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How can I choose ahead of time where my research should be published?
Ten Simple Rules for Getting Published states:

Rule 7: Start writing the paper the day you have the idea of what questions to pursue.

This sounds like very good advice, not just because you would pace out the act of writing your paper over the entire duration of your research, but it would also help you stay focused and keep track of your progress.
However, in practice, how is this possible? To start writing a paper, I must first know what format and style it should be written in. To know that, I would consult the guidelines of the journal in which I want publish. But the choice of journal depends on the quality of the research and notability of findings. But if I start writing on the day that I start my research, how can I know what journal the research will be good enough for?
For instance, if I shoot high and assume I am going to have a Nature paper, what do I do if a year down the line, it turns out that I was unable to succeed in reaching my goals and Nature would not possibly accept my research? Now I have to rewrite from scratch for another journal, and the time I spent slowly building up my Nature manuscript is wasted. I might as well have focused on research only at first, and left the writing part for last.
What journal's submission guidelines do I pick to follow this Rule 7? The most prestigious journal? The humblest journal? Some generic set of guidelines for "no journal"?
Rule 9 from the same text says:

Rule 9: Decide early on where to try to publish your paper.

But how can you know ahead of time where you will be able to publish, especially if you don't have much experience publishing?

" Now I have to rewrite from scratch for another journal, and the time I spent slowly building up my Nature manuscript is wasted. I might as well have focused on research only at first, and left the writing part for last."  Can you explain what you mean by that?  In my field (mathematics), one would rarely if ever write a paper in a way which is suitable only for a particular journal.

Also: yes, it is more efficient to focus on the research first and leave the writing for last.  However, I find that often my take on the research is clarified by the writing process.  For instance, sometimes I write the introduction to a paper when the results of the paper are incomplete, and this can help me to figure out what the results of the paper should be or could be.  Of course this first introduction may bear little or no resemblance to the introduction of the final version...

@PeteL.Clark I was exaggerating the effort needed to rewrite a paper for a different journal, to illustrate my confusion. The advice to "start writing right away" seems solid, but in practice, I get stumped about what exactly I'm supposed to actually write. Though, I think I was exaggerating the problem in my mind as well; and the answer I got are definitely very helpful (I'm not quite sure which one to accept).

Format and style should rarely, if ever, be your first concern in writing a paper. Your top objective should be describing good research to your readers. You need not worry about how to cite a paper or if you should use British or American English spellings at first. (Or at least not until you complete Rule 9!)
Instead, what this is rule is advising you to do are tasks such as organizing your thoughts, collect references, write up your methodologies, and think about the graphics you will want to use to help illustrate your points. This is more or less the same advice given by people like George Whitesides in talks and as a "editorial column."

Knowing where to publish is not that difficult. Look for where the work you're drawing from is currently being published. If many of the papers you are citing are from journals X and Y, one of those will likely be a good home for your paper. Which one to select might be a matter of which audience you're trying to reach: for instance, The Journal of Physical Chemistry and The Journal of Chemical Physics cover very similar sets of areas. However, the former journal is mainly a chemistry journal, and the latter is primarily for physicists. (There is, as you might imagine, a lot of crossover.)

From the OP's question it sounds like "early on" means "as soon as you begin doing the research".  It seems to me that that is too early to decide where to publish the paper, because you don't know what you will actually be able to do in the end, and therefore you don't know whether to send it to a top journal, a miserable journal, or somewhere in between.  Also, what is the advantage of following Rule 9?  I.e., what does it hurt if you don't think seriously about where to submit a paper until the research is nearly or fully done?

(I myself tend to fantasize about where to submit a paper assuming that it turns out in the best possible way.  I think it is human to have these kind of dreams.  But I'm not sure that it is actually helpful or necessary...)

Writing a letter instead of a full research paper are two very different propositions. . . .

I agree...but what are you referring to when you say that?  I thought we were talking about writing research papers.

Sorry—by "letter" I meant submitting to a journal like Physical Review Letters.

Hmm.  In mathematics I'm not sure that the distinction exists.  I have a paper published in Mathematics Research Letters but the title doesn't really mean anything so far as I know: it's still a carefully written, not especially short paper. But again, could you explain what the advantage of Rule 9 is?  Are you saying that in your field when you are doing the research it is helpful to think "This is research I will eventually submit as a letter" versus "This is research I will eventually submit as a full research paper"?

Personally, I agree that it's not such a big deal, in that there's not that much to gain. However, knowing what journal you're going to submit to helps you determine what kind of audience you should plan to address, and what the expectations for writing the paper should be. (Again, to take the example above, I would write a paper for Journal of Chemical Physics very differently than I would for Journal of Physical Chemistry, because their target audiences are different.

I was provided this advice by a few successful professors (in computer science): keep a track for a "small pond" and a track for a "big pond". A small pond is a yearly conference that has a pretty small community, is reasonably specialized in its area, and is often accessible as far as acceptance rate goes. Every year, you should aim to have a paper here and get known in the community over time. A big pond is a yearly conference that is large, has good impact and reputation, and is more general to the field rather than to your specialization. Again, aim for this conference every year, but keep in mind that because it's bigger and more prestigious, it's also more difficult to get in.
What ends up happening is that, almost by default, you get at least two yearly targets for publishing - and as a result you know where you're writing every year.
This advice isn't exactly the same when it comes to journal writing, but the general principle can still apply. Pick a couple of journals that are well-known in your field: a specialized one and a more general one, and use them as your main targets.
How do you select targets? Well, as suggested, the places that you cite are pretty good places to go to. Your advisor is likely to have a few favorite publication venues (and it's usually a good idea to publish with your advisor). When you read and write often, you will start recognizing which journals and conferences have respected papers in them, and what the bar is for getting accepted is.
Overall: start writing early. Research questions, for example, are generally going to be similar no matter what venue you submit to. Your methods are not going to change based on the venue you write for. Your results are not going to change based on the venue you write for. It's safe to write these things down early.
What does change with venue is the style guidelines (easy enough to just use a new LaTeX or Word template, or even to copy and paste) and the audience (mostly with respect to Introduction/Motivation and Implications/Discussion of results). It's important to choose the venue for these reasons - I personally consider it a bad idea to not customize the intro and the discussion sections to tailor it toward what a particular community expects.

Your advice regarding conferences actually applies to me as well, I think. However, how do you start to figure out which conference to aim for? I am familiar with which journals are prestigious because I have read and cited many articles from them, and discuss their relative standing with colleagues and professors. But with conferences, I am stumped.

The conference culture in computer science is quite different from the other sciences, but in computer science, you get a sense of which conferences are in the area by reading papers and checking references and by asking people (in computer science, conference papers are very frequently cited and are often considered high impact on a similar level as journals). If you discuss the relative standing of journals with your colleagues, ask them about conferences as well.

This answer is not universal, as in some places and some domains (I am thinking France and fundamental mathematics) writing with your advisor is a bad idea (at least for you major papers), as our custom is that the advisor puts his or her name on a paper only if he or her has helped the graduate more than should be expected. Also, the way the journals are ranked is slightly different in each researcher's mind, so one might get better chance to be recognized by publishing in as many different venues as possible, so that everyone can say "hey, he published in X, that's good!".

