text:
I am a research student working on a book, should I be included as coauthor?
I realise similar questions have been asked previously, but I believe the circumstances here differ in some respects.
My former boss and I worked as practitioners in a particular field for several years, and I was invited to work as a research assistant to do a qualitative assessment of the work we did. We are now working together on a book on the subject. Over the years, I believe we have developed a strong working relationship based on mutual respect, despite his many more years of senior-level experience.
So far, I have written the majority of the work, including background and empirical material. I have also done an extensive literature review and provided a draft theoretical framework which I have begun to connect to the empirical study. Roughly speaking, I have written over 25,000 words of my own, and highlighted potential conclusions including my reasoning. He has written about 2,000.
I recently asked my boss if I would be included as coauthor, but was given the answer that the publisher might not accept a coauthor without a post-graduate degree. I previously wrote an article together with this person on a different topic, and was given the same reasoning that the journal would only accept my boss as the sole author. I was instead included in the acknowledgments. Having researched the publisher, I can see that they may reject the book if the author is not deemed "qualified", for which previous publication is an expectation. I am certain that he will be deemed qualified, but I am unsure how they would look upon me. I am currently completing a Master's degree but won't be finished until next year, at which point the book might be ready. I did, however, work extensively as a practitioner on the topic, in a supporting role to my boss.
I do not necessarily expect co-authorship, but surely there is something such as supporting author or another title that is more appropriate than a mere acknowledgment?
Should I accept the reasoning that the publisher might reject the book proposal? What can I expect in terms of authorship acknowledgment? Should I put my foot down and demand that publication is put on hold until I have completed my Master's degree and published something?

Thank you so much everyone for your insightful answers. They've been helpful in understanding the typical modus operandi of publishers and confirmed my own grasp of the situation.
I have made it clear to my boss that I expect coauthorship, and I will have to wait and see what he replies. Will come back to you with the results.
EDIT: Since raising the issue with my boss, I have been included as cowriter with no damage to our professional relationship. In fact, my contribution to the book has, as a result of the methodology we've chosen, risen to be even more substantially acknowledged. Many thanks for your answers and help, truly insightful. We will see if there is any push-back from the publisher, whose answers I will make sure to verify for myself.

Did you publish peer-reviewed papers with them as well?

I would say not only should you be a co-author, it would be completely dishonest of the other person to ever pretend it was sole authorship. There are no ghost writers in academic work.

There should be no such thing as ghost writers. I know a grad student who wrote several chapters of a faculty member’s book with just an acknowledgment…

Over the years, I believe we have developed a strong working relationship based on mutual respect, despite his many more years of senior-level experience.

Hmm. I feel rather terrible to be the bearer of this sort of bad news, but your belief seems rather strongly contradicted by the facts. In fact, the reality seems to be that you are in an abusive and exploitative relationship with your boss. Denying you coauthorship for work in whose writing you have played a very significant part is nothing like what “mutual respect” looks like.

I do not necessarily expect co-authorship, but surely there is something such as supporting author or another title that is more appropriate than a mere acknowledgment?

The only title that’s appropriate given your description of your contribution is that of a coauthor.

Should I accept the reasoning that the publisher might reject the book proposal?

No, the reasoning sounds approximately 100% invalid to me.
Regardless, even if there is possibly a publisher who would take such an illogical stance, your boss’s insistence on excluding you is unethical. An ethical boss would look for, and almost certainly find, a path towards publishing the work with you getting the credit you deserve.

What can I expect in terms of authorship acknowledgment? Should I put my foot down and demand that publication is put on hold until I have completed my Master's degree and published something?

I cannot say what you can expect, or what you should do. It’s a sad fact that there are parts of academia where corruption is rampant and people have no good choices. But at the very least, in order to make good decisions you should have a clear picture of what’s going on. And what is going on is that your boss is exploiting you, I’m sorry to say. It’s not right, and I sincerely hope that you will find a way to get the proper credit for your hard work. Good luck!

Also the OP should have been an author on the article.

If the facts are exactly as you state them, then your boss is exploiting you. Clear and simple. There must be a department at your university where you can file a complaint.

(I used to work in academic publishing)
A book in which you are the sole author might run into this issue. A book in which you are a co-author is not. You can probably request to be a co-author and the publisher will not object as long as your boss is also listed (they might also ask for your boss to be listed as the first author).
I once published a book where one of the authors was the primary author's wife (she apparently did a lot of proofreading for the author). It's not usually a problem as long as there's a senior name in the list of authors as well.

the publisher might not accept a coauthor without a post-graduate
degree.

It depends on the specific publisher. There are no general rules. Even the same publisher may have different arbitrary criteria on the authors' CVs for different publications/collections.
I would suggest that you contact the publisher directly with a general enquiry (I would even suggest to do this anonymously to avoid the possible discomfort of discovering that the publisher is a very small one and your former boss is the only customer at the time).

If your contribution is substantial, then you are a co-author. Given the amount of work you have already done, it would only qualify as unsubstantial if it were of a clerical nature. (For example, retyping tables would not qualify for co-authorship.) This gives you the right to demand co-authorship.
If we look at the reasons for the reluctance of your primary author, the concern with the editor does not appear to be very valid. It is possible that both of you are victim of a predatory editor. (I get invitations to write a book or become editor of a book composed of individual chapters from suspicious sources, and so do most people in academia.) A serious editor will evaluate the credentials of the team of authors. While you might not be able to publish with this editor based on your lack of a title, your primary author has the credentials and seems to be directing you. The concern of your primary author might very well be genuine, but is only founded in fact if the editor is not following academic usage.
There is still a personal problem you might be facing if you insist on being a "named" co-author, appearing on the title page. This is something which a forum like this cannot address. If your primary author is really unwilling to make you a co-author because of irrational fears or because of another reason, there is ultimately only so much you can do that will not result in a rupture in your relationship.

You seem to be applying the rules for scientific works to books. That isn't necessarily valid. Books often include only settled questions, not new contributions. The OPs description, however, does seem like authorship in this case.

We both agree that he made a contribution that qualifies him as an author. There might be a cultural component here. Emil Artin once wrote a book with a graduate student and did not want to list him as a co-author, but the Americans convinced him that he had to. But nowadays, it would be hard to deny authorship based on what OP did.

Have a look at this book:
If you look it up in google scholar, you will find that the book is credited to a single author.
If you look at the cover page, one name is written with large letters and then with smaller letters but immediately below, it is written
"with the collaboration of ...[2nd person]"
If you open the book, there are short bios for both persons
If you look at the copyright page, both persons are named after the copyright symbol.
In this specific example, both persons are professors, but my point is that "co-authorship" is not a single situation -it can have "degrees", which could provide some sort of solution for your case.
I am not going into whether you should be "equal" or even the prime co-author, because it would require much more detailed examination of the matter. I am currently writing an academic book with a co-author, and we have agreed that I will be the actual key-stroking writer, in order to maintain a homogeneous writing style throughout. But that does not make the book mine, not even me the "prime" author, because they will contribute in other important ways.


text:
Is my citation error considered as plagiarism?
Briefly speaking, I recently found out that my graduate research paper has some citation errors. Which is really poor citations.

I cited a wrong author name (author A) for a sentence which actually came from another author (author B). However, I did cite both authors in my reference list.
Some of my figures' citations didn't follow the correct format. I did cite the author and date, just in the wrong format.

I am not sure how serious these problems can be. Are these errors considered as plagiarism?
I really didn't copy anyone's works, just gave wrong citations. I know this is very dumb and not professional. I feel pretty guilty and anxious right now.
Update:
I have further look into my thesis. I summarize with my citation errors as following (except the previous errors):

I cited a source in-text (author, date, source), but forget to put in my reference list.
I cited a web source, but it is actually came from a report. I cited as an internet source.
Misspelling.
Wrong order number of tables/figures.

My thesis now looks like a total trash to me. So my next question is:
What is my next move?

Erratum maybe?
Notify my professor?
Let it go? (This is a master thesis, unpublished, but public.)

First one is kinda useless, because my school does not accept any revision or change.
My first priority is to not commit any misconduct/dishonet.

No.
1 is sloppy, and you should take care to avoid things like that in the future. But you were not trying to pretend it was your original idea or phrase.
2 is nothing like misconduct of any kind. It is only an issue of style.
Update (four new points):
These are all sloppy, but not misconduct or dishonest.
Make a list of all the errors and a new version of the thesis. Send them to your professor and say you would like to correct the public version or at least attach a list of errata. Follow whatever the professor recommends, except that if they say you can't do anything, then perhaps you could put the errata on your own personal website.
For point 4, in the future you should consider using software or software features that does the numbering of tables and figures automatically, which would make this kind of mistake impossible.
It is good that your first priority is to avoid misconduct. And as far as I can see from these mistakes, you have not committed anything like misconduct.

