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Is writing a research paper on Overleaf risky for plagiarism?
Is it safe to write research paper on Overleaf? Some of my friends say that it is not safe to write research papers on it as it is connected it internet. Please suggest. I am afraid of plagiarism.

Plagiarism?  This is quite different from someone stealing your username/password and stealing your work.  You do know that even writing your papers locally has the same risk? Nowadays with malwares, once you digitize your thought, it can be stolen.  To push it further, any nearby cameras can be hacked to take a snapshot of your paper.  I doubt anybody would want to steal your papers unless your topics are sensitive or have commercial value.  In both cases, you wouldn't use a cloud-based system.

@Prof.SantaClaus Hopefully a university-hosted gitlab should be a safe cloud to store research papers in progress in, even in the unlikely event anybody is interested in stealing OPs work.

I never had any problems with Overleaf... if I can't trust my collaborators not to be mindful when sharing the edit link, then why would I want to collaborate with those people? And for more "sensitive" documents there is always an option to give edit or even view-only privileges to a specific e-mail address which can't be shared further, rather than through a link. Besides, Overleaf provides at least some history and associates the work with your e-mail, so you can easily prove when you started your work.

I have done it and experienced no big problems. Occasional downtimes can be a bit annoying. I do recommend creating backup copies frequently and storing them also outside overleaf.

How could this be about Academia, rather than Overleaf or any other tool?
If you're worried, consider only those explanations which give you guarantees, no matter how few problems they happen to have met.
Consider, eg, Blazej's contribution "… no big problems." What, exactly, does that mean and what recourse would you have?
I have no brief for Billy Rich and still, why not stick with MS Word?

@RobbieGoodwin Standards differ across disciplines, remember? In many areas of CS, LaTeX is fast becoming a defacto standard. Many journals and conferences provide their own standardized templates following their publication requirements. I know of academics that refuse to review manuscripts which are not typeset in LaTeX. And while I personally think that is extreme, I certainly know that I shan't be submitting again to the journal that forced me to submit in MS Word (specifically, forced me to switch in the middle of the review process), and most certainly not as corresponding author.

Hello, Tom from Overleaf Support here. Note that while Overleaf is indeed operated over the internet, we do take data privacy and security very seriously. You can read more about it at https://www.overleaf.com/legal#Privacy and we are happy to answer your questions at support@overleaf.com . (Note that I don't make a full answer here as I only deal with one part of the whole consieration, and the existing answers tackle the other parts very nicely.)

@penelope: "LaTeX is fast becoming a defacto standard..."?  Maybe if you wrote this sometime in the last century, but LaTeX has been the de facto standard since before there even WAS a MS Word.

"Some of my friends say that it is not safe to write research papers on it as it is connected to the internet." What do you mean? A lot of systems are connected to the internet.

The typical procedure of collaborators e-mailing Word files back and forth is way easier to hack than Overleaf.

Dooes the question concern fear of being plagiarised or being accused of plagiarism? It was edited by someone who is not the original poster.

I rolled back the last edit, since it might have changed the intention of the question.

Overleaf is unlikely to be a problem
To plagiarize your work, someone would have to

find it very valuable
hack your Overleaf account (and know it is there they need to hack) or that of your coauthors or you would have to have shared it publicly
finish the research before you do, which typically means they would have to have superior or in any case solid knowledge in the field,
publish it before you do
have more credibility than you do in the academic community, so that you can't just say that it was actually your work they are plagiarizing

Of all these factors the second one is the only one that has anything to do with Overleaf. In order for it to be the crucial issue, you already need to have a competent and well-connected researcher out to plagiarize you. While it could happen, it feels unlikely, and you probably know if you are in this situation or not.
If you do happen to be in a position that requires extreme information security (governmental research, dual purpose research, authoritarian regime, a powerful enemy out to get you), then it is a good rule of thumb to not use Overleaf or other cloud services. But in this case you really should seek help that is a lot more competent and specific than the answers here.

The risk with a plagiarist finishing and publishing first could be more severe if the OP is trying to perfect a paper (perhaps by acquiring one last result) and submit to a slow, high-impact journal.  The plagiarist could then go for a quicker journal, one that's barely respectable, happy to publish the more preliminary results,  but included in the major indices.  It's still highly unlikely though

"hack your Overleaf account" -- this depends on how the Overleaf project has been set up. Using free accounts, often the only way to work collaboratively is to allow anybody with a link to the project to access the text. The security is then provided by the long-and-random nature of the project's URL, but if the link is intercepted (say, a coauthor inadvertently forwarding an email with the link to someone they shouldn't have) then the text could leak, potentially to other groups in a better position to plagiarize.

"finish the research before you do, which typically means they would have to have superior or in any case solid knowledge in the field," But if the part that the author on Overleaf had done was the hard part, requiring ingenuity in addition to solid knowledge, then the plagiarist might need only solid, but far from superior, knowledge.

@MichaelHardy Right; superior knowledge, or at least solid. If my language is easy to misunderstand, feel free to clarify with an edit.

@Tommi Don't you think Neelkanth was asking not all about being plagiarised, but "I am afraid of being accused of plagiarism"?

@RobbieGoodwin Very good question; I completely did not understand that. Maybe they want to confirm or deny.

A wide range of Academicians and Researchers have been using overleaf for a long time now, none of them have complained of anything as such other than some suggestions of improving it. I've personally never had any issues with overleaf since it is much more convenient to have a common platform for collaboration. Also, being insecure about an idea/paper being stolen isn't something one should be bothered about unless you've a ground breaking idea (pun unintended)
However, if one is reluctant to use the cloud based LaTeX editor, one can always switch to an offline LaTeX software if one wants. That should help.

Actual problems experienced with Overleaf include: 1. unexpected downtimes before a deadline; 2. weird behavior if some collaborators use their git integration and some don't

I do agree with that. Also, I remember a couple of researchers last month who were actually working in parallel and at the same time, complained of losing progress of what they had actually written and that too abruptly. Not once, but multiple times!

@AaqibBashir merging simultaneous changes is theoretically doable (manually) but it's generally best to try and avoid working on the same section at the same time, and an author needs to take on the duty of integrating changes.

@ChrisH Thanks for these insights! Quite valuable indeed!

Overleaf is indeed slightly more insecure than Dropbox, Git or e-mail, because it has one additional avenue for attack: you can get illicit access to a document stored there if you obtain the 24-digit hex number that appears in its URL. Clearly the probabilities to guess one at random are minuscule, but there are in theory some exploits that could help (sniff one from a plain-http connection, visited link attacks, etc.).
Dropbox also has unauthenticated share tokens, but typically one shares their document with specific users anyway.
Of course this is all theoretical, and probably this risk is only a tiny fraction of that coming from more traditional attacks (weak passwords and phishing, for instance --- as the saying goes, "problem in chair, not in computer").

I believe you need a paid plan for that, though, and most researchers don't have that.


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How to keep up with new publications and conferences. RSS feed?
I'm curious to know how you keep up with new publications in your field and various conferences that are happening. I seem to miss really great conferences and find articles a year or more after they have been published.
How do you keep track? Have you tried an RSS feed?

Benty-fields is good but I think it's physics/ arXiv only.

I should also add that in in the domain of CS, medial imaging and electrophysiology.

@corey979 That should be an answer, not a comment.

Yes, the sea of information is immense, but you can keep a pretty good handle on it, especially with the tools available today. And one key to remember is that research is done by people. Often there is a core group of scholars in each field that do the most to move that field forward. Here are a few ideas of what you could do, and certainly there are more:

Use alerts on Google Scholar or other search engines
Follow other researchers in your field on social media
Meet some of the other researchers in your field, if you haven't already, and keep in touch with them
Do a search every so often just to see what is out there. You can also search in other ways, such as for a particular researcher or group and see the direction their articles is going in.

The short answer is that there is no way: a normal person just cannot trace the work of a few hundred people, read (with details) 3-5 papers a day and go to one conference every fortnight himself. The more typical situation is that you work on a few problems and communicate to a few people with similar interests, who communicate to a few more people each and go to a few conferences, etc., so if something relevant and exciting happens somewhere, it reaches you in 2-3 steps but the routine that might interest you in general but hardly has any direct impact on your current work goes unnoticed. If you are just a year behind the current trends, you are 10 years ahead of me, so it shouldn't really bother you too much.
With all this said, if you want to "keep your hand on the pulse" more than you currently do, get into the habit of visiting standard places like arXiv, try to figure out what would be a few journals that publish interesting stuff for you and read them on a regular basis, scan conference ads online and in your field society bulletins once a month, but, above all, talk to people both around you and across the globe. Despite all modern search engines like Google, the word of mouth and the grapevine remain the most efficient communication channels, as far as I can tell.

“One person can’t... [do a list of things]” You probably could, if that was all you were doing. Of course, basically everyone in academia has other responsibilities like classes and/or research of their own.

I use the following for learning about new articles. Mathematics, inverse problems.

RSS feed for the relevant Arxiv categories (alternatively, arxivist.com)
Google scholar profile with notifications of articles that cite my articles. Scholar also maintains a list of articles similar to the ones you have cited and adds new articles there.
With Google scholar, it is possible to follow the new articles or citations or related research of other people with scholar profile. I do this to a very selected list of scientists. It is also possible to follow the citations to a given article; this is mostly useful if none of the authors have a profile, but they have an article or two relevant for your work.

