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Is it unfair for paper circumstances to play a role in the review of the paper?
Let me say beforehand that this question does not refer to scientific correctness and treats it as undisputed, i.e. the paper is assumed correct in the sense that it clearly states a valid purpose, has an adequate literature review, the theory and methods are scientifically sound.
After a brief introspective, it came to me that I often take into the account under what circumstances a paper was written when assessing the scope / prestige of the venue it is to be published at. This usually includes funding, if any, seniority and number of the authors.
On the one hand, I find it unfair to expect the same scale of experimental devotion from a student-mentor author pair from a developing country with no or relatively little funding as from a research group with multiple grants from a developed country. Given the relevance of the contribution, the first group shouldn't be rejected on the grounds that they don't have a comparable abundance of resources. Also, they shouldn't be discouraged as they managed to make a difference without those resources. And, after all, we do this kind of expectation management in other aspects of life, e.g. one doesn't fail a student because they wrote the assignment in a free text editor, because they can't afford MS Word.
As a concrete example, I once saw another reviewer comment that they would like to see a more significant average deviation on the graphs. This requirement would've required the authors to run tens of multi-hour simulations on a cloud cluster consisting of ~50 high-end instances, each billed by the hour, and it is also rather irrelevant to the proof or the contribution itself. The two authors received a government grant which translated to roughly $1200 for this research at an university that doesn't have subsidies with the cloud provider.
On the other hand, this is clearly a bias. Augmented additionally by the fact that it is not possible to implement during a double-blind review. Also, somewhere in there is an argument how practices to include low-cost research would result in research funding being gradually cut in some way or the other.
So, my question is the dilemma whether it is unfair to let capabilities outside of a research group's direct influence contribute to the review of their paper (again, only once the contribution is established)?
My field is computer science, so, while not strictly pen-and-paper, few resources are needed, relative to other fields, e.g. experimental physics, bio-medicine, etc., to do meaningful research.

Wouldn't it be the best course just to tape over the authors and affiliations and then to review the paper as is?

We're assuming this is a "standard" venue, right? There's certainly venues for research with special conditions, e.g. undergrad conference/journals, conferences for research in a specific area of the world, conferences for non-research universities, etc. I would expect less rigor and resources in a undergrad conference than a standard one.

No, your review should not change based on knowledge of the authors' circumstances. Your role is to give the editor an objective assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the author's submitted manuscript. However, you can still help less advantaged authors. Write your review to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of their work, and leave the authors to choose how they wish to address these.
To take your example: suppose that the authors have developed a new algorithm for X, which you consider to be a worthwhile contribution to the field. However, they go on to claim that their algorithm outperforms the current standard, based on only one test-case.
An unhelpful reviewer might write:
"This paper has potential, but it cannot be accepted unless the authors run more test-cases". A more helpful review would be: "The algorithm in this paper appears to be a useful contribution, and it is deserving of publication. However, I do not feel the authors currently have sufficient evidence to support their unqualified claims regarding performance, and this should be addressed before acceptance."
By doing this, you leave the authors with a choice: they can either run more experiments, or they can put caveats around their discussion of performance. (Of course, you should only do this if you feel the paper is publishable in such a form.) A wealthy research group will likely choose the former option, a less well-off one might settle for the latter. However, both have been held to the same standard of scientific correctness.

This is an excellent answer, I think the proposed solution satisfies everything.

Unfortunately you seem to be specifically asking for opinions which isn't especially valued here. However, I'll give my opinion on this.
A scientific paper (or any scholarly paper) should stand on its own. Either it properly makes a case or it does not. The resources involved in establishing truth should not be a factor, other than to say WOW in some cases. We should neither value nor devalue a work of scholarship based on who did it or how.
The case you mention is instructive. Asking for better significance of results is completely valid. With low significance the likelihood that the results are invalid is increased. Who knows what would happen if more resources were poured into it other than with more data (and a good design) the confidence in the results is increased.
However, in cases in which researchers from places with few resources achieve good results, it is the people themselves who should be especially honored, but not the paper itself. Again, you can say WOW, but the paper stands for itself. We seek truth in scholarship, nothing more or less.

This might be a good meta discussion. I consider all ethics questions to be more or less opinion based. It is also my opinion that this question is not significantly different from other ethics-tagged questions and that it can be constructively answered (as your answer shows, among others). If you however do have some concrete suggestions how to improve the question, feel free to comment or edit.

I enjoyed reading this answer, but have two observations: (1) 'Who knows what would happen if more resources were poured into it' could extend indefinitely, as could data collection. Someone with more resources may be familiar with larger-than-necessary datasets and insist on the same. Who gets to draw the line?

(2) "The resources involved in establishing truth..."is ironically and unintentionally very true. In English, 'truth' is derived from religious terms - from faith, loyalty, steadfastness, and not from 'factual' or 'scientific' terms. Sadly, the availability of resources has very much decided 'faith', historically. Science is not immune from this, since it's the same humans working on it. The 'fact' is that we live in an unequal world and what is routine for one is a luxury for another.

@user153812, the individual researcher has to draw the line. Resources are always finite. Larger studies are generally better, but it may be impossible to achieve. Research, however, need to be repeatable, so that spurious results (which are always possible in statistical studies) can be corrected. At the 95% confidence level, 5% will give the wrong answer. And even that assumes true randomness. Moreover, some questions are so important to answer now that time won't permit a fuller answer as action needs to be taken to, for example, save lives in the near term. A better answer has to wait.

Precisely. The individual researcher does decide; so unless it is a clearly non-representative datset, reviewers should not object (because they use larger datasets themselves). That is the point OP is trying to make- for some researchers the objection is a minor annoyance, for others it could be near-impossible to resolve.

Let me answer this question by other questions:
Would you like to live in a world where pharmaceutic products which the population is administered is based on studies in which a reviewer accepts that given the resources the researchers had at hand it was unrealistic that they could make a clear line between "drug is working or not harmful" to "drug is not working or harmful" can not be drawn, and therefore we accept that we regularly take unproven results as proven?
Would you like to live in a world where simulation software contains simplifications which work "usually" and not "most of the time" when predicting if a structure is stable?
Would you like to live a world where it is ok to accept an algorithm for a self driving car even if it not proven up to the full level of required credibility because the authors could not afford to test it properly?
So, no, sometimes lives, health, well-being and economic progress depend on science being right. We should not just do it sloppy.

So, my question is the dilemma whether it is unfair to let capabilities outside of a research group's direct influence contribute to the review of their paper (again, only once the contribution is established)?

Is it fair that there are people suffering from war, poverty, starvation and all kinds of other serious problems in various parts of the world as I sit in my comfortable chair typing this answer, free to think about academic matters? No, in all honesty it strikes me as deeply unfair. Perhaps I should drop everything else and dedicate my life to correcting all the injustices out there. But, recognizing that both my ability to fix the world’s problems and my willingness to do so are limited, instead I have taken it upon myself to write this answer in this small region of space-time that I currently occupy, and I will try to do the best job of it that I can.
The same principle applies to the situation you ask about. When I review a paper, I take on a responsibility to provide the most honest, competent and professional review I can. Thus, the standards of review I apply must be the same ones that I would want to see applied to my own work, and the review must be as unbiased and uninfluenced by irrelevant factors as I can humanly (and consciously) manage to make it. To do anything less would be to betray the trust of the people who chose to assign me the review and of the journal’s readers who expect papers of a certain quality. I can’t fix all the world’s problems, nor do I have a responsibility to do so, but the one thing I do have a responsibility for is to do the job that I have committed to doing as well and impartially as I can.
The conclusion is obvious. It is unfair that researchers from some parts of the world are constrained by a serious lack of resources that prevents them from doing good research as well as equally or less talented researchers in richer countries. But as a reviewer, it would be wrong for you to “grade on a curve” and set aside your usual standards for researchers who you feel are disadvantaged in some way. Your desire to give those researchers a little “help” is well-intentioned and even admirable, but you must resist that temptation; to make the world a better place, start by doing your job as professionally as you can. Of course, if you still have time and energy left over after that, there are plenty of things you can do try to help researchers from poor countries, so certainly that should be something to consider as well.

Let's start with the premise that it is impossible to be perfectly unbiased as a peer-reviewer, though it is a worthy goal to work towards. Now, given other types of bias prevalent in publishing, this seems benevolent, because ultimately it is oriented towards equal opportunity. So in principle, I'd argue that this is actually a responsible thing to do.
In practice, there are two issues that come to mind:
(1) The reviewer's ability to assess how well funded a group is. A basic assessment could be based on the authors' country, but there are big variations across universities in any country. Not all groups publicly mention their funding status. It doesn't seem possible to make a correct assessment of spending ability based on the little information available.
(2) This type of bias should be like a valve; it should work one way. That is, you shouldn't hold a well funded group to higher standards just because of their funding. That can open doors to all sorts of discrimination which will rapidly spiral into unsavoury. The goal is to give less economically privileged groups a leg-up, not to use privilege against those who have earned it already.
EDIT:
On probing different angles of this issue further, I came across this question which is quite similar on the ethics, though it deals with admissions. Insofar as promoting equal opportunity is concerned, I think there are some very good answers, particularly the one by penelope.

