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Publishing a mathematical research article on research which is already done?
Recently, I was working on some mathematics (number theory) and try to do that just for a math fun. Prior to that, I did not refer to any literature or any research articles, as I was doing this for fun. But I went in very deep and spent almost 15 days on that as it was getting interesting.
After one stage, I was able to represent the numbers in a series representation but was not able to find the equation. After a few more days of work, I was able to extract the equation. Now, I can represent that series in one equation. This makes me very curious, as all this I did just by trial and error method and found on my own.
I know that, making equation of some series is not a big task. But, the way I came to that equation is making me think to publish an article on that.
I thought to search on whether this equation is available or not, and as it was expected the research on that has already been done.
In this scenario, can I publish a research article on the topic?

Have you also checked that the method is actually new, and not already known and used for solving other things?

If this is an integer sequence you can check out http://oeis.org/ to see if it's already known. If it's known it will have references you could check to see if your result in novel or not.

@RemcoGerlich No I have not checked all, I have started to check, If it is there then there is nothing new in my work.

@Winther Thanks for the link, New thing I came to know.

Probably all mathematicians who were once students have such "repeat" results in their drawer somewhere.  (Or nowadays on their computer.)  The value is that you learned something,  But usually such things should not be published.

If your work is not worth a paper - as others have suggested - it is surely worth a blog entry. You might have not discovered a new solution of a problem, but now you know a lot about the problem and you can do a good work by telling others.

@Pere This is a very good idea, I was not knowing that. Very very thanks. Now, surely I will keep as a fallback.

I would mention that "I went in very deep and spent almost 15 days on that" denotes a certain lack of conscience of what mathematical research is like. If in two weeks of time you found by your own something interesting enough to have been the object of a publication before, then congratulations! But be aware that it is probably unpublishable in any decent journal (the suggestion of a blog post is good though).

An article is not about you. It is not a reward of effort. In an article you try to communicate to the readers, so it needs to contain something that your readers want to read. If something is already done, then why would I want to read it? Maybe, you have variation, or a special case, or a more general case, that makes your equation or your derivation thereof different and interesting. But if that is not the case, then the answer is simply no.

Yes that is true, but I think I can target the method of achieving that, If that is significantly distinguishable than current one then I think it adds something new.

Perhaps unfortunately, the whole academic publishing culture is not about writing for the education and enjoyment of readers, it is all about proving that you have done something novel and unique. If you wrote about things that had been done in the past but were not well known, your readers might well be very interested indeed, but you would have difficulty getting published.

A mathematics research article need to contain something new. If the result itself is not new, then the method used to obtain it must be new and sufficiently interesting in its own right to be worth an article. The main reasons that the method would be seen as interesting would be either that it is significantly simpler than the existing methods, or that it looks like it might be useful to prove things we don't already know. In the latter case, it would definitely be an advantage if you did use the method to prove something interesting and new, as well as to prove the existing known result.
Note that, if you do try to publish your new proof, it is imperative to cite the existing proof, now that you're aware of its existence.

Your answer seems very practical and useful. And from this, I think I get a new thought process for this paper. I think I have to target my paper with facts like, the Method used to achieve that result and how it differes from the existing method and what significance it makes, Also,What new finding or contribution it can make in the existing result, I mean further development on that result.

If you had followed an extremely distinct methodology to get to the same position or have a very distinct proof I would say "go for it".
The suggestion that it was found by trial-and-error, though, seems to indicate to me that the actual value of the work would not add to the existing greater body.

Yes, you are right, if the result is already there, then I have to target the method and method should be enough distinguishable from existing method.


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Can an international PhD Student in Australia make a living with an APA scholarship and 8 hours teaching work per week?
My "problem":
I am from Austria and currently in the process of applying for a PhD position in Brisbane, Australia. My supervisors said that I might be eligible for an
APA (Australian Postgraduate Awards) stipend which is supposed to cover my living expenses in AUS. Receiving this scholarship would also mean that I wouldn't be paying any tuition fees.
The total stipend amount is 26,288 AU$ / year. And as far as I know, I would be allowed to work up to 8 hours a week to earn some extra money (I.e. as a teaching assitant).
I don't know how much the hourly rates for this type of job are, but if I speculate and say it's about 20AUS$/h, this would result in a total weekly budget of approximately 660AU$ (including wage and scholarship).
My question:
Can I make a living with this amount of money in an expensive city like Brisbane? Could I maybe even safe up some money to fly back to Europe once a year to visit my family and friends?
Any experiences or useful links of (international) PhD Students in Australia are appreciated (I.e. on insurance costs, etc.).
Note: I know that the Australian Government says that the average living expenses per year are AU$18,610, but they don't explicitly state how they calculate this sum. When I checked the costs for housing, food, insurance, etc., the sum exceeded this official number by far.

Ask people at the school you plan to attend. It might be too little for a regular guy, but as a student you could have access e.g.to  cheap housing (or other advantages, perhaps linked to TA or RA).

Yes. The stipend is similar in Sydney which, from my understanding, is even more expensive. I wanted to do a PhD there and I asked a few friends/colleagues. Money will be tight but it's doable.

@lafemmecosmique, the scholarship amount is set federally and does not vary from city-to-city.

Alright, if that is the case then you won't starve or be unable to make your rent - you just won't be rich either (So the usual situation for a PhD student ;) ). You get discounted travel as well (except in NSW, where you are not) as a student. One weird thing about Australia is that eating out can be cheaper than making your own food, but you need to experiment with this one.

You can see the casual teaching and research assistant rates for any australian  university. Just note that many of the higher rates (e.g., for tutoring - say $100 or more per hour) sometimes include associated planning and/or marking. Also, consider tax; the apa scholarship is generally tax free. So if you are only earning $10,000 or so on top of that, you wont be paying much/any income tax. So in that sense it has benefits over the equivalent amount of money from other sources.

@lafemmecosmique, international students and local postgrads  don't get transport concessions in victoria.

No cangaroos in Austria.

Australia, New Zealand, the UK, etc. have standardized rates for stipends - and in fact for minimum wages in general - that's also inflation-corrected and increased accordingly every year. Though the minimum wage stuff also is there in the USA, there is no inflation correction in any government jobs/public (and most of the times private) universities. The stipend you have mentioned is calculated from a standard Australian government agency that governs (indirectly) the APA awards. Hence I would not worry about its calculation as it would be correctly calculated to the precision of the inflation-correction till this year. I used to get around 18,500, 18,800 and 19,150AUD (approximate figures) back in 2007 to 2009 in Perth, and my wife and I had a happy life (we didn't have kids then though)! I could afford to rent a 1living room+1br+kitchen apartment (called unit in Australia) some 7kms from the city center. If you want to live quite close to the campus, then you will have to pay quite a bit - or share an apartment with others. I could buy and drive a used car. There is not too bad (much better than any city the USA except NYC, for example, but not so great compared to Europe) public transportation. The tickets and monthly passes were discounted for the students.
My wife and I went back to our home country just once in 3 years but that's not because we couldn't afford it but for other personal reasons.
One more thing - you don't pay tax on this stipend. So you get the full in your pocket.
You obviously can't afford too much partying, eating out, etc. with this money. But for a student with usual studentsy life-style, the stipend is calculated well. Or, the other way around, if someone is spending more money than this stipend, then he\she is living a bit more expensive life than the 'average' student - not passing any judgement here, just giving a practical financial comparison.
The health insurance was covered by my award for me and my wife as well. I don't know if and why they have changed the rules recently about covering the health insurance.
For the other paid work such as tutoring. It may very well be even more than 20AUD/hour. The academia is (mostly) unionized there and the union negotiates the wage-range for each job in academia including tutoring every year to make sure that the inflation-correction is correctly implemented in the wages.
I was also an international ph.d. student in Australia, and working in the USA these days. And I am ready to say on record that Australia has been the best thing that has happened to me - and I would love to go back for a permanent job there if there is any such opportunity! I really wish you get the time of your life both academically and personally.

I'm a current PhD student at the University of Melbourne. I can just support myself and one other person on my $30,000 of scholarships. I also live with just my partner (no housemates), our rent is just under $400/week + bills. So if you are OK with a more student-like experience you are likely to be fine, and use TA work to save for flights you need to take back to Europe.
Your estimate is quite low for TA work: the minimum wage for casual cafe or fast-food workers in Australia is over $22/hr. I get $44/hr for TAing, though this may just be Melbourne Uni. Also scholarships are tax-free, meaning you may not have to pay any income tax (as it would be nearly impossible to earn over the $18200 tax-free threshold given visa restrictions).

I get about $44/hour and the University of West Australia, for TAing. so I would say it is fairly standard

I am also from Austria and currently based at a university in Queensland. My personal experience is that the scholarship plus the extra income from casual teaching contracts (42-62 AU$/hr at my institution) is enough to make a living and even save some money. But this depends on your lifestyle of course. Unlike in Austria, you will get the student consession for public transportation in Queensland as a PhD student. On a side note, as an international student you will not be eligible to apply for the APA scholarship but only for a Postgraduate Research Scholarship (PRS) or International Postgraduate Research Scholarship (IPRS), which pay the same stipend as the APA but are typically more competitive. The latter one covers health insurance and visa costs as far as I know.
As others have pointed out, consider that you have to pay your health insurance upfront (depending on your scholarship), and be aware that the scholarship does not contribute to your superannuation or retirement fund. This is different from most paid PhD positions in Austria in my experience.
Some departments at my instition also award top-up scholarships of AU$10000 p.a. to their PhD students, and I would encourage you to discuss this with your prospective sueprvisor or department.
Good luck with your application.

