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How does one choose which articles to cite for a very broad sentence?
For example, take the sentence: "Gaussians are widely used in mathematics & statistics".
At this point there probably tens of thousands of papers that use Gaussian functions in some way (that's not even counting the papers in other fields like the social sciences that make use of Gaussians). It's impractical to cite them all. The sentence still calls for at least some citations though. How does one choose which papers to cite?

Not a fortunate example as it does not require citation.

Perhaps a better example would be "deep learning has set new benchmarks on many tasks over the past decade." In my mind, this is a self-evident statement that does not require citation. Yet, most papers do have citations after this sentence, sometimes more than 10 (and, in one case, more than 70).

Do you have the option of citing a recent review paper and "references therein"?

Not duplicate, because the first answer in that linked question says "If you think it is common knowledge, wait for the reviewer to ask for a reference, before going to all the trouble of sorting out the history", and in this case the reviewer has already asked for references. Voting to reopen.

Not a duplicate, should be reopened. The example in the OP is not a good one, but there are other general statements that are not common knowledge.

It sounds like your actual problem is that the reviewer has asked you to add inappropriate references.  I'd suggest posting a new, more accurate question since this seems to ask something quite different from what you want.

Either none at all if you can assume that the most likely audience of your publication is aware of that as if it was a basic fact of life.
Or recent reviews that provide a wide overview of Gaussians used in mathematics and/or statistics.
I searched for TITLE: (Gaussian) AND DOCUMENT TYPES: (Review) AND YEAR PUBLISHED: (2015-2021) in Web of Science. The query led to 56 results, many of which have accrued considerable citations and thematize mathematical or statistical issues. Perhaps you could do a similar search and pick some suitable papers to cite.

Indeed, in general it doesn't even have to be a (review) paper: in some cases there may be a standard monograph or textbook that provides a broad overview that you can cite.

If you really want to write such a general statement: Look at the statement and think about what it means. The references should provide evidence that the statement is indeed true. So in your example, you need a selection of references that show that "Gaussians are widely used in mathematics & statistics" (sorry, it is as simple as that). This selection does not need to be complete, nor must it be 100% representative. A few more or less random, but fitting references from publications using Gaussians within the mentioned topics suffice, maybe from different time periods and different (well-known) authors. I would go against citing reviews only, at least a few primary sources should be mentioned.
However, it makes more sense to be more specific and to give some more context. For example you could simply write:

Gaussians are widely used in mathematics & statistics, e.g. in topic 1 [citation 1], topic 2 [citation 2] and topic 3 [citation 3].

In this case, the selection of references is a little less random which is to be preferred.

Your example is not a good one, it is common knowledge and does not require citation. However, I treated it just as an example for a general statement, and of course there are general statements that are not common knowledge.


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Is it a bad idea to put real papers on the arXiv during April Fool's Day?
There're lots of spoof papers on the arXiv every April Fool's day. I'm wondering if it's a bad idea to upload a real paper on April 1, in case people dismiss the paper as a joke.

As an anecdote, Arch Linux published an official guided installer on April 1st last year. Reactions on r/archlinux were somewhat confused, but the git repo speaks for itself, and it seems well-received now. The maintainers were pretty cheeky when they published it on April 1st, but why not? Just because some jokers may or may not submit some jokes, this shouldn't preclude legit papers from being submitted on whatever date their authors seem fit

I have also seen serious papers posted on arxiv on April Fool's Day. If anything, I have found the joke papers to be rarer than the real ones. It's usually easy to tell from the title and abstract if the paper is a joke or not. (If it isn't clear, you might want to rewrite your title and abstract :)). So I don't think it would matter. But, in most cases, I would think delaying submission by one day would not be a major issue, if you were concerned.

If you upload your paper on April 1, it will appear in the arXiv a few days later.

@markvs Do you mean this year, because April 1 is on a Friday? (a) I'm not trying to write an answer tied to 2022, and (b) the point stands whether it is one day or one weekend.

Any year. But a paper submitted on Friday will certainly appear after Monday. In general if a paper is submitted on day X, it will appear on day X+i, i>0..

@markvs But that is only relevant in years where April Fool's is on a Friday or Saturday. If you want to handle all of the edge cases explicitly, you are free to write an answer.

As I said - any year.

@markvs (a) Your comment "If you upload your paper on April 1, it will appear in the arXiv a few days later" is incorrect in general -- it's only true if April 1 is on a Friday or Saturday, or the person missed the submission deadline. (b) If you read what I wrote, I didn't claim in the answer that submitting on April 1 would cause the submission to appear on April 2. What I said was that if you were worried about submitting on a day where your paper would appear on April 1, then just wait to submit 1 day. That strategy would lead to your paper appearing as soon as possible after 4/1.

I have 57 papers in the arXiv. I know the procedure.

I don't get what Andrew's objection is on markvs comment? Andrew said: "it's only true if April 1 is on a Friday or Saturday", why? So if April 1 is not on a Friday, uploading the paper on April 1 will be published on the same day? I think it's not the case.

If you uploaded a paper on April 1, 2022 (Friday) before 14:00 Eastern US time, then April 1 is the date that will be on the arXiv page of the paper. But as mentioned the paper will be announced later.

Bizarre comments about the number of arxiv postings aside, I think it's good to clarify the various timelines around arxiv submission. However, I also want to be clear that my answer simply says to submit a day later if you don't want the paper to appear on April 1, which does not imply anything about when the paper will appear. As we've discussed, sometimes if you submit on April 1, it will appear on April 2, and other times it will appear a few days later, after the weekend.

+1  April Fool's is a dreadful "holiday".  The best thing we can do is to not take part in deliberately gaslighting people and to go about our business like it doesn't exist.  I, for one, refuse to cede a perfectly useful workday on account of jokers with no sense of consideration and who delight in wasting other peoples' time.

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Has the Nobel Foundation said anything about the skewed gender ratio in the 2021 Nobel laureates?
For this question I exclude the Nobel Peace prize.
A few years ago there was some talk by the Nobel committees and the Nobel Foundation board to be more inclusive. The committee explicitly called for nominations to take into account geography and gender for 2019. There was apparently some increase in nominations of female academics, and in 2019 and 2020 there were also a few female laureates. This year, however, all Nobel laureates (excluding Maria Ressa who won half the Peace prize) are male.
I'm wondering if the Nobel Foundation has said anything about this.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Additionally see meta discussion on whether this question is on-topic at: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5029/is-a-question-about-the-nobel-prize-committee-awardees-on-topic-here

The BBC has posted an article stating:

Goran Hansson, head of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said they want people to win "because they made the most important discovery... not because of gender or ethnicity"

It goes on further:

"It's sad that there are so few women Nobel laureates and it reflects the unfair conditions in society, particularly in years past, but still existing. And there's so much more to do," Mr Hansson told the AFP news agency.

So, they recognize that this year was heavily male, but will not go for quotas.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

The question asks whether the Nobel Foundation has said anything about the gender ratio. As far as I am aware, they have not. However, that's probably not the right question to ask. The foundation itself is not involved in the process of selecting the laureates, so it is more useful and relevant to look for statements from the different Nobel committees or the prize awarding institutions (which, again are separate from the foundation). The existing answer includes some quotes from Göran Hansson, secretary general of one of the prize awarding institutions.
There is also a recent Science news article with some statements from members of several Nobel committees. They want more women to be nominated, but do not consider that the full story.

“The fraction of women among the nominated people is very low and I don’t think it represents the [fraction of] women that were doing science even 20 years ago,” says Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede, a biophysical chemist at Chalmers University of Technology who is one of two women on the eight-person chemistry committee. “We want to have more women nominated,” agrees Eva Olsson, an experimental physicist at Chalmers who is a member of the physics selection committee.
Wittung-Stafshede adds that, in addition to finding ways to boost the number of women who are nominated, the committees might also want to broaden their view of what counts as a Nobel-worthy discovery. “It’s possible we miss certain topics and candidates because we are biased and have a narrow view of what is an important chemistry discovery. We may need to think more outside the normal box.”
She agrees with those who say the scarcity of women winning prizes is due in part to the systemic disadvantages women face throughout their careers. But that explanation is not the whole picture, she adds. “That’s kind of a passive way to approach the problem. … We also need to address it ourselves,” she says of the Nobel committees.

They also effectively state that there are no quotas. The article further discusses the representation on the Nobel committees themselves.

The committees don’t consider gender when they discuss which discovery to award a Nobel Prize, Olsson says. “The focus is on science.” But she thinks it’s important for women to participate in the selection process and ceremonies because they can serve as role models. “We make sure that women are there and presenting the prizes.”
“The few women we have at high positions in academia are used a lot, often too much, for committee work,” Wittung-Stafshede says. “One should be careful around this, to save women’s time. But in the case of the Nobel Prize committees … it is extremely important. It sends a clear signal we care about this topic.”

@DanielHatton Indeed, at least the physics, chemistry and medicine prizes do explicitly allow committee members to nominate potential awardees. Still, appealing to a broader range of qualified nominators probably helps bring in fresh ideas for names.

