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How to admit that the cited source is lost?
I am trying to replicate a certain paper, which derived an important formula based on five other papers.
In order to do a correct replication with insight into sources of error, I need to gather all five papers. However, ALL the methods I have used have resulted in nothing.
A typical answer would be "ask your librarian" or "ask the authors," however my librarian is famously incompetent (can't even speak English, and given the exact bibliographical data, found a completely irrelevant paper), and also it is realistic to assume all the authors are dead.
Now, in my replication work I have to say something like "I cannot estimate the source of error, because the original papers are lost."
How should I do this? I checked Academia StackExchange, but the closest search result asks about phrasing negative search results for papers on a particular topic, whereas I am sure that the papers exist. There is also this question about how to continue my literature search, but I am asking about how to proceed if the search fails.

How old are these papers?

So, to clarify... 1) You have a paper in your hand. 2) This paper contains citations to five papers you would like to find. 3) You cannot find any of these five papers. Is that correct?

Could you be more explicit about your problem? Are the 5 papers cited in the paper you have? If so, is your difficulty in determining what journal(s) are intended due to the use of (now) non-standard journal abbreviations/names (example), is your difficulty in finding a hardcopy in your university library or a digitized copy on the internet (e.g. as far as I know, this once fairly well-known journal is still not digitally available), or something else?

Can you clarify why the "closest search result" you linked is not applicable in your case? It seems identical to me, if you're asking about how to phrase the negative search results. If you're asking about how to continue the search, our canonical question is this one.

@cag51 I think the difference with the other one is that the other is talking about hypothetically existing papers that the authors can't find, so they presume they do not exist but cannot be sure of this however systematic they've been. In this case, it seems that the authors know the other papers exist because someone else has referenced them, but the authors are unable to access the full text of those papers for some reason.

Ah, you are right of course. I added this clarification to the post.

@cag51 I think your edits made the question more suitable for this site, but also different from OP's actual situation. OP's situation is that he/she needs to look harder! It is not even clear if he/she has actually asked "my librarian." And if all local librarians are useless, you can try the Library of Congress or some other way.

@Oliver882 - perhaps, but if the question is "how do I find the paper?" then it is a duplicate of our canonical question. That said, I agree that the answer to this question will probably involve detailing a painstaking and meticulous search, which has not yet been conducted.

I'm not sure why you defer to an "incompetent" librarian. There are a lot of libraries and librarians in the world. A query to a major academic or governmental library might help you find an existing paper. If the publisher is known from the reference, have you contacted them? If you can discover the affiliation of an author you can write to that institution, its department or its library. I fear you have given up too easily.

@user46147  In scholarly writing you cannot state that "the original papers are lost" until you have done a really painstaking and thorough search. Saying they are "lost" means they are lost to humanity, like some manuscripts from hundreds of years ago.

In the case of a genuinely lost reference you could of course say so. "The last known copy was lost in the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria" would certainly be acceptable if true. But like others have said, in your case the real solution may be to find a competent librarian.

Regarding techniques you can try for locating copies of the papers, besides what @cage51 suggested see the answers and comments to Should I cite an article that I can't find? Also possibly relevant is How to cite a thesis/paper when it's not available online?.

I agree with @Buffy here. Your lack of access of a source doesn't excuse you. I can't go to a remote location with a terrible librarian and try to publish the standard model or the photoelectric effect citing that I don't have access to the original papers.

Even if you do a more exhaustive search with other libraries and still cannot find it, a better wording would be to say you are "unable to locate the source" rather than saying it is "lost". It's likely that someone still has the paper somewhere.

@user46147 Asking for advice on this site gets you access to thousands of years of combined experience. If everyone is telling you something different than the couple English words of phrasing you were initially looking for, it would probably be wise to consider that, too, and not react that way to the free advice. It's not given to cause you trouble, but because people want to help and don't want you to leave here with information that will hurt more than help.

In the 21st century, I'd consider it a shortcoming of the author if I saw anything along the lines of "unable to locate the source" in an academic environment.  If a student brought me a manuscript like that, I would certainly challenge the student.  You'll likely encounter issues from referees.  It would be a little different if you were in a resource-challenged part of the world, and certainly if you were seeking some arcane tome and not an archived journal.

You also say in your question that you "need" to gather all five references to achieve your goals, so presumably not finding them is really a non-starter the way you've put it.

@Anyon (&all doing so) please stop sharing the moral judgement about the said librarian. We have only one side of the story here...

The answer is still "ask your librarian". You say your librarian is famously incompetent, but that shouldn't be disqualifying - you can still ask a different librarian. If your library only has one librarian, you can still ask a librarian from another library, or the publishers of the article if they're still around.
Don't underestimate the extent of what librarians have access to, e.g. the British Library has a copy of every single book ever published in the UK, comprising hundreds of millions of books, plus several hundred thousand journals. Someone will almost surely be able to find the articles for you.

Yes, it's really not fair to expect reviewers and readers of the paper to just accept that it's missing a big piece because the authors didn't like their librarian... It would be really embarrassing if the author writes that the paper is lost and a reviewer thinks uh, no it isn't, and finds it themself...what would that make them think about the quality of the rest of the manuscript?

Asking the publishers of the articles is a very good idea, might cost a bit, but they should definitely still have a copy

As a partial answer, you might need to cite  secondary source.
For example, under APA style this is:

An indirect citation or secondary source is when the ideas of one author are published in another author’s text but you have not read or accessed the original author’s work.
Include both the original author and year and the author and year of the work where quote/idea was found in the in-text reference.
Add "as cited in" before the author in the in-text reference. For example - (Harris, 2009, as cited in Lewis, 2019).
In the reference list, provide the details of the work in which you found the quotation or idea.

However, this does not help you verify the original equations. Maybe look up more papers that cite the original papers?

Just state exactly what the problem you encountered was and what you tried.
Something like
"an attempt was made to procure the paper by XYZ in order to estimate the error.  Although database X, database, Y, and database Z, were searched, and the library services of ABC were consulted, we were unsucessful at obtaining a copy of this paper.  Therefore, error analysis of the original paper could not be performed".
BTW, I wouldn't be so fast at assuming someone is incompetent.  It sounds more like a lack of patience on your part.

If you have a goal to reach and to reach that goal you rely on a single incompetent professional figure, I wonder if it is more incompetent that figure or the way you follow to get that goal accomplished.
As @Allure answered, there are more libraries to ask to.
Write a nice email to some other libraries that are even tangentially involved in the topic or that share the authors affiliations. If I have to cite a paper from an author that performed some research at the University of Aganawawa, there is a non-zero probability that the library of the University of Aganawawa has some interests (and duties) in helping you find the results of that research.

This seems to presume that one of the parties actually is incompetent. Perhaps one of them is, but we can't be sure of that, or even which one might actually be incompetent.

@JonCuster Yes, absolutely, since one of the parties mentioned the other is incompetent, I am 100% sure at least one of the two is incompetent. I do not know which one

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When submitting PhD proposals in the humanities in the UK, are students expected to have already applied for funding?
In British universities, is there a standard procedure with regards the order of application for funding and submitting a proposal for a PhD? Is there an expectation from universities that the students have already sought funding or be in the process of doing so before their proposal is submitted? Is it more common to be accepted for the programme and then seek funding? Or do they tend to happen concurrently?
Or does it depend mostly on each individual situation and there is no norm?
My question relates to a PhD in English literature in a British university for a British national, but information from other fields and locations would also be good to know. I haven't found information about this on any of the university websites I have looked at.
Specifically, I would like to know if there is a standard procedure or not.

Can you please expand your question a bit?  Apply for funding from whom, and which proposal?  Saying what country you are from will likely be important too.

What does the university's page on the application process say?