I am based in another Australian city that has a similar cost of living to Brisbane. I had four students working with me over summer, and asked them what they were spending on living expenses so I would be in a better position to advise the next batch of students. They were spending betweek $150 and $200 per week each on accommodation (for rooms in houses shared with other students) and between $35 and $100 per week on food.
Regarding health insurance, if it is not included with the scholarship, you will need Overseas Student Health Cover, http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/Publishing.nsf/Content/Overseas+Student+Health+Cover+FAQ-1#insurersofferoshc, which costs only about $437/year and covers all the necessary basics. Private health insurance on top of this can be much more expensive, but is not really necessary unless you want faster treatment for non-emergency care.
The amount provided by Australian PhD scholarships is intended to cover basic costs of living. It's about at the poverty line: you can certainly live on it, and most of your PhD student peers will be doing the same, but you won't be well off. If you are a single, healthy person living frugally, you can save enough to cover occasional trips home. Your scholarship will also include an amount (in addition to the stipend) to cover at least one overseas conference during your candidature, and you might be able to make a side-trip to visit family after the conference.

"It's about at the poverty line". That's certainly one way of looking at it. But I used to see me as a "rich student" because I could afford everything that other students couldn't!

Yes, you can do it but do not expect it to be similar with PhD salaries in Europe. The APA should be roughly enough to cover your expenses on a week to week basis.
Better do all your calculations with the $500 number and not the $660 per week as the TA money would be only for half the year and it is less common for PhDs to have TA With that money and no other income you are realistically looking into sharing a house or apartment (2-3 people) and in Sydney that would be in the range of $250-$400 with bills included, depending on where you choose to leave, how old or new will the flat be and how long you are willing to commute every day. Rents will be slightly less (or closer to the lower range) from the above numbers. (My recommendation would be to choose somewhere closer to the uni so you can walk or cycle and avoid using public transport on a daily basis)
The rest should be enough to cover your daily expenses, shopping, cooking, transportation and the occasional eating outside ($150-$200). The money from your TA should cover a flight back, but count it as an extra and do not include it to your weekly estimates.
For insurance, you will have to get "Overseas Student Health Cover" or OSHC which should be roughly $2500 to cover 4 years of study. You can do the calculations for yourself here: https://www.oshcallianzassistance.com.au/#anCalculate and you will need to buy that as part of your student visa application before you even arrive in Australia.

it is very difficult to make it work, in most parts of AU. I'd be careful about attempting it without some savings, guaranteed uni work, or the  possibility of family assistance--which is how most people make it work. The APA is less than minimum wage, and most of Australia has crazy high rents--even for shared housing. Your budgeting is correct--the numbers just don't add up. I don't know where the poster lives who says it is cheaper to eat out than buy groceries--in the Sydney and Melbourne areas, a salad out is 30 dollars. Grocery food is fine--expensive by European standards, but you can live on noodles and beans.  it is the rents that are,  and some of the health care that can be,  expensive. Even with insurance, there are additional health costs for many doctor visits, tests, etc--not covered by insurance (either for Australian nationals or international visitors/students). Again, the APA award is less than AU minimum wage--which itself does not cover basic costs of living in much of Australia--so no, the award is not enough, unless someone lucks into bizarrely cheap housing, or has existing savings to supplement the award. Do not think you will automatically get work on campus at $44-62 dollar/hour rates. Jobs are few and far between on many campuses. If campus work is your supplementation plan, get a commitment from the Uni for that work before accepting.

I must disagree . as an undergraduate i lived on <2/3rds the amount the APA pays. i mean it depends what one is used to. being poor is a skill, i guess.

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Tips for work-life balance when doing postdoc with two very young children and a one hour commute
I have a postdoc position in my dream lab with PI, who leads the field and has very cool projects for me. The thing is, I have two small kids (youngest is 3 weeks old) and I live one hour away from my prospective place of work. I have a great nanny and a wonderful daycare, but I am still worried if I can pull off the lab work and all the writing and not abandon my children. Anybody in the same boat? Tips for survival?

What people with kids do in my lab is: drop them off at daycare early, work for 8 hours, go back to pick them up. One hour commute is not that unusual.

Thanks for posting this! As someone who did a postdoc with four kids myself, I can relate :)  As stated, though, this question is very broad, in that "not abandon my children" means wildly different things to different people. Could you possibly make the question more specific so the answers can be more directed to your situation?

Also see Ways to manage something like a 'work-life balance'? and Having children while at graduate school. To avoid repeating the advice already given in those, perhaps you can clarify the specific aspects of your situation that lead you to seek further advice beyond what's given in those.

Can you use a daycare closer to work? That way commute-time is also play-with-parent time.  This doesn't work if commute-time is also study-time for you.

Any way you can move closer to work? Even if it's more expensive, it would be an investment in your quality of life. Or: can you work from home once in a while?

You need to specify your country/working culture a bit more.  Also the local culture which depends on the PI.  Is the commute by car/bike or public transport -- I have a 40 train journey on my commute and often have work I can do (even if it's only working through emails).

I was in the same boat (as well as many others). The basic strategy is first to accept that people at the same stage without kids may be more productive and you will be competing against them later. So try to make your research time count, but in the end this is a compromise that you make when you have young kids at this stage. Good luck, and enjoy your children!

Regardless of your gender, I suggest you read Professor Mommy. It is a book written by a real academic. Of course, with a 3 week old, it will be hard to find time to read such a book.

@axsvl77 - But reading is so much easier at this stage than when baby is on the move and craving constant interaction.  You can look deep into each other's eyes for a little while during feeding, but then you can put your nose back into your book -- baby won't mind.

I'm a postdoc and I work maybe 40-45 hours a week.
Things that make this work:

I don't check my work email at home. I did that in the past, now I don't. I never missed something (although once in a while a colleague will call with something really urgent).
I don't do everything around the lab. I clean up my own stuff in the lab, and I will do my "chores" but I'm not going to be involved with buying stuff, reorganizing stuff, salespeople, "better" kits / reagents, saving money, discussing the who-does-what etc.
I don't do all the experiments I can do. I can think of many things that are very interesting, but some are just more interesting than others and you can only do so many. Maybe at a certain point what you can think of still fits in the time you have (and you're going to work more to do it), but in the end there are only 24 hours in a day, so you have to start cutting at a certain point. Why not now?
Related: I don't write long papers. I gather the proof, make a point, find the holes, plug them and that's it. I don't do certain experiments "because everybody does them" or "because 4 methods to prove we made a known compound is better than 2". And your "interesting side-phenomenon" will probably be moved to the supplementary info.
And the most important one: I don't expect working more is getting me ahead. Good papers are. Smart questions are. A keen eye is. Collaborating with great researchers is. Of course you need to spend the time and effort and be productive, but there's no A for effort, nobody is going to think you're a better researcher because you did 20 experiments this week and even publishing a few more papers isn't going to make a difference.

I'm a slight bit skeptical about your very last sentence. Five years down the road, you'll be competing against someone who did indeed put in 60 instead of 45 hours in the lab and has 33% more papers - and did all the same good papers, smart questions, keen eyes and collaborating with great researchers, only doing more of them. If your priorities are your family, that is great, but there is no way around the fact that your career will be impacted. (Been there, done that.) Otherwise, +1 for recommending clear priorities.

60 hours won't get you 33% more papers. It's doubtful that they'll get you any more papers. Decades of research into productivity at work shows that worker longer hours depresses your productivity to the point that you don't achieve any more and can actually achieve less. Scientists apply evidence daily yet seem strangely unable, or unwilling, to accept the conclusions of this work.

Quality counts. 1 really good paper beats 3 "meh" ones. At the beginning of the career, perhaps some paper counting is done, but again, it is a matter of making a good case for oneself by publishing in the right places. I am a bit skeptical about the not contributing to chores of the lab, though (unless someone is paid to do specifically that). Because someone has to do them, so this work needs to be split. You do not want to "fellow travel" on your lab colleagues (having a family is not an excuse - they may want a life, too).

A person putting in 60 hours a week for 5 years will probably be LESS productive than someone who does 40 and kept his family happy.  60 hours is hard on everyone else too, not just you.

@StephanKolassa: I don't know what you want to achieve, but nothing will be really impacted by the # of papers. Of course good people will probably have more, but no hiring decision will be made based 10 vs 13 papers.

I am not sure I understand how this answer the question.

@StephanKolassa and the guy that worked 60 will compete with the other that put 72 and had 20% more good papers, smart questions, keen eyes and collaborated with 20% more great researchers. The 72 hours guy is lucky that the 90-hours one is dead.

I'm not dead I just don't have the time to answer all your e-mails Mindwin!

@JackAidley all that research is in manual production, not knowledge work. It's a small technicality but a large one when you look at knowledge work there is no actual research, other than some compelling and plausible articles.

