, it's perfectly possible to have never met your co-authors, who are based on another continent. But as a footnote to the list, all authors should have a grasp of the whole paper, and know their limits.  This might lead to: "That's a really interesting question, but Jane would be much better able to answer it than me.  I can only tell you that... but we can discuss it afterwards"

@chrylis Or thousands, depending on the experiment... ATLAS's current author list looks to be about 2700, while CMS' is about 2200.

The average immunology paper has 11 authors; so does the average molecular biology paper.  Genetics papers average 21.6 authors. High energy and nuclear physics papers, 226.8.
In many cases talks will cover multiple papers, so there could easily be 50 co-authors involved.  In many cases, these include authors from many different institutions, countries, and continents.
And talks are not a particularly big deal in many fields. In my fields, a moderately well-known scientist might give 5-10 talks a year. A post-doc looking for a faculty position might give far more than that.
Who is going to pay my fifty co-authors to travel to five talks a year?  I have a hard enough time getting reimbursed for myself.
I don't even understand what the point would be.  Presumably they'd sit in the front row? And ... smile and wave? Or would they run up to the podium when there's a slide they know about and take over for thirty seconds, and then run back to their seat?
The more I think about it, the more baffled I am. I guess the short answer is, There's no point, no one cares.

226.8 authors per paper?!  How do they even fit that on the title page?

@Prime Well, the record for a paper (particle physics) is of around 5000 authors.

@Massimo Ortolano (1) Invite them all to your talk. (2) Take a photo of the room. (3) Show it to your mom.  (4) Profit!

@Prime It's a lot easier than when the 0.8th author has to give their research talk.

@Prime Sometimes they do give a multi-page author list and don't start the article until the second or third page, but in most of the extreme cases the author list is printed after the paper appendix. (example)

What do you mean you don't understand what the point would be, you nailed it perfectly - for them to smile and wave, clap really loudly, and use the clicker at inopportune times

I love that the first one in your list with a fractional number of authors is Genetics

@MassimoOrtolano I remember reading about a paper from a distributed computing project that tried to claim the title by listing all of the 10s or 100s of 1000s of people who donated CPU time.  The journal only let them include a link to that list in a footnote though.

I'm starting a research internship soon (not physics), and was told that if I make a significant contribution, I can be listed as an author. You're telling me that in physics research, one paper can have several hundred people make significant contributions?

@Shokhet there are links to papers with several hundred authors. Are you claiming that such papers don't exist, or suggesting that for some reason the journals abandoned their authorship criteria for them?

@iayork I'm not claiming or suggesting anything. It would take some effort, but I would believe it if the answer to my question was "yes." (I don't read physics papers, but maybe they're complex enough and have enough work to go around to allow for hundreds of authors. An example might help; the one I saw linked to above lists "[object Object]" under "AUTHORS & AFFILIATIONS," so it's not very helpful in that regard.)

@shokhet Physics paper sets record with more than 5,000 authors and Fruit-fly paper has 1,000 authors are the first and second hits for me on a google search for papers with over a thousand authors

... Multiauthor Papers: Onward and Upward and Scientific papers get more authors give many more examples ("Editors of physics journals do not bat an eye about papers with hundreds and, lately, even thousands of authors.") and discuss trends and conventions.

Some responses I don't think I've seen, yet, as well as some backup to former responses...

Oftenimes, other authors have different roles at the same conference, at the same time, such as presenting a different paper, serving a role at a division committee business or admin meeting, or they may be attending another panel session about work in their same area(s).
Sometimes it's because they are, for instance, on a different teaching schedule or invited profs at international universities, as opposed to just lacking monetary resources. Larger schedules conflict.
Monetarily and to my last point, many/most schools don't offer adequate travel expenses to co-authors. Before recently retiring, at the end of June, 2017, I had a budget of $2,500/yr., which, at least in my field, was EXCELLENT, and based on a long-term endowment from the E.W. Scripps Foundation, which most J-schools don't have, even though it could only be used @ $1,250/conference, for up to two conferences per year. While my colleagues would often be rather amazed at that base amount of funding--which could be supplemented by funds from other accounts, such as grants or other projects that rewarded one with monies toward university-based projects--at the same time, there were other restrictions on how that base money could be spent. If I were "SIMPLY" a second or later author on a single paper, I could only get up to 50% of the base funding -- $625. While, at many schools, that can be a good deal of subsidy, it doesn't go far, in covering expenses to major cities, for a few nights. It would barely cover the costs of the flight and maybe conference registration, leaving one with all the hotel and per diem costs.
As a tip to young scholars "new to the other side," to avoid such problems, it's always good to do some networking and/or to actually "co-present" a paper with a graduate student. Networking, one can usually pick up a side-gig as an officer in a division, let a research chair know--as soon as a paper is accepted--that you're willing to serve as a moderator, discussant, or panelist, in a discussion session (although the last often requires input well before even entering an article into competition). Co-presenting a paper with a graduate student who has worked on an article or is the main author has benefits of helping to "craft" your students and introduce them to others, afterwards, and it can also help them to get funding they might otherwise be unable to receive.