This community wiki answer was created from a high quality answer-in-the-comments.
I am an academic misconduct officer at my university and look into these things. Clearly you made an effort and didn't try to cover up anything (or copy and paste text and claimed it as your own). Without having seen your work, I would put it down as poor academic practice but not plagiarism. The reference are there but not correctly formatted / cited. If it helps you, read any scientific paper and look through their references, chances are you will find inconsistencies even at that level. I wouldn't worry too much about it. If it does bother you, you can always put in a correction.
I also recommend this video showing what real academic misconduct looks like. After seeing that, I think your citation mistake will not look as bad in comparison

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
Supervisor advised me to quit late in my PhD
I'm a third-year PhD student at a university in the Netherlands. The program is normally four years but students finish averagely in 4.5 years. By the end of each year we have progress evaluation. The first and second went well, just some advice, nothing critical. However, about 10 days ago I received a shocking feedback from my supervisor saying that it's better to quit because we (the committee) don't think you will be able to finish. Me and my supervisor then discussed things back and forth, and I argued that I had big delays due to covid and he agreed with me, but still the advice is to stop. And if I want to continue I have to try to find something (somehow) in 3 months and present again in front of different committee. And he won't be there.
The thing is, we have very bad data. Some interesting insights but his general expression is that we can't publish anything out of it. Of course he is stressed about the grant he got for the project and that the project didn't work as desired, but does that give him the right to want to terminate my PhD?
The thing is I'm still in shock and don't understand why this is happening. And more, why now? If I was a bad PhD, why not let me go before?
I'm sorry I'm just sad and confused at the moment. I don't know where to go and whom to ask for advice.
Edit: so the committee is pretty much useless and the supervisor is not interested in my data or PhD anymore. He can't however effectively terminate my contract, I can stay but mostly no degree in the end.
Should I fight against that somehow? Should I ask for ombudsman advice?
Or maybe just cut loses with all the stress and anxiety I'm getting from all this?
Update: the ombudsman sympathized and suggested to leave once I manage to find work somewhere else.

I am so sorry that you are in this situation.

Are you fully funded with stipend? The advice is a bit different if you are paying v.s. if they are paying you.

I am a bit confused here… is the underlying issue that the project is not recoverable so the funding is disappearing? Why would the supervisor not be at the next meeting?

@Clumsycat I'm fully funded until the end of fourth year.

@Dawn the funding of the bigger project of which mine is part of, is still ongoing. But the whole issue is that he decided all of a sudden that my PhD isn't feasible. And why he wouldn't be there is I believe because he wants someone else to judge my progress. I really can't think of anything else.

There is no question in the post that anyone can answer.

Does your edit (" the committee is pretty much useless") indicate you have had a new conversation since you wrote this post? What was said?

@Prof.SantaClaus The problem is that they aren't getting terminated, they are being told that they are not on a road to graduation and should quit. This is much harder to fight on a formal basis. The ombudsman might still be able to help, but it's unlikely they can do more than talk to the supervisor and try to convince them that they are not playing fairly here (success chance of this talk is small, in my experience).

Europe is a continent. Which country exactly? different countries, very different rules and things to do. Even when neighbouring and sharing the language ... (even different faculties may have different rules).
One thing is sure: now is time to be loud in marking your territory. If you had 2 positive evaluations, they have to fight hard to prove you deserve not finishing. It must be soso hard to prove, that it will be easier (in comparison, given their actual evaluation and assessment of your thesis) for them to bring you to conclusion your PhD.

I don't think this is answerable.  We don't know whether you actually can finish in reasonable time, or your research was a shot in the dark that will lead to no publications good enough to earn you degree, essentially "wasting" most of 3 years. What is required by the university/department in terms of papers? Getting one shitty and/or low impact paper is obviously doable no matter how un-perspective your research is, 2 first author papers published in Q1 journals might not be.

One paper is needed to graduate, and the university care to some extent about the impact factor. Also, this is in the Netherlands.

If the supervisor agreed to work with you and then decided to quit only because of bad data, this is simply outrageous and you have the right to make a big scandal. If on the other hand the supervisor has some doubts about your ability to produce a PhD and moreover has some evidence to substantiate these doubts then I would very politely ask advice from the supervisor - what could be an option for you in such circumstances.

@Zen, who proposed and designed your PhD title and research project?

@Zen Perhaps it is noteworthy that research that yields essentially nothing (was a dead end, didn't produce any data to support a theory, etc.) can still be valuable. It's surely not what one hoped for; but it is valuable scientific information. Wanting to produce results at all costs -- publish or perish because arriving at a negative is considered inferior -- is one contributor to the replication crisis. So: Professional quality research that resulted in "bad data" may perhaps still earn you a PhD: It is also a result.

If you're in Leiden, then you should be aware that Faculty of Science is notorious for a toxic work environment, see e.g. here: https://www.mareonline.nl/en/background/fraud-disappearing-evaluations-and-a-toxic-environment-how-the-best-statistics-group-in-the-netherlands-fell-apart/ . Maybe you can learn something about how to navigate this situation from the experience of others who went through the previous scandals.

@user366312 an external group (different country in EU) that we are collaborating with.

Knowing that the OP is in the Netherlands allows for a more tailored response.
In the Netherlands most PhD students enjoy employment as an "AIO". This is full employment contract that gives the PhD "student" all the rights and benefits of a normal employee of the university. Since you have satisfactorily passed your previous performance reviews, it will be very hard for the university to make a case for terminating your contract (unless you give them cause to do so).
This employment contract however is formally distinct of the process of getting a PhD. While the stated goal of the employment contract will be to prepare you for getting your PhD, there is no guarantee that this will be the case.
Essentially, your advisor seems to have given up faith that your current project will lead to something. Rather than trying to get your PhD back on the rails, they seem to want to convince you to quit (because firing you is hard). This will save face for them. PhD candidates quit, it happens. If you stay, this will reflect badly on them as the failure of the project will become their failure. They are trying to make their problem your problem
This leaves the OP in a tough spot. Their contract as an AIO will likely require them to report to their line manager, which in all likelihood is their advisor. So, while some have given the advice to try to find a new advisor, this is not so simple, since their funding is essentially linked to  their advisor. They will not only have to find someone willing to act as a promotor, they also have to persuade the department to transfer them to a different line manager. This may or may not be possible.
On the other hand, it seems your advisor is effectively refusing to do their job. So, you might have a recourse in complaining about this to their line manager (probably the institute director). However, this may also escalate the situation in such away that it becomes hard to resolve, and your best outcome becomes accepting a severance package.
My best advice is to get advice from somebody that actually knows the situation in your department. In principle, you should have been assigned a secondary advisor that you can talk to in case of conflict with your advisor (but unfortunately this does not always happen), you might be able to talk to this person. Alternatively, contact your university's ombudsperson for advice.

I contacted the ombudsperson and indeed the situation is really complicated. They said I could go against my supervisor decision, but at the same time, I won't get much support from him along the way. That implies a risk of working hard without earning PhD in the end. Hence, wasting more years. The other option they suggested is to basically cut loses and find a job/PhD somewhere else.

(Edit; TooTea points out that you specified the Netherlands in another comment. I'm going to leave this answer basically intact, because I think it best covers the general case, but there are some additional notes in italics.)
So it's not impossible that you missed some poorly articulated indications that this project had issues. Some cultures don't give very direct criticism. Impossible to say without a lot more information, but it's neither here nor there at this point. (If the supervisor is culturally Dutch this seems less likely, they probably just didn't keep track of things well enough to spot the problem when it was smaller).
For whatever reason, your supervisor is not going to help you anymore, but I see no reason you should quit.
You are fully funded, and so there is little reason to walk away prematurely. There are a couple of ways you could play this, depending on your priorities;

You want to optimise your chances of graduation. It's not exactly great odds, but they would improve a lot of you could find another advisor. Is there anyone else at your institution who might be relevant to your topic? Have a chat with them, and start out just asking for their perspective. Tell them you fear you may have misunderstood earlier communication, and maybe missed a big problem. If they agree that the situation seems strange, and there wasn't a clear problem earlier, ask if they think you could graduate. If they think it possible, ask if they would be willing to supervise your last year. During this conversation absolutely resist the urge to say anything rude about your current advisor, it will kill any chance that another academic will take you on.

(This is apparently complicated by the funding stipulations, as described in TimRias's answer. I'd still advise you start with this chat though. Another faculty member who was supportive and willing to take you on is probably the best way to persuade the department to transfer the funding).

Maybe you actually don't want that stress anymore? A reasonable move at this point would be to do the minimal work required to present something to a committee, and spend the rest of your time job hunting. I suspect that by creating a minimal thesis to present you would make it harder for your supervisor to kick you out earlier, therefor maximise your time on the stipend. Having longer to job hunt, particularly while you can honestly say you are still working towards the PhD, might be very beneficial. Maybe this isn't the most ethical of approaches, but your supervisor's failure to communicate well (or possibly just lack of oversite) has put you in an unfortunate position, so I think it's justifiable to prioritise your own long term security now.

(With reference to TimRias's description of your funding model, this looks like a very viable approach. They would struggle to force you out if you just coasted for the remainder of your funding period).
Whatever you do, best of luck. I'm sorry you got this thrown at you.

Not sure where you are, but in the U.S. another angle for this second option is to change your PhD into an MS or an MPS degree. I know many PhDs who, due to problems with their advisor or research or both, opted to meet smaller research requirements to get another MS degree or shifted to a practical project (capstone or internship) to get an MPS degree. That worked out well (in terms of good employment) for everyone I know who did it, so I would not think of it as 'quitting' so much as 'adapting to the situation'.