@JackAidley: but then those 20 h OP spends less in the lab aren't exactly relaxing time if they are used up by commute and the necessities of caring for the kids (the plan does not sound like relaxed time to care for kids!). So they + lack of sleep because of a too tight schedule may plausibly lower productivity for the remaining 40 h as well.

It very much depends on lab culture. When I was a post-doc, I was explicitly told several times that about 70 hours a week is expected. The question generally came up related to working hours, being present or doing certain experiments in given time and not as general chit-chat.

@cbeleites but commuting and lack of sleep affect 60h-workers as well. Also, assuming work is not too strongly related to upbringing kids, 15h kid care impact work-life-balance differently than 15h work. But, as you said, good evidence for knowledge-working fields would be interesting.

@MauganRa: sure. And I certainly agree to expect the impact to be different - but I'd also recommend not to expect it being less, so in total I'd not bet on higher productivity because of these factors. (Productivity may be higher because lack of time leads to fast decisions etc. - just like productivity tends to get higher when deadlines approach closely ;-) ) and anyways, without reliable studies we're discussing rather in the blue here...

I'm not in exactly the same boat, but mine is related.  I'm working on my dissertation while working in policy research full-time and adjuncting a class, while having a 3 year old at home.  My commute is only about 30 minutes though, lucky for me.
The key for me is drawing a line, beginning with my daughter's play time.  Sacrifices have to be made, and that includes some family time, but you never sacrifice ALL of it.  I plan to play with her either for a bit in the morning before work or a bit in the evening before bed, plus have one full or nearly-full day on the weekend.  Occasionally I get two days on the weekend, or both a morning and evening play time, and all the better if that happens.  But I never cross over the line of one day on the weekend and either a morning or an evening on other days.
Once you've decided on a (realistic) hard line for your family time, the rest becomes the standard juggling of work.  Your two hours of commuting each day is unfortunate, but I assume if you could have cut that down already you would have.  Can you spend it on mass transit, where you could get some work done?

To echo what a lot of others are say, I think the key is really to be present in what you do. You can't have/do everything, so treasure as much as you can because it really is amazing.
Personally I consider the time I spend with my young daughter (1.5 yrs now) to be more important than the time I spend in the car and at work, and as such, I try to be completely present when I'm with her (no fiddling with emails, checking twitter, etc.).
I shifted my working day earlier, so I can leave before my daughter wakes up, and get home in time to spend the evening with her, performing some of the rituals (play, dinner as a family, bathing and reading to her before bed). This has also helped with the commute (down to 1 hour each way, traffic makes it much worse).
I still work longer hours than I should, and the commute is an annoyance, but I don't feel guilty for leaving on-time (and my daughter is the best excuse to leave). I love my work, and have had to make compromises to the amount of work I commit to, but with a consistent day, I am regularly more productive than my colleagues (if only for keen task management and time-boxing).
I recommend you spend the commute on you. You don't get a lot of time to yourself, so spend it doing something relaxing and something you enjoy. I find it's a good time to listen to audiobooks for pleasure, or music, rather than trying to cram in studying or research.

I imagine this might be a question where you will get different answers depending on the norms and legal context of where you live. In particular, my impression is that the United States has much less support for taking time off and flexible work arrangements after having a child, than Australia (where I'm from) and many European countries.
For example, the standard approach in Australia would go something like this. The primary carer (usually the mother) would take maternity leave after the birth of a child. The duration varies a lot from parent to parent, but 4 to 12 months is quite common. When returning to work, it would also be common to come back to work on slightly reduced hours (e.g., perhaps 3 or 4 days per week; although full time is also common). Australia (and presumably many other countries) support this approach with various paid parental leave schemes and anti-discrimination legislation that requires employers to not discriminate based on parental status, birth of a child, and so forth. Such legislation and associated organisational policy (particularly in the university and government sectors) generally supports flexible work practices where possible.
The benefit of such approaches is that it makes it easier for primary carers to have some consolidated time with their children in the first year (and also makes breast feeding easier). Going back part-time also helps to shape a compromise between having a work life, earning money, and having quality time with your children.
Of course, there are many other considerations for families: financial, career progression, and personal interest considerations. Furthermore, the support of the university or post doc adviser in allowing for an initial period of time off and then potentially reduced hours is also an issue. In particular, because of the fixed-term nature of post docs and the nature of post doc funding, there may or may not be implications for the capacity to take leave or transition to something less than full time. And even where in principle it is allowed, post docs may be concerned that their CV will suffer or their supervisor may not feel that their contribution is as valued which may have implications for subsequent post doc positions.
More generally, it seems that universities, academics and funding bodies should take on the obligation of facilitating parents (and particularly mothers) in managing academic careers with parenting responsibilities. This is particularly important given the timing of post docs in people's lives. Not that this necessarily helps you, but I think that there are issues in Australia with this and  the resulting reduction in the number of women who pursue an academic career, even with the legal and regulatory context. My casual impression is that it is much worse in the United States.
In terms of practical tips, it's tricky to make suggestions without coming across as trying to be prescriptive about what a good parent should do. But perhaps, if you want more time with your children, enquire about taking time off after the birth of a child, and enquire about flexible work arrangements (e.g., 3 or 4 days per week). Would your post doc be extended based on time off and pro rata-ed for the days you work?

I'm not in the same boat, but I'll still venture as a one-time hour-and-more-long commuter: Seriously consider moving close to your university/research institute.
Since you're a post-doc, you're going to be moving anyway; and since your children are small - I'll assume all are under, say, 3 or 4 - attachment to friends, kindergarten or school is not an issue for them. You might have to settle on the quality of your accomodations or pay more than you expected, but you will be a lot less tired - IMO and YMMV. Also, while some people can "power commute" and do things on the way, my experience is that trying to do so is more tiring than anything else. Do invest some of that extra time in sleeping, though. One of the dangers is being overworked and exhausting yourself; perhaps counter-intuitively, do less than you think you can manage rather than the utmost - like others have said, this will help you "be present in what you do".
Another suggestion is to figure out what everybody else is doing. I mean, there are bound to be other post-docs or doctoral candidates with small kids. What arrangements do they have? I'm sure you can learn more from their specific experience than from the inspecific advice of people here on the site.
Finally, where is Mr. Dad in this picture? I believe it's a father's responsibility to be nearly-or-as-involved in the rearing of and the caringfor his children as the mother (*) - even if you've separated, and regardless of whether you're married. So unless you feel he's a terrible influence on your kids, try to get the father more involved and be with them more. Comments suggest that maybe he's away on business a lot; if that's the case - well, he should be away less. You should not be the one shouldering all the responsibility.

I guess it is probably fair to infer from the questioner's chosen username that they are the mom... And then, yes, "Where is Mr. Dad?!?" In some cultures (cough-cough) fathers do have some responsibility for child-care and such. Unless the question-asker is a single parent, this conflict ought not have to be resolved by her alone.

"Mr Dad" may well be doing plenty of childcare, or may be away on business all the time.  He may be permanently employed in the city an hour from the postdoc position.  Or of course he may be - for whatever reason -  out of the picture.  While we may like to get him to pull his weight, we can't assume he's not

@ChrisH: See edit ("involved" -> "more involved"). However, if he is "away on business all the time", then my suggestion is indeed that OP pressure him to change that and be more involved.

My primary concern with the last paragraph is that the poster mentioned everything from nanny to daycare, and they are politely implying that's all. Asking about "Mr Dad" in this way is thus rude and comes off accusatory - if they were present or available, they'd have been mentioned. To fix this you could be a bit more circumspect - suggesting the importance of investigating the availability of any family support (extended family, other parent/partner if available, etc).

@BrianDHall: It is sort of accusatory - towards him. Maybe I should make that clearer.

The final paragraph might well miss the point completely the main concern being: "not abandon my children." In any case I have a hard time to imagine circumstances where it is actually helpful as an answer.

I am worried if I can pull off the lab work and all the writing and not abandon my children.

My mother, J, saw very little of her mother, S.  The few times they did see each other, J had to keep her distance so as not to mess up S's clothes and hair.
There were several servants in the household, and they made sure the children were bathed, clothed and fed.
Whenever J became close to one of the servants, S would fire that one.  Which was incredibly damaging to little J, as you can imagine.
You're not going to be like S, right?  If you allow your children to be close to you, and to their nanny, they'll be okay.  (Yes, you will miss them and yes, they'll miss you.)

Tips for survival?

Don't skimp on sleep.
Arrange something in your office so you can take a short nap if needed.  It could be a piece of cardboard, a camping mat and a pillow.
Consider co-sleeping (if it's comfortable for you, and if it doesn't affect your quality of sleep).

Both require lots of work, time, attention, and love.  Doing both means that you can't do both 100% - In other words trade-offs will have to be made.  But I think you know that already!  Children grow so very fast and the first couple of years are incredibly important to their emotional development. How they "attach" in these years (more so for the newborn) will go a long way towards how they relate to others as adults.  Attachment styles include: Secure, Avoidant, Ambivalent/Anxious, and Disorganized. Obviously Secure attachment is the hope for all of our children.  Can the career wait... at least for a couple of years?