For conferences in inverse problems, I use the Finnish inverse problems society's list of conferences.

For conferences, in various research areas there are (national, regional or international) mailing lists on which they are announced. For instance, in numerical analysis we have NA-digest. Maybe a big-list question here could collect their addresses.
Even though I like RSS feeds, it seems that they have lost this battle and people keep using plain old mailing lists instead.

I collected all relevant arxiv categories and a bunch of main journals to an RSS feed and it helped me a lot. I agree, that it is impossible to keep up with the pace, but I found this better than reading weekly/monthly newsletters.

I use http://zetoc.jisc.ac.uk/ to alert me when major journals in my field publish a new issue.  There are a few missing from their list that would be relevant for me though.

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What if I found some machine learning datasets are not trustable?
I'm doing research on object detection for aerial images (drone capture from above).
And many datasets I think their ground truth is not perfect (but also buggy), some object obviously but be ignored by annotator while some objects took long time to recognized with guesses is labelled ?
But for some reasons (they love publishing), the datasets got a lot of citations and results on boarding blah blah from variety of methods.
In that case, should I do something ? (I'm newbie to academia world and I know nothing much)
Get higher metrics and claim SOTA on something not good is quite confusing in my opinion. And from that, lead to a question that those question is really workable or just a trick only work for those bend ruler ?

I suppose it depends on what degree of imperfection the datasets have. Is one in ten images mis-annotated? One in one-hundred? Half of them? Is the analysis done on these datasets likely to be improved if the datasets are cleaned up? I imagine that approaching this from the angle of "I improved the annotations in this widely used dataset, lets see how that affects these results" would be recieved differently than "people are intentionally using bad data to get results they want."

What resolution is expected? Sime cameras can pick up the detail of a black cigarette box on a white card from 100 miles or more? Or isn’t the resolution that good?

The benchmark to which we compare the quality of datasets is not perfection, but rather other alternative datasets. Are there better datasets available? How large is the impact of the flaws in this dataset, do they justify throwing it out and making a different dataset? Can you quantify the accuracy of the dataset? E.g. in natural language processing it's common to evaluate inter-annotator agreement on a subset of the data and use it as a metric of both the rate of mistakes (it's expected that it won't be 0, even in double-reviewed data) and the inherent subjectivity of the annotation schema.

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What are A and A* conference ranks?
Following this question, what does A and A* mean for conference rank? Is there a site where can I get information for conference rank?

In computer science, the most important ranking is the one maintained by CORE, the Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia. It uses ranks such as A* (=exceptional), A (=excellent), B (=good to very good), and C (=sound and satisfactory).
They make the criteria for the different ranks explicit in a formal ranking description document.
Also, they have an explanation page and an online database with their rankings.

Thanks @lighthouse keeper, Is there also an online database for journals (Q1 etc.)?

@Avi At least for my subfield of CS, there's no universally accepted ranking of journals. The closest thing would be rankings based on H-index and/or Impact Factor, listed on sites such as Scimago.


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Is it okay to scan a book (that I own) strictly for personal use?
I have a physical book from an Australian publisher which is nearly a thousand pages long, so it's quite hard to carry around with me. It is a book of worked solutions for a math textbook. It has no digital version, presumably to prevent people form distributing it online.
Since it would be much more convenient for me to have a digital copy, would it be okay to scan a copy of the book to keep with me, strictly for personal use? By "okay", I am asking more about its legality than its ethicality, preferably in the US.

Although I probably intended this question to be more general, here is the information for this specific book.
There is a disclaimer related to copying in the front page of the book, which says:

Except as permitted by the Copyright Act (any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review), no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any enquiries are to be made to the [publishing company].

The first part of this statement seems to suggest it might be allowed for private study, which seems to be the situation I am in.
One other notice that can be found in the book, right below the above notice:

Copying for educational purposes: Where copies of part or the whole of the book are made under Part VB of the Copyright Act, the law requires that the educational institution or the body that administers it has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL). For information, contact the Copyright Agency Limited.

Part VB of the Copyright does not seem to apply to me as I am not a teacher (I am not a lawyer, either!). Is my only option in this case to contact the Copyright Agency or the publishers? I assume that if there is no resolution, I would have to try to obtain permission specifically from the publisher, which seems to be the safest option.

I find it kind of shocking that we even have to ask this question. Even so, adding your country tag would be necessary for accurate answers. For instance, in Germany, I think the blanket restriction on "photocopying" would be ineffective (in case anyone would want to interpret it not as one of the listed "fair dealings") as it would automatically be overruled by the right to a private copy. In other countries, very different restrictions or rules may apply.

Just because a book has no official digital edition, that does not mean it has not been scanned and uploaded online somewhere.

@O.R.Mapper I am in Germany, so thanks, haha! I would be interested in the ruling in the US as well, however. Additionally, the book was published in Australia, so that may play a role in this. I have updated the question with an additional copyright notice that there exists in the book.

@101010111100: Depending on the jurisdiction, scanning the book itself may be legally fully ok, whereas using a scanned copy provided by someone else may be an offense.

Nobody will know and everybody will be happy.

@O.R.Mapper I agree. Although, in my experience, personal use of scanned books is one of those victimless "crimes" where the law is almost never enforced, especially if you are smart about it.

Scanning is expensive, buying the eBook might be more economical.

@user2768: "buying the eBook" - the OP states "It has no digital version".

@O.R.Mapper, I read "no digital version" as "no (pirated) PDF." My mistake.

Libraries do scan books (for preservation and also general archiving and "searchability"), so I don't see scanning it as the offense. The same copyright still would apply to the scan though, so no reselling (of parts), giving to other people (but don't we all have other people borrow our books anyway?) or publishing the scans.

@skymningen: "Libraries do scan books" - but then, it is totally conceivable that libraries have fulfilled the requirement outlined in the book, namely asking for "prior permission of the publisher". As such, libraries are not quite comparable to the OP as a single person.

@user2768 Scanning is often free if you have access to a library with a scanner. Of course it still costs time: I'd guesstimate 1-2 hours for a 1000-page book. But consider also that ebooks often come with DRM restrictions, whereas a scan is readable indefinitely, with any document reading software, on any device.

@Pont: "Scanning is often free if you have access to a library with a scanner" - or, of course, if you have a scanner at home.

@O.R.Mapper True enough -- I mentioned libraries because they tend to have big, fast multifunction scanners (and sometimes specialized book scanners) which make relatively short work of books. I would never want to scan a book on my home flatbed scanner (let alone a 1000-page book), and not many people have the money or space for a professional-grade scanner at home.

@Pont You make good points. In my situation, though, I have access to a sheetfed scanner at a library. I'm thinking of dismantling the book entirely (as I never use it as "a book" per se, but rather more of a reference material which I use to check answers and look at solutions, so having it digitally is more convenient for me. Thus, I'm presuming that I don't need to spend much time manually scanning the book.

Are you asking whether it is ethical or legal?

@Bitwise I'm asking more about its legality. The ethicality of it will most likely vary on the person who is asked anyway :)

@Pont, you're assuming you can scan 8-16 pages per minute. That's a lot faster than I can! Assuming minimum wage of $5-10/hr (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country), it quickly becomes economic to buy an eBook rather than scan. (NB: O.R.Mapper has already pointed out that there's no eBook available in this case.)

@user2768 I'm not assuming it; I've determined it empirically :). On a fast scanner I can definitely scan a double-page spread, flip the page, and replace the book on the glass in under ten seconds, giving >12 pages/min (though I'd need breaks for a 1000-page book). Even faster on a proper book scanner where the book is face-up and you just turn the pages. Faster still if you do what OP is planning: cut out the pages and put them in the sheet-feeder :). Whether the ebook is competitive depends on its price: >€50 is common for academic works, making the scanning option appealing in many cases.

If you want a legal answer (although it would not constitute legal advice), Law.SE would probably be a better place for this.

I am not a lawyer. This is a general caveat, and it is also why I don't know which copyright law applies: Australia's (where the book was published) or Germany's (where you reside). I would think Australia's, but I don't know for sure.
Under the laws of both countries it is illegal to make a full copy of a copyrighted book, but different exceptions apply. In brief: Under German and Austrian law, only manual copying is allowed. Under Australian law, you can legally scan a book that you own for your private use.
In Germany and Austria
According to the Urhebergesetz (copyright-holder law), a full copy may only be made by handwriting or -typing (§ 53 Abs. 4 Nr. 2 in Germany and § 42 (8) in Austria). This restriction also covers non-commercial personal and research purposes. An exception applies to works that have been out of print (for at least two years in Germany).
In Australia
The Copyright Act governs the reproduction of artistic, literary, dramatic, and musical works. Presumably this is an open list that includes also scientific works. The following information is taken from the official brochure "A Short Guide to Copyright Law".
In general, reproducing a copyrighted book is illegal, but there are exceptions.
There is a "fair dealing" exception for, inter alia, research purposes. Whether this exception applies depends on "the amount and substantiality of the portion copied". As a rule, several articles from a journal or one chapter from a book may be copied.
The most important exception for your case, however, is the format-shifting exception. It "allows certain types of material that a person owns to be copied into a different format for private or domestic use. For example, a book can be scanned into an electronic form".
Finally
On a pragmatic and ethical note: You bought the book, and there seems to be no ebook version that you could buy instead of scanning the book. Thus no harm is done if you scan it. As the German adage goes, "wo kein Kläger da kein Richter" (no plaintiff -- no judge).

