text:
Author has published a graph but won't share their results table
I am trying to reproduce some of the results in a paper from 2018 where the results were included in a graph but no exact values were given. There is no results table to go with the graph. I can't exactly compare what I produce with my guesses as to what the values in the graph are. They also did not specify one of the parameters used to produce the results.
I have emailed the authors multiple times and they keep ignoring my question about sharing these values with me and apparently do not have the parameter values as they don't have the logs any longer. I am unsure how to proceed with this. It's a paper published in a high-impact well respected journal.
Any help or guidance would be appreciated. I am not being rude or brash about the way I've asked for these results. I just explained I want to compare to them and can't use the graph because I need some level of accuracy.

Why can you not evaluate your findings plotted in the same way? Are they close enough to be convincing that your two experiments find the same outcome? Are you trying to perform a statistical test to see whether you have the same outcomes?

Its unclear how you know that they don't have the lgos any longer if they are ignoring you?

@Mark 2018 it was first published

@AzorAhai--hehim Because I don't have the numerical values so it's hard to say how similar or different the results are. Their graph is quite low resolution. I could try and plot my results on the same graph but it will be hard to infer much useful. I can replot it by guessing the values they've used but that seems like the best i can do

@IanSudbery They don't have the parameter I asked for and said that's because they don't have the logs but haven't responded on the rest of the results

"they don't have the logs" - does anybody honestly believe this? It's excusing malice by pleading incompetence. If the journal truly is respectable they'd have open data rules, can you force these people to properly show the work they're happy to reap publication prestige from? Also be aware of course, that by asking uncomfortable questions about peoples' data you burn bridges and make enemies. Science talks a game of openness and scepticism; the reality is more like @Buffy's first couple of paragraphs. Get used to that kind of post-hoc excuse

What is your question?  This is a question-and-answer site, so we require you to articulate a specific answerable question.  I don't see a question in your post.  "Any help or guidance would be appreciated" are too open-ended to be a good fit here.  See our [help/how-to-ask].

In some circumstances in some jursidictions you might be able to take them to court.

@benxyzzy “does anybody honestly believe this?” — Yes. Anybody who has ever worked in science should believe this, because it’s depressingly common. It’s not malice, it’s just standard incompetence, and — at a close approximation — every starting scientist has done this at least once. I know I have, and I know many of those I did my PhD with have as well. I’m not excusing this practice but I can confidently state that it doesn’t require malice or even negligence other than what’s explained by lack of experience.

Just to second Konrad's comment - it's stupendously easy to lose data. Just because the paper was published in 2018 doesn't mean the data was that recent. It could have closed in 2016 and taken ages to review. Could have been based on a student's project who didn't organize very well. I've seen far more poorly organized labs than well-organized ones.

@D.W. There are multiple questions but is more concise as a single post. "How best to response to this?" "What is the consensus on this from a scientific POV?" "Is this normal?" "Is there any normal approach to get around this?" etc. I figured it wouldn't make sense to split this into multiple different Qs

@KonradRudolph That's a fair approach. I would have hoped they could have asked the other authors on the paper or given some approximate ranges for the parameters. It's frustrating they couldn't at least try to encourage someone to reproduce their work

@Espore Please don't leave the questions in the comments.  Instead, [edit] your post to state the question explicitly.  Comments exist to help you improve your post - we don't want people to have to read the comments to understand what you're asking.  Asking multiple questions in a single post doesn't always go well; some of those are a matter of opinion and may not be a good fit here.

The matter of data and the ethical issues you impute to the article author(s) are given some coverage here: problematic datasets. Paragraph starting after the "Borader Impact Length" chart. It does not directly address your concern, but it provides a fleeting insight into NeurIPS concerns regarding datasets.

@KonradRudolph It's a "hot" question. Every time a question here makes the hot questions list, it gets flooded with visitors who vote, or comment, or vote on comments, without having much of an understanding of the situation. Hence the ridiculous suggestions such as "take them to court".

@KonradRudolph Also, I wouldn't even call it incompetence. We cannot even tell from the OP's question that the information they're asking for is actually relevant, not to say crucial. Most people assume it is, but students get lost in details all the time.

Here's a possiblity: For all we know, some numerical work was done by a student who has now graduated, and is no longer in academia. The code they wrote is somewhat sloppy and not well documented (after all, they were a student, not an experienced scientist). Their supervisor can't start using it again, either because they don't know the tools well enough, or even if they do, it may take a significant amount of time to understand all its details again. It would not be surprising at all that they are not willing to dig up all the details, especially if they are not crucial to the main result

Is the reproduction of their work critical to your work, or is it a case of it would be emotionally nice—though scientifically worthless—if your work gave results the same as something which cannot be reliably reproduced?

@AndrewMorton I'm trying to analyse how the methods they present behave depending upon the choice of parameters. I don't have the numbers for that graph so I can only include an approximation of their results compared to mine. I also can't discuss how the parameters used for their results affect the behaviour. I've reproduced their exact model but the exact results they've produced seem not to match up exactly with the theory in their paper. Essentially their theory doesn't match the graph and I am trying to determine why.

@Szabolcs I'm genuinely unsure what your point is. I'm basically trying to understand how their results match up to their claims and their theory. I don't think they do match. I can't seem to reproduce their exact results even though I have reproduced the exact model which behaves exactly as my understanding of the theory suggests. I wanted their exact values so I can show this nicely on a graph, giving a quantitative measure of how different the results are. Also the parameters used to produce their results, or what they say they are, would also help me to understand the differences.

There is no results table to go with the graph.

Use Datathief: https://datathief.org/
Despite the name, in most countries using Datathief is explicity allowed by copyright law.  Data cannot be copyrighted.

They also did not specify one of the parameters used to produce the results.

Two possibilities: it does not actually matter or peer review has failed.  When it is your turn to peer review, check for this type of mistake.  Sorry I cannot not help in this situation.
Paper authors can choose not to answer their email if they wish.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7671/software-for-extracting-data-from-a-graph-without-having-to-click-on-every-singl/7745#7745

Datathief works well; in the old days we would have manually read the data off the graph at key points for comparison.  It may be that the authors aren't used to open data or sharing their underlying data - and if the journal has a page limit there's no room for a table, unless supplemental information is an option

A good opensource alternative is WebPlotDigitizer.

Not only the data source should be cited, but also information of what tool was used to extract the data points from a graph, as it may introduce a bias.

Maybe not very nice, but hardly "misconduct". You might need to reproduce more of their "experiment" to get new data. Their data is their own, I think.
It may be that the reviewers saw more than the authors are willing to share publicly. And it is possible that they have future plans for the data that would make release at this time unwise.
If you want to reproduce the research you will need to do more than re-use their data. In fact, the results you would gain by looking at fresh data would likely be more valid than reusing theirs. You might find, in fact, that their conclusions aren't supported, assuming it is a statistical argument. Or, you might give it additional credence from using different data.

I don't think it is misconduct in any way - I didn't say that, or I hope it didn't come across that way.
Is it not the same as the results they've already shared in the graph though? But in numerical form? My thoughts were that it's purely just that they've already 'shared' those results just in such a form that they're not useful for numerical comparison.
I'm not after any of the actual data, just the numbers to match the graph and if possible the parameters to reproduce those numbers.

You had it tagged misconduct originally. I was responding to that.

Not sharing the raw data associated to a plot in a published paper maybe isn't misconduct, but I find it definitively shady. I think that journals ought to require that the raw data used for a plot, and all the analysis pipeline and generation code used to create it, should be submitted to the journal and made public along with the paper, in the name of reproducibility. Sadly, most journals don't currently bother with this.

I'm not sure its even "shady", its probably just lazy and is definitely poor practice. Requiring all raw data behind every figure is becoming more common. For example, Nature journals require this now.

@a3nm The journal is NeurIPS

Authors are not obligated to comply with random requests for additional information about their paper, nor do they even need to respond at all.
If they provide what you ask for, it would be them doing you a favour.
Their obligation is to the journal and the reviewers. This obligation mostly ends after they've made the reviewers happy and their paper is approved for publishing.
Some egregious problems might cause a paper to get retracted, but some missing data probably doesn't meet the threshold for that.
If contacting them has not worked for you, then you're probably out of luck. Contacting them multiple times is likely to only annoy them.
This applies in general. Specific journals or jurisdictions may have different policies regarding the above.
* One could of course say that them replying to you is good practice, but that's still them doing work for your benefit. And you can't control whether they choose to do that. Maybe they aren't replying because they just don't feel like it, but it might also be that they're chronically busy, or maybe they don't have access to the data any more, maybe they have some psychological issue that makes it significant effort to write even simple replies to people, maybe they have depression or chronic fatigue and doing much of anything is a whole lot of effort, maybe they'd dead, etc. But the bottom line is: if they aren't replying, there isn't really much you can do.

It's also possible that they don't have access to the email address you used any more. This would be most likely if e.g. it's a university email and they're no longer at that university. You can do some Google searching to see if you can find their profile somewhere, or see if you can find a more recent paper by them, to see if they're still at the same university or see if you can find a newer email address for them, or if you can find some other way to contact them (e.g. sending a message on LinkedIn).
But don't be a stalker. If you can find a newer email address, I'd probably recommend just sending a single email to that (assuming you already sent some emails to their previous email address).