Regarding this seems benevolent, because ultimately it is oriented towards equal opportunity, imho as Buffy wrote We seek truth in scholarship, nothing more or less.  and therefore all other considerations should be secondary. Imho equal opportunity can play a role in the grant of research funds but not when judging the result. This is why I downvoted.

@problemofficer - First, thanks for taking time to explain your point, really appreciate it. Nevertheless I must disagree on two counts: (1) OP is amply clear that the dilemna in question does not involve any compromise in the veracity of results(first sentence of question). So anything over that is essentially frills; and not being able to afford said frills shouldn't detract from the 'truth'. Just a less pretty way to state the truth. (2) 'All other considerations should be secondary' is fine with me, so long as it is a consideration. I don't think I conveyed anything to the contrary.

Now you have mentioned computer science, I'd like to tell a loosely-related anecdote.
At earlier days I have seen a chess program for a programmable calculator. The calculator had, like, 12 registers and no larger RAM or swap ability. You'd think you need an array of 64 integers to represent a chess board. What they did, was to go for some endspiel problem (so, less distinct chess pieces) and sort of bit packing. They put each row of the board in a single register.
This way they even had enough spare registers to track other required things in a game.

Since this is computer science, hardware matters. But those, who do not have access to a more potent hardware, are not lost, standing in the rain. It is possible to word smarter, not harder and to circumvent the limitations of the hardware by more clever programming and better algorithms.

But actually, my personal opinion is stated in the comment above. Affiliation and names should play no role in the review process.

This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post. - From Review

I understand that the first part of the answer is a bit far-fetched (and it probably won't fit into a comment). But the second part actually provides an answer. "Is it unfair for paper circumstances to play a role in the review of the paper?" – "Yes, it is."

There is always some bias, but if you have an established set of criteria that you apply across the board then that seems to be fair, only my opinion though.
If all papers/submissions were double blind reviewed then, as you say, it would not be an issue.


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Phd program @Harvard when my '''education''' didn't go beyond highschool?
Would I be accepted at a Phd Program @Harvard when my '''education''' didn't go beyond high-school? I have however done lot of self-study after graduating from high-school by studying:

Electrodynamics.
General Relativity.
Quantum Mechanics ...

and all the maths that is related to those physics areas.
So do I have any chance?

Yes, this is a duplicate. Voting to close.

I don't know if you'll get into Harvard but try the subject GRE for competitive admissions.

You PROBABLY don't have any chance at the moment. Have you published in the field? Do you have any projects that you could show to a professor (outside Harvard first?) that might shed light on your exceptional ability? Without ever going to any college you would have to be extraordinary enough to be an exception to Harvard's admission criteria. Of course, alternatively you could try taking some graduate level classes somewhere else, build a relationship with a professor, and either join their program for a preparatory master's or get them to comment to Harvard on your abilities.

This is in no way a discouragement. The fear of inadequacy created by studying all of this on your own may have actually helped you to be better than the average admit at Harvard PhD. If this is so (which you would have a hard time evaluating by yourself), then the channels suggested could reveal this to Harvard.

It's definitely possible. What you need is:  (1) someone the PhD program at Harvard acknowledges to vouch for your academic skills, and (2) show them you have those skills. (1) is normally accomplished by including letters of recommendation from your college professors. You need to be creative in choosing your recommenders. (2) is normally accomplished by including a writing sample in your application (this is normally required anyway).
And by the way, you're accepted to a program, not at a program. If your application contains grammatical mistakes like that, you're unlikely to be accepted. That's just the way it is.

The person doesn't claim to have anything beyond a high school education.

@aeismail Yes, I am aware ... ?

So who should act as the recommenders. Saying "being creative" isn't exactly helpful here. . . .

It's not definitely possible. It's definitely plausible. Getting into Harvard PhD is not a purely stochastic event. Certain (difficult) conditions have to be met by the OP as far as producing evidence of excellence, which might not be physically possible depending on his actual level of excellence.

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Where to submit an incomplete work just for the sake of record
I am an undergraduate student. One day an idea popped up in my mind about some theory. I started working on that and then I have to stop due to my very limited knowledge. I shared my incomplete work with my brother and he said that what I have is rubbish. May be it is rubbish and I cannot see what is wrong with it at present. If my work is useless, it doesn't matter but if it is of some use and somebody else found about it(independently without my incomplete work). In this case  I get no credit and it is fair too because I have not contributed to the final result.
The problem is, when I tell somebody that I have also worked on the same idea then no one would believe me.
So is there any way that I can submit my incomplete work online, so that it gets recorded. And maybe if my work is not rubbish then it may be of some help to others.

Why don't you just bring it to its finish and then submit? Either your brother is right and then you shouldn't be publishing it anyway, or he is wrong, and then you should just ignore him and go on. Do you have a prof that could advise you?

For an undergraduate student it would seem pretty normal to get advice from a professor on the quality of what you have done. You might even get advice on how to complete it.

So is there any way that I can submit my incomplete work online, so that it gets recorded?

Congrats on your research idea! As I see it, you have two options:

Publish a blog post or put something up on a website.
Spend more time on polishing your work: ideally, by getting feedback from a professor or trusted expert. Within a few more months, put together the best write-up you can at this time. Then put the paper online, e.g. on arXiv.

Based on the information you provided, my preferred option in your situation would be (1). This is because:

You describe your idea as incomplete. If that is true, you don't want to present this as a finished paper to the community (attached to your name) when it is more of an idle curiosity that is not yet fleshed out.
It is very uncommon for undergraduates to be able to produce a publication-worthy paper without mentorship. So, what you need at this stage is a good professor, mentor, and advisor. Without that, statistically speaking you probably don't have the skills or knowledge yet to pursue this idea in the most effective direction.
If your brother is right that the idea is bad (I don't know your brother, so I can't say if he is just being mean :) ) then announcing it in a public venue like arXiv could be embarrassing later down the road. It doesn't really matter now (lots of crappy papers get published to arXiv), only later.

In contrast, writing a blog post has several advantages: for instance, it's not really embarrassing later (no one expects you to sound like an expert in a blog post).
Overall, I don't mean to discourage you -- the fact that you had a new idea and are excited about thinking about it is a sign that you would make a good researcher. Establishing a relationship with a professor is the natural next step, and they could also give better advice about whether this particular idea is worthwhile.

If you blog in a place that you don't control, make sure you understand the fine print in any user agreement. Some will at least attempt to claim ownership over anything published there.

Try https://www.journalunpublishedresearch.com/, it's free to submit and they take papers from most subject areas.

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Undergraduate international computer science student [Can i go to grad school?]
I am Computer science major at University of Wisconsin Madison.
I just want to ask you if i can get into graduate school with such a low GPA.
My current GPA is 2.9 and i have 20 more credit which makes me possible to go over 3.0
But I have finished my freshman year with 2.0 GPA and took 2 years of ESL program.(English as a second language).
I have done 2~3 internships in korea and plan to do 2 years of more working experience after i graduate from college this summer.
I am worried about my GPA because it is quite low and my CS GPA is only about 3.4
DO you guys think i have chance of getting into any top 30 or 40 graduate school out there in computer science field?
Thank you

It depends on what you mean by graduate school.  If you mean a masters program, then you can definitely get in, even at a top 30-40 school, assuming you have some sort of explanation for your grades and good letters of recommendation/evidence of work to ameliorate your application.
If you're referring to a PhD program, may I suggest that you instead apply to masters programs first.  This allows you to get a new GPA to associate with your name, research experience and recommendations.  Then, you can apply to PhD programs and not only have a much better shot of getting in, but you will also be more prepared and have a much better idea of what you want to do.

Anything is possible.  In your cover letter highlight your strengths, perhaps mention that you have managed to have a BLAH GPA while at the same time learning English as a Second Language.  If you word this properly, you can show that this is a strength, i.e. you had to properly manage workload balance while at the same time earning your degree.  Highlight your internship experience.  Make it known that you have a firm understanding of what is being done in industry and the type of problems one would regularly come across.
All in all, you have just as much of a shot as anyone.  The worse that can happen is that you won't get in anywhere.  I highly suggest you apply to as many schools as you can as this increases your odds of being accepted, at least somewhere.

This depends if you already know the area that you want to research.  A lot of times, you are at the point in your career where you are going to grad school to get a taste of what's out there, so to speak.  At the very least, the OP should tailor his application / cover letter to each school he applies to.

