text:
I am an undergrad and I am working with my mentor on a project. However, I did the majority of the experiment. Should I be the first author?
I’m an undergrad researcher at a lab. I started to work with my mentor, a PhD candidate, last year. She was nice at the first, and I learned a lot from her. Quickly, like in 2 weeks after starting my research, I became very independent and started to do experiments and collect/analyze data without her. I work around 40 hours per week for this project.  I cherished this opportunity and I made huge progress. I see a positive result, but when I tried to report some updates to our PI, she didn’t let me talk, and she just pretended she found those things instead of me.
In addition, I found out for that very long time, she just “pretended” to work and did her personal things in the lab while I was conducting our project and doing experiments.
Our project is ending, and we are probably going to have a paper. I think I deserve to be the first author, but as an undergrad I really don’t know a lot about academia. Could you give me some information to help me? Or do you have some opinions? I would appreciate it very much.
My contribution:
90% data and data analysis;
95% experiment;
20% experiment design

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/147969/advisor-wants-first-author-do-i-have-any-leverage possible duplicate/defenitely related.

What do you mean "data analysis"?

To have a strong claim for becoming first author, you also have to write the paper, or at least good parts of it.

@Karl I'd say that's field-dependent, IME in experimental physics I'd expect that whoever did most of the experimental work would be first author no matter how much input they had in writing the final paper

Even the PhD candidate might not have a claim of first author. In fact, you might not have permission to publish at all unless you have it explicitly from the PI. In some fields the lab/center director gets authorship on all papers. In some, the PI gets authorship. They paid for it, it is their data and research even if you did all the work.  It is always best to establish authorship well in advance of paper writing.

My experience is that junior researchers often underestimate the amount that their work has relied on other people's efforts. Obviously I don't know whether this is true in your particular circumstances, but it is something to consider.

If you write the most parts of this paper, yes, no doubt you should be the first author!

You say you don't really know a lot of academia. I think what you need to learn about it for this situation is quite simple -- good academic practices are founded on good communication. It may be that the PhD candidate you are working with is not particularly good at it, which is even more of a reason for you to lead by example (of good communication) in this case.
As far as I understand, you have not yet discussed the possible paper resulting from this research with your PI. Take initiative in discussing this with your PI. Some advice for this discussion:

Come prepared with facts, not opinions.
So "I designed experiments X Y and Z and contributed to the analysis by performing A B and C" is good, but "I became very independent" is an opinion which you'd like your PI to reach based on the facts you present, and not something to say.

Especially if you're unsure about academic practices, phrase things as questions.
Conventions on author order differ from field to field -- a lot. But a practice that is/should be universally encouraged is discussing it before work on the paper has started. So after presenting your contributions to date, ask about the authorship conventions and discuss your place (and the meaning of your place) in that list.

Remember that the work is not done -- writing is a skill.
This is the key. While discussing the authorship, ask what should be your contributions going forward, related to the write-up. While it seems like you have done a substantial amount of work to date, maybe your PhD student co-author can make up for some of it in the writing phase.

Be open to the possibility that you are not correctly interpreting your contributions so far.
Being talked over is certainly not nice, as is somebody misrepresenting your work as theirs (in fact, that is called plagiarism, but that's a whole other discussion). But I still prefer to assume good intentions (while still being careful) from other people. This is why preparing for this meeting with facts about your specific contributions will help.
However, I don't know from your question whether this PhD student had separate meetings with the PI about the project. Did they contribute to conceptualising the research direction, or experiment design (maybe even before you joined?). So be prepared to listen and change your opinion about your relative contributions if new facts are presented.

Finally, there is a possibility that you take initiative, initiate good communication, however both your PI and your PhD co-author are not cooperating. Sadly, even if you deserve first authorship, while discussing it is certainly worth it, entering an argument over it isn't. Any undergrad publication is already a huge boost to your profile, regardless of where you are in the author list -- and if you can elaborate on your contributions when asked, that's how you can really shine. If any authorship is on the table rather than first authorship, and you do not believe the discussion went well (i.e. no facts were presented to convince you the other person was the primary contributor), take what you can get and look to move away from this PI in the future.

Good advice here.

To add to this good answer (+1) - come with the draft of the paper before anybody else, with your name as the first author. Get the popcorn and look at the world burning (this sis  a good experience to have)

@WoJ sure, that's one option. If you know how to write well, and have the capacity to put in the work of drafting the manuscript -- which not many people are "naturally good" at any many need coaching. This option also substantially reduces the possibility of workload balancing during the write-up phase. I would also suggest that if you enjoy watching the world burn, you might not be a good fit for some advisors and teams. You can watch the world burn nowadays easily by turning on the news. To take it a step further, consider enrolling to the Evil Academy of Evil instead?

@penelope: sorry if my words offended you - but just, maybe,e there is a moment where someone does not need to be crawling in front of the demi-god professor but simply state that he is the first author? Somehow in my 30 years career, it did not hurt me that much to be assertive and say what I mean, and avoided a lot of stress. OP is being sidelined because he is junior, the real world outside of academia is breaking the medieval structure of academia apart. As fro the writing part - the key word was "draft"

@WoJ Not offended, and have learned long ago that I don't need to agree with everybody's opinion. I was simply pointing out some further consequences of deciding to present a draft at this meeting: mostly, time and skill constraints (that's not something the OP can do tomorrow, which they might with my original suggestion). While I applaud assertiveness, nor expect crawling, as you'll see from my answer, I believe key is in good communication, so I don't take kindly to demands which do not invite for discourse either. The above are my professional opinions as a response to your comment.

@WoJ On the other hand, the "Evil Academy of Evil" was a personal quip that possibly had no place in my answer about how to handle this situation professionally. However, the fact that I do not, in fact, enjoy the company of people who believe "grabbing popcorn and watching the world burn" is a "good experience to have", does in fact reflect on my professional decisions as well, as I will consider those people to not be a good professional fit either and try and avoid working with them.

@penelope: if you belive that the key is good communication, I think that * you might not be a good fit for some advisors and teams.* may be a bit too much, no? Yo udo not know me, who knows maybe I have managed hundreds of people and keep great contacts with the ones who are not with me anymore? Or mentord people. You never know - so a direct "suggestion" such as this one is not exactly neutral.

@penelope: "grabbing popcorn and watching the world burn" is to say that sometimes you need to put the fish on the table by pushing people's boundaries. Arriving with a draft paper with your name as the first author forces the others to react. Either they do nothing, or they change th authors and need to explain why. Yes - it is a somehow bold move but academia is made of real people who have real characters. Some are great, some are not - and you want to find you place in that jungle.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

It is the "raison d'etre" of peer review. Researchers do not have time (and might not have the facilities) to verify other's research. They rely on field experts "testing" a paper before it is published.
An academic paper offers a hypothesis with supporting evidence. So, how does a researcher identify appropriate evidence?  A paper published earlier is usually part of that evidence.  Selection requires testing a number of sub-questions. The provenance of the author, do they have a track record of publications in the research field is one of those questions. The presumption is that an author who has published in the field for twenty years has "more expertise" than a researcher publishing their first paper. Initial paper research is essential to test that the hypothesis is unanswered. And, this will identify the established field experts. Initially, the student is named last, they graduate, supervise their own students and rise to second name. When they hold a professorial chair, theirs is the first name. A short time span for this process suggests growing respect for their expertise. It is an effective system that reduces risk for student, department/laboratory, providers of research grants, the academic community at large.

In my field, being the last author is reserved for the professors / PIs, not the students. The first authors are typically students who conducted the experiments. Which research field are you talking about?

If peer review is double blind (as it often is) your whole reasoning isn't applicable, as the reviewer never knows the names of the authors, their number and  their position.

most recent is identifying semantics from free text but the practice is wider

as you identify identification of reviewers prior to publication may not be known but I search for the paper authors. In an initial task a new PhD student may review the relevant literature, their review may be published but is it rigorous, scientific to blinker oneself to the recommendations of a review? Surely researchers should be constantly testing. Is their experiment rigorous, are expected results valid, is comparison of actual v expected sound, are the conclusions sound, Relationship does not always mean cause.


text:
Can I get an honest opinion about my PhD research journey?
As a 5th year PhD, I am about to submit my thesis in 4-5 months. My PhD is in computational materials science. Following are things I have done:

I have published 1 paper and 3 are yet to be submitted.
I have 2 co-authored publications. 1 more to be submitted.
Presented in 5 conferences.
Teaching assistant for several tutorial courses, grader position.
Contributed to grant writing.
Took part in some extracurricular activities like mentoring undergrads on presentation skills, being judge on some sessions.

So what's my question here? I just want an honest opinion about what you think about my PhD journey, because I am really underwhelmed by it. My supervisor seemed satisfied with my progress. But I feel that I will be ridiculed by my committee for the low-key research I have done.
Why do I feel like this:

Well, I feel that I could have done all this in much less time than I have spent on them.
I have published my research only in mediocre journals. So, I have not been very productive. My work is not mathematically intensive as my colleagues. To be honest, it is not a very technically difficult research.
I feel that I am not hardworking enough to deserve a PhD.