OP wrote they're in the Netherlands (which is generally somewhat on the "direct" end of the scale culture-wise), but of course it's possible their advisor comes from a different culture.

@TooTea Your guess is right, unfortunately.

@Zen Given the direct nature of the Netherlands, possibly you can tell your advisor that you will not be quitting, and now the problem of the project going badly is in fact their problem again. And since the easy/low-risk solution of getting you to quit and making the problem go away didn't work, maybe they have some higher-risk options to offer that might result in salvaging your PhD.

I can only answer in general terms, because you do not specify which country and which department. Being "in Europe" (note it is a continent with heterogeneous laws), you may have some legal resource, but the most important thing is that you have a contract and money.
I will therefore focus on the half-full glass, looking forward to a way out of this situation.
In no PhD's contracts is written that the employer will give you a PhD, so your situation is not illegal per se ... and you have the big advantage that your financial/working relationship with the university is independent from your relation  with an (any) advisor. You have to find a new advidsor, because you have already a salary to perform research (yes, I know, with no renewal perspective... welcome to the academic world!).
Now is time to bang to all the doors of all the department and even neighbouring departments. You have money, you have some data, you have one-two years left on the contract, ask every professor, every heads of department if they can take you in to bring your PhD to an end.
You still have money and time, so your situation is already quite stable. You just need to find a different thesis advisor with a different thesis topic.
Basically you are restarting your PhD, and you have two years of experience, so it is possible to finish your PhD in one-two years (hard, but possible).
Good luck!
Ps: you may be able to write proposals for grants. Time-consuming, but then you may obtain your own money to perform research.

I updated that it's in the Netherlands. I understand that finding a new advisor could is an option, but unfortunately in the department, he's the only one with expertise to judge the work. A different thesis topic in a different department is an interesting idea, but do you think that it's common that students move to other departments to start over, while failing (on paper) their previous project?

How common? a lot: you bring money and workforce, you will find an advisor with more than one neuron willing to host you.
Please note that you should keep the door open also for cooperations with other unis and research institution in the country.
Additionally, if you want to move out of the academia, you have now money and time to build up you network in the private sector, but you have to be proactive and build the relationship. Join student associations, think tanks, professional association, you are in a very invidiable position (again: you have a salary for granted!)

@EarlGrey Although the OP has a contract, this does not mean that they can do as they want. The contract will come of contractual obligations, including reporting to a line manager, which in all likelihood will be their advisor. It is not at all clear, they can take their money and start working for a different professor.

@TimRias "the supervisor is not interested in my data or PhD anymore. He can't however effectively terminate my contract, I can stay but mostly no degree in the end."
It is quite clear that OP has a running contract, surely with formal obligations that OP can fulfill since he passed two (2!) yearly evaluations.

@EarlGrey, As this is the Netherlands, they likely have a contract as an AIO. This is an employment contract like any other, and comes comes with the usual contractual obligations. In particular, they are in all likelihood required to follow the instructions of their line manager. They cannot simply move-on and effectively start working for a different line manager without their line manager agreeing to this.

@TimRias feel free to expand on your comments and make an answer. It would me much more useful.

@Zen Actually, you did not update that the question is based in the Netherlands. Please EDIT that fact into the QUESTION and not as an ephemeral comment.

Dead ends happen in research, I don't think it is feasible to quit PhD over a dead end. However, there is something you should know, a dead end is a big setback. You will most likely take much longer than average length to graduate. Now you say the data is very bad. You could try to side step to a similar topic with different data to analyze.
However, you will need to persuade your supervisor to do this. Tell him/her you understand the problem and you are ready to start over. Obviously it will not be starting from zero, you gained experience, you have now better tools to deal with the task. If he/she accepts, you will probably finish in two more years and everything will be fine.
If not, try to find another supervisor. Talk with the dean or head of graduate studies for help. They might be willing to help you find another supervisor with similar interests. This route will probably take longer as you will have to find another supervisor who might have different work habits.

First of all, I'm sorry to hear about your situation, and I truly hope you'll find a solution.
I've been in the situation myself where it was hard to publish anything during my PhD, since most of the results we were getting were negative results, as in "the answer to this question is no, what we want to achieve is not doable". Took me long long enough to realize that: "negative" results are still results, and it is just a matter of what one does with it. It can be hard, that no one can deny, but you probably can do something with the data you acquired. Furthermore, the data, as bad as they can be, come from somewhere: you provided some work, and by doing so you brought some insight on your field and the way it is performed, at the very least in your group. And it is not nothing, and a try is usually rewarded in European universities (of course there are exceptions, but well that's case to case...).
As per your supervisor, that might be a bigger issue. As mentioned in the answer, and as I actually saw it happen to a friend of mine, you might not want to go against them. It will bring you further pressure, and you probably don't need it right now.
My advice would be, try to talk this through with them, and also your coworker (Assuming your have coworkers), and figure out what the best solution is with them. And do not fear to express you wishes, since you were involved for about four years in your project, it is but normal to feel attached to this project and having trouble to let it go.

Consider starting another PhD at another university. Working together with your supervisor to get a PhD is hard enough. Working against him, you need to have pretty good results or some other allies.
Your three years won't be lost, as you probably learned a lot and will pick up a similar topic more rapidly and are able to do smarter choices compared to yourself three years ago. You might be able to finish your second attempt within three years.

One way or another, this is your supervisor's fault. If the title was your proposal and the project was designed by you, the supervisor should have evaluated that thoroughly before taking you as his PhD student. Secondly, a failed project is 50% of the supervisor's responsibility. The supervisor seems to be not experienced enough to salvage your research. These are signals that you should not continue working under this person.
Find a new supervisor with a PhD program at a new university, possibly outside the Netherlands but in the EU.
I hope you have published some papers. If that is so, there should be no problem with getting admission to another PhD program. Your previous experience will help you to streamline your next project. Therefore, never give up!

I got my PhD in Astrophysics few years ago.
My best advice: search for another supervisor willing to continue with you from the point you stopped with your current supervisor.

This answer lacks some details, justification, elaboration.

authors: მამუკა ჯიბლაძე

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Is it possible to publish bad data from an accidently failed experiment?
We performed a very complicated measurement in the high-energy physics field and now as a PhD, I am doing the data analysis. The setup has two detectors, one of which broke. Therefore, we only have information from one detector. The thing is, both detectors are crucial to reach the final goal of the measurement. Instead, we have only one working but we know why the other one accidentally died during the experiment. So, I suppose this is neither wrong methodology nor it is a null hypothesis. As much as I hate the term, it is a failed experiment due to mistakes that could've been avoided.
The question is, how would one extract something publishable from such data?
Would it be enough to state what I did and why it failed?

I think this is too specific for this site; consult with your research advisors/mentors/collaborators for how you might salvage these particular data, if it's possible at all. Stating what you did and why it failed is often perfectly reasonable for a course project for a student to be graded on, but rarely publishable unless the failure is very spectacular or interesting to the field. That's a bit unfortunate, I wish errors were more appreciated in the scientific literature.

When deciding whether something is publishable, try to answer the question "what does my article add to the knowledge of the world". The "finding" that a broken detector does not work does not add that much. So you need to look at whether there is something interesting in your data. For that I would talk to your advisors/mentors/collaborators, like @BryanKrause suggested.

Think about why we publish to begin with: Because we want to add to the existing knowledge, not because the authors need it for their careers. As a consequence, what makes something publishable is if it provides for something that is new in the sense that it is either an observation no others have made so far, or that it adds evidence to something others have published but for which the evidence was not yet convincing (think: the precise mass of the Higgs boson). A paper that is solely written "because we made an experiment and we want to write a publication on it" is neither interesting to readers, nor does it add anything worthwhile to the body of literature.
Which way things lean for your specific case I don't know. It is possible that you can scrape enough evidence from your one detector to show something that was not yet known, even if the evidence is maybe not overwhelming because you don't have the second detector. In that case, it may be possible to publish the results. Or, it may be that there really isn't anything others haven't already observed. In that case, you're out of luck.

Since both detectors are "crucial" you haven't really got anything and the experiment needs to be repeated (woe).
What you have is an anecdotal story about instrument failure and the necessity of carrying out experiments according to a pre-defined plan.
Perhaps you have enough data from the one instrument to be able to say that the data available doesn't seem to contradict the hypothesis, but not much else.
Sorry for your troubles, but lots of people have setbacks in their research. Math is full of it also. Yours may be expensive in money as well as time, but little in the world of scholarship is assured.
Whether anything can be published is up to the publisher. Since you can't accept or reject the hypothesis based on the failed experiment it seems doubtful.

So if you can prove the hypothesis from the available data, would it be something? Knowing that the technique was already used before but with different apparatus.

I can't judge the case, but it seems doubtful. At best you have poor evidence. And, FWIW, you don't "prove" a hypothesis in experimental work. You only give evidence, usually statistical.

Thank you for the correction.

If the data are useless, too bad.
If the accidental death of the second detector was somehow interesting or instructive you might be able to write about it.
See What to do when you spend several months working on an idea that fails in a masters thesis?


text:
Does following a PhD cost money or earn money?
According to academicpositions.be, which quotes the New York Times, PhD students earn 15000 and 30000 dollars per year. But according to Educationdata:

In 2012, the average cost of a full year in a Ph.D. program was $21,400.
Of the $21,400, the net price for the student was $8,480.
Of the $21,400, roughly $12,920 was covered by grants.
39.2% of surveyed Ph.D. students offset the cost of their degree with teaching assistantships.

