text:
As an undergrad, is it unethical to work in a field that I'm not interested in pursuing further in graduate school?
I'm a CS undergrad in my senior year(last week!). I've been working as a part-time research assistant in a research institute. I didn't think twice when I took the job, as I just thought it would be fun, and because it's not a school, I never thought I'd continue my research in this field after this job-at least not there.
However, recently I've decided to go to a graduate school, and I want to pursue a master in a different field. I still want to finish my work and hopefully publish my current project, which would probably take 6 months to 1 year more.
During a lunch, I told another RA(graduate student) about my plan. He said that I should quit my job immediately, or otherwise it'd be abusing resource. I'm very confused right now as to how should I take this situation. Is it generally considered unacceptable or unethical for me to not quit my job?

Is it unethical for me to work part time in a shop over the summer even though I don't want a career in retail? The idea that you can't have a job outside your field as an undegraduate (or even as a post grad or post doc!) is absurd.

He said that I should quit my job immediately, or otherwise it'd be abusing resource. — Oh, please.  He's just being a jerk.

I suspect what the student means is that they don't like the idea of competing for limited opportunities with someone with the audacity to have a preference for another topic. Remember that grad school is about learning the skills of research, not primarily learning facts about a given subject. Research experience is good experience, especially if you learn about creating publishable papers. It would be a greater waste of resources, IMO, if you throw it in now.

I had an excellent programmer working for me once, and when I asked about his career plans, he told me he really wanted to be a rock musician. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. It gave me a slight dilemma about how much to invest in his training, but he was doing a good job and being honest so there was no way I could complain.

Is it unethical for people to work in fast food restaurants during college if they don't want to make a career of delivering pizzas or flipping burgers? No, of course not. Despite the attitude of this particular research assistant, you're done nothing wrong, unethical, or questionable. You are not somehow required to choose to get an advanced degree in a particular field simply because you have a job at a "research institute". Does this research institute require that the janitors or office staff pursue PhD's in a related field? I very much doubt it. You're fine. It's the RA who has a problem.

Some people get weird ideas about academic resources and what constitutes a "waste" or "abuse" of such resources.  It is short-sighted to think that your continued contribution to the present project won't benefit the grad student, yourself, the field you're currently working in, or the field you plan on going into in significant ways.

@MichaelKay Hey, I worked with a musician (more folk music) who was a programmer as a day job too. He invited us out to his gigs sometimes, they were pretty good!

Not only is it quite ethical, but you gain valuable experience! You will forever bring a fresh perspective to whatever teams you join.

How do all these ridiculously stupid questions get upvoted so much?

@spacetyper obviously, it's the very absurdity of the question and the invalid premise behind it that makes it entertaining and leads people to upvote it.

Definitely not unethical, as long as you're doing the work you're hired for.  Branching out to other areas is actively encouraged.  Check out Steve Jobs' commencement address if you need some inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

You are like half of the interns we have.

@spacetyper because, as absurd the question is, there are people who ask themselves this question. Who might stop their job and subsequently leave research altogether (since they had to take up something else to make a living) because of that broken assumption. They deserve a good answer.

It is definitely not unethical. Many undergraduates interested in medical careers do research in, say, biology labs, since it looks good on their applications. It is common practice in the field, and no one considers it abusive.
More importantly, oftentimes people take up RA positions specifically for a purpose like yours: to figure out whether or not graduate school is right for them and, if it is, whether they want to stay in the same area or switch to a different one. Being an RA is one of the best ways to try out a particular line of research  without a long-term commitment. That said, once you decide that you want to pursue research in a different area during grad school, it definitely doesn't mean that you should immediately resign (especially since you are planning to publish your work). Even though you are not planning to stay, you can still make a contribution!

Thanks for clearing that up. I'm planning to switch to psychology for graduate school and did not find much information about this kind of situation.

Perhaps you should consider this RA as a research opportunity. :-)

@BobJarvis I will. I've been enjoying it!

@RexYuan Your programming skills should be extremely valuable in grad school! I am in cognitive neuroscience, a related field, and find that the computer science courses I've taken make my life a lot easier.

@RexYuan To echo neuranna, I am a programmer whose wife is working on her PhD in clinical psychology. The research she is doing requires quite a bit of programming (statistical software like SAS or SPSS), and I definitely see her (and her department, really!) struggling quite a bit with it (and she goes to a very good school). I suspect that in many psychology departments, you will find real, serious programming skills extremely in-demand. It’s a skill that they need and often don’t have enough of.

The grad student that you spoke to has no idea what they're talking about.  As long as you are doing the work you've agreed to do so for the supervisor, you are fine ethically.  You are likely paid by a grant, and the grant was for a specific research objective -- it almost certainly wasn't to force an undergraduate to make a commitment to spend their life in a particular field.  Quitting immediately would just disrupt the project, and generate extra work for the Principal Investigator.
The graduate student who you were talking to probably knows almost nothing about how/why research is funded, and is just being a jerk.  I certainly didn't know much about funding when I was a grad student.
If you are thinking about shifting fields, you should probably bring it up with your faculty supervisor.  They might think of ways to adjust the work you are doing to help with that transition.  I think as long as you stay focused on their project while they are funding you there is little chance they'd ask you to leave.

At some point most if not all grad students go through tough patches.  This can lead to being rather snappy towards colleagues who appear to be having an easier ride (even if they do understand functing systems).  That's to explain rather than excuse acting like a jerk, especially towards someone who doesn't know you very well and can't be expected to sympathise if you're having a bad day. (+1)

Adding to neuranna's answer: Given that the cat is already out of the bag (you told the "secret" to someone on the team who obviously opposed the idea and might thus leak that information to the rest of the team or your supervisor), it might be wise to prepare a sound explanation of your future plans should the discussion come up with your supervisor. In fact it might even be advisable to approach your supervisor directly and put all your cards on the table. There is nothing wrong with your plan to finish up the project and publish the results. Just convince your supervisor that you can still make a worthwhile contribution. One could argue that you already know all the ropes of this project whereas a new RA might have to spend some time on training and familiarization with the topic.

Is there any normal situation in which you shouldn't make your intent clear to your supervisor?

@fectin, well ethically it might be a dilemma, but if your company (in or outside academia) is known to terminate you as soon as the rumor hits the floor it might at least be reasonable and in your own interest to not discuss the matter until your period of notice arives. Workplace.SE is full of such situations.

This answer is misleading in that it assumes the premise that OP has anything to explain or convince his/her supervisor of. He/she doesn't.

In a perfect world they might not have to, real world and "office politics" make it all look different.

I'd say: it depends.
You most definitely may (and should) wrap up your work, finish and publish it. Otherwise it would be a waste of time and resources - including yours, of course. You are to some degree obliged to present your results to the scientific community.
The assessment of the current situation might get a little bit more difficult if (and only if) you would be "hogging resources for exclusive use" right now, and there are many people "waiting in line", "reduced to inaction" until you resign. If this appears to be the case, you should try to wrap up your work without any avoidable delays (or extensions).
But in any case you should wrap it up. This will be in the interest of the institute's chair, too.

If the work is of interest then someone else can pick it up. This is what handovers are for.

@crobar I guess it takes some months to become proficient in a new project (even more if it's semi-completed). But of course, if you can manage to find someone who has enough capacity to accept the workload in addition to his or her own... something else is probably very wrong.

The guy's an undergrad, it can't be that specialist.

No, it is not unethical. If this were unethical most human adults would be considered unethical. Not many people truly do the job they really want to do (e.g. rock star).
You may laugh heartily at this RA person, for they are a fool. If anyone is being unethical here it is them, telling someone to quit a perfectly good job for no good reason.

There is nothing wrong with spending time studying a particular discipline in great depth and participating in research opportunities therein, and then going on to do something else. Society has moved on from the paradigm of "one profession/career/employer/job for life" (despite the attempts of some out-of-touch unions to cling to the old ways); I know or know of many highly skilled professionals who have embraced seemingly counterintuitive career changes (e.g.: an archivist becoming a restaurant manager; a lawyer becoming an academic in the fine arts; a museum director becoming a church minister). In the arts & humanities, it is actually quite common for students to go on to study or work in a completely different field. Does that mean that the degree/research was a waste of time? No, of course not. For many people, undergraduate study/research is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to engage with a discipline in great depth unfettered by administrative and financial obligations (and believe me, these get really onerous and distracting even if you do end up becoming a researcher in the same field).