My goal prior to starting my PhD was to be an academic. Now, when I am on the verge of completion, I don't know if I have the right to see myself that way.

Your feelings are not unusual! Search for other questions that are labeled "emotional-responses" and you will find other people with similar questions and probably feel less alone.

Sounds like classic Imposter Syndrome. Your advisor is probably the right person to answer your concerns as they know what you have actually done and what they would want to say in any letter of recommendation.
Two notes.
First is that you are probably smarter/better now than when you started this research, so in looking back it seems less significant than it did when you started. This is natural, if not universal.
Second, your first work (the dissertation) won't, one hopes, be the best work you ever do in your life. It is a mistake to think of it as such.
Talk to your advisor. Relax.

Collect the sheepskin and move on.  Yeah, maybe you could have worked harder and done more, but that is in the past.  You have a decent record, nothing earth-shattering, but also better than some poor souls with zero publications.  (You asked for candor.)
It is natural at this stage to have some second thoughts about how you could have done more. But you need to look forward, not back.  Drop the woe is me (definitely don't show it to committee).  If you want to work harder in future jobs, fine, do so.  But don't dwell in the past.

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text:
My research paper has been stolen on pretext of a book publication deal? What can I do?
I submitted my paper to a supposed editor for publication in a book.
He never responded to the emails post my submission of the paper and upon contacting others from the mailing list I found out that they haven't received any response from him either.
A senior scholar suggested that I should partially publish the paper I sent so that I can save it from him stealing it. I did that and thought to forget it, but I just found out the supposed editor has a paper with my research idea in his list of publications.
This person is now doing his postdoctoral research at a European university.
As a young scholar, I am feeling quite helpless.  What can I do in this regard? Please help me.
EDIT: So upon reading the paper I can see that he lifted my idea and sources and tweaked it, my research paper was a literary analysis and he has copied my methodology and core text along with my sources.

Send a copy of your original paper and evidence that you submitted it to him as editor to the relevant department head at the European Uni and see what they say...

Welcome to Academia SE. Can you please [edit] your question to specify the extent of plagiarism? Is this a verbatim copy, has just the text been altered, or is it “only” the idea that has been stolen? Also, how does your partial publication tie into this? Was it published before the plagiarising paper or afterwards. How large is the overlap?

@SolarMike: Please do not answer in the comments.

You mentioned that other people also submitted papers and then heard nothing back. Do you know whether their work was also stolen? If you're not the only victim, that should strengthen the case agains the thief.

This is an unfortunate situation. I would try to contact that person's current supervisor (if you can find out who) and explain all this, and maybe s/he can reprimand this person. Additionally, I would also contact the editor of the journal and explain the same to him/her. It might result in the paper retraction on grounds of plagiarism/academic dishonesty. However, I am not sure how would you be credited for the stolen work. Maybe an addendum saying it was your idea or maybe publishing it separately altogether.
Edit1: As @CaptainEmacs pointed out, "Add email date evidence. It is not perfect, but at least corroborates the dates."
Edit2: As @ASimpleAlgorithm pointed out, "Presumably there would be vastly more evidence possible in terms of prior revisions and incremental experimental or theoretical work. It only takes a very short conversation before it becomes obvious which person is the plagiarizer and which is the author."

Add email date evidence. It is not perfect, but at least corroborates the dates.

@CaptainEmacs yes, this is very important.

Presumably there would be vastly more evidence possible in terms of prior revisions and incremental experimental or theoretical work. It only takes a very short conversation before it becomes obvious which person is the plagiarizer and which is the author.

@ASimpleAlgorithm Excellent idea. Perhaps this can all be added to the answer?

@CaptainEmacs and ASimpleAlgorithm, I have added both of your comments in the answer.

If you can document what is in your question, collect all and contact, letting both recipients know about the other,

the dean(s) of that european university;
the editor of the journal or book where your stollen paper had appeared.

If I understood the situation correctly, the pseudo editor should have a rather hard time, professionally speaking.
The behaviour is a kind of aggravated plagiarism.

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text:
How to explore Physics research as an undergraduate, keeping in mind the ever increasing weight on publications?
I am currently 3rd year Physics UG and have been working on Cosmology for past 3 years.
I want to explore different areas like QFT, Quantum Gravity and maybe a bit of basic Math research as well, before I enter into PhD.(I have 2 more years of MS education)
However, with an ever increasing stress on Publications for PhD applications, it's very hard. I can try get 1-2 publications if I continue in Cosmology, as I already know the bare minimum and can start my projects with comparatively less reading. But if choose a new field I'll first have to do a lot of preliminary readings and only then start my research projects. Thus lower chance of good publications.
So how should a Physics student go about exploring different fields?
Note: [I am not considering doing a course in QFT, Math as exploring the topic]
PS: I am from India where it is much less common for UG students to get publications compared US/Europe. So, if possible, please do consider this.

It is not common for undergraduates in physics in the US to have publications.

In an interview for internship (around 3 months back ) I was asked if I'll publish my research project. This was asked even after knowing that I am a 3rd year UG. It was a European lab though. I assumed the same for US!

The fact that you were asked does not mean that you were expected to give a positive answer - they asked so that, if you had, you would have the opportunity to say so, but I find it extremely implausible that a negative answer really made you uncompetitive. I really don't know what you mean by "an ever increasing stress on Publications for PhD applications" - I've yet to hear of a PhD programme in either Europe or the US where your application is seriously compromised by not having publications.

I do not mean that it is mandatory. But given the competition it has virtually become mandatory for the very top institutes (say MIT, Standford, ETH Zurich, Max Planck Germany), at least according to online forums. These are just 2 examples - 1) https://www.quora.com/Is-it-very-essential-to-have-publications-for-getting-accepted-to-the-PhD-program-at-a-top-US-university  2) http://usgraduatesblog.com/is-it-necessary-to-have-paper-publications-when-applying-for-phd-ms/

It would be amazing for you to get 2-3 publications before you enter PhD.  Maybe it’s just the semantics of what is meant by “getting 2-3 publications” but just participating as co-author in one publication in first- or second-quartile journal is not that common, and it’s extremely unlikely that this would be “your” publication, i.e. that you would be the major contributor to this.
It is not easy to publish original work in a mature field like cosmology: the low-hanging fruits have long been picked.  In other words, all the easy work has already have been done by current researchers or their graduate students or their undergraduate students, or by the generation before them.  Rejection rates in well-recognized journals are generically above 70% of submissions, and these are submissions by authors who considered their work sufficient good to submit to those journals in the first place, i.e. the rejection rate would be much higher if it weren’t for a significant self-filtering of submission to good journals.
I recommend students not to play it safe at the undergraduate level, i.e. if they would like to learn about cryptography then take a crypto course rather than some other “safe” topic which might narrow rather than expand their expertise.
There is this nice article published in the NYTimes which makes a similar point, although in a the context of students obsessed by grades and from a more “dealing with failure” perspective.

You are right, "2-3 publications" is actually "at-least 1" !! But all questions in internet regarding "enrolling to PhD" in top colleges across the world suggests students to have publications  (For example - https://www.quora.com/Is-it-very-essential-to-have-publications-for-getting-accepted-to-the-PhD-program-at-a-top-US-university)

In an interview for internship (around 3 months back ) I was even asked if I'll publish my research project. This was asked even after knowing that I am a 3rd year UG.

@Indigo1729 unless you are truly brilliant (and maybe you are) I’m sorry to say there is no way an undergraduate research project gets published in any reputable peer reviewed journal.  Not suggesting it cannot be published on some website somewhere - good undergraduate work is very valuable from a pedagogical perspective and in supplying useful examples - but I understood the OP as referring to peer-reviewed publications.

That is exactly what I am asking in the question. If I stay in a topic I already know something about and work on it for 2 more years I have hope to publish 1 paper (worth all 3 years of work). But if I go to completely new field, there is no hope at all. Going by the online forums, former seems beneficial in terms of PhD applications.

@Indigo1729 being co-author on one paper in a top-tier peer-reviewed paper is very good.  However, I stand by my recommendation which is to explore all topics: there is time enough for you to make your mark once you have found something you're truly passionate about.

There are often conferences that are friendly to undergraduates, such as the annual meeting of the major society in the field. They may accept posters that are minimally peer-reviewed to check for relevance and basic quality. This is likely what most people have on their applications. As for top tier conferences or high-impact journals, obviously that's absurd.

@ASimpleAlgorithm Thanks for the tip. I didn't know about that. I was under the impression that peer-reviewed meant only journals! Hopefully, it is as you say!!


text:
Does the native language capability (for a foreigner) help in applying for a faculty position?
Consider an international scholar X, fluent in English, who currently holds a postdoctoral position in science (say, in particular, the fundamental science: physics, chemistry, math or biology) in the US.
If X wants to apply for a tenure-tracked (junior or senior) faculty job in a country A outside the US, does acquiring fluency in the language of country A help in applying for a faculty position in the top ranking universities/institutions in that country?
I am mostly, but not exclusively interested in the situation in Europe.
The key point to ask is that suppose X is a highly qualified candidate in all aspects academically, would X be ruled out from the candidate short list due to the lack of fluency in the language of country A?