(Never underestimate the good that can come from crafting and polishing a couple/few rough diamonds or straight-up high potential grad students at a time. If well-trained, they can become great students and profs, at times going on to be lifelong colleagues you place in doc schools and/or as profs. With your main expertise as their starting point, they will often do very creative work that branches off slightly from or continues on, in your tradition, and they will often have some great insights, along the way.)

It may be that such grad students are simply unable to attend, for other reasons, such as moving schools, as they progress, or it may be that they didn't have a great deal of expertise/anything of substance to add to the specific discussion that I/another author didn't already know, in toto. In my field of media psychology, there are often 2-4 authors (or maybe 5-7, if a school has a system of "milking" authorships, by having several (usually grad) authors each spread out tiny duties (heheheh) from their projects, so that all, like, 7, could be on all 7 papers, as authors (Michigan State's Mass Comm used to be famous, for that in the '90s and early-mid aughts, until people caught on...)), but, say, two out of four of my students/co-authors simply coordinated my lab and ran our experimental participants, for the time, and then co-wrote the (always essentially banal/straightforward/specific) methodology section, because they had the most direct experience with the process. Such beginner or "helper" authors are rather "insignificant," in presentation, and any questions, should the section not have been specific enough for direct replication--or If I didn't specifically remember--can be referred to those authors, by email or whatever (even face-to-face, later at the conference) -- as can any others who may be more "important," if any of the other situations mentioned occurs, wherein a more "essential" author is unavailable at presentation. If seemingly worth it, you might set up to have coffee or a drink with your co-author and the questioner, if it seems worth the effort. It could yield a cite and future interest in your work.
All-in-all, most presentations--especially given time constraints--don't offer the opportunity for more than, say, two authors, at most -- and that's generally if they're both basically co-equals, bringing together different areas of expertise in a presentation. Otherwise, there's the mentoring grads model I expressed above.

!! Oh, yeah, and there's one last reason about which I just thought: the co-author is retired. My graduating doc student is presenting what is essentially his dissertation, which he defended this spring and which we'd since worked into a much more concise and expert piece--wherein I added a lot of my personal insights into theory and applications--but I'll be damned if I'm going to shell out $1,500+ on my own dime, to go help present that paper, in Chicago, next month (although I'm helping put together the presentation materials) -- especially on retirement money. He's presented several, at this point--including a starter, with me--and he knows my arguments in the article VERY well, having had to answer for them, in his defense (after submitting it to the grad school, finished, I tightened up and made the arguments more precise and forceful). Plus, it's his time to start carrying the torch, on his own, as my latest and perhaps best...
(My apologies for going a bit off topic, at times, but I seemed to read more into the question than was specifically articulated, although I do think fleshing it out, as such, should be very helpful. It sounds like a grad student question (as a matter of experience). This is also my first post on this site. I guess that's what you do, 12 days into retirement, at 4 in the morning. ;) Hope that all helped, in broader and specific senses. I'll get the hang of it...)
Thanks for the Opportunity,
Carson B

At the university I was at during 1993-1996, I had $50 (not a typo) per year available for travel expenses. I never bothered trying to get reimbursed, but I was able to get lodging taken care of by the 5 research-oriented conferences I attended in this time. (I just paid my own way to a few Mathematical Association of America section meetings, which were mostly teaching focused.) Similarly during 1996-1999, but in that case I was teaching at a high school, not a university.

In my field, the professor or leader of the research group is the mastermind behind the research going on in their labs. They will have a number of PhD students working on different parts of projects and then they will present the overarching story either in a conference talk or in a paper.
Sometimes, part of the work — significant for the results achieved but pointless by itself — has been performed by collaboration partners. In that case, the part of the talk usually sounds something like:

We sent this compound to the group of Mastermind to find out whether it glows in the dark.

Again, we have the presenting professor with the big picture who brings all loose ends together. It only makes sense that they do the talk.
The final slides are then usually the acknowledgements. Here, I am used to the professors saying exactly which PhD/Postdoc performed which work and which collaborator did what.