I am not that pessimistic. My observation both with myself and with others is that people with young children spent less time at work, and are less flexible when they are at work, but when they are there they are much more efficient than their childless counterparts. The only problem is communicating that to your colleagues. It depends very much leadership capability of the persons in charge of the lab. If they are supportive you will have no problem, if they are male chauvinist pigs than you are better of going somewhere with a more professional work environment.

I'm not an expert on developmental psychology by any stretch, but to my knowledge there is no compelling evidence that children of professional parents (working full time) develop more poorly or develop insecure attachment as compared to part-time workers or stay-at-home parents. If you are aware of any such research your answer would be greatly improved by citing it, as it otherwise alludes to modern research findings (such as attachment theories).

As a small example, here's an advice sheet from a University of Minnesota researcher (now retired) that would seem to suggest the research goes in the direction of "quality of relationship matters - daycare and working is fine": http://www.cehd.umn.edu/ceed/publications/tipsheets/ericksontipsheets/attachmentfactorfiction.pdf

Dr. Sroufe also has a great interview on the podcast Science vs. which basically makes the argument that attachment is important, but attachment parenting doesn't change attachment. Abuse and severe neglect do decrease attachment. https://gimletmedia.com/episode/2-attachment-parenting/

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Can my undergraduate research thesis be published in a scientific paper? If so, how should I go?
I'm starting my bachelor's degree thesis and i will do some research work. If I achieve good results can my work be published? If so , who should get the credits? I'm afraid that my prof or his research lab can publish/include my work in some their future papers without my name.

Your thesis will possibly be too big to publish it "as is" in a paper or as an article. You could of course write a publication based on your thesis, but should avoid self-citing it. (e.g. in Germany a bachelor's thesis is not published and in result not publicly available to everybody)

So if my professor publish a new paper and my work gets a "section" of the paper, should I be mentioned?

@Voxis Yes, if your professor writes a paper based on your work, you should be co-author.  If you write the paper, your professor should be co-author.

In which country is this?

When you are the main contributor of a work you can claim authorship. Having submitted your thesis to an examination office puts you in a good position to provide proof on this. The easy way is to talk to your supervisor and mention your wish (and right) to be named as (main/co/whatever) author

@AndréKleinschmidt I agree, but then one should also take the lead on writing the text, making publication-quality visualisations, etc..

Most academics I've met would be pleased if an undergrad project resulted in a publication, and would be quite supportive.  It would be extra work for you of course, but it would reflect very well on you if you're planning a career in academia or even some industries.

Thank you all for the answers. Being new user I cannot upvote your comments :(

If your work is good enough, it deserves to be published. It doesn't matter if it is the result of a hobby, undergraduate studies, or your main job as a researcher.
Summarizing it to make it fit into the space allotted in a journal or conference proceedings will be a daunting task, ask your advisor for guidance and help.

What if I do not have an advisor? Is there any online facility to gain help?

As vonbrand has said, it is the quality of work, rather than the degrees behind the person who wrote it, that should determine whether or not something can be published. There are very few journals who have standing bans on publishing undergraduate research, though be aware that preparing a paper for publication is a fairly daunting task.
My advice would be to talk to your advisor about whether or not your work is in the position to be published as a stand-alone paper, or if it's going to be incorporated into a larger paper.
In the first case, the next step is to talk to them about what still needs to be done, what journal to target, and the steps you need to take to get going on that path. In the second case, it's largely a matter of asking if you'll be included as an author on that paper, or end up in the acknowledgements section. Having a clear and direct conversation up from will help things in the long run.
For reference, my undergraduate thesis was published with me as the first author on it.

To add to the above answers, there are in fact, some journals which are dedicated exclusively to the publication of undergraduate research. It might be easier for your paper to get accepted in such journals. The Council of Undergraduate Research provides a list of popular undergraduate journals.
However, you can also submit your paper to any regular journal as very few journals have restrictions on publishing papers by undergraduates. Here is an article on publishing as an undergraduate that you might find interesting.

Yes, my first PhD student published a paper on his undergraduate work (I was also a co-author of the paper), so it is certainly possible (and indeed a good way of learning about research practices if you are interested in that as a career).  As the other answers suggest, quality is the key.

Is it possible to show a undergraduate paper in my PhD which I published before joining PhD ?

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What is a "very good higher education degree" when applying for a German PhD?
I plan to do a PhD in Germany. I have read some material that said that:

"The most important formal qualification for being able to do a
  doctorate in Germany is a very good higher education degree that is
  recognised in Germany"

"What is" or maybe should I ask "How much is" very good higher degree?

Basically, you need to have a master's degree. If that master's degree comes from:

A German university
A university in any member country of the Bologna Process
A few other countries considered "equivalent" but not participating in the Bologna Process, such as the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan

then it is almost always automatically accepted. On the other hand, if your degree is from another source (such as India, China, Iran, Africa, etc.), or is from a German Fachhochschule, then the degree must be certified by the university as being at the same level as a German master's degree before you can be admitted. Also, after your admission, you may be required to take some additional courses to establish your candidacy (although this is usually on the order of two to three courses during your first two years).

The German grade scale at universities is:

very good (1)
good (2)
satisfactory (3)
sufficient (4)
fail (5)

Numerical grades are commonly considered to the first decimal digit. I'd interpret the requirement for a "very good" degree as an average of 1.5 or better. This seems quite strict to me though: my department has the informal rule that we are willing to admit PhD students with an average of 2.5 or better, i.e., a "good" degree. In order to compare from international grading systems, the so called "Bavarian formula" is often used, see e.g. http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/studium/pruefungen/anrechnungen/umrechnung-auslaendischer-noten/ .
Recognition of your university degree as equivalent to a German degree is another important factor. The anabin database would be a good place to start researching the situation for your specific case, if you understand a bit of German. (I really don't understand why this isn't provided in English.) @aeismail's also discusses this aspect.

This statement of "very good" grades is even stranger because they make it seem like a universal requirement in Germany, which is very much not the case! Grades matter, but not that much.

@aeismail I know of at least one department that actually has a strict rule on the grade of the Master's degree (well, at least it had it 10 years ago). If the grade is too bad, one cannot become a PhD student. In that case, the grade can be the show-stopper. But you are right in that the "very good" in the statement that the OP found does not refer to such a formal requirement, as that would indeed be very strict. Sorry for commenting on a very old post.


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Why is manuscript review in mathematics taking so long (over 8 months)?
I  submitted my paper on mathematics to a journal  8 months ago but I have no received any reports or comments yet. I sent an email to the editor asking him about the manuscript, he just replied that it is still under review. What shall I do?

An eight month wait is not at all unusual in mathematics.

It is a bit weird that your question's title does not align with the question you ask in the body. Both questions are interesting, but you should choose which one you really want to ask and write your text and title accordingly.

I've had plenty of papers take more than a year; one of my papers has currently been at a journal for 2.5 years.  It takes a long time to referee a paper, and people who do a good job at refereeing get tons of requests.  My usual policy is to ask the editor if there has been any progress in refereeing the paper at 9 months, at 1 year, at 15 months, and then every 2 months thereafter.

My most recent paper has been sitting on the editors desk for three months and hasn't even been sent out for review.  I sent an email enquiring about its status and was told they can't give me any information on how long it is going to take.

IMHO, since most journals require copyright transfer, it would be ethical from their part, at the very least, to guarantee authors some time frames for their actions, specifically, maximum review time.

The fastest I have ever seen a mathematics paper go from initial submission to acceptance is about 4 weeks.  The referee's report was really thorough and detailed.  The author's mind was blown.

Mathematics tends to have a long refereeing process.  It's nice when it can be completed in a few months, but eight months is not especially worrisome.  The editor should be sending the referee(s) periodic messages to make sure they aren't just forgetting, and you can send status inquiries to the editor every once in a while if you'd like (it shouldn't be necessary, but it can't hurt and could conceivably help).  I tend to ask for a status update every six months or so.
One reason it takes so long is that refereeing a mathematics paper is difficult.  The referee has to read and understand the proofs, which is one of the slowest and most painstaking forms of reading.  Another issue is that there is no expectation that it should be done quickly: a referee who takes eight months isn't generally considered problematic by the journal or the community at large.
In practice, the lengthy refereeing times are not a problem.  Mathematics papers are typically circulated publicly (for example, on www.arXiv.org) long before they are accepted for publication, so the publication process isn't holding up progress in the field.  And the mathematics community is well aware of how long it takes to get papers officially published and takes this into account in career evaluation (hiring, tenure, etc.).  For example, if you're applying for a job, nobody will expect your papers from the last year or two to be published yet.  If they are at least on the arXiv and submitted for publication, then everything is as it should be.

And that's just the process to get accepted.  After the lengthy process of getting a referee's report, making corrections, and getting those accepted and your article officially put in line for publication, with some (reputable) journals you can still wait years for it appear in the actual print journal.  Thankfully, a lot of them have caught onto publishing articles online, so you usually get a DOI soon after it's fully accepted.  But the actual print version could take a long time, indeed.