I don't understand what you mean by "native language capability".  By definition of the word "native", you can't become a native speaker of a language if you aren't already (unless you are a baby).  Do you mean "fluency equivalent to a native speaker"?

yes, please help to adjust it to adequate.

Can you also take out the $ signs?  They don't do anything to the formatting and just make it hard to read.  If you insist on italics, use *A*.

This question and a previous question https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/88010 try to gather what factors matter for applying for a faculty position in a foreign country.

Why not learn a second language that is spoken in more than one country e.g. German? // FWIW, here in Wales I think there is preferential hiring of native Welsh speakers, or at least bilingual Welsh and English (i.e. it's very beneficial if you can speak Welsh)

This is going to vary a bit from country to country, but I think on the whole, the answer is obviously yes.  In most institutions in these countries, not only is teaching in the country's usual language, but so is the life of the department in most important respects.  I spent 6 months in France as a visiting scholar at Paris 7, and had a fairly rudimentary command of French (enough to navigate life in France, but not good enough to carry on a conversation), and leaving aside teaching, most conversations in the department, and most academic talks were in French.  In my situation, things were basically fine, but I could not have functioned as a staff member without improving my French very quickly.
France is something of a special case (though I suspect Spain, Italy, Poland, etc. would be similar).  The Netherlands and Scandinavian countries are more used to expecting nobody speaks their language (and can expect greater English fluency from students), but even there, I'm sure knowing the language would be necessary for many positions, and a big advantage for the rest.  If nothing else, it shows a commitment to being there which would be appreciated.
EDIT: You can also see examples of how this is dealt with by looking at job ads from the season that's winding down now (I'm going to use examples from MathJobs, since that's what I know; since that's a US-based site, it's going to be slanted toward ads looking to recruit English speakers).  Some will make it clear that functioning in the local language is not a professional requirement or at least don't specify it is:

https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/jobs/10239
https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/jobs/9749
https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/jobs/10164
https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/jobs/10127

Some will specify that there is a transition period:

https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/jobs/10154

Some seem to expect that there already is language fluency:

https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/jobs/10004
https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/jobs/9973

That's actually more slanted toward English speakers than I expected, but of course, posting on MathJobs is a very biased sample, since it's mostly a North American site, and I think you only post there if you want recruit North Americans (that's including students or postdocs from abroad currently in North America).  It's notable that from a lot of countries (Israel, for example) there are many postdoctoral positions on MathJobs that don't expect the ability to teach in Hebrew, but no permanent positions.

Even in Scandinavia many (or even most, depending on the university) undergrad courses are (required to be) taught in the native language. Since these are usually also the least desirable to teach for most researchers, I can imagine that an applicant with the proficiency to teach these courses has an advantage (though I have no idea how much of one).

Good answer. I would add that in French speaking University in Canada (at least in the ones I know), the selected professor is given a certain number of time to learn French.

In France, teaching is almost universally in French, but the situation is dual since there are two kinds of starting faculty positions (both tenured, or more precisely under French civil servant status which is possibly more protective): maître de conférence (MC) and chargé de recherche (CR).
What follows applies for my field, mathematics, but should be true in some (probably not all) other fields.
For MC positions, in most places (including most large research universities) you are expected to speak French well enough to teach in French (without being too demanding on what that means), or you can be discarded altogether. However I have seen at least one exception, where someone with no teaching experience and a very limited ability in French was hired in one of the very top universities, on account of an extremely good research record. My guess is that his teaching duty must have been hard to fulfill.
For CR positions, your research record is all that matters (there is no teaching duty, these are research-only positions). Note that for foreigners with more than 4-6 years of postdoc, you are expected to (also) apply to CR1 positions which brings you at a slightly more advanced stage of the career.
Currently there is a scarcity of positions, and I would say that in math MC positions are very selective, and CR positions are extremely selective.

In France, and I have seen it more than 1 times, especially in Paris, they hire MdC and they give a period of 1-2 years to "master" the french language. The reason is that everything is being taught in french and French students have generally very low knowledge of English.

@PsySP: in what field(s) was your observation? What did the hired MC teach during those 1-2 years?

It was in Applied Maths in a university in Paris. The 1st year did not teach anything. The 2nd they gave the MdC to teach the "most easy" course.

@PsySp: this seems most unusual to me: it is at odds with the status of the position, I don't even see how it was possible with a MC position.

I am not sure what would be the problem. They had a great candidate and they did not want to loose that candidate for something that is fixable in a year. That MdC did a great job in learning the language and everyone was happy at the end. In the meetings they noted they would do their best to secure the candidate.

@PsySp: the problem is that the law is pretty clear: a Maître de Conférence has to teach 192 hours of exercize session, or 128 hours of lectures, or any equivalent combination of both. There are some legal ways to lift some teaching duties, but mostly not suitable for starting MC (you need to apply in advance to them). So I suspect what you witnessed was actually illegal, or at least needed some borderline manoeuvres. I thus want to stress it seems a very extreme event to me (I never heard of such an arrangement even if I witnessed the hiring of extremely strong candidates).

Yes I am aware of that but they can be arranged as seminar courses (not particular classes) and many other ways to overcome it. You see, exactly of this law there were many stellar candidates who run away and people decided to act in any way they can. One thing I am not certain is if the candidate had the status of MdC since year 1 (or had some other status and from year 2 promoted to MdC given clear advance in french). I am not in a position to know that.

I knew and heard before, at least in the case of top universities of China, Hong-Kong and Taiwan, they recruit foreign academic professionals/professors (e.g. Italian, Japanese, American, German, etc) who cannot speak and cannot write nor read their native languages (Chinese mandarin or Cantonese), but those academic employees can do research, or may at least teach special courses/seminars in English.
Some of these Universities are: Tsinghua University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Fudan University, National Taiwan University, etc.

I know this to be correct. But even then, there is at least an expectation that one, over a reasonable period of time, learn at least enough to participate in the department's life. Realistically, though, this will never be enough to write papers or grant proposals in Chinese, and that is also expected.

I agree with @WolfgangBangerth. Yes, those universities recruit foreign academic professionals. I personally know some of them in Taiwan. But, please note that the OP is mentioning apply for a tenure-tracked (junior or senior) faculty job

I was talking about a full professor position.

In Germany, I've never heard of a professor who didn't speak German at least on a decent level. There are no "research only" faculty jobs, and lectures (at least in undergraduate courses) are normally held in German.

Thanks +1, so in Germany, one cannot teach in English?

I think there may be some rare cases of study programs being held entirely in English, but in the large majority of all cases, no.

I have. This is not true, especially for the top universities that the OP seems to be interested in.

@xLeitix Interesting. In my subfield it's definitely true, but I've now checked some websites of top universities to see if it also applies to related subfields. And indeed, I found a few professors from non-German speaking countries who only give lectures in English. But these few professors seem to be the rock stars in their field anyways.

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text:
Do people care about single-author works in quantum information theory?
I am a junior postdoc (completed one and a half years) working in the field of quantum information theory. I was told by my PhD advisor that single-author papers don’t really matter in physics. They said that it’s all collaborations now, citing the example of experimental sciences. I was surprised by how callous this sounded.
This comment was made in relation to a single-author work of mine which is something that came out of my PhD. I pursued it myself and as I didn't really get any relevant help, I ended up being the sole author.
So I am just wondering what the general consensus is on single-author works in the quantum information community, i.e. if you are a postdoc advisor would you encourage your postdocs to write single-author papers? As a PhD advisor what would you think of your ex-students when they write their own papers?

To commenters: make sure you're commenting to improve the post. If you have an answer, post it as an answer.

I do not work in quantum information theory, but I think my insights can be generalised with some care. For whatever it’s worth, I have published two single-author papers arising from my PhD in computational physics.
First note that in most subfields of physics I am aware of, single-author papers are rare. This is simply due to the nature of academia where most work is done by a student or postdoc and supervised by a professor. This doesn’t mean however that single-author papers are not valued. Showing tons of examples of multi-author works (as your PhD advisor apparently did) doesn’t prove anything. That doubly applies if those papers were all experimental, as it’s far easier to produce single-author papers in theory.
Since your PhD advisor’s statement was about physics in general, it can also be falsified by just looking at how well single-author papers tend to do. It took me a few minutes to find some recently published single-author papers in Physical Review Letters, and I could not even filter for theoretical papers, let alone single-author papers. If you want to be sure about your particular subfield, look for single-author papers in it and check whether those that you find are regularly cited. Maybe you already cite some yourself. Just beware that since those papers are inherently rare, you really have to search till you have a statistically relevant population.

If you are a postdoc advisor would you encourage your postdocs to write single-author papers? As a PhD advisor what would you think of your ex-students when they write their own papers?