It’s not that those collaborators who are not on stage prefer sitting in the back or writing papers. Rather, they have different research interests, sometimes even sub-fields. They will go to those conferences that better fit their research, hold talks there and maybe mention the collaboration with the professor we just talked about if it fits into their story.
And it’s not that the PhD students and Postdocs prefer to sit back and write papers. They will either be in the lab working hard or they will be there listening, maybe presenting a poster.


text:
How to apply for ms in astrophysics?
I am a mechanical engineering student from India. I wish to do an ms in astrophysics in foreign universities. How should I apply and what are the requisites for admission in different universities?

Go to each of the Universities websites and check out the registration procedures. They will all have their own criteria - but some will be similar, level of prior education etc, equivalents with other countries / institutions etc

It would be helpful to have an undergraduate background in Physics (or you have some other science based background and have taken plenty of Physics courses). If that is the case then you might have to take some per-requisite courses to fulfill graduate school requirements of a certain university.
I would start with GRE test. Make sure you score higher on the analytical section than the verbal.
I would go through this journal https://aas.org/ and look for university leaders in Astrophysics. Narrow down your list to 5-7 universities, search through the research professors in Astrophysics at those universities acquaint yourself with their research and then email those professors to make your case. Introduce yourself, inquire them what your interests are and why do you want to pursue a graduate degree in Astrophysics and how you would be interested in joining their research.
Most universities have pretty generic graduate school admission process. Submit application before deadline. Write statement of purpose. Provide GRE scores. Provide reference letters. Pay application fee etc.
I went for graduate school in USA so my advice is particular to admission process for USA graduate programs.

I think that this answer would be greatly improved by removing the gratuitous assumptions and addressing the question more generally.


text:
Should I quit my Ph.D. program in scientific computing to become a software developer?
I’m three years into a Ph.D. program in scientific computing and I’ve just received my M.S. I’m thinking about leaving school to go to a programming bootcamp and become a software developer. I’ve done pretty well with my coursework, I enjoy learning (at my own pace), and I’m good at teaching, but I have doubts about my ability to do solid research. I’m working in an interdisciplinary area and I don’t really have a deep understanding of any of the fields involved, so I am pretty dependent on my advisor for direction and ideas. I’ve put in a lot of (mostly coding) work on a project, but haven’t published yet. I always tell myself that if I stay, I will dig into papers and textbooks and learn as much as I can, but it feels like a pretty big mountain to climb at this point. I’m already in my thirties, having been a teacher for many years, and the lack of money is starting to get to me. I also have a serious hobby I’d like to pursue, but I’m not sure how realistic that is.
So why would I stay? Partly a desire to finish the project I’ve started. Partly a conviction that this research is at least tangentially related to some very important problems (climate change). Partly a fear that my domain-specific (mostly mathematical) knowledge will go to waste. Partly a bias for academic over business pursuits (my parents and my sister are all scientists). And partly a longstanding habituation to an unstructured schedule, with freedom to study what I want when I want. Are any of these good enough reasons?

In my opinion, most of the PhD candidates pass through this step, where they feel that everything is gone, no chance to finish the work in time. I personally had the same feeling, my colleagues as well. The one who could assess whether we should continue or just leave is our supervisor since he is experienced. Without knowing details about your case, I suggest working harder in the remaining months to finish your PhD (especially because you already spent 3 years).

Just forget the programming bootcamp, it's probably targeted at a very different audience ;) You can hone your skills while doing very valuable work in the program, and may still become a software developer after finishing the PhD (if you wish to do so). I can confirm (as @John pointed out) this is a phase many, if not most PhD candidates go through. Yes, even the financial part ;)

Only a partial answer but a fair warning, if you have not been keeping up with the news with respect to coding bootcamps: avoid it at all costs, seriously.  Learn to code by yourself through books - you have the "smarts" for this judging by your PhD in Sci Comp candidacy - or take CS courses at your school to pick up enough depth and breadth, which is what bootcamps severely lack (but make grandiose claims about).  I urge you to Google search some articles about this disastrous outcome that many bootcamp candidates are facing, e.g. stigma that they are unqualified coders.  E.g. Google, I think, now automatically desk-rejects applicants with bootcamps on their resumes, after hiring one too many failures.  Good luck.

I did that last year, dropped my PhD for a full time permanent job. My program was 6 years ahead and I couldn't afford it anymore. Before dropping consider that if you have less than 2 years to finish your PhD, it does NOT worth it to drop, you better finish it and enjoy your degree. If you have more than 2 years before graduating.. I would say go for a full time job, there are too many PhDs out there anyway.
Whatever you decide, only hard work will get you wherever you want to go. Good luck.


text:
side income from company when working as a professor at a design Hochschule in Germany?
In this thread there is a comment which says that side consulting jobs are restricted in German academia. Specifically this comment:

You can have consulting contracts in industry. You will usually need to clear this with your university, and your outside commitments will likely be capped at 8 hours per week or similar, but this can of course still mean serious money.