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Combining Visiting Professor with TT
I currently work as a TT Assistant Professor in a very comfortable and welcoming top-100 university in my field. My wife lives in another country for the time being and I would like to spend more time with her so I was looking for opportunities there as well. I noticed a top-10 university there that I have connections with that I would like to collaborate with. After making introductions and such, they are willing to collaborate and are additionally offering me a visiting professor position.
The way I understood this offer (one line in an e-mail), is that this would allow me to go there and do research and teach some courses every once in a while and probably get my costs reimbursed. After reading some threads here, it seems that my view is too simplistic and possibly wrong.

Is such a visiting professor position actually combineable with an existing TT position?
Is there a name for what I described in the second paragraph?
What would you recommend for my situation? Visiting researcher? Visiting scholar? Visiting professor?

In the U.S. model, you'd need to "take leave" from your TT position, allowed for at most a year or two. They would not pay you at all while on leave. If the other univ is a high-status place, your time there might enhance your own status at your TT place... or, depending how things appear, it might detract, for example if people at the TT place get the idea that you feel no attachment to them... And, visiting positions rarely lead to TT slots, so it would be "naive..." to imagine that you'd necessarily have that opportunity at the more desirable place. Don't give up the TT place.

Thank you for this advice, this confirms my fears and I would not give up my TT for this. What is the name for what I'm looking for though? I.e., some kind of an agreement that allows me to be part of their university without sacrificing the TT. I would have expected this situation to be common but the terminology is confusing for me so it's hard to look up ...

In the U.S., the title would be something like "Visiting Scholar" or "Visiting Assistant Professor" (the latter indicating some sort of seniority higher than "scholar", which might refer to a post-doc, meaning just after PhD). But in the U.S. I think you'd not be allowed to have a permanent job at two universities: one or the other would decide that they were not getting their money's worth out of you (even if you scrupulously avoid "double-dipping", that is, do not accept two paychecks at the same time...) "Visiting" positions are not permanent, even if recurring.

I will answer this question in light of @paulgarrett 's comments:

A Visiting Professor position is a full time job and not combineable with a full time TT position
A Visiting Professor position is no guarantee whatsover for anything else in the future so one should not give up her TT position for this.
Visiting Scholar seems to be the type of position that is combineable: you start a research collaboration with the second university but officially affiliate 100% with your current one.

I ended up going for something in between which I hope will combines the best of both worlds: having the visiting scholar position for a year and simultaneously giving up 20% of my TT at my current institution in order to get a temporary 20% position as visiting professor at the external institution.


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Can I use the term 'abuse' if someone submits five papers to a conference?
During my career as a researcher, I have attended many high-quality conferences in my research field and presented papers. In general there are some rules about the number of papers accepted which belong to a researcher as an author. I can take it normally one person can be an author for a paper, or two. What about five papers?
My question is;
Can I use the term abuse if someone (first author or not) submits five papers to a conference?

"In general there are some rules about the number of papers accepted which belong to a researcher as an author." - even if that is the case, the maximum number of accepted papers per author does limit the maximum number of submitted papers per author.

Can you explain why you would consider it abuse?

Of note, there are some large conference that allocate the number of sessions to sub-groups/divisions in the conference based upon the number of submissions to those sub-groups/divisions in the proceeding year. This creates an incentive to pad the submission papers to your division you wish to have more exposure in the following year.

Conferences my field (theoretical computer science) do not rate-limit authors.  It is quite common for the most prolific author at any given conferences to be a coauthor on five or more papers.  I think the largest number of papers I've seen from one author at one conference was 11 (out of roughly 45 papers total).  And no, not every submission from these authors is accepted.

Why would you think of it as abuse? If the conference has rules that prohibit it then the author is breaking the rules, otherwise not. The more important question is whether the papers have merit. If they do, all is good. If not, they will be rejected in due course. In the latter case, the committee can admonish the author about a flood of junk.
The conference program committee doesn't need to accept a lot of papers from an individual and I think in most cases they would like a variety of authors to be represented, but that is their concern. It also seems a valid "policy."
The committee also needs to be prepared to review, according to their normal methods, all papers submitted. The selection, however, probably involves actually accepting fewer papers than the reviewers approve, just for time and space.
The "problem" if there is one, will resolve itself.
If the committee doesn't want this to happen in future, they can write rules into future submission criteria.

And, sometimes, works mature over long time and if multiple results relevant to a conference get ready about the same period, they might be all sent there (without anything sinister going on).

@CaptainEmacs and for someone who does a lot (lot) of collaborative work, such as Paul Erdős in mathematics until his death, having lots of things simultaneously "growing" is a natural phenomenon. Ditto the sciences where papers produced in a lab often have many authors.

@CaptainEmacs: Or at least the most "sinister" part in there being that the author tries to save money and time by attempting to present their work at just one conference rather than several.

@O.R.Mapper There are conferences for which registration gives you the right to present 2 papers, but for every additional paper, you have to pay.

@CaptainEmacs: That's true, but saving on flight or train tickets and hotels can also be relevant in terms of total cost.

@O.R.Mapper Frankly, it is none of our (or anybody's) business if the authors try to save money. Not everyone is blessed with unending sources of funding. As a PhD student in Germany, I always had to contribute parts of my expenses, typically 50%. I do not know whether this is still the case, but the only criterion is whether they abuse the system in one way or another. I do not see how that would happen for conferences which limits the numbers of submissions per registration.

@CaptainEmacs: I'd say it is very much the business at least of the institution whose money is being saved. In any case, note that I put "sinister" in quotes - by that I meant that it's not sinister (in a fraudulent/unethical practice kind of way) at all, but completely legitimate. Also, to my knowledge: Getting fully reimbursed for any business trips (i.e. any expenses for fares and accommodation, plus the usual rate of extra payment e.g. for staying abroad) is, as far as I can tell, the standard at least in CS in Germany at least for the past few years.

@O.R.Mapper Ok, thanks, now I understand you. I said "authors" as pars pro toto, I of course included the institution in the party interested to lower costs.

Strange. I would indeed consider it "abuse" to submit five papers to one conference. The reviewers are investing a lot of time in reading and evaluating the papers. I would think that one would submit the paper that is the best fit for the conference! I really don't like the co-author-is-the-lab-head thing that seems to be expanding by the minute. I really don't see how one researcher can have five projects on different topics coming together for one conference, unless salami-slicing is going on to get more publications.

The appropriateness of submitting 5 papers to a conference depends on what the nature of the conference is and on how coauthorship is done. Is the conference competitive, or just a way for people to meet up and share ideas? If each paper has 5 authors, is it strange for one author to be on 5 submissions?
In my area of computer science, I've seen someone with 5 papers accepted to one conference. The only thing this made anyone think is that the individual is impressively productive.
In any case, I don't see how it rises to the level of "abuse", unless this person is genuinely spamming the conference (e.g. with computer-generated papers). Each paper should be judged on its merits.

I agree with you. I sometimes do think that people don't really care about conferences or what they are presenting. They just need that line on their CV, at least, this is what I sensed in my department. I don't even think it's appropriate to present the same research at different conferences, but that's what people do all the time. Frankly, I do it too. Why? because I need publications to get a job and scholarships. So it's largely determined by the market, or the reality.


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The rationale behind academic and industry salary difference
This question is not about PhD students, but about professionals with PhD degrees. To narrow down the scope even further, let my subject be a computer science PhD seeking a job in Europe. (I'd include the USA as well, but I'm afraid the dynamics are not the same. However, feel free to include relevant comparisons and data in the answers when needed.)
The salary of such a professional, if they stayed in academia, will be probably lower than if they chose to get a job in industry.
What is the economic incentive behind the university policy to not have higher, more competitive salaries when compared to industry?
I know that state institutions are (at least partially) on the government budget, so they arguably have little say in the matter. However, private institutions are significantly more independent in their organization. Basically, isn't it in the institutions' best interest to have the "best pick" of PhD graduates, instead of competing against the lure of a higher pay?

Usually, academia is more research oriented. You are free to research whatever pops in your mind. Plus you can teach cool and modern topics to graduate students which is always a lot of fun. Such freedom is not present at the industry. So, many many people prefer the academic freedom even if salaries are a fraction of industrial ones.

Universities have less money.

Given how many people currently fight for each faculty position, we can be lucky that faculty salaries are still as high as they are.

To quote Dr. Raymond Stantz:  "Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've WORKED in the private sector. They expect results."

Surely some also think teaching is important, and don't go to industry because there is less (no?) opportunity to teach.

@PsySp "You are free to research whatever pops in your mind"* well, only if you are a tenure awarded professor - any level below that you are more or less forced to do what you are told to do (by your supervisor or by whomever pays your scholarship).

@GennaroTedesco I am not a tenure awarded professor, and I spend the vast majority of my time researching whatever pops into my mind. Also, "supervisor" isn't really an accurate description of anyone above me in rank, and they definitely don't define my research agenda.