I think that this may be a false proxy for what you actually want to know. Papers do not (or at least should not) become single-author papers because you design your research like that from the beginning. Rather, you set out on a project you conceived and it turns out that you complete it without any external input qualifying anybody else for authorship. Mind that this includes the writing process for which previous publication experience is extremely helpful, if not essential.
That being said, suppose I supervise somebody and the above happened: They conceived a project and completed it without any relevant input by me or anybody else (but with me being aware of it, assuming I am their boss). If I do not see any flaws (which of course would be relevant input), and they have the skills to handle the writing and publication process on their own, I would advise them to do exactly that. I would ensure that they have access to constructive criticism along the process, e.g., I would offer to read the manuscript (internal peer review), unless they have somebody else for that, hoping for nothing but an acknowledgement. One reason to encourage this is that they can demonstrate that they can perform and publish research on their own (which is what a PhD should qualify for), which can be crucial for their career.
Of course, you should be wary that this does not translate to all advisors and situations. Some people think they need to be the author of everything published by somebody in their group (violating authorship ethics). Some people might also get legitimately angry that you pursued a project without telling them anything about it, displaying a lack of trust or transparency towards their boss (in the work sense).

Further reading on this:

Does one really need a co-author to avoid being considered a nerd?
PhD students publish without supervisors – how does it work?

In addition to the other answers that cover the value of publications I would like to point a possible misunderstanding here.
"Single-author papers don't really matter in physics" can be understood as a contrast to "Single-author papers are very important in field X". I have seen reports of applicants for professor-positions where the lack of single-author papers was pointed out as a shortcoming of one of the applicants. This has nothing to do with the quality of the papers. In some disciplines being able to write a single-author paper in itself is seen as a strong point. And not having any can be thought of as lacking independence. Your advisor may just have wanted to let you know that this is not the case in physics.
This has consequences for what a good strategy to getting tenure is. If time allows you to write 2 papers with 3 authors or 1 single-authored paper, the best (to get your next position, not necessarily to do high-quality research) choice depends on the field. And it seems that in your field collaboration is more valued than single authorship.
Of course I don't know if that was what your advisor meant, but it may be worth asking them.

I am quite sure that across all scientific disciplines, it is first and foremost the quality of the work that is relevant, and not the number of authors. So if you are able to find a relevant research question and come up with a solution all by yourself, there should be no problem whatsoever to write a single authored paper about it. What would be the alternative? Give somebody else a gift authorship to make it appear a collaborative effort? That would certainly not be the right way to go.
If a single authored paper does not get much attention, it will be more due to the contents of the paper which does not matter to others much. In fact, in certain disciplines it might be difficult to find open and high impact research questions that can be covered by a single person, so maybe that is more what you supervisor was getting at? This may be because the field is old/mature, or it is so super complex that one would expect to require at least a few highly specialized individuals to make progress, among other reasons. In this line of thinking, a single authored paper could then be perceived a priori, i.e. without reading it, as a paper with a higher probability to address a relatively simple research question with a relatively simple methodology.
Something else to keep in mind: If your publication list consists of mainly single authored papers, it will make the impression that you prefer to work alone or are unable to collaborate with others. However, generally speaking, collaborations make a lot of sense in research, and your (documented) ability to work with others will be relevant for future employers.

This is not specific to quantim information theory, but I see the following dangers associated with single author work:

Your work is easily ignored by others
They might not get aware of your work, or do not fully understand the impact and value of it. Especially if it is a new or slightly different approach. This may easily happens if you work alone. Also in my experience only junior researchers actually perform a literature research. (Established) senior researchers mostly get aware of adjacent research by personal contacts. Having a (well known and established) senior researcher on your publication gets it attention of his/her peers. Maybe it should not be the case, but practically that is what happens. There may be examples where this is not the case but an isolated researcher has certainly  no advantage over a well integrated, collaborating researcher of the same skill.

Your research may only be tangential to the (current mainstream) research (and you cannot really influence the mainstream direction)
Even though your work might have impact, convincing others of the
importance may be hard. It will not happen automatically.
Collaborating with others will ensure that you use the same
language/mindset of others and make it easier for a community to
connect your research to the current mainstream. Also you can influence the community much easier when you involve more people as if you are alone.

Apart from that I see no immediate disadvantage from single author publications. Especially when it comes to theoretical research I have a hard time seeing a large number of authors on a publication like for experimental works. How should that actually work?
But being an "isolated" researcher, for which single author publications is a symptom, is a risk I would say.


text:
Is missing or adding a word accidentally in a citation serious mistake. Can it be fixed before publishing?
You accidentally made a mistake in a citation in a submitted paper. For example, you cited a list from one author and you accidently made a mistake in one of the bullets. Let's say you added a word you shouldn't have or you missed a word. Is it ok to make those changes after the peer review stage? It feels bad to make such a mistake when citing a list, but hopefully it can be fixed later.
What do you think about it? In general, are these mistakes that uncommon and is it ok to fix them later?
How common is it that there are some mistakes even in published materials? Are they a reason for serious problems?

first of all, this means reviewers did not verify the citations, at the very least, not manually, and not with a citation verifier software, either

@ivan866 Of course not, that's way below their "pay" grade.

Yes. At the revision stage you can certainly still fix additional small mistakes. Just make sure to include a statement in your rebuttal letter explaining the additional changes you made.
However I would be careful with larger changes like adding an additional analysis as reviewers might feel that you are trying to sneak something past them.

Thank you! Are these mistakes uncommon or common? I have read discussion where people mentined noticing these mistakes even in published materials? It feels awful to accidently miss a word in citation. For example, instead of "percieved price" to put just "price". I know it's a mistake, but don't know how serious and common. However, it's good it can be fixed. Thanks.

@Academicaeconomica Happens sometimes - nobody is perfect ;) Even in published material but then it is more complicated and you need to submit a "corrigendium"  e.g. https://www.elsevier.com/editors/perk/policy-and-best-practice-errata-And-corrigenda (but journals don't like that very much)

Are these mistakes considered plagiarism or just mistakes that should be fiexed?


text:
First authorship dispute between the research leader and the person who did the most important analysis. What is the solution?
I'm involved in a research with a first authorship dispute between the one who lead the research and the one who did the most important part of the analysis.
I give you the facts from a neutral perspective:
A had a research idea and gathered a group of people to work on it. In the first meeting he asked to B if they could do some analysis in which the paper would be based on and B agreed. Also asked C to do some other analysis. D, E and F where in charge of minor analysis and to add their expertise on interpret the results.
Once B's results were successful, A started to write the paper with the help of the other coauthors, doing most of the writing work. However, he did not do any of the analysis on which the paper is based. His role was leading the paper and writing.
Once the writing is over, A included the names of the coauthors in order A, B, C, D, E & F. But B complained that he did the most important analysis on which the paper is based, and suggested that the order should be B, A, C, D, E & F. A suggested to B to do it in the former order with the specification that A and B contributed equally, but B replied to do the same but with the latter order. Finally, both want the research to be cited as either A et al. or B et al., since it gives them more prestige.
Now it seems that B wants to withdraw their contribution and analysis to the paper. A wants to continue anyways with the paper without B's contribution since they think that it can be redone with C's analysis. However, the paper will lose a great part of its content. C's analysis support B's findings, but the proper ones are the one that B did. I'm trying to calm them down and to mediate between them, but I would like to know what would be more ethic. For me, it's a new situation, since in my field, usually the one who leads the paper does the most important analysis and writes the first draft.
Supplementary information:

Both A and B are starting in this topic, so it seems that both want their surnames to be associated with this.
B argues that at the beginning they didn't know that they would carry the weight of the analysis part. They thought that their part would be equilibrated with other coauthors. That's why they didn't raise their voice before to ask to be the first author, although they recognize that they should have done it before. They are also very shy and maybe that played against them.
Indeed, A wanted to be the first author from the beginning. So, in that case they should have told B not to participate in this paper.
B specially complains that A didn't do any analysis and only wants to get credit for others' work

Question:  What would be the most ethical solution to this problem?

Are co-primary authors an option in your field?

both want to their surnames be associated with this - Hyphenated surname?

This is field-specific. What field are you in?

rock-paper-scissors !

It would seem both A& B are acting very poorly.  I guess you could ask Paul McCartney (who is famously second in all Lennon-McCartney credits)....

My field is meteorology/climatology. In this field sometimes supervisor goes at the end, but the one who leads the paper is not supervisor but independent researcher who recuited other people to solve the research problem

"A had a research idea and gathered a group of people to work on it". Did A work on it? Did the work consist only of analysis, or was there work which went into producing the data which B (and others) analysed?

I don't have anything substantial to add, but I just wanted to say that I'm very happy that in mathematics it is standard practice to list authors in alphabetical order.