In some circumstances, in some jurisdictions, authors/institutions are obliged to respond to Freedom Of Information requests.

@BobsaysreinstateMonica indeed, some funders make data sharing a condition of funding. At the research funder I work for we will if necessary take an appropriately anonymised copy of study data and hand it over to other reputable researchers if the original data owner won’t do it. Luckily we’ve never had to - once the original researcher realises what’s in the contract they produce the data, on those rare occasions they didn’t want to share.

“If they provide what you ask for, it would be them doing you a favour.” — Nah, that’s nonsense. It’s not a favour, it’s good scientific practice. Even if they’re not legally obliged, they’re ethically and professionally obliged to respond to earnest requests by peers. They only don’t need to respond to crackpots.

@KonradRudolph It just seems frustrating when im trying to spend my time reproducing their work - something which should be helpful to the research community. I'm only asking for the numbers for the graph which was already presented. It's almost just like asking for a higher resolution graph in a sense. But also the parameters which they describe, provide a formula to calculate, but don't say what values they used to produce these results - which seems odd to me.

Sorry but no, this is not the right view, definitely not in the era when so many research papers were shown to be non-reproducible. If you don't respond to requests (and don't publish the data on your website), you can now by default be assumed to be a fraud.

Wow, 9 downvotes. This is the correct answer. It would be nice if we lived in a perfect world where authors always responded to requests and were happy to share their data. But realistically, if OP asks for the data and does not get a reply, they have no recourse. Better to be realistic about this so they can make other plans.

Check the journal's guidelines and/or contact the editor. Sometimes journals require data and code to be made available (which is obviously the right thing to do) and authors that refuse to do so are breaching the agreement under which they published.
If the journal does not, then you are out of luck. Sadly there are many researchers out there who think science is a race and will do everything in their power to be the ones ahead. This is reprehensible but unavoidable.
I'd refrain from using their results and actively call them out if you publish anything similar, i.e.: attempts where made to reproduce the results from XXX et al. but the authors refused to share their data/code/methodology.

The journal is NeurIPS. I can't see anything on sharing data from my checks.
If i intended to publish something similar how is it best to approach this? I wouldn't put something so straight forward, but perhaps "we were unable to obtain results from XXX and so we reproduced them.."

You could contact the editor and ask directly. What you propose looks good to me.

"call them out" still gives them cite points and hence maybe a wage increase etc.

Ian that's a valid point, but there's no way to get around it unfortunately. Not mentioning the article  (the authors really) is the same as giving them a free pass at doing it again.

It would be a misrepresentation to say they "refused" when they didn't reply. "Refusing" implies a conscious decision to decline to provide what's asked for. But if the email requests went to an address they no longer have access to, if it just went into a pile of many unread emails they're too busy to respond to, or if they're dead, then they wouldn't be "refusing" the request. If the authors didn't respond, then just say the authors didn't respond, rather than putting your own spin on it.

Usually research communities are small and you will see each other at the next conference or the conference after that. Than you can ask them in person. Either informally between the sessions or when they present new research based on their paper. It is way more difficult to brush someone away in a room packed with respected peers who will be the referees for their next paper.
But act carefully, you don't want to affront them and turn them into an enemy!

So do your own experiment and make your own graph.  Compare the graphs.
Why do you need the specific data anyway?  There will be noise aka experimental errors in all the data so they wont be exactly the same every time which makes needing the original data irrelevant.

Compare how? I can approximate their numbers but that just seems so messy


text:
Instructor to assistant professor transition
How likely is an instructor position to be a stepping-stone for an assistant professor position?
I'm a postdoc in the US and currently applying for academic positions in the US. Is it a good move to consider an instructor position at a relatively well-known university relative to tenure-track positions at colleges that I have never heard about?

Are you thinking of a stepping stone to tenure track at the well known university or elsewhere at better colleges than you can apply to now? Please [edit] to clarify.

It would help to know what discipline you are in, because it would help to know what kind of resources (including research time) are needed for your research.

@AlexanderWoo Machine learning/Computational Science

@EthanBolker My question is general, but in particular (all of this are speculations and nothing to do with the general question that I asked here), the program that is hiring an instructor has 3 instructors with a faculty director and administrator, all of which have been hired last year, so I was naturally thinking the program might evolve into a department in the future.

The answers to this question may be institution-specific. For example, at my institution, Instructor is a tenure-track rank used for hires who are ABD. Instructors are automatically promoted to Assistant Professor when they complete their doctorate, so for my institution, the answer is "Not only is this common, it is baked into the definition of the rank/title." I suspect that by "instructor," you mean a non-tenure-track position. Could you edit to clarify?

As a general principle, ceteris paribus, if you have the choice between offers of an instructor position at an elite institution versus a tenure-track position at a non-elite institution, I would think that the latter is a bigger stepping stone towards a faculty position at an elite institution.  The main reason is that a tenure-track position will have a substantial focus on research work, whereas an instructor position is heavily focused on teaching.  It is valuable to gain teaching experience and do enough of it to remain good at it, but competition for tenure-track positions at elite institutions is heavily based on research/publication/funding records, which is something you will more easily build up in a tenure-track position at a non-elite institution than an instructor role at an elite institution.
Since you are a postdoc, you should already have some research experience, and hopefully you have the ability to progress your own research with minimal or no supervision.  An Instructor position can be a stepping stone to an Assistant Professor position in the sense that it provides you with some teaching experience and general university experience that will bolster your candidacy for the latter position. However, the main drawback is that it might not give you much time for your research.  If your research work does not progress adequately, that is likely to make it difficult to compete with other candidates for an Assistant Professor position.
Of course, in practice, all other things are never equal, and so you will want to take account of all sorts of differential factors, including where you would prefer to be located, marriage/children, which set of job duties you prefer, which set of job duties will advance your skills more, which place/institution has a culture you prefer, etc.  It also seems from your question that you are not talking about offers of positions, but just opportunities to apply for these positions.  In this case you could cast a wide net over both types of positions and see what offers you get --- after all, you gotta eat!

Yes! Seeing a teaching-focused position as a "stepping stone" towards a research-focused one is a trap, for you and the institution. For you because your research CV might actually get worse during the time as you won't have much time to do research, and for the institution because they likely have different goals with this position than have it serve as a parking space for future research professors.

Very, very few assistant professors in the sciences in the USA have ever been instructors.
Some instructors have gotten promoted to a higher rank within their university, but it was not called "assistant professor."  There can be a separate system of ranks.
If you like teaching, either "instructor at major university" or "assistant professor at a little known university" might suit you.  If you want to write grants, neither is likely to suit you.

Why wouldn't tenure track staff at a little known university write grants?

@VladimirF From what I have heard as a postdoc, agencies tend not to award the grant to proposals from less research focused universities. As a result, assistant professors in those universities are merely expected to have something submitted to advance their position, but assistant professors in reputable research institutions are evaluated based on their successful grant applications.

@VladimirF That's not quite what I said.  Grant funding is biased towards researchers who already have many resources they can leverage.  Faculty who have more teaching responsibilities have less time to write grants.  Working for a large, wealthy university where little teaching is required makes it easier to write grants.

There are no guarantees, but it can help at the margins if you do a good job. The issue is that most "relatively well-known" universities are bound by rules that require a public, national (at least) search for tenureable faculty. You would need to apply and be judged along with others.
It is possible for a department to write an publish a job description that describes you almost perfectly so that you are guaranteed to meet the requirements. But I've seen it happen that this was done by an R1 State University and the committee got three candidates (among others) who met the criteria at least as well as the one they wanted (really wanted) to hire.
But, it isn't a step backwards. Get involved with the "life" of the department to make the transition as likely as possible. Don't just teach your courses and go away. Get involved with faculty research seminars, for example.

In the U.S., in math, at research-oriented universities, there are at least two sorts of "lecturers". (And, note, this title is entirely different from that in the UK.)
First, there is non-permanent, but long-term, contracted sort of adjunct faculty, whose duties are exactly teaching, nothing else. There is not a progression to assistant professor, etc. It is not at all tenure-track.
Second, analogously, there are explicitly temporary versions of "lecturer", to fill teaching needs. No long-term commitment at all. Similarly for more elevated titles (and pay?), but no long-term commitment: visiting assistant prof, visiting X.
Third, there are some fancier "lecturer" or "instructor" positions intended as approximately post-docs, sometimes with honorific names attached. So-and-so instructor/lecturer in mathematics. But, again, no long-term commitment.
And, as @Buffy says, these days there is usually a legal requirement to conduct a well-advertised nation-wide search for any tenure-track position. Since lecturers/instructors are usually not in the pipeline for tenure at a given place, they have to compete with everyone else. Sure, it's good to have cultivated good-will and appreciation, but that's not a guarantee.
(So, most likely, if you have a lecturer/instructor position for a year or two, you'll be back to the same spot at the end, of applying for tenure-track positions all over again, with no promise that the place that made the offer this year will make you another one that year.)