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When multiple editors make a decision on a paper, is it normal to not reveal their names to each other?
I recently handled a paper where the peer review process ended with two minor revision reviews and two reject reviews. The disagreement was pretty fundamental - the two reviewers recommending rejection think the authors should do X, but the authors disagree, and it's extremely unlikely they are going to agree with each other.
The handling editor decided to accept the paper. Journal policy in this situation (where there is at least one outstanding 'reject' review) is to involve another member of the editorial board. The new editor is asked for an opinion & an explanation of that opinion, which is shown to the original editor to see if the two editors can come to a consensus.
Here's my question: Journal policy is also to not reveal the names of the two editors to each other. The stated reason is to maintain the anonymity of peer review, thereby allowing the editors to speak freely without fear of retribution from the other editor. Is this normal? I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with it, but intuitively it still seems rather weird.

Do you know the identity of the reviewers? If yes, do you think this information is important for your work as an editor?

@Snijderfrey technically I'm the publisher and know the identities of everyone involved. I'm not sure if the identities of the reviewers matter in this case as well - the editors can see who the reviewers are, they just cannot see who each other are.

...and who decides eventually if the paper is accepted? Does there have to be a consensus or does the "first" editor still decide, no matter what the other editor's opinion is?

@Snijderfrey if there's a consensus then we do that, if the two editors cannot come to a consensus then we ask the editor-in-chief for a final decision.

I wonder what you think is wrong with this. I mean, I see why one may wonder whether this is necessary, however the motivation seems to be pretty clear (as explained in the answer of @WolfgangBangerth), and what harm does it do?

@ChristianHennig I don't think it's wrong. It's just weird. Like, on the one hand we have an editor who's supposed to be an expert on the topic and we are questioning their judgement (since we're getting a second opinion), and then we send them anonymous, potentially-critical comments from another editor?! It feels like it's a situation to use real names, to show that the other editor is also an expert, and their opinions should be taken seriously. But I dunno. One could argue it both ways, in favor of and against anonymity.

In all but the most bizarre cases, neither of the two involved editors have a stake in the outcome of the process, and as a consequence there can be no "conflict" of interest in knowing the other person's name because there is no "interest". So my personal opinion (as a long-time editor and editor-in-chief) is that the anonymization is not actually necessary.
That said, in my publishing career, I have been fortunate to work with people who put little of their ego into the job. (But I have also worked consciously on making the editorial board work more like a collective.) It is interesting to me that your journal has an explicit policy when in the environments I work in, we would have handled these situations with ad-hoc processes between colleagues trying to figure out what the right outcome is. I do recognize that that is not always the case, but that there are environments in which people have entrenched opinions they want to defend, rather than come to consensus, and in such situations anonymization might make it easier to come to agreements.
There is of course also the issue that in defending the decision to authors, being able to point to a written policy is useful. Since anonymization always makes procedures appear more sound and serious, this then is more defensible than an ad-hoc process would be.

Yes, and the anonymization also seems a bit weird and unworkable in practice. If the editors are knowledgeable in the field, they probably know one another.

In my experience, the name of the board member would NOT be revealed to the associate editor, and this report is otherwise treated as a regular referee report.
Now to be perfect precise, in case of split decision, the journals I know go to a “senior referee” or member of an “advisory board” or some other such designation, not to another editor as they are sufficiently busy as they are.  Moreover, correspondence comes through the office so a senior referee would not know the name of the associated editor.
This is the procedure in at least two journals I regularly interact with.


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How often do editors reach reviewers whose expertise don't match the paper?
It's inevitable that sometimes, editors will invite reviewers whose expertise don't match the paper very well (example).
How often does it actually happen, and what percentage is considered acceptable? I'm especially interested in answers from editors and/or publishers who have seen hundreds of reviewer invitations.
Tangentially related graphic from the reviewer's point of view:

Acceptable to whom? And the "distance" from the invited reviewer's expertise should probably be factored in.

@Anyon acceptable to the person supervising the editors - e.g., the editor-in-chief. "Distance" should be factored, but it's awfully hard to quantify, e.g. Stephen Hawking is obviously a physicist, but that doesn't mean he can review papers in condensed matter physics. So I don't see a way to do it other than to use the reviewer's self-reported "out of expertise" option.

I agree it will be tricky to quantify "distance", but it certainly factors in to how I answer invitations to review papers outside my expertise. If a paper is reasonably relevant, perhaps in the general field but using some specific formalism/technique I'm not equipped to review in a timely manner, I might explain what expertise I think is required and suggest other potential reviewers. On the other hand, an example like you mention would give me a bad impression of the journal and might not get a response.

I'd guess at least some journals/publishers will have statistics on this they don't make public, but here are a couple of data points:
Raniga, S. B. (2020). Decline to review a manuscript: insight and implications for AJR reviewers, authors, and editorial staff. American Journal of Roentgenology, 214(4), 723-726. considered three years' worth of decline-to-review responses to American Journal of Roentgenology, and found that 12.6% (n=1181) of the declined reviews were given the "not an area of expertise" response. At the same time, 49.4% of the decline responses were due to lack of time ("overcommitted"), and 34.7% were for unspecified reasons. In the text it is stated that a total of 26,290 reviewers were invited. If we assume all numbers given refer to invitations rather than unique individual reviewers, that means ~4.5% of the invitations were declined for being outside the reviewer's expertise.
Willis, M. (2016). Why do peer reviewers decline to review manuscripts? A study of reviewer invitation responses. Learned Publishing, 29(1), 5-7. looked at a medical journal published by Wiley over a 5-month period and found that 4.3% of all invitation responses were "Decline to review – not my field".

I'm surprised at how low those numbers are. It's perhaps worth think about both field and journal. I tend to decline 1 or 2 reviews every week for being outside my area, far more than I actually review. But they tend to be from what you might called lower quality higher volume journals.

It's surprising how both these papers find that "no time" is about 4-5x more likely than "out of expertise", but the most common reason given by reviewers (as in the OP) is "no time".

@Allure It seems quite likely that there is (significant) variation from journal to journal and between fields, like Ian suggested. A well-run and long-established specialist journal probably knows its reviewer base better than some more recently started generalist journals, for example.

@Anyon I'm pretty sure there is significant variation from journal to journal actually. The 69% agree-to-review rate in source 2 is well above anything I've seen. Looking at the source it seems probable that the reason is because it's a society journal with a special reviewer database. The first source shows similar variation, as well.


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What are the pros and cons of doing PhD study at a big vs. small department?
Crudely, it seems better to study at a big department - one has more peers, more seminars, and is also more likely to find a faculty member with the same interests if one's interests change during the program. However some top-tier departments appear to prefer to stay small, e.g. Caltech as a whole. That seems to imply there's a downside to becoming a big department, which is part of the reason they haven't expanded (I'm guessing they aren't staying small because they lack the funding - they're top tier after all).
For the student, is it preferable to study at a big or small department? What are the pros and cons of each?

Big-list question.

Big department
Pros:

More funds raised.
More faculty members and students to interact, learn and collaborate with.
Possibly more equipment and space for your work.
More publications which benefit the department as a whole in terms of rankings and securing additional funds.

Cons:

Lesser chances of valuable one on one interaction with your supervisor since he/she will have to take care of a lot of students.
Relations are usually more impersonal as there isn't enough time or opportunities to interact with everyone properly.
May be restricted by goals of senior members of the group since some may require you to play a part in their work as well.

Small department
(Here I am assuming that the department is small out of its own limitations and not by choice like it seems to be with Caltech.)
Pros:

More personal relations with the faculty members and fellow students.
Motivation to grow and expand to compete with other bigger departments.
You may be asked to participate as a co-author on grant proposals etc.

Cons:

Funds may be limited.
Not enough in-house expertise in the subjects you are interested in.
Limited peers to interact with.
You may have to build your own contacts from researchgate-like forums. You may also have to out conferences and seminars on your own.

These are some I could think of from looking at my current and past department. I have also read some blogs regarding this. If you are interested in reading experiences of established researchers, search for 'researchwhisperer', 'thesiswhisperer' and blogs of that genre on the interweb.

If there are more graduate students AND more faculty, why is it true that each faculty will have to take care of more students in a large department? I could see the ratio going either way....

Well it can, but usually faculty in large depts have more projects and that requires or accommodates more students.

The main disadvantage of being a student in a big department is that the professor can not actually provide in-depth mentorship to that many people: your "real" advisor will most likely be some post-doc instead. The quality of post-doc advice is more variable since they haven't had as long as a professor to prove and improve themselves. (This one bit me personally, and I switched from a largeish department to a small one where I like it much better.)
On the plus side, a big team will likely have several different funding sources, so if your main grant runs out but you don't have enough work to graduate yet, it'll be easier to find you another contract to tide you over.

Right, that depends on how the university structure is set up - where I was, in Germany, a "department" is defined as a unit that contains a single professor.