A good indicator of where to publish and who is more likely to publish your work is to look at your citations.  Its a good bet that a journal that you cite heavily has an audience interested in your work.
As far as having an adaptable, journal independent formatting for your paper, you may want to write your paper in LaTeX.  You can easily switch formats by changing the .sty files particular your journal of interest.  These usually include predefined reference templates so that you can simply include a separate .bib file with your reference information and the necessary formatting will be automatically be generated.

In my field (mathematics), journals often include instructions about the style for submitted papers.  I have always ignored these instructions unless/until the paper has been accepted...and I have never heard a peep of complaint from the editor or referees about this.  It just seems reasonable not to mess with the formatting until one knows whether the paper itself is worthy of publication.

@PeteL.Clark:  I think you're right... it's best to focus first on content, and then on style only if they really want the paper.

I write while I do the research, but I don't attempt to write the text of the journal paper from the get-go.  What I write at the start is essentially a set of research notes, which often gradually evolves into a lengthy technical report.  The journal article is written by extracting the most valuable and interesting parts of the report and adding some expository elements (introduction and transitions).
It's possible and sometimes worthwhile to "publish" the technical report as well, for instance on the arXiv or sometimes in an institutional series.  In that case you may want to spend more time polishing the report itself.  Here's an example of a 47-page report that's much too long for a journal article -- at least, for most journals in my field.
Sometimes it makes sense to submit all or most of the report to a journal with no page limits; for instance, this lengthy report will soon appear in the LMS Journal of Computation and Mathematics.
As Pete Clark says in the comments, I find that the most valuable effect of writing as I go is that writing things down carefully clarifies my own understanding.

Hooray for arXiv! How cool is it that you can actually keep updating your technical report over there too, instead of publishing errata that no one will ever read, or revising your analyses with new data that no one will ever want to publish on the same, tired old subject? I'm exaggerating, I hope, but it seems like quite an advantage to have little or no impediment to updating one's work as time goes on, as opposed to having to stick with the article as you published it, even after receiving useful feedback, catching typos, collecting new data, discovering new, useful references, etc....


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Is studying past exams I found online cheating?
I had an exam this morning. Last week the teacher had warned us that her exams are tough; this scared me. I wanted to see what her exams were like, so to study I searched through the exam repository at my school for an old midterm. Unfortunately, the exam repository only has final exams (including this course). Then I googled "(course code) (school name) midterm", and a couple of links came up. One was an online repository (not associated with my school) where people can upload old exams. I found a lot of old midterms for this course. These midterms were all in the same format but the exact questions were different in most cases. These midterms also had the answer key. I studied them to get an idea of how much the professor expected of us and to help resolve my confusion about some concepts. The practice midterms REALLY helped clarify things for me.
Last night, a student in the class posted a past midterm in a student-run Facebook group for the class. This exam did not have the official answers on it, but it did have the ones given by the student who took the test that year. After taking the test today, I noticed that some of the questions on this midterm were identical to the ones I studied online. It dawned on me that I may have committed an academic offense.
I am wondering, is studying past exams given in the course cheating? What if those exams are found in an non-school-sponsored repository online?

No, I do not think you were cheating by looking at the past exams before the actual exam. However, your question looks awful - wall of texts. Would you please take some efforts to edit it to make it more readable?

I apologize, new here and was sort of in a panic.

No worries -- welcome to Academia SE :) I tried to clean up your question, since I think it's a good one that a lot of students face... if I misconstrued anything, feel free to edit!

Might be country dependent, but in Germany it's standard practice. Typically some student organization collects all exams and lets people copy them.

I'm in Canada... also seems like common practice here. Students always share them on the Facebook groups for the classes. I'm just worried I saw one that I wasn't suppose to have seen as it had the professor's answers on it.

@ff524 I agree that it's mostly a duplicate of that.

I agree it's a duplicate too, but it's a good question.  I also agree with the answer there from @paul-garret that the only thing misguided would be the assumption by the professor that old exams were confidential.  Also, I would caution that the professor could throw in unexpected twists if they know this is happening (and even if not), so use care that these exams aren't the only source of studying.

This is from the Texas A&M Honor System:

20.1.2.3.6 Complicity:
Intentionally or knowingly helping, or attempting to help, another to commit an act of academic dishonesty. Examples: ...
b. Distributing test questions or substantive information about the test without the instructor’s permission.

If you were here at Texas A&M, then this is considered an act of academic dishonesty (in my interpretation), as this was uploaded to the repository, perhaps without the knowledge of the instructor (as is usually the case). If, on the other hand, the instructor had provided old exams or released sample tests, then this is okay. I personally follow this, as I only trust information from the instructor.
However, I would say this was a lucky search on your end. Unless your campus has a clause on academic conduct and the distribution of past tests, you're okay.
This answer was based on a misinterpretation of the question and is therefore not a valid one. The original text is still available.

In the question, I did not find anywhere the OP stated that he distributed test questions. Why do you say "If you were here, then this is considered an act of academic dishonesty"? We don't even know what course the OP is taking, how did he distribute the test questions?

He had access to past questions (that likely the instructor did not authorize release) and is, in my interpretation of this rule, a dishonest act under the Aggie Honor Code. I use "here" as a placeholder for "Texas A&M University."

The OP may have downloaded the test questions, but he did not upload any question.

Okay, I see now. This may then be categorized under "other similar offenses" in these rules, I suppose. I must have added extra information in my mind by accident.

I have not distributed any tests. I did download old tests without permission from the instructor. I cannot find anything in my school's academic integrity policy that explicitly states the policy behind studying from past exams. In fact, it's a tactic that every student I know uses. The only difference is that the midterms I looked at were the answer ones that must have been made available to students to check their answers after the exam.

I'll strike my answer out but keep it available for others. I misinterpreted the question.

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I never finished my master's degree; how can I reflect the courses I took on my resume/CV?
I completed some of the coursework for a master's degree in Hospital Administration, but I did not complete the entire program or graduate. Can I still include this coursework in my resume/CV? And if so, what should I write?

This post and this post are related and somewhat similar to yours.

Possible duplicate of Graduate coursework not taken for a degree- still relevant for graduate admissions?

It should not be reflected in your CV at all.  Writing "Master in Hospital Administration," no matter what the qualifier, is likely to cost you your job when your credentials are checked and it is found that you do not hold such a degree.

I've made some (perhaps too many?) edits to the question, since I'm of the opinion that it's subtlely but significantly different than the one @Coder pointed out. Please feel free to edit back if I made too many changes or changed the intent of the question.

@BobBrown: The question has meanwhile be changed, and as it stands now, "it should not be reflected (...) at all" seems too hard an advice. With that said, this is of course one of the reasons why it is useful to have degrees: Someone with a degree needs just a single line to write "Master in Hospital Administration", whereas the OP may need to spend a whole paragraph to outline the approximate fraction of the programme that they completed, successfully or partially before dropping out.