Outstanding answer! Loved the last part especially.

The tricker question (for Australians) is: can one, under the Copyright Act, obtain an electronic copy of dubious legality to supplement that physical copy one already bought? :-)

Not relevant, but perhaps interesting: in the UK a library can create an electronic version of a textbook to provide to a disabled student.

Interesting. Par. 53 Abs. 1 UrhG says simply that "single copies on arbitrary media" from legit sources for private (non-commercial, non-publishing etc.) use is permitted. Do you think Abs. 4 etc. are restrictions to that right? I read the law such that the cover uses uses than strictly private ones.

I am not a lawyer, but I think so. In my reading, Abs. 1 concerns the general case, whereas Abs. 4 concerns the specific cases of books and journals/magazines ("Zeitschriften") for which the article defines special restrictions. According to lex specialis, Abs. 4 applies before the more general Abs. 1.

Australian law: This matter is dealt with under Section 43C of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), which relates to reproducing works (that you own) for private use.
Broadly speaking, this section allows you to take a book you own and make a copy in a different format (e.g., scanned pdf) for your own "private and domestic use".  You can only use this for your own personal use, and you are not allowed to sell, lease or trade the copy you have created, and you cannot retain the copy if you trade the original book to another person.  Read the section to get a full explanation.

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Who has the final say in making revisions to a manuscript after it has been returned by reviewers?
You wrote a paper as first author and submitted to a journal. Months later, you get the paper back with suggested revisions from reviewers. One of your much more senior and accomplished co-authors wants you to do a lot more revisions than what the reviewers suggest, and mostly things that have nothing to do with the reviewers' requests.
My questions on this are:

Ignoring whether or not your assessment of your co-author's suggestions are correct, who has final say in these revisions?

If you were the first author, how would you communicate to your senior co-author?

If you cannot agree, how do these things get resolved?

How does your answer change in each of the following additional contexts:

The senior co-author is the principal investigator (in my opinion, in this case, you simply follow them).
The paper was written when you and your co-authors were still in the same organization (with you as junior to them), but now you are all in other jobs in other places.

If you are working as an RA or untenured professor, you'd do well to listen to the other colleauge.

@JosephDoggie I agree. See 4.1. Thanks.

No one has the "final say", you have to come to an agreement among all coauthors.
If you disagree with your coauthors, I would make your case to them respectfully. The specifics of that interaction are quite culturally dependent but would not be special to this circumstance.
Consider that if you have less experience publishing than your coauthors you may defer to their expertise. But also changing parts of a paper not commented on by reviewers is a bit unusual and may lengthen the review process; in some cases it absolutely must be done (like if some mistake was discovered) but in other cases it should have been done before initial submission. On the other hand, if there is something new and exciting to add there may be strategic benefit.

Thank you. I certainly agree that talking should be the first course of action. Would you mind including your answers to #3 and #4? For #3 specifically, if the authors cannot agree, does the paper just die?

@tommyB Yes, which puts a high incentive on agreeing. I'm not going to address 4 it doesn't seem important to me.

@tommyB What alternative is there? You are forced to sign your name under an article you no longer agree with? That would be wrong in so many ways. So yeah, if you collaborate you need unanimity, and no unanimity means no paper.

For number #3 it is also possible for the disagreeing co-authors to remove their name from the paper.

One obvious thing you could do, if you haven't already, is try to get some clarification from the senior coauthor. Specifically, what's their reasoning for suggesting revisions that are not in response to the reviews?
Without any other information, it could be anything from "sorry, I didn't really think about it before" to "actually these are in response to the reviewer and here's the reason why" to "I consider these to be serious problems that we need to fix before publishing, independently of the review", or something else.
Depending on their reasoning, it might then be appropriate to suggest skipping some of the suggestions on the basis that the reviewer didn't ask for them, or to ask the senior author to implement some of them. But depending on their personality and your relationship you might have to be careful in asking about this. I would probably try to do all this in a meeting / zoom call, rather than by email.

Thank you. Yes, definitely talking and trying to clarify and reason would be the first course and hopefully only action needed. I was merely thinking of the worst and seeking insight on what protocol was. Also, I chuckled a little at the "ask the senior author to implement some of them" suggestion. Thank you for that.


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I feel like doing a PhD is my only option but I am not excited about it. What can I do to fix my life?
I have graduated a year ago from Oxford with a first honour master's degree in maths and computer science. Since then I've been trying to find a decent job and have been failing, to the point where I feel like going back into academia is my only option.
During university I focused so much on my studies that I missed out on any internships or graduate positions I could have applied for (in the UK, you apply to graduate jobs during the first term of your final year). When I graduated, I tried applying to any entry-level jobs available to me that looked even remotely interesting and paid >30k. Out of three hundred applications, I got two interviews: one to Jane Street during which I have gotten to the last on-site stage and failed due to not being the best quick thinker, and one to the company I work at right now and desperately want to quit.
My current job is the most dead-end software development job imaginable; I work fifty hour weeks, doing things that any high schooler with an eight-week course in web development can do and I am bored out of my mind. Due to this I've been looking to quit and been trying to find a new job for the last month. Again, out of more than hundred applications (all to entry-level/graduate jobs), not even a single interview invite.
On the other hand, I loved the quantum computing in university and submitted eight applications for PhD positions in that field, which resulted in three interviews and two offers, from Nottingham and Cambridge. This makes me think that skills I have are much more sought after in academia. But after thinking about it for a while, I realised that I dread getting into an academic career – having minimal pay, having to teach five classes just to survive. Moreover, I believe that the particular topic I'm interested in is not very transferable to other careers, and so after I graduate with a PhD in four years, my job prospects will probably look just as grim if not worse than they do now, instead I will also be approaching my thirties and probably balding. What should I do?

Folowing the most upvoted comment: if you need a better job, probably asking at the workplace.Stackexange would yield better answers.

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"Out of three hundred applications, I got two interviews" You are doing something wrong. By sheer numbers you should have gotten more feedback than 2 of 300, let alone with an honours degree from Oxford in Math. I suggest you head over to workplace.stackexchange.com to get help on your application game, b/c something is clearly not working out...

You stated that you had received two offers in quantum computing; and then you said: "I dread getting into an academic career - having minimal pay, having to teach 5 classes just to survive."
Please be mindful that these days a holder of a PhD degree in quantum computing is not really doomed to spend the rest of their life in academia. Not sure about the UK, but in the US such a person may as well apply to a startup, or a government lab, or a major corporation (IBM, Microsoft, Google) engaging in quantum-computing research.
My son had received his PhD in this field, spent three years as a postdoc at a government lab, and is now applying to one of the major companies mentioned above.  This is a rapidly developing and well-funded area.
Predicting future is a risky business. Unable to give you any warranty, I would nevertheless suppose that some three or four years down the road experts on quantum computing will be in demand not only in academia but also in industry. Not in a position to advise you on what to do with those two offers, I simply wish to point out that in quantum computing things are not as dire as you described them.

That is quite reassuring, thank you. My biggest anxiety is that my skills are not valued and at some point I will have to face reality and do what basically amounts to mindless labor to survive

@DmitriyFilippov I cannot imagine a PhD in Quantum Computing from Cambridge doing "mindless labour to survive" :) Drop me a message if you wish, and we shall talk.  You will find my e-mail address on my website. I shall introduce you to my son, and from him you will be able to learn what the options can be these days for a PhD in this area.

There might be a quantum computing winter in 4-5 years. The current systems dont work good enough for decent application (personal opinion). So if there is not a game changer, funding will dry up.

@lalala The Holy Grail is so precious that the flow of funding is unlikely to dry up any time soon. Sexagenarian, I recall how in my high-school years I learned about scientists' promises that the research into Controlled Thermonuclear Fusion (CTF) would "soon" yield fruit.  Dozens of years down the road, we are still far from building an industrial facility of the kind.  Nonetheless, all large countries keep investing in CTF - because the prize would be colossal. I believe that quantum computing will sooner or later bring success, and that funding will continue for long if needed.

Yes, but the current big growth in funding especially also from companies might dry up and get back to 2010 levels or so

Look, nobody has dared to say the clear truth to you. So I will for your sake:
  You dread getting into an academic career.
Please, think about it. You should try your best to not go into something you dread unless it’s a matter of life and death, especially if it’s going to be for four or more years with no clear benefits.
Note that the only apparent benefit is escaping your current situation, but I hope you have heard about the saying: “The grass is always greener on the other side.” Believe me, it’s true; so guide your decisions based on their intrinsic value and not based on trying to escape from problems. It is better for you to try to find another job than to stick yourself in an academic box for a long time, unless you genuinely enjoy research.
(If you can somehow get assurance of job prospects after a PhD, then it should naturally be factored into your decision, but it does not contradict anything I said, because you should have enough confidence in your future prospects that you no longer dread going for a PhD!)