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What does it take for a lower-ranked university to compete with a top-ranked one?
Let's take the Times Higher Education world rankings. Oxford is first, and the University of Bonn is 100th. (Nothing special about the THE - I just used it to pick examples of a top-ranked university and a lower-ranked one.)
Suppose I'm the rector of the University of Bonn and I want to make my university as prestigious as Oxford. What will I need?
If we assume that world university rankings are at least somewhat of a proxy for "prestige", then it seems that research output is a key determining factor for how prestigious a university is. To produce good research, presumably the most important ingredients are 1) research funding and 2) good faculty. Since good faculty can presumably be bought, does that mean that the most important factor is money? In other words, Oxford is much more prestigious than the University of Bonn because it is much richer, and if I can find $10+ billion and several years of time, I will be able to make my university one of the world's best?

Have you read the THE ranking methodology? It involves quite a bit more than just research.

Also, "good faculty can be bought" is far from clear.  My impression is that academic faculty aren't primarily motivated by money (or they wouldn't be academics).  They're going to want other things; for instance, a pool of talented students to work with.  And it's not so easy to buy students - they probably demand a university with good quality teaching and a reputation which will help advance their career.  So you see the chicken-and-egg problem.

The superficial version of this "question", to the extent that it makes sense, is just about status, and, even then, as determined by dubious unscientific but pseudo-scientific produced-data by entities trying to self advertising... to say the least. Thus, it really does reduce to something akin to (in U.S. context) "how can I get the most attractive person to go with me to the prom?" Namely, if one over-shoots, one is rejected,  but if one under-shoots, one has harmed one's "status". Also, again, these "rankings" are at best a way for departments to disrupt the inertia of Deans and others..

Are you asking "how can I find $10B" ?

There is somewhat of a parallel in certain sports, where clubs might try to buy their way to success, but if they don't keep the spending up (e.g. by improving their income) it can become a short term and costly success. Still, status plays a role, and these clubs often end up overpaying a lot. In light of that, and the fact that Oxford's annual budget is ~$1.7 billion, I think you'd need a lot more money. It's probably wiser to invest more carefully and more long term, and climb a few rungs on the ladder more slowly.

@NateEldredge there are other factors but stuff like "staff-to-student ratio" and "doctorate-to-bachelor ratio" sound straightforward to attack with money. It's true that academics aren't primarily motivated by money, but if questions here at Academia SE are anything to go by, it looks like an important factor (searching for "salary" in existing questions for example yields lots of people thinking about positions based on salary).

@Solanacea no I'm primarily thinking about what it takes for a developing country to create their own top-tier university, and if that can be measured in dollars, how much that sum is.

@Allure You talk about developing country: Don't try primarily to get "random" international quality researchers to your university, but rather now well-known researchers who come from your country. They are more likely to be willing to return and to contribute to the growth of your place. Also, salaryis not all. Condition of work and perks (e.g. support, assistant positions, tenure and similar) can be further attractors. Generally, it is important to help your top researchers keep contact with the big world (travel funding!), because they will want to stay on top.

You should also consider the fact that the rankings are pretty much worthless... - The UK does not have research institutes like other countries in Europe, thus the Universities dominate research. The best research in places like Germany or France takes place at institutes like the Max Planck instutes - or say INRIA (for maths) in France. This already makes the ranking worthless. The next issue is that quantity does not equal quality. There are good research groups in the UK - but there are also those that publish a lot with little value. Still, the "visibility" will be viewed positively...

Just because work comes out of Oxford it isn't automatically better than work coming out of Bonn (to take your two specific examples). It will need a very specific case by case examination to determine which one is better in every single case. (Side note: The Grimme group from Bonn is rather well known in Quantum Chemistry...) - In many ways, the whole premise of a global ranking can only be describe as stupid. A ranking may to some extent work within a single country or with countries that have identical education systems. Across countries it is completely meaningless.

And another comment: Maybe a slightly more meaningful ranking, is the ranking by Institution for research only by Nature: https://www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2017/institution/all/all - Suddenly Oxford is number 7. (And yes, this ranking says absolutely nothing about teaching or education, but it appreciates that other countries have research institutes.)

"It's true that academics aren't primarily motivated by money" Are they not? I would assume everybody likes a very nice salary, all other things equal. Also, I would assume academics would like the idea of having a very large budged for their research group.

Do you have a few centuries to spare?

Money can indeed buy a lot of things that will move you up in rankings, though probably not all. It's true that you will be able to attract good faculty with money -- spent on salaries, research infrastructure, beautiful offices and spacious labs well equipped with machinery, several postdocs attached to each professor position, and maybe money to support (grad) students and travel. For this, you will actually need a lot of money -- take a look at the budgets of the really good universities in the US and UK, and you will realize that you will need an operating budget in the $1+B region per year. So $10B will be spent quite quickly.
But that by itself will not be enough. Faculty will generally only go to places where there are also good students, and the best students go where they can historically expect to get an excellent education. To find out where these places are, they look at, say, the top 20 or 30 universities in the world -- so you're caught in a catch-22 if you want to move up. In other words, you have to have a long-term strategy to move up: things can't be achieved within a few years, but it will take 10, 20, 30 years of big spending if you really want to get high in that list.
There are some examples of relatively new universities who have really tried this, and you can look at the press coverage to see what they have achieved and what they haven't:

The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia
The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Japan
National University of Singapore

There are other examples in China and in the gulf countries of universities that have (tried to) significantly rise in rankings in recent decades.

+1 for mentioning KAUST as an example. Other schools in KSA tried to inflate their ranking artificially by asking authors to list the school as their affiliation. An ingenious plan, whoever came up with it.

@FixedPoint -- that practice is common in the second and third world. Pick any university there and you will find that they have people on their faculty lists who are from that country, work in the US or Europe, and may visit a couple of times a year, but have that affiliation on every paper.

This is a nice answer. Similar examples from 120 years ago would have been University of Chicago and Stanford University. Stanford, in particular, took decades to become an academically strong school, and toward the beginning its development was hobbled by (arguable) violation of academic freedom.

@FixedPoint Actually, KAUST didn't do that.  You're most likely confusing it with KAU in Jeddah.  I've been at KAUST since it opened and we were specifically cautioned not to engage in schemes like that (not because anyone wanted to, but because other uni's in the same country did it).  Please don't spread this misidentification.

In fact, KAUST did the opposite -- funded about $1B of research all over the world without asking anyone to list KAUST as an affiliation.

Yes, I didn't want to name KAU, but that's what I was thinking of. I know that KAUST didn't do that, and they also don't need to -- they have excellent people (like David) right there full time.

Find hundreds of researchers that do not care about rankings. Give them freedom, don't make any pressure to force them to play any ranking-related numbers game such as papers or third-party grants. If you are lucky, some of them may produce great results in 30 or 50 years. Then your university is the best one in the world.

Indeed. Rankings are predominantly based on publications, which themselves are predominantly based on "impact factor" or other similar obscure metrics... - The result being, that "good" universities are focussed on producing as many papers as possible in journals that are ranked highly as opposed to focussing on truly good work. And some good papers take years to be appreciated... So while the ability to do "free research" wouldn't guarantee good work, it would offer a conducive environment for good work.

It should also be noted, that in other countries, research, especially of the applied variety, is not predominantly carried out at universities, but at research institutes. Universities exist to teach instead. - And these institutes can be a bit more "free" in their research approach.  - And for all the problems with ranking, Nature has a ranking based on Institutions - which does say a lot more about the published research: https://www.natureindex.com/annual-tables/2017/institution/all/all

Suppose I'm the rector of the University of Bonn and I want to make my university as prestigious as Oxford. What will I need?
if I can find $10+ billion and several years of time, I will be able to make my university one of the world's best?

Your basic question is quite an interesting one, but the way you formulated it involves several false premises:
First, that there is a chance in hell for the rector of the University of Bonn to suddenly get his/her hands on $10B; there isn't.
Second, that if he/she were to "find" such a sum of money after all, that trying to buy the university's way up the Times of Higher Education rankings to overtake Oxford as the top-ranked institution would be a good way to spend the money; it wouldn't, and no sensible rector would try to do that.
Third, that the way to climb up the rankings would be as simple as buying good researchers, who "can be bought". There may be some kernel of truth to that assertion, but it isn't nearly as simple as you make it out to be.
All of those premises are false, and for somewhat interrelated reasons: the rector wouldn't get $10B (presumably from some rich donors who really like the city of Bonn) to try to climb up the rankings, because climbing up the rankings simply isn't a good goal to strive for (he/she also wouldn't get $10B for any other purpose, because this is too much money for a single university to spend efficiently). Think of it this way: the University of Bonn is already a perfectly good and functional institution that serves the German people and the world at large quite well as it is -- that is why it holds the already very respectable position of the 100th ranked institution on a widely-known global ranking of universities. What exactly would be the point for it to become #1 by poaching all the good researchers from Oxford and other top universities? Even if it were possible to do so (and it isn't really; see below), this would add nothing of value to the world. Arguably it would benefit the city of Bonn at the expense of various other cities, but what investor or philanthropist would spend $10B just to transfer a chunk of intellectual and economic wealth from one rich country to another? One can achieve much greater and more worthwhile things with such an amount of money.
As for buying good researchers, the reason it's not as simple at that is that people's decisions of where to build their careers are a lot more complicated than just how much they get paid. Top researchers want access to other top researchers, to top research infrastructure, to a nice city to live in where they like the food and the culture and speak the language, to top students (who in turn want some of the same things, and would also need to be "bought"), and much more. Oxford has many ingrained advantages over Bonn that would be very hard or even impossible to replicate with any amount of money - most importantly its presence in an English speaking country (compare English's position as the language with the largest number of speakers, estimated at 1.12 billion, compared to the German language's status as the 12th most spoken language with 132 million speakers [source]). So yes, a lot of money could certainly buy you a few top researchers here and there who are willing to relocate late in their careers in pursuit of a salary even higher than their already-high one; and hiring such researchers is generally speaking a pretty good approach to getting started on the path to improving your university's quality (not "prestige", which is absolutely the wrong thing to strive for; quality should come first, and prestige is what you'll get once you have high quality). But that path is a much longer and more tortuous one than what your question suggests. A hundred billion dollars and one hundred years, as well as wise stewardship of those resources, might indeed propel an institution to a very high place in the rankings (think of places like MIT or Caltech), but $10B and "several years"? Sorry, no chance.
As a way of summarizing this long answer, I'll respond to your question if it's the case that Oxford is more prestigious than the University of Bonn because it is richer. No, that's not at all the case. Rather, it is more prestigious because it is better, and it is richer also because it is better; and it is better mainly because it is much older (and of course, because its leaders spent the time since its founding quite wisely rather than squandering it away). The money does enable it to stay better, but another university cannot simply replicate all of Oxford's advantages just by throwing money at the problem for a few years.