You might consider something like this:

Education
Undergraduate Institution  B.S. in DEGREE FIELD, August 2005-December 2010
Graduate Institution  Graduate-level coursework in Health
  Administration, August 2016-May 2017

If you want, after the graduate level coursework line, you could list relevant classes. For instance:

Relevant courses: Hospital Administration, Global Health Policy, ...

This looks like it would immediately prompt the question: "Ok, so when are you expecting to complete your graduate degree?"

Interesting, I think if that was what was being communicated I would write, "MPA in Health Administration, expected December 2018" or whatever. At least that is the convention in my field. I suppose you could put dates after the graduate level line: "2016-2017" I will edit to include.

I read the question in such a way that the OP does not intend to graduate any more. As such, the question I wrote in my comment above would be either a reason why the OP's application may be sorted out right from the start (because essential information is missing), or how the OP could be setting themselves up for a rather awkward moment during an interview (when being asked that exact question).

Absolutely. I don't think that OP is taking any more classes. The end date says that they have already stopped taking classes. I did my master's in a fairly practical field and this is a common occurrence. It would not surprise an employer that a person didn't pay for a full Master's degree. In an interview, the person would say that they learned a lot in the courses they took, but that they didn't feel it was worth the cost to continue. (Assuming they were not forcibly kicked out.)

Ah, fair enough. Where I live, cost is not a factor in education, so I did not consider the possibility anyone might actually intentionally take a partial degree for financial reasons (hence, "partial degree" sounded equivalent to me to "kicked out/left in time before he'd get kicked out"), but it sounds like a realistic thing to do in the context of tuition fees.

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Why institutions and governments invest in infrustructure instead of hiring researcher permanently?
I have observed two recurring trends in Academia, both in Europe and in North America. I don't have statistics in hand but I can present quite a few examples of budgets in which the investment for new infrastructure is 1000 fold what is invested in hiring permanent research staff. For example the French government has invested 4.6 billion euros in buildings and 680 million in researcher for a large research hub outside Paris. New infrastructure, most often new buildings, are filled with temporary staff, more than half of researchers are on temporary contracts. Some European countries even have limitations on the number of times a contract can be renewed, so researchers end up moving from one lab to another, which is also an inefficient use of (public) money.
A building is only paid once, while 20-30 years of salary definitely adds up, but considering the cost of a new building we could easily hire hundreds of researcher. I would rather have more permanent staff in an old building than being in a new building with 80% of temporary researchers.
So why this agenda and why is money not invested more in people? Is it just imposed by politicians? Why don't large recent centers ask for more permanent positions to be funded?
PS: I am not even sure what tags would be appropriate for this question.

I asked a similar question a few years ago. All the answers were not really convincing. In Europe, they argue that keeping a good researcher productive is only by putting him under pressure and stress. From one side it works because I know how it works in developing countries where the researchers enter into idle after obtaining their PhDs. The system adopted in Europe works somehow for some disciplines but not for others (e.g. CS), where industry attracts more people with PhD. The question now is whether there is another alternative to keep researchers productive if they are permanent?

I suspect one reason may be that organisations love to "show off". A building can still look impressive in 10 years time, but the people will have moved on due to stress/excessive hours/low pay/lack of security.
(Unless you decided to keep them in a permanent contract because you need them - which is rare.)
You arrive, get your PhD and then at the end have to leave - not even everybody is offered a post doc, yet fewer a permanent position.

When I started in Leeds, we moved into a new building - a building built apparently purely to show off. I would have recommended razing it to the ground and starting anew... (Open atrium and 40+ plus people with open plan for PhD students...) - But when the industry paymasters (who like low cost work as done by cheap PhDs - where else do you get to pay about 14.000 pounds per year for full time work with free overtime...) drop by, you can impress them with your fancy building...

But in the end, we cannot look into the head of administrators...

I am not sure what you are asking. Hard-money faculty, soft-money staff (i.e., temporary contracts), and peripherals are usually funded from completely different types of funds. An university cannot decide to hire more hard-money faculty rather than temporary staff because for the former they need to guarantee funding long-term, while the latter comes from projects which may only exist for a few years. A new building is an investment that you have to do every so often, because at some point your old building just isn't good enough anymore.

And if you ask why a university, for instance, would rather guarantee a professor two postdocs rather than hiring two professors without postdocs: because in many places, good people expect a package, and you won't be able to attract or hold top talent if you use your money only for professor salaries.

Often public spending in infrastructure is a mean to subsidize the construction sector.

At least at my institution in North America, the existing infrastructure is all full, filled mostly with researchers on temporary funding (i.e., grants). If money was instead spent on full time employees, I'm not quite sure where they would work.

@BryanKrause, I don't follow your logic, you don't hire new people, you start transferring the temporary researchers to permanent positions. So according to your logic the temporary will always stay temporary?

@HermanToothrot In the meantime your way means a lot fewer researchers, and yeah, one of the jobs for those "temporary" researchers is to continue bringing in money to pay themselves.

I mean, buildings cost money every year in maintenance, electricity, power, etc. And as someone who works in an old building, I'd very much like an upgrade.

@BryanKrause your last comment it's exactly one of the reasons why research is becoming less and less a practical life choice and more like a big production machine focused on quantity.

@AzorAhai you probably have permanent position, don't you?

@HermanToothrot No, I don't even have a PhD.

@AzorAhai I was referring to space for researchers not for students.

@HermanToothrot I'm not a student.

@HermanToothrot Eh, I think we've gotten a bit off the topic here, but I think you are really missing some obvious practicalities and instead imagining some research utopia and I think that's unfortunate. It makes me feel like your question is really just a rant and not a real question.

@BryanKrause I think we have very different opinions and probably different ranks. In any case my question is very legitimate and I have seen in come up in meetings with colleagues and unions.

You can have a reception when you open a building, cut the red ribbon, invite the queen...you can't do the same with new positions (as far as I know).
This is another example, but with philanthropy, it is often the case that the benefactor will want to put money towards a physical object that will stay in place with a name plate. I think equipment goes under the same category. Does the same go for politicians or whoever secures the funding for the building?
Funding research is like a big black hole. You invest and you get only a few percent back on your investment. To policy makers and philanthropists it must feel like investing in a building and getting an elevator shaft.
Just to give an example, recently a natural history museum was opened in my institution. A huge amount of funding went into the project, all donations, but the institution created basically zero new research positions for the facility.
I think the problem is well summarized in the Yes Minister episode "The Compassionate Society".

Also, the money you spend on the building goes to the construction company, whose owner will then donate to your election campaign in a few years...

@Trusly How does that work? At least in the US, university presidents aren't elected by a vote of the people, usually by the regents, so I'm not sure what incentive they have to provide graft to construction companies.

In the US, the finance options for buildings are many. For instance, bonds can be used to finance buildings, parking decks, etc. They cannot be used to finance researchers.