@Fomite This is great, but nevertheless you have to acknowledge that this isn't the general situation (at least not in every area).

@GennaroTedesco You were the one who asserted a general condition, not me.

@KevinMcKenzie It will be pretty hard to get hired, get tenure, get grants, get graduate students at a large research university without producing results. The real difference is that companies do not welcome risk. Or maybe I should not take ghost busters comments seriously..

@GennaroTedesco forced to do what you are told? I think you have a very distorted view of academia and our assertion couldn't be more false. I am not tenured (yet) and I was, and still am, free to do (80% of the time) any research that comes into my mind without having anyone above my neck. Moreover, it seems that this is the norm: All the PostDocs we have they pursue their own research agenda, as well as the tenured track assistant professors. I do not know where your idea is coming from.

Are universities in Europe for-profit? All of the institutions with which I have worked (R-1 and teaching, all in the US) have tried to pay faculty as much as they can, but just aren't as flush with cash for payroll as (successful) private sector tech companies.

@JeffE Isn't that a matter of perspective? Sure, some universities have less money compared to some companies, but it also goes the other way. I think this is a rather large spectrum. But, what strikes me as important is also the income to number of employees ratio, where I think the universities are better off. Universities have around a few thousand faculty + admin stuff, companies can have tens or even hundreds of thousands of employees, but the income is not multiplied with the same scale. As an example, on the far side admittedly, compare employees vs income of Harvard and Microsoft.

I highly doubt university salary policies are based on "economic incentive", especially in European countries where universities are directly funded by the ministry of education. Generally, political, not economic reasons prevail.
That aside, competition for academic positions is already fierce - there is simply no need to offer higher salaries to attract candidates. Currently, candidates are attracted by reputation, the thirst for knowledge, and similar non-monetary considerations. It is by no means clear that higher salaries would attract better candidates: you would have to argue that someone who simply follows the money would make a better researcher than someone who is willing to put in long hours at low pay for the dream of someday being allowed to put "Prof. Dr." in front of their name!

Good answer.  Certainly,  a maître de conférences in France is probably much more prestigious for a young and good researcher after the PhD than any industrial job, especially in maths etc. Even if the salary is tiny in comparison to what someone could get e.g. in an investment bank etc.

Good answer. However, it is not just "following the money" vs "dreaming to be called Prof. Dr.". I'd argue that the main reason why competition for academic jobs is fierce is that there are way too many PhDs for each professor job opening. And many PhD's don't leave their field because they do not have the skills to work elsewhere. If my reasoning is correct, computer science professors in private institution should receive competitive salaries. Anybody who can comment?

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

A few thoughts on the disparity between academic and private industry salaries:

In some cases, they aren't: It's hard to get broad level comparisons as many companies are fairly cagey with their salaries and it's not something people often talk about, and there's a difficulty in a 1:1 correspondence between academic positions and industry ones, but I've talked to enough people to be comfortable saying that while industry positions often pay more, this isn't universally true.
Universities aren't a free market: Often, universities have salary guidelines set by the legislature if they're public, different compensation schemes to promote people trying for full professor, other constraints, etc. that mean their salary determination is not just "What the market can bear."
They may not need to: Getting a PhD is already something of an ode to opportunity costs, and there's a fairly heavy selective pressure towards people not necessarily being fully motivated purely by the number on their paycheck. For example, while financial considerations came up in my own job search, they were on the level of "This needs to not be a financial disaster for me to take the job" not "Coming in at a higher salary is what will determine my choice". That means offering more money may not actually yield better recruitment prospects.
Academic freedom: By and large faculty members have a considerable amount of autonomy over their research agendas, and are free to switch those agendas in a way that industry researchers are not. For example, if a drug company abandons working on drugs to treat X, it doesn't matter how interested you are in X, that's not what you're working on anymore. That freedom (which is, admittedly, constrained by things like "Can I get funding for X?") is valuable to people.
Other soft factors: Some people like being professors. I set my own hours, and if I want to not come into the office one day, and work from 10 PM to 5 AM on something, I'm fully free to do so in a way most people in private industry are not. I am, by and large, not directly supervised by anyone. Even when I was a postdoc, and had a direct supervisor, what I did with my day was mostly up to me.

Especially in fields where there is not a lot of movement between academia and industry (for example, in biomedical fields, leaving academia often means its hard to come back), one could view the higher industry salary as what has to be paid in order for people to give up the largely non-monetary "perks" of academia.

I don't know about other countries, but in Germany, you will have some other benefits from staying in academia (at least if you can get a position as a professor) that you will not have in the industry (google "Verbeamtung" for more details). One of them is the security that your company (the university) will not suddenly decide to fire, replace or transfer you, so you can be rather sure that you will have this job for the next 40-something years; something that might be nice for long time planning. There are other benefits, like health benefits, etc. - if you are interested in that feel free to google it.
So you have to decide between possible high income, but with risks, or lower (but still quite good) income that is rather secure.
That is, of course, only one reason. There might be many different reasons to go into industry or academia, there might be as many as there are people in both areas, but as you explicitly mentioned the money, I think risk vs. security might be a big point to make up for this gap in payment.

so you can be rather sure that you will have this job for the next 40-something years – If you ignore the fact that there almost no permanent positions in academia below the level of professor.

@DirkLiebhold "So you have to decide between possible high income, but with risks, or lower (but still quite good) income that is rather secure." https://www.hochschulverband.de/fileadmin/redaktion/download/pdf/w-portal-d/w1-besoldung_ful-beitrag.pdf here they say that an assistant professor has 3.667,98 Euro per month, after a basic tax calculation, that is around 2200 Euro. I don't know if this is "quite good". Perhaps I just don't have enough perspective...

@user3209815 2200Eu sounds a bit low for me for an Assistant Professor. Are you sure this is right? But again: people that stay in academia they do not do this for money.

@PsySp: The salary tables in question are for a special class of civil employee in Germany called Beamte. The salary is so low, because it comes with an automatic pension and other benefits. I earned almost as much as the listed salary on a part-time PhD position in Germany (not being in said class).

@Wrzlprmft Thanks for the explanation. That salary seemed too low for me to be on a "normal" scale.

@Wrzlprmft Thanks for bringing some scale to the discussion. I'm familiar with the term Beamte (I attended a Gymnasium in Germany), but aren't all professors Beamte? If not, could you share a similar salary scale for non-Beamte professors? And by professor, I mean from Juniorprofessor and up.

but aren't all professors Beamte? – Sure, but what what point do you want to make?

@Wrzlprmft Your previous comment led me to believe that there are other classes of salaries for "non-Beamte" professors. Since you state that the low salary is for a "special class of civil employee" and that you used to earn "almost as much as the listed salary on a part-time PhD position", I was under the impression that not all professors are bound to that scale. That is why I asked whether there are other pay scales.

TL;DR: more money does not in general buy better researchers.
Your question is based on the premise "more money buys better researchers than less money". I would like to argue that, aside from the obvious fact that more money costs more money and therefore comes at the expense of other things, the premise itself is simply incorrect (I mean it is not universally correct; there are specific contexts when it is correct however).
The thing is, different kinds of people are motivated by different things. Some people are highly motivated by money and less by a passion for some specific professional calling. You can find a lot of them in finance and other very lucrative industries that are not known for being especially exciting. Other people are highly motivated by the passion for doing something very creative and/or with a high potential for societal impact. Academics tend to be those sorts of people.
Now imagine what would happen if universities suddenly started advertising professor positions that paid $1M a year. What I think would happen is that a lot of money-driven people would suddenly decide that academia is a good place to build their careers, as opposed to, say, finance or tech. Some of those people are quite talented and would be able to build impressive resumes that enable them to get a share of those lucrative jobs, driving out some more passion-driven academics.
However, in the long run academia would suffer. To do really good science, you have to have a great deal of passion - more than some of the money driven types would be able to muster for long term success or for making groundbreaking, world-changing discoveries (as opposed to just for building a good enough resume to land a tenure track job).
My example is a bit exaggerated, but it illustrates a general principle that I firmly believe is true: by offering less money than industry on average, universities not only save money, they actually select for a particular kind of person, who is in fact a better kind of researcher for fulfilling the mission academia is trying to accomplish.

"more money does not in general buy better researchers" it does not buy better researchers but it does buy better research -just simply because researchers wouldn't have to apply for new positions every 6 months, work with limited laboratory tools, give up on visiting conference and interrupt their research whenever no (or not enough) money is offered by university. We all agree that you don't do research for the money but practically speaking money does allow you to perform good research without worrying every 3 months.

@GennaroTedesco "work with limited laboratory tools, give up on visiting conference and interrupt their research whenever no (or not enough) money is offered by university." - You seem to be suggesting that higher paid industry scientists are using their higher salaries to support their research. I very much doubt this is true. Additionally, higher salary costs would eat into grant budgets and startup funds, and actually reduce the resources available for actual research.