I upvoted but I feel like your answer misses the forest for the trees. The same basic question could, e.g., be asked by the Prime Minister of Thailand on what it takes to get the country's best university competitive. The question concerns national pride (see e.g. https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/02/23/thai-universities-must-look-beyond-ranking/), https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/1414267/thai-universities-in-drastic-decline) so it might be worth doing even if academically it's not the best way to use money.

@Allure I’m not sure I understand which forest I’m missing for which trees. If your example is about the possibility of a country deciding to irrationally pursue the goal of outranking Oxford by pouring unreasonable amounts of money into one of their universities, then yes, that is indeed something that happens (someone above mentioned a notable example), but that strategy is bound to fail. The country in question would have to be badly mismanaged, and only very few top academics and students would prefer living there over a more well-governed country with the rule of law, human rights etc.

... So no, it’s not “worth doing” (but it might seem so to the heads of a few authoritarian governments with tons of money and little wish to spend it efficiently, and even then it won’t achieve their stated goal). I don’t think the leaders of Oxford University are losing any sleep over this possibility.

I wrote that your answer misses the forest for the trees because there's nothing specific about Germany or the University of Bonn, and the same question could be posed by lots of other people/countries, which makes large swathes of your answer not very relevant. I also don't see the connection with an authoritarian government. There are lots of developed countries without a top university, e.g. Denmark or New Zealand. It's not inconceivable to me that their leaders could decide to try to make one, for reasons such as stopping brain drains.

@Allure I think you might be placing a somewhat too heavy emphasis on the precise rankings and how much governments might care about them (Denmark for example has two universities at rank 109 (yes, both have the same rank somehow), so I doubt the government is hugely interested in bumping their universities up by a few ranks if that costs a lot of money).

@Allure it may not be inconceivable to you, but it is inconceivable to me. The fact that Denmark and New Zealand are developed and prosperous is highly correlated with their being stable, well-governed democracies whose leaders base their decision making on (by and large) rational factors. I think you are underestimating how frivolous, wasteful and economically inefficient it would be for a country to pour large amounts of money to try to make their university more prestigious than Oxford. As I said, it’s not a sensible goal to pursue and that simply won’t happen in any well-governed country.

Top schools are great in many fields, but they can't be best in everything. The strategy (for everyone really, top-ranked and lower-ranked alike) is to focus resources on certain areas to get recognition. Sure the top ranked school has great programs in A, B, and C, but we are tops in X and Z. Schools can attract both better students and faculty in such areas. Plus even people outside the areas of focus will hear about the lesser-ranked school more because of the areas where they shine. Kind of unfair to students in the other departments who are subsidizing this, though.
Also yes money. It's not everything, but it can buy lots of things. Very nice things.

Finding a niche that the higher-ranked universities can't access very well is a brilliant strategy for lower-ranked universities.  Often that niche is determined by location and population, among other things.
For example, I live near a university that caters specifically for defence-focused technologies, because it is near a military barracks.  Thus, the main types of students that would ever benefit from such education would be military personnel. Supply and demand.
Another example is the university that I went to, which was located in a desert region: It was somewhat low-ranked, but was able to leverage its location to attract major investment for research and development projects in solar energy and Mars exploration.

Find a niche, throw resources at it, and become the best in the world at that niche. Especially at MSc/PhD/research level.  Don't chase the general rankings apart from this as you have no chance.  You want the very best students in the world - not just UK - interested in your niche to be coming to you.
Examples in the UK -- Sheffield Hallam University - best in UK (maybe world?) for sports science (as in, designs the bicycles for Team GB Olympic team using advanced fluid dynamic models and very hardcore physics and cluster computing people);   Lincoln (disclaimer - is my own uni) -- best in UK for agriculture/food processing automation/robots, probably top 10 in world for same, grown out of its location in the physical center of those UK industries + hiring those specific people.  UEA - best in UK, high ranked in world for creative writing, massive reputation for being the top place for new UK authors to go to get signed.
Then having done this -- spin your more general undergrad offerings around the niche too. eg. if you have a Computer Science BSc, it can continue to be a general Computer Science BSc covering standard topics like compilers and architecture, but you pack these topics with examples and emphasis on your agri-robots niche, to spread the glory.  This should result in the undergrads getting snapped up by employers with interests in your niche, even for quite generalist jobs.

This sounds like a saner approach than the current rankings hunt. - Yes, departments can rise and fall with a single professor, but being good at everything is impossible. However if the right people come together, an otherwise unknown university can become one of the leading research institution in its specific niche.


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Can someone with a PhD in the field take the GRE/SAT/AP tests in the same field and pass, without preparation?
I'm curious if someone with a PhD in (say) math can take AP math, SAT Math 2, or GRE math subject test and pass, without preparation. I define "pass" as scoring enough for an "A" grade, or 90th percentile if scoring is based on percentile, or better.
In other words, can someone with a PhD in math be expected to still know undergraduate math and lower well? Given time to study they'll surely have no trouble, but can they do it cold? If the answer is "no", how much more elementary does the exam need to get before the PhD can be expected to pass it cold?
An ideal answer will draw on a large sample size, but if that's not realistic, single case studies are also OK (e.g. "I can do most of it, so passing is not a problem, but I've forgotten/never encountered ___").

Yes, you’re expected to know everything. No exceptions, why do you ask?

AP math

There is no “AP Math,” so I assume you mean AP calculus. Yes, any (recent) math PhD should be able to do calculus competently; I would expect a near perfect score. Even/especially from PhDs in adjacent fields like physics or applied math. Of course, such knowledge may be forgotten if it is not needed; someone who got a PhD 40 years ago and hasn't used calculus since might not do so well.

SAT Math 2

This is no longer a thing. But it used to test precalculus, so yes, this would be even easier.

GRE math subject test

This (not to be confused with the math portion of the GRE general exam) is much harder than the other two, in that it covers undergraduate-level math including higher math. I am confident that most recent PhDs could make a good attempt at most questions without preparation, but I suspect that many would not hit the 90th percentile within the time limit and without external resources. On the analogous physics exam, for example, I’m sure there is stuff about optics and analog circuits that I no longer remember.
Remember, however, that a PhD is a research degree, and that higher math is fundamentally different than high school math. To the extent that PhDs would outperform those with masters degrees or undergraduate degrees only, this is probably due to greater teaching experience or passion for the subject rather than because the PhD itself is good training for such exams.

It's surprising to me that the AP & SAT tests seem to be focused on calculus. There's more to math in high school than calculus, no? I remember summing infinite series, trigonometric identities, conic sections ... Are these topics not tested? If not, why?

Honestly even within calculus I think I don't remember everything. I think I can do most of it, but I've forgotten some corners like integration by parts, especially since Wolfram Alpha. (But I'm not in math.)

Infinite series are normally covered in calculus class. Trigonometric identities are precalculus, and you’ll need them in calculus to solve certain integrals. I suspect physics school is actually better training for calculus than math school; I remember doing integrals and derivatives every day for undergrad and the first part of grad school.

I ran a little GRE prep seminar for some students and definitely had a few questions I couldn't answer. I think I would get around 90%, but there is just a bit too much miscellany asked on the Math GRE to get without practice.