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Applying for tenure-track research position and lecturer position at the same university?
there is a very good research university (actually many of them; this is mathematics in the US) that have both tenure-track assistant professor open positions and lecturer open positions. I want to know what you think about applying for both. Ideally I want the tenure-track position, but the job market is tough, and I would also be happy with a lecturer position (which is much more teaching oriented). How would a hiring committee look at this? I am afraid that the tenure-track guys will say "Well, this guy/girl doesn't think he/she's good enough to get a tenure-track job because he/she is also applying for a lecturer position, so let's ditch him/her". At the same time, the lecturer guys could say "Well, it seems that he/she wants a tenure-track position but he will settle for a lectureship. We want someone more motivated."
There is a similar question here: Should I simultaneously apply for multiple jobs in different ranks at the same university? which is more about "post-doc vs. tenure-track". I think this situation is slightly different.

I don't see that way. I see a desperate applicant.

You're right that the question you link to is a little different, but the answer is basically still the same.  If you would accept both positions, ahead and apply.  The TT committee is not going to ignore an applicant they want to hire otherwise because they also applied for the lecturer job, and the lecturer committee will look at whether you're prepared for the job, not whether you also applied for the TT.

In my department, tenure-track hiring and lecturer hiring are done by different committees. When I was associate chair (until a couple of years ago), I was on both committees, but, as far as I can remember, I was the only common member. So if someone applied for both sorts of positions, that fact might not get much (or any) attention.  Also, you shouldn't worry about the tenure track committee thinking you have a low opinion of yourself. We generally don't care very much about your opinion of yourself (some people are naturally modest); we care about other people's (especially experts') opinion of you.

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What to do if I don't understand the related work?
I am writing a master's thesis in Computer Science. It's the first document I write, so not much experience.
My supervisor told me to include some previous/related work on the topic I am writing about. In short, it is about computing influence in social networks. I have found about 10 papers which I think are the most relevant ones.
The problem is that, while the topic and goal are the same as mine, the math/algorithms they apply are often way different than mine, and advanced enough that it would take a lot of work to truly understand them. So in other words, I want to somehow argue why my model makes sense and not others, but at the same time my work is not directly based on others.
The question is, can I write about it even though I don't understand it? How well am I supposed to know the previous work I am writing about? Is it enough to have some intuition?
Sorry if this is obvious, but my university do not teach us how to write (I guess one point of having a Master's thesis is to learn these things).

Best to put some effort into understanding them.

How can you write about something you don’t understand? I mean, you could, but that’s not gonna get you a degree.

Read, extract what you do not understand, prioritise which of these are the most important issues, try to read up on them, go to the prof with the most important of these, and clarify the remaining open issues. Sometimes (not always, of course), a prof can resolve an issue in 2 minutes.

I want to somehow argue why my model makes sense and not others.  It is impossible to do this without first understanding how the other models work.  Without that information you cannot make the argument you propose.  It's a simple as that.  ...it would take a lot of work to truly understand them.  Yes, postgraduate research requires that you do a lot of work to understand things.  That's effecitvely what you have signed up for.

This is the main reason why I never solve an old problem.

The thing that strikes me most about your question is "the topic and goal are the same as mine". If this is the case, then those papers are intimately related to yours, and you will want to understand them for your own good. Granted you might not have the time - it is a Masters thesis after all. However, you'll still want to compare and contrast their results against yours. After all, a big question to answer is "is my method better than theirs?" and you cannot answer that question without knowing how the methods stack up.
You don't have to fully understand another work to write about it, but you might not be able to go into much detail: for example "Alice and Bob (2019) have also studied this problem using [method], but they ran into [issue] which we do not have" is perfectly fine. Nonetheless, with ten intimately related papers I think you will want to discuss this with your supervisor. That's a lot of related work, and your professor might already be aware of some/most of them. He might give you direction on which papers to write about, which to read in more detail, and so on.

One of the skills that you have to learn during your masters is reading papers and previous work done in this particular area. So I suggest you put extra effort to understand them. This will benefit you a lot and will definitely boost the quality of your master's thesis.
Also, learning about these previous papers might give you an idea to improve them and build upon them, and then you have your own paper published! This is how it actually goes in the research world. GoodLuck!

While the most common answer seems to be "well just study all of that thoroughly" I can totally see why this may not be feasible. Related work usually is not the main focus and one cannot spend 2 months just to understand the stuff other people did.
I'd argue that that is not necessary. The key is to understand what those papers did and to get a rough idea of how they did it in principle, but you absolutely do not need to understand their methods in detail. Doing this probably will cost you less than 30 minutes per paper, which seems to be a manageable amount of work.

I like that this mentions a specific amount of time to spend per paper, although I would recommend a half day per paper (very field dependent).  The point is that sometimes the different math behind a different method could take years to learn, and that is not realistic.

One certainly can spend 2 months or even years to understand important work in your field. But that doesn't imply that you can't do anything else for that time period.

Can you perhaps mention the other research without endorsing it?

Previous work on the subject of frabishes was published by Smith and Jones [2012].  They claim to evaluate all frabishes using methods different than the methods we are using here.

As a reviewer, I don't like that kind of statement. I would expect a discussion of why/when the new method is more appropriate than the old one.

"They claim" sounds to me as if you wanted to say the claim is not true.

You did not mention your country but in some places (at least Europe, vastly speaking) the Masters thesis is the obligatory door out of your university.
This means that the contents are mostly irrelevant.
There are some philosophical discussions about how it should teach you something - the reality of the real world is that this is something you have to do, full stop. Bonus points if you learn something out of the exercise.
Going from there, you should be as serious as possible and have an idea of what is happening around your master's thesis topic but this is pretty much that. Skim though the papers (introduction, conclusions and what is in the middle if it sound interesting), discuss that with your advisor and call it a day.

The question is, can I write about it even though I don't understand it? How well am I supposed to know the previous work I am writing about? Is it enough to have some intuition?

Yes, somehow, yes. Your advisor will redirect you if you start to drift away, so as I mentioned - keep a close contact with him or her.

Sorry if this is obvious, but my university do not teach us how to write (I guess one point of having a Master's thesis is to learn these things).

If they not teach you how to write (I have not seen any who do - probably the best ones have something), they will not expect you to come out with something spectacular.
One important note: this answer is not there to say that your school is not good, or that you are missing something by having a normal, standard thesis nobody will ever read. It is there to say "do not worry". This is normal, expected and will have zero impact on your further life (if you are not planning to go into academics, at least)

I think you should raise this question with your supervisor. Think carefully first about what part of this literature you expect you could master well enough in the time you have. Ask about reducing the scope of your project in order to write a narrow good paper rather than a shoddy comprehensive one.

I think on any technical field building understanding is crucial, and what unfortunately is not taught sufficiently in technical universities/colleges is how to actually build it. However, I can give you two hints about learning that I have learnt over the years that will push you forward.
There are two good books that will help you to understand how to speed up understanding:

"On Intelligence" by Jef Hawkins, is a good general presentation how your brain works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Intelligence. The central message is that new things are build on the things you already know. This also means that in order to really understand, you should not leave gaps.

"How to solve it" by George Pólya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Solve_It presents guidelines how to learn to solve problems you can not yet solve. The basic principle is to simplify the problem as much as you can, to the bone, so you eventually  can solve it. Look for similar but easier problems as long as you become confident that you understand the problem and you can solve it, and then move forward.

Unfortunately, there is no possibility for shortcuts. Simplify, try, fail, try again.

Talk to you advisor about that. When I was doing my master's thesis, my advisor (a really good advisor), gave me some papers to read, and she also showed me how to read them. She explained that I didn't need to understand all the technical details of the methodology involved; the big picture was most important.

I think there's two critical questions you really need to be able to answer in this setting.
First, is there some mathematical equivalence or relationship between some earlier paper's methods and your own, even if hidden by a different expression in the algorithms used? This may require some amount of digging in and gaining understanding.
Second, how would you go about comparing results from what you're doing to the results they got? Are you measuring the same thing? Can you run your design on the same problems as they ran theirs, to compare quality of result and, if relevant, computational performance?
Beyond those, I think it's perfectly legitimate to say roughly "these other authors took approaches X, Y, and Z to the problem. We describe A, which is truly, fundamentally distinct from X, Y, and Z, and here's how it stacks up".