@GennaroTedesco Additionally, your "not having to worry every 3 months" is an argument against short term positions, not academic vs. private positions. I know plenty of consultants who are in a constant state of searching for jobs (either internally with projects as funding comes and goes or with different firms).

@Fomite I am not suggesting that people in industry use their salaries to support their research, I am stating that lack of money in the university does affect research as it cuts down the stability of the people who are involved in it. Moreover, you might be surprised but startups funds are in general way more than what university allowances are in the course of, say, 2-3 years (standard post-doc position duration). About my assumption on the short terms position, you're right, I am assuming that academic position are short (after all, are they not?).

@GennaroTedesco "I am assuming that academic position are short (after all, are they not?)" Not necessarily, no, and not inherently less than private industry positions.

@Fomite Well, except they are. What is the average duration of the sort of academic position you are referring to? In industry (unless you are dismissed) you are generally employed permanently. Don't take this wrong, I am not arguing that industry is better than academia, I am arguing that academia does in general pay way less and offers way less job stability.

"In industry (unless you are dismissed) you are generally employed permanently." - That's a big unless, given you can be fired for cause, laid off, the company goes under, etc. And I'd assert that the average duration of an academic position (lets say an average of 4, falling between a postdoc and non-tenured professor who doesn't get tenure) is quite a bit longer than many of the people I know who went into consulting had - as mentioned, there are many private industry positions where you must compete for projects internally or find yourself out of a job.

@GennaroTedesco According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the U.S., the median current job longevity for workers 25-34 is 3.2 years, which isn't meaningfully longer than most academic positions in the same age. Overall, it's 4.6, which is still...not that much longer, if at all.

@Fomite I can speak about Europe where there are very strict conditions around terminations and job security is extremely high. I don't know why you are talking about consulting (which is only one of the many jobs in industry); moreover, about the statistics you mention, one must see what they really mean. It may be true that people switch jobs very often but that might as well be because they want to (or because they get better jobs), not because the grant is over and they have to re-apply somewhere around the continent.

Don't assume everywhere is US (where employment is at daily will and academic positions are generally well paid): elsewhere (especially in Europe) academics positions are rare nowadays whereas industry employs decently well (and pays longer and better).

@GennaroTedesco Because if one is making statements about "industry" as a whole, one of many jobs in industry is still relevant, especially given its where a great many people in my field would end up if they went private. I'll note I haven't assumed the U.S. is everywhere - you're the one whose spoken in universality. I've simply asserted "That's not necessarily true..."

Had to -1 because the logic doesn't really work out.  Sure, if you offer tons of money, you'll get tons of applicants; but there're plenty of ways to ensure that you get true performers rather than frauds who just want the money.  And besides this logical mistake, there's the factual mistake that universities already do offer more money when they want the best talent.

@Nat thanks for the feedback. You're free to disagree of course, but, to clarify: (a) I never said the money-driven people are "frauds" or that they would not be "true performers". They would be good researchers overall, but nonetheless I'm arguing that those kinds of people are not the ideal people universities want to attract. (b) I agree with your second point: universities sometimes offer more money when it makes sense to do so, and that's consistent with my answer (specifically, the part where I said there are contexts when the premise that more money buys better researchers is correct).

Do not think that salaries in academia are low or fixed. Getting a good salary in academia is definitely more difficult and takes a lot longer than in industry. Basically anyone below a professor is not paid what he/she is worth. But then, the dynamics work quite a bit differently. As others have pointed out the number of people applying for academic positions is much higher than the number of positions. Especially at prestigious institutions. Once you reach a professor position, your salary depends highly on which country you are in. The span for tenured position salaries in Europe ranges from about 30k€ per year to 500k€. Though the latter is only possible if you are at the level of a Nobel laureate.


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Under what circumstances could a project fail from the perspective of a government provided grant?
I'd guess that the topic only marginally differs in different geographical regions. I narrowed the question to government agencies, because privately funded projects usually have contractual obligations that may vary substantially on individual basis and that may also not be publicly visible.
Let's assume a university employed researcher (e.g. tenure-track faculty) successfully applied for a grant, i.e. an amount of money for a defined period of time intended for research on the topic stated in the grant proposal.
As time goes by, the work progresses, papers are published, students work on their theses, etc. There is no apparent evidence of any foul play. However, the PI in question embezzles a relatively small but significant amount of money for various purposes (own pockets, financing another project, lab equipment that is not related to the project, ...).
Under what circumstances would the funding agency suspect that there wasn't enough progress made / work done or a misappropriation happened with the granted funds and start investigating? What are the mechanisms for detecting such cases?
Note that I causally link lack of progress and misappropriation mainly for illustrative purposes and I'm not suggesting that one can't happen without the other or that embezzlement is the only reason for poor results (or the only illegal action for that matter). Indeed, the discussion regarding the opposite case, i.e. when embezzlement happened, but the project yielded excellent results nonetheless, would be interesting for another question. My question is primarily concerned with the when and whether a funded project can be deemed insufficient and thus lead to an investigation.

"I'd guess that the topic only marginally differs in different geographical regions." - I'd guess otherwise.

Most significant projects, at least here in Europe, are always "investigated". That is, there is always an end-of-year and/or end-of-project audit, and all money that has not been used according to the funding agency's regulations is requested back. Note that it is not usually the PI personally who manages grant money, but some university department who also oversees that money is spent according to the rules. It's not like grant money is sent to the private banking account of the PI.

@xLeitix I think the OP is referring to the end results of the research. Imagine a government official saying, "Hey, we gave you $100,000 to find out whether camel milk is more nutritious for children 5-10 than cow's milk, but your report says "inconclusive". Did you really buy all the animals that you said you did or did you spend it on upgrading your BMW and then sneak into Farmer Bill's pasture at night to surreptitiously research on his animals? Tell the truth now...."

At least in my experience, this isn't something funding agencies concern themselves with directly; unless something is brought to their attention, it isn't really possible to measure by productivity anything but a gross misuse of funds. They defend against embezzlement by working through other institutions (universities) that monitor the use of funds directly, including every line-item of a purchase card statement; the reports back to the funding agency are quite sparse in comparison.

@RobertColumbia As I said, the supervision of whether all the money went into the research or not happens independently of whether the research goals were achieved or not. If you spent 50k of your grant to buy a new car, the NSF won't care a bit whether you also achieved your project goals. Embezzlement is embezzlement.

The DOE ARPA-E and DOD DARPA programs are very results oriented with specific milestones each quarter and sometimes competitions e.g. robotics challenge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge to determine which projects to cut. But this is very different from most grants.

Funding audit is orthogonal to success
The criteria for success of a project generally rely on particular measurable goals as promised in the project application. Enforcement of that is often handled by making parts of funding conditional to submitting the required deliverables and evidence of appropriate milestones. Usually, no research project is optimistic enough to promise that conclusive results will be in these deliverables (if you already know the result, why is research needed?) but it may specify e.g. certain data sets, analyses, and quantity of scientific publications that must be delivered.
However, it's not really relevant to the question of misappropriated funds. A funding agency may (and often will) audit the expenses of successful projects, possibly randomly, and possibly all of them. For example, I have participated in grants where a proper third party audit (paid by the receiving institution) was a mandatory requirement in the project planning, an inalienable part of the contract, and a "successful" audit report was required for the final payments.
Furthermore, as with taxes, they don't actually have to investigate that much or prove anything - it's your duty to provide appropriate evidence. If they "gave you $100,000 to find out whether camel milk is more nutritious for children 5-10 than cow's milk" but you can only provide evidence of paying $50,000 for camels  because you spent the other $50,000 on something inadmissible, then you're simply not receiving the full $100,000 from them, no matter what scientific results your project achieved - and if they have already paid out more than that, then you legally owe them and they will collect it from the institution. And yes, the funding requirements will be set out so that they will disqualify any institutions where it's reasonably possible that they won't be able to repossess the advance.
Expenses are planned in detail beforehand
It's quite unlikely to simply be assigned "$100,000 to do X" - what would actually happen, is that the project plan would specify the expenses required for the project. If the submitted budget proposal states that your camel milk research is going to involve buying a fancy car for $50,000 then it's likely to rise issues before (and if) the project is selected and approved. If the approved budget proposal states that you'd spend $50,000 of the grant on camels and you then decide that you'd actually want to buy something else for that money (no matter if it's that car or directly buying camel milk instead of camels), then you'd generally have to get an approval from the funding agency for this modification.
Also, often the funding is structured so that they pay after the fact - i.e. the institution buys equipment and pays salaries, and the funding agency only reimburses these expenses when (and if) they're acknowledged as appropriate for the project goals. It's a reasonable scenario that sometimes happens that some expenses will not be reimbursed for some reasons - in that case, the institution has spent that money but won't get funding for it, tough luck. It may result in "allocating" that expense so that it reduces institutional funding available for that PI for other goals.