@Allure: It's surprising to me that the AP & SAT tests seem to be focused on calculus. --- The AP tests (traditional AB & BC calculus; there's also a statistics exam and a very recently developed precalculus exam) were/are specifically designed for students to obtain college calculus credit (1st semester for AB test; 1st & 2nd semester for BC test). The SAT test is intended to help select for college admission and is mostly restricted to geometry and first-year algebra, (continued)

perhaps topping out with quadratic equations and quadratic inequalities and some very basic trigonometry. I would suppose that the topics you mentioned -- summing infinite series, trigonometric identities, conic sections -- are studied by too small a percentage of U.S. high school students by the first quarter of their 4th/last year of high school to be all that statistically helpful in selecting for mathematical aptitude rather than mathematical knowledge among the academically upper third of high school students. (continued)

At least, that was probably the original reason. I think in the past few decades, with the huge rise in both test prep that students engage in (something no one really did when I was in high school, at least where I was) and the much greater than "academically upper third" who are now taking the tests, that both the SAT and ACT tests have become more of a knowledge test and less of an aptitude test.

I got a 5 on the AB AP Calculus exam. A long time ago. I got a PhD and have worked in my field for more than 40 years since. There is no way I would do well on an AP Calculus test at this point - I don't do integrals every day or even every month. Sure, I could help my kids with their calculus homework but that is more because I could remember how to approach problems, not all the details. I don't believe I've ever done a trigonometric substitution in my professional life...

(Actually on the BC test - so long ago I'd forgotten).

Shortly after earning my doctorate in math I'd likely have done well on any such standardized test. Now, more than 50 years later and retired, I'd almost certainly do poorly (poooooorly)!

(Returning to this several hours later) Actually, the SAT test has no trigonometry (unless a very recent change). It's the ACT test that has some very basic trigonometry.

My impression of the AP calculus exam (and the GRE math subject exam, to an extent) is that a lot of the questions involve having memorized certain "tricks" (e.g. for integration).  If you have those "tricks" top-of-mind, the problems are not difficult, but if you haven't thought about them in a while, they are going to be quite hard.  I would imagine that a recent physics phd would actually do better on such an exam than a recent math phd---particularly if the math phd is in algebra or number theory or some other field where integration is not a day-to-day event.

@XanderHenderson - even before my PhD, my "trick" was the CRC Math Handbook and the table of integrals in there...

@JonCuster Mine too!


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Do online courses and certificates actually count toward University credits?
I am interested in pursuing a couple of online courses and certifications but I am not sure if they will count towards my university credits or in getting a job. I found some courses from this article but i need to make sure that they will actually be beneficial for me. They also have mentioned a couple of online degrees from University of People. Does it count as an accredited degree worldwide?

Possible duplicate: What is the value of a Coursera certificate?, Does one get academic credit towards a degree for open online courses?. Related; Are verifiable MOOC programs of study recognised by employees?

For your last question: There is no guarantee that anything will count as an accredited degree worldwide.

If your online sources are accredited, and your certifications are germane to the work you will be asked to do, then absolutely they will help you get the job you desire. But, since degrees are bestowed by Universities, only they can determine what (and whose) credits are transferable. My first year was spent at a community college (for personal reasons), but even so, I had to have my (desired) academic path laid out, to avoid wasting time on unnecessary courses. Of course, some classes are taken for the sheer joy of attaining knowledge, but know your goal, and keep it in mind.
I looked at your link provided, and note with interest that the University of California accepts some credit transfers for 'exceptional' students. I would verify statements like that, tho' I'm not disputing it. These courses seem to be for a 'leg up', which is good if they help you be in the top of your class. But I don't believe that is what you are asking.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Should I go for a Campus or University
I'm currently looking at higher studies options, taking a degree in Computer Science. So far, I have two options:

Get a degree locally, from a campus that partners with a foreign University and you get the same degree as the partner University students.
Go abroad and get a degree directly.

What would be better? Would the first option be OK?

IMHO, I would go abroad because it would expose you to a different culture and broaden your experiences.

@MichaelC. That comes in with the exponentially higher costs for the degree.

Well then if cost is the main factor, then go to your local university.... not sure why you would ask which one is "better" or which one is "OK" if cost is involved...

@MichaelC. Just stating a con. It's not a local university I can attend, it's a campus. Local universities don't accept people from the exam boards I took my exams with. They only accept students who passed their local exam boards.

Then I would list out the pros and cons and go from there. Either way, your diploma is going to say "XYZ University".

@MichaelC. Would the employers still treat a graduate from a Campus and a graduate from the same University the Campus is affiliated with

My university has three campuses. Two are very close together, in the same town in fact (about a 10 minute walk apart). Most of the main university buildings are on the larger of the two, with the smaller one containing a few department buildings (e.g. Law and Business) and another library. The third campus is halfway round the world in the Southern Hemisphere.
To the best of my knowledge, you can study for a degree on any of the three campuses and your degree will only state the name of the university, not the campus you studied on (which is only of administrative importance and not relevant to what you studied). You even state this yourself in your question:

"...you get the same degree as the partner University students."

I would not worry about the value of the degree if studied for at a separate campus. The university itself should ensure that academic standards are maintained across all its campuses, including those abroad, as if they did not this would only devalue the degrees they offer.

"The university itself should ensure that academic standards are maintained across all its campuses" - and yet, so many don't.

Campus is not owned by them. It's a third party


text:
What happens when a journal changes its editor-in-chief in the middle of a review?
I submitted a paper revision (1st revision) to an Elsevier journal 3 months ago. The problem is that last week they apparently changed the journal's editor-in-chief. My paper status was previously "With editor: 50 days", and now it has been reset to "With editor: 2 days". What happened to the revision process? Does it mean that the 3-month wait was in vain?

Most likely, nothing changed. The previous editor was probably waiting for referees responses and the new editor is probably now waiting for the same referees to respond. Only if the new editor strongly disagrees with the choice of referees (which is very unlikely), he would ask for new ones and you would have lost time. But you are probably safe.

I agree with this in that it has no effect on the timeline.  Another possibility is for the previous EIC to retain access and continue to shepherd the paper through the process, or conversely, for the new EIC to have taken this before officially moving into the position.  They surely knew months in advance who would be taking over when.

But if the editor was waiting for referee responses shouldn't the status be "Under Review"? I am basing this on this question https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12497/how-much-time-does-each-stage-of-paper-in-elsevier-editorial-system-ees-take

@GerardoFigueroa. It depends on the system but it is indeed plausible that the paper was just sitting in the old editor's desk (maybe because a new one was coming?), and it's only being considered now.

I had something similar happen with a recent paper.  We had already received reviews and submitted our revisions, and the Associate Editor approved it...and then it sat with the Editor-in-Chief for months.  After two months at that stage--which was unusually long for that journal--we emailed both EICs and the journal's administrative contact to ask whether there were additional revisions they'd like us to make.  The new EIC responded relatively quickly to let us know that the old EIC was handling it, and within a week or so we had gotten editorial revisions back and were on our way to getting the paper accepted.
This worked out for us because:

We were professionally acquainted with both the old and new EIC (so
we had enough rapport to push a bit), and
The paper was already quite far along in the process.

If your situation is like ours, then unfortunately, yes, it does seem that your 3-month wait had no practical function.  It might be worth contacting the editor(s) just to be sure you have not fallen into a situation where each party thinks the other is handling it.


text:
Is it rude to send my professor a link with teaching advice?
I know the title sounds terrible, but it's not as bad as it sounds so please hear me out.
I am an undergraduate and have set up an independent study for this fall about topic X. The professor doesn't work too much with topic X, and she has told me that she may need to review the material a little bit herself before we start.
I read the preface of the book we will be using, and I noticed there is a section dedicated to instructors. This section contains a link with advice on teaching this book.
Is the professor likely to read the preface and find this link on her own? Would it be rude of me to send this link in an email?

Does she have a copy of the book that will be used?  If not, I think that's the basic problem you need to resolve.  Could you request another copy through Interlibrary Loan, for her to have handy?

When you say "the book that we will be using", do you mean the book your study group will be using, or the book that the professor will be teaching from? If you're proposing to tell her about something that's in the textbook she'll be using, that's very patronising.

"Independent study" and "the professor" sounds like a contradiction.

The book's advice to instructors is most likely in the context of running a whole class. It is unlikely to be useful in the context of an independent study situation.

@PeterTaylor: It's perfectly normal terminology in many US universities. It means that the student (or several students) want to study a subject not included in normally offered courses, and arrange with a professor to teach a custom course. It's included on transcripts as an "independent study" since it does not have a course number. Where it falls on a spectrum from self-guided reading to the professor lecturing varies from group to group.

Can you send an anonymous email? You might say something like "I am a (current) student and I thought you might like to see this.(I can't say whether this is a good idea or no; just a thought.)

@Shokhet That's a truly terrible idea. Essentially, you're saying that it's sufficiently likely to cause offence that you don't want to be associated with the email, but you're going to send the email anyway.

@DavidRicherby I see your point.

There is possibly a legitimate question you can ask: What does she think of it? Pretend you don't know whether it's good advice. Perhaps you don't have to pretend. I wouldn't have to. I know that knowledge about teaching is not like knowing how many are in a dozen.

Similar question with possibly helpful answers: Should one offer to take over a lecture that the lecturer is struggling to teach?

It's really bad to complain before the course has even started. It would certainly make me disinclined to work with this student again. At least wait until something has gone wrong (if anything goes wrong at all).