It is field dependent, but in my own experience, the first author ususally goes to the person that did the main investigating / research and the last author goes to the person that took on the supervisory role. The authors in between are normally ordered according  to their contribution.
From this viewpoint, I suggest that B should get first author and A last, but, as I said, that is field dependent and might not apply to you.
In any case I think that even though A feels like it would increase their reputation by having another first author paper, if that comes at the cost that B withdraws their contribution and the paper is inferior because of it, A should think long and hard if it really is better for their reputation to have one really good paper with last author or second author with equal contribution than having a bad/mediocre paper with first authorship.

"It is field dependent, but in my own experience, the first author ususally goes to the person that did the main investigating / research and the last author goes to the person that took on the supervisory role." Do you --or others-- have an example of fields that do not use this ordering (with the exception of fields that use simple alphabetical order)?

@BrtH In my sub-field of astrophysics, I don't think anybody cares about the last author position; it's usually just in order of contribution.  This may be because it's such a small community that we all know who the supervisor is.  Some times (with longer author lists), we also split into two or three sub-lists, where order within sub-lists is simple alphabetical, but the sub-lists are themselves in order of contribution.

In my experience, there isn't any set criteria for being first author, other than making the largest contribution. Having been on both sides of this in the past, I'm not sure there is an answer, other than maybe to turn back the clock and have an explicit discussion about author order earlier.
I'm of the opinion that author A is in the right. He conceived of the research, delegated tasks, and took the lead on writing. I would consider that a more substantial contribution vs being assigned a piece of the analysis (important as it may be) and taking part in the usual writing and revision process. A also seems to have made a reasonable concession with co-first authorship. This is just based on my own assumptions and field.
Whether or not A is right doesn't really matter though, since a disagreement like this will prevent publication and no-one wins if that is the case. Ultimately, it seems like it is in everyone's best interest to come to some decision, even if someone has to make a concession.
The best thing to do is bring in an outside, impartial person (perhaps a mentor or a more experienced colleague) and agree to go along with their recommendations, whatever they may be. Someone will end up unhappy at the end, but hopefully the paper will go out.

"the best thing is to use an official arbitrator" this is probably the only way the paper gets published.

IMHO, both A and B should be reminded that the main purpose of research is advancing the knowledge and not self-promotion (especially by such a meaningless criterion as being the first or the second in the author ordering).
Flip a fair coin and, if everybody is so eager to make his/her particular contribution known to the public, describe it in the introduction. Playing childish vanity games is detrimental to both the science and the public image of a scientist.
Just my two cents.

I don't think this answers the question. The question assumes A and B cannot/will not agree, and is asking what a OP can do. Possible answers are "A is in the right" or "B is in the right" according to criteria Y and Z. If there is no clear criteria, then splitting of the baby, which is what I suggest.

This answer is at odds with the current scientific community... Opportunities for a person to advance in their field/have influence very much depend on self-promotion.

If the world was fair, this should not have happen. The problem is that science is not fair and to get a position this might eventually count. Also, scientists are also not perfect, and tend to think that the first author has done much of the work, and if someone contact anybody of the paper to make a collaboration, it will be the first author.
In conclusion. Science is made by humans and has human defects. It is not perfect.

@Sergi Of course, nothing is perfect, but this is not a reason to embrace "imperfections" and to start fights with your colleagues and collaborators because the rest of the world expects you to and is pushing you towards it. On the contrary, one should strive to maintain the friendships, collaborations, and acquaintances one has acquired and to tell the rest of the "imperfect world" to go and do you-know-what in such cases. :-)

@Questor Yep, I'm at odds with many trends in the "current scientific community" and have no intention to hide it :-) I should say that, IMHO, if one has to constantly rely on self-promotion instead of other people promoting him or her based on the merit, one, most likely, isn't really worth much.

Incorrect. This is the answer of an idealistic dreamworld; but the real world is not one. Visibility of scientific work is immersely important for academic carreer, impacts funds, conference invitations, project applications, etc. This answer completely ignores reality.

@Neinstein The "real world" is what we make it to be. Neither less, nor more. Everybody is free to choose their sides, opinions, and principles (and yeah, pay for their choice).

@fedja and your free choices, opinions, and principles will have consequences on you. For example, if you ignore the publication pressure out of principle, you won't be a very successful academics, no matter how amazing a person you are for it, and frankly you won't make any difference. You're free to start a countermovement, but your individual actions are only you - not we.

@Neinstein You are absolutely correct. It is a trigger effect: as long as you stay alone, you can't make much (or, often, any) difference, but sometimes the ideas (both good or bad) are contagious, so why not to try? As to ignoring the publication pressure, I mostly ignore it and publish only what my co-authors want to publish (with 3 or 4 exceptions out of about 160 articles that have appeared in print). I'm certainly not "a very successful academics", but that has never been my goal: I just like to figure things out and to have sufficient salary to live a reasonably free life :-)

@fedja I (and I think also most scientists) honestly agree that the existing p/p structure is quite harmful to science as a whole; and I'd be quite happy to do away with it. My point is only that this answer is idealistic and not quite realistic. Not only does it not help OP regarding their current situation, but it can also actively cause harm by blindly suggesting OP give up their first authorship for idealistic reasons, without considering the impact of this on their career at all.

To put it in your words: the "real world" is not what we make it to be, it is what it is. That's the future word, but OP (as we all) are living in the present.

@Neinstein Disagree. I would just accept changing the tense: it is what we have made it to be, but there is absolutely no reason to keep it that way, though I completely agree with you that any change will take time, effort, and, above all, persistence and patience.

@Neinstein I haven't said anything about "blindly". Also, I offered to flip a coin giving both equal chance. You obviously cannot give both the first place in the author list by the pigeonhole principle and nobody will be able to help with that objective.

@fedja Sure. I just don't see that OP resolving this dispute by giving up authorship on idealistic grounds will achieve anything besides harming their carreer. OP (as anyone) could start a movement, propose and promote alternatives to current p/p scheme, etc., and that may achieve something; but noone will ever know about this "sacrifice" you propose. 2) by "blindly" I mean without any grounds, i.e. flipping a coin. This dispute should be decided on actual grounds, not by gambling. If OP does have more rights to first authorship, then by all means he should have it.

@Neinstein "If OP does have more rights to first authorship" He does and he doesn't. Everything depends on which "projection" you take. Which point (1,2) or (2,1) is greater than the other one on the plane? There is no linear order there and there is no convincing argument that any one component should be given more weight than the other one. The same thing happens every time when you, say, decide which candidate is "better" for the job, etc. One should learn to resolve such issues in some civilized way without starting fights or mutual distrust and hatred. That's the main point I make.

@Neinstein "will achieve anything besides harming their carreer." Never forget the famous diary entry by senator Warron (or whatever the name was) from " Der falsche Nero" by Feuchtwanger, which read: "Captured a city, lost a friend".

There is a solution to which the wiser of A or B will agree. It is as follows.
Clearly, there is no clear answer to your question. Had there been one, you wouldn't have posted here. So if you are looking for the solution of your original question, read no further. What I want to do is change your question to a one which can help the situation:
How can we manage this situation in such a way that future collaborations between all coauthors is amicable?
Sit down with both of them individually first to propose the solution that A and B contributed equally, that a distinction of who did more is not readily possible or sensible, so let the order this time be A,B,C... with A and B both contributing equally. Then talk to both of them that the next paper will be B,A,... with both contributing equally (and only if they actually do!). Tell them they are both just starting out and there needs to be more papers.

This sounds like a sensible solution, but I bet it won't work. The fight will just move to who is going to be 1st on the 1st paper. Both will suspect that the author who got to be 1st on the 1st will coast on the 2nd paper, leaving the bulk of the work to others.

This is where a coin flip is useful as suggested in another answer!

I assumed a wise A and wise B, this problem is unsolvable for idiots.

Assuming there is no workaround the issue, e.g. a sit-down with both authors did not solve the issue, this is how I have seen this solved:
The paper is split into two papers, one paper with authors A, B, the second paper B, A. The fight then moves on to which paper will take the lion's share of the contributions from C, D, E, and F, assuming that A and B will each try to have their respective papers be the bigger one. So C, D, E and F have a conversation without A and B present and split the baby (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_of_Solomon). Nobody is happy, but everyone moves on.
Both papers are submitted simultaneously with a note to the editor. This requires a compliant editor, which might mean a lower-ranked journal. But that's the price A and B have to pay. I've seen this solution work a couple of times.
But let's assume that they both dig in, neither wants the paper split, and both want you to adjudicate. As @sErISaNo notes, A is in the right.

I do not consider this to be scientifically sound advise: splitting one paper into two just to increase your paper count.

The goal is not to artificially increase perceived output, but to solve the conflict. Assuming the authors will not agree, what's the next best option?

No clear cut answer but some suggestions.