If you need to select related papers for your academic work, you actually should not read and understand the whole document you use. You can choose the main thesis of someone's paper, describe the main problem they write about, and even highlight their research methods and obstacles they faced while working on this subject. For instance, if you use other research methods, this information will supplement your paper.
The second moment is if your topic is not clear for you (so you cannot understand similar works from other researchers), and in this case, you usually have two ways:

choose a new topic if it is not too late;
discuss the key points with your advisor - what are the moments you should pay attention to first of all.

And third, if you do not understand only one-two papers you need for your work, try to look for reviews for them - usually, opinions from other academics clarify everything you need to know.

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Methodology structure for undergraduate thesis
This is a very basic question, hope you can help me. I study abroad and I am working on my final year thesis. My thesis subject relates to the field of finance. In the literary review I establish a mathematical background of various theories. In the methodology I develop algorithms that use real data and are based on the previous literary review. The thesis structure I must follow is asking me to specify whether my research is quantitative or qualitative, I must also further specify which kind, so for example if it's quantitative, is it descriptive, correlational, etc.? I know my methods revolve around a quantitative nature, but then again I can't think of how a descriptive, correlational research would apply to my thesis. I have talked to my tutor but he's shown very little interest in helping me. I was considering dropping this part of the thesis structure because I just feel it does not apply. What could I do?

This depends on how many variables you are looking at in the data and how you intend to analyze them. There are lots of possibilities and you only list two options.


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How should I paraphrase a paragraph with several primary references?
I have a question about in-text citations. I have read different answers and want to be sure about it: when I paraphrase a text from paper A, I should cite the author; if there is a reference in the text which is the author of the paper B, paper C and so on, should I also cite them in my text? Is there any other way besides using "as cited in"? For example, in paper A there are multiple sources that the author refers to like [1],[2], [3] in the part that I want to paraphrase. Should I cite them all?

This question is a bit vague, but if we assume you are trying to publish a paper in a peer-reviewed journal you can follow the general rule of cite any ideas that are not your own and try to cite them at the source. Best practice is to find the paper the idea originally comes from but that is not always necessary. Obviously if we did this all the time we would have unwieldy reference lists. For example, a review is appropriate to cite by itself, rather than citing all of the papers it draws from. There is an argument to be made for including direct citations to important papers from that review, but I doubt anyone would fault you for just citing the review when discussing general background information or the state of the field. On the other hand, it would not be appropriate to only cite an unrelated experimental paper that contains a relevant citation in the introduction.
This is based on my experience and can be very subjective. It also assumes you are holding yourself/being held to a relatively high standard. Even if this is not the case, I think that it is still applicable as a guideline. Ultimately you need to decide what papers are worth citing.
A side note, I'm note sure you should be "paraphrasing" anything to the extent that you even need to ask this question. There is a difference between synthesizing information and including it in your paper (with appropriate citation) and lifting entire sections from something you've read. Tread lightly here.

I would go a bit further and say that the part about the paraphrasing is not the side not but the main issue. You should not parafrase a paragraph and then wonder what to do with the citations therein. You should write, in your own words, which idea you want to convey and cite the appropriate primary literature (ideally the first papers describing the finding you talk about) in whichever sentence has content they refer to.

thank you for your response, for example, i need to describe the effects of the socioeconomic of households on air emissions, paper A mentioned several papers to indicate other works and findings on the effects of age, gender, income, number of workers, and so on on the emission, when I want to write about it, I think i should cite all the papers that paperA mentioned , not just summarize what paper A  reviewed and just cite paper A, am i right?

Yes, in that scenario it would be more appropriate to cite the relevant papers - in addition to paper A - if you intend to address all of those topics individually. Again though, I encourage you to be careful lifting what sounds like a large section from another paper, cited or not. Simply rewriting another's work in your own words (with the same citations no less) might raise some eyebrows.

thank you very much for replying, in this case, the bibliography becomes very long, is it no problem?

The length of the bibliography is less important that ensuring proper citation. If the bibliography is becoming excessively long because you are lifting citations directly from another paper, that is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. As long as you are behaving ethically, cite whatever is needed and do not worry about the number of references.


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I recently enrolled in masters in AI after doing my bachelor in CS, I'm overwhelmed how to start research
So as someone who started  aiming for PhD and enrolled in masters , I'm really confused with how someone could move in the AI/ML research domain... I see outstanding papers published round the clock and it really makes me feel how anything I would do would even match the lowest standard worthy of publishing, not to mention the single biggest problem I don't have a problem in hand.
It increasingly looks like to me that I'll publish a review paper instead because I feel I'm decent enough in doing literature review (which really helped me with previous publications), but it feels like a shortcut, that I am not doing actual research and I am nowhere good to warrant a publishing.
PS I had some experience of publishing papers in my bachelor and know the general process followed in the academic writing, but these were often papers I really think were not worthy enough to be published. They had stemmed out of mostly the project I was involved in undergraduate.

TL;DR. Search this forum, and beyond, for impostor syndrome: What you're experiencing is perfectly normal.
At masters-level, you're just entering the amphitheatre arena. Of course everyone looks better, you haven't started yet. I see outstanding papers published round the clock, that's great! You're looking in the right places, finding the best stuff. It really makes me feel how anything I would do would even match the lowest standard worthy of publishing, that's impostor syndrome. Hang around, absorb the knowledge, learn how to compete.
[N]ot to mention the single biggest problem I don't have a problem in hand, many students get handed problems by their advisors, only later do they identify their own problems.
Look in the mirror, ask yourself, do I want to do research? If the answer is yes, go learn how to do it. Don't worry about not being able today.

Your comment really helped me .. Thank you its really reassuring ... I think I m trying to think large all of a sudden , maybe taking baby concrete steps eventually will help me


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Distinctions between programs, departments, and institutes
I am applying to tenure track jobs at high research activity universities in the United State. Wading through open positions, I've become increasingly confused about what is the meaningful distinction between "programs", "institutes", and "departments". I understand faculty are organized into departments, and may participate in multiple institutes or graduate/undergraduate programs. However, for the particular position I am considering, the position is being offered by a particular program, and time is said to be split between the program (0.6FTE) and the appropriate academic department (0.4FTE).
My question is broad. What are the meaningful distinctions between programs, institutes, and departments within a research university?

Could you specify the country or otherwise location? Depending on the place, "department" and "institute" can be synonyms.

Another batch of confusing terms in the US is "school" and "college" within a university.

Some alternate definitions to matinking's based on my own experience, which moves the answer more toward "It varies, you need to ask":
Program: Where I have applied to faculty positions in "programs", they usually mean transdisciplinary fields (think 'Biomedical Informatics') that may or may not grant their students a defined degree (Ph.D. in Biomedical Informatics), have specific courses, etc. Usually, in my admittedly limited experience, the program is actually hiring one or a series of faculty who will be housed in specific departments, but whose main duties will be focused on the needs and themes of the program. For example, Biomedical Informatics might hire people in Computer Science, Nursing, Public Health, Statistics, etc. and house them in home departments for things like tenure.
Department: A free standing, degree and tenure-granting entities within the school.
Institute: At least in my field, an "Institute" can be either at the sub-department, sub-college, or sub-university level, but implies a specialty, and it's own funding stream. Often, universities have very specific rules about whether or not something can be called an "Institute" and what that implies. They can often be "Department-like", but may lack some powers of a department.

Divisions vary. For example, we had Faculties, some 10 of them, a while back. So there was a Dean of Chemistry, with chemistry (as a science), chemical engineering and metallurgy (materials science), last mostly as an outgrowth of the previous ones. And a Dean of Sciences, with math and physics. The university was reorganized, into a Dean of Engineering (with some 11 Departments) and Dean of Science (with three Departments). Later the deans where abolished, there are 12 Departments now.
Sometimes there are Institutes within the University, but e.g. the Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany are independent entities focusing on research (and graduate studies, sometimes) on some specific area.
The subdivisions, and their names, are mostly historic accidents.