Then it would certainly have been most unethical of George Dantzig to do his PhD thesis in statistics, given that it was not his principal field of interest and he had merely confused unsolved problems in that field with homework and handed in a solution.
The opposite is the case: it would have been unethical to bury what he had been able to contribute.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


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Are there any special actions that I should execute as a reviewer of a sloppy manuscript?
Occasionally, I review a paper that is submitted to a high-quality journal that is one of the journals regarded as the most prestigious journals in my field, and the manuscript is sloppy. The following can be encountered in the manuscript:

Lots of typos.
Sloppy mathematical notation.
Imprecise statements.
Figures with missing legends, labels, imprecise captions.
Incorrect recollection of an aspect of someone else’s past work that’s being cited. Say, a formula from a different paper is being recalled and the meaning of terms is described incorrectly with respect to how they have been described in the original paper.
Sloppy reference list with missing years, authors, or authors referred to in the text by Name et al. instead of Surname et al.

I’m aware that this sloppiness can stem from the researcher who wrote the paper being a junior researcher, e.g., a Ph.D. student. I’m happy to take on a role of being a helpful reviewer who will let the student improve the work and learn from the review. But at the back of my head, I always have the following worry: if the senior researchers on the author’s list haven’t corrected Ph.D. student’s manuscript before submission, then have they actually read the paper carefully and, more importantly, have they checked the Ph.D. student’s research rigorously while it was being conducted? There are always details of the research that has been done that I have no way of checking as a reviewer, especially if the authors don’t provide access to the code they developed. So all I have left is trust that the senior researchers have checked everything.
As a reviewer, should I take the sloppiness in a manuscript as a warning for potential sloppiness in the research? Thus far, I’ve been meticulously listing all typos, all notation inconsistencies, and any imprecisions in my reviewer reports. Is this enough? Is there any other action that is required of me as a reviewer? For example:

Would it be fair to reject a paper on the ground of a sloppy manuscript?
Would it be fair to recommend that the authors go to a lower-tier journal? — this is not ideal anyway, since, in the end, I would like all published research to be rigorously checked, regardless of the tier of the journal.
Would it be fair to mention my worry in the special note to the Editor?

I’m most concerned about cases where one of the senior researchers on the authors list is, say, a well-known mathematician in the field. Is it fair to assume that if that mathematician has read the manuscript, they would have corrected the sloppy mathematical notation and imprecise mathematical statements? And therefore, is it justifiable for me to become worried about the quality of the whole research when “math sloppiness” occurs in a paper where the senior researcher in the authors’ list is a mathematician? In the end, all authors have agreed on the final version of the manuscript and yet I know that that mathematician in the past has written some very good and rigorous papers, so I know that “they can do better”.

Good question, though it may be closed as "opinion-based". I personally will admit that a sloppily written paper does reduce my trust in the parts of the research that I cannot verify, such as computer code and any statistical analysis.

@StephanKolassa, I see, thanks for sharing your view!

Just decline to review such papers. It is the the responsibility of the authors and editors to only send papers for review when they are reasonably well-written.

@SylvainRibault, this is not possible with certain journals which only give me access to the manuscript after I accept the review invitation.

@user166265 : You could look for the submitted article on arXiv before accepting to review: if it is not there, do not review it. Or you could refuse to review for such journals. Or immediately ask for a major stylistic revision before working on the paper's substance.

Decline to review when possible, but not without offering feedback to the author when you do. If the author cares enough, they will invest in polishing their work. Or if you're already committed, reach out to the author informing them that you've taken on the task of reviewing their manuscript and you'd like for them to provide a copy without typos and the other problems mentioned. Communicate that if left as-is, those issues will negatively impact the review.

Papers are not just the content, they are also the presentation. Even in cases where the content is ground breaking, if the presentation means it cannot be understood reliably that is a major problem—both for verifying and building on the results.
I would definitely draw a line at errors that affect how the content is understood. That means simple, isolated tyops in prose are okay but everything that leads to ambiguity is not. Critically, all of these would be problems:

Sloppy mathematical notation.
Imprecise statements.
Figures with missing legends, labels, imprecise captions.
Incorrect recollection of an aspect of someone else’s past work that’s being cited. Say, a formula from a different paper is being recalled and the meaning of terms is described incorrectly with respect to how they have been described in the original paper.

All of these mean that parts of the content must be guessed. Lowering your acceptance and possibly rejecting a paper based on these is perfectly fine. As with any out-of-the-ordinary things, if you know they are unusual for the authors then mentioning this to the editor in addition to adjusting your score can be useful information.

This answer feels wrong to me. If the core ideas of a paper are sound and advance the state of the art, then the writing can be improved to be acceptable. Yes, comment on the issues, and suggest major revisions. Few papers are ever published as first submitted.

@Buffy I don’t see how one can even say that "the core ideas of a paper are sound and advance the state of the art" if the presentation (that means notation and information, not being flashy) are severely lacking. Whether this means one requests revisions or rejection depends on the specific review system, but being difficult or even impossible to understand to scientific standards is definitely a major problem in my book. Papers exist not just to be published but to be read which requires being understandable.

The rest of this discussion has been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.

“simple, isolated tyops” ... I see what you did there. ;-)

As with all these questions on reviewing, the key point is to emphasise that you are the reviewer, not the gatekeeper. If a paper has poor lanuage, sloppy notation, incorrect recall of referencs, it is your job to say this (adding examples). You might even note in your review that the sloppiness reflects badly on confidence in the rest of the paper (phrased constructively and with emphathy). But it not your job to decide if that disqualifies the paper or not. That is the job of the editor. If you are worried about the parts of the manuscript you cannot check, then you should note the parts you cannot check in your review. You might even say in the confidential remarks to the editor "I wasn't able to check these parts of the manuscript, but I am worried about them because of the sloppiness in the language, notation etc".
One more thing. You say that you have meticulusly catelogued all the typos. Just as you are not a gatekeeper, you are also not a copy editor. it is good to provide examples, but it is not your job to point out and correct every typographical error.

I have to say although I know I am not a copy editor, I also like to point out the typos during review as I stumble upon them, as it is not a lot of work (you can easily mark them in a PDF).

@Sursula I actually like to take the opposite approach -- I will rarely list every single one in the review. I prefer to say that the language was generally poor and contained many typos, provide a handful of examples, clearly state that the examples are non-exhaustive, but that I would expect to see all of them corrected in any future versions. It's a bit of a test -- if the revised manuscript only corrects the listed examples, it adds to my (negative) opinion of the work, while correcting the majority of typos usually makes me more eager to help further improve the manuscript too.

@Sursula I agree with penelope to not list more than some representative or non-technical typos. The reason is it tends to obscure the review of the actual content, which is the reviewer's main job. That's more important than something the journal's paid copy editors are responsible for anyway.

-1: "But it not your job to decide if that disqualifies the paper or not". Every time I've refereed a paper, I'm literally asked for an accept/reject recommendation. It does sound like it is indeed my job to decide if something disqualifies the paper, from my point of view; then the editor will decide based on that an whatever other information they have.

@MartinArgerami, this answer is suggesting to reject. This seems wrong approach. If the content is well understood and at the standard of the journal then giving "major revision" is also possible option. The revised version will give a chance to decide if the authors are really caring about the manuscript

@Learner: I strongly disagree. We are talking here, as OP describes, about papers that are very poorly written. When you send a very poorly written manuscript to a main journal, you are also sending a strong message that you don't care and that you didn't do your job properly. Why would the journal/referee spend time doing what should have been the researcher's job anyway? At the very very least, a poorly written paper takes unnecessary time out of the referee, and that's unfair.

@martinargerami Most journals I review for don't ask for a reject/accept. Many journals ask for some like 1-5 on categories like novelty, rigour presentation etc, buy not accept/reject. In fact, I tend to refuse to review for those that do, and even if I do, I more often not find my recommendation is not followed.

@martinargerami you assume the authors know that their manuscript is poorly written,  but you have absolutely no way of knowing that.

@IanSudbery: of course. It doesn't change the fact that a very poorly written manuscript should cause an immediate rejection from a major journal. The (volunteered, tough, unpaid, often unrecognized) job of the referee is to assess the scientific quality of the paper. It shouldn't be the job of the referee to waddle over stuff that is obscured by very poor writing.

@MartinArgerami, i don't agree with you at all. Content should matter mainly, exposition could be developed at any point if revision is given with a strict note. If the authors still don't take it seriously, then ofcourse a rejection.

@MartinArgerami Poorly written manuscripts should not be published in any journal, irrespective of how major. That doesn't mean all such papers should be rejected out of hand. If a paper is sufficiently poorly written that I can't tell if its any good I return it to the editor and say "I can't tell if this should be published as the lanuage is so bad I can't judge it". If the editor wants to reject it on that basis, thats the editors decision, but personally if I were the editor I'd return it to the authors and say "resubmit when the lanuage is better".

In the end its the science that matters. Lanuage can always be improved. But that doesn't mean its the reviewers job to improve it, just to point out it needs improving.

@IanSudbery: when I referee, from time to time I'm asked what I think of a paper (usually when an editor is trying to decide whether the paper is worth refereeing). But most of the time I'm asked whether to accept or reject. The final decision is in the editor's hand (or the editorial board, sometimes) but referees are certainly asked to accept or reject.