I think the OP is asking about an instructorship at a good school as a step toward a tenure track job at a better other school than he can apply to now, not at the good school.

@EthanBolker, indeed. Clarification is needed...

@EthanBolker Both are correct. The instructorship is offered at a school that I may not successfully get an assistant professorship at. I may need couple years of post-doc at a top 10 university to get an assistant professorship there.

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Faculty TT verbal offer made, but no written offer (it's been about 10 business days)
I went through 2 rounds of interviews with a public university in the United States, was given a verbal offer 10 business days ago. The professor who spoke with me said that I should get a written offer the following week (last week) but so far - silence. I reached out to my contact person last week and they said the Provost (who needs to sign off on the tenure track line) was out last week. I waited to check in again with my contact person yesterday and they said that they will check, but still silence.
This is my only offer so far, but I do have interviews lined up beginning and mid-January and February with other schools. This public university is my 1st choice and the verbal offer was excellent.
Is this a bad sign? What is the customary timeframe to expect a written offer following a verbal offer? 2 weeks? Can the university change its mind? What is the best action on my part?

The U.S. Postal Service is struggling at the moment.  It has taken ten calendar days for a letter from SUNY Canton to reach me in Georgia.  Consider asking, because the Postal Service is struggling, whether they can send you a PDF of the offer letter by email.  If there is an offer letter, that shouldn't be a problem, but campuses will be closing for the holidays soon so you should act now.

@BobBrown Does "written" really mean "on paper" these days?

@AzorAhai-him- Based on a sample of one, yes it does.  My former institution sent a paper offer letter in two copies, signed by the president of the university, one of which the candidate was to sign accepting the offer and return.  More advanced cultures may do things differently.  (It's not SUNY Canton that did that.)

@BobBrown Just curious!

Several years ago my national lab went from overnight delivery of a physical offer letter to an online repository for the candidate to download the offer.

Great - thanks so much all! I received the 5-page written offer YESTERDAY from the Dean of the school. It is quite detailed, and I'm currently in the process of starting to negotiate the offer. They only gave me a few days to answer but with approaching holidays, responses are being delayed.

Congratulations. Not unexpected, but now you can stop worrying. Remember to contact the other schools.

@kbb465 awesome, congratulations!

A “verbal offer” is not an offer. in the US, any self-respecting institution would at the very least document their desire to extend you an offer in an email sent in very close proximity (same day, or next day) to the “verbal offer”. The actual offer including a precise salary anount and other hiring package information might take a couple of weeks after that, and official, final approval (typically by a university provost or other high-ranking official) might even take a few months, although that part is usually considered a rubber stamp that’s certain enough to happen that people will move across the country and even buy a house before it happens. But do not let anyone mislead you into thinking you have any sort of offer until something is, at the very least, documented in writing.
It is encouraging that someone says they want to hire you. I hope all will end well and that this is nothing more than an example of a mildly incompetent bureaucracy. But yes, they can change their mind (I have seen it happen), and yes, it is a red flag of sorts, or at least a yellow one. I advise you not to assume anything and to proceed with all other interviews as scheduled until your offer is extended in writing, with precise salary information. Good luck!

Good answer; one comment. Instead of  a mildly incompetent bureaucracy, it's also possible that OP's contact group wants to extend an offer, but another group who'd rather have someone in their field argues against the hire. I've seen that happen twice.

@gnometorule if OP has been told that they will receive an offer and has not received anything in writing for two weeks, that is by definition an incompetent bureaucracy. The details of what exactly is happening behind the scenes, whether it’s due to infighting of different groups, a key official going on vacation and not answering their email, or anything else, do not change that verdict. In a well-managed institution, groups do their fighting over positions before telling candidates that they are getting offers, not after.

As said, I've seen this happen at excellent universities. And while you are certainly right that what I describe is also a sign of a lacking bureaucracy, I found that having to possibly deal with infighting after hearing, from the group, that the group will extend an offer to the candidate (even though it shouldn't happen) would be worth a comment.

@gnometorule fair enough, thanks for clarifying. Sadly, incompetence exists everywhere including at excellent universities.

Incompetent bureaucracy seems highly probable.

@AnonymousPhysicist tell that to my friend who had an “offer” rescinded because the dean “changed his mind”. Probabilities should not dictate OP’s actions. Play it safe, hope for the best but prepare for the worst is what I advise.

In the middle of a public health crisis I might at least give the provost the benefit of the doubt over an unexpected illness, not vacation.

@AzorAhai-him- sure, but I’m confused about what your comment is referring to. Did anyone here make an assumption about the provost going on vacation?

Yes, you did, in your first comment.

@AzorAhai-him- I made no such assumption. I merely mentioned it as one possibility that can be speculated about as the reason for the delay. Also I was referring to an abstract “key official” of an abstract university whose identity is unknown to me. I can hardly be accused of not giving any particular person the benefit of the doubt about anything. Regardless, if I‘ve given offense to any key officials anywhere in the US, I apologize.

@DanRomik It was a general comment - albeit prompted by that one.

@AzorAhai understood, thanks for clarifying.

Great - thanks so much all! I received the 5-page written offer YESTERDAY from the Dean of the school. It is quite detailed, and I'm currently in the process of starting to negotiate the offer. They only gave me a few days to answer but with approaching holidays, responses are being delayed.

Edit after reading @DanRomik 's answer. I think he's right. I misread the question, equating "verbal" with "informal" which I misinterpreted as email from someone with authority. Without at least that I'd be concerned.
Academic mills grind slowly, particularly in December. Particularly at state schools. Particularly now in covid times. I don't think there's cause to worry (yet). I think the chance that they will change their mind is negligible.
Soon you will want to tell the other schools you're not coming (or zooming)  for an interview. The sooner they know that the happier they will be. You could tell your contact at this school you need to know your status in order to cancel elsewhere.
Congratulations on hearing first about your first choice.

As others have said, an overburdened, COVID-disrupted, and not very competent bureaucracy seems the most likely explanation, and you probably just need to be patient. That being said, there are high profile examples of major snafus in such a situation (google University of Toronto Valentina Azarova for an ongoing one right now) and lower-profile examples of surprise budget cuts and unexpected hiring freezes. So you can't count your chickens before they hatch.
I'd normally suggest giving your contact 48 hours to answer your most recent followup, though due to essentially everything shutting down at end of this week, you might need to accelerate that a bit. Then try to have a phone or Zoom chat with them, not to pressure them (they're doubtless trying!) but to understand the situation. Has the authorized decisionmaker informally said yes, just not signed the letter yet? Has the budget and terms of the offer been syndicated? Be upfront that you're trying to understand how much stock you can place in the verbal offer made. If you clearly make the conversation about "what can you tell me to reassure me" rather than "I'm going to yell at you for not having been successful yet in sorting this out", you'll get a better read of the situation. Ask open ended questions rather than closed, investigative ones, and try to have a chat, not an email exchange. You want to understand the situation, not have your contact fire off yet another email internally and continue to tell you nothing.
Finally, while you do want to let other institutions know you're off the market, and doubtless you and your family want to celebrate and start planning your move over the holidays, you do need to proceed cautiously and not burn any bridges yet. You are very close to having a confirmed position at your first choice institution, but you need to proceed as if that is not yet 100% confirmed. Even though it seems extremely likely it will be.

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text:
As a double major if you do reasonably well in only the second major will it affect your chances of getting into a good grad school?
I started out as an economics major after being pushed into it by my family. However, I never had much of an interest in this subject. I was going through a very rough time in the first two years and I never excelled much in economics and I did not care about what was happening to me. However, a math professor who is my current thesis supervisor encouraged me to look into the math department and that's when I thought about finally majoring in a subject I actually cared about and doing something for myself. Thus, I ended up double majoring in mathematics and I started finally feeling somewhat invested into my own future. I have done quite well in my second major (mathematics) and I hope to do a master's in either mathematics or statistics in France or Germany.
However, I am worried if I can even get into a good grad school as my grades in economics are not very good.

I have no idea how grad school admissions look into double majors. How will my case be considered if I want to do a master's in mathematics? Will my performance in economics adversely affect my chances of getting into a good grad school?
Is it recommended that I retake some economics courses I haven't done well in? I really don't want to. I would prefer to use that time to study more mathematics and preparing for grad school which is a cumbersome process in itself and retaking would also mean more finances behind a subject I don't care about. But if it comes down to that then I will have to give it a try.

This is my first post here and if I have made any mistakes or failed to explain something in a manner that can help to prompt any answer/advice to my problems then please let me know. Downvoting for stating an academic problem I'm facing without providing any explanation to a newcomer here makes very little sense. I thought the point of engaging in communities like this one is to help out one another, maybe I'm wrong.

If your second major (economics) is not related to the graduate program (pure? math), your performance in the second major will be viewed the same way as your performance in elective courses.  It is not that important but it will count towards any GPA cutoff.
If you were applying for a graduate program in economics with an intent to do quantitative research, bad math grades would be more important because math is used in some economics.
I would not recommend retaking a specialized course you do not plan to use for anything unless you would enjoy it.  It would be more efficient to take a course that is useful and also increases your GPA.