Even though collaboration over distance has become more and more easy due to technology, it is that researchers like to meet. Really, they do. And especially, they like to meet at nice places. I am pretty sure that places like Princeton would not have attracted all these great minds over a long period of time if it has been an unpleasant and crammed place.
Similarly, researchers still like to have offices.
Besides this, there is also politics: It is much simpler to allocate a fixed amount of money for one greater expense than to allocate a yearly budget. This is what I observe in my country. We see a lot of programs where a fixed amount of money is given for a specific purpose which has to be spent in a limited amount of time ("Hochschulpakt", "Exzellenzinitiative", "1000-Professoren-Programm", "Digitalisierungsoffensive") and this is often used to fund temporary positions. but it is really rare that the government actually raises the base funding of and institute to hire more permanent researchers.
Finally, the number do not really add up. You can build a decent building for, say, 10,000,000 (Dollars, Euros,…), but considering that a researcher costs (very) roughly 100,000 a year, the building only pays 100 year of research, so can have enough money to pay about 3 or 4 young guys for the rest of their careers.

+1 I think you are right that the pot of money is different (one-time vs. permanent), but a building also has ongoing costs.  I DO think you are right that the math is off in the original post

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Transforming an MA thesis for publication
I am attempting to transform the content of my MA thesis into a piece of academic writing which can be published. This is the first time I have done this, and I am concerned that some of my main arguments will become lost in the process.
How can I successfully condense my writing but still present my points, when I have 6–8,000 words to work with, rather than the original 20–30,000, on the basis that many of my arguments are theoretical and need careful explanation?

Rather than thinking in terms of condensing your writing, begin with an empty document in a suitable format for publication. For purpose of writing the paper, treat your thesis as though it were your notes from a period of research.
Remember the two documents have different objectives. The MA thesis was about convincing your department that you should get the degree. The paper you are now writing is about informing the world of some research results that you think are interesting and important.
First decide on the key points that will make the paper worth publishing. Write, in the new document, the background, lines of reasoning etc. that are essential to those specific points.

"Be concise" is what they'll tell you, when you're writing an article for a scientific journal. Of course this helps you only partially (although the average master thesis I see could lose 50% of the words without losing any information).
Some more cutting has to be done in your case.
You're probably well prepared and you know how your research relates to literature. An article should refer to previous work more than a thesis would. If parts of your introduction / beginning of the argument were already known, cite this, don't explain it again. If something doesn't really have to be mentioned, but you just wanted to be complete in your thesis? Don't include it in the article, this is what reviews are for. The scope of other articles in your field is a good starting point.
Then you have the work itself. The usual master thesis contains way too much of the work the student has done, just to show they did a lot of work. It's highly likely you didn't need all experiments to reach your conclusions, you probably have too many examples to prove your case, or maybe you have a theory that's supported by strong evidence, and some other nice, but circumstantial evidence. Get rid of the experiments, examples and arguments that are not required.
Probably the discussion of the results / conclusion is too long. I usually encourage students to write a bit more about the things that could be done next, to see if they could continue the research on their own. But for an article, most of these things are trivial or wishful thinking, and not in the scope of the article.
If you were writing a decently structured thesis, you can probably cut the useless paragraphs while keeping the core, without starting from scratch. A new structure containing the key points will definitely help you decide which parts to keep.


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What does it mean when a STEM researcher has a lot of "solo" publications?
This is related to advisor selection for North American universities, STEM majors.
I noticed some profs tend to have a lot of "solo" publications, meaning that he or she is the sole author of a journal/paper for over the span of quite a few years. This tends to be from earlier on during his or her career as a researcher.
Is this common in academia? What would cause this to happen (not saying that it is a bad thing) and does it hint at anything about the particular researcher?

Trivia: the Belgian mathematician Lucien Godeaux (1887-1975) has written 600+ papers, all of them as the sole author. http://mathoverflow.net/questions/28947/least-collaborative-mathematician

Can you specify the field?  The typical number of collaborations, as well as expectations for co-authorship, vary a lot by type of research (as mentioned in at least one answer).

There are a lot of reasons why a professor may publish a paper without co-authors: (1) he did the research by himself and wanted it to get all the credit for that research instead of sharing it with some co-authors that he could have invited on his paper, (2) he did not have students, (3) he does not have good social skills or his project appear uninteresting to others and thus he could not find collaborators...
In general, it is beneficial to have collaborators. They have different ideas  which can improve the quality of the paper, and they can help carrying the reearch and writting and thus reduce the amount of work by the main author. Thus the main author can then do more research. Some researchers will see it as a negative point if an author has too many papers by himself and do not collaborate.

This must be heavily field-dependent. In mathematics, people do often work on their own, and it's not an issue of "getting credit" or "inviting people". In mathematics, the style (at least) is that students should have "their own" projects. The issue of "finding collaborators" doesn't really make sense, either. As in "why?". Also, having co-authors does not reliably "reduce the amount of work", in my experience. In what field do you make these observations?

I'm from  Computer Science (CS) but I can see it in some other fields too. Papers in CS often have 3 or 4 authors. I agree that it may not always reduce the amount of work. For example, it is common in CS for a student put the name of his supervisor and a co-supervisor, and a co-supervisor may sometimes not do too much. But in my experience,  having collaborators helps. For example, the co-author can check the writing and improve the text or paper organization, help with carrying the experiments, or provide ideas for improving the solution that one may have not thought of by himself.

Sometimes, one can also split the task of writing the paper : one write the introduction and related work and method and the co-author take care of the experiments and references (or some other ways).

About collaborators: I doubt that @paul is disagreeing that it can be beneficial to have collaborators (since that seems quite evident).  However, collaborators are useful when they bring expertise that you lack, thus "he could not find collaborators" sounds slightly strange.  Also in mathematics there is no "main author"; without this kind of model it is hard to see how adding collaborators inherently helps with the routine tasks you mention....

That is, it could (but need not!) help in the process of getting out one particular paper, but the time your collaborator spends writing your paper is time that they didn't spend writing their paper, so there is no clear savings.  I also find that successful collaboration requires that all n authors do more than 1/n of the work: i.e., redundancy is necessary in order to ensure that the work is fitting together properly.  In this sense solo work is probably more efficient.  Finally, in math people can be skeptical if there are no solo papers: seriously skeptical, in many cases.

(There are other benefits of collaboration, e.g. (i) It can be pleasant to interact with others.  (ii) It can be encouraging to know that others are so seriously interested in what one is working on.  (iii) In math, usually no one knows what you're working unless/until you finish it, after many months (usually) or years (not that rarely).  So it's easy to put things in a drawer indefinitely if you're all alone.  My jointly authored papers tend to get finished in a more regular, alacritous manner than my solo papers.)

The normal number of co-authors, if any, is very specific to the different (sub-(sub-))disciplines. In my specific sub-discipline it is normal to have a number of solo publications and a number of publications with one, maybe two, co-authors. But in the same department we have people who do primarily qualitative research and they tell me that it is very unusual to have co-authors and they cannot imagine how that would work. From the outside we would both be sociologist, but even within disciplines there are big differences. In other disciplines it is normal to have 5 or more co-authors. So the number of co-authors per se does not say much without also considering the sub-sub-sub-sub-discipline that that person works in.