To reiterate the other good answer and comments... do nothing. It is unfortunate, yes, and frustrating, yes, and inconvenient, yes, that refereeing takes so long... but it is both understandable and inevitable.
Ironically, but understandably, the more original your work is, the more effort will be required of referees... who are paid nothing, and will acquire no status/raises/funding/whatever from their efforts to appraise or improve your writing.
As in other answer/comments, hiring committees and funding agencies are aware of the time-lags... although, yes, true, it's better to have gotten through this gauntlet than have to explain that one is enduring it.

The scientific reasons above aside, in my view it takes long also as it is a voluntary job with no credit or immediate gain so it gets deprioritised. In many cases the long wait is waiting for a referee to actually look at it. Based on some reports I have received some referees seem to wait one year to then look at it for a few hours. Also some referees go awol and then as an editor you have to find someone else.


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What percentage of UK academic faculty are in UCU?
Just wondering what the rough % of academic faculty (e.g. full time and part time teaching fellow/associates, lecturers, senior lecturers, readers, and professors) are in UCU? I've been invited to join, but the hefty fee is putting me off. And other than the negotiation regarding pay scale and pension, there doesn't seem to be other significant benefits (although one can argue that the negotiation on pay and pension is big enough).

What is "UCU"? While you are at it, please consider including the relevant information in the tag wiki if you believe the concept is important enough to warrant a tag.

@S.Kolassa-ReinstateMonica apologies. UCU is university and college union.

@PandaPants The fee really isn't that hefty. The max you could possibly pay per month is about the equivalent of a round of drinks. Plus you get a little bit of tax relief for your fees: https://www.gov.uk/tax-relief-for-employees/professional-fees-and-subscriptions The insurance value that Ian Sudbery discusses is well worth it.

I don't know what the numbers are for academic faculty specifically is, but the numbers for education in general is 47% (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/trade-union-statistics-2018), and that is in line with membership within my department (STEM, Russel Group). UCU has a membership of 120,000.
As well as collective bargaining on pay, conditions and pensions, perhaps the most important work of the Union is local. On a collective level the union will represent its members in situation where your employer might be going through a "restructuring" involving a reduction in headcount or a change in contractual terms and conditions for example. This has happened to me twice in my career, once when my employer laid of 30% of staff in my area, a second time when I was transferred from being employed by UKRI to being employed directly by the university.
But perhaps the most important thing is casework. Your membership would entitle you to representation in any HR dealing with your employer. In the case of the worst this can include provision of a lawyer or solicitor paid for by the union. This might be important if you are subject to discrimination at work, or accused of discrimination, or placed on performance review or have been otherwise mistreaded. In the five years I've been faculty, I've seen colleagues require union help with probation, and one (a professor) require union help when they were placed on performance review. I also knew someone who had to involve the union when their head of department took a dislike to them and did everything they could to get rid of them.
One way to think of union membership is like health insurance, but for employment/legal matters.

thanks for sharing your experience and the rough % of membership in your university.

tenure isn’t what it used to be in the UK...or ever was in the UK.

The UK doesn't have tenure as people in the US understand it - it was outlawed by Thatcher in the 80s.

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What database catalogues citations in the humanities?
Alright so I know what I'm thinking of exists, I just have absolutely no idea what it's called, and I'm driving myself crazy googling it. I'm looking for a resource that catalogs each instance a certain work is referenced in a certain time frame. For example, something that might show how many times, say, Moretti was referenced in academic journals and books in the past year. I've had professors mention this to me in passing, and I think I heard it was run by MLA, but I'm not sure. Something that could be used similarly to the h-index, but for the humanities.
What database catalogues citations and could be used to get a h-index in the humanities?

Do you mean Scopus?

Here are a couple of databases that may be of help.
The Arts & Humanities Citation Index by Thomson Reuters has access to over 1700 journals according to the following form their website.

Arts & Humanities Citation Index®, accessed via Web of Science™ Core
  Collection, provides researchers, administrators, faculty, and
  students with quick, powerful access to the bibliographic and citation
  information for journal articles in the arts & humanities that they
  need to find research data, analyze trends, journals, and researchers,
  and share their findings.
Overcome information overload and focus on essential data from over
  1,700 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals.

Also as mentioned in a comment there is scopus According to this blog scopus as of late 2012 has over 1 million articles from the arts and humanities.

As of November 2012, the total number of Arts & Humanities articles in
  the database is a little over 1 million, just over 2% of the total
  database. All document types that are within the Scopus coverage
  policy are included in the article counts. From 2007 to 2011 the
  number of articles has grown from 42 thousand to 76 thousand articles
  per year, which comes down to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of
  16.2%

Both of them have fairly advanced search forms that should be able to do something like what you are looking for.


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Is using academic writing services for a thesis considered plagiarism? Can they write in an original fashion?
There are many academic writing services (editing, proof reading and writing from scratch). These services range from writing basic essays to research papers and dissertations.
I will use editing and proofreading services because my mother tongue is different from the language of thesis.
I distrust these kinds of services, can they really do job appropriately and according to suitable form? Is this considered plagiarism and can they write in an original fashion?
Has anybody used these kind of services and what are your experiences?

I am currently using one, I will let you know in 2 mouths when they finish editing and writing thesis. ( Writing in language-context sense )

Did you check plagiarism with a program.

Two possibilities.  The writing service wrote it, you include credit to them in the document.  (not plagiarism).  The writing service wrote it, but you turn it in without giving them credit.  (plagiarism)

Third possibility: The writing service plagiarized it, and you give them credit. (still plagiarism)

There's a big difference between paying someone to proof read your thesis (generally acceptable, and sometimes encouraged) and paying someone to write original material from scratch (plagiarism).
The way your question is worded (and from one of the comments about getting someone to "edit and write the thesis") it sounds like you are asking whether if you pay someone to write part of your thesis, will they do it well enough that it wont be detected by plagiarism software (e.g., the idea that people who write paid essays just copy and paste huge chunks from Wikipedia and random journal articles). My apologies if this is not what you are asking. But to state the obvious point, paying someone to write your thesis and contribute intellectually is plagiarism and unethical whether they do it in a rigorous or a sloppy way. It is plagiarism, because you are not acknowledging the source of the intellectual effort.
Surely if you are paying someone merely to refine your expression, phrasing and give general guidance on structuring, then there is minimal risk of plagiarism.

Thank you. i want know about did anyone try this because i think its a new type of fraud and includes criminal situations. i think their papers is not original.

I am confuse @jeromy, usually translation ( most of times ) is considered original work, maybe acs could write in his own language and then give for translation, it can be acknowledged that thesis was translated.

It is not plagiarism. It is even worse - it is fraud. I don't know whether it falls under criminal prosecution, but I would thus not be surprised if there would be a way of actually criminally prosecuting the perpetrator. When fake doctors are caught out (pretending to have a degree/approbation they did not attain), this is - to my knowledge - already treated as fraud. Similar for a structural engineer that would not have a degree but build, say, bridges. Also in less life-threatening situations, it pretends to have acquired a knowledge/ability without doing so. Stay away from it.

I don't think it is a new type of fraud. Our possibilities to detect it have gotten better though.

Using a service that edits documents to correct grammar and spelling issues, and minor awkward phrasings, is acceptable and need not be acknowledged.
Using a translation service, to translate a document from your native language into English, is acceptable, though the translator needs to be prominantly acknowledged. If you can write in English, though, it may be better to do so, because many employers in academia may be wary of applicants who have not demonstrated high-level proficiency in English.
Using a "substantive editing" service, that re-writes a document to improve its logic, flow, general structure and rhetoric is problemmatic. Such an editor should probably be named as a co-author, but if not, needs to be very prominently acknowledged. The use of such a service may not be acceptable to those evaluating the thesis.
Using a writing service, where you provide your results and they write the document without working from a strong draft from you, is cheating, and not likely to be acceptable even if acknowledged.

Rules for authorship differ between disciplines, but for example ICMJE guidelines require that the author has to meet all of the following conditions: Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data AND drafting the article or revising it AND agreement to be accountable for accuracy or integrity of any part of the work. Editing does not meet the criteria, and therefore getting the authorship that way should be considered an academic misconduct

There are two issues. The first is, if the "academic writing service" did genuinely original work for pay and let you sign your name to it, would it be plagiarism or copyright violation? In a "corporate" setting, the answer would be "no," because it was "work for hire," to which the payor owns the rights. But in an academic setting, it would be plagiarism, because you are representing work done by others as your own work, and thereby overstating your capabilities.
The second issue is, can these services produce work that is sufficiently original not to violate copyright or constitute plagiarism. The answer is usually no. The reason is, unlike the situation with a corporation that will "pay what it takes," these services usually "shortcut" to keep their fees down. But this issue is "trumped" by the first one in the previous paragraph.

In my university proofreading would be somewhat. Editing would normally not be acceptable. The reason is that the thesis assesses many aspects of your abilities. That includes not only your ideas (intellectual skills), but also your ability to express your ideas clearly, and even your ability to express yourself in (in this case) English (transferrable skills).
Getting someone to read through your work and identify typo's, runaway sentences and other little snafus is normally fine (and impossible to identify as well). On the other hand if someone corrects the way you structure your sentences, paragraphs and sections that is not appropriate. If however you use university resources (your thesis adviser perhaps, and/or library services) you will not need to worry about it being acceptable. At that point it is the university that is responsible for ensuring your learning experience.