I only have my thesis left and since I still have about a semester left I am on the fence about retaking any past eco courses that might improve my gpa. From your advice it seems that it's recommended to not retake any economics courses. I wonder how the admissions office will evaluate my transcript if I want to apply for higher studies in mathematics and to what extent a good gre score can balance out the bump in my cumulative gpa due to my the situation with my eco major. Some insight into that would be helpful.

Apply and you will find out.

I am just uncertain whether I'm making the right decisions and my academic advisors are not very helpful. Thanks for the encouragement, I guess there's no option other than just going for it.


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Approaches to finding potential collaborators and co-authors
Based on my recent question on simultaneous working papers strategy and relevant insights by Stephan Kolassa, I would like to solicit the community's thoughts, advice and best practices on the topic of finding potential collaborators and co-authors (especially from a beginner's perspective).
Initially, I thought that it is a rather simple question with a most likely and obvious answer to it is simply to intensively network, interact with relevant people and publicize your own ideas, thoughts and projects (in other words, build your academic "brand"). However, while the core idea is most likely to follow the above-mentioned common sense, on second thought, there might be much more to it, such as various important strategic and tactical considerations that I could have missed.

@ff524: While the question you reference is closely related, I think that it would be beneficial to leave my question open, because: 1) the former one has been asked a while ago and doesn't seem to be active since then; 2) the existing two answers are limited in coverage and, thus, the answers domain could be improved.

If the question is basically equivalent but the answers on it are lacking, the appropriate procedure is to offer a bounty on the old question to draw more attention to it, not to leave a duplicate open.

@ff524: IMHO offering bounty might not always help in drawing more attention to a question, especially if it is suffering from deficient formulation. I humbly believe that my question is clearer and, thus, better in this regard.

@AleksandrBlekh What is the other question lacking? Especially I cannot imagine going beyond the JeffE's answer. When it comes to strategic or tactical - even if you do everything right, finding a collaborator has a lot of random components (interests, time, character alignment, ...) so like with every networking-like process, for every dozens (or hundreds?) of opportunities one a few are going to fire.

@PiotrMigdal: As I said, I (obviously, subjectively) don't like how it is formulated. While JeffE's answer is quite "stylish", it mixes serious stuff with funny (or less serious, or whatever you call it) as well as is perceived by me to be not complete enough in terms of coverage. While I agree with you that there are many random or unpredictable factors, I am expecting a more structured approach (read: lightweight framework) in answering my question.

@AleksandrBlekh The structured way is to apply to a team, and you will be given both a topic and collaborators. For the unstructured - JeffE has his own style, but I think that it is easy to extract the massage: talk to many people with similar problems/approaches, and a tiny fraction of them may turn in collaborators (but it's a multi-iteration process; similarly, usually you don't propose during the first date).

@PiotrMigdal: When I said "structured approach", I didn't mean a formal structured one, like you mentioned, but rather an informal structured, which would cover various small strategic and tactical aspects or observations (i.e., like ones found in the Jake Beal's answer below). As for the JeffE's answer, I don't mind his (or any other's, for that matter) style and yes, it is easy to extract his message; the problem is that his and your messages are just common sense, but I wanted to see, if there something beyond that.

@AleksandrBlekh Sometimes there is little beyond the common sense. People search for silver bullets, panacea or some magical solutions - but they are rarely there. And if they are, more that often they are BS (in the line of "How to get rich in 10 easy steps").

@PiotrMigdal: I agree that "sometimes" it is true. However, sometimes is not always, hence my question. Otherwise, we can declare that all wisdom shared on this site (and many others) is common sense, so there is no need to do that. That IMHO would be a simplistic and unwise thing to do.

Here are a few key observations I've made about the process of starting collaborations:

Most people one would like to work with are already quite busy, and have many random people come to them looking for collaboration.  If you want to be taken seriously, you need to have a specific and detailed idea of a way that their work can make a difference to your goals or your work can make a difference to their goals.  Once you start discussing, you might end up somewhere totally different, but clear and specific thinking is key to getting things started: I suggest Heilmeier's Catechism as a useful framework for your thinking.
Most collaborations thus start with a discussion with between PIs, but are only fully realized if a graduate student or postdoc becomes involved to do a lot of the work.  Early career researchers may play the role of both PI and postdoc themselves.  Be careful, however, to keep acting as a collaborator rather than turning yourself into a free postdoc.
Almost no interactions turn into collaborations.  A good rule of thumb is that for every 10 people you meet, 1 will become a potential collaboration; for every 10 potential collaborations, with 1 there will be meaningful follow-through on the possibility, for every 10 with meaningful follow-through, 1 will actually turn into a significant collaboration.  Don't get discouraged, but also don't waste time pursuing people who indicate they aren't interested beyond the point you are at.

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


text:
How can I best determine if a masters program is of high quality?
I'm about to start my master in mathematics next year. I'm having a lot of trouble determining how some of the options available to me compare. They are all not very wel known programs, and I don't think it's a good idea to name them here explicitly so I won't.
This whole choice is really stressing me out a bit. I want to choose the best one, but I have no idea how best to compare them. Things that I'm currently taking into consideration:

The number of enrolled students. This varies from only 10 to around 35 per year. 10 seems very low to me. And remember we're not talking about very prestigious programs here.
The structure of the program. Some programs make you choose a track in which you specialize, while others don't. You can of course still build that specialisation into your program on your own, but I feel that this explicit specialisation is probably better. I also think that better profs are attracted to programs where they can teach just their specialisation.

I would appreciate some input on the relevance of those two factors, as well as other things I should consider and ways of approaching this.
I will be studying pure mathematics and hope to be able to stay in acedemia if that is relevant for this situation.

I find it mildly strange that those are your possible criteria. No reviews from former students? No looking at papers published by students of the program?

@Telastyn, the purpose of posting this is clearly to ask for suggestions of good criteria.

Ask the professors that wrote your recommendation letters. They are the people in the best position to give advice. Also, as a very rough measure of quality, you might check the US News and World Report rankings of the PhD programs at the same universities.

@Potato Thanks for the suggestion, I'm definitely going to ask them for some input as well.

Also, look at placement data. If graduates aren't being placed into PhD programs you would like to attend, don't go. The programs undoubtedly have this data, even if they do not make it public. You should ask for it.

@Potato Thanks again! That's great suggestion, because really that's the curial information that I really want to know. I don't care about any of the ratings, nr of students, the structure of the program and all that. The PhD options afterwards are really what I want to know about. Is it appropriate to just ask for this information straight up, even if they don't make it public on their website or other sources?

@user2520938 Yes. The chair of the graduate committee (or whoever is in contact with you about admissions) should provide it to you upon request. Keep in mind there will be a lot of variance -- some people will decide academia is not for them and go into industry, some will not get into good PhD programs, and so on. But if your goal is academia, and even the best students are not going to good (say, top 15 or top 20) PhD programs, that is a bad sign.

There are several things you could try

Read student reviews online - sites like GradCafe offer
interesting discussions that will give you an idea how well the programs are run and how much faculty members are willing to go the extra mile to help their students get jobs after they graduate.
Look at USNews ranking as a loose reference. In my opinion (as a mathematician) those rankings do not fully reflect how good an institution is, but a department ranked #1 is quite likely to be better than one ranked #100. Bear in mind that US News won't give you the full picture, though, you could run into a fantastic professor at an institution that only gets a decent ranking.
Speak to the academic advisor in your department

Last but not least, your choice very much depends if you want to stay in the academia. If you're going into industry, reputation and the alumni network might be factors to consider. Otherwise, browse through the faculty directories and see if there's any potential match of research interests. For example, if you want to learn analysis, you're better off going to UCLA than to Harvard.
Good luck!

Thanks a lot for your answer! I'm going to have some conversation with advisors in my current department, and I'll also contact some people for the different options I have to see what they have to say. Can you say anything about the nr-of-students indicator I was using? I'm just wondering how a mathematics program with only ~30 master students in total can possibly be a vibrant and high quality program. Some other programs have upward of ~200 students, which seems like it's a much healthier amount to me. However, the smaller one has way better rankings on the sires you suggested.

@user2520938 I don't think having a large number of students is a particularly important requirement for a graduate program. 30 (or even 10, as you mention in your original question) is already a good number for a cohort. Some very good PhD programs (e.g. Harvard, Yale) admit fewer than 10 students a year some years. The quality of the faculty and the program's record placing students into good PhD programs are much, much more important.

@user2520938. In many top institutions there're less than 10 math PhD first year students per year (i.e., about 50 grad students total) and those are the most vibrant research institutions you could ever find. It's the academic excellency that matters. As for your case, it boils down to what you want to do with your Masters degree (industry, research, teaching?).