"meticulusly catelogued all the typos" - I see that.

I assume the context (vaguely implied by your question) of mathematics journals.

Occasionally, I review a paper that is submitted to a high-quality journal that is one of the journals regarded as the most prestigious journals in my field, and the manuscript is sloppy

A high quality journal needs to publish high quality content. Sloppiness of the level you describe does not sound acceptable for the standards set by top journals. I certainly would not recommend publication in such circumstances until the quality of the paper has been brought up to match or exceed the standards the journal and its readers are expecting. A few typos or ungrammatical sentences here and there are okay; major inaccuracies and notational inconsistencies, especially ones that make the mathematical content hard or impossible to understand, are not. The identity of the authors, whether it’s written by a PhD student etc, are immaterial.
That being said, if the math is solid and of sufficient quality for the journal, I wouldn’t outright recommend rejecting the paper, since issues related to presentation can be corrected (whereas the content being not novel or exciting or important enough is not typically a correctable issue). I would simply say — and have said in the past, when I had similar concerns myself - that the paper needs a major revision, point out at least some of the issues, and say I look forward to re-evaluating the work once those issues have been addressed.
If the authors then resubmit a revised paper and the revised paper is still not up to standards, the only fair response is to recommend rejection. Not every work, even not every really good work, deserves to be published in a top journal.
As for your other questions:

As a reviewer, should I take the sloppiness in a manuscript as a warning for potential sloppiness in the research?

No. But are you talking about mathematics here? If you are reviewing a math paper you would check it for correctness yourself, right? You should not be performing your evaluation based on heuristic indicators such as the prevalence of typos. Perhaps one can say that sloppiness can be a good reason for a bit of extra vigilance when evaluating the paper for correctness. But then again, as I have said above, the sloppiness would already be sufficient reason to send the paper back to the authors and ask them to fix the issues, so I would simply hold back on evaluating correctness until they submit their revised version.

Would it be fair to reject a paper on the ground of a sloppy manuscript?

See above.

Would it be fair to recommend that the authors go to a lower-tier journal? — this is not ideal anyway, since, in the end, I would like all published research to be rigorously checked, regardless of the tier of the journal.

You don’t have to explicitly make such a recommendation, but it’s quite reasonable to make it. As for it being not ideal, I suggest focusing on the task at hand, which is to review the paper for this journal. If you point out the issues and the authors ignore them and resubmit to a lower tier journal, that would be up to that journal to think what to do about the problem.

Would it be fair to mention my worry in the special note to the Editor?

Sure, but personally I never use the “confidential” editor’s note option and don’t see what it’s for other than for use by very squeamish or conflict-averse reviewers. If you have a valid concern then you would be doing the authors a favor by sharing it with them, not just with the editor.
On the other hand, as I said above, the concerns that “sloppiness in writing implies sloppiness in research” or “hmm, this paper smells like it’s written by a PhD student; where’s the senior scientist?” do not strike me as particularly valid concerns. It’s fine to use the Editor’s note, but you should point out actual issues, not inferences based on shaky statistical logic.

My two cents:
Depending on where the authors are originating, typos and language errors I find very annoying, but do understand that not everyone is a native speaker or has excellent English skills. So what I always do is remark that the level of language is not up to par and need thorough revisiting, but I would not hold that against the authors. I recently wrote a paper with a quite senior (in experience and position) colleague whose passages for a joint paper were so bad in terms of spelling and grammar that I had to rewrite almost everything.
Concerning the other issues: those probably often do stem from inexperienced writers, but I would not necessarily assume that it means that the research was conducted by these inexperienced researchers without supervision and might thus be flawed. Rather, after a project is finished, the task of writing everything up will often fall to the inexperienced, more junior members of the project. And the supervisors might wave the paper through without proper revision because they are too busy (not an excuse, they really should!). So a sloppy manuscript might not necessarily mean sloppy research, but rather sloppy and unsupervised writing.
When encountering a sloppy manuscript, I always write a note to the editor about it, because they are the person in charge with making a decision.

I agree with the first part and this is why I didn't list grammatical or language errors in my question. Typos are a different thing, say someone wanted to write "Newton" but wrote "Nweton". If the paper is full of those, it really starts to look like a rushed work, and is difficult to justify just on the grounds of the authors not being native speakers.

The second part would still worry me. If the senior researchers were busy at the time of submission, why didn't the authors wait with the submission until such time when the manuscript can be thoroughly checked. And if the senior researchers are always busy and never able to check student's work, then we're back to my original worry: how can I trust that they had the time to check the student's research while it was being conducted?

There are some good answers, but let me add one more point/option: You, as a referee, are not obliged to review. It is perfectly acceptable to contact the editor and write: "I am willing to review this manuscript, but I kindly ask that the authors fix issue xyz first."

Thank you, I didn't know this was an option! I wonder what happens next, do you know what actions the Editor takes in that case? And what happens if another reviewer has already began their review of the paper as it is?

That seems like something the editor would have to handle and I cannot report first hand experience with that, though I do remember that something like this happened to me as an author in an early career stage. In any case, the earlier you make your concerns known, the easier it is for the editor to act appropriately.

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IT person never reply to my emails
I am a PhD student in a lab in a well known university. I am not sure if I should just ignore this although it has been bothering me for a really long time. My project relies on help from the IT person in my lab who would maintain the database so that we can have the data coming in. However, during last years there are countless times when the database was down and we lost data due to this issue. Everytime it went down I was the first one to find out and contact the IT person, but they never replied to my email within a day, usually they ignored me for days until I or other people in my project reach out again. Due to their lack of communication, my project lost a lot of good data and the data quality is critical for generating good results. I am not sure why my PI never said anything about this but I am very troubled by this IT person.
I have tried talked to this IT person about it and asked if I did anything wrong , but they said everything is fine between us. But still they never really replied to my emails. My PI also doesn't seem to care about it at all. However, my PhD is sort of depending on the data we collect and this IT person's lack of communication and not helpful has made us lose fair amount of data. I am not sure what to do, I respect my PI since they gave me a good project and opportunity for studying in a PhD program, but dealing with the IT person feels traumatizing because I constantly wait for their email reply since we need to know that the database is fixed before meeting with our study's candidates. I am not sure if this is a toxic environment or if there is anything I should do to improve myself. Any advice is appreciated.

Is this "IT person" an actual IT person? Or are they, say, another student or technician with a host of other responsibilities?

"I constantly wait for their email reply" Why not pick up the phone to call the IT person?

They are basically the technician for our lab, I believe my PI would be their boss.

I don't have their phone number and they were not nice to me so even if I do I would not call them. They have walked away from me during our conversations in person every time we had spoke, so I do not want to speak with them on the phone either.

Can you set up your own database, so you can store your data in it, and no longer rely on your IT? I had a very similar problem once, and I worked around it by first storing my data in MS Excel, and eventually setting up my own MariaDB under WSL. :) If this sounds hard, it shouldn't. Most PhD students can do it.

Thank you! I would definitely do it if I could, the database they use is the only source data  coming in, I shouldn't say database, it is a server that hold data. I could have my own database but the problem is the server went down so the data can't come in..

This really does seem like an issue that you have to take up again with your PI. You aren't the boss of your IT person, and you have no leverage that you can employ other than an appeal to their sense of fairness or reasonableness. But they might have other commitments and demands that you don't know about. It might also be, for example, that their employment conditions mean that they don't get paid for responding on particular days, or during particular hours; again, something of which you are likely to have no knowledge.
On the other hand, it is the apparent unconcern of your PI that is most striking and troubling. I think if I were in your shoes, I would try to document, in some detail, the effect that computer/database outages are having on your project, and then try to have a discussion with your PI about what can be done about it.
Unless your PI specifically brings it up, I see no reason at all to mention emailing or contacting the IT person. Simply talk to your PI about it as a problem of system unreliability that is having a wide impact. For example, "Sometimes the computer goes down, and the database might be offline for several days at a time, during which time it isn't possible to gather or retrieve any data. It's having X effect on the project overall, and  Y effect on my capacity to get on with my research. "