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At which level (D or E) should I apply for an advertised faculty position in Australia?
I am putting together an application for an academic position that has been advertised as either level D or E at an Australian university (equivalent to full professor or chair professor in the US). The selection criteria are slightly different, depending on the level at which I apply, and I need to specify which level I am applying for in my application. I would happily accept the role if offered at level D, but would also be a credible candidate at level E.
My publication record and h-index are comfortably on par with existing level E professors in the department, my grants and funding record is good, and I would also bring the industry experience and leadership skills that they are looking for. On the other hand, I am not a shoe-in for the role, even at level D: my research interests are only just within scope for the department and I have limited teaching experience. It's a ("Group of Eight") research-focused university, so teaching is likely to be secondary to research, but it is still a factor.
I am guessing that they would not consider me at level D if I apply at level E, or vice-versa. Australia has less of a culture of salary negotiation than the US. I have thought about addressing both sets of selection criteria and leaving it up to them, but worry that might simply be annoying.
What is your advice?

Call the department head and ask.

It is my understanding that when a position is advertised so broadly, i.e. D or E, they are likely looking for someone really big. That being said, I think they are likely looking for someone at the level E, but would consider a strong candidate at level D.
If it were me, I would evaluate my qualifications and fit with both D and E positions honestly, and then put all my effort into whichever feels like the best fit.
If the only motivation to try for E is salary, and you probably fit better for D, then you are likely risking both.

You should be very careful in deciding whether you would be happy at the lower level. Australian academic levels are quite distinct, and transitioning to a higher level is not a simple case of applying for a promotion: you essentially need to have your role re-graded, and the process can take 2 years.
There are typically very few full professors (grade E) in a School or Department, and it is a big deal when a new position is offered at a Go8 university. Expect a lot of competition from people with international reputations in the field. Often potential candidates are approached by representatives of the university, so if you are considering an advertised position be aware that you may well be an outsider to done prime contenders.

The level is mostly about your salary floor.  It sounds like level D is sufficient money to satisfy you.  I don't see why you would increase your risk by applying for level E.

It isn't entirely about salary floor. It's also about future salary prospects: if appointed at a salary near the top of the level D range, I would need to pass a major hurdle to get pay rise (a promotion case involving reference letters by eminent leaders in the field and review by the vice chancellor, amongst others). If appointed at the bottom of level E, subsequent pay rises would not require passing such a hurdle. To be honest, there's also the matter of prestige and position title.


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How does Microsoft Academic Search generate its rankings?
Yesterday, during some idle time in the office, a colleague of mine has discovered that I am currently ranked at position 20 worldwide by Microsoft Academic Search for my subfield regarding the last 5 year impact. While certainly flattering, this ranking is also quite clearly bogus, as many much more eminent academics are ranked far behind me in this list.
The Occam's razor explanation that there simply is another researcher of my name in my field can be discarded, as Microsoft Academic profile does indeed list my, and only my, publications (as well as a profile pic that they seem to have grabbed from an old university web page).
So my question is the following: how does Microsoft Academic Search actually generate rankings (of individual academics, but there are also rankings of journals)? It seems clear that not all citations and publications are considered equal (otherwise I would not end up so far to the front with a comparatively meager set of papers and citations), but how do they decide what is "worth" how much?
I am mostly looking for answers that refer to papers or web links coming from MS insiders  on their ranking algorithms. Barring that, some well thought-through speculation from outsiders is also ok :)
Edit:
I just discovered that Microsoft Academic Search seems to employ the notion of a field rating for conferences and journals, and the rating for some of the venues that we prefer seems to be unreasonably high. However, that still does not fully explain my curious case (and it still leaves open the question of how these field ratings are generated in the first place).

+1 Interesting question. Perhaps Microsoft sent employees back from the future and therefore knows you are an upcoming star scientist who will change the world as we know it?

For the first name I tested, the university is completely wrong, many publications are missing, many are listed more than once, and many are erroneous and belong to somebody else in an entirely different field (say physics versus economy).

Would love to see someone chime in on this one.

Having poked around my own entry in Microsoft Academic Search, I'm somewhat afraid the answer is "disastrously poorly".

how does Microsoft Academic Search actually generate rankings?

Since Microsoft Academic Search, like Google Scholar, is a proprietary vertical search engine and its algorithms and ranking systems are not open source, you're unlikely to get a detailed "how" answer unless a disgruntled former Microsoft employee decides to chime in.
Microsoft Academic Search does make some details of its rankings and results system available, however. This page offers a basic explanation of the search engine's approach. For both Microsoft and Google, citations play a major part in search result rankings, which has subjected academic search engines to criticism in the past. As the Academic Search page above indicates,

the information associated with Microsoft Academic Search author profiles is derived from the tens of millions of scholarly publications that are currently indexed by Microsoft Academic Search. Most of these publications have reference lists that Microsoft processes. The indexed publications and reference lists help create a snapshot of individual authors' publication history, productivity, and impact. As more content is indexed within Microsoft Academic Search, the accuracy and completeness of the author profile data improves.

Because Academic Search rankings can be distorted by factors including citation counts, incomplete publication indexes, and the field rating system you mentioned, it will inevitably produce some inaccurate results.
Speculation alert: it seems to me that the lion's share of ranking is accomplished through automatic citation list analysis, which is not necessarily a good indicator of

Prominence in one's field,
Number of publications (instead, it seems to emphasize how often a publication is cited elsewhere).

Finally, Academic Search is still in Beta, and I suspect that their rapidly growing index may not always be in perfect step with their ranking algorithms - in my personal experience with the search engine, there do seem to be cases of highly-ranked scholars or papers suddenly plummeting, then re-appearing again, which I assume is a consequence of ranking algorithm tinkering.


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Do high-profile journals edit authors’ figures?
I have a paper published in a Angewandte Chemie, “one of the most renowned chemistry journals”, and realized that the figures have been edited from the version I had submitted. They did not tell us about it, but clearly modifications have been made for typographical consistence with their style guide: some symbols have been italicized, axes labels have been changed from, e.g., “Temperature (K)” into “Temperature / K”, etc.
I was surprised, because I know that most journals don’t typically edit figures, so I wonder: is Angewandte Chemie unique in this respect? Do other higher-profile journals, such as Nature or Science, edit figures or provide feedback to authors on graphics?

This is a duplicate question of the one Daniel's pointing out, and therefore I'm voting to close.

Okay, I have tried to make it more different: the other questions asks about journals in general, and how you could ask them to help with figures. My question would be about how common it is for a specific subset (high-profile journals, of which no example was given in the answers to David’s question) to edit graphics or advise authors on the matter.

It still seems like a duplicate to me.

@DanielE.Shub - It's a close call. The question isn't "does this happen?", but rather, "this happened, is this a one-off or a common thing I'm not familiar with?" It seems like a useful enough question to me to be worth a re-opening.

Didn't they show you a final proof copy?  Journals often at least edit the size/position of figures in my experience.  Some of them also reformat formulas and other aspects.  I recently had a journal article where they had to completely rebuild my tables to fit their in-house style.  I had to note a couple of issues, which they fixed.  Usually they give you a final proof so that you can check that your original intent is still retained.

@Namey yes, they gave notice, and all they did was fine… but I was surprised that they had reformatted the figures themselves, not only the captions/text

Gotcha.  I guess I wouldn't be that surprised if it happened.  While there is a trend toward things to be more camera-ready, it seems sensical that some major venues still like a high level of consistency among their figures.  I also get the feeling that journals who still put out a lot of paper copies take a lot more care with that sort of thing.

Yes, high-profile journals do typically edit figures for style and consistency. You will find this information on their web sites, e.g. nature physics.

This doesn't seem to answer the question; if anything, it suggests that Nature Physics doesn't edit figures, unless you specifically use Adobe Photoshop.

@eykanal They do edit figures. The statement can be found as the last sentence of the first paragraph (and elsewhere): "This allows us to restyle to our journal house style."

Good point, I missed that sentence.


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Pros and cons to having two advisors

Possible Duplicate:
What are the advantages and disadvantages of having multiple advisers?

What are the advantages to having a single advisor vs having two co-advisors?


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How to check the total number of papers published by a country at a certain conference?
I presented a paper at a top-tier conference, and I would like to know how many papers from our country have been presented at this conference? Also, I would like to know how many papers from our school have been presented at this conference? Where does my paper rank? How should I inquire? Thanks!!

Do you mean in the past as well as for the current conference?

I mean: For example, I would like to know how many papers our school has published at the ISCA conference up to this point, and what is the ranking of the paper I presented at this conference among the papers published by our school. And what is the ranking of our country in terms of the number of papers published at the conference?  Thanks!!!

There is not typically such a "ranking" of conference papers. There could sometimes be an awards process to assign a "best paper" but this does not imply that all papers have been ranked (and especially not in a way they could be compared across years). Any rough ranking by, say, reviewer scores would not really be an appropriate way to rank papers against each other, since the reviewers will have different standards. This would be a near-impossible task, in any case. I would abandon the thought entirely.
Some conferences may collect and report participation statistics, but I question the meaning of papers being published by countries. A paper can have any number of authors from any number of places, and assigning a given paper to a specific country may not be possible. In any event, this will almost certainly have to be your own endeavor: you would need to programmatically collect details on each paper in the conference yourself and use some criteria to sort them. I would not expect that there is a place these numbers are easily available to you without extensive effort.