Why do these sources seem to contradict each other?
Does this also differ by country?

This varies around the world. Where do you propose study?

Costs whom? The professor pays stipend, tuition, and research costs.

I replaced the Glassdoor reference

It's kind of both. When you study, you (or someone) has to pay the university the tuition fees. However, in many countries, the professor/department/scholarship will have funding to pay the university and pay you a stipend.

If you don't have funding, then the net result is you pay the university.
If you do have funding, then the net result depends on how much funding is provided. Quite often, the net result is you are paid. If the funding is only partial, you still might have to pay the university.

Don't confuse cost with price.
The following applies in the US. There is also some difference by field and by university. Generally, though,...
I think $57K sounds a bit high, though it probably includes such things as health insurance. The stipend is set to cover modest living expenses of a student in that locality, recognizing that many are married. Enough for frugal living, but little enough that you want to finish ASAP.
And for almost all doctoral students, a TA or an RA will come with forgiveness of almost all costs. Those costs are borne by the institution or the government that supports it. But a privately funded student will have high cost of tuition. Again, I'd guess $99K is at the top end of the scale, and those are total costs over the multi-year program, not annual costs. And, most students in doctoral programs have a TA or (fewer) an RA. Both provide valuable service to the institution, especially in making the faculty more productive.
But yes, the costs are high, since in some fields the labs are costly and the professors are well paid. Even building maintenance isn't free.
You aren't normally paid for your research. A TA means you assist in teaching (normally) undergraduates. An RA probably means that you assist in someone else's research, though your project might grow out of that. You are paid a stipend, not normally a "salary" (US). The tax implications of that difference might be important, but most likely taxes will be due.

A bit high? The NSF graduate research fellowship pays $36,000 and represents the largest pay a lot of fields can hope to get, by like $10,000 ...

@AzorAhai-him-, yes, 36K sounds about right, but does it include health insurance - a big cost in the US. And the 57K was listed as a max figure. But 10K sounds too low.

One valuable thing a PhD in an empirical field teaches is a reminder to always concern yourself with where data come from. From the page OP links: https://i.sstatic.net/5nhwO.png ...a couple at $25k, a couple around $35k, one at $150k... and GlassDoor happily reports "average 57,029". These are just reported salaries by users, and the average may not be particularly meaningful if it includes outliers that are data entry errors or unusual circumstances.

@Buffy It does, yes. But that is not usually included when reporting salaries. And no, no one said $57k was a max. If you click through, it is clearly implied to be some sort of mean.

And "largest pay ... by $10,000," i.e. $25,000 not $10,000 for the year.

I am now living in a country where generally PhDs are not paid unless you find a grant and where a lot of people do a PhD for free.
In my country this can also happen, however it's now getting more and more common to require actually having a grant or some kind of compensation before being able to start a PhD, thus most people over there earn a salary.
I'm paid a salary for my PhD as I'm employed outside of university.
Generally around here doing a PhD does not cost money, outside of registration fees and stuff like that, which is generally quite low and definitely below 1000€ for the whole PhD. If you get a grant these fees are generally covered by the grant. Of course, if you're not paid you'd have to account for how much it costs you not to have another jobs that pays you.
I do not know about you, but I'd never accept to work for free. Doing a PhD is a job in my mind, since you're doing something that takes your time and generating useful research for other people to use (which is quite different from what a student does for example during his master), thus I'd never accept to do a PhD for free.
On a side note, I personally disapprove of people who accept to do unpaid PhDs or to work overtime; this because you're basically lowering the salary of other people doing a PhD by accepting to do the same job for free.


text:
Limits of academic search engines
Having spent quite a lot of time going through the literature on my research topic, I've been disappointed by the search features offered by the dominant academic databases and search engine (Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar etc...).
The search feature remains pretty basic and allows us to search by common theme.
We cannot search for ideas shared between papers, how one paper contradicts or supports another, or create nodes graphs by citations etc... I've thus relied on doing Knowledge Extraction by myself, but I'm sure someone has encountered these issues before.
Has anyone found a better tool or approach ?

What advice did your librarian give when you consulted them?

Nothing helpful, the tasks I'd like to do (paragraph level topic modeling etc...) were not supported by any search engine they knew of

This is impossible with current technology.  You're essentially expecting the search engine to understand your area of research!

I've built this myself on a smaller corpus - topic modeling is standard NLP practice. Scite.ai for instance (mentioned below) makes use of it, albeit at a restricted scale. I'll try scaling it up and share more if the results are good

... how one paper contradicts or supports another

The tools to go for this feature are:

scite.ai
Semantic Scholar

... or create nodes graphs by citations

You may be interested in:

ConnectedPapers
VOSViewer
CitationGecko
CitNetExplorer
CoCites

I ask new researchers to generate a conceptual model by identifying 3-7 key terms, authors, and journals before implementing any review of literature through a search engine. This prepares them for either a narrative or systematic review of literature. This also allows them to quickly begin the process of understanding how their future work "fits" within the larger corpus of literature.


text:
GPA when having extra courses
I'm from Europe and would like apply for PhD in the USA. On my university it is mandatory to take 70 credits of courses in order to finish a master's degree. However, I decided to take extra courses to push my GPA.
How is that managed?
I can write my 'better GPA', but still I'm obligated to send all my grades.

It may help to keep in mind that in U.S. colleges and universities, course credit requirements are minimum requirements, and the best students often go well beyond this minimum. Indeed, in math at least (what I know most about), I would be extremely surprised if anyone who was accepted for admission to a U.S. top 10 math graduate program in the last couple of decades only took the minimum math requirements for a math degree at their college/university. And probably a large majority took more than the minimum number of courses overall for their degree.

US universities will likely expect you to report your overall GPA, not just the GPA of your "best X credits". Having extra courses can still improve your overall GPA if you have better than your average grades in those courses.
If your institution allows you to report some other official GPA based on your best courses (I've never heard of this; maybe it happens, though?), you may be able to justify doing so, but should still make clear how this GPA was calculated.
As you mention, schools you apply to will likely expect to see your entire transcript, so if you try to mess with numbers to make yourself look better than your transcript indicates, you're going to get caught and you don't want to get caught inflating your application.

Some may ask for your GPA in your major as well, but will expect to see a complete transcript.

Your GPA is the average of the grades or marks you earned as part of a degree.  No more, no less.  If your university awarded you a degree for completing x courses, and you take another course later, the additional course does not change your GPA.  If your university awards you a degree for completing x+1 courses when only x courses were required, then the additional course does change your GPA.
This is why American universities only award a degree to a student who has met the course requirements if the student also applies for graduation.  Otherwise, they are permitted to include more courses in their degree, if they pay for them.


text:
Resubmitting a Manuscript to the Same Journal after Being Plainly Rejected
I am a Ph.D. student in the field of social science --sports marketing and public relations. Lately, I have submitted a manuscript to a reputable journal X in my field, my choice was hinged on two reasons: 1. My research addresses a niche that can be published only in a handful of journals, X is the most suitable among them; 2. This journal X, has a relatively short submission to first decision period, which is important in my case as I need a certain number of published articles to be able to defend my thesis and I'm running out of time.
A few days ago, I received the Editor's response which was "rejected". The editors took longer than usual to deliver a decision. When I read the email, I understood that initially the manuscript was assigned to two reviewers. Reviewer 1 made easily addressable comments; reviewer 2 made a low-level review that addressed the tiniest details and explicitly advised the editors not to publish the manuscript in its current form. Apparently, the two reviews were conflicting, so the Editor decided to send it to a third reviewer whose review was more aligned with that of reviewer 2. Although a few comments were unfounded, 90% of the comments were fair.
As a result, the editor rejected the manuscript stating:

In view of the criticisms of the reviewer(s) found at the bottom of
this letter, your manuscript has been denied publication in X. We hope
you find the reviewers' comments useful as you revise and consider
alternative venues for your research.

I have summarized the reviewers' comments and am currently editing the manuscript to address them. I am very tempted to resubmit my manuscript to the same journal, but I wonder whether this is advisable. I'm also contemplating the possibility of sending an email asking the editorial board concerning the matter. I would like to read your thoughts on this before I do anything.
EIDT: I initially thought that I shouldn't consider resubmitting to the same journal, but some fellow researchers told me that some journals plainly deny publication just to reduce the "Time to final decision" metric, which left me a bit puzzle as to what I should do next.

If the journal was interested in receiving a revised version, the decision would have been a "major revision". But they rejected the paper -- a strong indication that they are not interested in seeing the paper again, even after revisions.
I would suggest to try your luck elsewhere.

I thought the same, but I've been told that journals just plainly refuse manuscripts to reduce the "time to last decision" metric or to avoid problems with authors.

@MehdiRezzagHebla This is somewhat true, but it depends on the wording. The wording here is pretty clear. They will not consider your paper if you resubmit, even if you address the concerns of the referees.

@MehdiRezzagHebla Why would you want to resubmit (or submit at all) to a journal that plays games like that with peer review?