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


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Should I mention in a PhD application statement of purpose that I earn a large income from a business I created?
I am UK national applying for a PhD (microbiology) in the USA. The application process requires a statement of purpose which includes, among other things, a section on recent / current work activities that are relevant to the application.
I am a Master's student and have plenty of relevant details to talk about from an academic perspective (there is a separate section for this), but I also run a successful IT business and the transferable skills that I have learned from this form a core part of my relevant work experience for this section.
To illustrate my motivation and potential for success at graduate level, I was going to mention that I essentially started my business from scratch a few years ago and now earn a six-figure income. However, I am worried that the selection committee might view this unfavorably (talking about income is quite a taboo subject here in the UK), or worse they might question my commitment to a graduate program if they think I have a comfortable job to fall back on.
I should also mention that the PhD program I am applying to is fully-funded, but the cost of living in the area is notoriously high and most grad students have to supplement their income by teaching. I wouldn't need to do this as I have enough savings to be financially secure for the duration of the program.
Should I mention my income to demonstrate my aptitude, or will it do more harm than good?

They might think you're insane for ditching a that kind of income for a career in microbiology.

Can you word it in terms of how profitable your business is instead of your personal salary?  For example, maybe talk about how many people you employ, how many stakeholders, etc...

You may mention your successful business venture in your CV, but it's not relevant to your SOP -- unless it's directly related to what you want to do in your graduate studies in microbiology.
If you were applying to business school, the answer would be different.
In the CV, take the usual approach -- use lots of verbs to describe the types of tasks you have carried out.  In this way, you will be able to subtly convey the general level of success the venture has enjoyed, without being crude.  (Yes, in this regard, what would be crude in the UK would be crude in the US as well.)
Re your ability to support yourself without a teaching assistantship, just don't apply for one.  If there's any ambiguity, you may mention in a cover letter that you will not be applying for one.
HOWEVER: if you have aspirations to be a professor later on, it might be helpful to have some teaching assistant experience under your belt by the time you graduate.

Anyway, even if the work itself is relevant to the area of study, the profitability of the business almost certainly is not.  The work will be evaluated based on whether it's scientifically interesting, not on whether it made money.


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How to cite a section of a wikipedia article?
I'm kinda new to academia and was wondering how citations are done. In particular, say I wanted to cite the "Inspiration, pure and applied mathematics, and aesthetics" of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics
Would I cite the whole article, or is there a way of citing just the part I want?
Also, who do I mention as the author of a Wikipedia article?
Lastly, what format would is commonly used for writing such a reference?

In academia, Wikipedia is often not considered a good source to cite, but you should look for primary materials.  For a discussion, see: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/19083/19607

This question is very basic and broad in scope; have you made any effort to research it? If you search for "citation reference style" on one of the major search engines, the first few pages are full of useful tutorials.
There are many different formats used for references (e.g., Harvard, APA, Vancouver). If this is for an assignment, ask your instructor which format he or she wants you to use. If this is for a journal article you hope to publish, consult the journal submission guidelines.
Normally, page numbers are not required for short articles. For something longer, such as a book, page numbers (or perhaps chapter numbers or section numbers would be used.

As I said in my answer, a quick google search will turn up loads of tutorials on how to cite all kinds of resources. Once you have determined the format you're using (e.g., Harvard), then pick one of those tutorials and read it. Also, on Wikipedia articles have a "Cite this page" link which will tell you how to cite it in a variety of formats.

Use an APA citation generator. Dont write citations one by one. Even Microsoft Word has a 'references' section where you pasta the data of the site/book/article and its automatically generated. You can use Zotero too (it's a reference manager.)


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Information on Grants & Funding in mathematical research
Professors of mathematics in research universities get grants and funding from time to time. I have two questions regarding this issue:
1) There are many sources of grants and funding, are there any ways to search the records of grants & funding a person got? (Of course I know I can ask that person or I may consult the records of each single sources, but I just want to know is there a more convenient way to do that.)
2) What are the most common grants and funding math professors get? (I am not shopping among those sources, which sources are most commonly gotten in this field has statistical and objective answer)
I am asking about the information in United States and Canada.

You can find links to NSF and DoD award search sites here: Database of funded US Department of Defense (DoD) component grant proposals with abstracts: Does it exist?

NSERC had public database of all award holders: http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/index_eng.asp


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How to pronounce SCImago?
My mother language is not English and I am not sure how I should pronounce in fron of my students the word "SCImago" for journal & country rank by Scopus at https://www.scimagojr.com.

My mother language is English, and I also don't know how to pronounce "Scimago", because it's not an English word.  But I would probably guess "Ski-mah-go".

Perhaps ask on English.se

Any updates on this? There are various pronunciations doing the rounds, including:

'SKIM-ago'; (skim as in skim milk)
'skI-mAgo'; (ski as in snow ski)
'sci-mAgo'; (sci as in science)
others...

Just ask SCImage how to pronounce their name. There's a contact email in their About Us page.
In the mean time, just choose whatever pronunciation you like, and tell your students you're not sure what the right pronunciation is.
Myself, I would say it's "sci" like in science + "imago" with a hard g (like in "egg") - and extend the i as though it's doubled. So kind of like "scyimaggo".

I think your suggestion would be more correct if it had two “I”s; as it is, I’d probably just use one I sound- and since the SCI is capitalized, i would think that it’d take precedence.


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Can I qualify for program that has different requirements if you are from a different country than the other
I was planning on going overseas for my higher education.
However when I went to look for the academic requirements needed for the degree I was concerned when I found out that the qualifications that were needed differed from country to country.
I was wondering if I could qualify for program that had different requirements which I have completed within my host country and get in the program even though the requirements for my country are completely opposite and it would take me time to complete those qualifications.

That depends a lot on the program in question and I would advise you to contact them, as there is no general answer for that.
Just as a small remark: Usually, the requirements aren't that different. It's just that school/universities are different in different countries, so they might say "if you are from here, it is enough that you passed our Bachelor of XXX", while if you come from somewhere else (where this Bachelor might not exist in this form), you should have done this, that and that.
So if you think that you have fulfilled the requirements, just not in the exact way they stated it (because your classes had other names but the same content, for example), then you might have a good chance in getting in. But once again, this is for the person in charge of admissions to decide, so just contact him/her and ask.


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I forgot to add preprint submission (BioRxiv) before the actual journal submission, what can I do now?
I was entrusted to do the entire submission process on my own (previously done by the PI) as a learning process, so I am learning by trial and error.
I was supposed to initiate and complete all the bits in the submission portal of the journal, submit the manuscript to BioRxiv, and then submit to the journal. At least that was the order I was advised to follow.
In the rush of getting things done, and done right, I forgot to submit to the preprint server, before submitting to the journal. Now that I check the author guidelines of the journal (ACS publishing), they advise:

... authors are allowed to deposit an initial draft of their
manuscript in a preprint service such as or including these specific
preprint servers, ChemRxiv, bioRxiv, arXiv, or the applicable
repository for their discipline prior to submission. Please note any
use of a preprint server in the cover letter and include a link to the
preprint, and as appropriate, state how the manuscript has been
adjusted/updated between deposition and submission.
Electronic posting of conference presentations or posters secured by subscription or
institutional logins are not considered prior publication works. All
other prior/redundant publication is forbidden.
Upon publication in [journal X], authors are advised to add a link from
the preprint to the published paper via the Digital Object Identifier
(DOI). ChemRxiv and bioRxiv add this link for authors automatically
after publication. For further details, contact the Editorial Office.

Since you are supposed to mention the DOI from the preprint server in the cover letter to the editor (which is already written, signed and submitted) I'm thinking that I should not just submit the manuscript to BioRxiv without somehow notifying the editorial office.
The question is how to do that in a nice way. Should I send a mail to the editor-in-chief? the managing editor? I don't want to negatively effect my chances by annoying the editors unnecessarily, but I also don't want to assume anything and make a mistake along the way.

You are being very careful, though inexperience, and this speaks to your good will. It is no big deal. Just submit the preprint and notify the journal, stating that preprint submission was done after journal submission. Most journals have a "contact" link in the "action menu" for your submission that will contact directly the person managing your submission. If you cannot find such a link, look for a "managing editor" rather than "editor in chief," and make sure to include your submission number in the communication.
I would also let your PI know. There should be no reason for them getting angry at you, and it will make you look good that you own your mistake and try to rectify promptly.


text:
What are the differences between M.Sc, M.Tech and M.Eng.?
Based on this other question where the OP asks whether or not a second Masters degree is possible, I realized that I am not sure what the difference is between Master of Science and Master of Technology.
I have graduated from a Swedish university and after 5 years of studies (Bologna process) I got my undergrad (kandidat) and masters (examen) together as it is very common here. I double checked my diploma now and even though I have graduated from the technical faculty and an engineering program, I am given a Master of Science. I believe there is no Master of Technology degree in Sweden, so I am not sure what it means. To make the matters worse, I stumbled upon another similar degree, Master of Engineering.
I would really appreciate some insight into the differences of these degrees, and whether or not they would be considered interchangeable abroad (read: outside Europe).

I believe it's all down to the school.  To further confuse you, I have a "Master of Engineering Science". :-)

Degrees with the same name aren't always interchangeable!  (And my department offers both "Master of Science" and "Master of Computer Science" degrees.)