Thank you! But I just want to inquire about my position as the nth person from our school to present a paper at this top-tier conference. This information is for my job application resume.

@Gerrie To do that, it seems you'd need a list of all previous people presenting at this conference and their schools. I do not expect this to be available in some already-compiled form. Is it worth the trouble?

In simpler terms, I would like to know the position of my paper among the papers published by our school at this conference. This seems like a straightforward count. For example, if my paper is the fifth one, it means that our school has previously published four papers at this conference.

I understand what you're looking for (I would not have called this a rank, but it's now clear what you mean). Many things are conceptually straightforward but difficult to perform in practice without the necessary data.


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Is publishing in a special issue of a Q3 Journal as relevant as publishing in a Q1 Journal?
I want to publish a paper in mathematics in a special issue of my topic but in a Q3 Journal (i.e., ranked in 3rd quartile). The catch is that in this issue, the editors are some of the top leaders in the area, so I guess that the quality of the paper should be high in order to be accepted. Should I go for this? Or is it preferable to publish in a Q1 Journal (i.e., ranked in 1st quartile)? How would you, as a hiring committee when applying for a postdoctoral position, see this? I honestly think that the paper has the quality in order to be published in a first quartile Journal.
For those not familiar with the terminology, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. They refer to quartile in which the journal is ranked within discipline. For example, see this listing of mathematics journals on scimago with the prominent display of ranking quartile.

How do you know who the reviewers will be? Usually for special issues, there are special editors, but who knows who are the reviewers?

@theL you are right, are editors. I will edit the question

Your question is not obvious. Whether it is Q3 or overall ranked 3. If it is Q3 then go for Q1, as said that you have high quality manuscript.

What are rank 1 and rank 3 journals? Is this a national classification scheme?

@TommiBrander I meant Q1  and Q3 journals. The question has been edited.

What are Q1 and Q3 journals? Is this a national classification scheme?

Q1 (first) and Q3 (third) refer to ranking quartiles. It is common language at my university. I've seen the term Q1 be used more often now that some university ranking systems give special weighting to publications published in Q1 journals. In particular, scimago makes quartile quite prominent. I've added a bit of an explanation.

q1 one after all, but if you want more citations, I suggest q3. unfortunatelly,

had the same question after 4 years.

How would you, as a hiring committee when applying for a postdoctoral position, see this? Since I've been on "hiring committees for postdocs" quite a few times, I'll just share personal experience.
1) As to me, I wouldn't care at all where you published but would look directly at what you published. As one of my colleagues in Wisconsin put it "I just want to know what his (applicant's) signature theorem is". So as soon as your paper is on arXiv, I'll have an opinion about you. Not all people are like that, of course, but given that the postdoctoral positions are often given to people somebody in the department seriously considers working with, you may be pretty sure that if your result is good, then the interested in you person will spare no effort explaining to others why it is so and that "this guy solved a 40 year old problem on which Terence Tao had only a partial result" is stronger than "this guy published in Acta".
2) It may be beneficial to have a publication in a higher ranking journal on your record later in your career (some university promotion guidelines explicitly count Acta papers as 5 points and "University of Urjupinsk Seminar Proceedings" as 0 points).
3) The formal "publication score" is not everything. You also make professional acquaintances and get friends and enemies over time. Sometimes I choose the journal based on personal relationships (existing or the ones I would like to establish) rather than according to any ranking system and I don't think it is such a terrible idea.
Just my 2 cents :-)


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How to search for list of papers citing both papers A and B?
For given papers A and B, I would like to search for all papers that cite both A and B. I guess one can generalize to papers {A,B,C,...} and find all papers that cite all of them.
A quick Google Scholar and Web of Science search revealed nothing. Google Scholar has a "cite=..." thing in the URL, which I messed with a bit to no avail.

I think this would be a useful tool. I found a thread on Google Product Forums where someone suggested this, but I don't think Google has yet implemented such a tool.

Just get the citations of each document from the Scopus database, export the results into two files, and write a Python script that does a set intersection. You can generalize this to any files.
You can export the Scopus results to .csv files, and then use the csv python module to read the files. You can then have the set operation based on the title of the articles (even though I would also export the DOI and use it). If you know how to program in Python, writing this script shouldn't take you more than one afternoon.

+1, even though Scopus is horribly incomplete.  If only Google Scholar had an API (or didn't cut you off for screen-scraping).

In Wikidata, we have at the moment around 36 million citations. It is not much compared to Google Scholar, but you can query them in flexible ways with the Wikidata Query Service, - a SPARQL endpoint.
In Scholia, a website that uses Wikidata Query Service, we have implemented a query that shows "all papers that cite both A and B". You can see an example for "Protein measurement with the Folin phenol reagent" and "Novel method for detection of beta-lactamases by using a chromogenic cephalosporin substrate" here: https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/works/Q20900776,Q24564458.
Scholia will also show results for more than two papers, see, e.g., https://tools.wmflabs.org/scholia/works/Q20900776,Q24564458,Q39309940.
Following the link "Edit on query.Wikidata.org" gets you to the SPARQL query at the Wikidata Query Service interface. The SPARQL query currently reads:
SELECT ?date ?work ?workLabel
WITH {
  SELECT (MIN(?dates) AS ?date) ?work
  WHERE {
    ?work wdt:P2860 wd:Q20900776 .  ?work wdt:P2860 wd:Q24564458 .
    OPTIONAL {
      ?work wdt:P577 ?datetimes .
      BIND(xsd:date(?datetimes) AS ?dates)
    }
  }
  GROUP BY ?work
  ORDER BY DESC(?date)
  LIMIT 1000
} AS %results
WHERE {
  INCLUDE %results
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en,da,es,fr,nl,no,ru,sv,zh". }
}
ORDER BY DESC(?date)

You can read more about the approach of using Wikidata and SPARQL for citation analysis work in this paper: "Scholia and scientometrics with Wikidata", https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04222


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Whether to do second postdoc at prestigious university or take a lecturer position at current university
I may be in the position soon of going to do a postdoc at a highly prestigious University. I am currently at a good university in the UK doing my first postdoc. I have applied for a Lecturer position at this university, but there maybe the option to do a second postdoc at more prestigious university. I am unsure how having a post doc at a prestigious university on my CV would improve my employability, applications for funding etc.
What are the pros and cons of doing a second post doc at a prestigious university versus taking a Lecturer position at a good university?

I don't think we can answer this question for you - it depends too much on your individual circumstances.

In UK is a lecturer a permanent position?

This question was closed (not by me). I edited to make the question more general. Perhaps it overcomes the limitations of it being to specific.

A bird in the hand... or maybe here a position in hand is better than two positions in the bush.

@Buffy A fully permanent academic position (subject to 1 year probation like most permanent and fixed-term positions I held in the UK which is usually just a formality).

I can remember this trade-off myself in the Australian research context.  This is similar to various decisions: i.e., continue doing a post-doc or apply for lecturer positions, take a second post doc or a lecturer position.
For this answer, I assume the academic model common in the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand where "Lecturer" generally represents an entry-level  post-PhD teaching/research position that is commonly continuing (i.e., something a bit like a tenure track position in the U.S.).
Here are a few things to consider:
Job Security: Getting a continuing position is a major challenge for many researchers. If you are able to get such a position, you have a guaranteed income and a way of staying in academia to achieve your research goals in the longer term. If you take the post doc, there is a risk that you may struggle at the end of your post doc to obtain such a position. But equally, if you are a real research star, this might be a smaller risk.
Academic autonomy: In general, when you have a lecturing position, you are broadly free to do research in the area of your choosing (at least within your relevant discipline). In a Post Doc, this may be the case or you may have to align your research with the nature of the funding. Whether you experience this as constraining will depend on the alignment of your interests with the PostDoc.
Research allocation: If you are motivated by achieving great things in research, then you will be interested in the amount of time the position permits for research. Lecturer positions are highly variable in how much time they permit for research. There are so many different models for allocating service, teaching, and other responsibilities to academics. Furthermore, once you have been allocated various non-research tasks, academics vary in the effort that they apply to such tasks and their efficiency. And this changes over time. So, when you first start teaching in general and when you start teaching new units, the time you need to put in is much greater. In summary, some Lecturer positions may permit you to have a large amount of research time, whereas others will give you almost nothing. If research is important to you, then you should learn about the likely model at the institution that you are considering. In contrast, most Post Docs are entirely or almost entirely research focussed.
Mentoring and research support: You should consider the extent to which the research environment at the two institutions would support your research goals. What collaborations would the roles provide? Who would be mentoring you at the two places? One benefit to consider regarding Lecturer roles is that you may be more able to supervise research students.
Location and life: Consider where you would ultimately like to live and work. If the Lecturer position opens up in a place that you'd like to set up your life, then that can be well worth taking advantage of.
Money: Money varies in importance to people. Money includes both salary while doing the role and future income. It can be hard to predict but in general a Lecturer position will pay more in the short-term.
These are just some of the Trade-offs. I've seen many researchers set up successful academic careers using both strategies (i.e., the prestigious-post-doc strategy and the early-take-up-ff-Lecturer-position-at-mid-tier-university strategy).
Finally, there is a difference between having both offers in front of you and considering applying for one or both positions. If you are only at the stage of considering applying for positions, you essentially have neither a second Post Doc nor a Lecturer position. Depending on your confidence in getting these positions, it is often helpful to apply for more things to ensure that you will have at least one good option at the end of the process.