@BryanKrause how do you mean?

Some journals don't permit resubmission after rejection. Check to see if that is the case here with your submission.
But the paragraph you cite seems to be pretty strong advice that a resubmission won't be considered. It would be written quite differently otherwise.
But, you can certainly ask whether a resubmission would be considered.
And if you do a major revision, rather than a minimal one, there might be a possibility of considering the paper as a new submission, though doubtful for those journals not accepting revisions after rejection.
You should also start the search for an alternate venue, as suggested, even if you make enquiries of the editors.

They said:

consider alternative venues for your research

So yeah, resubmitting is not likely to be useful and will most probably result in a desk rejection.
You write that some fellow researchers told you that journals will reject to reduce the time taken to final decision metric, which does happen, but in that case the decision will be 'reject and resubmit' instead of 'reject'.


text:
Does my advisor dislike me?
I am a phd student in a lab. PI has been sending out an email to everyone to prepare for a conference. They already booked hotels and flights and all. I only noticed this because the other phd student in the lab told me about it. So I was a little shocked about the news. I have assumed I will also be there. I am very shy at asking these kinds of things, but of course, I know I should have been more vocal about this.
Does he think it was not worth asking me? He knew I wanted to go (or at least I thought he knew). Does he simply dislike me? Should I tell him what I think?

Why do you think this is not just a simple mistake?  Don't you ever text the wrong person?

Very smart people easily make mistakes all the time. I don't understand what you mean by "very lengthy accomodations for everyone", it sounds like you were just left off an email. Is there something besides that?

Agree with the others. Beyond that, most of the questions here (does he dislike me? why didn't he ask me?) can only be answered by your advisor.

"or at least I thought he knew". Most of our assumptions, in social life as well in science, are wrong.

Did you submit a contribution to the conference? Did your PhD colleagues subimt a contribution? are you the same seniority as the other PhDs?

The best guess, mine and that of several commenters, is just that you were inadvertently left off of some email list. Even a typo in an email address would do it if it isn't well maintained. Or you might find something in your junk/spam folder.
If it were intentional, then I doubt that you would have any doubt about it and you'd have seen many other signs.
Just send a note, or visit the office, and say you seem to be not getting emails sent to others. It will probably be cleared up. If you get a good response then you can follow up with something about the conference or any other concern you have.
No, don't tell him how you feel, unless  you get a negative message in a face to face talk. The issue might even have been caused by a clerical staff member and the faculty member could be unaware.
But being to "shy" to speak up isn't going to get you anywhere, now or in the future. Speak when you have a need. That was a hard lesson for me, actually, and it cost me a lot until I learned a better way.

Email can go missing for more reasons than listed here.  Just because it is not in the inbox or in the spam folder does not mean it was not sent.  I've learned this the hard way.

+1 especially for the last paragraph. Being able to talk with your PI is crucial to getting through the PhD. Like Buffy, I had difficulty with this and I might have finished eighteen months earlier (and a lot happier!) if I'd been more confident in talking to my supervisor when I ran into difficulties.

Yes he dislikes you and he intentionally left you out of the group going to a conference.
In fact, he is secretly preparing your dismissal letter.
Can you believe this?
I don't. Now that you see in writing the most perverse trick your anxiety is playing on you, do you see how absurd it is?
Even if he dislikes you, you have been hired to contribute to the group work, not everyone can be friend of everyone, but people can still work together (I would even say that it is best to have friends outside the close colleagues).
Plain tell (or write) the PI that you would like to join the conference, but you did not receive the invitation to book the flight/hotel, so you are wondering if you should contact the secretary or if you should do it on your own. And wait for his response.


text:
Expectations of journals that want a Word document?
I'm used to publishing in a field where it's normal to submit papers in LaTeX format. The journal has a LaTeX class file. No fuss, no muss. Now I'm submitting a paper to journals in a field where the standard seems to be the following. They want both a Word file and a PDF file submitted, and they want them to follow style guidelines in a certain handbook. These style guidelines are things like using a certain citation style, but they don't deal with things like whether sections have numbers or whether a paper should have an abstract, which I suppose either (a) I'm supposed to do by imitating the journal's papers, or (b) they don't care about and will handle themselves if the paper is accepted.
I can generate a Word file using tools like pandoc and LibreOffice, but I'm a little perplexed by the idea that this is going to work without some conventions or best practices that don't seem to be explicit. Are they really going to pay an office worker to go through the whole document and reformat everything by hand to suit their preferences, or are they just assuming I'm going to do certain things the way they're used to? For example, from what little I recall of using Word 30 years ago, you can either format section headers by choosing a font, size, italics, etc., or you can define a style, which would presumably be a better practice. But this is just one of many styling issues that I would anticipate. There's going to be a style for block quotes, footnotes, the abstract, and so on.
How does this actually work for this type of journal? What do they use the PDF for, and what do they use the Word file for? Which format goes to the referee? Are there hidden conventions or best practices for how to set up the Word file?

"...this type of journal..." doesn't really have much meaning. They probably don't collaborate on this.

@Buffy: They clearly do have some kind of communal understanding. They all have the same requirements for format (Word+PDF), and they all refer to the same style manual, which is specific to their field.

Even if the journal does not provide a LaTeX template on their website, they might still be able to process a submission prepared with LaTeX. Have you asked them?

From editorial work I know that guidelines and even LaTeX class files are very often ignored by authors, and quite a bit of work has to be done on the publisher's side anyway. Not sure how much less work they'd have if they'd provide clearer guidelines.

It is called typesetting. Almost all books, newspapers, magazines, and journals go through this process. Most writers do not use Latex, and for many kinds of page design Latex would not be suitable. Look at a copy of Nature for example.
Yes, someone will go through the document and fix all the styles. Probably the PDF will be sent to the referees, with a cover page and line numbers added. The Word document might be used by the typesetter to copy and paste the text into some other software.
The main best practice in Word is to use styles for the headings. Follow the style guidelines in the handbook, and for things that are not mentioned (such as whether headings are numbered) copy an article from the journal, and don't worry too much about getting everything exactly right.

Follow their guidelines as stated and don't try to guess about things they don't make explicit. It would probably be more efficient in the long run if you use a similar style to papers they already publish. But you can ask them, in any case.
Few papers are published as first submitted. Someone, you or they, will provide more production ready copy if the paper is accepted. Worry about it when you need to.
The pdfs might be for reviewers and the Word docs for production to "play with". But who can say?


text:
What should I do if Google Scholar doesn't link to the published version even after 7 months?
My last paper was published around July 2023 but when I check it on Google Scholar, till now it only shows the preprint version. Because of that, even the latest citations go to my preprint version. I even manually updated my scholar data, but still searching for it only links to the preprint on arXiV.
Although, those in my field of High Energy Physics, use Inspire to get citation data which mentions both the published and the preprint version. Still, someone who is unaware of Inspire and relies on Google Scholar only gets the Bibtex data for the preprint, which is a big issue for me. How do I resolve it?

Why is it a big issue?

Because my colleagues from different fields are unable to find the published version from Google Scholar.

That's not the problem your title question asks about. Anyways, people should cite the version of your paper that they read. If they read the preprint that's what they should cite.

Ah true! Maybe I need to rephrase my question.

I am not sure if there is a satisfactory answer, see also this meta question: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5376/should-we-make-google-scholar-questions-off-topic

You would do nothing.  Google says it can take more than a year for a paper to show up. https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/help.html#coverage

Basically this. The time to indexing of the published version is very variable. That said, I'd also encourage filling out the journal reference field on arXiv so readers pointed there by Google Scholar or other papers are informed that it's been published.


text:
Is it appropriate to use a QR code at the end of Thesis acknowledgements for a subtle banter?
I have seen this "thank me" motivational remark made by Snoop Dogg during his Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony, several times and found it hilarious. I wondered if using it at the end of the acknowledgements section of a thesis in the form of a QR code for a light-hearted comedy would be academically appropriate.

If you do it, consider using Wayback machine to archive it for posterity.

I have heard a lot about it. Can anyone upload it on this site? In my field, scholars generally prefer https://arxiv.org/

They have different purposes. arXiv.org is for preprints and Wayback machine is for archiving web content, e.g., websites, videos, etc. When you archive a screenshot of a website you can access it even if the original website is taken off-line. This is very useful to keep politicians accountable of what they say online on social media, so they cannot simply  delete content and lie about never writing certain things.

Tangential: something to watch out for is QR code services are not always above board. The link could be malicious or could turn malicious. If you go this route, you need to be extra sure about the website providing this service.

@CameronWilliams how about this LateX Package

I'll note that, not being human readable, QR codes are inherently unsafe and are being used to lure suckers in to traps. There are translators, of course, but that is a separate (awkward) step. This actually sounds like a "lure" though not into a trap. I'd avoid it.

Baroque artists are masters in having a high density of in-jokes. However, all these jokes are such that they can be deciphered hundreds of years after they have been made. It's a good idea to keep in-jokes self-contained in your work. External dependencies rot.

Re the Wayback machine ... yes, anyone can upload content. Whether the upload is successful or not depends on the site. From what I recall, there is a criterion test: if the site is inaccessible to crawlers, then you can't upload, otherwise you can. Check the Wayback machine site for details. See @the-doctor, supra.