Yes, it is (very, IMHO) rude, and yes, it is exactly as bad as the title makes it sound. I am sympathetic to your concern that your professor may not end up doing the best job she could due to not being aware of good advice. Nonetheless, it is not your place to tell her how to do her job, and sending her a link with teaching advice falls into that category.
At the same time, it is your place, and well within your rights, to communicate to your professor your needs as a student, so it would be perfectly appropriate to send her an email and let her know about any action she could do that would be helpful to you as a student (I mean an action that is directly related to the course and how she teaches it, not an action like "study the material of topic X so that you know it better"). But as I said, PLEASE do not send her a link with teaching advice.
Also, if during the course you find that the professor is doing an especially bad job and does not address any requests you made of her to teach in a more effective manner, it would also be appropriate to complain to her department chair or other superior. But I would reserve such a measure for truly extreme circumstances.

Okay thanks a lot for the warning I will definitely not send that email.

I'm sorry, but I disagree -- I think some important factors to consider are the social/cultural environment we're talking about, your professor's personality, and your own relationship with the professor. And of course, the way you word your email. I can easily imagine a professor who would be very interested in receiving such a link as well as a situation where this would be very inappropriate. For instance, I've been lucky to work under two different professors at different universities who are very approachable -- they would probably not have minded in the slightest receiving such an email.

@Thomas: Indeed, a lot depends on how close you are to the professor in question. I know professors who literally rejoice in receiving feedback and advice on teaching, including mine.

I can easily imagine a professor who would be interested in receiving such a lunk. @Thomas as I said in response to user73001's answer, the fact that you can easily imagine someone who would like to receive such advice from a student is irrelevant to the question of whether sending it is rude.

@DanRomik Whether it is rude or not depends on the wording and what is assumed. A flat out e-mail recommending the link would be assumed to mean the professor is believed to not be fully capable and needs the link. However, if it is made explicit this is not the case, I do not see an issue. If I thought it was truly useful, I would say something like, "this link may offer insights into how to teach the material, and I thought it would be worth mentioning in case you hadn't noticed it and would be interested."

@DanRomik And again, I disagree. The original question cannot be answered in general without taking the specific circumstances into account.

I also disagree with this answer. It would be clearly rude to send an email implying "You suck at teaching, here's a reference to make you better." In this case, the student could easily avoid rudeness by saying "hey I found this resource, since you mentioned you had to refresh on this material, does this look like something helpful at all?" (that said, I prefer @Penguin_Knight's suggestion that the student digest the information themselves instead) Importantly, this does not seem to be GENERAL teaching advice like "here's how you run a classroom!" it sounds like advice SPECIFIC TO THAT BOOK.

Too dependent on the individual professor I'd think. Surely some professors could be okay with it, no? The important point here I think is the detail that the professor said they don't have some of the requisite background. Perhaps maybe asking if they would be open to some suggestions first? I don't think this is a cut dried thing, I think it depends on the professor.

To show that you're an independent learner, I'd suggest don't just send the link, but read the materials in the linked page and summarize them to your professor, tell her if you think it may be useful for the directed studies. For instance, instead of:

And here a link (URL) provided by the text on how to teach this book.

Try:

I also found a link for teacher and read up a bit (URL). I think the
  suggested chapter sectioning for a 7-week syllabus seems suitable to
  our directed study time frame, please let me know your thought.

Or something along the line. I think you're quite lucky that the professor was being so up front about her lack of background knowledge, it should be a good directed study experience. But in turn, you'll need to bear some of the self-teaching responsibility, and don't expect that she can read some pages about how to teach the subject and then magically be able to teach you.

+1 for the implication that, as a student approaching an independent study, you are as much responsible for the curriculum as is the supervising professor.

The phrasing suggestion would be good for an office or between co-faculty, but I'm dubious that a teacher would appreciate being spoken to like a peer by one of their students. That last clause especially makes it seem like the student expects the teacher to "report back after their task".

+1 for the overall idea, but I don't think you've succeeded in providing a delivery/framing that's not still rude.

I'm dubious that a teacher would appreciate being spoken to like a peer by one of their students -- I don't appreciate students speaking to me in any way other than as a peer.

@JeffE Haha, Ok, so there is in fact a teacher that would appreciate being spoken to like that. The point still stands, though; do you think a large majority of professors would also want an undergraduate to speak to them like that? Your approach to student relationships might be different to many other professors (even if it is effective), and that particular phrasing seems at real risk for striking a nerve generally present in an implicitly power-imbalanced relationship.

@HarrisWeinstein Remember, the student - professor relationship for the OP already is different.  Most of my colleagues and I do one or two independent studies a year.  They take time and we get paid the enormous extra sum of $0 to do it.  If I don't already have a syllabus that I can readily modify for the student and lots of the material prepped, and they find a source that basically has exactly that, I want to see it.  It saves me time.

@HarrisWeinstein "I'm dubious that a teacher would appreciate being spoken to like a peer by one of their students." I don't think she is that kind of teacher. A teacher who hangs onto how students place themselves lower than herself in daily communication is very unlikely to say that she "may need to review the material a little bit herself before we start" to the student's face.

@Harris This likely differs quite extremely not only from person to person, but also on a larger scale from place to place. I can’t find any indication of where the asker lives, but anecdotally (from Scandinavia), I can only recall perhaps two or three of the teachers I had as a student at university who would be even remotely likely to consider the approach suggested here rude. Nearly every teacher I’ve ever dealt with would find this polite, useful, and completely acceptable. Especially for an independent study, for all the reasons mentioned by guifa.

This answer is awesome.  This is an independent study.  You found a resource that gives a reasonable scope for a set of material to study in your independent study.  You are putting forward a suggestion that this should be the scope of your study (I might include "provisional" somewhere in there, as one of the advantages of "independent" is the ability to move the path as you learn the territory).  It also completely reframes the "I will tell the teacher how to teach" into "I will propose a framework for my topic"; one seems arrogant, the other seems proactive.

It would be less problematic if you mentioned it in passing (in person).
Something like "How's it going planning the class?" and then "Did you see the tips for teaching this class?  I think all textbooks should have this!"

This is probably the best approach if it can be done in person; pointing out the link as a cool feature, not suggesting the professor needs or should consider looking at it is the safest approach.

Nice. This approach also works for other situations. "Did you see these tips for losing weight? Everyone should read them, even handsome skinny people like you."

I think it depends what kind of relationship you have with your professor, but considering you're asking then it is probably not appropriate. It also depends what kind of personality the professor has, some may not take it well, while others would be happy you helped them out - but since we don't know the professor, nor do we know you or your relationship with said professor, none of us can say for 100% if it is truly rude of you - because those factors will determine the rudeness your actions.
I have been fairly close with some of my professors and I feel like if I found something like this I could tell them about it, although it should be done so carefully and casually.
You don't want to come off as if you're telling them how to do their job - only just trying to share something you think they may appreciate.
As I said previously, the fact you're even asking that questions implies you may not have a very close relationship with your professor. So I would keep it to yourself.

For every type of rude behavior there likely exists a person who would not mind if that behavior was directed at them, so I think the fact that the professor may not be offended is irrelevant to answering the question. The behavior is rude because a reasonable person almost certainly will be offended, so saying "it depends" is misleading at best.

When I was at college there were quite a few teachers that were quite casual with the students and they were often asking for our input. I wouldn't have sent them an email about 'here are some better teaching methods' but I did on occaision show some of them them to resources related to the course I thought were quite good and they took them on board. (It helped that I was doing somewhat better than the other students though in certain subjects, the difference in ability meant my word had a little bit more gravitas.)

@Pharap That sounds helpful. But I bet even those teachers would have been annoyed if you'd mailed them to say, "Hey, I just read the preface of the book you'll be teaching us from. You should read it, too!"

@DanRomik To be fair, a truly reasonable person almost certainly wouldn't be offended. But I see your point.

@DavidRicherby Indeed, I was by no means contradicting that. My point was to illustrate that if one wishes to assist the teacher then there are ways to do it without overstepping the mark. Suggesting a (suplementary) book after having actually read said book is potentially a good way to help without causing offense. (Note that in my case we weren't actually working from a book at all and I was only informing my teacher about said book because I had read the book and found it to be both relevant and useful to the course and thought that others might benefit from reading it.)

If the professor's told you that she may need to review the material, that generally means that not only is she aware that there's a need, but that she's intending (time permitting) to deal with it.
Depending on her personality and the dynamic you have with her, she may or may not take offence if in the meantime you email her some resources that are genuinely intended to help her out, but I would be very cautious about it - at least to some extent, you're implying that she won't find those resources on her own, i.e. that you think you know better than she does.
If you genuinely do know better, and you're dealing with a professor who's very open-minded and can recognise that, she may accept it and thank you. On the other hand, many (very many!) people don't enjoy admitting that people whose current status they perceive to be lower than theirs know more than they do about something, and if you're dealing with one of those people then there's a real risk that she might take offence.
A safer way to tell her, if you must, might be to say that you've been looking at book X, and ask her (without mentioning the teaching guidance!) what she thinks of it as a reference for the course. That will make her equally aware that the book exists (if she doesn't already know about it), without implying anything.