Bring in a senior person and have them talk with A and B (sit in if you want to since you seem to be an impartial party as well and you might help to clarify things when needed as you know the case and both A and B), assuming that you really are impartial in the matter). It is important that nothing gets lost in translation here.
Do some research to find what is common in your field (I don't think you mention this). In some fields, senior authorship is as important as first, so if A is willing they might even take that (last) spot and call themselves lead author and corresponding author and give B first (A will then look more senior - only works if this holds standing in your field).
As another example, in biomedical research, there are author guidelines and author contribution categories from ICMJE.
You can even try to make these contributions quantitative (e.g. for each category, let the authors themselves fill in how much they contributed. As an example: let's say data analysis is a category and the total contribution in this category is 100%. B may think they did 80%, with C, D, E and F each doing 5% (in reality it may turn out to be less than 80% for B after a few back and forth discussions). Same for writing the first draft, where from how it sounds A did 100% (or if others wrote small sections they also get a few percent). Etcetera. In the end, each category needs to add up to 100%. This puts things in a more objective perspective (lots of work though and it requires agreement between authors but this is a good thing).

In general though writing the first draft and getting everything ready for publication as A appears to have done does carry a lot of weight.

A and B should consider a binding determination from a trusted neutral expert
As others have pointed out, this is a lesson in the importance of negotiating authorship order and work responsibilities prior to commencing a research project.  Since that ship has sailed, as a suggestion for forward progress, if A and B cannot agree on authorship order (as appears to be the case), they should instead attempt to agree on a process for binding determination of authorship to which they are both willing to be held.  It is sometimes the case that parties who are in an insoluble dispute over an issue can nonetheless agree on a reasonable process for binding determination by a neutral third-party.
One sensible option would be to negotiate for a trusted neutral expert (e.g., a senior academic in their field but who is a neutral arbiter on the matter) to review the history of the research agreement and the respective contributions of the parties and make a binding determination on the proper authorship order.  Both A and B would have an opportunity to present their "case" to this decision-maker and would agree in advance to be bound by the outcome of the determination.  This would allow them to "agree to disagree" but still push forward with the publication under an agreed process for determination of authorship.

I recently read a paper where the authors use an asterisk and a footnote: "Equal contribution, order randomized.": https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.09332.pdf
Maybe this could be a possible solution.

I think that's a great solution when people agree they worked similarly. In this case everyone thought that their contribution was more important.

Some fields it is well known the the first author's name is on the paper just to get it out there with the second name being the main contributor.  As other have noted name ordering is discipline, institute and country specific.  There is no clear ethical order of names as there is no universal agreement to what the name ordering means.
I would echo what others have said that to save confusion and expectation of how the names will be listed should be agreed ahead of time.  If conflicts exist then it is over to Human Resources or the Legal Department to start reaching an agreement on what is acceptable or contractually required.  Before it becomes an impediment to a project people need to agree to base it on contribution, seniority or lottery.
A possible resolution could be to have all members of the project make a confidential vote on what name order should be.  Have a trusted third party organise it and agree the options.  e.g. just come up with a ranked voting system where everyone lists their preferred order of names (B, C, D, A) or system for ordering names (random, contributions, lives of report written).

I faced this problem on two similar occasions, after my long-term coauthor Val and I completed our joint projects. On each of these occasions, we had a lot of new material on our hands. So we could easily afford writing two separate papers, to be published back-to-back in the same issue of a journal. In the first paper, the order of authors was "Michael and Val", in the second -- "Val and Michael".
Do you think you can convince your collaborators to split the paper into two ones?
Things change when the coauthors' job situations are different. Say, when a tenured scientist is collaborating with a junior colleague lacking a permanent position or with a colleague surviving on soft money. In this case, it would be gentlemanly of the tenured coauthor to yield the first authorship to the non-tenured one.

I think this makes sense as part of a larger collaboration: to recognize the value placed on first authorships and make sure everyone gets a first authorship out of the collaboration. But, it's not a good thing to split a unified work into multiple just for this purpose. It can be seen as gaming the number of publications.

@BryanKrause Sure. Paper mitosis cannot be performed just for the number of publication sake. In our case, we had a wealth of material on our hands, so our strategy safely passed the straight-face test.

Yeah, as an overall strategy I think it's good, my only qualm is the advice in this specific case to split an existing paper into two.

In my area (social science) and experience, there is too little information here to say who "deserves" first authorship. Doing the so-called main analysis in a quantitative social science study would be an important factor for author order, assuming it is non-trivial, but hardly sufficient. It would not be uncommon in my area for someone to conceptualize the study, oversee data collection, etc. but delegate statistical analysis to a junior (in terms of author order) collaborator.
It is ultimately about the total intellectual contribution although it is not always cut and dry. When I'm unsure about order, I often give weight to whose participation came first; that is to say, if A and B have roughly equal contribution I would give some weight to the fact A organized the project.

The solution is simple and straightforward: List authors alphabetically or in randomized order (and say that you did so in a one-sentence footnote, so people don't get the wrong idea.)
The custom of encoding contribution significance by order of listing of authors is, IMHO, a poor one. More fields should adopt the custom of Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science and some other fields to list authors in arbitrary order. This dissociates the question of personal aggrandizement / credit / boasting rights from the actual published work. If someone really wants to know who contributed what, they can write and ask; in which case the respondent won't need to provide a ranked list but could describe things in whatever way they saw fit.

Just randomize order in other arenas, so that each gets the limelight.
OR, you can invent a new designation for authorship.  Show principle authors, and then list secondary ones.


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Minor mistake in setup, no time to redo it. OK to publish anyway?
Before publishing, I found a minor mistake in a study that took a month to do. The mistake will not affect the main conclusion of the work, it just shifts a curve on one of the plots ever so slightly. My advisor says it is not worth the time to redo the work to correct the mistake, because it will not make a big difference in the results. (This is a month-long project). My field is engineering.
Is it unethical to publish the results with the known mistake?

Why would you need to "redo the work"? Isn't a quick re-write enough?

One thing to consider: if you end up wilfully publishing a mistake, you may end up in a situation where you have this niggling doubt at the back of your mind for the rest of your life whether you did something unethical and whether you should have done things differently. If you are seriously considering this, be sure that you have properly factored "your own peace of mind in the future" into your decision making.

Can you provide a theoretical proof that the redo will only slightly affect the results (and not the main conclusions) ?  If so supply that proof and an explanation in the submitted paper, e.g. with the proof as an appendix.

@StephenG-HelpUkraine If I present the results as-is you can actually see the difference it would make since this curve is supposed to be exactly like another curve, but they are slightly off. Most readers probably wouldn't realize that these curves should be exact but aren't. (and would probably think that it looks good, since the curves are so close as they are) Would it be OK if the effect of the error is shown, in that respect, but I don't say what caused it?

@AdamPřenosil Thanks for the advice.

@MrAsker "Would it be OK if the effect of the error is shown, in that respect, but I don't say what caused it?"If you know what caused it but do not say it because it will make your results look less impressive, that is certainly unethical.

It would always (IMO) be better to give the reason and the effect together.  This shows you understand the process clearly, have analyzed it and are confident in showing this to a reader.  Omissions will always make at least some readers suspicious of your motive for the omission.

If the mistake shifts things so slightly that it doesn't matter, why can't you present the results accurately as the experiment was performed? If you can tell it doesn't matter, won't everyone reading the paper be able to tell that, too?

I wish my projects were only a month long!

What's the lead time for publication? It's possible that you can submit your paper with an explicit acknowledgement of the error and the proposed fix, and you can complete the fixed study by the time anyone recommends the study be fixed before publication.

If you try to cover up the mistake by manipulating data, or omitting critical information that is needed for reproducibility, then yes, it is unethical.
If you include a mention of the issue, and describe any applied correction, then it is fine and it is up for the peer reviewers to (hopefully) pick up on and decide if they are concerned about the impact it may have on your results.

The first paragraph here s the right answer. Your advisor is wrong. I recommend the rewrite, though the second paragraph offers a possible way to avoid that.

Thanks. With regard to omitting information: I've struggled to understand "reproducibility" within my field. Is the ideal to offer enough details so that someone can reproduce the data "well enough" to come to the same conclusion you did? Or would they need to be able to reproduce every plot exactly? If the latter, a single journal article would be a 300-page book in my work. Unless I give them all my source code (which I can't do). The mistake in question is regarding a detail that wouldn't normally be mentioned. My advisor usually favors less detail for readability's sake.

@MrAsker one must distinguish between "the good of science" and "the norms of a field" and "issues of practicality". For the good of science, everyone should be able to perfectly reproduce everything in the paper just by following your methods. If you want to support the good of science, you should aim as close to that as you can, within the constraints you're subject to. This doesn't require redoing a month of work to fix something trivial, but if you can explain the discrepancy briefly in a footnote, future readers will thank you.

Of course, for the good of science it should be mandatory that all the source code be published too, since reproducibility is usually kind of hopeless without it; but as my friends sometimes hyperbolically say, we live in a fallen world.

if the problem of publishing the source code is the length and not any requirement to keep it a secret,  there are archives such as at the university of Michigan that focus on such sharing for research --- https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/deposit/index.html

Thanks for all your answers. I'm just going to mention it in the text.