I would be very careful to put references to living persons in your acknowledgements where you cannot be reasonably sure they won't go off the deep end. It's bad enough (but understandable) rereading acknowledgements to your then-girl/boyfriend while working your way through an acrimonious divorce, but Snoop already has a criminal record and you never met the guy .....

@CameronWilliams - QR Code Services? Just encode the URL into the QR, no need for a third party service

If someone I was examining did such a thing, I would either a) ignore the QR code entirely, or b) follow the link, find out it was nonsense, and be slightly irritated when starting to read your thesis. Your choice. Alternatively, you can just write something like "I would like to thank myself, since I wrote all of this, and without me, I could never have finished this work."

@ScottishTapWater the URL itself is a third party service.

@Davidmh I don't think that's what Cameron Williams was talking about. There are a lot of QR code generators which incorporate URL shortening to avoid a ridiculously high density code being needed. So the URL encoded in the QR Code is not the one you upload, but one generated by the service, and you're trusting that service to continue redirecting to the chosen URL. That's substantially more risky than directly encoding a URL to YouTube.

Personally, I would find a QR code in an electronic work (and, let's face it, even your examiners aren't going to read it on paper) to be obnoxious. PDF files can include clickable links, or otherwise the text of a URL can be copied and pasted into a browser. If there is a link, I want to open it on my computer, not get my phone out and view whatever the link points at on my phone. Of course, even on printed paper, the standard way in academia to include a URL is as text, not as a QR code. QR codes are better suited for adverts, printed leaflets, or business cards.

There was a famous physicist (I won't name him) that tries too hard to be witty and acerbic in his papers and it's quite painful at times.

@Tom, I know him and I can understand :D

@Davidmh - A URL isn't a service... It's a pointer to a resource. Assuming it's pointing to a YouTube video, sure YouTube is a third party service but it's not going to "turn malicious" and is clearly not what Cameron was talking about...

@ScottishTapWater unless you run your own registrar, yes a URL is on itself a third party service. YouTube is probably not going to turn malicious, but the video may be taken down. Anything linking less stable websites may, though.

@Davidmh - no... it's not

The video clip is funny but not hilarious. The joke is pretty obvious. There is a high chance that the people who read your thesis won't find it as funny as you do.
Also social media is full of links to little humorous video clips like that, and a person might prefer not to be confronted with even more of that kind of thing when they are reading a thesis.
Unlike CrimsonDark I think a QR code and video clip is worse than a joke that is written there and can be seen with no effort. Going to "a little bit of effort" and then finding an unfunny joke is annoying.
The joke by Steven Skiena is funny. Like him you should try to come up with your own joke rather than put a link to someone else's.
See also Should academic papers necessarily carry a sober tone?

I think it's far more likely that readers (especially older academics) will simply not follow the QR than that they will follow it and form a negative impression.

This answer is based on the somewhat questionable premise that anyone will actually read the thesis or the Acknowledgements in particular. I agree the joke doesn't add anything and might only serve to annoy, but in all likelihood it really doesn't matter since nearly no one is going to see it anyway. I'd say anyone with enough time to be digging through QR codes in the Acknowledgement section of a student thesis is already wasting their own time and shouldn't expect much more than a Rickroll.

Fine to include, but the tone is wrong.
I think the speech is funny, and would be possible to include - but the general tone of academic acknowledgement jokes is subtle. The consistent addition of a cat as co-author in one field of physics or mathematics, puns in dead languages, obscure quotations, callouts to common paper phrases - the idea is to be smart, and to make the reader work for it. This doesn't fit with those.
So, instead of the QR code, I'd put something like:

The author would like to thank C. Cordozar Broadus Jr  for his inspiring remarks, and agrees with the sentiments of his speech on insert date and occasion

The difference between "flippant and inappropriate" and "academic paper humor" is how much you make the reader work for the reference. The goal is to trip someone up a little who is reading this, and send them down a 10 minute research rabbit hole, before discovering the slightly stupid joke.
edit: I can't find out if snoop dogg was awarded any honorary doctorates - but feel free to include them properly after his name.

It is better not to waste the reader's time. But "The author would like to thank C. Cordozar Broadus Jr ..." is not a bad idea. You just need to make it as funny as possible and avoid making the reader investigate an in-joke, scan a QR code, etc.

Honorary doctorates? Ah, sadly no! But he has a great criminal record. Also, the mentioned video captures the ending of his speech which starts with "Last but not the least... " given during his Hollywood Walk of Fame award.

@toby544 - in the body of the paper, I'd agree. In the acknowledgement section? the odds are no one will ever read it. If they do, and look up the reference, it's pretty quick to get to the video. And looking up a person noted for their "inspiring remarks" in the acknowledgements is only something I'd do if I'm already wasting time :P

This is the way™

This is a really nice and thoughtful answer, so at the cost of pushing your score up past mine :) definitely +1. However, I think that your answer isn't really applicable to a dissertation but very applicable to an academic paper ... and I will definitely follow your ideas in my own future acknowledgements! I also liked the fact, that you somewhat discount your own assessment of the Snoop Dogg video ("funny") in your overall approach to the question. And that, I think, is completely correct.

@CrimsonDark - I'd agree with probably being better for a paper! I also liked the call to creativity in yours - I've always found the occasional bits of humor, outrageous statements or similar to be great at breaking up some otherwise dry topics. (I liked one I read recently that declared "We believe this paper resolves all remaining questions on the topic. No further research is needed or wanted, and we urge the rejection of all future papers on the subject. " - (steals from xkcd, but I liked the audacity of it)

+1 if the joke is good, the popular search engine of 2076 will still find it.

I disagree completely with @toby544 . To my mind it is irrelevant to your decision whether he, or I, finds the joke hilarious, funny, or just plain dull. (I found it hilarious). And I certainly don't think that you have to be "original" in your acknowledgements; in other words, I would disagree entirely that "you should try to come up with your own joke rather than put a link to someone else's." Most dull, boring, gray acknowledgements are completely unoriginal copies of the template of every other dull, boring, gray acknowledgement. Many contain completely unoriginal quotes from some million-times-repeated source ... and I think that that too should be completely irrelevant to your decision. You want dull, gray and boring? You want to be the 100,000th person to quote Sinatra and say "I did it my way"? Go for it!!
It is generally appreciated in the academic community that the acknowledgement section of a dissertation is a private[^1] personal space in which the writer can do very much as they would like.
I have seen the acknowledgement sections of numerous dissertations, not all from the same university. Humor appears in a goodly number of them (i.e., my humor-detector was triggered); sometimes subtle, sometimes not. But I should add that some of what I have found hilarious was quite possibly unintended, and some things I've read without detecting any humor might have been intended to be side-splittingly funny. Again, to my mind, it's completely irrelevant.
That said (having shown the video and the reply of @toby44 to some other people) that the possibility exists that culture not only plays a part in determining what is funny, but also in what might be OK in an acknowledgement. So I would still check with someone you trusted. You don't want to antagonize your markers (a very remote possibility in my culture)
By the way, I really like the idea of using a QR code! It means that whatever the joke, it isn't "in your face". The reader will have to go to a little bit of effort to appreciate it. Assuming you actually intend to put in a list of other people (which you might not!), I could imagine ending with "... and to others, too numerous to name (insert small QR code here)", or somehow make the QR code a footnote. Think of the creative opportunities!
I think it is in the book "Combinatorics and Graph Theory with Mathematica" by Steven Skiena that I recall reading something along the following lines: "I would appreciate being alerted by readers to any errors that you might find in the text. I will then find out who is to blame". (Some people would find that very unfunny).
Note: This answer has been heavily edited and reorganized. None of the original content has been omitted. It also turns out that I have mis-quoted Skiena. The original wording is either more funny, or much less funny, depending on the tuning of your humor-detector.
[1] Thank you to @greg-martin for pointing out that "personal" is a much more apposite description than is "private".

I think it is notable that the person who found it hilarious thinks it is okay and the person who found it not hilarious thinks it isn't a good idea.

@user1558604 My answer was not just based on that

@user1558604 Come on! Gimme a break. ... My answer wasn't just based on that either :)

@user1558604, I too notice that. Also, the person who didn't find it hilarious got so many upvotes. I wonder if the majority of users here on this site side with not use a Snoop Dogg quote due to academic sobriety :D

For anyone interested, the correct quote, actually from Pemmaraju, S. V. & Skiena, S. S. (2003). Computational Discrete Mathematics, is It is traditional for the author to magnanimously accept the blame for whatever deficiencies remain. We don't. Any errors, deficiencies, or problems in this book are somebody else's fault, but report
them to bugs@ com binatorica.com so we can determine who to blame.

@CrimsonDark Your version was funnier!

@toby544 No. It wasn't. There is no objective funny, funnier, etc. That's a completely misconceived and muddle-headed idea. You found / didn't-find something funny ... a fact that is irrelevant both to the question and to any answer.

+1, especially for "It is generally appreciated in the academic community that the acknowledgement section of a dissertation is a private space for the writer to do very much as they would like." Maybe "private" isn't exactly the right word, but a "personal space" that the writer can do with as they please.

@greg-martin I agree. Personal is much better, and I have amended the word.