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In what kind of research should I analyse its possibility, necessity and feasibility?
I'm an educational/instructional technology major in China. My supervisor asked me to analyse my thesis' possibility, necessity and feasibility which seldom have I seen in papers written by Western researchers. What's more, I have articulated the literature review ahead. I'm just wondering if masters in your university need to write such things.
the background
It may sound strange to you, but I'm truly confused on this issue. I'm pursuing a master degree under a very reputed and elderly tenured professor. Although he has a PHD background in Dutch in the earlier 1980s, I thought he is kind of too non-international.

Just for clarification: Do you see a difference between "possibility" and "feasability"?

A study may be possible but not feasible if time or other conditions don't permit. Hoping that we're on the same page.

The introduction of articles usually explain why are you doing what you are doing, i.e., the necessity. You don't see feasibility analysis because they are, obviously, possible, since they have been done. On the other hand, grant proposals do it: they have to convince the committee that the research they propose is possible, useful, and can be done on time. You could ask your supervisor for some of his grant proposals as an example. This is not always done because this is in general a difficult analysis to do.
Furthermore, MSc thesis are often used as feasibility analysis on their own: the professor gets someone to work for a few months on a topic, and can (hopefully) discover most of the problems in advance. If the results are promising, it will be offered as a PhD or postdoc project.
By making you do the literature review in advance he is making you get up to date with the field, something that everybody has to do when starting a new research topic. Bear in mind that this section will have to be expanded and rewritten as you advance your research and discover that you need other tools.


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Potential Plagiarism of Published Papers when writing Survey Paper
I am in the process of writing a survey paper, and found one conference publication A that I will cite. Additionally, I found a journal publication B that I almost would have included in the survey, but I found it is almost identical to publication A. B was published 6 years after A. Here, "almost identical" means all the algorithms from A were screenshotted and directly copied-and-pasted into B, with no citation, and most of the text in B was verbatim the same as A, with slight changes in some places.
I already contacted the authors of A and the journal editors for B regarding my concerns. However, what should be done for the survey? Just leave B out entirely? It has a few citations, so it wasn't just ignored in the literature. (I'm also considering not having any of the main author of B's papers included in the survey as well, but haven't directly found anything like this in those other papers yet.)

Are the authors of B the same as the authors of A?

@Arno Nope, completely different.

When handing in your paper, ask the journal / editor to exclude the authors of paper B from reviewing your article. Otherwise, this could lead to ugly discussions jeopardizing your survey paper.

@usr1234567 Great point, didn't even think about that. Thanks, will do!

"I already contacted the authors of A and the journal editors for B regarding my concerns." Good job. It is important to report suspected plagiarism and you did so to the correct people. However, you should be careful to not directly accuse the authors of B of plagiarism--just present the evidence and let those whom you have appropriately notified pursue the case and make their judgements.

@Tripartio Yes I did that, thanks!

Leave B out entirely. It sounds like B brings absolutely nothing new to the table that wasn't present in A - even if it wasn't obviously plagiarized, there isn't much reason to include a duplicate paper with no novelty whatsoever in a survey paper (you wouldn't cite textbooks covering non-novel material, for example). Anything you want to say about the findings can be accomplished by citing A alone.
It's one thing to find a result independently replicated with different methods and data, but applying the exact same methods to the exact same data and presenting it as two studies of the same phenomenon is a bit disingenuous - you'd be citing two sources to support a point, when it's actually just one single source repeating the same claim twice. A citation is in a way an endorsement, conveying the notion that you trust the source enough to lend credence to the points you're making in your own paper. Here, you have no reason to trust B, they merely regurgitated what A said without any further thought.
If reviewers come back and suggest the inclusion of B, you have good arguments for why it should not be cited.

But isn't it the purpose of surveys to help readers by telling them: "in such paper, such thing is new/interesting, etc."? If some people have read a paper C that cites B, and are wondering if they should read B, it might by worth to tell them "no, read A instead". I don't see the point in leaving B out entirely.

If OP wants to be passive-aggressive, they can have a sidenote in their method about why paper B was excluded from the survey. I would be tempted to write a footnote "Paper [13] matches our inclusion criteria, but was not included in the review due to perceived plagiarism of paper [9]. We have informed the authors and journals about this perception as part of the preparation of the manuscript."

(it's probably not smart to write something like this, and my co-authors would likely talk me out of it, but I would be tempted nonetheless)

@xLeitix:  If you're "lucky", the paper B gets retracted before you actually publish the survey and you can simply say "but has since been retracted" instead.

@Plop I see the survey paper as highlighting the important contributions and novel papers. The fact that B isn't there already suggests it's not one of the key papers in the field. To list all the papers you shouldn't read would be an endless and ultimately not vey useful task.


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Is it possible to write good papers in a startup?
I don't know if there are some small startups in the world where they hire researchers to write papers. If so, is it possible for them to write good papers almost without advisors and professors or even doctors? What they only have is probably the open source materials like papers on Axive and Sciencedirect and etc..
I have never encountered any small company having research department only for publishing papers. Is it common?

How are they making money? The cost of a single employee in a small firm is a huge part of the total cost, what does that paper-writing employee add to the profits of that firm to justify those costs?

A small startup will not have any money for hiring a person to write papers or form an independent research department.
Yet you can see startup companies appearing as author affiliations on academic papers, so a question might be how that is possible.
What happens is that some startups are funded out of research activities at universities, and at least during an initial growth phase they keep a tight connection to the university they are funded out of. Typically that would work in the way that a university research group develops a technology, and maybe a PhD student or post-doc working on that funds a company to commercialize the technology. Nevertheless, the research group may continue improving or working with that technology, and if that is in collaboration with the company, then of course company members will appear as co-authors on the papers coming out of that.
In that case, also the professor who originally supervised the research would also stay in contact with the company, usually even in some formal role such as on an advisory board, and would thus be available for further academic support.

What happens is that startups are funded out of research activities at universities -- I'd suggest modifying this to say "that some startups are funded out of research activities at universities".

@MadJack That's right of course.

@silvado maybe in some countries the government is supporting them?

@lerner Yes, this can either be specific funding programs aimed at small company, or through universities who get a budget to support companies funded out of their research.

agree, very common practice, it is called Start up incubators.


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Why are professors from some universities willing to supervise employees in industry?
I find that many professors are to some extent supervising employees in the industry. They are helping the industry guys publish papers or solve difficult problems.
I don't know what motivates them to spend their time on that. I thought there are three possible reasons: 1) they can introduce their students to the company; 2) they keep up with industry trends through that method; 3) they are paid. I once heard that some professors have some side hustles and earn some consulting fees, but I am not sure.
How are academia and industry bridged?

(4) the distinction between academia and industry is artificial

As a grad student I spent a lot of time at Bell Labs, doing experiments with folks there. What was in it for them? Good relationships, good students, good experiments - that's what.

"Supervising" may be overstating the case. Collaborations, of course, can be valuable if a faculty person is interested in applications of theory to real world problems. The same collaborations can be valuable to industry if theoretical expertise is needed and not present in the company. Papers arising out of such collaborations can be as valuable as any other.
Some industry folk work in the other direction, coming to the university to collaborate on things of mutual interest.
The collaborations I've done haven't been paid, but resulted in fairly informal grants that I could use for travel and other research support. Some (not all) of the (industry) people I worked with were doctoral students at the university and their research was peripherally related to the project, though not directly. It was a learning experience all around. One of the projects I was involved with resulted in a major change of direction in an important segment of the company. They were, in fact, seeking solutions to important problems from academics. A couple of us were able to provide that assistance.
Side hustles, such as a separate business (an accounting professor working for an accounting firm, say), are possible and do happen, but most universities will control them in some way, often by forbidding them for full time faculty. They may be more important in those places where faculty salary is very low.

I'm not sure any professor would call consulting or other collaborations a 'side hustle'.

No, @JonCuster, but there are such hustles - completely independent work. Maybe I need to clarify the last paragraph.

Seems to me a ‘side hustle’ is driving for Uber, not doing your professional (professorial) work with other people. Hustle is just too close to scam in various meanings.

@JonCuster, I was using the OPs words, actually.

Just as ballast to other ways of thinking about this: I myself will spend effort+time on questions that interest me, and where I think I can be helpful. :)
Yes, having a tenured faculty position makes this possible... but/and I do attempt to act in the interest of the people who pay my salary, namely, as Steven Gaal once put it, "the farmers and workers of Minnesota".


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At what stage of research career one can write a 'tutorial article'?
I learned from this thread that review articles are often written by experienced scholars, but I wonder if a graduate student can publish a tutorial as his/her first publication? For instance, Tutorial on Variational Autoencoders.