This is good advice. You may also want to note that the resource in question is the very textbook the professor will be teaching from, so it's almost a certainty that she's aware of this one.

In the situation you described it would be rude, and possibly damaging to your relationship with you professor. If the professor is willing to inform you that she needs to review the material herself then she almost certainly has the matter in hand. The message you'd be sending could be interpreted as you think she's an incompetent who can't do her job correctly. Female faculty take an immense amount of grief from students and are often judged for more harshly than their male colleagues.

If you are assuming that your professor just might not have seen or read the section, then you would come across poorly to suggest it.
However, almost every legitimate course will offer every student a chance to review the class.  If the professor does not do a good job and you care one whit about the professor or your fellow students then you should give honest feedback at that point.  Just keep in mind that your perspective as a student is vastly different than your professor's perspective - and you might be wrong.  Always allow for that possibility (that you are wrong) and you will be okay.

There are already more authoritative answers here. I am not an expert, so take my answer with a pinch of salt.
Environment: I am an Indian graduate student studying in the US.
While you should definitely not tell/ hint a professor on how to teach, most professors are open to adjusting the curriculum based on the background of the class. So just make the professor aware of your academic background, your inspiration to take the course, and ASK if it is possible to modify the aspect-X of the course (not Prof.) to better help you achieve objective-Y. I am not sure what exactly is that you want to convey, but here are a few polite (IMHO) examples:

I am unable to figure out X in the given time. I have tried A, B, and C. Could you please give me a direction where I can look (narrow your area of study), or loosen requirement Y or do "advice_from_your_link"?
Most of the students already know topic X; could you please emphasize topic Y more?
(In CS courses). I don't have much experience of working in this domain. Could you please give a few examples of applications, so that the theory is more relatable?
If possible, please give assignment requirements early in the semester.

As other answers said, don't send the link. Phrase what that link says in 1-2 sentences so that it sounds like what YOU wish to achieve from course, NOT what the professor should do.

It' obviously an old question, but generally there are of ways to phrase such an e-mail in a way that would not be rude:
"I've looked out of curiosity into this section for teachers and I'm wondering (some specific question about whether the course will be like in this advice) OR (some form of teaching mentioned in this advice would work well for me, could we have that for extra credit) etc.
But there's always a question of cost/benefit.

It all depends upon your relationship with the teacher.  If you know them well, and you know they wouldn't mind, or you know enough to know it won't offend them, then no, it is not rude.
But, since you asked the question on the Internet, you are indicating you do not have this kind of relationship. So, you are taking a chance.  Some will be offended, some won't care, some won't even read it.  You just don't know the person well enough.
Because of that and because of the way people are so easily offended, you are being rude, very rude, to send it.  You are asking for trouble, regardless.
If you are that worried about it, as other(s) suggested, bring it up.  Perhaps,

"I looked at that textbook and read the teaching suggestions.  I would
  not want to be you.  That looks hard.  I wouldn't want your job for nothin'(g)."

Or just ask,

"Teacher, Are we gonna get to study x this semester?  I hope so.  I
  really wanted to learn that."

That is true and you won't look bad asking, more than likely.
You will still risk offending someone because you are going to have to work very hard not to sound condescending or concerned.  People are not (too) dumb.  They know when you are not sincere.  It will be difficult for you to hide this.  Or, maybe you're good at this sort of thing.  Who knows?
But guess what, no matter how hard you try not too, you will offend some people at some time or another.  People get their feelings hurt easily and are insecure.  Some people you simply cannot win with no matter what.  They read into things ranging from email, Facebook posts, and phone conversations.  I know this firsthand because I'm a fallen human.

I feel emailing a link from a book the professor has is rude and risky; it is best to approach this topic in person, use proper academic titles, be genuinely humble about your respect for your professor's greater experience, and openly express your own wish to learn. With this foundation I believe you will achieve a more rewarding response than an email and avoid a possibly negative attitude from your professor. Also, remember how personalities and daily mood swings play a part in whether something is perceived as rude. Face to face is safer. Please read on for more perspective.
In my experience as a doctor and professor, I have always responded better to students who show respect for my position and title; I worked long and hard for them. Keep in mind that even the most humble people can be offended by being treated as an equal by those who have not proven the same level of effort and accomplishment. This is largely at the root of your question about rudeness.
Remember you are an undergraduate and your professor is, well, a Professor. Until you have done what she has done to gain her title and position, you cannot truly understand her point of view. That you are asking this question shows you have some comprehension of this. IMO, it is not just rude to send an email with a link on how to do her job, but it is putting yourself in a risky position regarding her opinion of you. Respect is key here. Respect must go both ways. I respect my students who are serious and I expect them to respect my position. Do not address your professors on a first name basis until you have first established your respect for their title and their position in the academic hierarchy, and have gotten some hint from them that first name reciprocity is acceptable. Even once this is established, always remember who is the student and who is the professor! In the academic setting, there should be a peer to peer relationship between students and professors, but there are limits to this relationship; students and professors are peers in that both are academics, but professors have (hopefully) greater understanding and their role in the process is considerably different from that of the student; this fundamental difference should always be kept in mind, no matter how smart we are. The best situation is that teachers and students are always learning from each other, but reality is that the institution and human nature combine to create a bit of a gulf between us. It is our job as striving humans to overcome that gulf.

Yes, professor. No, professor. I couldn't possibly think for myself, professor, because you are a professor and I am just a humble postdoc, barely worthy to clean your shoes. It's very generous of you, professor, to spend your time giving advice to a mere student. They're so low in the hierarchy that they're barely more important than insects.

I am sorry you feel so put out by my response. This is, however, how the world works, whether you like it or not. It is not to your advantage to be arrogant to those above you in the hierarchy, whether it be academia or other. This was intended to help you succeed, not to insult you.

By the way, in the beginning of your question you referred to yourself as an undergrad. In your response to me you are now a postdoc. Which is it? Also, re-read what I wrote and tell me where I personally attacked you in any way, and tell me if you would speak in that manner to me or your professor in person. Your sarcastic tone was unprovoked and shows immaturity and self-importance that often gets people passed over for advancement or even fired in some circumstances. No one is unexpendable. This is real life experience I am giving you. Consider it well.

Er, I'm not the person who asked the question. And this is not how my part of the world works. I behave respectfully to those above and below me in the hierarchy. That respect is not based on mechanistic use of titles and hierarchical structures but, rather, on respecting them as people and understanding their position. Whereas your answer is, basically, "You are an undergrad, she is a professor. You cannot possibly teach her anything ever, because she is superior to you." This kind of attitude is antithetical to the parts of academia that I live in.

I would say professor and student are merely different positions especially at the undergraduate level. People who spend a lot of time with undergraduates are not always the most intelligent or creative. But they are experts.

Firstly, as an undergraduate, I think if possible, you should tell your professor about the advice, since it would benefit other students as well. (At worst, it would do nothing.)
Secondly, I think BigDataLouis's advice is very good. Meet your professor in person in their office hours, don't use email. Email can easily be misunderstood, it is easier to sound rude. When chatting in person, your facial expressions and tones should help avoid sounding rude.
Thirdly, I think you should talk about it inside some other conversations. Say you ask your professor some questions about your study and then before you leave, you may say, "I find out that the book contains some advices, it says [summarizing]... It sounds good to me, what do you think?".
Finally, this answer of course assumes your professor is reasonably nice, approachable, reasonable and loves answering students' questions. But most professors I met are of this type, so I think it should be fine.

The advice is in the textbook the professor will be teaching from. She's pretty sure to have read it already.

@DavidRicherby If it is the case, then the OP does not have to do anything... I don't know how a professor would prepare a class, do they read the book preface or jump straight ahead into the content?

@AlexVong Note that this is specifically for an independent study course, which is very different from a standard course. I would expect a professor to put a lot less systematic effort into preparing to teach an independent study, and be much less likely to rely strictly on a particular textbook.

@DavidRicherby, you said nonsense. They will be using a book does not mean that the professor have read it already, or that she intends to.

Nothing wrong with making an observation, context helps, for example.....
I observed these notes in the reading material you provided, I would like to understand why your teaching method differs so I may understand your approach a little better
Also, remember, at the end of the day, it's your job to teach yourself, the professor is just there to help you

Yes it would be very rude.
You are there to learn, not to tell your superiors how to do their job.

Nobody is telling anybody how to do their job and, in my experience, the concept of "superior" is very seldom used in academia. We're all here to learn and it's always possible that there's something to learn from people lower in the hierarchy.

I do not think it would be rude to send the link to her, as long as you provide a little context. e.g. "Hello Mrs. [xxxxxxxx], I noticed a link in the preface of the book that I believe would serve as a valuable resource and I wanted to share it with you in hopes of strengthening the course material/curriculum". Perhaps you should justify to her why you believe the link provides relevant material to said course.
The goal is not to come off as condescending or supercilious but rather to appear genuinely concerned and interested in the content and direction of the course. I believe that will be a positive sign for professors and the only ones who would find offense with it (provided proper context and justification) are the ones who perhaps are too full of themselves and their own ideas to actually serve and do right by the title of "Professor".