@Fe2O3: LOL. I think it's false, but how to prove it...

What you write about the number of interviews vs. the number of applications sent makes me think there might be something wrong with your applications. Where I live, mathematics is actually a quite useful degree for landing reasonably interesting or at least nice programming jobs.
When I was fresh from university, even with not so good grades I had one interview for about ten applications. After gaining a year of work experience, the quota should be even better.
Have you tried to show your applications to a friend, preferably one who also works in the field (and preferably in the UK) and reads other people's applications from time to time?
For career advice: If you want to stay in programming, it might be useful to focus a bit on areas that other programmers do not like so much, e.g. SQL or front-end stuff. Try to get familiar with one of the more popular languages, e.g. Python or C#. If you have the energy, it can also be useful to contribute to an open-source project – some employers like that.

For front end popular would be Angular and React, and (sadly IMHO at least) TypeScript.

For broad employability it’s important to have sufficient knowledge of whatever languages, frameworks, and tools are most popular for the type of dev work you’re targeting (e.g. front end) that you can feature them prominently on your resume and talk about them in an interview.

"Have you tried to show your applications to a friend" Preferably a good friend, who is willing to give you brutally honest, uncomfortable, not-flattering feedback. You won't get honest feedback from companies, because (a) they are afraid of getting sued and (b) most people don't react kindly to honest feedback, so there's nothing to gain and a lot to lose for them.

While showing applications to a friend may already reveal fundamental issues, this always comes with the caveat that the average friend does not have much more experience with writing applications than oneself. In particular, the situation in question seems to call for professional career advice, not only in terms of polishing applications, but also preparing interviews and finding satisfying jobs.

You've actually already hit on a critical thing to figure out before you start:
What makes you think that if you get a PhD you'll be able to find a better job?
Here're some possible answers:

You've looked for jobs where "PhD in quantum computing" is one of the requirements, and there are lots of jobs that you find interesting.
You know, based on your current position, that there is stuff that knowledge about quantum computing will directly help with. (This implies that HR should have advertised for quantum computing for your current job.)
You know, because you've looked at the syllabus of quantum computing courses in detail, that although there are not many jobs that require a PhD in quantum computing, they ask for skills that you will learn through a PhD in quantum computing.
Some people at your current company are doing interesting things, and they have PhDs in quantum computing.

Once you figure out the answer to this question, then you have concrete evidence to believe "my job prospects will probably look just as grim if not worse than they do now" (or not). If your job prospects really will look just as grim, or worse, then that's a good reason not to do a PhD.
But if you don't do a PhD, what about your current job? The standard thing to do would be to keep applying until you find something better. I'd suggest asking Oxford's career center if possible, and getting their help with polishing your CVs and cover letters.
What if you never find anything better? Welcome to the club. 66% of people report being detached from their jobs. Life would be so much better if everyone got what they wanted, but that's not how the real world works. C'est la vie.
PS: I just remembered there's one more thing you can do - ask your prospective graduate programs at Nottingham & Cambridge what their QC PhD graduates wound up doing. See if you are interested in those jobs. If not, don't do a PhD. You can even ask if they'll put you in contact with their QC PhD graduates.

Your proposed answers to the question are all fairly optimistic, in suggesting that things in the job market are basically well-justified.  A more cynical possible answer: in the jobs OP has been applying for, people with PhD’s (in QC or otherwise) have better success rates, without the PhD either being a listed requirement or providing any clearly-relevant skills.  I’m not so cynical as to suggest this is the whole answer, but I definitely think it can be part of the situation.

I definitely don't propose them as answers. They're just examples of possible answers. Lacking similar answers, OP should probably not do a PhD. It'd be great if OP can tell whether people with QC PhDs have better success rate, but that'd require statistics that are hard to find.

Doing a PhD is not your only option, whether it is past, present or future.
The first thing you should do is stop in order to think about what you really want in your life. After reading your question, I feel like you don't know yourself clearly enough. Once you have clear goals about your life (including everything like work, study, relationship and so on), you will feel less confused and more motivated.
How to know more about yourself?

Find out what you really like, or what kind of things will really interest you. Think about your experience so far: What things you did would make you feel passionate? In other words: What are you willing to do even it’s unpaid because you won’t feel bored?

Find out your talent. It is not a need, but if you do the things you are good at, it may be easier and you will be better than others. For example, if you spend less time and energy to achieve the same thing than your competitors, then it’s more fulfilling to you.

Summarize what you have. That’s the basic element to decide how far you can go.

If you don’t know what you want exactly, just close your eyes, and imagine the lifestyle you want to have in the next ten years. Where are you? What kind of house or apartment you will live in? How will you spend your day? In order to have this life, what do you need to do now?

Find out your ideal job, including the location, salary, career, company and anything you can think of.

Life is long. What you want to do is much more important than what you can do now. If you can answer the questions above, I believe you will know what should be done in the future. Good luck!

I am under the impression that you concentrated on your degree. You did this well. But you missed to learn skills and to gain experiences needed to get a job.
Maybe you applied to the wrong jobs. People with impressive degrees are not the best fit for an open position. If they are bored, they quickly leave the company (such as you). And they might feel undervalued and underpaid, which leads to frictions.
Academia values good degrees. Universities might accept red flags (missing skills, issues with CV or personality) industry would not accept. After your PhD you might facing the same problems with you three to five years older.

My advise:

Whatever you do (take PhD position, stick to your current company, apply for other jobs), level up the relevant skills to land jobs you want, e.g., programming, machine learning, quantum computing applications, inter-personal skills, project management.
Apply to jobs that are a match for your degree. Not above, not below.
Seek help by career coaches (they are not cheap, but if taken seriously worth the money). They help to evaluate your potentials, both strengths and weaknesses. They can help finding suitable job offers. And let you help improving you applications and job interview foo.

Also beware of predatory boot camps that charge you a lot of money and coach you to pad your resume in unethical ways. Good hiring managers can spot that kind of behavior a mile away, so you’re not doing yourself any favors using such a “service”, and even being affiliated with the these orgs could be a red flag that costs you an interview.

In the question chat, the OP mentioned that he had therapy until the 3rd year at university. While I am not a medical doctor—just someone with personal experience—it seems from his question that the issues might have resurfaced. Already, the language in the question title is quite telling: “not excited,” “my only option” (everyone has options, especially a young Oxbridge graduate!), “fix my life” (which sounds pretty serious).
Addressing this should be a priority, whatever path the OP chooses. For example, psychological issues could make successfully applying to jobs very challenging. HR and managers are astute at picking up verbal and non-verbal cues and, for various reasons, might hesitate to hire someone they perceive as moody and unenthusiastic. Staying in the current job, which the OP dislikes, can create a vicious cycle of boredom, burnout, dropping performance, and deteriorating health. Even if the OP lands a dream job somewhere like Google, he might end up bitterly disappointed: psychological issues can make a person blind to the positives and over-focused on the negatives.
Despite the OP’s worries about the PhD, this could be a good path. OP, you say that you “loved quantum computing” at university. At a PhD level, this can be 10 times more exciting: you’ll learn the cutting-edge discoveries from the field leaders, and you yourself would be contributing to these discoveries. (What if you discover something amazing?) Don’t worry too much about future income: e.g., the PhD founders of DeepMind are hardly starving. Even if you pursue a different career, the PhD will give you valuable transferable skills. And unlike, say, a military career, it is not impossible to leave a PhD program early if you cannot continue.
I suggest finding, or returning to, a good professional therapist. From my personal experience, medications, so readily prescribed by GPs, can have side effects and are not sufficient on their own, whereas talking therapies, like CBT, are essential. If necessary, a letter from the therapist might help you arrange a deferral of your PhD, if the university permits that. Удачи (Good luck)!

I think there's a few separate questions here, and it's better to take them separately.