There are some differences, especially in the concept of the programs M.Eng./M.Tech. and M.Sc (and M.A. obviously too).
From my experience, and Wikipedia states this also, the M.Eng./M.Tech. degrees are rather given by Universities of Applied Sciences (at least in Germany, Canada, Finland etc,) and seldomly by Universities focusing on research. Any program that is research oriented will thus very likely give M.Sc. degrees.
The M.Eng. is even given as an undergraduate Master in the UK (see the Wikipedia Link) that gets granted immediately (without a bachelors in between).
For the career of a graduate, the title itself is not too important as aeismail mentioned, since any employer will have a look at what's inside (= the student track record).
Because there are so many slightly different programs, especially in computer/information engineering/technology/sciences I am not sure where universities draw the line regarding the "not granting a 2nd masters degree in the same field/area/discipline" policy.

M.Eng in the UK is 4 years, a M.Sc is 1 year, but you must do a 3 year bachelor degree first.   People can drop out of a M.Eng after 3 years and get given a bachelor degree.

At some schools, there may be differences in the formal degree requirements, such as the requirement of coursework or completion of a thesis; at others, including the graduate school I attended, the distinction is purely a departmental issue—engineering departments give out M.S. or M.Eng. degrees, while science departments give out only M.S. degrees. I think, from an admissions perspective, in most cases, these would be viewed as largely interchangeable. Some schools may have very particular entrance requirements, but these would be noted as part of the admissions instructions.
Where I now work, we don't specify the nature of the master's degree required for enrollment as a PhD student; any relevant master's degree will suffice, and the exact title of the degree is more or less immaterial. (We do have to petition if it's a foreign degree, but this is mostly a pro forma process.)


text:
When will the authors be listed alphabetically?
Recently, I noticed that some of the papers actually had their author names listed in the alphabetical order.
Say Mr. Smith contributed more than Mr. Black. Then without noticing the tiny footnote, one will simply take Mr. Black as the first author.
I am wondering whether there exists some certain such scenarios where the authors have to be listed as such. Will it be unfair for the first-author-should-be?
Update:
I am talking about EECS field. I see most of the papers list the authors according to the contributions. But only occasionally, I see alphabetically-listed authors.

Strongly related to http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/535/order-of-authors-on-publications

Sometimes it's just a coincidence, surely?

It happens when the authors chose to do so!
Journals do not impose the order of authors in the authors list. They usually give guidelines (or policies) on authorship standards, i.e. who should be co-author and who should not, but they leave the ordering up to the authors themselves.
Now, different fields have different customs. In physics and chemistry, alphabetical ordering is very rare (used for example in consortium publications), while in mathematics alphabetical ordering is more commonly, but not exclusively, used. Unless there is a footnote clarifying the authors’ respective contributions, you cannot definitely tell which system they used.

In mathematics alphabetical ordering of author names is used "exclusively" rather than "commonly". The exceptions are so few as to be essentially zero (the most famous one is probably the paper of Beurling and Ahlfors).

In mathematics authors are almost always listed in alphabetical order. This works, among other reasons, because work groups are organized less by a lab structure so you get more rhetoric of equality between all authors.

Moreover, all authors of a multiple-author math paper are "first" authors.

@JeffE THanks for both of you! Any idea in EECS field?

Alphabetical authorship is also standard in some subfields of EECS, like algorithms (my area), but in most subfields, the norm is order-of-contribution.  (On preview: What Aaron said.)

And because of this rule, if they are not listed alphabetically it usually means that the first author had the most important contribution to the paper. But from my experience, the alphabetical rule is broken only when one author contributed much much more to the paper, and even in those situations is up to the authors to decide :)

In CS, it varies by subfield. Theoretical Computer Science follows the math tradition and (almost) always uses alphabetical ordering. Many other subareas use some form of order-by-contribution.


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What are potential hassles of publishing papers with family name preceding given name?
As some of you may already know, family names precede given names in Eastern Asian culture, and furthermore  given names (e.g., Lingfeng) are more differentiable than family names (e.g., Li). This is quite the opposite of Western names.
As an Eastern Asian who just started my career in academia, I am seriously considering publishing my future papers under Li Lingfeng instead of Lingfeng Li (just an example). To me the benefits are two-fold.

This preserves my culture better, and I don't think nowadays Westerners will have problems identifying my family name is actually Li. I guess they are already familiar with this name format, given that in mainstream news (such as BBC or CNN), Chinese names always appear in its original form, e.g., Mao Zedong rather than Zedong Mao?
Citation Li et al., 2016 is way less distinguishable than Lingfeng et al., 2016. It's every researcher's dream to get famous. I think this at least helps clear some ambiguity?

Will this unconventional way of writing my name cause trouble in my future academic career? What are the foreseeable hassles that it may bring?
It will be even more amazing if someone could also help me with this bonus question: for immigration purpose, will it cause me any trouble if my publication records don't match exactly my foreign IC that writes Lingfeng Li?

I disagree with your first bullet.   I bet people know about 'Chairman Mao' as opposed to his full name.  Also, in the western world, people automatically assume your last name is the family name.  Why go against the tide?  Also, any publication tracking software will assume that too.  Second bullet: it's about the work/idea.   With Chinese names.  I'm sure there are thousands or Li Lingfeng so it doesn't really matter how you order your name.  Make an important contribution so people pay a bit more attention to find out who is who.   I've seen researcher add a western name: Li (Bob) Lingfeng.

Lingfeng et al., 2016 is an incorrect citation regardless of the order in which you write your name. Depending on your discipline/subfield people may be more or less likely to know how to correctly handle your name.

Moreover, traditional order is not unconventional at this point (at least not in my field).

I think the bonus question should rather be a question of its own on Travel SE or Expats SE.

Just to point out that my gut feeling is that if you asked random Westeners what Mao Zedong's first name is, the overwhelming majority would say "Mao". Note that in Europe the royalty is almost always referred to by their first name only ("King George", "Queen Elizabeth") so it's not obvious that the name used to address a country's leader is their last name.

This would be a mistake setting you up for a lifetime of incorrect "corrections" by people who know that Li is the family name.

People will always adress you and introduce you as Dr. Lingfeng. Doesn't it sound weired to you? To me at least it would be odd to be called Dr. Peter.

family names precede given names in Eastern Asian culture

... and in Hungarian, and possibly some other languages.

As an Eastern Asian who just started my career in academia, I am seriously considering publishing my future papers under Li Lingfeng instead of Lingfeng Li (just an example).

I am not sure this is possible: I have come across various paper styleguides that explicitly requested the given name to come before the surname (or, equivalently, to list the given name first, but then add a comma, to indicate the "original" order of name parts has been changed). For example:

Springer says: Chinese authors should write their given names in front of their surnames, i.e. Linfeng Li
Nature says: Authors should be listed surname first, followed by a comma and initials of given names., i.e. Li, L.
Elsevier says, at least for some of its journals: Author names should be in Western format, with family names (surnames) last., i.e. Linfeng Li

Now, if you switch the order based upon whether adherence to a specific order is required, this can easily create more confusion than always going with the given name - surname order.

I don't think nowadays Westerners will have problems identifying my family name is actually Li. I guess they are already familiar with this name format, given that in mainstream news (such as BBC or CNN), Chinese names always appear in its original form, e.g., Mao Zedong rather than Zedong Mao?

While BBC and CNN might do so, there are many news outlets that are "mainstream" in their respective countries or language areas. Are you sure they all follow this convention?
In any case, I am not convinced this is evident at all to a "Western" audience. I wouldn't be surprised if quite some people interpreted a mention of "Mao Zedong" to mean that "Mao" is the given name and "Zedong" is the surname, thus remaining oblivious to the (from their point of view) "unusual" ordering and getting the name wrong.

Citation Li et al., 2016 is way less distinguishable than Lingfeng et al., 2016. It's every researcher's dream to get famous. I think this at least helps clear some ambiguity?

I am not sure about famous as such (which somewhat implies a general audience), but let's say most researchers would wish for their name to be known in their community and associated with certain findings.
While I agree with the issue you outline, my understanding is that you use the surname in citations, no matter in which position it is shown. So, the citation for a paper by "Li Linfeng" would still be "Li et al., 2016". (And then, some might not recognize the ordering and indeed cite "Linfeng et al., 2016", thereby creating confusion again).
To conclude, I fully agree with the problems you outline1, and I do think this is a problem that to date does not yet have a satisfactory solution in the academic publishing world. However, just using the surname - given name ordering as an individual will probably just create new problems rather than making everything nice and tidy.
1: with the restriction that I find terms like Asian and Westerners overly generalizing in this context. As mentioned above, there are also Western cultures with the surname - given name ordering, and also, while many Chinese surnames may allow for relatively little distinction, I am not sure the same can be said about Thai surnames, for instance.

I suspect there would be issues with citation indexes too.

I know a former colleague, who publishes all his
work under the name
A. B. C. Ddddd Eeeee, even though he comes from a part
of India where the family name comes first – so his family name
is in fact Aaaaa. In his case, that works: academically, he's known as Prof. Ddddd Eeeee. But it works only
because nobody outside of India and few people in India
know the real story.
For Chinese names, the situation is different. Even in the
Western hemisphere,
there are quite a number of people who know that in any
trisyllabic Chinese name the one-syllable part is the family name,
and who would therefore cite Li Lingfeng as Li, L.
or perhaps Li L.
Others don't know it, and they would therefore cite
Li Lingfeng as Lingfeng, L.
This kind of confusion, however, is
clearly undesirable.
You could try to make it clear (to those unfamiliar with
Chinese culture) by using all-caps for the family name,
i. e., LI Lingfeng,
or by abbreviating the given name,
i. e., Li L.-F.,
but that may interfere with journal formatting styles.
So, in the end, it's probably not a good idea.