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How to deal with repeated resubmissions of a bad paper (as a reviewer)?
(Context: theoretical computer science.)
I just received a review request; I have previously reviewed three previous versions of the same submission (twice for conferences, once for a journal), recommending rejection each time.  For one of the conferences, there was discussion between reviewers and PC members; all reviewers agreed that the paper was “strong reject”.
Between each iteration, the paper has been lightly revised, but never addressing two fundamental problems: the novel content is very insubstantial, and the write-up contains substantial self-plagiarism.
The author(s) have/has extensive publication records, containing some genuinely significant work, but also a very large amount of repetition, often to the extent of self-plagiarism.
My current response is: accept to do the review (first letting the editor know that I have reviewed earlier versions and recommended rejection); then see what significant changes have been made, and if the major problems haven't been addressed, re-reject with essentially the same criticisms as before.
A generous referee might reasonably judge the work substantial enough for a third-tier conference, and not notice the self-plagiarism; so I guess the paper will probably strike it lucky and get published sooner or later.  Is there anything else I can or should be doing to forestall this?  Or should I accept that bad papers do get published, and that the damage the authors are causing to their reputation with referees/editors along the way is enough censure?

"Self-plagiarism"?  That sounds exactly as heinous as "robbing your own house."

@MasonWheeler self-plagiarism is taken just as seriously in most academic institutions as normal plagiarism. The theory is that you aren't supposed to take credit for the same research, and publish it multiple times without citing that the entire study, or portions thereof were previously published elsewhere. It isn't the same as robbing your own house, it would be like photocopying a $100 bill and passing it all over town.

i think your current approach is about the best you can do. just to give you some hope, i have seen moves to share reviews. The most recent paper I did had some box to tick to say whether my review could be provided to future editors if the paper was resubmitted to a new journal with the same publisher.

Been there.  Done that.  The only thing I would add is an explicit note to the author that you have already reviewed the paper N times, and that your essential criticisms have not changed since version N-1.  That way the author might actually realize that you're likely to review version N+1.

Where is the harm in letting that paper get into some low-brow conference, as long as you dont let it get into a reputable journal?

This type of repeated submission of junk is something that I truly hate, but also don't know any good way of dealing with.  The problem is that the same freedom that supports novel science also leaves room for this type of "publication-shopping."  In essence: any more unified method of "disapproving" junk papers, to prevent them from wasting everybody's time, will also work against highly novel papers that are meeting resistance from entrenched communities---see, for example, the decades-long fight Barbara McClintock faced in getting her work on gene regulation accepted.
We are thus left with the current and default system, in which each publication judges independently, and in which reviewers face frustrating situations like the one you describe.  My recommendation, then, is simply to judge the paper on its merits, of which it has little.  The biggest key strike is the self-plagiarism: once you've discovered that, the rest doesn't really matter, because self-plagiarism is an offense worth rejecting a paper over in and of itself.
I would recommend informing the editor, along with informing the editor about the history of the paper.  They may then either judge whether to speedily reject the paper (and possibly initiate proceedings against the authors for the self-plagiarism), or whether to ask you to formally write this assessment as a review.

Reminds me of a quote by Václav Havel that seems relevant: It's a natural disadvantage of democracy that it ties hands of people who take it seriously, while it allows people who don't take it seriously to do almost whatever they want.

If it still doesn't cut it, reject, again. In your comments say that you saw the paper before, and have rejected it.
Let the editor know in more detail what you think.
That the paper has been lightly revised a dozen times doesn't make it good, according to what you state.

Your question raises two issues, one of which is merely annoying, but the other concerns a possible breach of ethics. I think it's helpful to consider those two issues separately.
Regarding the fact that the paper is of subpar quality, there is nothing you can or need to do other than to reject the paper. The author is within his/her rights to write a junk paper and submit it to as many journals or conferences as he or she wishes. If he/she eventually finds a venue that will accept it, that is probably not a reputable venue and no one will pay it any attention, so I don't see it as anything to lose sleep over.
The self-plagiarism issue is more serious. From your question it sounds like you are starting to ask yourself whether additional action is warranted beyond merely rejecting the paper, on account of what you perceive as unethical behavior by the paper's author. Indeed, I can see that being the case based on your description, though it's hard to know for sure without knowing the extent of the self-plagiarism. One natural idea in this case is to contact someone from the author's institution (department chair, colleagues, ethics committee...) to alert them of his/her behavior. A complication here is that as a reviewer you are likely bound by confidentiality to the journals that asked you to do the reviews. (Although arguably the unethical behavior may be cause for rescinding that promise of confidentiality, but that's a tricky argument that I would try to refrain from making.) So, if I were considering such a step I would first of all contact the editors of all four journals/conferences, tell them what I am contemplating doing and explicitly ask their permission to contact the author's institution.
Alternatively, if you prefer not to get so involved in the story by taking such action (which would possibly involve you losing your anonymity and making yourself an enemy, who despite being in an unproductive stage of his/her career may still exert some influence over your field), you can email the four editors together, tell them the details of the story and put in their hands the decision whether to contact the author's institution or take further action. Of course, they may decide to do nothing.
Finally, I'll add that the sort of self-plagiarism you're describing sounds more pathetic than outrageous to me, and would probably be perceived by most people as a minor ethical infraction at worst. Trying to do something to prevent such behavior may be more trouble than it's worth, but that's for you to decide.

I strongly advise against contacting somebody from the author's department. You will only make enemies and not get anywhere with this. The home institution will protect/hide plagiarists in order to maintain their facade. You may want to highlight the case with the national or international professional body of academics in the related field.

@Walter, what you are suggesting is a lot more aggressive as it could lead to public shaming and censure of the researcher, with potentially catastrophic results to his/her career. I don't think such measures are warranted in this situation. A discreet email to the department chair, leading them to invite the person for a chat and make clear to him/her that this is unacceptable behavior, could be the least drastic (and hence, IMO, most preferable) way to address the situation. One can always try other things later if that doesn't work.

@Walter, and as for your automatic assumption that the complaint will be ignored by the home institution, that reflects a very cynical outlook on academia on your part. Not necessary incorrect, but very cynical, and I am sorry if that is what your experience leads you to expect. I for one, as a current department chair, would take such a complaint very seriously if it landed in my inbox. I guess it all depends on whether the institution is a respectable one that cares about its reputation. Certainly the scenario you describe is possible, so the OP is well-advised to consider that.

Yes, the measure I was proposing is only justified with serious breach of ethical basics (which I cannot judge here). Contacting the Dept only makes sense if you know the person personally, otherwise there is no guarantee that it will go as you intend.

Did you follow the case in Birmingham University (UK) of a plagiarist in the sociology (I think) department a few years ago (was only covered in THE)? In the end, the HoD who wanted their plagiarising colleague disciplined was sacked, because he didn't keep the affair internal (the institution was arespectable one and cared about its reputation: they wanted no publicity, but, I think, the HoD was frustrated by nothing being done and went public), and not the plagiarist. There may be little you can do as HoD, in particular if the institution cares about its reputation.

I was not aware of that case. You certainly make a good point that all sorts of things can happen and one should not assume that things will go smoothly.

If he/she eventually finds a venue that will accept it, that is probably not a reputable venue — Sadly, this is incorrect.  I know of several weak papers that appeared in strong venues after years of publication-shopping.

I don't think you should review it.  Tell the editor that you have seen it 3 times before and each time you recommended reject and paper was.  But don't spend your time on this thing once more.  It's not up to you to set yourself up as some gatekeeper of all science.
If you were reviewing, sure hit the reject button.  But you shouldn't be spending your time looking at the thing four times.  If it gets in the literature, so be it.  Again it is not your job to worry about things so globally.  Purge it from your consideration.

I think that (in part) the job of a reviewer is to serve as a gatekeeper of science. Not all science, of course, but certainly the science in the journal concerned.