"My job is boring, if I do a PhD will it be more interesting?"
A PhD might be more exciting, it might also be boring. But more importantly a PhD comes with a lot of other things besides just how exciting the work is. You should choose a PhD because you want all, or at least most, of those things, and not just for a single reason like "it's more interesting".
I doubt there's not a single industry job out there that wouldn't be "boring" to you - the more sensible option is to look for that. Not every job is the same. Now that you've seen one type of job you don't like, you can try to avoid applying to jobs like that in the future. But generally, this is a question for https://workplace.stackexchange.com/

"I have great credentials, but I can't get any good jobs. Can I escape to academia?"
What people don't say is that applying to jobs is an art that requires considerable learning, and until you do that learning you will be hopeless no matter how great your degree is. In college, people kind of pick up by osmosis how to apply to academic jobs (PhDs and the like) but nobody in college (unless you are very lucky) teaches you how to apply effectively to industry jobs. But, you can learn this, and it's a lot easier and faster than pivoting your whole life into academic research when you started out planning to work in the software industry. Before thinking about a PhD, you should first look into learning this so you can get some job offers befitting your very high credentials, qualifications and abilities. Right now you are not - 30k is too low for an Oxford Math grad who can code.
This is also something better asked about on a career advice site like https://workplace.stackexchange.com/

"PhD also sounds hard, will I be happier in it?"
Nobody can tell you this. It depends entirely on your personality. Moreover, it will also depend on who exactly you do the PhD with. But some invariants I can tell you are that:

The pay will be considerably lower, and will also grow worse, unless at some point you can leverage your academic background to get into a very high paying job (this is doable but you will still have to get good at applying to jobs, it won't happen automatically)
The work will be more complex and intellectually difficult (whether this makes it harder or easier or better or worse depends on you)
Job security is much better
Coworkers are more "academic-minded"

Of course there is no this or that answer to your question. So, here are some key pieces of advice and you can cherrypick whichever is more relevant in your case:
I would encourage you to take some time to reflect on your career goals and what you are truly passionate about. Understanding your interests and long-term career aspirations will help you make more targeted and fulfilling career decisions.
If you are having trouble finding a right job, then you might need to revisit the way you are applying. Maybe you are sending same resume and cover letter without giving much thought to what the recruiters are looking for. Many universities offer career services to alumni, including resume reviews, interview preparation, and job search assistance. Oxford likely has resources that can help you improve their job search strategy. Networking is a crucial aspect of the job search process. Attending industry events, joining relevant LinkedIn groups, and participating in online forums related to you field can help you connect with potential employers and learn about job opportunities.
Since you lack internship experience, you might consider gaining relevant experience through freelance work, contributing to open-source projects, or working on personal projects that showcase their skills. This can help build a more impressive portfolio and demonstrate their capabilities to potential employers.
Taking short-term courses or obtaining certifications in in-demand skills can make you more attractive to employers. For example, certifications in cloud computing, data science, or other relevant areas could enhance their resume.
If you find the UK job market is particularly challenging, you might consider broadening your search and start looking for opportunities in other countries or regions where their skills might be in higher demand.
If you are seriously considering a PhD, they should carefully weigh the pros and cons. While academia offers certain opportunities, it also comes with its own set of challenges. They should consider whether they can leverage the PhD to transition into industry roles later on, perhaps in research and development positions within tech companies.
The job search process can be long and frustrating, but persistence is key. Stay positive, continue learning, and remain open to new opportunities.

Only you know your situation, but it’s worth considering that entry level jobs outside of academia are often just really boring. They don’t usually give the most interesting tasks to someone who’s just starting out in the field for a variety of reasons, some valid, some not. One of the valid reasons is that you’re (the general you, not you specifically) still learning the ropes and are a much higher risk to the project and so are given lower risk easier tasks which tend to be the menial tasks. So unless you’re in a toxic or woefully incompetent company or department (which is possible; again only you know your situation), it sounds like you’re probably describing the typical experience for an entry level developer.
If so then know that it will get better. The best advice I have if you’re at all interested in software development is to do what you can to find joy in the menial work (e.g. are there parts you can automate by writing your own code without jeopardizing getting your work done in the process?), learn all you can (especially the soft skills of working with people and working under deadlines), network with others, and take comfort in the knowledge that as you demonstrate the ability to do menial low risk tasks well, and more importantly reliably, you’ll gain more responsibility in the form of more interesting tasks. This will most likely take a year or two, possibly longer or possibly even shorter depending on the company (companies vary quite a bit in their view of how long it takes to gain experience), but it will happen.
Regarding your difficulty getting interviews, the easiest way to increase your chances assuming you’re writing your resume properly (check with an expert to be sure your not making mistakes there) is to have experience on your resume. A really easy way to get that is to stick with your current employer for at least 2-5 years if you haven’t already. And as you stay longer you should get more interesting tasks that will make your resume more impressive assuming you write it correctly. If you jump ship too soon (assuming you’re still entry level), your resume will still be a blank slate on experience and you’ll be stuck dealing with the challenge facing most entry level job seekers: emoloyers want experience.

It doesn't always work out that more senior employees tend to get given more interesting tasks. Several years ago, I was a Senior Engineer in Mechanical Engineering for a large multinational, and found myself stuck for several years doing the most mind-numbing, tedious tasks that any entry-level Engineer could have been doing. I had tried to change jobs, but had no luck whatsoever in the local job market. The experience was a major factor is my deciding to do my PhD - I have never looked back and am now planning to stay in academia.

That sounds awful. There are exceptions to every rule and the more interesting tasks may still be boring to you (the general you), and of course even as a more senior dev you’ll have to do menial tasks as well from time to time, but in general if you’re not in a terrible job seniority should yield some more interesting, less menial tasks than those given to an entry level dev. That said there are always going to be employers who don’t know how to properly task their senior talent or don’t respect them, and those employers should be avoided.

My former employer would definitely fall into the latter category. They were spiralling downhill as well, laying off a lot of good staff.

To explain my current position, I think if anything I am being given too much responsibility, mostly stemming from mismanagement. I work for a small start-up and have complete ownership over almost the entire backend, including a terraform infrastructure, kubernetes stack, api server, database and several video transcoding microservices. My boredom stems from my work being almost entirely reading documentations and implementing api endpoints executing simple API queries and from not being given enough stuff to do on a weekly basis.

During the last 3-4 months, I consistently get given enough tickets for like 10 hours of work while being forced to work 9-7 5 days a week. I try to spend free time doing future-scoped projects but because the rest of the development lags so far behind half of the time those need to get scrapped or reworked. Meanwhile most of my seniors who I strongly suspect are earning several times what I do are contributing roughly an equivalent of a single button a day.

I am getting a perception that the "company culture" valuing staying in the office as long as possible over actually being productive makes everyone reluctant to put in effort. Meanwhile for me, working until 7-8 for the last half a year made me drop almost all my hobbies, not see my friends as much as I used to etc. And to salt the wound, I have been brought to a meeting with my boss who spends 3/4 of the meeting praising all the work i do, and then proceeds to tell me how I should move closer to work so I can stay in the office for longer and that me often leaving first is not cool

Ah yeah I’ve heard that startups often have a “work till you drop” culture. It’s a burnout risk.

First, your situation is probably not that unusual. UK universities, especially elite ones like Oxford and Cambridge, have a culture of over-emphasizing coursework and exams, and under-emphasizing research and work experience. So you spend your three or four years studying hard for exams, and spending your summers and holidays recovering. Then you find yourself applying for jobs and find that simply ranking x in your year in exams is not enough to get a good job (or, indeed, even a good PhD position outside of the UK, but that's a different story...)
My advice would be to just take the PhD position.
First, it sounds like you're unhappy in your current position, so since you have the PhD option, you might as well take it.  If they (the department or your future supervisor) gave you the offer, it means that they have confidence that you will be able to handle it. Provided you are actually interested in doing research, doing a PhD can be a good experience. And it will ultimately only be 3-4 years of your life (note: this is strongly dependent on the country. In the UK, PhDs typically have a fairly fixed end-date.  In some places like the USA, they can drag on forever, but that doesn't apply to you).
Getting a PhD does not mean you will stay in academia forever.  In fact, finding a faculty position is significantly harder than doing a PhD, so much that the vast majority of people who actually want to stay in academia will not be able to, so it is actually a much healthier attitude as a PhD student to not plan on having a career in academia.

Moreover, I believe that the particular topic I'm interested in is not very transferable to other careers, and so after I graduate with a PhD in 4 years, my job prospects will probably look just as grim if not worse than they do now

This concern is valid, but now that you've learned your lesson, you have the next few years (while doing your PhD) to think about jobs and pick up marketable skills on the side.  While the actual day-to-day research might not be widely applicable, you will gain general technical skills that are transferable, and simply having "PhD" attached to your name will open lots of doors in the job market.

Two things to untangle here.
First, getting a PhD does not chain you to an academic career. Far from it - the people who can continue/stay in academia for a lifetime are few and far between (with an increasing number of people also not even wanting to stay in academia because they see other opportunities out there that make them happier than academia can - be it job security, monetary compensation, working hours, etc.).
Second, if you are not excited about the idea of DOING (not getting in the end but actually putting in the work for a couple of years) then by all means, do not consider starting a PhD. The one thing that will pull you through is an intrinsic drive and motivation for (your topic of) research. You will not be in it alone, you will have a supervisor and a larger academic community, but in the end, a PhD is about showing that you can do research independently, which means you will take ownership of the project, you will be the main person responsible for troubleshooting and problem solving and you need to enjoy that and see that as one of the perks of the job. If you lack excitement before even starting, then don't.

Apply to big firms with well paying positions.
From your comments I can’t tell if you tried already. In general we don’t have that much to go on.
But atleast try to apply to some well paying positions. People will think you are joking if you apply for 30k jobs with your qualifications. Have confidence in yourself.

Is this written from a UK perspective?

This is written from an everywhere perspective, taking into account that OP graduated from Oxford with a masters and so on.