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How should I start my own private post-doc research project?
I am interested in pursuing my own part-time postdoctoral research in computer science, with a view to getting one or two publications over the next two to three years. My motivations are personal interest, and also to keep my options open in case I decide to apply for an academic or research post in 2016.
I am not sure where I should start looking for a project.  Should I read academic papers until I get ideas?  Should I just try and brainstorm my own ideas?  Should I go back to my current university supervisor, or my previous PhD supervisor?
My Background
I am nearly 41 and married with two children (aged 10 and 13).  I gained my bachelor's in computing in 2006. In 2012 I submitted a thesis in artificial intelligence (case-based reasoning) and the PhD was awarded in 2013.  My family are not keen on moving and we live in an area with very few high-tech or academic employment opportunities.
I can't see a way to extend my PhD research.  I have never worked as a post-doc; before the PhD I was a database administrator and immediately afterwards I was a software developer.
Fortunately, late in 2013 I found a position on a UK government scheme known as Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.  I am employed by a Scottish university to work within an English manufacturing company, to use AI techniques to solve a particular engineering problem.  I am based at the manufacturing company and I see my university supervisor very rarely.  I am not allowed to publish anything from this employment. The contract ends in August 2016.
The KTP project will probably use standard AI methods; I won't be inventing any new techniques.  If the manufacturing company consented (and they will not!) it would be possible to publish, but it would only be as an interesting application of AI, not a new way of doing AI.
I have a substantial training budget (GBP £2000 a year) which—with the approval of my employer—I can spend going to conferences, buying books etc.
I have discussed the idea of doing research with my university supervisor, either performing experiments myself, or a literature review paper.  She made some nice noises but she was not overly enthusiastic.  I think she is worried that it will divert me from the KTP project (for which her university gets paid a lot of consultancy money) and possibly upset the construction company who I am based with.
My interests and skills lie in artificial intelligence (neural networks, case-based reasoning), computer-aided design and software engineering.
I still have my PhD supervisor on my LinkedIn page and I could approach her.  However, I worry that she will think it is strange if I ask to collaborate with her, given that I am currently employed by a different university.
I can commute to my current workplace (it's about an hour away) and there are 2 good universities (and another two not-so-good ones) about 60-90 minutes' commute from our family home, so location is the biggest restriction for me, I can't force my wife and children to move.

Do not start a new project with your PhD advisor after you've received your PhD.

Why not, aeismail?

Just a small comment - collaboration across institutions is not only not strange, it's actively encouraged, so you needn't worry on that count.

@Paul: Please see my extended answer below.

Try to know the best researchers in your field and follow only their work.: That's terrible advice, which might cause someone to miss out on important work because it's not by the "best" researchers. (And how does one define "best"?)

Partial answer: start reading!
Read for both breadth and depth, and be sure to occasionally step outside the boundaries of what you are familiar with, even exploring fields that seem only tangentially related. In the process, you will almost certainly discover an area that is begging to be explored further. Indulge yourself, dive into the literature, buy books and attend conferences (for which you say you have a budget), and keep excellent notes while doing so.
You may discover that you can write a literature review fairly easily, and will probably also find that you have identified exactly what you wish to pursue for your research project. At worst, you will have spent many enjoyable hours increasing your knowledge; at best, you will be well on the way to completing your research.

Doing "unsponsored" research would be tricky, but at least it's more feasible in artificial intelligence than in other fields (such as experimental particle physics or cell biology).
In general, however, working with your PhD advisor on new projects after you have finished your doctoral research is considered a very bad thing. The reason is that this suggests that you are still dependent on your graduate advisor, and are effectively still "riding her coattails." Consequently, it suggest you're not ready to stand on your own, which makes you much less desirable to hiring committees. Furthermore, in places like Germany, if you have only published papers with your graduate advisor, one can argue that you're not actually yet qualified to be an independent principal investigator, which can reduce your ability to apply for and receive grants.
Note that this does not mean that you can't finish up papers that are part of your graduate thesis work after you graduate. It just means that you shouldn't start up anything new.

But she may be a bridge to the academic community. You can ask her to get you in touch with people working in your area of interest.

"It just means that you shouldn't start up anything new." Why? Explain. It is very common in many fields for postdocs, assistant professors, and even professors to collaborate with their mentors.

I explain in the previous paragraph—when you collaborate with your mentor, your mentor tends to get more of the credit for the work than you do. Many people do work with their advisors—but they shouldn't. (Some of my colleagues at other schools have been expressly told by their department chairs to stop collaborating with their PhD advisors.) If you're tenured, it's not such a big deal, but a freshly minted PhD should try to strike out an independent path from her advisor.

"In general, however, working with your PhD advisor on new projects after you have finished your doctoral research is considered a very bad thing."  This does not match my experience: I could give you dozens of examples of top people who have continued to collaborate with their thesis advisors for many years after graduating.  In fact, in theoretical mathematics, for a top mathematician to write even one paper with one of their students often suggests that that student is unusually strong, as these people don't collaborate with just anyone.

I agree that if one has only written papers jointly with one's thesis advisor, then that is likely to look bad unless there is a good explanation.  Since coauthorship practices vary so much across academia, it seems likely that the community view of continued collaborations with one's advisor is also highly variable, so it seems to me that such blanket statements should be avoided.  But more than this: what if you and your former advisor together hit upon an especially promising research project?  Should you really not do it because of the way the collaboration might look to some?? (No.)

What do you want to achieve by doing research "on the side"? Is it purely for intellectual stimulation? Do you want to maintain/raise your profile in the field? Are you hoping to create something that leads directly to your next job (through a research grant or similar)? Thinking about these questions may help you work out where to go.
First, you need to consider whether your current (KTP) employer is likely to raise any conflict of interest issues, and ensure you steer clear of any potential difficulties. Then, think about your PhD work: are there any outstanding issues that you could investigate? Projects that never got written up? In your situation, anything where you have a head start on the research is valuable. I'd definitely get back in contact with your original supervisor - they may have ideas, or contacts, or simply advice. Whilst it's true that in an ideal world, you'd expand your pool of collaborators, anything is better than nothing.
Are there any research groups active in your field in the local universities? Make contact, find an excuse to visit - it can't hurt. Even better, are there any researchers from other fields attempting to apply AI to their own problems, or trying to solve problems that are suited to AI? (Almost certainly!) By bringing your knowledge to another field, you may be able to achieve much greater impact for a given amount of effort! And if you offer something that most people in that field don't have, you'll find people are much more keen to collaborate. If you make yourself sufficiently useful to a large and well-funded research group, you may find a job offer down the line. So, spend some time investigating what your local universities are good at, find something that interests you and you think you can contribute to, and make contact. They might not be interested, but it doesn't hurt to try (and you may find postdocs/junior faculty more receptive to developing a side-project than senior professors).
I guess the bottom line is: be pragmatic. Unless you're only interested in the intellectual stimulation, in your present situation, you need to focus on maximising the cost:benefit ratio. This might mean not working on the things that most interest you, for the time being.
Good luck!

The best way to start a project that will get funded is to read funding announcements (FOA, PA, RFA, RFP, etc.) in your areas of expertise and/or areas that really interest you. Funding announcements are availible directly from the funding agency, or through online database such as Community of Science and Grants.gov. Reading funding announcements is an easy way to see the current state of knowledge as well as the gaps that exist (and available funding!).
I disagree with some of the other comments, collaborating with your PhD supervisor is very common (in my field). Furthermore, cross institutional collaboration is encouraged as pointed out by Luke M. I see no downside to this.

I think this answer could be improved by perhaps a paragraph about what RFPs are and where they are found.

@Superbest I think RFP stands for Request for Proposal, but yes, more information about how to find these etc. would be useful.

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The structure of a multiple-study proposal/thesis/manuscript?
I'm going to write a proposal for my PhD thesis. I'm familiar with the outline of a proposal or thesis, but my thesis will involve two quite separate studies (like multiple-study articles). I want to know how should it be structured.  It's going to be done about successful aging. It's a mixed method study. Actually studies are as follows:

Choosing appropriate sample
A qualitative research on the sample
A quantitative research aiming to generalize the results of Study 2.

I appreciate an example outline or an actual proposal/thesis.

which fields ? How is it linked ?

@GautierC It's going to be done about successful aging. It's a mixed method study. Actually studies are as follows: 1) Choosing appropriate sample --->  2) A qualitative research on the sample ---> 3) A quantitative research aiming to generalize the results of Study 2.

Ehsan Abd - edit the question and add that information directly to it! :)

I had a similar situation. My thesis proposal included three different studies.
Obviously, you have a subject and both studies fall under that subject. This means you should have one introduction concerning this subject, one set of objectives and hypotheses. Personnally, it's in the method section that I would explain that I'm going to test those hypotheses using two research methods.
After that, it depends on your institution rules for thesis proposal. Just remember that your PhD is not about the experiment or studies you're doing. It's about answering a specific question, testing some hypotheses.The method you use is secondary (in my opinion).

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Mastering out and reapplying to another program
I was at a top American program in my field. Due to my personal reason and substantial change in my research interests, I was forced to quit my PhD (I’ve passed the comp exam, got an MA and almost defend my thesis proposal). I’m planning to reapply to next year. Fortunately my supervisors are supportive (indeed they encouraged me to quit, take a break given the poor fit of the program right now and resolve my personal issues. If I still decide to start my PhD again at other programs, they would still advocate me, and can be on my committee if I want). Is my chance of getting to a program that is at least as good as mine good, especially if I can get a good publication? How skeptical the new programs are if my supervisors provide context in their letters?