You are in the classic position where you are looking at the differences between a lower-level position at a more prestigious university, or a higher-level position at a less prestigious university.  I was once in the position of considering a choice like this, and I asked a senior professor in my field for his advice on whether a move would be considered to be up or down --- "It's a move sideways" was his reply.  I think that is how many people look at this kind of thing --- the higher prestige of the institution roughly balances the lower level of the appointment.
The pros and cons of these two options are too numerous to list, but a few basics stand out.  You already have experience as a post-doc, so there may be diminishing marginal returns to taking another position of this kind, even at a prestigious university.  Contrarily, with a tenure-track appointment as a lecturer you will have all the advantages of a higher-level position in terms of gaining experience that will develop your academic skills.  Such a position would usually have a teaching component where you would probably be expected to run a full university course, so you would get some good teaching experience.  As a general rule, it is a good idea to "stretch" yourself with new demands to develop new skills.
Ultimately, either of these could be successful if you make the most of it, and much depends on what you are able to achieve in terms of output in either position.  You may rest content in the knowledge that there is probably no wrong choice here, since either position can give you a pathway to career success.

Yes, Oxford is a pretty prestigious place. It has a pretty good historical record. But what will make or break your career is what you are actually able to accomplish if you take such a position.
Harvard University in the US is also pretty well known to be a good university, in some circles, anyway. But there are plenty of people who go there who turn out to have (and share) idiotic ideas. Some of them cause great damage.
You can succeed or fail, but it is what you do, not where you do it, that matters.

"...not where you do it, that matters' -> it certainly helps to do it at Harvard.  The good and bad get amplified many folds.

@VitaminE, only if you do it well. There is an old saying that there is nothing more dangerous than a 'C' student from Yale.


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How are some academics able to publish so many papers per year (e.g., 50+ papers per year)?
Background: I understand that academics have different styles of working, but in the same field, I would have thought that the outputs of senior academics should be comparable (and according to their extra responsibilities).
For example, the Editor-in-Chief of Nano Energy (impact factor 12.343) is the director of a research center. Until now in 2017, he has published 69 papers in high-impact journals (all with impact factors higher than 10). Many distinguished professors in the same field publish about 20 papers per year (in a wider range of journals) without executive or editorial responsibilities.
Note that my question is not about this specific person as there are many examples of academics who are publishing far more than is typical for the field.
Questions

How is an academic able to publish so many papers in a given year (e.g., 50+)?
Does this imply the academic is a genius? Or are there other factors at play?

Please don’t write answers in comments. It bypasses our quality measures by not having voting (both up and down) available on comments, as well as having other problems detailed on meta. Comments are for clarifying and improving the question; please don’t use them for other purposes.

If you look at big names in science, you'll see their name at the end of a ton of papers (in many disciplines like chemistry and biology, standards can be different elsewhere) and this is why: providing the money and the lab space gives "senior authorship". Usually they review the drafts coming out of their labs/collaborations, along with guiding students/postdocs at the idea stages (which is considered worthy of authorship by NIH/NSF and journal standards). People with big labs get to put their name on the end of every paper generated from not only their lab, but from their lab's collaborations and whatever their grants funded.
Of course, some people are just crazy productive, but it's more likely that someone with tons of papers is getting a lot of them through their large labs.

Is this practice ethically OK? Shouldn't a person who doesn't contribute to the research but merely provides the facilities, be mentioned in the acknowledgments section? For instance, why isn't the Director of my institute a co-author in my papers? Because, while he/she can, in some way, be linked to the process via my lab got put in place, he/she didn't contribute to the research that we did using those facilities. How is this case any different from the one that you mention in your answer (v1).

The NIH and other funding agencies, along with journals, have authorship rules. Usually for authorship someone has to contribute some idea to the paper, or at least attempt. A PI at least reads over every paper by each PhD student and postdoc, and presumably has some input in it, and that alone is enough for authorship. The PI, when directly funding the research, usually follows your progress and gives some guidance, and this is considered authorship worthy.

Distribution of Productivity is Non-normal
In many industries and fields, metrics of success often follow something like a power distribution. Examples include incomes of sports professionals, sales of writers and musicians, publication output and citation counts of academics (see some of the work by Aguinis and colleagues on star performers).
Causes
Success leads to more resources: In general, the world rewards the best and most capable in a field. This occurs though giving more exposure in high impact journals and so on. It also occurs where success leads to more resources (e.g., grant money; collaborators willing to put you on a paper; better collaborators; better PhD students; more time to do research; etc.).
Ability is non-linearly related to productivity: In addition, writing journal articles for high impact journals takes substantial expertise. There are many academics who never publish in high impact journals, presumably because their research skills, available data, or whatever are just not at that level. In contrast, other researchers are able to consistently produce output at that level. I'd also note that this is not a fixed characteristic. People do learn and improve. But ultimately, high level skills and persistence are required to consistently publish in top-tier journals.
Publication Metrics
In general, whenever you compare the publication of one academic to another, there are a number of things to consider:

Quality of publications: The impact factor is a crude approximation in first instance but average impact factor becomes more informative when average over an academics portfolio of publications.
Field-specific performance norms: Some fields publish more or less, and related to the next points, some fields have more co-authors per paper, which makes it easier to get many papers.
Number of co-authors per paper: Some authors publish with few co-authors; some publish with many. A fairer comparison will often be obtained by dividing each publication by number of co-authors, and summing this fractionated total.
Weighting by contribution to paper: In general, with more co-authors, any one person's contribution is less. In many fields, the first author makes the main contribution. Thus, one quick way of fractionating, is to get a count of number of first author papers only. Thus, if someone is the head of a big group, which get their name on many things, this often won't transfer to first author papers.

Types of prolific authors
In my experience in psychology, I have seen various strategies for prolific publishing (e.g., 30, 40, 50 or more papers per year):

The many mid-tier papers strategy: There are some academics in psychology who pursue a strategy of publishing a large number of papers in mid-tier journals. These journals often have an okay impact factor. They might be Q2 or low Q1 on Scimago. Often these articles are a bit more incremental. The journals do have standards, but they are often relatively quick to publish in. In some cases, such authors frequently publish in a small number of journals that seem to like their fast-style. Such authors also often join the editorial board. In general, I find these academics are often fairly capable, but perhaps lack the depth of insight to publish at top-tier journals.

Big group strategy: Another common strategy is to be part of a big research group. Often it is the head of such group that gets on a lot of papers. But it's also possible for methodologists to get on a large number of papers. And more generally, you can often find groups of academics at institutions who work together. Most papers have many authors (e.g., 10 to 20 authors). In even more extreme cases, you can see some mega-collaborations (well known in physics, but occurring in other spaces) that span multiple institutions.

Aguinis, H., & O'Boyle, E. (2014). Star performers in twenty‐first century organizations. Personnel Psychology, 67(2), 313-350.
http://www.hermanaguinis.com/PPsych2014.pdf

This community wiki answer was created from answers-in-comments.
The other answers explain mechanisms by which "normal" academics can have very high paper counts. But there are also some (very unusual) instances of people who are just insanely productive (and not just putting their names on papers where their proteges do all the work). For instance, Saharon Shelah; another example is Leonhard Euler, who wrote over 800 (singly authored!) papers. To put it in better perspective: "The historian of science Clifford Truesdell has estimated that in a listing of all of the mathematics, physics, mechanics, astronomy, and navigation work produced during the 18th Century, a full 25% would have been written by Leonhard Euler." Truly mindboggling.

According to my long experience in academic research, it is possible that you can accumulate a large number of papers at the end of the year by including your name on every paper, whether you have a genuine contribution or not, where the latter is the dominant tendency in academia. I’ve been in China for more than 10 years and I have seen tons of cases for fake Chinese professors who spend the whole year sending emails and begging other people (students, postdoc, ... etc) to include their names on papers even without having a quick look at the papers... This is, of course, a nonethical approach to science... In China this is quite common everywhere where most academic people don’t care about ethics.... the most important thing is the number of papers... Look at any conference (e.g., IEEE proceeding) and see how many papers coming from China... You will get amazed at the first glance but wait ... mostly useless and rubbish papers.....  Moreover, Networking and Connection are important in that direction where many Chinese academic people manage to publish their papers in peer-reviewed journals through connections with editors and chief-in-editors where they are in most cases Chinese... I know many cases where reviewers directly keep in touch with authors, promising them to give positive feedback (no matter the solidity of work) on their submitted papers which is, in turn, will be beneficial for both... mutual benefit between comrades... This is the truth about academic life nowadays...  On the other hand, exceptional cases are there everywhere (genuine researchers).