If it is the most dead end job then you would likely be one of many looking for an alternative.
I find that eveyone brings along a truly random and vast amounts of abilities and connections.
So if possible you could try talk with your current co-workers as openly as you can. Try and figure out a local solution...
Some might excell at thinking lighting fast and under pressure, while not having what you have, as someone who studied at Oxford.
But more useful could be all the seemingly incidental connections and the half forgotten tricks, and lived experiences. Which I've found are somehow the most life changing stuff around.
But ultimately please do what makes you not miserable. While remembering that education costs money and job gives money. Both add stress. Both take time, and have various risks along the way.
(And who knows talk to enough people and you might just have to make your own company)
Anyway you explained yourself plain and simple with confidence in your question.
I hope its not too much of a stretch to ask: could you start writing as a career.
Not like a full published guide right away, start small.
A few brief articles on your personal favourite areas at current.
Could be nothing but I get the feeling that you have massive enthusiasm that could light up online spaces. Giving you the option to kinda teach and hopefully learn, but in your own way.
While keeping a boring job having a fun relevent hobby can be a life saver. Especially if vastly overqualified and needing to prove yourself in a more tangible and dedicated way.
(Sorry if this answer was all over the place)


text:
What is a faculty mentor for a junior professor?
I see JeffE mentioned the existence of a faculty mentor in his comment on this question, so I am wondering if there is usually a faculty mentor for every junior professor (e.g., newly hired untenured profs). If yes, what are their roles?

In my institution: formally never, practically in some cases. However, unofficially I would assume most entry-level profs have some go-to experienced prof that they ask for advice here and there.

It's rapidly becoming the norm at least at larger research universities (R1s) for all junior faculty to have assigned mentors from the senior faculty. At smaller institutions, they may not be assigned and so junior people have to find a mentor themselves from within the college, go externally, use their thesis adviser as a continuing mentor, or choose not to get mentored altogether.
I'm currently serving as a senior faculty mentor to a junior colleague (I was assigned this person by my Chair) and am an informal mentor to two others. As I see it, my roles are to:

Show an active interest in my colleague's work.  Read their published and unpublished work. Go to their internal talks and try to go to their annual conference talks. Provide feedback.
Serve as a soundingboard for my colleague -- which journal should they publish in, should they change the structure of their article, what should their publishing schedule be. Suggest, but don't direct.
Serve as an advocate for my colleague at senior faculty meetings and to the university at promotion and tenure time
Take the colleague out for lunch from time to time.

In general, try to be a decent human being to them. Especially at the larger R1s, decent human beings are rare so this takes quite an effort. :-)
Note that I've seen a lot of bad mentoring by senior faculty. I'm not sure if they do this because of spite or because they are Evil People®. In my mind, bad mentoring is worse than no mentoring, so I'm not sure if mandatory mentoring programs such as at my institution are a good idea.

It's rapidly becoming the norm at least at larger research universities — [citation needed] I'd love for this to be true, but my impression is that faculty mentors are still relatively rare.

I see it at the R1s where I work and circulate. I can hedge that statement more if you like. In any case, most provosts are trying to create the facade that faculty mentoring is occurring although as I note in my last paragraph, quality is very uneven.

From what I've heard, a statement like "It's … becoming the norm … for all junior faculty to have assigned mentors", has already been hedged enough to be true.  Whether the assignment necessarily translates into any meaning mentoring is another question.

I see it in some departments at my R1, but not enough to call it a "norm".

This will be a slightly different persepctive from RoboKaren's. I work in a small American liberal arts college in a small department. We have five tenure lines split between math and CS. My college does assign mentors to new faculty who are given funds to take the mentee out to lunch a couple of times.  What is different from an R1 setting is that the mentors are specifically and intentionally from very different departments. These assignments come from the Faculty Development Office. Mine is from history.
A few thoughts about what advantages having a mentor from an outside department may have:

An outside mentor helps navigate the politics of a small department by knowing everyone involved but not being part of the situation.
A lot of what the mentor gives is insight into navigating the college's structures and politics that are independent of departmental affiliation. For example, the relative workload of the various college-wide committees.
It helps get you outside of your own department to meet people from across the college. In a small town in a small college this social role is more important than you might imagine.

What this model does not accomplish is any sort of discipline specific mentoring on research or teaching. Those matters are left to informally acquired mentors and friends. This system may not be the Platonic ideal of mentoring but it does accomplish some good without too much bad.


text:
Is it appropriate/safe to ask for help on major theorem proof of my paper online?
I have been stuck on the proof of a major theorem in my forthcoming paper for about two weeks. Since offline help is limited, I'm trying to see if there is more help online. But I have two concerns.

I am the author of the paper and am supposed to work out the heavy-lift proof. I want to see if someone has worked on similar proofs who may point me in the right direction. What if someone comes up with the complete proof, rather than just suggestions/comments? Should I offer co-authorship or just appreciate their help in the acknowledgement?
For others to offer concrete help, I may have to disclose the proposed algorithm as they suggested. So there is the risk, even remote, that someone just uses it for their publication purpose before my paper is submitted.

How should I proceed, keep grinding hard on the proof offline, or solicit help online with the still-to-be-published algorithm, or something in between?

This comment does not answer the question, but I've struggled with a proof for months (and even that is not a long time). Don't give up! Try different approaches. Try to find a counterexample (is the statement even true?). Maybe someone with more experience can suggest a proof strategy or insight (your advisor)?

I have been stuck on the proof...for about two weeks — I have published proofs after I was stuck for years.  Two weeks is nothing.  (But have another problem to work on in parallel while you're stuck on that one.)

Depending on the expected difficulty of the proof and what kind of mathematical/CS expertise is required, you might consider checking whether there is some expert on this matter at your own university.

This answer is meant to apply to graduate students (like the OP).
Talk to your advisor. She is the designated person to help you with your research.  You should do so because:

1) Your advisor will probably have some help to offer.  Give them more than one chance to do so, and be clear in communicating how much help you want/need at any given time.

In your case I believe you said earlier that you talked to your advisor and got some but not enough help, because she only thought about your problem when you were there.  To me that is the opposite of strange: being a thesis advisor myself, I recognize it as the classic tension inherent in the job.  How much help do you give the student?  How much time you do spend thinking about the student's problem so as to be able to give help? There are usually no easy answers to these questions.  Even in dealing with the same student, over time I often find myself: giving too much help; giving too little help; being put in a situation where the question they ask is too hard for me to give an answer on the spot and then having to try to find time for outside thoughts about their question.
When you talk to your advisor, make sure she understands that you feel so stuck in your research that you are considering seeking outside help.

2) If you get outside help without telling your advisor about it, it could be embarrassing to her.

It can be tough to ask the same person for help on the same thing more than once.  But it is part of the advisor/advisee relationship.  If my students showed up on SE sites asking questions that I feel that I could have answered, I would not feel great about it.  (Most of my negative feelings would be directed to myself rather than at them, but still: not great.)

3) If you are truly stuck, your advisor needs to know.  It very often happens that the best thing to do is to switch to working on a different aspect of the problem, or perhaps a different problem entirely.  Your advisor is the one to help you with that.

Let me also say that in the realm of mathematically-related research, two weeks is a fairly short amount of time to be working on something.  If after two weeks you are completely out of ideas and don't even know what else to try, then you should address that.  If you simply haven't proved the "major theorem" yet: join the club.  To prove a major theorem usually takes me at least two months; two years is not at all unheard of, and is not a maximum.  As long as you're making some progress thinking about the problem, I don't necessarily see anything wrong here.
Added: The lack of directness of my answer was intentional, but let me add one comment.  In my opinion the greatest risk in asking in the internet community for help in solving your mathematical research problem is....that someone will solve your mathematical research problem.  As mentioned above, your advisor is optimally briefed in the matter of how much help to give you / how any one question fits into the larger scheme of your research program, and still advising a student is a matter of successive errors and corrections (i.e., helping too much and too little).  Being a PhD student has a highly egoistic aspect to it: you are not just trying to find solutions to problems; you are trying to find them yourself.  There is a real risk that the right expert will simply leave you without a problem to be working on.  This is why talking your advisor is so critical: she may in fact decide at some point that asking for help is best, but in that case she will know exactly what and whom to ask in such a way that the rug is least likely to get pulled out from under you.  This is very important!

The "opposite of strange" and "no easy answers" parts really strike a chord. One the one hand, I want to prove it by myself independently. One the other hand, I feel I need someone more experienced (e.g., my advisor) to nudge me a little in the right direction after days of stagnation. I'll go ahead to solicit more help from my advisor. Thanks a lot for the prompt reply.

@sinoTrinity "days of stagnation" ... you are expecting progress too fast.

LOL, I directly assumed the supervisor would only provide disservice (just like mine). If your supervisor is competent then I don't even understand why is the question here...

@Trylks He is offering constructive feedback. It's just I thought it would be better if I could get additional suggestion online so I can move faster. At least it does not hurt. That's the intention of my question.

If your supervisor is doing his work, then you can keep on that. You may propose collaborations with other people, but that's up to him. Usually the collaborations will be with people in the community, going to the wilderness of the online world is not common. After you have gone to a few conferences/workshops you will probably notice the faces are the same in all of them, AFAIK this happens in most areas, otherwise they would simply fragment into smaller areas, because people like to attend to talks in their very same area, hence only a few people can be there (it's very specific).

@Trylks: For whatever it's worth: this past weekend I was a speaker at a small conference attended by about 40 people. Number of faces I had seen before: 0.  Number of people with whom I had interesting, content-related conversations and would like to learn more about their work and keep in touch: at least 10.  Moral: there are many more people doing interesting work in my academic subject (mathematics) than I yet know or have met.