Certainly your current advisor(s) being supportive will help. But how it will go is down to many other factors as well.

If you want to try to complete a PhD, your only option is to apply to programs; each individual person evaluating your application will apply their own personal criteria as they compare you to everyone else that applies. No one can predict what those people or an admissions committee together will think of any given application, if you want to find out you have to apply. Assuming limited funds, whether you are accepted or not will not so much depend on whether you are capable or qualified for entering their PhD program but rather whether you're in the top N of applications they receive that year who accept admission.
Note that "credits" do not really "transfer" in a PhD the way they do for an undergraduate; you may be expected to more or less start from scratch in a new program and conduct an entire research project leading to earning a PhD, not just complete, say, 2-3 years you have remaining after accounting for time already spent. That's what would be expected of someone who applied after completing a masters degree.
In your application I would focus on what will make you a good candidate for a PhD in that specific program rather than dwelling too much in the past; your letter writers, also, should be explaining why they think you'd be great for a PhD there based on what they know of you.

Yes that makes sense. I expect to start again as well (I’m also applying for US programs), though might be able to skip some courseworks. In terms of making the case, my strategy is to write a clear SoP and if possible, getting papers published (ideally solo, but collaborative might also help). Is there anything missing here?


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Who should be proofreading journal articles?
I try to have any manuscript proofread before submission to an academic journal, where proofreading typically involves checking/fixing the spelling, grammar and overall style in English.
This decision often involves somewhat difficult decisions to make on how best to proceed. Here I am interested in one particular dimension of the problem. How to select someone good to proofread an article for an academic outlet?

By proofreading do you mean checking/fixing the spelling, grammar and overall style in English, or are you talking about the content?

First, the author.

@JeffE: Even before the author does his proofreading, I think an automatic spellcheck/repetition check/etcetera is in order. There are various tools for spellchecking a .tex file. I imagine this can also be done with other formats.

To proofread something, you need somebody who knows about the subject matter. They have to gain something too, doing the work just for "fun" doesn't cut it. So your best bet is a coauthor, a colleague who is willing to swap proofreads with you, someone in the research group (understanding what others are doing should be beneficial), even perhaps your advisor.

"They have to gain something too" - when I'm in "proofreading mode", I can attentively read a document from start to end, find all grammar and spelling mistakes, and yet have not even a remote idea what the document was about. Maybe that's just me, but I feel it is rather impossible to "gain" anything contents-wise at the very moment of proofreading.

Cape Code's and vonbrand's comments are spot-on. Proofreading and copy editing are many a time considered the same thing, but they are not. If you want the content to be corrected or refined, copy editing will do the job. Proofreading is a light kind of edit which deals with spelling, punctuation, local grammar (subject-verb agreement, article usage,etc.) and typographical aspects. A copy editor, on the other hand, will check the global text issues (text organisation), pertinent vocabulary (general and domain specific), sentence construction and others. As vonbrand says, someone who knows the subject matter should proofread/copy edit. I do not recommend proofreading your own work as it is likely that you miss your own errors or inconsistencies. The best of writers are surprised by what their editors catch.

You mean you doing recommend being the only person to proof read your own work.

Not sure what you mean, but to make the statement clear, I do not recommend that a writer proofread his or her own work.

Not at all? I mean, when I write something, first I will read it and make  corrections, then I will pass it on to someone else (a friend, my wife, my supervisor etc) for them to proofread.
Because I don't want to have them spend time fixing and noting down all the errors, when I could knock-off say 25% of them myself.

Sorry about this very delayed response. Yes, self-proofreading is the first step towards clearing any surface errors. But then, writers are too familiar to their content; they can get blind spots towards their inconsistencies  and overlook errors. See http://www.wired.com/2014/08/wuwt-typos/ and http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2013/aug/09/mind-your-language-brain-mistakes. So a second pair of eyes--preferably trained--will definitely take care of the persisting errors. Hence, the recommendation.


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Wrong proof in a research paper, will the paper be rejected?
We submitted a research paper to a journal for publication and we received the reports of the reviewers. However, the two reviewers pointed out a flaw in one of our proofs. Unfortunately, we cannot find another proof and we cannot also find an exemple in which the result doesn't work. One of the reviewers said that we can remove the result. The editor-in-chief asked us to send the revised version as new submission. What we can do in this case?

Depends on the journal.  Best is to ask your supervisor or a senior scientist who has experience publishing in this journal.

If you cannot actually prove the result then you obviously cannot include it as a result. Whether you want to formulate it as a conjecture or not is up to you.

I see four options: (i) Retract your submission entirely. (ii) Remove the faulty theorem and proof. (iii) Remove the faulty proof, but leave the theorem as a conjecture. (iv) Fix the proof (and possibly also change the theorem accordingly). Which option is best depends on your exact situation. Talk to someone senior who is familiar with the paper or subject area.

It seems important here what your area of research is. If it is any type of pure mathematics, then a statement that has no known proof absolutely cannot be called a theorem, and there's no such thing as an "incorrect" proof because if it's incorrect then it's not a proof. If rather this is in the applied sciences, maybe you have some experimental evidence and you could talk about the statement in that way (but that's not my area so I don't know).

@j0equ1nn, there is experimental evidence (sort of), OP tells us they couldn't find a counterexample. Maybe it should be published as a conjecture, with said evidence.

First, notice that the question asked in the title has already been answered: your paper has not been rejected solely because an incorrect proof has been found.  So your real question seems to be "What do I do now?"
The obvious answer seems to be to do what you have been advised: resubmit the paper with the faulty proof removed.  To me an "unproved theorem" sounds a bit self-contradictory; although there are some things that you might want to informally describe that way, using that language in a paper seems to be asking for trouble.  Rather you should decide whether you want to include the statement that you now realize you cannot prove in some form, e.g. as a question or a conjecture.  If you think the work would be much more valuable if the statement was proved, you might want to delay resubmission while you make a more concerted effort to prove it.  Or you may decide that without the theorem you had, the paper is not in your opinion worth publishing.  All this is up to you.

Thank you for your answer. As you know, our paper will go through another round of peer review, and might not be evaluated by the same reviewers since we have to send it as new submission. So I was asking if removing the theorem will lead to rejection. The reviewer ask to exclude the theorem as unproven and not to state it as unproven (I correct my initial question).

@Farah: Your edit, "One of the reviewers said that we can exclude the theorem as unproven." is still not completely clear, but I think you mean that you have been asked to remove the result.  You should certainly not call something a theorem which you have not proven, but you could make it a conjecture or a question if you want....

In terms of whether your paper will be rejected: no one knows whether a paper will be accepted or rejected until it happens.  In that you got asked to remove the theorem and resubmit, some experts have indicated that the paper still has some value without the theorem.  The editor and the referees have so much more information than we do: they know your academic field and subfield, the journal submitted to and they've read the paper.  Their guess is better than ours.  If you are  student, you should talk to your advisor about this.  But you are not going to get a definitive answer.

You are right, we cannot call something a theorem if it has not been proven.  The second reviewer said only that the proof is not clear. My advisor said that we have to prove the result, but I am a PhD student, I have not so much time and the first round took one year.

@FarahMind, whether you have time or not to work on it does not matter to the journal nor to the reader! Either fix the flaw in the proof, or state it as a conjecture (with honestly confessing that you do not have a complete proof yet). Don't try to get your work published by any means. Yes, the math journals have long turn around time and your resubmitted paper may probably be rejected in the end. But if you manage to publish this work, and someone else in future shows that the proof of the theorem is flawed, it will harm your career far more than a rejected paper)!

@John Of course we will not include the wrong proof, we are working  to prove the result or to find examples on witch the result doesn't work.  We are not trying to get our work published by any means. I asked the question to get the answers of the experts, so I can take the best decision.

@FarahMind, good. Your statement "My advisor said that we have to prove the result, but I am a PhD student, I have not so much time and the first round took one year." seemed a bit careless. But now I understand where you are coming from better.

Actually, it looks like the paper has been rejected: the editor has asked them to send the revised version as a completely new submission, rather than a revision. Also, since they've found a counterexample to the claimed result, it's probably not a very good conjecture (though it could become a conjecture of the form "Every X that does not have some property of the counterexample is Y.")

@John Just for clarification, I agreed with my advisor in the fact that we have to prove the result. But it has been more than 3 months ago that we are trying to prove that result but in vain. So we have said that we have to think now about the other results of the paper, our other works that depend on the results of this paper, the delay to submit the revised version and also about my PhD.

@David Richerby exactely, I was also asking about that. Asking to send the paper as new submission and not as a revised version, is  this common in academic publishing?

@David: Technically you're right.  But in practice, getting invited by the editor to submit a revised version of the paper is...submitting a revision.  Whether it is counted as a "new submission" or not does not have any obvious consequences beyond the journal's internal reckoning.  In my opinion/experience a "real rejection" is when they tell you to take the work elsewhere.  Farah: There is a lot more information appearing in your comments than appeared in the original question.  Next time, please take the time to write a careful question: you'll get better, faster answers.