"by using all-caps for the family name" - note that this in itself might create some confusion. For example, writing the family name in all-caps is totally unusual in German, So, when I first encountered this convention in French names (where it seems to be quite usual), I was totally confused and it took me a while to figure out this was not a personal quirk by the respective authors and instead, this was a somewhat standard way to highlight the surname (even though I could perfectly tell which part was the surname from the start, because French names as such are quite readable to me).

@O.R.Mapper The convention seems to be used in particular in France and in some parts of Asia, e.g., in Japan. But you're right, some may find it confusing. And in the case of a two-letter family name like Li, there is even the risk that "LI Lingfeng" is interpreted as initials, i.e., "L. I. Lingfeng".


text:
Does writing a book improve your chance for getting scholarship for applying PhD abroad?
As you know there are many candidates competing for winning the scholarship for their PhD program, specially the ones who are applying abroad. So, having better skills likely spell to overcome the other candidates.
I have two SCI papers in my field. So I don't have a very bad research background as a graduated student of electrical Engineering for M.SC. degree. But, recently, I've started to write a book in English. The content of book is very general and simple but still can be fitted in my field. The book title is going to be 'Technical use of English language in electrical engineering'. This book is one of the courses of Electrical Engineering for undergraduate program in our countries.
So, since the books are not usually peer-reviewed, I was wonder to ask:

How much does writing  a general and simple book in your field help
you to get a good scholarship for PhD program?
Is the effect of writing a book more than a namely SCI research paper?
Is the affects of having a book variy in different countries? If
yes, please tell me about Australia, US and Canada for precise.
Is it okay if I self-publish the book or I need a good publisher?
does it compensate my bad GPA by any chance?
finally, what are the advantages of having a book as a graduated
master student?

Related (partial duplicate): Is there any value in self-publishing a book as an academic?

Also related: How do you get a bad transcript past PhD admissions?

The goal of a PhD is to teach you how to do research. Teaching is not the primary goal of the PhD. Book publishing is also considered something that can be detrimental early on in one's career, since it takes time away from the other more important goals (advising students and postdocs, peer-reviewed publications, grants, teaching, committee work, etc.).
That said, a well-written published book probably can't hurt your chances. If, however, it's riddled with poor writing and technical errors, it will not help and may even do some harm.


text:
3+ month delay in reviewing the revision of paper, what can we do?
I had submitted a paper in an ISI journal, i.e. in Taylor and Francis. The first submission date of the manuscript was 30-may-2014. We received the first revision result on 27-July-2014. Hopefully, the result of reviewing our paper was optimistic as the paper status was accept with change; we had only some minor comments. We submitted the answer of revision on 15 Aug. They didn’t reply our revision yet. How can we write to them to review our paper faster?
Note: Its 2-Dec Today.

Aug 15 to at least Dec 2 seems like a very long period for a decision based on a minor revision. Particularly since the procedure earlier seems to be very timely. Sending an e-mail to the handling editor seems in perfect order. There may of course be some natural reason for the delay but after more than three months you should certainly enquire.
As for the content of your request just make is short, to the point and polite. Do not assume anything or be unfairly judgemental, you do not, yet, know the reasons for the delay. If you have some "excuse" for why you are extra anxious to get a response, please mention it. This could be that you need to show your updated publication list for applications or for some other official reason. This will of course not mean you receive special treatment but will make the editor aware of the delay and the possible effects it may have. But, a short e-mail will suffice.

@Electricman "I need this paper to finish my Phd" sounds like you are trying to influence the decision, while wanting an up to date publication list prior to your examination is a little more neutral.

@Electricman we are really not a proof reading service. Your letter seems reasonable, but I would ask someone to proof read it for you.


text:
Is it common for professors in The Netherlands to change institutions as they go up the ranks, or to speed up the promotion process?
I have heard that it is common for Assistant Professors or Associate Professors in The Netherlands to apply for positions at other Dutch institutions to improve their chances of promotion. Is this information correct?

So you mean: (A) I apply at another university, but I do not intend to go there.  If I get an offer of employment from them, I will show it to my current institution, and hope for a matching offer.  Or (B), to get promoted from Associate to Full, I do it by switching to another university.

More like (b). I am Assistant Professor and I apply for an Associate Professor position elsewhere to "pressure" (for lack of a better term) my institution to promote me earlier, or simply to gain promotion at a different institution a year or two prior to the time I would promote at my university. Is this possible? Thanks.

More like (b). I am Assistant Professor and I apply for an Associate Professor position elsewhere to "pressure" (for lack of a better term) my institution to promote me earlier, or simply to gain promotion at a different institution a year or two prior to the time I would promote at my university. Is this possible? Thanks.


text:
Revising thesis into a publication : Can I use the same language or must I paraphrase?
I'm in the process of revising my MA thesis for a publication. I am not clear whether I can just copy and paste information from my thesis and do minimal revisions, or I should paraphrase my thesis to a large extent so as to avoid self-plagiarism.
Any feedback would be appreciated!

Paraphrasing something that would otherwise be plagiarism does not stop it from being plagiarism. Similarly, trying to get the same thing published twice is a problem, whether or not it uses the same language.
However, at least in the UK it is normally fine for ideas that are in a MSc or PhD thesis to also appear in a journal article. I would not worry about using the same words, when it's appropriate to do so.
If you want to be sure, you could write to the editor of your intended journal to check. Either way, it would be wise to mention the situation in the cover letter when you submit your article, just in case they run it through a "plagiarism detector".

If your thesis hasn't been "published" in any form then you can just consider the publication as a new version and revise it as you like. It would be good, however, to note somewhere that it is derived from your thesis. The new publication will be the "first" publication.
But if you or the university has published it, then you are normally better off citing it in the publication rather than just copy/paste. However, since the work is yours, you can also quote longer parts of the original (with citation) than you would do with  the work of another.

Thank you! My thesis is not published yet. It's all done, I've submitted it to school. After I defend my thesis, I need to upload it to the library website.

You should probably ask locally whether they consider that a "publication". They can probably give you general advice on this also. Maybe talk to the librarian.

If a journal or publisher considers a MSc thesis a publication, I'd rather avoid that journal or publisher.

In the UK, in some disciplines, it is quite common for PhD theses to be published as books without it being stated anywhere that the book began life as a thesis. That is usually quite obvious to an experienced reader, anyway. There is no nonsense about that being self-plagiarism, because the defining element of plagiarism, namely an intention to mislead, is obviously absent. I would be very surprised to see a thesis for a master's degree being published, good luck to you if yours is, but in the UK at least you should not worry.


text:
What should I expect from a non-academic interview for a PhD position?
I have applied for a PhD position in Physics. First I had Skype interview that they called "personal interview". They asked me about my family and stuff.
Now the University has called me for a face to face interview and they are calling it "non-academic interview".
I wonder what kind of questions should I expect from this interview?
Note: I had academic interview with my prospective supervisor, who's accepted me.
The university is KAUST (Saudi Arabia)

I have no idea what this might be, but one possible speculation: perhaps it is an interview to check to see if you are ideologically suited to a university position in that country (i.e., that you won't cause political trouble for the regime)?  Is that possible?

It is quite acceptable to ask who you will be interviewing with, and what the interview will be about. You can even ask whether you should prepare an overview of your academic work for non-academic interviewers (to which the answer is likely to be "no", but it'll probably be "No, the interview will involve X Y and Z"). You can ask whether it's an interview with their administrative personnel, or with higher-level managers; you can ask whether you should bring anything (you're visiting Saudi Arabia, right?); and so on. You could even straight-out say "I'm not sure I understand what a non-academic interview means, as after I'm interviewing for an academic position and KAUST is a university."
Don't ask a zillion questions, though, just pick one or two depending on the context.
Also, if you know someone who's not in charge of the hiring process (PhD candidates, post-docs, faculty) you can ask them in parallel about the process.
Finally - I could speculate about what "non-academic" actually means: Maybe it's an HR-style interview? Talk with group members to see whether they like you? Negotiations of employment conditions? Political screening like @Ben suggests? ... but they will probably just tell you (except for that last option I guess).


text:
Moving from a University to a National Research Institution, career implications?
Because of Brexit issues with my large grant, I'm considering a move from a permanent research+teaching post at a university to one of Europe's large research institutions. I'm not particularly familiar with these entities and I'm finding it difficult to gauge the long term implications of this move. Can anyone tell me:
What are the key differences between basing research at a university and basing research at a (large, European) research institution?
What might the long-term effects on one's career be due to making the switch, e.g. from not teaching or supervising phds?
For the record I'm not STEM, I'm a social scientist who does a lot of humanities/arts work.