What a number of single-author publications means will depend entirely on what field, and as other people have noted, what sub-field you are in. In my own experience, in a field (Epidemiology) where single author papers are extremely rare, I have a modest number of them all of which fall into a single category:
"Methodological Musing"
These are small papers with a single idea, usually which can be addressed with a single illustrative example. Essentially they are "Dear Field, Stop Doing This. Love, Me."
Those papers don't need a second person. They are amusing side thoughts. Those don't necessarily reflect anything on the number of students I have, how friendly I am as a collaborator, or what stage of my career I'm in. The only thing they're possibly indicative of is that I'm interested enough in methods development that if that's not what you're interested in, we should possibly not work together. But the answers to what this means are too varied by field, sub-field, personal style and "Well, what's in those papers" for there to be a meaningful, general answer.

+1 For the voice in the wilderness with "Dear Field, Stop Doing This. Love, Me."  Though some such do have a big impact, like the infamous dead salmon fMRI.

It means the Prof. is self-reliant. In other words, he/she doesn't need to wait for some bright students to come along to be his/her research brain/arm.  The key thing to look for is the quality of his/her solo publications.  Are they good?  Usually, a Prof. will have lots more solo publications earlier on in his/her career; he/she doesn't have the gravitas to pull students in yet.  This is especially true in the US where I believe you really need to have $ or funding before you get students.  So without funding, you're a one man team.
The other side of the coin are Profs. who ride the coat tail of big Profs.

It is also possible the person is somehow hard to work with, and therefore has (close to) zero students.

If one doesn't have students, publishing solo is not the only option. I am an assistant professor in applied maths in my early career, and many of my current projects are with colleagues of a similar age and career status, on a peer-to-peer basis.

@FedericoPoloni: To reflect mrm's comment, if you were somehow hard to work with, it is  of course quite possible that colleagues of a similar age and career status would turn their backs on you just as well as (or maybe even more so than) possible students.

@O.R.Mapper Absolutely. Working alone can be either a personal preference, or a consequence of being "hard to work with". It is difficult to tell which without knowing the person.

I find this answer rather obnoxious. You seem to be suggesting that the typical modus operandi of professors is to push their names onto the papers of students who do actually do all the work. This is not typical of any of the people I've ever worked with.

Actually, Profs do offload their work to students or post-docs whenever they can.  This will depend on his/her other responsibilities; head/dean of XYZ, teaching, etc.  In some discipline, the 'culture' is to include the 'director' of a center on all papers.  The director then uses his/her considerable publication list to apply for big grants, grow the center, etc..

It means the Prof. is self-reliant. No.

This answer is rather over-generalizing and rather mean without having a point. In most STEM fields you have collaborators/co-author even when you do not have students, just for the simple reason that most research projects are inherently cooperative.

@Greg, collaboration takes time to build up.  So 'solo' will be the norm at the beginning, before you start getting other 'leaches' (collaborators), whereby you may be the first, second, .. authors.  After that, you become a 'leach' yourself (Profs), where you leach off the sweat/efforts of your students.

@santa I am sorry to hear that you could only found leaches as collaborators or supervisor. My experience is that most people with decent skill set is able to start meaningful collaborations during grad school or early post-doc years. I see no reason why would be solo researcher before grad school for an extended period. Wish you better luck with your career,


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What is the meaning of “Samuel C. Collins Professor”?

I would like to know the specific meaning of Samuel C. Collins Professor in the above screenshot. It is a title for MIT faculties or the award with the same name (Samuel C. Collins)? Or something else?

It looks like a title to me because of the name on the line above.  However, Google is your friend.

It's a named professorship, which means a couple things.  Generally, endowed chairs are better paid and have some extra funds associated with them.  These are typically funded by a gift to the Institute.  In this case, somebody presumably gave a gift in honor of Prof. Collins, who was a pioneer in low-temperature work.

Dr. Samuel C. Collins, Professor Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, internationally known as the father of practical helium liquefiers and founder of the MIT Cryogenic Engineering Laboratory, died on June 19, 1984 in George Washington University Hospital, Washington, DC.
In 1946, Dr. Collins and his colleagues at MIT built what became know as the Collins Helium Cryostat. The device provided for the first time reliable, relatively in expensive and adequate supplies of liquid helium. His invention was of great interest to physicists because it opened the door to extensive experimental low-temperature physics

The existence of the endowed professorship is a honor to the memory of the eponymous Samuel Collins, and it is an honor for the current faculty member who holds it.

It is worth noting that the named person may have funded the endowed chair themselves, i.e. Samuel Collins donated or bequeathed money. This is definitely the case where an endowed chair is named after a company ("Qualcomm Professor in XYZ").

The speaker, Professor Leonard, holds a named or endowed chair, which is quite an honor in academia. His chair is named for Samuel C. Collins, an MIT professor "known as the father of practical helium liquifiers and the founder of the MIT Cryogenic Engineering Laboratory".

Would you mind fixing the typo in Collins's name please? Thank you!


text:
How to the enlarge the font size of a journal paper
I’m a low-vision person. I want to print research papers to read. But the font size is very small for me. Is there any way to make it bigger and print it?

It would be up to the publisher to have a large print version.

Some publishers (e.g. IEEE) offer a HTML version of the paper on their website where you can change the font size freely.

What field are these papers in?

As it stands, there is little about this question that is specific to academia (I will write an answer about the only exception I can think of). I suggest that you first ask this question for PDFs and webpages in general on [su], [ubuntu.se], [softwarerecs.se], or similar.

@Wrzlprmft What is specific to academia is the fact that academic papers continue to be published only in non-accessible formats. This is one of many ways in which academia tends to be a hostile environment for people with disabilities.

@ElizabethHenning: That’s (sadly) not specific to academia. I regularly encounter user manuals, legal material, and similar stuff that are only available in a ready-to-print PDF. Even if it were, we are not the right group experts to solve this problem (or at least most aspects of it).

@Wrzlprmft - While I agree OP may get helpful advice at some other SE sites, I am bothered by the closure.  Disability accommodation in academia should be something everyone in academia should be looking to learn more about -- understanding better what the needs are, and thinking about solutions and workarounds.

In the U.S. you can borrow a CCTV from your local office that supports people with disabilities, including low vision.  You put the printed page or the journal or book on the platen and turn a knob to control the magnification level.  You may need to move the page up and down as you go.  If you are a student, there would be reasonable accommodations, provided in the U.S. as a 504 Plan.  I'd also encourage you to write to the authors for an electronic format that is easier to blow up on your computer monitor.

If the paper in question has been submitted to the Arxiv as a LaTeX source, you can download its source (other formats in the sidepanel → source), change the font size to your liking, compile the result and print it. This also applies to other aspects affecting readability such as the font itself, the number of columns, and the image size.

If the paper is in PDF (the standard) you can print using the Poster option. You will need to print the page in a bigger size, to make it fit in multiple pages.
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/basic-pdf-printing-tasks.html
You can try to convert the PDF to word and enlarge the font before printing, but many don't convert well.
https://smallpdf.com/pt/pdf-para-word

pdf to word is never an option if the paper contains formula or graph or equation, it deforms completely

Another option that has not been suggested yet is printing to A3 paper, which makes the document larger by a factor 1.414. This is similar to the poster option mentioned in Cochise's answer.