@PeteL.Clark well, I guess your mileage may vary, on your age and the broadness of your subject. "Mathematics" is definitively very broad, but it must be hard to research without more focus. I'm thinking about the famous illustrated guide to a Ph.D.

@Trylks: I guess I don't really understand your last comment.  I was responding to your "people like to attend to talks in their very same area" by mentioning my own recent experience.  If every conference I went to had the same people and concerned the same topic, I wouldn't see the point of continually going to conferences.  (I should point out that in my field, conferences and publications are almost entirely separated.)  Also, the number of people who can help me on my work -- and vice versa -- is quite large: in fact, I don't know many of the people who have insight into my work.

The bit about breadth and focus confused me: certainly "mathematical research" means, at any given time, research in some very specific parts of mathematics rather than mathematics as a whole.  But the same person can be interested in and do work on more than one thing and in more than one subfield, especially as the years roll on but most of my PhD students, for instance, have written at least one paper outside of the narrow topic of their thesis.  The number of mathematicians with whom I share some common research interest is effectively infinite.

I'm confused as well. In short, to advance the state of the art in some topic requires to become quite familiar with it, which usually requires a lot of background (and time to acquire it before actual research can be done) even for very narrow topics, i.e. deep knowledge about the topic. Breadth and depth don't use to go well together, that's all. In any case, if it works for you, all I can do is sincerely congratulate you.

"Breadth and depth don't use to go well together" I would rather say that breadth and depth are both extremely desirable, and the fact that it is hard to acquire both is what makes research hard.  To make an important breakthrough requires a new insight or idea.  Always talking to the same people about the same things is not the best way to generate new ideas (in my opinion and experience).

Moreover, often an important component of the solution of a big problem is a connection made with a different area of mathematics: the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem connected Diophantine equations and modular forms.  The proof of the Poincare Conjecture connected low dimensional topology and geometric analysis.  So learning what people who are not standing right next to you are doing and asking how it can help with what you're doing is a really good strategy: http://wiki.genexus.com/commwiki/servlet/hwiki?The+Feynman+Method+to+be+a+Genius.  Maybe this would be worth a followup question...

On point 2: I've never been a thesis advisor, but I have spent some time on that side of a mentor-mentee relationship, and I would not be offended or embarrassed if someone I was mentoring sought qualified outside help to solve a problem I had given them. Rather I would applaud their initiative in doing what was necessary to get the solution. (If it were something akin to a homework exercise and they used outside resources to shortcut the educational value of the problem, that'd be another matter, but still, I wouldn't be offended or embarrassed, just disappointed.)

I think the answer depends on this:

Do you hope to become an expert at mastering the kind of difficulty you're facing with the proof?

If your answer is:

Yes: Then go ahead and work it out on your own. (In particular if you're a grad student and this is your thesis problem... and in this case also consult your adviser as @PeteL.Clark advised.)
No, I usually focus on a different subarea, and I realistically expect to keep it that way: Then it may be a good idea to ask online:

Use a "minimal working example". That is, don't describe your entire project but reduce your difficulty to a simple to state problem that you feel is far away from your own specialty.
Offer co-authorship to whomever helps you out.

+1: this is a very good answer.  (My answer uses the information that the OP is a student from his prior question.  Nevertheless the question doesn't specify this.)

Yes, this problem falls in my subarea. I'll refrain from asking help online and try to solve it myself, at least for now.

You MUST attribute the proof regardless of whether an offer of authorship is accepted.  Any other behavior is plaigarism.

@ScottSeidman Indeed


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Do most Mathematics Phd programs accept class credit from a masters program to transfer?
I'm considering entering into a terminal masters in mathematics program. I was wondering if after completing the masters, if most US PhD programs will accept the masters graduate classes I took as valid credits or make me re-take the courses at my new PhD institution.

To amplify the points in @ElizabethHenning's answer: in the U.S., in my experience in mathematics, in Ph.D. programs it's not so much "course credits" that are required, but some sort of "proof of reasonable competence", by local standards. That often certainly includes options to take an exam to prove competence (which would be helped by having your prior coursework), or sometimes by completing a (local) course with reasonable grades.
Here's the key point: why not give "competence credit" for courses taken elsewhere?
For one, if you want to claim that those external courses were sufficient for you to be competent, then you shouldn't object to demonstrating it in a half-day exam.
Second, at best it is very difficult to compare courses at different universities, all the more so to compare coursework done abroad to U.S. coursework... so, given the difficulty of comparison, we're back to just demonstrating competence on a half-day exam.
The "credit hours" themselves are usually not an issue in Ph.D. programs in the U.S., although a typical expectation is that people do register for some courses... since without sufficient registration advanced courses are often shut down by bureaucratic constraints. Advanced courses often do not have burdensome homework or exams, and are not meaningfully graded, so there's hardly anything to object to.
That is, in part, the question is a little misguided... and, no, coursework does not usually transfer in the sense of "fulfillment of requirements"... but you often can take a competence exam to fulfill requirements.

You will probably need to retake the standard courses, although you might have the option to test out of them. It's unlikely that the program will accept transfer credit, but of course you need to check with them.


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Will American high schools recognize a foreign MA?
I'm an American who's getting a Master's degree abroad. It's my understanding that an MA leads to an automatic pay raise in public schools, but I'm not sure if my two-year foreign MA would count. To be clear, this isn't a teaching MA but a literature MA, so I'd still have to do education training in the US.

The answer is specific to your state and possibly even school district.

The answer to this will vary, depending on location. It might even be so local as to be determined by the local school district, though state level regulations most likely apply. But, I would think that you can make the case that, for some programs, the MA is just as valid, if not more so, than the US "equivalent". Certainly EU degrees are high quality.
But, the educational regulations of the various states are probably available online, or you could send a letter to the highest level administrator in any state and get back the correct answer for that state.
And I'm assuming that the MA is relevant to what you would be teaching.
Private schools, of course, have their own compensation plans. For that, you make your case individually.
But, for example, the New York State regulations are available online.


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Manuscript was "unsubmitted" because the manuscript was deposited in Arxiv Preprints
One of my manuscripts was "unsubmitted" and potentially rejected by the journal for the reason that it was submitted to a preprint server. Is it normal for the journal to reject a paper that was submitted in a preprint?

@TommiBrander Biological science published under De Gruyter. Most of my papers in the field were all submitted to preprint servers before I submit it to formal submission to a journal. This journal is quite weird to unsubmit my MS. Any suggestion how to appeal?

Don't appeal. That just wastes your time. Just find a more reasonable journal.

"Normal" depends on the field. Please include that in the question (not just the tags) and, assuming that biology varies in its practices as much as computer science does, you'll probably need to be more specific than that.

@MaartenBuis "Appealing is a waste of time" is reasonable advice if the paper was 'unsubmitted' by an editor. However, if it was done automatically right after submission by the journal editorial staff (I mean, not the academics, the employees), then it would be a good idea to let the editors know that this happened, in case they aren't informed yet.

How do you know your manuscript was unsubmitted? Did they send you an email saying your manuscript has been unsubmitted because it's been submitted to a preprint server?

"unsubmitted" is not the same as "rejected because previously published on Arxiv". Please quote exactly what the journal has said.

Another potential concern is for journals with double-blind reviewing policies. The argument could be made that posting to arXiv violates this since a reviewer could potentially see the paper and your identity would be revealed.

@Allure the journal contacted me informing the decision and the reason why they "unsubmitted" my MS. Although I appealed already pointing that it is not included in their policy and the journal is under SHERPA/RoMEO that allows preprints.

Most journals now allow and even encourage the use of preprint servers. Some, however, still prohibit it on the notion that it is competition with their own publication of the article, or even consider it self-plagiarism. This tends to be field-dependent as well: some fields (e.g., physics, mathematics) are very liberal in policy, while others tend to be more retrogressive (e.g., chemistry, certain portions of biology).
The only way to tell a particular journal's policy, however, is to check the specific journal (the SHERPA/RoMEO database is also highly helpful, since it's easier to find the policies there and they have been pre-interpreted by experts).
If you have, indeed, been prohibited from submission due to a journal's policy on preprints, my only advice is to find another that allows it.

I checked the Journal in SHERPA/RoMEO database and it's under RoMeo Yellow publishers. It says "author can archive pre-print (ie pre-refereeing)" so pre-prints are allowed? correct me if Im wrong about my interpretation

Apparently the database is wrong in this case. Mistakes happen, it is a large database after all, and it  summarizes complex policies into 4 color codes. So consider that database a starting point when searching for journals, but don't rely on it.

@xavier that would be the interpretation, yes - preprints allowed.

@Allure thanks! I appealed to the journal using this database. I hope they will reconsider.

@xavier Did you check if the journal had any preprint policy (or "policy on prior publication" or similar) on their website? Clearly that would override any listing in a third-party database.

@Anyon No mention of pre-prints or any third party database.

@Anyon Although the journal only says that "Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication in one journal or major publication". In this case, I believe Preprints are not considered a major publication.

@xavier By third-party database I meant the SHERPA/RoMEO one, which the journal would be unlikely to mention in its policies. Anyway, I guess you could sit back and wait for their reply for now.