Do professors in Germany have other payment than their standard salary?
Would a professor at a design Hochscule be restricted in say, selling a drawing software app, photoshop plus ins, or art prints?  Would permission need to be obtained? Does it need to be mentioned to the school?
Are there federal and/or state rules regarding side income, or is it determined by the institute? If it's per institute, are there any websites which aggregate this information, or is the only source of information asking the school directly?
The specific school I am thinking of seems to have a lot of faculty running their own design agencies. Are the rules different for faculty in design oriented fields vs. a field like chemistry or politics?

I guess it depends on the Bundesland. For normal research staff in a Hochschule in BW you have to provide info about other jobs in the contract and your boss has to allow it (so it depends on your boss, not some general rule/law). So maybe have a look at your contract at first.


text:
Asking the institute about the status of the application
I have asked the person who was responsible for the application twice about the status of my application.
First time, he didn't read my email. After a week, I sent another email and this time he answered my email and told me they will send me an email shortly!
For two weeks, I didn't get any answer. I sent another email yesterday and wrote that I am "sacrificing" all other PhD positions for this position (this was really the case). It has taken over two and a half months after deadline.
Today, I have received an email from another person who is a secretary and he wrote me that my application is rejected, because of a close competition.
Do you think the fact that I have asked them several times and that in the last email I wrote "I am sacrificing ..." could have a bad effect on their decision?

I would initially say probably not, however there is no way of knowing for sure.
I am not sure if using strong words is advisable when waiting to hear back. I hope your 'sacrifice' of other positions hasn't left you with nowhere to go.
For what it's worth, I would try explaining in the future your situation in a way that makes it sound like you need to know in order to make a decision, as opposed to sounding like you are upset with them for not informing you yet. There are often multiple people involved in decision making and it can be hard to get everyone together to decide.
In other words, I think it may be better to say something like "I have other offers, and would like to know what your decision is before making my final choice" and giving them a solid date that you need to know by.
Cheers.


text:
PhD with a supervisor who has not published anymore since 2014
I'm finishing my master's degree in physics and I'm searching for a PhD position. A potential professor for PhD is almost 60 years old and he has not published any paper since 2014!
What do you think about this?

How regularly has he published up until 2014?

I think about 3 papers per year.

It's likely that he stopped caring about publishing himself and lets his students get all the glory.

So, is it advisable? I'm afraid, he has no motivations and projects anymore in head.

You could send him an e-mail and ask if he's taking on new students or projects at this point? also possible that he just has not bothered updating the place you looked for his publications.

Just ask about his current research interests.  In principle this should not be a show-stopper.

You are concerned that this professor does not publish because she/he ran out of ideas and motivation. Although this could be the case, there are other possibilities, which I want to point to you:

They are working on a very large and important textbook and don't have time to publish.
They have a lot of PhD students and allow them to publish as a single author (a bit unusual these days, but still happens)
They don't cope well with modern technology (computers, word processors, simulation tools, etc), and rely on their students to help them put their ideas into  final publication.

I suggest talking to professor and asking these questions face-to-face.

Option 1 seems realistic indeed and is impossible to find out without asking. Option 2 is realistic, too, but can be found without asking, assuming a website where the students are listed. Option 3 would be surprising, given that publication technology hasn't changed so much since 2014.

The Prof might've had a student until 2014, but no-one to assist later.


text:
How familiar should I be with research topics of a potential PhD supervisor?
I'm about to finish my master's degree in physics (theoretical physics). I'm applying for several professors in Europe. I want to do my PhD in another field than my master's thesis, but both fields are theoretical and to some extend related. But, I didn't take some relevant courses on this topic in my undergraduate studies, instead I took courses which were related to my master's thesis. My question is the following:
How much details should I know about the research field of the potential professor?
I don't understand his papers quite well, although I'm passionate about the topic and have many ideas or maybe fantasy.

It is rare for a Ph.D. student to know much about the research topics of their advisor before they begin their studies with that advisor. Clearly it couldn't hurt, but I can't see how it would be expected.

The answer can vary by country: European PhD culture is very different from that of US.

You should at a minimum make an attempt to understand some of the papers written by a professor you want to work with, but the professor shouldn't expect you to understand every aspect of their work. It's also fine to go into your meetings with some questions about a paper, but do make sure you've made some effort to understand by reading other related papers, etc.