Perhaps a low-vison person will find it worth the expense to buy a printer that handles such larger-than-normal paper sizes.

@GEdgar Universities often have A3 printers, in my experience.

@GEdgar This kind of misses the point. Compiled PDFs are not an accessible format for a lot of disabilities, not just low vision/large print.

@ElizabethHenning OP asked about printing and too small font size. If you are interested in other disabilities, it's a different question.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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How to avoid being plagiarised when suggesting an idea to a potential collaborator?
Say I have some idea about research and I want to suggest it to a potential collaborator (researcher).
Assume that I don’t know the researcher personally and have no any ties with him.
If I write my idea to him, there is a threat that he will steal it and proceed without me, right?
Is there a way to do this in a way that both me and the potential collaborator do not enter that risk?

Could you elaborate, have you already started developing the idea? Why do you seek partnership? I have 'some idea' isn't much helping writing advice here.

check other posts on here for "stolen ideas" ... excuses are "we were already looking at that" etc

"stealing" an idea that was shared informally is not plagiarism.

@CapeCode: "stealing" an idea that was shared informally is not plagiarism. – Yes, it is.

@Wrzlprmft how? Plagiarism is claiming other people’s work as your own. An idea isn’t work.

@CapeCode: Contrary to the common cliché, ideas usually do not come to you just like that, but require a considerable amount of work. Anyway, the ethical situation is the same and it wouldn’t make sense to draw the line of the definition here. Many dictionaries explicitly mention ideas in the definition of plagiarism: 1, 2, 3.

You are correct that it MIGHT be the case that another researcher uses your idea without acknowledging you. However, the chances are much higher that your idea is not even good enough that the other researcher wants to collaborate with you. Keep in mind that the other researcher is probably an expert in his field and might either think this idea is trivial or is not realizable due to problems you are not aware of now. I do not want to demotivate you, but in my experience "That is the best idea ever. I am going to steal it and get famous" is the least probable reaction.
So to answer your question about how to continue: Your main task is to convince the researcher that your idea is worth the effort. It is much better if you already have something to show, some preliminary results or a simulation that shows your idea might work out. That is the best point in time where you can contact another researcher and ask if you can collaborate to refine the work and publish it. If you fear that the other researcher might steal your idea, you could also publish your preliminary work at arXiv. Think about why you want to collaborate and why you can not realize it on your own.

I do not fully understand his work and I hope he can explain to me how my idea can be realized with his methods: Chances are very high that your idea does not work out. Try hard to understand his work first. If you have questions, you can try to ask, but do not expect that the other researcher will teach you all the basics just because you might have an idea.
I do not have the time to realize it and just want to share the idea: The other researcher probably has no time either. Sharing is great, but do not expect much from the collaboration.
I know how to realize it, but I do not have the equipment: That is a very reasonable cause, but then try to do some calculations or simulations that show that your idea might work.
I can only realize parts of the work. For example I can do the implementation of an algorithm, but I am not able to prove that it works for all corner cases: Very reasonable, nobody is an expert for everything. But then at least begin with your part and show how it works before contacting a potential collaborator.
I just want to have his name on my paper: Please don't!


text:
How to establish inter-rater reliability as a sole PhD researcher
I'm doing a PhD in the social sciences and want to use an observational method to analyse audio recordings of social work conversations. I will be using an established behavioural coding manual (the Motivational Interviewing Skills Code 2.5) to assign behavioural codes to the interaction. The problem I have is that I need a way of demonstrating that my coding is reliable. Typically, on studies I have worked on in the past, there would be a small sample of recordings that would be re-coded by at least one other person to establish inter-rater reliability. As a sole researcher, I cannot do this.
Is there a way around this issue?

Please explain why you are a sole researcher. You do have an advisor, don't you?

It seems inherently impossible to say anything about inter-rater reliability when you only have data from one rater.  So, I would say you should start looking into ways to get another rater.  Look for a collaborator, or funding to hire someone.  Or else accept that you won't be able to establish this.

There are small sample statistical measures that might be applied: https://measuringu.com/small-n/

The measurement of an inter-rater reliability premises multiple raters.
I therefore see three possible solutions for you to thematize this issue:

First, aim to get another rater. The best approach for you would be to apply for and obtain funding in order to hire one. I say that this is the 'best' approach because it would demonstrate (a) your ability to get grants for research purposes and (b) your accuracy and honesty with regards to this methodical task. But if that does not work, there are other options; perhaps you can ask among your friends and colleagues to volunteer their time for you (this is what I once did, and my wife volunteered for a small rating task). Or perhaps your supervisor can arrange a student or research assistant for this task.

Second, you can disclose that you were unable to obtain a second rater (due to resource constraints). Your paper's discussion section would highlight this as a limitation of your research, and it would identify the measurement of your approach's reliability as a gap to be closed through 'future research'. This is not shameful; in every scientific publication there should be a discussion section that identifies limitations and further research paths anyway.

Third, you could split yourself into two 'raters' by assuming that you were rater number one at time t1 and rater number two at time t2. However, I have never seen this approach, and it is merely a bold speculation from my side; I am sure that this would be accompanied with grave methodical concerns. Thus, I should also add: Don't follow this advice, just to be sure.

If there is a lot of data, the second rater might only rate a sample, reducing the cost.


text:
How to find research topics and publish more?
I seem to be a bit stuck here. I am reading quite a lot, but I cannot find a topic to write about, which is original and which I could then publish as a paper. I am in the Humanities, so it's basically just about reading, reading, reading (so no research in a lab or something).
Are there strategies for this? What would you recommend a young scholar does to publish more and find interesting things to write about?
PS: I know that this question will not receive an entirely objective answer, but there might still be some proven strategies or insights that could alleviate some concerns.

You're thinking about this the wrong way; if do not have a topic you want to write about - then don't write.
I'm not being flippant: You should write and publish something if you feel it's important to express in writing and to disseminate. Don't try to produce publications for publication's sake.
But maybe it's the other way around: You're frustrated about being so passive - like you said, just "reading, reading, reading" - rather than producing something written. Well, in that case,  instead of thinking about what to write, think about what you want to know or figure out. What questions about human society (be it history, sociology, psychology or whatever you're focused on) intrigue you?
When you have your questions, you look for what's already been written or said. If it's sufficient - then you had an interesting read and can perhaps put the knowledge to some use; and if there isn't a definite answer to your question - that's what you can contemplate, explore, study, and eventually publish about yourself.
Edit: I gave a general answer, but your tags suggest you are in grad school. If that's the case, then also consider:

You have an advisor. Talk to him/her about this - that's what s/he's there for.
If you've submitted a research proposal, then you've asked yourself some of these research questions already. Are you actually looking into them? Do you have satisfying answers to them?

I am a PhD student and your sentence really added a bit of motivation to my goal "You should write and publish something if you feel it's important to express and disseminate. Don't publish for publication's sake." Thank you so much.