Keep track of one key issue that needs to be handled before the paper can pass the reject / don't reject stage. When you get a new revision, you check if that one issue has been handled. If it is not handled, you reply "one of several issues leading to rejection was X. Since X has not been handled, the paper is again rejected and will be rejected until X is handled." This can most likely be done with minimal effort.

You could do the following; review the paper and make the review available on-line on Publons. This would also allow for a discussion where also the author could share her/his point of view.


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Utilising assignment for thesis
I had utilized an assignment that was under a free license to explain a part of my thesis but did not self-plagiarize by copying my own written work for an earlier submission.
Is it acceptable?

A thesis is a publication. If the material is new and is not published anywhere (preferably even in pre-print servers) then it should be fine. Provided all the work is yours and not someone else's assignment. There really is no way to know but think of it as self morality!

What do you mean, exactly by "utilized an assignment"? Was it the assignment statement or the solution? If it was the solution, did you write it? If you wrote it, is your solution "published" in some form - even just on a web site?

The assignment was a set of tasks that were experiments, the set of tasks and their perception can change according to people. Set of tasks were under a free license. I wrote two different solutions (with changes in langaugaes). This was utilized as an introduction only and were not a major part of thesis

I'm still not sure that I understand the entire scenario, so this will be a bit hypothetical.
If you write something but it isn't published in any form then, later, you can simply copy and publish any part of it without citation or further comment. It isn't self plagiarism to use your own unpublished work.
Assignments in a course might, however, follow some rules beyond those generally accepted in scholarship. If the thesis is at the same institution as the earlier coursework, then, for purposes of keeping the faculty happy, it would probably be wise to mention that some of what you write was written earlier for a course.
But normally, student work for course assignments isn't really published, though it is shared in a limited way (with the professor). There can be exceptions, of course.
A way to be safe with all sorts of plagiarism, including self plagiarism is to cite if there is any doubt at all. Over citation will not, generally, be a problem. Under citation can be.

Thanks for the reply, it really helps. The assignment was created by a third party and they have made it accessible to all under GPL and is commonly used by many universities. I utilized that assignment to explain some concepts and wrote them differently from my original assignment.

Just cite it and you should be fine.


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Is there something like Qnotero for Mendeley?
I've been using Zotero for bibliography, citation and reference management for a long time. Particularly, I came to love Qnotero, which is a stand-alone application, providing a handy way of accessing PDFs from the Zotero library even when Zotero isn't running: One just presses a customizable hotkey, a popup appears on the desktop, where you enter a search term (e.g., title or author of a paper), hit enter, and the PDF opens. However, I recently discovered Mendeley, and it's really appealing to me. Still, I'm missing the Qnotero functionality. Is there something similar to Qnotero available for Mendeley?

Mendeley isn't open source like Zotero is (although I do believe it has a developer API). That may make it harder to develop such functionality for third parties.


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Pros and cons of double majoring vs a Master's
I've looked into double majoring at my university and it seems that, as is apparently common, it's very likely that if I go down this track I will not graduate in 4 years, but probably in 5 or 6. This makes me wonder: what are the implications for a career in either industry or academia of a double major, as opposed to doing a single major, graduating in 4 years, and using the next 2 years to study for a Master's degree instead?

It's hard to say much without knowing what the two fields are and what your aspirations are, but in general I would find a master's more impressive than a double major.  However, if you wanted to go into arts administration, a double major in the right fields could look very good.  There might be other exceptions as well.

As other people have suggested, you will need to give more information to get a useful answer as it can be case - and country dependant.  In general, I wouldn't advocate a double major in the US if it will push back your graduation date.  If you are looking towards academia, keep on track for the standard graduation date, spend your extra time/summers with undergraduate research, then apply to direct PhD programs or research-based Masters.

I have found my own double-major extremely helpful to me (computer information systems and psychology) - but if it would have required more than 1-2 extra semesters I would not have done it, and there's a good chance you shouldn't either. In most setups you can take your electives in your second major, some classes double count (I used classes in both of my majors to also fulfill general education requirements), etc. Spending 2 years just for a second major sounds way, way past the value you could get out, save for one situation: you changed your mind near the end and need the new major.

In general (and from the perspective of academia) I would say many undergraduate students overrate the value of double majoring and misunderstand its importance. Having two majors does not make you an expert in two fields. Moreover, depending on the fields in question, it doesn't aid your ability to go onto graduate school.
All things being equal a masters degree is

more useful for employment (I've never seen a job that explicitly requires a dual major but some jobs list a masters degree as a qualification).
a better indication of academic ability in a field
a more impressive credential than a dual major.

But there are several things that could make things unequal.
First, there are cases where showing a background in two fields is valuable, because a job bridges two skill sets. As aparente001 suggests in a comment, majoring in administration and art might better show an aptitude for managing a gallery than just one or the other. (Another example: a patent attorney often has a degree in science).
Second, there are cases where a graduate field requires knowledge (or some competency) in multiple underlying fields such as materials science (chemistry and engineering).
Third, if for personal reasons you desperately want to study both because you believe you will never be able to study the other after you go to graduate school, then it might be worth it to someone to spend 1 or 2 years to do that.
While there may be other special circumstances that make sense of it, I would say it's unlikely that the value towards academia of getting a second major is worth two years that could have been spent on an MA.
(For the record, I did two majors and don't regret it -- but I finished both in the usual 4 years).


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How to teach multiple levels of French?
I am a 5/6 and 7/8 split French teacher with students ranging from anglophone, all the way to francophone.
I am having difficulty finding ways to make lessons that will include the whole class, and I feel like I'm either way above the level, or way below the level of half of my class.
Does anyone have any techniques that may be of use to me? All suggestions are very appreciated!

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it isn't a question about academia (5/6 and 7/8 sounds like lower school level rather than university level and certainly not like graduate level.)

Could you please explain "5/6 and 7/8 split"?

I suggest studying the techniques used in one-room schools.
The idea is not to even try to teach one lesson to the whole class. Instead, you get small groups doing work appropriate to their level, while moving around and giving instruction to groups as needed. Generally, the younger students will need the most attention.
For example, you could set a group of the most advanced students to first translate a passage individually, and then discuss, in French, the differences between their translations. If they disagree about a translation and cannot resolve it themselves, they will need your help for a few minutes. Gradually make the passages more difficult, so they go on learning. Periodically, explain an advanced point of French grammar or usage, and then set passages to translate in each direction using it. You can tell them to use the new structure when translating to French.
You can also use more advanced students to help teach. Trying to explain e.g. a tricky point of grammar can be a good way of clarifying it in one's own mind.
Meanwhile, you can be working with the beginners, who will need more direct instruction.

This is a good idea, thank you! I will definitely use this method.


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An Author without an Affiliation
We are preparing a manuscript to be submitted to a peer-reviewed international journal. We have an author that contributed significantly to our research work in which we would like to include her as a first author of our manuscript. The main problem is that she doesn't have an affiliation.

Our question is to advise us please under what institution should she be affiliated?
Can we list her as a first author without an affiliation?
What type of institutions other than research centers and universities could  generally be listed as an affiliation on a research paper?

Thanks a lot!

This question already seems to have an answer here https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/60082/using-home-address-when-submitting-an-article-with-no-affiliation

And the answer given is: use your home address or home city. Having an affiliation is not necessary to publish. Its purpose is not a credibility check but for others to be able to contact you / connect with you in some way. (Incidentally, I find the practice of writing full postal addresses an archaic leftover of old times when people would write letters as a means to exchange ideas. We should get rid off that soon...)

You don't need an affiliation to publish. Independent Researcher or the equivalent is enough. You probably need an email address, but likely a professional one, separate from one used for personal things. That isn't really essential, but might be helpful.

What type of institutions other than research centers and universities could generally be listed as an affiliation on a research paper?

@Naps Companies, non-profits, government agencies, consultancies, self-owned small businesses, etc.  Pretty much anything that one might have as one's employer.  I've co-authored with people from all of these and more.