Can you say country? There are major differences between different EU countries' national systems.

This would be CSIC so Spain. Specific comments would help me of course. However I was hoping for a slightly more general comparison of the two types of environments so as to make the answer relevant to more people.

What might the long-term effects on one's career be due to making the switch, e.g. from not...supervising phds? Can you clarify why you believe you cannot supervise PhD students?

Because the research institute in question does not have PhD students. No PhDs to supervise means no PhDs supervised.

I would recommend against making any long-term decisions until brexit plays out completely. Funds for existing faculties of higher-ed should remain unaffected as R&D works to save taxes. This is partly why many public universities run deficits. They are loss making entities, exempt from taxation. I don't think you're in any big danger of being affected.

@GrotesqueSI that doesn't necessarily follow (although it may in that institution). I've worked at research institutions where staff have jointly supervised PhDs with universities.

@FoldedChromatin sadly ypu are mistaken. I have a €1.5mil ERC that will dissappear the instant there's a no deal brexit if it still is listed as having a uk host institution.

@GrotesqueSI What's to stop you hiring a PhD student?

@user2768 I'm not quite sure how to answer that. Everything would stop me from hiring PhD students in that situation. If it is an institution without PhD students, there are no PhD students to hire. Further, and specific to me, my grant only pays for Post Docs anyway.

@GrotesqueSI With the exception of your funding requirements, it seems there's nothing stopping you, rather than everything. Perhaps ask the institute whether you are allowed. (By no PhD students to hire, I presume you mean no undergraduates. Nonetheless, you needn't hire from within.)

@user2768 ...but National Research councils don't grant PhDs. I'm really not following what you are talking about. Do you know what a research council is? They are not degree granting institutions. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_National_Research_Council or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_national_de_la_recherche_scientifique

@GrotesqueSI Anyone can supervise a PhD student and PhD students needn't be hosted by an institute that grants PhDs. For instance, industrial research labs don't grant PhDs, yet they still have PhD students. If you want to have PhD students, then find a way.

I don't think that a generic answer would be valid for every European continental country as University careers are already quite different from country to country.
As you are mentioning CSIC I am going to focus in Spain.
Short answer: Making your career at CSIC or any other Spanish research institution means that you have the opportunity of focusing on your research in a high quality institution. It also means that the possibility of changing to a University (again in Spain) decrease the longer you stay there, virtually becoming zero after some five years
Explanation: Spanish academia requires that you go through a system of pre-qualification (acreditación) for any of the four current faculty positions. Other countries such as France (Qualification) and Italy also have a similar system but I believe that the particularity of the Spanish case is that you need to fulfil a lot of different requirements in teaching, research, knowledge transfer, etc. You can check the requirements in this link (sorry, no English version). Being able to fulfil these requirements is relatively straight-forward for the first faculty position (profesor ayudante doctor) but it becomes increasingly difficult for the next ones if you are not employed at a University. It has been often quoted that a Nobel prize not previously employed at University would not be able to become tenured in Spain regardless of the quality of their research.
As you mention being currently in a research + teaching position at the UK, your previous teaching + supervising experience might allow you to become qualified (acreditado) for faculty positions. But both Spanish universities and the organism that evaluates research (ANECA) are extremely picky with the certificates that you need to bring from your home university. It is possible that some are deemed not valid because they are not signed and stamped by the right person, etc.

Thank you for this, it was extremely helpful!

That's so kind of you! In part because of your observation of the difficulties of re-entering the University system post-CSIC I've decided to go the "safe" route and stay within a Uni. I'll be heading to the Netherlands. A bit sad because I speak Spanish and would love the Barcelona weather, but with everything else changing so quickly, I think it best that I stay in the system that I know.

OK. I feel a bit sad of depriving my country of a potential researcher as you. But those barriers do exist and it is good that you are aware of them before making a decision

What are the key differences between...research at a university and...research at a...research institution?

At a university, researchers may have teaching duties (as in the OP's case), whereas researchers may not have such duties at a research institute (albeit, institutes may vary), hence, a research institution (without teaching) provides a more focused researched environment, compared with a university (with teaching).

What might the long-term effects on one's career be due to making the switch, e.g. from not teaching or supervising phds?

As above, not teaching facilitates a research focus. (Moving to a teaching-focused institute later might be more difficult. (Moving to an institute with teaching less so, assuming they focus on your research results, rather than your teaching.))
As discussed in comments, you can supervise PhD students.

Hmm. Thanks for trying but this isn't really a detailed or helpful answer. It simply states the surface distinction that is already obvious, and speaks nothing towards career implications.

@GrotesqueSI It answers the question you asked. If you can add more to your question, then I can provide a better answer.

No need. I got a thorough and knowledgeable answer already. See above.


text:
Citing a Book Chapter where the book is not yet published, and the bibliographic details are not known
I'm trying to reference a book chapter (I have the title for this). But the book's title is not yet confirmed and neither is the order of the chapters, or the size of the book (meaning page numbers are not gonna be fixed to the A4 manuscript).
How would I go about citing this?
I have the chapter title, chapter author, publisher, location. That's it.
Any advice?

This is an interesting question (though I don't know the answer). I edited the title a bit to make it clearer - hopefully this is OK. Just to confirm, has the chapter itself been accepted, so that you know it will definitely appear?

Yes, the chapter and book have been confirmed by the editors and publisher!

It may not be possible in all cases, but if you are preparing a manuscript for publication and there will be delays for review, you can give a tentative descriptive citation, rather than a formal one, marking the other work as "forthcoming". This will probably be fine for the purposes of review and you can correct the citation before final publication.
It might also be possible, in some cases, to contact the author(s) of the other work for their "best guess" as to these things and mark the citation using their words but as a "private communication, publication forthcoming". It is fairly common to mark some citations in new work as private communication, actually.
But it is possible that the work you want to cite won't, in fact, ever be published, so you need to be a bit tentative, both in the short term and possibly for final publication of your work.

Cite what can for chapter details (at a minimum first author but hopefully title, publisher, chapter, editor, etc.) and say "in publication"  or "in review"  or "submitted" "in preparation" or even "unpublished". Whatever describes the situation.
This is not unusual situation.  For instance I often see people cite journal articles with "in review". (I have self cited in this manner.)  Obviously we don't know the issue number or page number yet.
Of course such citations may never make it into the peer reviewed literature so people may object if the work is highly dependent on a questionable result from unpublished work.  But even on that, you may appease them by sharing a copy of the unpublished work.  (Or may not, some reviewers/editors may balk at essentially reviewing two papers at once...others will feel like it is OK since they are just checking on a small doubt.)  If the current paper is not heavily dependent on unpublished work (unpublished work cited to show parallel work or background or credit for a minor idea) than it is usually no big deal.
And of course some detail of name/author/journal may change in the future.  But you are doing the best you can.  Some cite may be better than no cite.  I would further say that I frequently see a few cites like this in final papers and it is often no big deal (if the cite is just a nice to have cite).


text:
How to make sure that something hasn't been done in the literature and can be studied by me
Before starting a new research project/paper, one needs to make sure that this project is new and nobody has done it. I'm still not confident about whether sth really hasn't been done in the literature by doing the following search: 1.google scholar, 2.researchgate, 3.related papers, their reference lists and what papers cited them. Is there a foolproof approach?

Since when "sth" is a word?

4 is the library. Go there and have many happy hours reading.

@SolarMike physical libraries are perhaps obselete for frontier research

Physical libraries -good ones - have all the journals that you have asked for and will get them if you have not got access already.

@SolarMike ok, I accept this. But the efficiency is still not comparable with online search

So can you guarantee that everything is online? Surely it is incumbent on you to make proper use of all the tools available...

there is always mathscinet for mathematics. Also asking the experts in the field wouldn't hurt.

The strict answer is "no, there is not a foolproof approach". No matter how good your literature search, there's always a chance that you've missed something.

'Before starting a new research project/paper, one needs to make sure that this project is new and nobody has done it.' - do they really? Is replication not important in science? Or doing the same thing but better? Addressing flaws in existing work? There are a lot of reasons why you might do something that 'has already been done' if you can do it in a way that is different and provides different / more information to the research community.

@E.Rei I'm glad to hear that. But if it's not entirely new, the method and result must be distinct to get accepted

Ideally, your advisor would know well beforehand if something is novel or not. In practice, this is not always the case.
The best thing to do if you want to develop new stuff if to build upon new stuff as well. If anyone could have done what you are doing 20 years ago, then you'd need to check 20 years of literature to be sure, but if you are extending the results of a known paper which was innovative in itself and published on a respected journal 3 years ago, then you can basically just check the references quoting it.
Also, try to have some preliminary work published on an international conference rather than a journal. This will give you the opportunity to present your work to an audience of both students and established researchers in your field, see their works and to talk to these people over coffee breaks and social events. Someone is likely to point to you if you are missing something important and known in the literature. They'll likely give you new terms and names which you should look for, I've seen a few topics which don't really have consistent nomenclature throughout publications.
Then again, if some result which is relevant to you actually appeared in some obscure publication (which maybe is not even in english), that nobody knows or quoted, then for the purpose of your question, why does it matter?