@CrimsonDark When a person says "That was funny" you can assume they mean "I found it funny"

A QR code containing only a fragment of text might be acceptable, although the number of people with a reader which didn't assume it was a URI is probably small.
A URI referring to an arbitrary server is very much not. A thesis survives- in theory- forever, and the likelihood that any given online resource be hijacked to contain something socially or politically unacceptable is substantial.

It sounds like you want your acknowledgements section to be a parody of a genuine acknowledgements section. Well, I suppose the sky won't collapse if you do that, but there are some possible unintended consequences you might want to consider:

If there are people you are sincerely thanking in your acknowledgements section, then when those people see you are using the space of the acknowledgements section for a subversive satirical critique of the "stuffy" academic custom of thanking people who helped you in your academic journey, they might wonder if your thanking them is meant as a part of the parody. They might be offended that you can't bring yourself to thank them plainly without resisting the temptation to also throw in some half-assed attempt at ironic humor.

If your acknowledgements section is entirely satirical and isn't genuinely meant to thank anyone, the same people you might have thanked in an "honest" acknowledgements section might be equally offended by your thoughtlessness in failing to mentioning them and to sincerely acknowledge the help they generously gave you.

Bottom line: tread carefully. I know sincerity is hard for some people, but there are times and places that call for it and when it can be a powerful method of communicating. Likewise, humor and sarcasm are awesome when used effectively, but there are times and places to employ them as well, and other times and places where their application might easily fall flat.

Be very careful with this. I know someone who actually did it; his thesis' Acknowledgment section devoted the first paragraph to thanking himself. Literally. Seriously. Not as any kind of joke. Such people exist, and I really don't think you want to taken for someone with such a high opinion of themselves.
So while including a joke is fine, it's your thesis after all, I would be very careful with this joke since it isn't particularly funny and it is close enough to reality that some people will not know if you mean it as a joke or if you truly believe it is appropriate to thank yourself. I can tell you from experience that the latter does not go down very well with anyone reading the thesis.

The statement, oft repeated on this page, that "it isn't funny" suggests that some people but not others have a privileged insight into the nature of funny-ness that has universal applicability. Yet you only need to look at the various comments to appreciate that some people think it isn't funny, and others think it is, and that even the dichotomy is nonsense because the perceptions actually fall on a spectrum. In my culture, I haven't  yet found a single person who thought it anything other that a great joke ... and not all of the people in my culture are aliens with three heads

@CrimsonDark I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Yes, humor is subjective and different people find different things funny. I don't find this funny. Others do. That's perfectly normal and each of us can only give their personal opinion.

The statement "it isn't funny" does not equal "I did not find it funny".

@CrimsonDark um, OK. I don't see what else it could mean, there is no universal standard of humor so statements like "it is funny" or "it isn't funny" are obviously statements of opinion. But in any case, it seems strange that you are focusing on what is only a very minor point. The main issue is that this kind of thing can very easily be taken seriously, at face value. I know a person who devoted an entire paragraph in their thesis' Acknowledgements to thanking themselves. In all seriousness and with no joke implied. So making this joke seems like a particularly bad idea.

@CrimsonDark, the idea for this Question was based on someone who did it already, which is going viral on Social Media. Here's the link

There is a lot of discussion here whether the joke is appropriate. Focusing on the question whether a QR code is appropriate, I go with
Yes, but…

It should be about the reference, not the QR code itself (in the referenced video, the code is very prominent).
For the digital version (PDF, HTML, …), you should also employ a proper, clickable hyperlink.
In case of a printed document, the QR code may provide ease of access to the URL. However, it should not to be the only way to access an otherwise obscure reference.
A textual description should also exist (in case the linked target ceases to exist).
The joke should be part of a dedicated acknowledgement section, not in the thesis body (I concur with lupe's comment).

In my opinion, we are a visual species. People like references to pop culture and memes (still images and videos alike). Academics should be allowed to participate in a reasonable manner. I would appreciate to see it like this (note that I put the entire reference in a footnote):

Finally, someone answered about the main theme: The use of QR code! The very well-written and informative answer, Kudos!


text:
prepare a 45 minutes PhD interview presentation
I was asked to give a presentation in front of a group of people (they are leaders of different groups, because there might be collaboration with them). The presentation and QA will be one hour.
What topics I should give during this presentation?
My current plan is 1st-my brief introduction (major, experience). 2nd-my master thesis. 3rd-my research interest in this phd project.
Any suggestions are appreciated! It is a 45-min presentation, and I will spend one day with those group leaders. It will be like after one hour-QA, I might have a lunch with them, and I guess there might be some small talk.

Can you add context on what type of 'interview' this might be and who the audience is?

Can you explain the ":(" after the info that you will spend the day with your potential PhD supervisor? This is your chance to find out if you want to work with them for the next couple of years..

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

The number-one rule for this type of presentation is to make it clear and interesting to your audience --- you want to show them that you will be the type of work colleague who can talk about interesting ideas and can explain those things in an understandable way.
In view of that objective, you should minimise talking about your major and experience (which are presumably already in your application documents and CV) and instead focus primarily on telling the audience about the interesting work you did in your Masters project and the interesting work you plan to do in PhD research.  Use your presentation to introduce interesting ideas that will hold the attention of your audience, explain this work in clear and simple terms that has respect to audience context, and through this exhibit your intellectual curiosity and your present state of knowledge.  Practice your presentation to ensure you are clear and not rushing it, and leave some time for a question period.

It is okay to say 'I am not an intelligent person' during a PhD interview? I think most of people are looking for smart people. I am not smart, but I work hard.

@mmmm As a joke/off-hand comment maybe ("I had to re-do this entire experiment because I am not an intelligent person"), but I genuinely struggle to imagine a situation where you would do it otherwise. The admissions committee (assuming it is one) is not a counseling service, and it generally would form their opinion on your personal traits based on how you present your work, not what you think of yourself ("not smart" and "work hard" are both incredibly subjective).

I've seen some students who self-diagnose as being of lower intelligence than their peers and say they make up for it with hard work.  I'm not averse to hearing that and it would be a perfectly reasonable sign of a commitment to honest self-reflection.  Ultimately, if a person meets the entry requirements for a PhD program, they must have had whatever mixture of relevant skills and abilities was required to acheive the things that qualified them (whether raw intelligence, dilligence, or some combination).


text:
should I message the professor for a phd position?
I like a PhD position. If they give me offer, I definitely will take it.
I have submitted my application, and the dealine is the 20th of this month. But now I have a working offer with a ddl for acceptation or rejection. I don't think I have time for waiting for them.
Could I message the professor in linkedin, and request an interview for this position? Or it is not polite? Because they have their process for interviewing candidates.
Or actually they have reviewed my resume, and don't think I could be a match?

What's a "ddl"?

probably deadline

You can try, but the response will probably be "I am sorry to hear that. All the best with the rest of your career." They cannot make a decision before the deadline, because who knows who is going to apply just before the deadline. Depending on the local laws they may be legally required to wait till the end of the announced deadline.

Messaging the professor in itself is not going to cause you a problem. But it is unlikely that it can help you, because the professor is probably bound by procedures, which usually implies waiting for the deadline to pass before making a decision in order to allow to "exhaust the applicant pool". Even giving feedback on your application, even an "If I were you, mmmm, I'd take the other offer", could be dangerous. Saying (hypothetically) that you have good chances, is going to be particularly dangerous because a deranged twin version of you could sue for damages or badmouth the professor in the community as a liar, if you are considered but end up not being the preferred candidate. This would constitute at the least a big bother.
If you message the professor after what I just said, at least restrain yourself from explaining your dilemma. Also, using LinkIn appears to me to be a bit tacky, but this might be a reflection of my cultural prejudices.


text:
Manuscript status changed to under review again after with associated editor, what could be the reason?
Recently I submitted major revision to the IEEE journal. For 16 days, my manuscript status was showing to be under review and after that status changed to with associated editor for a day. Now status of the manuscript is changed to under review again. What is the meaning of this changes?

The basic advise for situations like these is: Submit your article and than forget it existed. Once you have submitted your article there is nothing you can do. Every second you spent looking at statusses, worrying, or asking questions on forums like these, is a second not spent doing something productive like writing your next paper, cooking a meal for a loved one, or just relax.

There are a lot of actors and a lot of variables. Papers can bounce around a bit before any decisions.


text:
Example of widely accepted and later refuted proof
I'm looking for an example of the following situation:

Proof of some statement that was widely accepted for a noticeable amount of time (say, at least 10 years).
The proof was later refuted (i.e. the proof turned out to be incorrect), and the refutation was similarly widely accepted.
The error in the proof was due to incorrect reasoning, not due to wrong assumptions. E.g. I'm not interested in a case when some proof relied on the laws of Newton's mechanics but is incorrect in the settings of special relativity.
This happened in the last, say, 150 years.

I'm also not interested in the case when some result had an error that was quickly found and fixed in the follow-up work.
Somewhat related to Is there a single example of an outsider considered a "crank" publishing a ground-breaking result that was found to be correct (in the last 30 years)?
@CrimsonDark gives a good reference to a question with some good (as far as I can tell) examples: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/139503/in-the-history-of-mathematics-has-there-ever-been-a-mistake

I suggest to ask this question on another SE, for example, History of Science & Mathematics, Maths Over Flow.