@DanielHatton Not OP, but it is not at all uncommon in applied fields for this requirement to be present. Sometimes full reproducibility reveals industry secrets and all kinds of other gotchas, to say nothing about military-adjacent R&D. I'll give a similar real-world example: when working with fruit growers, I can say that plants were receiving treatments in accordance with local practices, but I can't describe these practices in great detail because that holds commercial value. Bad for science, but... A necessary evil in some cases.

@DanielHatton Some of the code is proprietary directly from my funder (for which they only gave me an executable, no source code), other parts of it are commercial (as in my university pay's to use it), another big part is the research code of a professor from another university we are collaborating with (who also sells his code). And, I was also told that all the code I develop for the project belongs to the funder.

When you publish a paper, you are asserting that everything in it is true.  If you know before submitting for publication that something in the paper is false, then (excuse my bluntness) you are lying.  Lying is unethical (at least almost always).
As a separate issue, if you don’t fix the problem before publication and a reader spots the error, they may wonder if there are other errors in your paper.
In conclusion, I recommend fixing the mistake before submitting for publication.

From the example you provide it sounds like the work that has to be re-done is remaking a figure or re-analyzing the data (since you mention that you already know what will happen: a curve will shift to the right).
This is very different from redoing actual experiments/measurements (even there, one could argue that a month is nothing, unless your contract or funds have run out to prevent you from redoing the work).
If it's the latter, you might want to leave the data as they are and discuss the suboptimal setup in the discussion. In that case I would also argue it is not so much a "mistake" as an ill designed experiment.
If it's the former and you catch a mistake in the writing stage, then by all means fix it. Transparency and your reputation are key.

Recommend removing the first paragraph or move it farther down in the answer for future askers only. I think OP was clear that the rework required is specifically to redo the experiment correctly. Just because OP knows how correcting the mistake will affect the analysis does not mean that the analysis is the only correction needed. They specifically said otherwise.

Thanks. The issue is not a plotting issue. It is an error in the data that causes the plot to look slightly different.

Is it unethical to publish the results with the known mistake?

Of course, it is, unless you disclose your mistake. If you disclose your mistake in a publication, the only way to publish your findings would naturally be a submission to a low-quality venue. Junk results belong to a junk venue. This might be fine with you.
As for the impact of a hidden mistake, in some fields, folks will read your publication and perhaps care or reuse the data, whereas in other fields, your paper would be write-only. It's hard to say what the impact of a hidden mistake would be.
However, ethics is not the main point here. Regardless of ethics, and even if the impact of your mistake is zero:
If you value your own self, in particular, what you say and write, then tell the truth, or at least don't knowingly lie. Lying is not healthy and doesn't do you any good in the long run. Build and maintain the habit of being truthful as much as you can. For your very own benefit.

No, it is not unethical to publish results with a known mistake. As long as you state clearly what the mistake was, what the effects on the results were and give your reasoning why the main conclusion is not affected. Point out the shift in the curve and explain it. All of that is perfectly ethical.
What would be unethical would be shift the curve to match, change the data to match or in any other way prevent the results from being reproducible.
As long as you state something along the lines of

"The first three data sets were collected according to these standards
and resulted in these curves; the final dataset was collected
according to these slightly different standards and resulted in almost
the same curve"

then there is nothing to say against publication.

If you downvote my post, please add a comment explaining why. Otherwise I cannot improve the post.

It’s not completely clear what the nature of the mistake is, but from your description in the question and comments it sounds like, in broad terms, the data you have collected do not reflect the experiment you claim in the paper to have performed. That means that publishing the results without redoing the work would be knowingly misleading. This is academically unethical.
It might be worth considering the potential consequences for attempting to publish in this case:

Reviewers may notice the error and require you redo the experiment anyway in order to publish.
After publication, a reader may notice the error. You could be forced to retract the paper, which reflects much worse on you than not publishing at all. At the very least the paper would be badly received by the academic community.
If evidence arises that you knew of the error and published anyway, you could be subject to disciplinary proceedings in accordance with your organization’s academic ethics codes of practice.

Compare these possibilities to a one-month delay before publication when making your decision.

Redo the experiments during review.
If you are certain, you could send the paper for review, with a cover letter explaining the problem and stating that results will not shift nowhere close to changing the conclusion of the paper. Then, during the review you could rerun the experiment.
This might result in one of few outcomes: your paper is reviewed and then you fix the problem before publication, editor might reject it before you fix the issue, or one or more reviewers might reject reviewing due to this issue. In any case, you will not be doing anything unethical and will have chance to reduce time to publication.

If there is no  time right now or the process is to far, publish an erratum if the error may hinder another team to reproduce your results.

OP is clear that they haven't published yet, so they definitely should not intentionally publish an error with a plan to issue an erratum later.

@BryanKrause: theoretically yes, but better that the student corrects the error in judgement of the supervisor than not correcting it.

If they're not able to convince the supervisor to do differently now it's extremely unlikely they'll get them to agree to publish an erratum, which many people unfortunately view as a bad mark.

@BryanKrause: People view erratum as bad marks? Can not remember that i ever colleagues speak badly or make fun about errata. I would suppose the supervisor wont care after the publication......


text:
Why do American universities have so many general education courses?
Americans spend 12 years in school which is more than in many places, yet, when they come to university, they continue to study a general education program that may be unrelated to their major.
My understanding is that it eats up a better portion of their first two years, and that students do not necessarily even apply for a specific major at the time they start.
Considering how much an average American student is paying I would have expected there would be a higher demand for more specialised programs with fewer unnecessary courses. Particularly since universities in the US are very sensitive to the demand for their services. Why doesn't this seem to occur?

Since the existing answers didn't spend too much time on your second question about majors, and since it's partly a separate question, I tried to integrate this observation about majors into your first question and removed the second question. I agree that answers might discuss the second aspect as part of answering your first question, but it's better for StackExchange questions to be more focused and they should not contain multiple questions. I felt it was important to edit now so that we don't end up with a mix of answers that mostly answer the first part or the second part only.

Many would disagree that gen ed courses are "unnecessary".

It's another means for universities to generate revenue for themselves. Half a century ago I may have had an answer related to being well rounded, but having gone to Ohio State, a large and at least reasonably respected university, I would argue that they were a way for the school to make money. They were a horrid waste of time. There was little academic rigor, most of them were blow off classes that served as little more than a mandatory distraction. Many were graded more on some PHD candidate's opinion rather than strong argument. I don't buy that they made people more well rounded.

@GrantCurell Anecdotally, I went to a pretty average university, and my gen eds all gave me valuable experience and knowledge. I cannot think of any course I took that I have not already used multiple times in my life. Were all of them worth thousands of dollars? Probably not, but other courses were worth way more than I paid for them, those thousands of dollars also indirectly paid for many other experiences in college, and overall it has already paid off.

I attended high school both in Europe and in the US (exchange programme), and my experience was that the US educational system is roughly "one step behind", timewise, compared to the European one. The academic level I experienced in the senior year of US high school was roughly comparable to my last year of middle school in Italy. From friends who came through the US college/university system, I also get the feeling that their first few years of higher education (the general-knowledge, no-major-declared-yet years you are wondering about) covered roughly the same range of topics and complexity as my Italian Liceo.
For example: the highest maths class I took in the US was Trigonometry (and even this was done mostly using a graphing calculator). There were harder classes one could choose, sometimes for AP credits, but you could also easily complete your HS maths requirements with an accounting class. In Italy, I had started calculus (non-optionally) years earlier. Likewise literature was very much at a pretty basic familiarity (rather than analysis) level and foreign languages were mostly films and vocab quizzes.
Now this is my own experience, and there were other aspects (the US HS was in a very rural location, and I did not pick some of the hardest classes as they were held at the local college and I couldn't drive). But all other exchange students from Europe had a similar experience and we all easily coasted on the knowledge we'd gained in our early teens, even with the language barrier.
As to why, I have a few theories, but I don't claim to have an answer.
For one thing, European education tends to stratify much earlier - in many countries, you choose at some point in your early teens whether to pursue a more academic, university-focussed path, or a technical qualification. To do this, you need to have a variety of schools available within range - much of the US is too sparsely populated for this. Stratification allows European schools to challenge the more academically oriented students at an earlier age and get them to University with a more solid background; it also means that important life decisions are made much earlier, and may be much more biased by factors such as family background and socioeconomic status rather than the student's inclinations and skills.
The focus on non-academic endeavours was huge in the US compared to Europe. Sports, extracurriculars, clubs, productions - all these had the same standing, if not sometimes more, than classes, and were allocated time proportionally. Even some of the classes were, effectively, clubs - like "yearbook editing". I am not making a value judgement here: do extracurriculars distract from academic pursuits, or provide a more rounded education? Is it a better idea to dedicate your teenage years to study? Sports? Art?
But a practical result was that US students reached university without a lot of the general knowledge that European students - especially those who went to the more academically oriented types of high school - had acquired at their age. The first few years of college/Uni provided that, for those who went.