I'm also finding this answer incredibly helpful, thanks so much. I do not want to publish for publications sake, but I do know that I need to start publishing if I want to survive in academia.  I do have some topics I am very interested in, but I do not yet seem to have found the right questions to ask. I feel some people in academia have just "figured out how it works" as it were, and they just publish paper after paper and find all those gaps, but maybe I am just not asking enough questions. I am quite frustrated being so passive, but maybe I just have to get my questions straight...

@R.Kohlisch: Yeah, there's definitely a "paper mill" in academia, which very often people need to be on to secure their employment, or funding, or have an excuse to go to conferences etc. And while you might end up needing to get on it at some point - hopefully never - your soul is better off not getting into that kind of mindset.

Still, it's also the case that as you know more about what parts of your subfield different people are working on, and what research questions interest everybody who's somebody - you also start noticing those gaps where it would be easier to produce a worthy publishable paper.

I'm in engineering and teaching and you say you are in the Humanities, well, perhaps it is not in papers you should be looking.
By that I mean should you be "out" in society talking to people and maybe that will give you the spark you are looking for.

I am in a different field and I am almost in a similar situation where I am interested to work on something original. However, getting started is bit difficult at this point.
As pointed out by @einpoklum in their answer, 'You should write and publish something if you feel it's important to express and disseminate. Don't publish for publication's sake.' This seems to be a great piece of advice.
In my field (engineering), we do read a lot of papers; but, I read it differently.
Case A:

Read a paper that reports a new method M to solve a problem P.
Find out the limitations of the method when P changes a bit.
Can method M be improved to fit the new problem P'.

Case B:

Read a experimental paper.
Find out the outcomes of the experiments and all its parameters.
What happens the method in experiment if the problem changes? (a vice-versa to Case A)

Case C:

Start exploring a problem which has never been solved (an open problem).
Do there exist some approximation methods for this problem? What are their results?
Can it be solved in an alternative way?

I am really not sure whether it would fit to humanity field.


text:
Can I publish a critique of an experiment in a field in which I am not an expert?
I found a major flaw in reasoning in a psychological experiment, but I am not even related to psychology, I just attended to that course at my university in my spare time. The flaw I found is strictly logical, and also quite tricky, so I think it is feasible that no one noticed it yet.
This mistake (if it turns out to be an actual flaw) has huge consequences since a few studies validated the results (by repeatedly committing this mistake) and many psychological sub-fields referenced the study.
I want someone to validate my concerns about that study, and then if possible I want to discover the consequences of that error, and make humble suggestion on how to deal with the situation. If my notice would be published anywhere, I want to make sure my name will be seen in that article. (It would be awesome)
What would be the way to go in my situation if such things can be published at all?
Little Edit:
The error is highly controversial but my point of view should be true. It is similar to the Monty Hall problem.

I'd venture that you're maybe jumping the gun a little, by worrying about the publication. I think it's more important to check if the bug you found is indeed a bug. In my area of research, there are many people who claim to have found bugs in major results but haven't really.

Generally speaking, a publication (of whatever nature) devoted to pointing out a flaw in somebody's work is not done in academia, as far as I've seen. What you can do is publish something constructive (an alternative approach, an interesting counterexample, etc.) and leave your verdict implicit.  For direct criticism, use unpublished communication (e.g. peer reviews).

In order for this to happen, you need two things:

You need to communicate with specialists and convince them that you have identified a logical flaw.  You might worry that they will take your idea without giving you credit, but you shouldn't worry too much about that: the more worrisome scenario is that neither of you will be able to convince the other and it will end with a stalemate.  Without expert advice, it's unlikely that you can present your idea in a way that would be publishable, so talking with experts should be the first step.  (Of course unlikely is different from impossible, but it's best to plan on getting advice.)
Once they understand you, the experts need to care.  Many experiments have loopholes and caveats that are well known to experts but not described in popular accounts or even introductory college courses.  You may end up hearing "Yes, that's logically possible, but it's not a possibility we think is important."  Or "Yes, Jones and Smith pointed that out in a paper last year, but I still think the conclusions are true and the experiment is illuminating."  Using an argument that is not 100% logically air-tight is not in itself a problem outside of pure mathematics.

I'd suggest starting by talking with someone from the course you took (the professor or a teaching assistant).  If all goes well, either you'll convince them that this is new and serious, or they'll convince you that it isn't.

Thank you  for your answer, especially for pointing out, that the expert will need to care, if I am right. But when(if) my observation turns out to be correct and significant(even questioning the conclusion) is it automatic that I will receive an opportunity to publish, even suggesting a way to interpret the consequences? note:the prof is highly respected in the subject

If others agree that the observation is original and important enough to publish, then you should be an author and play a substantive role in writing the paper.  (Other people might become authors too, if they contribute to understanding the observation and its consequences, and you would have to discuss and agree on what to write.  However, it would be unethical for them to take your observation and publish it without including you.)

is it automatic that I will receive — No, of course not!

It's great advice to talk to an expert. I know that my mathematician husband often has views on flaws of psychology experiments which, while technically correct, actually wouldn't change the value of the experiment for psychology if corrected. In other words, they are often things that do not relate to the part of the conclusion that is interesting to the psychologist.

I think there is no way for you to publish this without understanding the psychology:

You won't know the significance of your work.
You will receive rebuttals that require you to have domain-specific knowledge.  (It might even be that your argument does not hold due to some domain-specific reason.)

You can discuss it with experts, but you need to know what it is you are actually claiming.
As a personal example, I spent the last 2+ years, along with my co-author, writing a paper where we discredit the typical statistical analysis used in network motifs.  Writing this paper changed me as a person.
I feel there would have been no way to write this paper without understanding the biological side (my research was in pure mathematics and computer science).  Time and time again, I would be asked questions that required knowledge from biology, and I don't know or I don't understand the question are not appropriate responses.
Nowadays, I would say biology (or, at least, computational biology) is a field I study.

Can we get a citation for your paper on motifs (if already published)? I am highly interested since it is relevant to my research.

It's currently under review.  I can send you the submitted version if you would like.

That would be absolutely awesome! I am sending you now an email (I don't like leaving too obvious traces of my aliases on the internets).


text:
Should I send an email to authors of a paper I enjoyed reading?
For me as a graduate student, there are some papers out there that really stand out among the others. Some of them are really meaningful and inspiring.
Is it polite or even acceptable emailing the authors of a paper you enjoyed reading?
Sometimes I think some people would be happy for knowing that a student got inspired about the work they did. But at the same time, I think this could be taken as a weird/spam/useless e-mail.

Not to mention "stalking"...

Wine. If the paper is mine, send wine, instead :-)

You will motivate authors to write more if you do this.

Now I am tempted to thank D. Knuth for "The complexity of songs", because it picks me up whenever I doubt that I can be a serious, adult scientist. I guess I should do that.

Data point: I recently sent such a message. It was enthusiastically received (apparently the author did not get any (positive) feedback before mine) and it started off an interesting discussion that may have affected subsequent versions of the article in positive ways. Win-win! In non-academic cases of indie-makers, I have done this more often and the feedback was always warmly received. Just don't expect an answer -- every mildly successful person is busy.