I think once you have a 'better' viewpoint or intuitive explanation, you can write a tutorial.  For example, https://betterexplained.com/  explains basic maths very well.  Another example is the 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel.  End of the day, a tutorial is useful if it helps a reader grok an area.  If you think there is a good 'path' that a reader can use to enter an area or simplify a seemingly complex idea/topic, by all means,  write about it.

Actually, I find that a relatively inexperienced (but not naive) person can write a valuable tutorial for novices. The reason is that they may remember how hard it was to get started and, especially, to gain insight. More experienced people, especially experts, often lose the sense of how difficult it once was.
I once specifically wrote a treatise on a topic I was learning in order to capture the wonder of it all along with the difficulty and what to look out for. It turned out pretty well.

This is reminiscent of the 'curse of knowledge' discussions.

It is not up to you (or a collection of random people on the 'net) to decide if the tutorial paper you want to write is up to your target venue's standards. In any case, you not being one of the stars of the field should not be a criterion to accept/reject. Sure, a rockstar has probably a wider perspective and experience teaching the stuff, so they'll probably (possibly?) write it up better.


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Recommendation letter sent from non-institutional email
Would it hurt the student's evaluation, if I were to send their recommendation letter from my gmail account as opposed to the institutional?
I use my gmail account for all my correspondence, it is listed on all my papers, university website, etc.

I'm not an expert, but I would try to use my institutional email for such correspondence "just in case".

Related - http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13845/letter-of-recommendation-from-an-unofficial-college-email-id

Depending on where you are, there may also be legal implications requiring you to use institutional e-mail for institutional business.

@JackAidley: ship's already sailed on that since the questioner doesn't use the institutional address for anything at the moment...

I’m slightly surprised that no current answers are concretely answering the question asked.  This site has lots of users who have been on hiring or admissions committees; surely one of them is able to give their experience of the topic, whether it’s “No, I never notice what email address referees use” or “Yes, it’s often discussed, since it can be a mechanism for attempted fraud.”

You don't say what the recommendation letter is for, but it's generally not a big deal for academic letters in my experience.  For industry letters, many businesses also use gmail, so it will probably not be looked on too strangely there either.
However, a plain text letter from gmail does look less professional than a one on official letterhead, so you might use your department letterhead.  If you want to use gmail, you can also cc a copy of the letter to your instituional address to "certify" that you are who you claim to be.

I intended to send my letter as an attachment, which would have the official letterhead of the department. However, I really don't think the letterhead is hard to come by, am I missing something?

@user3209815 I am saying a plain text email recommendation from a personal email address looks considerably less professional than a pdf of a signed letter on official letterhead.  As in you went though the small amount of effort to make your letter look professional rather than putting just the minimum amount of effort into your letter.  If I see a professional looking letter, whether it is sent from gmail or not won't make much of a difference to me.

I use my gmail, but gmail has the capability to manage the sender addresses. You should authenticate your gmail to send from your institutional address. The recipient will then have the confirmation that you are indeed who you say you are, as gmail will have already done the authentication.
The authenticator in gmail  has the ability to either use the SMTP server of your institution to send (if your systems team permits it), where gmail is then acting as the mail client, or it can use the From headers to indicate your authenticated affiliation.
If you were doing it properly you could manage all your email through the gmail account and choose whichever outgoing account and sending method you choose. This is what I do, for the several academic institutional affiliations I possess.
So in summary: you can have it both ways. You can use gmail for official institutional correspondence and you can use the options provided in gmail to choose which of your attributions any particular email uses. It is appropriate to badge emails for official correspondence, such as letters of recommendation, with your institutional addresses. I would   suggest not using a personal email addresses for business purposes, but using the tools properly you can customise your environment in a professional manner.

Oh, right.  I forgot about this when I answered.  (I chose not to do this personally.)

+1. In case it's not clear from this answer: Once you've demonstrated to Gmail that you have access to send messages from a certain e-mail address, you will subsequently have the option to use that address when sending an e-mail.

Doesn't actually answer the question...

He clearly says, "I use Gmail". I took it to mean that he uses gmail to send recommendation letters, but if you were still worried that you could have your gmail send emails using your institutional email. That way regardless of which you use it looks professional.

@QPayTaxes: unless I'm blind or dyslexic, I think the question was "Would it hurt the student's evaluation, if I were to send their recommendation letter from my gmail account as opposed to the institutional?" to which the answer is either yes or no.

@QPaysTaxes: No, it really doesn’t answer the question!  It says a lot about what the referee’s different options are, but nothing about how (if at all) the receiving committee will be influenced the use of a non-instutitional address, or at least nothing more specific than “It is appropriate to badge emails for official correspondence […] with your institutional addresses.”  It’s very helpful and informative, but it doesn’t say anything concrete addressing the actual question asked.

I assumed the OP was aware of this Gmail feature and still wanted to use a Gmail address.

@svavil absolutely. it is not my intention to mask the email client I'm using. the recipient will see xyz@gmail.com instead of xyz@institution.edu as the sender.

@Brian Tompsett I must concur with Mehrdad and PLL, as it is, your answer points out that you don't suggest "using a personal email addresses for business purposes". Would you mind expanding it? Do you have experience with people who used their gmail accounts and got themselves or others in trouble because of that?

For other purpose, I recently try to confirm that some professor X was indeed employed by University Y. This search taught me that some universities do not have directories for their faculty member or any other way to confirm online that professor X is a real researcher.
For this reason, I would strongly suggest to use your institutional email, in case there is doubt about your affiliation or existence.


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Asking authors for details of algorithm implementation when no explanation is provided
I am reading a paper where they cite "Apply the X Algorithm on the result" after a series of operations on "result" in the algorithm. The rest of the algorithm is clear in what it asks to do, but the "X Algorithm" and "applying" it are not clear in what is supposed to be done. Also, there is no other place in the paper, nor any citation to another paper, where the algorithm is cited.
Looking up "X Algorithm" online does give an explanation to how it works, but the result does not seem close to what the expected results are. For example, the explanation online gives results that are always integers, when the result is supposed to be a real number normally distributed between 0 and 1.
Is it suitable to contact the author(s) of the paper directly and get an explanation/access to implementation of the algorithm because it is not explained in the paper?

It can't hurt to try. It might also be worth posting a question to the CS.SE or ComputationalScience.SE or one of the other relevant subject-specific SE sites that links to the paper in question and asks for help interpreting how the authors did it. These kinds of questions are frequent on the Computational Science SE at the very least.

This is a perfect example of a case in which one should:

contact the authors with a polite request for additional information, and
fiercely and privately curse to yourself about the inadequacies of peer review.

+1 I just needed to make a comment first, pointing out your cool 6666 reputation before I destroy it :D

In this case it appears more likely that the person asking just lacked familiarity with a standard algorithm (one that computer scientists could be expected to know, that is described in a previous paper on the subject, and that is documented on Wikipedia).  See http://cs.stackexchange.com/q/32844/755.  So, this does not appear to be an instance of inadequacy of peer review, nor does it appear to be a situation would it would be appropriate to contact the authors.  Instead, the best thing the person asking could do is do more research and self-study.


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Correction of Diploma Having Two Types of Honors
Last semester, I was graduated from a four-year university, and am now a Ph.D student at another university.  I received two separate degrees: one in Pure Mathematics and one in Computer Science, both Bachelors of Science.  The honors in question are:

Summa Cum Laude (1): This is a direct, university-wide, GPA-related thing; it applies to both degrees.  I fulfill these requirements and so deserve the honor.
Summa Cum Laude (2): This is applied if the student does a Mathematics thesis.  I did not do this, so I do not deserve this honor.
Computer Science Departmental Honors: This is applied if the student does a CS thesis.  I did do this, working independently to produce not just one but two theses, containing publishable work.  One won best paper at a small conference.

The two separate diplomas were shipped well after graduation, and well after I had moved to a different state.  They contain:

Mathematics: Summa Cum Laude
CS: <nothing extra>

Clearly, there is a problem.  Since I didn't do a mathematics thesis, the "summa cum laude" on the mathematics degree refers to the strict GPA thing (the mathematics department confirmed this).  However, by the same reasoning, I should clearly have gotten the same on my CS diploma.  And, in any case, I might have expected the departmental honors to show up too.
The first thing I did was ask the university help office, which directed me to the (single) email contact at the registrar's office.  This email contact ignored repeated, direct questions asking to clarify the above; replies consisted mostly of one-line, semi-incoherent, half-caps, half-cut-and-paste of irrelevant information I'd already seen on the University's webpage.
Were it not for the typos, this lady wouldn't pass the Turing Test.
The mathematics diploma is correct (since I do meet one of the options for having the honor).  However, the CS diploma needs to be fixed.  I have surmised that the only way to get a fix is to send the original diploma back with a somewhat ambiguous correction form.
This leads me to two questions for the academic community:

Is it common practice to include both a summa cum laude honor and a lesser honor?  In my opinion, my theses represent far more value, especially research value, than a stupid GPA.  The contact was . . . unable to clarify whether the university has an established policy on this--but my impression is that it does not.  The CS department says it's not their format, so they don't know.