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I think this answer has some useful insight in it, but overall it suffers from being mostly anecdotal. The question and this answer share a challenge, which is that the "educational system" in the US is the opposite of monolithic. Education is the responsibility of the 50 states plus DC, which means there are 51 different pre-university public school standards in the US. Plus many students attend private schools, are home schooled, and some don't even complete any kind of school and simply pass a GED before going to university. Your experience in one system is too limited.

The goal of American higher education is more civic and cultural than seems to be the case in Europe.
European students seem to apply to a university for a specific course, in a specific topic, and then take courses in that field nearly exclusively, for 3 years. This creates a high level professional in the chosen field. A physicist will learn what a physicist should know (and little else).
American students apply to a university, often but not necessarily with a specific course or topic in mind. Then they take approximately a year of courses that deal with things that American society believes (or believed) that all educated, sophisticated, or refined citizens should know. Then they focus in upon their specific field, and for the next three years learn the same things that their European equivalent learns. Which is to say that a physicist will learn what a physicist should know, as well as what every educated adult/citizen/person should know.
It is a difference of goal, or world view. At least originally.
There are perfectly fine arguments to be made that it continues only because of the force of tradition, helped along by the financial interests of the universities, and the desire of the students to have a "full" college experience. But we can make similarly cynical arguments about the European system, which might be characterized as churning out tools to be used up in specific jobs and roles, and not citizens. Cogs to be subsumed by a machine, instead of equals for a democracy.
But there is no particular reason to make either of these cynical arguments. They are different systems with different histories. That would be sufficient for me.
As far as whether Americans apply to specific courses or majors, 50 to 80% of American students enter University with a major. Many, perhaps most, schools will accept applicants who are as of yet undecided, and students may change their major and course of study after entering a university. But the most common path is to apply to a specific university for a specific major or course. And for more prestigious or competitive majors, colleges, courses, &c, this will be a practical necessity.

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A few points:

Market forces don't really apply here because schools that want to be accredited (which is pretty much all of them since students can't use Government-sponsored loans at unaccredited schools) are forced to require 120 credits for a bachelor's degree. 120 credits is about 40 classes. So there is no option of graduating faster by skipping the "unnecessary" classes.
Some schools like Brown famously have an "open curriculum," allowing students to count to 120 however they want. But in practice, most students who attend schools like Brown are there precisely because they want to take many different subjects, not because they want to load up on a single subject.
Unlike in certain other countries (e.g., France), US students do not specialize so much during high school. So, most students have taken only the introductory classes in each subject, and few understand the differences between similar subjects (e.g., chemistry / biochemistry / chemical engineering) or the career options that each subject might provide. So, many first-year students are not ready to declare a major and appreciate having an extra year or so to decide.
As others have noted, the general philosophy is that university is not trade school; rather, university graduates should be well-rounded scholars. Certainly, it would be nice if all of our professionals had excellent reading/writing/speaking skills, could think logically, solve problems, use technology, and had some understanding of global culture, history, and a foreign language or two. Whether most colleges' general education requirements really achieve this goal seems doubtful to me.

Can you elaborate on what you meant with 120 credits? What if a student specifically wanted to load up on a particular major and ignore everything else, could they?

As I said, some schools like Brown would in principle allow that, though it rarely/never happens. But most schools require that the 120 credits be distributed a certain way. Most classes are 3 credits, but some can be more to reflect increased workload (and some “seminars” are just 1 credit and have minimal requirements).

Why don't they?

Brown is pretty hard to get into; most students who are good enough for Brown and laser-focused on a particular subject probably go to a school that has a better reputation for that specific subject (e.g., Brown is considered a great college, but it's not a physics powerhouse in the way that MIT is). And Brown is an edge case; even if half the students there and at similar schools did as you suggest, that would be a tiny fraction of US college students.

"US students do not specialize at all during high school". This is just not accurate. Even at a typical public high school it is fairly easy to both choose electives all in one field and also progress farther in required courses related to that field. In my typical public high school, I progressed further in STEM than most students, while others took four years of fine arts and art history classes, or marching band and drama, or creative writing, auto shop, technical drawing, etc., etc. Plus there’s private schools and magnet schools that offer even more specialization in various fields.

@ToddWilcox and i think your statement is gaining increasing traction. It might have been more true that high schools were generalized several decades ago, but the pendulum is definitely swinging towards a specialized experience earlier in american life.

Fair enough, I reworked that statement. But even high schools that offer many electives are still not really comparable to the French system.

@user156207 I graduated from public high school in 1991, so I feel like high school students could definitely specialize several decades ago.

On top of all the explanations given, there is powerful financial incentive to do so. Why let an enrolled student leave in 2 years when you can force them to stay for 4?
As part of that financial incentive, universities pander to students. Some students are much more likely to enroll and pay for a class in Klingon language than a class in business statistics. My experience shows significant detours from practical knowledge in higher education. Universities do not take responsibility for their offerings in this context. Its not their job to prepare students. Its their job to attract students and money. Thats how the gears turn.
You can argue all you want about the benefits and the dedication, as long as you mention the fact that university gets their money.
I would also point out that American universities are notorious for not adequately preparing students for the workforce, which erodes some of the more --shall we say sympathetic-- justifications.

The alternative to having 2 years of gen-eds would be 2 extra years of focusing on your major....for some reason I think everyone complains about universities not preparing students for work, not just in America. Ironically, many liberals in Russia are saying the same and point at American universities as the shining example of how things should be.

I think thats how Europe does it right? Specifically target a field with less gen eds? The reason everyone complains is because they have a legitimate complaint lol

My understanding that it is the general trend in Europe. I can only speak for Britain in Russia. In the UK, students study for 3 years while focusing on their major. The perfect system if you ask me. There are no gen eds. In Russia, people study for 4 years, and while there definitely some gen eds, they take up relatively little time, are generally not taken seriously by the students, and are considered a sign of a bad program: people are advised to check how much unnecessary junk courses the program they are applying to has since they are considered filler.

In my opinion, its not gen eds that are the problem. Its the quality of the gen eds. A course in public speaking or technical writing is great. Courses in pokeman gender analysis? Not so much. Page through a american university course guide and youll be sick to your stomach. And those ridiculous classes fill up mighty quick.

I would not count technical writing as a gen-ed. Being able to write reports as an engineer is a very important skill that you need to work. I could make an argument that it should be taught in high school, but regardless of where it should be taught I wish I had it. The sort of useless gen eds I am taking about are things like philosophy, history, foreign languages, philology...

Right. Just an example. And whats gen ed for me might be completely different for you. Those core competences are what should be considered gen ed.

My understanding is that ... students do not necessarily even apply
for a specific major at the time they start.

It's true that some students do not declare a major when they start their studies, but that's nearly always because they haven't decided on a major yet.  It's not the standard practice.  Students will often take courses of general usefulness to the handful of majors that they're considering, and then make a decision based on which subjects match their interests and aptitudes.  I don't have any specific numbers for you but based on my experiences I'd wager that these "undecided" students are a relatively small percentage of the student population, and few remain that way longer than a semester or two.  Most students have at least a vague idea of what they want to study. They might (for example) start as "general business" and then change to "finance" later, where the first few semesters look almost identical for both.

My understanding is that it eats up a better portion of their first two years

This can vary greatly based on the school and on the specific degree program you're pursuing. Students often get some choice over which general ed courses they take, so they can be tailored to match their degree program if the student wishes to do so.  For example, I was an engineering major and I chose a technical writing course to satisfy my "language arts" gen-ed requirement.  During my entire college career, I believe I only had to take 2-3 general ed courses that didn't contribute to my major or career at least indirectly (although I still enjoyed taking them).
Also, most courses in a degree program require that the student has already completed certain other courses first.  The number of prerequisite-free courses can be rather small, so many students have limited options for courses in their major for the first couple of semesters.  My first two semesters consisted of one introductory engineering course plus the background math and science courses that I needed to unlock the bulk of the classes in my major.  A lot of times that's not enough hours to be considered a full-time student, so your schedule gets padded out with general ed courses.  It wasn't until my fourth semester that I was done with the general ed/background courses and started taking nothing but courses in my major.  That's not because we had some massive general ed requirement, that's just how long it took me to get through the chain of prerequisites.
Contrast this with one of my roommates.  I don't recall exactly what his major was, but his degree program included a large number of courses with few or no prerequisites.  Starting from his first semester, he was taking almost exclusively courses from his major with maybe 1 general ed course per semester sprinkled in occasionally.  He intentionally chose gen-ed courses completely unrelated to his major as he felt it helped him stay creative and mentally flexible, but that was his choice. His weren't front-loaded like mine were, simply due to the way our respective course lists were structured.  You'll see very different experiences between different schools and different degree programs, and sometimes even between different students in the same program.

A music degree is like your roommate’s experience: first semester could be 5-6 courses that are for music majors only and only 1-2 core courses. That ratio continues for the next three semesters and then it’s all music until the end. A music degree can be extremely demanding even though it doesn’t lead to a lot of earning potential.