Thank you so much...


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Asked to Provide a Submitted Manuscript that is not Published Yet
A student of mine and I submitted a manuscript for publication. It is currently under review. My student applied for a postgraduate degree program. The advisor (professor) of this program asked her to provide him with the manuscript or pre-print in order to finally assess her qualifications.
As I mentioned, the manuscript is not published yet and is under review. What is the best way I can advise her to respond to the advisor? I don't want her to get rejected because we declined to provide him with the manuscript. This is somewhat new to me since no one, in principle, asks for a submitted manuscript that is under review!
Thanks a lot!

Where did you get the idea that "no one, in principle, asks for a submitted manuscript that is under review"?  This is actually totally normal.

So providing new unpublished results to someone  is totally normal?

If one is applying for a graduate student position with someone—yes.

Different disciplines seem to have different conventions. I'm a mathematician; in math, it's very common to share preprints publicly, and this request would not be in any way unusual -- even coming from a complete stranger. In math, the correct answer would be 100% that the student should send a copy of her preprint. In other disciplines, I suspect that this is still the best course of action, but I'm less sure.

Is it common in your field to upload preprints (e.g. in arXiv)? If so you can put it up there and send the link.

Yes it is common to upload to arXiv. Can I do so if the paper is submitted already?

Is there a particular reason to be uncomfortable sharing the paper with this person? I don't see that this is really any different from presenting results at a conference/seminar, or discussing them with colleagues. Note that the editor has -- presumably -- already sent copies to random strangers to review! So there doesn't seem to be any harm in sharing it with the professor. You can remind them that it is under review and ask them not to share it further.

@Naps Usually yes, but it may depend on the policies of the venue you have submitted to.

The only thing that might be sticky about uploading to arxiv is if the journal has notions about copyright or similar. If they do, it should be visible in their web site or editorial policies page in the journal or some such. But even that should not stop you sending a pre-print to another prof in the field.

The other possibility uploading to arxiv would be sticky is if your field (or the specific journal) does double blind reviewing, so that the identity of the authors is not supposed to be known to reviewers.

Should I provide the manuscript from the journal's online system (PDF that includes journal's name, cover letter, graphical abstract, etc) or in a format without mentioning the name of the journal? Is it a bad idea if they saw which journal it is submitted to?

You submit your own version of the manuscript, not anything from the journal or their submission system. It should be as if it hasn't been submitted.

It's normal to show unpublished work to colleagues, sometimes for their input/advice/suggestions for edits, sometimes because they're working on similar work (whether collaborating or not), or, like in this situation, to demonstrate work for a job/grad school application.
I agree it's a little unusual to ask directly, but only a little, and in this situation it makes sense, especially if the publication is listed on a CV as "submitted". More typically it would come up if, say, you were having a conversation with someone at a conference or after a talk. You're discussing some topic, and Person A says: "Oh we have some recently submitted work on this! If you'd like, I can send you the manuscript."
If the field allows for preprints (that is, if journals will not consider preprints to be prior publication and accept them as original articles), it would be a good idea for someone applying for positions to make sure their latest work is out as a preprint if possible and to include these details with their application. (of course there are other benefits to preprints, as well) Since you say people use arXiv in your field, then assuming the specific journal doesn't have an unusual policy against preprints, that's how I would approach this: reply with "oh of course! the paper has been uploaded to arXiv here: ".
I think it would be a courtesy to other authors to make sure they don't have any issues with sending the paper to one outside person (and I'd double check with her advisor, just in case there are any weird politics - in that case it seems that advisor is you!), though I personally wouldn't be bothered at all if the first author of a paper I contributed to chose to share it with someone else. I think other authors should definitely agree before posting a preprint with their name on it (just like they would agree to a submission), but I wouldn't expect any opposition if the work is already in condition to submit to a journal.


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Reviewer asking to do a study beyond our knowledge
I submitted a manuscript to a journal and recently I received the reviews. We have many reviewers assigned to the review process. One of the reviewers is asking us to perform some calculations that are beyond our knowledge. None of the co-authors know how to carry out such computations. All the other referees gave very good reviews but I'm not sure how to deal with this issue. Should we be honest in our answer to him or is there another way around? Is there a way we can avoid withdrawing our manuscript because of this request by this reviewer? I appreciate any advice in this regard.

Ask the editor whether they insist on this. Do not withdraw before it's clear that the paper will be killed without this.

Are the calculating relevant to the paper? Can you find somebody who could perform them for you?

I would suggest to the editor that it might be appropriate for future work and a future paper. You don't have to say what you say here and you don't have to follow up in the future unless you choose to.
But, I wouldn't withdraw the paper. Perhaps the editor will agree with you and perhaps not, but the other reviewers think it is worth publishing, so I'd guess you are fine. If you get rejected then reconsider.
The reviewer judgements don't need to be unanimous in most places. The editor weighs the evidence and decides.

Generally the reviewers can only give recommendations, they don't make the decision. I have seen many revisions that didn't do everything the reviewers asked for. The editor will have to balance things and decide whether the paper is good enough without this, which it may well be if a number of other reviewers liked it.
Normally you'd need to response to this and the editor will decide whether this is fine or send it to reviewers again. Now indeed "it would be a good idea but we are not able to do it" isn't really a very convincing response. You may actually get away with this (publication decisions are always something of a random process) but then you may not. Can't you argue that it's generally to much to do and goes beyond the scope of the paper, or another reason why it isn't such a good idea?
Another possibility, if what the reviewer suggests makes really good sense, is to look around whether at your university (or among people you or your co-authors know) could be an expert, maybe in a different department (not sure what this is about but just as an example it could be a mathematician), who has the skills to do this? You can then add a co-author to the revision, this is usually fine.

As editor I see such things maybe once in 20-50 submissions, and at least for the journals I am or have been involved with it was never a problem. Authors can just do that. From the point of view of the journal, I don't see why this could be an issue. Obviously you can ask the editor if you want to be sure.

The journal's interest is just to have papers as good as possible published. If adding a new co-author helps making the paper better, the journal will be happy about it. Journal publishing is not an examination of personal skills (or rather only the skill to put together a paper that is as good as possible, and if this involves wider collaboration as thought initially, so be it).

Do the suggested computations make sense? In other words, is the reviewer's suggestion valid? If they make sense or indeed, is a standard practice in your field, then you are missing a key piece of work.  Otherwise, provide justifications/reasons why such computations do not help with your research aim.  For example, 'Thank you for the suggested computations.  However, the computations aim to shed light on X.  However, our focus is on Y'. Alternatively, you can say, 'our evaluation on page-z includes a discussion on X.  Hence, we do not believe such computations will provide further insights into X'.


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arXiv submission 'On hold' status and primary category changed to 'None'
Recently I've sent a paper to arXiv, to math.GM primary category, then, somehow it was added a crosslist to math.CO, the category I'm not endorsed and can't send there papers, it was done automatically or by moderators. The same day submission was put to 'on hold', this status took approx. 2 days. Then submission category was changed to 'None' and 'Crosslist' to math.CO was removed, see screenshot submission status.
Has somebody experienced same situation and what probability that paper Will be rejected/approved?

As for rejected / approved only the editor can decide - we can’t...

@PKK Could you update with the outcome of this?

@GoodDeeds it was rejected after few days. And it was correct decision since article didn't contain anything interesting afterall


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Poster Presentation with One or Two Affiliations
I am preparing a poster presentation for a scientific conference. When I published my work, I was affiliated with institution X. After my publication, I moved to institution Y. Now, I want to put my affiliation on the poster as well as the institution logo. My question is simple. Which institution should I put on the poster, X or Y? Is it allowed to put both of them since this work was published with an affiliation X but now I am at institution Y?
Your answers are appreciated.

Thank you! my field is Physics

In pure-ish mathematics, you should put the institution where you are currently.  A simple footnote stating "Thanks to University X where most of this work was done" will give proper acknowledgement (but is not required).