Does this answer your question? When should I write a thank you letter to the author of a scholarly paper?

Is it polite or even acceptable emailing the authors of a paper you
  enjoyed reading?

Yes! Who doesn't like getting a compliment about work they did? Nobody, that's who. On the somewhat rare occasions it happened to me, I was delighted. And I don't think it matters how famous the author is -- trust me, no one in academia is so busy that they will not enjoy receiving fan mail.
The only caveat I would make to the above advice is that the email should be 100% genuine in its intent to express your admiration of the authors' paper and achieve no other purpose. Do not appear to have a hidden agenda or ulterior motive of any kind. Do not start telling the email recipient elaborate stories about yourself, ask leading questions about jobs or collaborations, etc., and for heaven's sake don't attach a CV. Keep it short. And please don't make up a technical question to have an "excuse" for sending the email -- in my opinion, aside from being dishonest, this runs the risk of coming up with a question that is clearly lame and inauthentic-sounding, which may spoil the whole effect. On the other hand, if you do have a genuine question, even a vague one like "that formula in section 3 is amazing, how did you think of it?", go ahead and ask it, but be considerate of the recipient's time, and make it clear that you would be extremely grateful for a reply but that you are not expecting one and that the recipient should feel free to ignore your email if they are too busy.
Here is an example of how I would go about phrasing such an email:

Subject: your awesome paper (no reply necessary)
Dear Prof. Goodpaper,
I hope you'll excuse this unsolicited email from a grad student.
  I recently read your paper "Traveling salesman optimizers in pseudo-logarithmic time". I'm writing to let you know that I was simply blown away by how good of a paper it is. Not only was it an incredibly clear and fun paper to read, but I was also really inspired by the clever ideas. In section 3, your definition of the class of problems solvable in pseudo-logarithmic time really captures the essence of the kind of algorithmic complexity that was previously studied only in a few special cases in the Jones-Truckey paper you cited. And your idea of taking the Mellin transform of the recurrence relation to get the asymptotic behavior of your TSP optimizer was also very inspiring -- I've never seen that trick anywhere, and was wondering how you came up with that idea. I'm currently working on a problem involving an asymptotic analysis in a graph connectedness problem that has a somewhat similar structure, so I'll definitely try to see if the same technique could apply.
Anyway, thank you again for the inspiration, and thank you for reading this. If you have any references to other papers you wrote or other books or papers by others on pseudo-logarithmic time problems that you think I should look at, I'd be very happy to hear about it. However, I realize you're very busy, so please do not feel obliged to send me anything or to reply to this email at all.
Sincerely,
  [your name]

Prof. Goodpaper taught my second year algorithms course!

FWIW if I received an email like that, my first impression of the sender would be as quite a brown-noser - decidedly not positive. But maybe I'm weird.

@DavidZ hmm, interesting. I conjecture that how you perceived such an email would depend on whether the paper you were being complimented on was good enough to deserve the praise. If it was truly an achievement that you yourself were very proud of and knew to be exceptionally good, my guess is you would understand that the compliment was genuine and would not think badly of the sender. But I could be wrong. I do agree that if the paper the student was praising you for was just an average paper, the email could come across as a bit bizarre.

Your first sentence would be completely unnecessary for any of the professors I have known. It also seems to contradict the spirit of your answer. Why should a graduate student have any less right than any other researcher to email a professor?

Although I agree with the spirit of your answer, your example is in my view much too long and way over the top. Which makes me interpret the sender as a brown-noser, as David says. It should be enough to say "I just finished reading your paper and I just wanted to say that I enjoyed it a lot".

I hope you'll excuse this unsolicited comment, but I just wanted to say that I find your book about longest increasing subsequences very interesting! :-)

@HansLundmark much obliged!

I think this would be partially a function of the fame of the author.
A minor nobody like me would be happy to hear someone is reading his work and finds it useful.
A major somebody in my field would probably experience it as pretentious spam. (Though perhaps people who are major somebodies can comment on this).
Either would probably enjoy if you had a question or two for clarification or asked for further related reading.
Of course people differ so mutatis mutandis and the answer can only be general.

Also a minor nobody, love these emails when I get them.

Mutatis mutandis is a Medieval Latin phrase meaning "the necessary changes having been made" or "once the necessary changes have been made".

I suspect that most "major somebodies" is specialized fields don't get that much fan mail either. For example in cryptogaphy Bruce Scheier probably gets a lot of mails because he's famous, but most other experts in the field are barely known outside.

Anyway, possibly a large part of the reason that Bruce Schneier is famous, is that he interacts with the general public (and journalists) on his blog. Therefore one would expect that even if he gets more fan mail than he feels he needs, he at least has good mechanisms for coping with it ;-) A famous recluse might find fan mail to be a burden, but anyone who's upset by it most likely won't be out there in front of the public in the first place (or will pay an assistant to handle email).

... I'm not close to any famous academics, but I do know some semi-famous authors (with tens of thousands of readers or more, which is a heck of a lot more than any academic paper gets), and none of them considers honest appreciation to be spam (at least, I've never heard them complaining about it). Attempts to get into a critical discussion of their work might be another matter!

I have written to a couple of famous academics, just to let them know I appreciated their work and was inspired by it. Both of the replies were warm and personal. It was clear they appreciated it.

Anyone who thinks an honest "wow, thank you for the great paper" is pretentious spam because of his own "majorness in the field" has a severely overblown ego and can stand to be taken down a notch from such rarefied heights of hauteur.

So if you are "famous" (in your community) you don't get any thank-yous because everybody assumes you already know you do good work? How sad!

Is it acceptable to send thanks to the maker of a work that you enjoyed? Yes, totally. Note that I chose the word maker and not academic nor author. This question is far more general than you may be framing it. You're communicating, one individual to another. Furthermore, you're conveying a positive and reinforcing message. Nothing weird about it.
To be polite, keep it brief and just show your appreciation. This takes one or two sentences tops. If you have more to write, so be it, yet don't expect the recipient to read an essay. If you have a specific question, feel free to add it in. Whether or not you receive a reply depends on the time and interest level of whomever you contact.
I've sent brief messages to academics who have spoken at my university - those that have inspired me. Some were big names, some weren't. A couple shot me back a sentence that expressed their gratitude! People like feedback!
In a similar vein, you can send short messages of thanks to musicians, photographers, and even to companies! It's no different, is it?

Yes, it is totally acceptable.  I have never heard of anyone frowning upon their work being valued and appreciated.
And I, for one, would not consider an email stalking.  However, just telling me what you like, is not always what I am after.  I would appreciate it more if you tell me what you do not like, what you cannot agree with and why.  No man is an island.  I have found I come up with concepts faster working in isolation, but that input from others give me insights in developing my ideas better, because others have skills, experience and knowledge that I might lack.
Of course as long as it stays at an email .  If you show up at my work or residence, then I might look at it in a totally different light.

"I have never heard of anyone frowning upon their work being valued and appreciated."  Ever heard of J. D. Salinger? ;)

authors: 路飞打大妈是多少集色厉内荏_路飞成五皇的报纸血战到底