Under these assumptions, I am forced to conclude that there is no established format at my university.  Further, as it seems they are taking suggestions, I will submit my correction form to list both honors.  If they really do have a policy, they'll know and can contact me.

I am having trouble thinking up a good way of stating the honors, however.  If this contact was representative of the registrar's office at large, then I definitely want my correction to be verbatim.  What is a simple phrasing of the honors that makes them clear that they are distinct?

Note: "diploma" and "bureaucracy" are not tags; I suggest them.

Re: the suggested tags, (1) I think 'diploma' is already within the scope defined for [tag:graduation] in its excerpt, and 'diploma' is ambiguous, which is undesirable for a tag name (people also use it to mean [tag:degree]). (2) I think [tag:paperwork] and [tag:administration] pretty much cover 'bureaucracy' already :)

As I'm sure you're aware, summa cum laude literally means with highest honors. Anything else that the university could print would be a lesser distinction or a less universal phrasing (thus less meaningful to admissions and hiring panels). Just get summa cum laude on both and move on. Literally nobody but your family will see your diploma, so it doesn't actually matter what's printed on it, only what is recorded by the university.

Agreed with @Tim. If you need to put it on your resume or whatever, just write Received BS in Computer Science, Summa Cum Laude. Technically people with Summa Cum Laude also qualify for Cum Laude and Magna Cum Laude, but to see someone write BS in CS, Summa Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, Cum Laude looks terrible and really doesn't change the fact that only the highest level matters.

In my opinion, the most important statement in your question is "I ... am now a Ph.D student."  Assuming that you follow through in your doctoral program, everything about your undergraduate career will rapidly fade into insignificance.  Please understand that I do not mean to downplay your accomplishments in any way: it is simply that you are entering a new realm in which you will be judged very differently on a very different type of accomplishment.
Given that, what's important here is to make sure that nothing on your C.V. could be interpreted as a lie in the unlikely case that somebody bothers to check with your undergraduate institution.  Check what the CS department believes about you, and write that down on your C.V.  You can always update it later if the bureaucracy gets fixed.
Beyond that, it's really more for your own personal satisfaction than for any career value, particularly as regards the pieces of paper that you were shipped.  My own personal experience as a working scientist... I recently rediscovered my degrees while going through a box throwing out old papers, and they have now been relocated from a box in a closet to a box in the attic.

This is definitely not the answer I wanted, but I think it's the right one.  Ultimately, being a researcher and having the background knowledge to be good at it is what counts.


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Can someone really be assigned to review in the APS’s editorial system for over a month without reacting at all and if yes, why?
From observations as an author and reviewer that I made myself and that have been reported to by others, it seems that the editorial system of the American Physical Society (which in particular publishes the Physical Review journals) works as follows:

The editor selects a reviewer.
The reviewer receives an invitation to review, which he can accept, decline or ignore.
If the reviewer declines, inform the editor to select a new reviewer (i.e., go back to step 1).
Otherwise, wait approximately one month for a review.
If nothing has happened, inform the editor to select a new reviewer.

This means in particular that if the reviewer does not react at all (for an extreme example, because he died years ago), it takes one month until another reviewer is selected. In contrast, with all other publishers, step 3 seems to be instead:

3. If the reviewer declines or does not accept the invitation within a few days, inform the editor to select a new reviewer.

which seems much more reasonable to me, as a reviewer who does not accept to review (which usually is little work) for whatever reason is very unlikely to review a paper.
My questions regarding this are:

Does it really work like this?
If yes, why is the system not switched to one, which requires the reviewers to give some positive response within a few days?

Note: Just in case, somebody mistakes this for some disgruntled bashing: Apart from the above, my experience of publishing with APS journals has been rather positive. I am just puzzled by this seemingly nonsensical mode of operation.

Imagine a prospective reviewer left for a vacation / conference for a week, and unable to respond.

I don't think giving reviewers a few days to accept an invitation to review is standard for "all other publishers" - I've reviewed for journals which gave a few weeks to accept an invitation. Maybe this depends on the field?

Yes it really works like this, except that:
(a) the editor selects 1-2 reviewers, not a single reviewer (see http://journals.aps.org/authors/web-submission-guidelines-physical-review). In my experience / field, it's usually two.
(b) I'm not sure which APS journal you are submitting to, but for Physical Review B, the median time with referees is be about 30 days (Rapid Communications) or 40-50 days (regular) in 2013--see https://journals.aps.org/prb/rapids. This is roughly consistent with my experience.
Some journals are much faster.  In my experience in refereeing manuscripts, I'm usually given only 1-2 weeks to respond with "Yes I will review" / "No I will not review".  However, I'm usually allowed to request for an extension of the deadline (and there's usually a box where I'll need to give a justification for the extension).

A 1+ month wait may be a little bit longer than normal--you may wish to consider writing directly to the editor (and if the editor feels there is a need to do so, the editor may choose send an reminder email to the referee). Note that the referee could already be receiving reminder emails (auto-generated by the system)--I have received such emails as the deadline for review approaches.


text:
Should acronyms always be expanded?
When writing an academic paper should you always expand on acronyms that you use even if the acronyms are universally understood, for example;

IT (Information Technology)
WWW (World Wide Web)

You may often be surprised how often a "universally" understood acronym turns out to be either ambiguous or not quite as universal as you believe.  For example, look at all of the alternate expansions of your example of IT (some of which are even reasonable).  I also find that if I wouldn't say the acronym (e.g., "WWW"), then it makes for smoother reading to use the words instead.
As such, I personally find it best to start by writing out a name in full before giving the acronym.  In fact, when there is a short prose alternative like "information technology" or "web," I prefer avoid the acronym altogether.
The exception to this rule is those acronyms that have made the transition to become words (e.g., RAM, laser, radar) or that have no real expansion, such as GNU, which is more of a recursion joke than an acronym.

Things like 'laser', 'RAM', and 'radar' are acronyms as you said. But 'IT' and 'WWW' are initialisms, not acronyms. Of course, collectively, these are all abbreviations.

@user1997744 This appears to be a distinction that is disappearing from common usage, much like "who" vs. "whom"


text:
DOI for a yet-unpublished paper
Suppose I have a paper #1 which was accepted by a Very Respectable Journal, and has been assigned a DOI, but has yet to be actually published (i.e. it's in the queue, and the DOI is not "activated", so it doesn't work for now).
Suppose, at this point, that I write another paper #2 in which I cite paper #1, saying that it is accepted by Ver. Resp. J. In this case, should I or should I not provide the DOI?
The possible downside of this is that someone may try to use the DOI before it goes live and be confused. On the other hand, if someone reads the version of paper #2 later on, the DOI may be more helpful than mere mention of the paper being accepted at Ver. Resp. J.

I would just cite the paper #1 in the paper #2, using the assigned DOI per your publication style, and add a footnote, informing readers that that DOI will be active shortly in the future (or specify approximate time, if known).

Related: How should to-be-published articles be referenced?.

Assuming the formatting requirements of your journal say to include DOIs, I would do so. One of two scenarios seems most likely:

Paper #1 will appear in press (or online) before Paper #2 is published, at which point it is a trivial edit to change the in press citation to the proper published citation, with the DOI.
For some reason this doesn't happen, and Paper #2 sees the light of day before the DOI in Paper #1 goes live. For a relatively short span of Paper #2's life, readers won't be able to get to the DOI for paper one - but for what is likely the majority of the paper's useful life, the DOI given in the references section will be live, and will point to the published Paper #1.

It's only in that really brief span of time where a reader might try to access the DOI and not be able to. I think optimizing for that time (which may be zero) is counter-productive when you view a paper over its entire lifetime. At best, you have what is essentially an auto-updating reference. At worst, a reader goes "That's odd..." and emails you to see if they can get a preprint.

Whether or not your article (paper #2) provides the DOI for its references (paper #1) isn't at your discretion, regardless of whether or not the referenced paper (paper #1) is published.
It's determined by what the style guide says about citation formatting, in your target journal for paper #2. If the style guide says to include DOIs, then you include DOIs. If it doesn't, then you don't. And whether a referenced paper is published or not only matters if the style guide that covers the referencing paper says it matters.

Does not address question.

@AnonymousPhysicist I've tried to make the answer clearer

I see what you mean. However, the publishers cannot really demand that we put a DOI with each unpublished paper citation, simply because those DOI are not public. Suppose paper #1 was not mine. Would I have to go and ask the author about the inactive DOI? And if he does not know it, should I go and ask the publisher/editor? What if it does not yet exist? It does not seem reasonable.

@tomasz but you said your paper does have a DOI. If in doubt, consult the style guide. If still in doubt after that, ask your editor.