It would be incredibly rude. First, by addressing her as "Mrs" rather than "Professor", you're suggesting that she's not worthy of her academic title. If you're familiar enough with her to address her by her first name, that's fine, but if you're using title and surname, it's the academic title. Second, by pointing out something in the preface of the book that she'll be teaching from, you're suggesting that she's not competent enough to have even read the book herself.

@DavidRicherby: “…you’re suggesting she’s not worthy of her academic title.”  Really?  If I got an email from a student addressing me as “Mr. …”, the worst I’d think is that they’re not fully up to speed on academic norms of address — which can be difficult to work out for anyone.  I’d take it as a faux pas, not a deliberate insult.

@PLL I agree that "Mrs" on its own wouldn't be a big deal. But combining that with patronizing advice really does look bad, even if that wasn't the intention. Also, I assume that Fillard is in the USA (their name is a Spoonerism of a 19th century president) and my experience of academic culture in the US is that students refer to every member of academic staff as "professor" even when they don't hold that title. In that sort of environment, using some other title looks much more significant.

Sometimes using "Mrs." for faculty might be an honest mistake (though once you're ought of the first semester of school it almost certainly isn't), sometimes sending a condescending email to a woman professor telling her how to do her job just means you're clueless or a jerk and not necessarily a sexist jerk...  But the two together in the same email?!  Yeah she'd definitely think you were a sexist jerk, and she'd be right.

@PLL As a man you are significantly less likely to experience gendered presumptions of your lack of qualification than a woman. Both "Mr" and "Mrs/Ms" are faux pas for addressing a professor, but only one carries the added weight of a long history of sexism, regardless of original intent. Also see https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

@DavidRicherby From my firsthand experience in the US, albeit with one University, the preferences of professors in regards to the titles they desire to be referred to with does vary greatly. Some insist upon "Professor" or "Doctor" while others don't mind being referred to on a first name basis (even when they hold a Doctorate).

@NoahSnyder Who said anything about telling her how to do her job? That seems like a gross exaggeration of what the OP wants to do. This is not a sexism issue -- you're verbally shadowboxing with phantoms that do not exist in this particular instance. This is the OP's independent study, he should feel free to engage the Professor on a level of intellectually honesty. Perhaps it is possible that the Professor did skip the preface? And how would the OP know without asking?

@BryanKrause Assertions without evidence.

@FillardMillmore Try the Gender-Career test at the link I sent; it isn't without evidence, there is a lot of research on this topic.

@FillardMillmore I agree that some American academics prefer to be referred to as "Professor" or "Doctor" and that others are fine with their first name. But your answer recommends using "Mrs", which is neither of these.


text:
Have trouble retaining material I learn in grad school. Is this common?
I have just began my first year as a math graduate student at a US school. I am having an issue in the fact that
During my undergraduate years, I would only take 2-3 classes a semester, and usually only one or two of them were a math class. This got me used to a particular style of learning; I always had as much time as I wanted to spend on any particular topic; I would read about the topic from different books, read about the history of the topic, etc. I feel like I learned very slowly, but what I did learn, I learned well.
Now I am in grad school, and the atmosphere is completely different. I have 3 math classes which move very fast, and assign a lot of homework. I feel like I do not really have time to learn the material well; I learn the material just barely enough to to do the homework and pass the exams, and then I have to immediately push on to the next topic. I solve the problems and try to understand the theorems/proofs, but then one week later I often retain very little. I always feel like I need 2-3 more passes over the material to learn it well, I never get a chance to do it.
I feel like some of those undergrads who just learn the material to pass the class, not really to use it. But this is terrible to do as a grad student, since math is supposed to be my specialty.
My question is, is this common? I am trying to figure out if this is normal, or if I handicapped myself in undergrad by taking it too easy. It seems to me like there are some students who retain information much better; they study much less than me, and seem to recall information from weeks before, and I can't do that.

I'd say pretty common. But you are just starting in a new environment. The assigned exercises are your friends. Hopefully you will settle in after a bit, but grad school can be pretty intense. Not a leisurely pursuit.

What other demands do you have on your time? Outside of school, are you working full-time, part-time, or not at all? Do you have a family?

Passing the exams is the test of your knowledge. If you pass them with relative ease (never repeat class) then you are doing great. It is a good sign that you consider this knowledge shallow nevertheless, it means you have a drive to improve.

@shoover I am a TA, so I guess you could call that a relatively easy part-time job. I don't have a family.

If you're putting the time in, successfully doing the homework, and passing the exams, then you're doing fine. The first year of grad school in mathematics should be thought of as a horrible bootcamp to get through rather than a deep learning opportunity. How comfortable someone is during their first year is mostly a function of what their undergrad experience was like. So it might be true that your undergrad program was less strenuous than that of some of your fellow students, but if you're keeping up, you're getting the job done.
Depending on your learning preferences, you might find that things percolate better if you work with others. I would also suggest that you keep good, searchable records for what you want to get back to at a later date. This will be especially helpful when it comes to prepping for written exams.

very good point having a summary with key point for each lesson/chapter can really make your life easier.

"...rather than a deep learning opportunity". Well that depends on if OP is taking any machine learning related classes.
I'll see myself out.

Your intuition that you need multiple passes to learn the material is correct. Retrieving material several times from long term memory (spaced repetition) will keep that material accessible to you for much longer than cramming. Another effective technique is to try to teach the material to someone, even if it's a stuffed animal -- by having to explain what you've learned, you not only retain it better, but you uncover gaps in your knowledge.
Between semesters, I'd recommend reading a book on learning. One I really like is Teach Yourself How to Learn, but there are a number of equally good books on the subject. Find one that focuses more on how to understand material with short, focused sessions rather that just spending more time, because short focused sessions are way more effective.
Also, don't skimp on things like sleep, exercise, and nutrition. I felt I never had time for any of that in grad school, but I found if I did a quick 30 minute run I was so much more focused afterwards (and less stressed!) that I was enough more effective when I got back that it was a net gain for my studies.

+1 for the comment about sleep. People tend to skimp on it to study, but you have to sleep in order to keep the memories you created during studying. Maybe the single best thing you can do to help memory retention is to regularly get a good night's sleep.

There are memory systems that assist many peole in better retaining information.
Typically it is recommended that you review material repeatedly woth decreasing frequency. I could dig up links, but, so can you and you will better know what suits you.
That said:
This may be useful Active Recall wikipedia
&
How to Improve Memory for Studying in 27 Ways


text:
How do you discover databases?
Is there a database or search engine where I can search for databases on a specific topic? For example, how do librarians decide which databases they will subscribe to; is there some central list?

You mean domain-specific databases listing publications, like Pubmed or Mathscinet or EconPapers?

I just checked the university library near where I live and using a link that is prominently displayed on its homepage, I found this list of 996 databases, which can be filtered according to subject and/or type and/or provider. I also looked at three other library web pages (well known, but otherwise chosen without much thought) --- Harvard Univ. and Princeton Univ. and Univ. of Michigan --- and in each case I had no trouble in finding a similar list of databases (or at least ways of finding those for a specified academic field).

@FedericoPoloni Yes, that is what I meant

@DaveLRenfro Thanks, that is helpful, although it wouldn't show me databases that exist but which my library hasn't subscribed to, but now I no longer believe that to be important since these lists are ample

For what it's worth, your first question only asked how to find databases on a specific topic, and my suggestion (which I probably did not make explicit enough) is that one method is to visit a lot of library web pages and then collect together all the databases you find at these various libraries on that topic. You might try libraries in different countries, as there might be some lesser (relative to the U.S.) known (or lesser listed) databases that you'll find than what searching only U.S. libraries will give, especially in China (but this probably won't help if you can't read Chinese).


text:
Why don't some encyclopedias have references?
Encyclopedia Britannica doesn't have references for its articles, even though some contain bibliographies for general reading at the end. This may be to save space and for a smoother reading experience, but isn't this against the grain of academic conduct, since we can't easily verify the articles' assertions or pursue primary sources? Why is this allowed and accepted?

Many general textbooks don't have references, just a bibliography at the end of a section. Not everything is a journal article, nor should everything be a journal article.

Why is this allowed and accepted?

In short, because Encyclopædia Britannica is independently published and can make its own rules. If they want to publish an encyclopedia with no references, they're free to do so. And there's clearly demand for it, since it's one of the most popular and respected encyclopedias in the world.
Since an encyclopedia is a tertiary source, there would indeed be a great deal of merit in citing its assertions, a model used by other encyclopedias (like Wikipedia). But its general audience probably care little and the publishers don't see it as worth the effort of obtaining, formatting, and maintaining reference lists that very few readers will ever use.
Britannica makes a big deal of its contributors' impressive credentials, and expects you to trust their word as experts in their fields. Since the majority of the encyclopedia's content is likely to be uncontroversial common knowledge within the relevant field—and a great deal of the knowledge therein likely predates the formal system of publication and dissemination of research in an easily citeable format—they think that's enough.
If you disagree (which is an entirely reasonable stance), read a different encyclopedia, or start your own.

As a side comment, I think many people decided not to read Encyclopedia Britannica because it is now out of print, although it is still available online.