(@David: also, the OP did not say that they found a counterexample.  He said they don't know a counterexample.)

@PeteL.Clark Re counterexamples you're quite right -- I misread the question.

You are worrying about a superficial consequence of doing mathematics research instead of what really matters, which is the research itself. This kind of thinking is an example of what's known as "putting the cart before the horse", and is in general a recipe for trouble.
What you should do is to do your best to try to prove the conjecture you thought you had already proved. If you succeed, great. If you fail, go back and revise the paper to reflect the new state of affairs. Treat this writing assignment as a completely new and independent project to the one you had before you discovered the flaw in the proof. Right now you seem to be emotionally attached to the idea of mentioning the "theorem" in your paper, but you should let go of that notion: you should decide on whether to mention it or not by taking a fresh look at the situation and asking yourself whether as a conjecture it really deserves to be mentioned, in the sense that it truly serves the interests of the readers and of the mathematical theory you are working in.
The bottom line is, don't second-guess the reviewers' advice. Just do the best job you can do to write the best paper you can, resubmit, and hope for the best.

Yes: in OP's practical world, this boils down to calmly addressing the academic publishing process and dealing with things in flux. Be conscientious, receptive, adaptable and patient. Also, be grateful for reviewers willing and able to work for nothing, finding holes in stuff that you might have ended up having to look like an idiot defending in print. Go round again... and again... and hope for similarly competent input on each circuit. Observably I do media/criticism stuff, but I do understand pure science, and I often wish that 'my' community could rely on this kind of scrutiny. Use it.

What's the flaw in the proof? That can really matter. Have you looked at adding any extra assumptions which are required in order to make your proof work? If you can find such assumptions, you can include the proof of this weaker statement, and then have it as a conjecture that the result can be generalized (and give reasons/examples).

In fact the mistak was in writing the theorem and not the proof. The proof we have sent treat a case, and the theorem is about another case, we added unintentionally one letter that changed the hole theorem. For the reviewers , the proof is not clear since it doesn't treat the case of the theorem. Now, we are trying to prove the case that we mentioned in the theorem.

If you have other results, it may be better to just edit the theorem so that way it's just about the case you proved, and in the discussion note that further work should be to generalize the result to this other case (and now you're working on your next paper!)

This is what we are thinking about, but the case that we proved is less importante than the case mentioned in the theorem.

If you have no proof, anything could be the case. You could formulate a conjecture, this is legitimate. However, you have no idea whether it is true or not, and, as such, this is not a theorem. If you can show independence, you can take it (or its opposite) as axiom. However, hoping to getting an unproven "theorem" published is not serving science, and, by extension, not helping yourself, either.
If you consider the paper without this conjecture as too weak, you could collect more results before resubmitting - however, the editor recommends resubmission, so it does not sound as if all is lost.


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I think my advisor wants me gone... what do I do?
I started my PhD 2 years ago and I was my supervisor's first PhD student. He had no funding for any of the projects he promised me at the time. Later, he received a grant and so I was able to switch focus but I've had this weird feeling that he wants me gone for almost a year now. Here are some things that have happened:

I didn't have a solid project, to begin with. When I finally was given something solid to work on, it turned out that it is a 5-year project - I was given this during my 3rd semester of joining the program;

In my department PhDs are normally about 4 to 4.5 years;

He hired me and another student when I started but the other student had taken all the funded projects our lab offered at the time. This student also receives all side projects in the lab;

In my first year I worked on a review, which he barely looked at. When he submitted it he essentially edited my parts 2 days before submission. I heard about this the day before he submitted the paper;

When I suggest doing one practical training or a workshop so that I can expand my skillset he declines. He only provides me with information about pieces of training that don't interest me (and aren't very much in line with what I want to do in the future).

I've suggested having a second supervisor but he has refused to say that he "knows how to do his job" and that I should leave if I am not happy;

I've caught him lying about a few things. The project he decided to give me after 3 semesters is a new type of project for his lab and we had to purchase equipment and find the space for its storage. For 2 months he kept saying that the orders have been placed and everything has been arranged. But it turned out that the order wasn't placed.

during committee meetings he has asked me to tell my committee that I am working on papers when in reality I was busy reading a textbook he had given me (after asking him 100 times about recommendations because he doesn't recommend anything on his own);

It is now almost a year since I've last heard from anything else I've written;

The lab next to ours is understaffed. I was asked to help out with a couple of their projects but he hired a BSc student to help them out;

He allows other students to contribute to my new project. But I am not allowed to contribute to anything extra - essentially my tasks are taken away and they are not replaced with anything;

He doesn't communicate with me. When I started working on the new project I had to write a proposal for it to the department, it had turned out (I found out about this 2 weeks ago) that I had messed up some of the timelines in the proposal -not on purpose, I thought they were the correct timelines. He never communicated anything with me.

In general, he is never interested in my development and often says he doesn't have time, doesn't have time to review my work, doesn't have time to train me on some methods, doesn't have time for pretty much anything. The only thing he does find time for is a weekly more or less 1h meeting over Zoom.
I've tried talking to my committee, the department, him. He says he is not interested in talking about such matters because they are pointless discussions that don't lead anywhere. I feel extremely guilty for what is going on, yet I don't know what to do. Is this normal in academia? Do you have any advice for a lost grad student?

Why are you staying? Are you searching for a different position, even a different university?

It seems pretty clear you need to find an new supervisor or a new job.  This is not normal and the supervisory relationship is clearly broken.  I'd suggest that your supervisor's first concern would be that your supervisor is about to loose his job.

Discuss this with your department chair or equivalent.

Do you have an Ombudsman at your university? Find out and go to them with this info.

related? https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/179187/is-it-rude-to-be-messaging-your-supervisor-if-he-is-in-a-hospital

I do not know your country/region, but at us it is common that a theoretically 3 years long Phd is completed in 4-8 years. If the project is 5 years long, that might mean that the funding is limited to 5 years, but the expected length is "until your phd is done". Particularly if it is not for a single person.

I have to assume you aren't exaggerating. In that case, this is not the advisor you need. You should find an alternative using the shortest and simplest path.
I don't normally recommend inexperienced advisors, and especially non-tenured ones (though you don't say that). They have other things to do and advising isn't their top priority. Some people haven't yet learned how to be helpful.
In addition, if they are abusive in any way they can stall you forever.
I was once in a situation not nearly this bad, but my advisor was simply not helpful in any meaningful way. I wound up changing universities and found a completely different environment and a much more competent and compatible advisor.
It wasn't without cost, however. My original plan was to complete in four years and took seven ultimately. With a different advisor I would probably have met my goal. My problem, however, was really that I was too "shy" to insist on a change. I paid the price, and learned to give up inaction when it was required.

They are not abusive, no, just that our relationship is very meh.
He will be there if I ask a question but he will never provide me with opportunity to learn in practice - it will all be done via a zoom call. When I say I am interested in contributing to some of the current projects he says he isn't and that the other student in the lab is already running everything. At the same time, my own project is barely moving forward (it is a 5yr project right..) part of me feels like he knows he f* up but isn't admitting it and is pushing me to leave now.

Some of the actions you describe are abuse, though not direct verbal abuse. Lying, for example. Not reviewing your work. If you see a clear path to completion then stay, but from here it seems doubtful.


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Is it okay to cite the abstract(English) of a foreign (non-English) article?
If you don't know any languages other than English (e.g. German, Italian, French, etc), is it okay to cite the abstract (which is in English) of a foreign article without reading the full text (which is in the native language)? I appreciate if you provide a reference too (e.g. APA Manual, etc).

Try using google translate to read the abstract. Then you'll at least know roughly what its contents are.

Ultimately, you and your co-authors are responsible for the contents of your manuscript. You can cite abstracts of works you haven't read in full, in any language, including your native tongue. However, misuse of such abstracts can always be called out by the reviewers of your paper. You will be responsible for defending your choices in the review process, if need be.
Ultimately, however, citing a foreign-language abstract ultimately is no different than citing one in English. The exact details depend on the citation format for the journal you intend to submit to, so check their guidelines. In general, you do not translate titles of articles or journals into their English language equivalent (unless the journals have done so themselves!).

In general, you do not translate titles of articles or journals into their English language equivalent — I think it's acceptable to follow the non-English title with an English translation in brackets.  Two real examples: "Solutio problematis ad geometriam situs pertinentis [Solution of a problem pertinent to the geometry of situation]" or "O jistém problému minimálním [On a certain minimal problem]"

@JeffE: I probably should have said "do not need to translate." If one is comfortable doing so, and the bibliography style permits this, then that's certainly an option. But I can only recall a handful of times where I've seen that done.