The conference and people viewing your poster will not care.  Ask your supervisor, just in case they care.

You should indicate the institution where the bulk of the work was done.  Then a simple footnote stating “present affiliation: University Y” will do the trick.


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Governmental and Scientific Institution Recommendation Letters
I was requesting some recommendation letters to be submitted to a governmental institution. I am surprised that two of my professors refused to provide me recommendation letters while giving me same response. They said they agree to send letters to scientific institutions but they do not send to governmental institutions. Actually, this is the first time I ever hear about it and I find it strange! I did not understand the difference. I would like to ask why did my professors refused to send recommendation letters on my behalf to governmental institutions while they do send to scientific institutions? Is there another way I can ask them or convince them to send to such institutions? What are they afraid of? Thank you so much for giving me some insights.

What country are we talking about here? The field of research may also be relevant. (e.g. I can imagine there being a difference in attitude to an astrophysicist applying to NASA vs. a Computer scientist applying to the NSA.)

It's a US governmental institution

To get an answer, you need to ask them. But, it might be, for them, a matter of ethics, depending on the government in question and what agency you are seeking to join. A lot of professors might be reluctant to help you join any institution if they feel that it is doing something ethically wrong. Perhaps spying agencies or weapons development, for example.
In the US, there is a lot of controversy about some of the things that have been done by Homeland Security and its various agencies in the past twenty years. And, academics are more likely to be attuned to that than many others.
But, ask them. They may be trying to save you from an ethically dubious career, rather than trying to sabotage you. Some of those things are not like the others.


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Acknowledging Someone in a Research Paper
We finished preparing a manuscript and there is a researcher who helped and advised us on many aspects of the research. I know this may sound trivial but I would like to ask if it is required from me to ask him if I can mention him in the acknowledgment or not. Can I mention him without taking his permission to do so? Thank you in advance...


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How to ask for a recommendation letter from your current professor without ruining your chances to extend your contract?
I am currently a postdoc in a research group and I would like to move to another group and leave the current one. I would like to ask my current PI for a recommendation letter since another PI is requesting one. I am not sure how to approach and ask him especially if he is willing to extend the contract. We didn't discuss whether we will extended the contract 4 months from now but I am not sure if he is going to do so. I know this may seem trivial and the answer would just simply be to ask him to send a letter on my behalf, but I am trying to keep my current position as a second option. To be more specific, in case I am not successful with the ongoing interviews or with the postdoc search, I want to discuss with him to extend the contract later on. So I have two questions on my mind:

Is there a way I can ask him for a recommendation letter and at the same time don't ruin the possibility of extending the postdoc contract 4 months from now?
Another option would be not to ask him in the first place. Do you think is it okay not to provide a recommendation letter from my current PI? May be I can arrange three recommendations from my past referees. Is it a weak point in my submitted applications?
Thank you so much for suggestions so I can make the right move...

Do you prefer to extend the current position or to change? What is better for your career?

both for my career and my preference, I would like to change. But I don't want to lose the chance to extend the contract in case the only opportunity I have is to stay in the current research group.

If your advisor is a good person who values your interests, they'll understand the situation you're in, and it would be best to have a candid conversation with them about your goals and next steps. It's completely reasonable to want to have a backup plan, though post docs are also intended to be temporary, brief positions.
It's reasonable that, even if they are a good person, your advisor may also want to move on to another person for the role (assuming they still have continuing funds) either because they feel you've accomplished what you can there and want to nudge you out the door, because there is another candidate who they need to make a decision on (and therefore can't wait to find the result of your applications), or because they aren't satisfied with your progress (I think this last option is least likely, but if so hopefully they have already discussed this with you).
The only thing you can do is have a candid conversation to find out where they are at and share where you are at. Ask explicitly about different scenarios, such as "is it possible I could renew my position here if I don't find a suitable position elsewhere?"
It's also possible your advisor is a selfish or insecure jerk, and they will take your wish to depart as some offense to them or a lost opportunity to gain something from you. For this sort of person, it does not seem worthwhile to me to strategize your approach too much. I'd focus on moving on as quickly as possible, with or without them as a reference depending on your intuition.

Couldn't have said it better.


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Is Salary Considered a direct/indirect funding?
I went to the US on a J-1 visa (Research Scholar) as an Adjunct Research Assistant Professor at a US University. I was only on the salary I was getting from the university without any external funding from the government or from an international organization. Is the salary I got per month considered direct or indirect funding? Thank you so much

In what context?

The advisory opinion states that I am subject to 212(e) which is the two-year home residency because I have received direct/indirect funding. The only thing that I received is a salary from the university but nothing else. I want to apply for a waiver for this requirement. So I need to know if this legally is correct or not. If a salary is not considered funding, how can I prove this? Is there an article in a specific law that explains this?

So this is for a visa application? If your salary would not be direct or indirect funding (those are defined in your institution's cost accounting standard) I'm not sure what else they would call it.

Yes, for a visa application. It is very crucial to me to know if this is considered funding or not. The problem is that they are considering it a funding. So I would call it a salary and not a funding but I am asking if anyone has an idea on this matter. I want to inquire also if there is a way to prove the difference in my waiver in case funding and salary are different terms.

Do you have form DS 2019?

I am not an expert, but as far as I have the understood 212(e) 2-year return requirement, the crucial question is where did the money that funded your (exchange) stay in the USA come from. If (part of) that money was provided by the US government or by the government of your country of origin the 212(e) rule applies. This funding could have provided to you directly (e.g. in the form of a stipend), or indirectly (e.g. funds provided to your university that were used to pay your salary). So the question is: where did the money come from that the university used to pay your salary?
What exactly counts and doesn't count for this I cannot say, and you should consult an immigration expert for this.

That said, if the university considers this a "funding" there's a good chance they are right. Universities deal with immigration laws often, and they know the source of the money. Mistakes do happen, but OP should start to make peace with the fact that likely their classification isn't wrong.

[I suspect that the distinction between direct/indirect funding is one defined in immigration/visa law, and unrelated to the use of the term we academics are familiar with. But in the end, this does not matter, because:]
From a legal perspective, "external funding" is money the government (or some other organization) gives to your university and not you. Your university then pays you a salary. For the purposes of visas and similar things, what matters is that you got a salary from your university. Where the university got that money from is not important.

Though I'm not an expert in this, from what I can tell where the money came from is indeed the thing that matters, and it's not about a distinction between direct vs indirect but rather about (direct or indirect) funding from the US or other governments.


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Answers to Reviewers
We submitted a manuscript, received the reviews, and answered them all. We answered all of their comments, every single one, but my simple question is that if we are obliged to mention every minor change we do in the manuscript or not.

I do not mention any changes not requested by reviewers.  Say during revision, I find an error.  I will not mention the correction.

When you say "answered" I assume you mean addressed the comments in the manuscript itself. But, no, you needn't list all changes, especially minor ones. Let the new version stand for itself.
There is a tradeoff in listing minor changes. While it might help that same reviewer do a quick scan of the new version, it also makes it less likely they will treat the new version as an organic whole.
List any major changes and point to changes caused by special concerns of reviewers, of course.

Thank you so much @Buffy for continuous help and support...

Do we add highlights (i.e yellow color) in the manuscript to the changes that are related to our answers?

Please not yellow.  https://discoveryeye.org/print-and-web-design-for-older-adults/

No, don't use highlighting. Let the paper be the paper. Ad thanks to @TerryLoring for the note on considering older readers, which should be a general concern.


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Are there statistics for the share of work which is put into planning, performing, analyzing and documenting of an experiment?
I was wondering if there are statistics of the ratio of effort (or time) for the different steps in experimental research?
Given that all the work which needs to be done to start (literature review, funding etc.), I would assume the following steps are necessary:

Planning of the experiment (or simulation)
Performing the experiment
Analyzing the acquired data
Documenting the findings

Are there statistics or other research on how the overall work splits up into these steps? (Something like Planning: 10%, Performing: 5%, Analyzing: 50%, Documenting: 35%)

As in Computer Projects : 90% of the project takes 90% of the time and the last 10% of the project takes 90% of the time.