@Pikachu피카츄, right when I was going to delete the question, it was answered. What should I do?

Have a look at https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/139503/in-the-history-of-mathematics-has-there-ever-been-a-mistake

@Dmitry Then just leave it here.

Probably if you publish a correct ground breaking result, you aren't, by definition, a crank, though I suppose it is possible to be so considered up to then. I think that the physics establishment of the day considered Einstein to be a crank, even after the publication of special relativity. They couldn't let go of the aether, and it took a generation to overcome that.

The heliocentric theory of Copernicus was still being condemned in Europe after about a century. Galileo suffered for it. Neither were "cranks" though the church considered them so. (Not within the last 30 years, of course, back in my youth.)

There is a quote (approx) from Einstein: "If the theory of relativity is proven correct, the Germans will call me German, the Swiss will call me Swiss, and the French will call me a great scientist. If it is proven false, the French will call me Swiss, the Swiss will call me German, and the Germans will call me a Jew."

Looks like a duplicate of https://mathoverflow.net/q/35468/78525

I don't have an example at hand, so this isn't technically an answer, but yes it happens in math. I once worked in a field (classical analysis) that had the reputation of all proofs being wrong, but the results still accepted. Lots of proofs in analysis are of the ε, δ variety as is, say, the definition of the derivative. The problem is that such proofs can be layered with several levels. Once you go beyond about three levels the proofs are devilishly difficult to keep straight in your mind and you can get it wrong. (See the magic number seven, plus or minus two for a possible underlying reason.)
This has been done by celebrated mathematicians. A vaguely remembered example was from around the 1920's, corrected maybe by the 70's.

Thank you for the answer. "reputation of all proofs being wrong, but the results still accepted" sounds very weird to me (and, in particular, probably means that "accepted" means something different), but I guess it makes more sense to people in the field. It would be great if you could remember the example.

I think that the reason was the people believed that the errors were "merely" technical and "obviously" overcome-able. In many cases that was true, but who can say. The original IIRC was (perhaps) published in Analytic Functions by Zygmund and Saks. Too long ago to remember, but I was the one that found the error. Both of those folks were giants.

Note that the theorem was older than the book and (faulty memory here) was by another person.


text:
Should I ask foreign professors to become their volunteer research assistant (online)?
I am in need of some research experience, so I want to email some foreign professors whose work I'm genuinely interested in to ask if they can take me as research assistant (online). It is not a problem if it is unpaid because my goal is to get research experience for graduate application. I will do the job seriously because I need to cultivate necessary skills.
Is that a dumb thing to do? or is there any drawback?

What field are you in?

Do not volunteer to do work that should be paid. If you do that, you can out-compete local people looking for a job. It is also generally illegal to volunteer to do labor in a foreign country where a local would be employed and paid.

@BryanKrause im interested in econometrics

Echoing @AzorAhai-him- 's comment: there are ethical problems with volunteering to do work that someone else might want, and need, to get paid for. That is, you'd be offering yourself at a wage that would undercut other peoples' living-wage aspirations, for sure. I realize that this would be accidental, but it's a real thing, and in some parts of the world is actually illegal, apart from having ethical problems.

"Volunteer research assistant" is a problematic term. It sounds like something I should be asking HR about before I could agree to anything, and you being overseas would make things even messier. "Research assistant" is a job title, and being one might make you a member of the hosting university. Not asking for money means that no funding is needed, but this doesn't necessarily make the paperwork any easier. Also, some (many?) people feel that it is unethical to volunteer for something others would expect to get paid for.
In my eyes, it is a completely different picture if instead you seek to collaborate with a researcher on a particular project. This wouldn't put you in any kind of hierarchical structure, and being an independent researcher is a perfectly valid hobby.
The second issue is the question what you can actually offer. Most opportunities where inexperienced people can contribute well are in-person tasks (cleaning laboratory equipement seems to be a popular task to give to students seeking research experience). In my area (math/TCS), it would be very difficult for someone lacking experience to make any positive contribution, and accepting to work with a stranger would make little sense to me. Whether you have something to offer will depend both on your current skills, and on what exactly people in your area do in their research.

I completely agree with that. "Unpaid research assistant" -> hard no from me. "Collaborate with me online" -> potentially yes (but I will have many questions).

It is not a dumb thing to do from your end.  You aim to seek knowledge and improve yourself, especially when you are in an environment that lacks such opportunities.  This is admirable.
The drawback is that you are unlikely to get a reply or an 'honest' reply, meaning someone that seeks to exploit you may reply.
In general, professors will not reply because they will not spend the time on a student who is not enrolled in their institution.  Another reason: such a student may run off with their idea(s).  Further, you could be a scammer.  Nowadays we receive many unsolicited messages that aim to pilfer private information.


text:
Circulating manuscript without explicit consent
I am a mathematics PhD student in the Western world.
I have a (single author) preprint in mathematics that I think will help my postdoc applications a lot. I wrote up the preprint about a month back, and gave it to my advisor for corrections. They did not have time for corrections as they were busy with their other duties. I asked them whether I could post it on arXiv, circulate it amongst people I want to work with, put it up on my website, etc. They asked me not to, as it might contain mistakes, which might be more embarrassing. However, I have job applications due in a couple of weeks, and really want to add this paper to my portfolio.
They have now read it and verified the accuracy of the results, although the paper might still need some re-structuring, etc. Is it now ethical to distribute it amongst my future employers, recommendation letter writers, etc without asking them?
I could of course just ask them, but I feel that they might not want me to do it, as their style is to only circulate extremely polished work, etc. However, for making myself more employable, and also because the paper is really my intellectual property and I should be free to do whatever I want, I do want to circulate it and share my results.

I know it is legal for me to circulate my work, as it is my property. But is it ethical? I don't agree with my advisor's assessment that I should suppress my work, and that they can mention it in their letter without me putting out my work.

Will it burn bridges with them to circulate it? I am not yet posting it on arXiv, as I feel that will be too incendiary, but I do perhaps want to share it with the schools I am applying to.

"I don't agree with my advisor's assessment that I should suppress my work" You mean you don't agree with what you hypothesize your advisor's assesment might be if you were to ask them, which you're trying to avoid.

@AdamPřenosil- No, this is what they told me, in the event that the results did indeed turn out to be correct, prior to actually reading the manuscript.

And if there is an issue you might find yourself not as employable as you think. Get it done right, not fast.

@JonCuster- Like I said, the paper has now been verified to be correct.

"No, this is what they told me, in the event that the results did indeed turn out to be correct, prior to actually reading the manuscript." Then you describe this situation in a misleading way in your question. It makes no sense to both say that you could ask them but they might not want you to do it and to claim that you already asked them and they did in fact tell you not to do it.

@AdamPřenosil- Thank you for your insights. I had asked them before they knew for sure that the results are correct. Their recommendation might now change, now that they know that the results are correct, but I think there's a chance that it might not.

And yet we have questions like https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/189597/errors-in-old-articles-that-keep-getting-referenced - articles that even went through peer review. They were “verified correct” before submission. I think you greatly overestimate the importance of circulating a preprint while looking for jobs.

@JonCuster- Thanks for the insight. But if we are working on the assumption that the results are correct, do you think it is ethical for me to circulate it?

I’d send it to your letter writers, but wait for your advisor’s sign-off before posting to the arxiv.

It seems like you know the answer you will be given, it is the general best advice to only circulate finished works. Circulating unpolished work is unwise- unless you are explicitly looking for feedback to help polish it (additional review, requests for comments, etc).  A history of sloppy work will open the door to the idea that your work is inconsistent.
Note also, some journals will not publish if an article is placed in other locations. I have heard rumors (horror stories?) of journals refusing to publish articles because it was already put online in some manner and had gained traction as an unpublished article.
Suggestions if you distribute this unfinished version anyway (against my advice and the anticipated advice of your supervisor): watermark all documents as "drafts", make sure you track where it is posted so you can update with a polished version later or takedown as appropriate.

Thank you for your answer. If I only intend to circulate it amongst three people writing me a recommendation letter, is that fine/ethical?

Ethical? As long as only your name is on the paper, you can do what you want. Prudent? Maybe, maybe not. If your letter-writers are already confident they can say good things on your behalf, why show them something that could disrupt that? They might be duty-bound to say @bladerunner's next work is unpolished.  I tend to lean towards a discussion with your superior about who you intend to share it with exactly and why.

Actually, there is no ethical issue with distributing your own work in progress. Your advisor is giving unnecessarily conservative advice as long as you indicate that things you distribute in a small group are still in progress.
I assume that the people writing for you know you well and your work. I assume that they won't be shocked (shocked) if the work in progress isn't perfect. I see no issue at all in that.
As for distributing it to potential employers, again, work in progress  is fine when labeled as such. Alternatively you could indicate that you have such work and are willing to share a draft if they would like with caveats that it isn't done and that it shouldn't be further distributed.
It is always good to have "Work in Progress" in your CV, even when you don't distribute it.
I agree, however, that it is probably a mistake to publish it on arXiv or elsewhere (website...) until it is quite refined, though much work there isn't yet "perfect", and people expect that.