Some citation formats forbid article names in non-Latin alphabets, which I've always disliked. I can definitely appreciate a requirement to give a translated/transliterated title, but it seems weird to forbid the most correct/accurate form of the information.


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Could I arrange random gifts for the participants in my research?
I've seen in many research projects that they give people who fill the questionnaires or participate in the experiment (more often the latter) some amount of money to acknowledge their help. But I can't pay that much because it's a small project. But also I want to attract many people to fill my online questionnaire. Is that right (according to research ethics or anything else) to say to them that I will give only random gifts, for example only 10 gifts when more than 500 people participate?
My concern is that the participants subjective perception that they will receive the gain for their participation is not true (in terms of probability) and maybe I'm cheating on them, in a sense ?

why not say that you'll add names to a lottery, and X winners will receive some prize ?

@Suresh Yes, but it's not really my question, it's not the way I give them the random gifts, it's the deed itself.

What did your IRB/ethics board say?

From scientific point of view - fixed pay and lottery may attract different groups of people, from ethical point of view - ask your ethics committee (common sense thinking: lottery is a typical way of gratification for filling surveys), from practical - well, it depends if it attracts people.

Questionnaire design is a science.
Within that science, there is a body of literature on the ethics of incentives, and on maximising response rates. Behavioural economists and other social scientists have put a lot of work into this: you just need to make best use of their findings.
Just because questionnaire design looks easy, and lots of people do it shoddily, doesn't mean you should. Apply to questionnaire- and incentive-design the same academic rigour that you will apply to the analysis of the results.
In other words: the answer to your question is in the literature, so consult it: and then you've got some proper peer-reviewed literature to cite in your methodology section. And discuss the ethics with your university's committee and with your more experienced colleagues.

Maybe I preferred an straight-forward Yes/No answer to my question at first, but you really provided an "academia" answer. Thank you so much.

I haven't used a prize draw in a long while, but we are no longer allowed to list hourly cash payments on our Ethics applications as an incentive. It is merely a reimbursement for the inconvenience of participating.

I am not sure if it answers the question, as stated. (Especially, as "ask advisor", "consult literature" (unless directly pointing to relevant publications), "ask yourself what you really want" are not, IMHO, good SE-type answers.)

@PiotrMigdal Yes, I would appreciate more if EnergyNumbers provided some links to relevant publications.


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Sanctions for cheating at an exam
What is a standard penalty for an undergraduate student who is caught cheating at an exam (e.g. using a mobile phone to copy the material from the lecture notes)?
I am aware that this massively varies from one university to another, but I would still like to know if there are some general guidelines, for example "usually some form of suspension from the university for a period of time" or "if a repeated misconduct it's the permanent suspension".

There are a number of possibilities, including

Zero for the exam but nothing further

Failure of the course

Expulsion from the university

The first would be something imposed by the professor. An appeal might be possible or not. The others would probably need to be imposed by a disciplinary board of faculty.
There might be some defenses possible in some cases, such as the rules not having been made clear or arguments about the severity of the offense.
Things have gotten a bit murky in the COVID era with online exams and poor communication about rules.
I've never actually heard of suspension for a period of time. I think the other three options are more likely. Expulsion would usually be final and might be reflected on any transcripts. Local privacy rules would apply, of course.

In the UK, the first and other penalties are not decided by the professor, but by the academic misconduct panel, including several academics.

About the last paragraph: when I was a student, about 35 years ago, a couple of students were suspended for six months/one year from taking any exam. But since I'm a faculty, I've never heard of anything similar. It's worth noting that at the time serious cheaters would also have their picture and generalities displayed along the corridors. Nowadays such punishments would be indeed impossible.

Your university probably has a stated policy for dealing with various forms of academic misconduct ( cheating, plagiarism, ...). That should describe both processes and penalties.
It's  best to follow the processes rather than making case by case decisions on your own.

Sorry , but I don't understand the purpose of your answer and I don't like the presumptions you are making here. Of course my university has stated policies and I am very aware of what these are. Why do you think I should not be interested in how these issues are arranged at other places and why do you assume I plan to use this information to break the policy at my university and make decisions on my own? I think it's really not fair to assume bad motives on my end without me writing a single word indicating such a possibility. Is it really not ok to make comparisons of different universities?


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Dealing with discouragement during the academic job hunt
Similar to this site's question on impostor syndrome, what strategies would people recommend for dealing with self-doubt and discouragement on the academic job market?
It's not that I think I'm an imposter; frankly, all of my academic peers are in the same boat. I also haven't been searching very long: I thought I had secured a position, but it fell through at the last-minute. Now all the navel-gazing of tweaking my CVs, polishing up my research statements and soliciting additional reference letters - to sometimes not even getting the courtesy of an explicit rejection - is starting to wear on me. I miss doing science instead of (what feels like) limp-wristed self-aggrandisement.
I've seen on this site that people have spent years searching: do you have any advice on keeping a positive attitude?
Update edit: Got a postdoc! Ended up combining aspects of all three answers; I went for a job with more teaching than I originally wanted, but where I had an edge topic-wise. Also got another paper through revisions during the process. From discussions with some more senior people in my field, the factors Cheery mentioned were presumably playing more of a role than I initially expected.

Since I can only accept one answer, I've accepted the top one. All three were helpful; thank you for your perspectives and advice!

I finished my PhD at a time when the job market was very (very) unfavorable for mathematicians. It took years to recover. I had to keep lowering my expectations for a research job and eventually wound up in a very small teaching college. We did great work there with first generation college students from rural areas with modest qualifications, so it was, in itself rewarding. We boosted some people who needed boosting. (Note that this is a US focus.)
But just putting yourself out there with a CV, etc. isn't necessarily going to get you anywhere as everyone else is doing the same thing. Seek out a place that looks interesting and focus on it. More than one place, most likely.
The mistake I made was in not keeping abreast of the changes in the market and not keeping in contact with my advisor and other faculty members. I could have moved up sooner than I did and higher, but I was fairly satisfied, until I wasn't.
My advice is to find a position for which you are qualified (over qualified, perhaps) and will be satisfied in the short term even if it isn't your ideal, but keep an eye on the market and keep in contact with your circle of supporters. The market is bad now, as you have seen, but it can change. Use what resources you have to expand your circle, perhaps by attending meetings and conferences. You can also, if you are at a modest place, work to increase its impact, which I also had the chance to do. If you are able to increase the quality of the place you are at, and it is small-ish, it will likely reflect well on yourself.
For the purely emotional aspects, a professional can help. It would be devastating to fall into actual depression over this. It isn't you, necessarily, that is the source of the problem. Times are rough.

+1 for combining part of your personal story with good advice for the OP.

Thank you! In particular, the advice to seek out a specific place I'm lightly overqualified for sounds like a good strategy.

Just to set a baseline, start by making sure that your self-evaluation is within range, ie check that you are not suffering from impostor syndrome, but also that you are not being delusional about your chances. Check that the people getting jobs in your field are more or less at your level, which suggests that the reason they are getting job offers is because of some small edge, i.e. an extra grant, an extra top-tier publication, a sexy topic (e.g. they work with Dolphins and you work with maggots), exceptional presentation skills, etc. It's normal to apply for a job for which you have a good chance, and lose to a better candidate. It's another thing to be applying to jobs for which you have no realistic chance.
So assuming that you are going after jobs within your range:

It's not enough to be good: you also have to be lucky. It's very possible that you are the perfect candidate to last year's job, or a job that will come up 5 years from now. You also compete against a different pool of candidates with every application. I have been on many faculty search committees, and sometimes it seems like it's impossible to decide among the many great candidates, other years we wonder why the applicant pool is so poor and end up canceling the search. So have some solace in the knowledge that luck has a lot to do with the process. And keep applying. Your number might be about to come up and you want to be there.
The academic job market behaves like a tournament: the best candidate gets 100% of the job, the #2 candidate gets the same as #299: nothing. It would be a lot easier to deal with if you knew your ranking, e.g. you were next in the short list, but most times you have no information. This is not your fault. It's just the reality of the academic job market.
Realize that a good portion of academic jobs are not really open. Many universities require all open positions to be advertised, even if the department already has a candidate they want to hire. The search committee still has to post the job, field candidates, interview 10 of them, bring to campus 5 of them, and just waste everybody's time before they hire the person they had in mind at the start. As the candidate, you have to see this as the cost of doing business. Let the other candidates be discouraged by this. The next job you apply for might be a real one.
Have a Plan B. It's one thing to tell yourself "research is the only thing I can/want to do, and if I don't get this job, it means I wasted 6/10/15 years of my life." It's another to be in a position in which not getting the academic job means you will be destined to making lots of money in industry, be able to raise a family, not be concerned about tenure, etc. There's a bit of selection bias going on when you compare your success against other academics. Speak with people who left academia. The ones I know seem pretty darn happy with the result. Knowing that you have options will also make you a better candidate, as it will take off the weight of desperation, allow you to be more relaxed and natural during presentations, and in the case you get an offer, put you in a better state of mind when negotiating your salary and benefits.