@rul30 - I think he meant that the last 10% of Step 4 seems to take nine times more work and time and sweat than the first 90%.

@rul30 - I think you should narrow down your question, and either ask for statistics, OR ask for a rule of thumb.  (Or you could ask two questions.)

@rul30 Also, I think specifying your field would help a lot toward making the question answerable. A longitudinal health survey would be very different than a psych lab experiment or a CS simulation.

A rule of thumb I heard (and experienced) in my field (chemistry, spectroscopy, bio/medical applications) is 10 % for planning, pilot experiment and experiment, 90 % data analysis.

@aparente001 I was also making the point that many projects don’t run to time ...delivery date slips due to unforseen events etc

There is no widely applicable rule of thumb on how to allocate resources across sub-fields and individual researchers/labs, and often the percentage break-down will even vary by project. Its something you can note retrospectively, but the variance is so high as not really to be usefully communicable; if a rule of thumb existed, you should probably ignore it.
In practice, projects differ both due to the preferences, skills, and working styles of the individuals involved, and external factors of publication culture, funding, method used, and the problem itself.
As a simple example, some projects just need a lot of careful planning to make sure they come together. This is especially true when the subject of the study is difficult or otherwise expensive to work with such as expensive/rare equipment, costly chemicals, long-running computer calculations, and human beings (especially when they are from a "vulnerable population" or some risk is involved). On the other hand, sometimes planning just takes longer because the idea needs a lot of work - while on some projects it can feel like the idea is nearly fully formed from inception and things just proceed rather obviously from first principles.
Similarly, analysis sometimes can be wrapped up in a few days - in part because of how the project was planned, and in part by the method used. In an experiment using null hypothesis testing using p-values and decision rules, if you are doing things right your analysis should be incredibly straight-forward to run because you had better have decided long in advance of getting the data what you were going to be doing, because otherwise you are doing it all wrong. But if you are doing exploratory data analysis or using various flexible modelling methodologies, analysis could go on for quite a while ("what if you included X in your analysis? what about Y? What about an interaction between X and Y?").
Similarly, writing everything up into a publication could take a few days to a few weeks for some projects/venues - or could drag on for months and years (especially true in areas like Economics, and even more true when the authors target top journals). This also varies widely depending on the project (some are just easier to describe) and the methodology (the more complex and less familiar the methods, the more work may need to go in describing it and figuring how one even should describe it). In some paradigms the analysis stage is the writing stage, while in others the papers are more formulaic with established guidelines that feel more like filling out a template.
To restate the initial conclusion: no, there is no rule of thumb, and if there were you should ignore it. There is no Right and Proper Division of Research Labor. Instead, learn the factors of how the stages work together, what seems to work well and what doesn't, and adjust per-project, per-collaborator, and as you develop your style and skills. Importantly, learn the expectations of your mentors and collaborators on timeline and specific plans, specific to the exact project you have in mind. Often it is only when all the details are laid out clearly for someone else that you can discover that, oh my, there is no way that a certain task is going to be as fast or slow as you thought. This way you'll develop more "known knowns" and "known unknowns", and develop ways to account for them - and end up being shocked by the countless "unknown unknowns" that appear with every new experience no matter how expert you become.


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My professor presented a problem that I solved. He says I can send it to a conference. What is the etiquette in cases like this?
But I don't understand if it is ethical because he was the one who identified the problem. I wouldn't have thought of the answer if he hadn't asked the question. I am an undergraduate and this is my first time in research. I do not understand the process, I think. But is this how research works? What is the proper way to proceed now?

Did he participate in working on the problem in any other way besides just stating it? Can he be a coauthor of the conference paper?

"I do not understand the process" presumably the professor does. Don't overthink it. Instead, enjoy it.

Articles answering open questions posed in another article are entirely fair (and quite common). They will probably be a co-author, anyway; if not, acknowledge their contribution. Problem solved.

Isn't this like the normal case? The professor presents you a problem, when he thinks you can solve it. You invest your time and then present it somewhere. The professor usually is a coauthor then.

You doing good reflects well on him, he is your teacher.

A simple acknowledgement of thanks to the professor for his advice and recommendations. If this was actually an issue of ethics probably 90% of PhD’s would have to be redacted.

Ask your professor if he would agree to read the introduction for your solution in the upcoming conference. Also investigate if this has not been solved already. Your professor is the one who should guide you and give you advice about everything.

Welcome to SE Academia! Please carefully observe grammar and formatting when posting and address the question specifically when answering.

Investigating whether it has been solved for might be useful in writing a paper, but I think that if the professor is saying to present it at a conference then either it is a smaller conference specifically for undergraduate achievements learning and research (more along the lines of a mass presentation) or it really is a problem that doesn't have any well known solutions. I'm sure the professor has done his homework on this. Great suggestion though. I agree that this is what someone in a more general situation ought to do.

There is no ethical issue. You should be proud of your accomplishment and publish the paper. It may be, in fact, that the professor saw the problem but not the solution and needed it himself.
In fact, it is fairly common for a dissertation advisor for the doctorate to provide the problems to his/her students that result in their degrees. That isn't universal, but happens regularly in some fields.
On the other hand, in some fields (mathematics, say) the ability to ask the right questions is extremely important - more so than finding the eventual answers in many cases. But to be a complete researcher you need to be able to do both. However, it isn't expected that you get this ability naturally. So, in a way, the professor is "kick starting" you on your way to being a good researcher.
Of course, you can also say in the paper that the problem was proposed by Professor X of University Y. The professor can give you advice about the advisability of that, of course.
Moreover, the question posed by the professor got you thinking. You got to thinking about the solution. But I also guess that it got you thinking about the next question that needs to be asked. If so, you are on your way.

I should also note, for completeness, that there have been occasions in which someone has posted important unsolved problems as "exercises" in books and elsewhere. This has sometimes been done without comment. The idea is to get the problem out to a wide variety of people who know the topic and might, somehow, have the insight to solve it. Don Knuth, for example, has done this in Computer Science:The Art of Computer Programming.

...there have been occasions in which someone has posted important unsolved problems as "exercises" in books and elsewhere. --> Fun fact, this is how noted mathematician George Dantzig got his Ph.D. thesis -- he showed up late to a class, copied down two previously-unsolved problems in statistics thinking they were the homework, and submitted the "late" solutions to his professor. True story.

You can co-author the publication with the professor, if you believe he made a significant intellectual contribution and wants to be included as an author.

I think I recall being told that Serge Lang's algebra (or number theory) text asks in an exercise for  the study of the rational points on the curve $x^n + y^n = z^n$. That is - prove or disprove Fermat's Last Theorem.

Nice work! There is certainly no ethical issue here, and not really much gray area either because this professor, who is the only other person there would be any measure of shared credit to consider, has advised you to send the work to a conference. Since they did not propose it as a shared submission, it seems like they most likely view you as the sole author of the work.
If you want to completely cover your bases, it would be appropriate to ask that professor for further advice just like you have asked us:

I am new to research and unsure of proper conventions. Since you suggested the problem, do you think I need to acknowledge your contribution in some way? If so, how?

Answering these sorts of questions is exactly what an academic advisor is for.
You may also consider asking them for advice on a proper conference to submit to, since this can be quite tricky for someone inexperienced.

"His professor" does not imply his advisor. It could be a professor of some random course he has taken before having gotten any advisor. It could even be a professor other than his advisor (in case he has got an advisor). In that case there could surely be some ethical issues. For example : Should I spend time which my advisor pays for to write a paper which another professor will get credit on?

True, but I didn't necessarily intend to imply this professor is the students advisor; if they are an undergraduate they should consider asking them to be one now. If they already have another advisor these questions can go to her/him instead, etc.

Yes, I also noticed it was undergraduate in the question first after I wrote comment.