@jakebeal Chemistry is getting better. Two of the largest chemistry publishers (ACS and the Royal Society of Chemistry) started the Chemrxiv preprint server and Elvesier and Wiley both say that accept papers that have previously been put online as preprints.

@Tyberius That's good to know --- this is the first time I've heard of ChemRxiv.  bioRxiv has certainly helped to open up the bio community quickly, and hopefully ChemRxiv will do the same for chemistry.


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Duration of postdoctoral positions in pure math
I'm curious as to how long postdoc positions in math usually last for. I'm far away from thinking much about this myself but all my grad student friends seem to be telling me they only last a year or two. Now I know people don't want a postdoctoral position that's too long, but I'm getting the sense that postdocs in math are both less common and generally shorter than post docs in other areas. I'm wondering if this is true or if I'm just getting the wrong idea as an undergrad from a relatively small pool of graduate students. Primarily I'm just curious as to how long these positions usually last in mathematics.

In my experience in technical fields, the typical postdoc is two years, with some extendible for one year. I have only seen a single case of a five year postdoc position.

This surely depends on what country you're asking about. Postdocs are usually funded from research grants so the answer is going to depend on what length projects the funding agencies support in particular regions.

@DavidRicherby Most math "postdocs" (in the US) are essentially short-term pre-tenure-track faculty positions, paid by the department from general funds, not by research grants.  (And they are extremely common.)

@JeffE OK but that makes my point even stronger! Even the things I assumed would be the same but cause differences turn out to be different.

I just saw a letter from 1973 in Physics Today (looking for something else). At that time, the standard physics post-doc was apparently a two year position, and the letter writer was advocating for three year positions split across two different groups. One argument was that the second year was spent job-hunting while the first was spent feverishly trying to produce results.

This varies considerably from country to country.  In the US, the "gold standard" is typically a 3 year position (just a quick look at MathJobs reveals ones at Baylor, Dartmouth, Northeastern, and that was just on the first page of listings). Note that some will say that they are shorter with a possibility of extension to 3 years; the extension is generally just a formality. There are even occasionally 4 year positions.  There are also a mix of shorter positions: one semester or one year appointments at institutes like MSRI or IAS are usually intended to complement specific programs, and generally taken as a supplement to a longer term position.  Sometimes there are shorter grant funded positions, though in most cases I know in the US, the department will be able to step in to extend the appointment to 3 years.  "Postdoc" is also a kind of porous category; sometimes departments will hire shorter term positions when they just need someone to teach a few classes which fit somewhere on the continuum of postdoc to adjunct positions.
In the rest of the world, positions this long are much less common, due to some mix of cultural and economic factors, but certainly not unknown.  Generally positions outside the US are funded by grants, and it is hard to get enough funding to support a postdoc for 3 years (in most countries).

While it is hard to say anything completely precise, your friends would generally be correct if they were speaking about postdocs in Europe (at least in my branch of pure math).
I have looked through a lot of math postdoc positions while looking for one myself, and at least in Europe they rarely last more than 2 years.
This is not to say that there are no 3-year postdocs, but they are far between, at least in pure math in Europe.

But since the OP's friends are (presumably) American, based on the location, they are actually wrong.

Ahh, good point. I had not checked where the OP was located. I will edit to make it more clear what geographic region my answer pertains to.

Yes I'm in the U.S. thanks. Sounds like my impression was incorrect!


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Invitation for campus visit for post doc position - salary negotiatons?
I have had a video conference with a university research center in the U.S. The interview lasted for about an hour and the professor told me that they would like me to come to campus to visit their center. I was told about the salary and it is lower than the average post doc salary that is followed by the NIH. However, he mentioned that there is additional 20 thousands dollars (I think he said for conferences but I am not sure).
The big advantage in this position is that it will allow me to focus on research without being bothered with heavy load of teaching. At the same time, I have been on campus interview for a tenure track faculty position and I am waiting to hear from them. The tenure track is for a position that focuses on teaching but provides me the opportunity to do my own research as much as I wish.
If I am inviting for a campus interview for the post doc position, is it acceptable to inquire about the salary again. Can the salary of a post doc be negotiable?

Post-doc vs TT is highly dependent on your field! In some fields, the market for both is very competitive/tight. Some might require certain number of years before you can be considered for a TT position in a good R1.

Unless the postdoc salary is making you into a beggar, don't bother about it. The postdoc is your golden opportunity to get your research really done and aim for a research-focused rather then teaching-heavy career.

It is certainly fine to ask for clarification of what you were told about the salary and other financial details.  Keep in mind that nothing is certain until you have an offer in writing.
See How to handle salary negotiations while negotiating a postdoc position? regarding negotiation of postdoc salaries.  My guess is that the salary would be negotiable only within a narrow band, if at all.  If you get offered the tenure-track job, you shouldn't expect the postdoc employer to try to match it.
The main reason to choose the postdoc over the tenure-track job is if you think that the additional years of full-time research will help you get a better job afterwards, or improve your research success over the long run, and if you think this will compensate you for a couple years of a lower salary.  It very well might.
Keep in mind that a position that "focuses on teaching" will likely have teaching loads that leave you very little time or energy for research, and may also not give you much funding for that research.  I think people who take teaching-oriented positions very often overestimate the amount of research they will actually be able to get done.

I am well aware of the time that teaching can consume. When I started teaching many years ago, it was time-consuming to prepare a teaching unit and to follow with all students requests. However, today I think that I am much less consumed by students requests and questions because I got used to it. I am also going to put a publishing plan in place and I am very good at committing myself to a plan and following through it.

Let me only comment on the post-doc salary, as I don't think you really want to ask us whether it is better to work as post-doc during mostly research, of tenure-track doing mostly teaching - the answer would be highly subjective.
ANY salary is negotiable: some governments forbid individual negotiation, but allow collective negotiation. US allows individual negotiation.
In US, your salary would come out of some PI grant, i.e. a larger pool of money. Thus he/she can certainly offer a bit more than what he offered initially, if he/she believes you are the best match for his/her team, and is willing to sacrifice on other investments.
How much you can negotiate depends on the size of the PI fund, the fair market value, your negotiation skills. In US academia and EU industry I was able to negotiate a 7-10% salary increase over the first offer. I am sure you can do better if you're good, and do your homework in understanding average salaries, and what influences them (private vs public academic institutions, lab vs universities, big city vs small city, etc.)

The "absurd" is individual salary negotiations. If the academic staff in that university or that country/region has any kind of power and is even minimally organized, that's one of the first things we as academics get rid of. No more discrimination, no more utilizing the extreme assymetry of power, no more personal favorites etc. A more powerful academic staff would also spread funding across all academic fields so that humanities and arts, which don't result in commercial benefit for donors and funders, don't get underfunded or have academic underpaid.

Can you explain what is absurd about salary negotiation? I repeat it: salary are something that is either individually, or collectively negotiated. If you, like me, come from a country where salary are "fixed", that is to say collectively negotiated, then you know that all the best scientists typically go to work where salaries are individually negotiated, so they can get a better pay.

Btw, if you down voted my answer because of your ideology, please reconsider the rules of this site: we don't vote opinions, but relevance. The OP asked if salary in the US is negotiable. And I answered the truth

On the contrary, your answer contains the incorrect and ideological claim that ant salary is individually negotiable ("collectively negotiable only" means non-negotiable in the context of OP's question and of your own answer). You have not even qualified this to post-doc salaries in the US. You specifically insinuate this is the case in Europe, which is false. Edit that part and I'll un-downvote.

Not sure I understand all of your comment. But I did edit the answer, glad to hear what you think of it

So, now it's not a cause for a downvote and I've undone mine; but if OP's salary is only collectively negotiable than the answer to his last question is really "By you - Usually but not always". Also, post-doc salaries don't \always come out of an individual PI's grant money. Even if that's more common in the US than elsewhere I'm sure it's not 100% of the case (and suspect it's not even 80% of the cases). Plus, regardless of what the source of the pool is, there may well be funding-body-side restrictions on what can and can't be offered. So I still think you're over-generalizing.


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Career Suggestion: Should I try to improve my manuscript or try to increase paper count after submitting PhD thesis
I am a PhD student in Applied Mathematics. I submitted my Phd thesis and starting to apply for postdoc positions.
In my PhD thesis I have one work published in a tier 1 math journal and the other two works still unpublished. My question is the following: Should I submit the unpublished works in tier 1 journals and try to improve the quality of the manuscripts (with the reviewer's suggestions) or, submit to 2nd/3rd tier journals so that it gets accepted as soon as possible so that my paper count increases. I want to apply for faculty positions after 2 years from now. At this phase of my career what option should I choose?

What does your supervisor say?

I confess it is painful to hear a fresh PhD in a relatively uncorrupted area like Applied Math speak of increasing his "paper count".

Depending on your particular subfield, having the works on arXiv might be enough for your 'paper count'. Judging papers by the journals they appear in borders on misconduct although it is widely practised. The notion of having 'tiers' for journals is also disputable: some top tier journals like Nature and Science have been criticized for publishing flashy but unreliable papers.
If you want to improve your manuscripts, do not count on journals, have them read by colleagues. If you want to publicize your work and improve your career prospects, give seminars and go to conferences.