+1 especially point 4

Thank you! The points were all helpful to me: this is my first real experience on the job market, so having more insight into how it works behind the scenes is very useful. I'll try to get another opinion about the range of my applications as well.

"There's a bit of selection bias going on when you compare your success against other academics." A bit? Nominated for the understatement of the week award. ;-)

Get a routine (don't navel-gaze 24/7) and keep exercising your "science muscles"

Now all the navel-gazing of tweaking my CVs, polishing up my research statements and soliciting additional reference letters - to sometimes not even getting the courtesy of an explicit rejection - is starting to wear on me.

I miss doing science instead of (what feels like) limp-wristed self-aggrandisement.

I've seen on this site that people have spent years searching: do you have any advice on keeping a positive attitude?

Absolutely!

Limit all the "self-aggrandising navel-gazing" activities to a specific block of time each day. Think of it a little bit like a day job - like going to work and waiting tables during the day to pay the bills while going to night school for a future career1. By restricting these thoughts to only certain hours a day and then NOT thinking them the rest of the time (rather than worrying 24/7) you can reduce the rate that they wear on you2.
Do science! While you may not have a cyclotron or electron microscope handy, you can read papers, you can calculate, you can learn, you can think. Keep your "science muscles" active by exercising. Find an interesting topic and dig in! Improve your python programming skills, get better at numerical simulations, buy a Raspberry Pi, take some data and analyze it. Check the topics that interest you in Phys.org and read as many papers there (or in arXiv or IFLScience or Ars Technica or Gizmodo or Quanta) as you can3. And for those that really pique your interest or challenge you, go deeper. Remind yourself daily that you ARE a scientist.

1Waiting tables can certainly be a career, just not so much of an academic one.
2This helps you remember that you are working as an employment agency with one client, rather than asking for your self. By abstracting your client as someone else, it will help you write about them objectively, or even when necessary, slightly embellishing or smoothing some rush edges. Acting as your own "agent" your goal is simply doing whatever it takes to get that person a job. Then when your block of time is done each day you can kick-back, relax (at least slightly) and read or do some science-tainment and continue to build your skills.
3You can also start asking and/o answering Stack Exchange questions in various fields of science that interest you. There was an unemployed period of my life where I even viewed waking up, making coffee and signing on to SE in the morning as "going to work". I could broaden my science horizons, read papers, research and calculate things, and extremely importantly interact with lots of smart, informed people every day! In a way, SE "saved my life". :-)

Thank you! I hadn't thought of the employment agency perspective before; it sounds useful. While I don't formally have access to university facilities anymore, my former supervisor is fine with me still dropping in.

@coffee_into_plots oh that's really good to hear :-)


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How to ask politely the editor to urge the reviewers to finish the reviews in the best short time
I want to respectfully ask the editor to finish the review of my paper in the shortest time possible, because I got an early deadline to defend my thesis.
Here are some details on the review process of the submitted paper:

Field: Computer science
The 1st review took 6 months, then I received the comments of the reviewers with "major revision"
After revising the paper, it was re-submitted, and now it is 3 months since that without any feedback.

What do you think about my essay:

Dear Editor,
Our paper intitled [XX] has been submitted to the [XXX] journal in
[DATE1], after 6 months we received the reviewers' remarks that were
taken into consideration while revising the paper. In [DATE2] (3
months ago), we re-submitted the revised version and we answered all
the reviewers' comments in separated letter.
Currently, I have a time constraint to defend my thesis that requires a
published journal paper, for this reason I am wondering if there is a
possibility to have the results of reviewing our revised paper in the
best short time please?
Thank you
Best Regards,
[MyName]

You are assuming that the second review will be positive. On which basis?

Of course I am not, but due to necessity to defend the thesis that took more additional years I said that, and I based on the average review time in the recent published papers in that journal.

Please consider we live in a free world and you are free to retire the submission and submit to a journal guaranteeing a quicker review.

It will probably have no effect. The reviewers are independent and have their own careers. And after a major revision, the paper needs to be looked at carefully.
It isn't wrong to send and is polite enough, but don't expect to see much action.

When I review papers, I try to speed things along if I know that the authors are under some constraint. I'd recommend keeping it brief, and saying when your deadline actually is:

Dear Editor,
I write concerning our paper X, which we submitted on Y, and for which we submitted a revised version on Z.
My university informs me that, to defend my thesis, I should have a paper accepted for publication by Date A. I know that my university's rules are not your problem, and I apologize for this, but could I please ask if it would be possible to finish the review process by then?

So, an actual date rather than "the shortest time possible".
Also, make sure first that you understand your university's rules. Does the paper have to be published or just accepted? In my field (not computer science), there is typically quite a long lag between the two.
And, finally, as other commenters have said, be prepared to take no for an answer.

Thank you. The paper must be published, not just accepted

Yikes: actual literal publication will often/usually take at least a few months more than an acceptance decision! This looks like an impossible constraint to meet...

You better put your effort in postponing the deadline of your thesis, because that one is the deadline on which you have control, i.e. it depends on you having a paper published by that date, not on the (at least) three external people: potential positive reviews and the acceptance from the editor.
Think about how to spend in a meaningful way the time between the early deadline and the next deadline for your defense.


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Consecutive sentence citation in Chicago date-author style
I am writing a paper in which I repeat a newspaper article citation.
"The New York Times article discusses the introduction of the AFB mainframe computer (Stevens, 1984). During an interview with a salesman, the AFB is called a "revolutionary tool" (????)."
Should I use the year, or the author's last name, or a different information, in the second, bolded citation?
I would like to avoid using "ibid."

Before I answer your question, can you please tell me if
"The New York Times article discusses the introduction of the AFB mainframe computer (Stevens, 1984).'                                                                                is your first citation

Hello, thank you - yes, it is the first time in the text this citation appears. There are others before it, but they refer to other sources.

As the OP asks, they need a shortened version for all other citations. I don't know how your paper looks like, so this is the best response I can provide. Now, I don't wish to change your paper, but I would recommend for your first citation for that source is that you use one of the formats that have been listed in the second link.
Now to move on to your question. For all other citations from that source, I would recommend Author, Name of Newspaper. I would recommend the name of the newspaper because if you had any other sources made by the same author it would be easier to differentiate. And overall, I would still recommend that same format. I really hopes this helps. :)
https://library.menloschool.org/chicago/shortform
https://libguides.wvu.edu/c.php?g=418946&p=2855023

Whoever down voted me, I don't have a problem with that, I'm just wondering how I could fix my answers. Please reply, thank you.

I think your advice is not useful and also does not answer the question.


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(APA) Citations for figures I created with existing data (An Egotistical Dilemma)
Context: I'm working on a paper in APA style. I created two scatterplots on my own using code I wrote in R. However, the actual raw data represented comes from a source in my references.
Issue: I feel I'm in a bit of a quandary: I deserve recognition for the creation of these figures, yet I feel I must still provide an in-text citation in the figures' captions. The closest parallel I can come up with is that the interpretation (in the form of visual elements) of the source's raw data is ultimately my paraphrasing the raw data; thus requiring a citation so as not to constitute plagiarism.
Should I just simply provide an in-text citation in the caption and not mention that the figures won't be found in the cited source?
If not, what's a succinct way to highlight the fact that the figures aren't in the source, only the raw unmunged data? Should I, perhaps, forgo citation of the data's source in the figure and only cite the data's source when discussing the figures in the actual text?

So you entered data into an R dataframe and used the R plot() command, maybe adding a title, axis names, etc., right?

Plagiarism is one thing, and I support your view on this situation as paraphrasing data. But a more important reason to add a citation is to let the reader know where the data is coming from (and how the data was collected). This is immensily important for the reader to understand and analyse your presented data correctly. In my mind, we should always write with open cards, i.e. so that our work is repeatable and deductions are easy to follow.

Should I just simply provide an in-text citation in the caption and not mention that the figures won't be found in the cited source?

I would recommend a sentence in the figure text of something like: "The data in this figure are derived from raw data found in [source]." Preferably add an equation reference to the equation that the plotted data is a result of: "The data in this figure are derived from raw data found in [source] by using (equation reference)." or ..."by applying (equation reference) to it."
In my mind this kind of sentence will make it clear where the raw data is coming from, and that the figure you present is your work and therefore not found in the source.

Should I, perhaps, forgo citation of the data's source in the figure and only cite the data's source when discussing the figures in the actual text?

The reference to the raw data should be in the figure text. A common way to read a report/article is to read summary and conclusion and scroll through to read highlights and look at figures. Therefore the figure texts should explain their figure in a quite independent way, so that the quick read gives a good understanding of what the figure presents without searching through the main text. References to how the data was collected and computed, is part of the foundation for understanding the figure.