text:
How can a layman easily get the consensus view of what academia *thinks* about a subject?
I'm a total layman, but sometimes I have really random specific questions, like What does science say about the transfer of learning, or what is the distribution of different of sexual fetishes in the population, or what do we know about how English warbow training evolved, etc.
Honestly, I'm a total noob, sometimes I find interesting things in google scholar by using it kinda like google but usually, I don't. If I'm very lucky a science journalist has written something on it, but often they don't and even when they do they can totally mislead, especially the popular ones.
For posterity, the answer I have found is that intro textbooks are the best in the very likely event there is no good popular science right up.
Though I was hoping for a faster way to find out what the consensus view is, especially for topics where I want to know what it is without having to wade into anything else or learn the how.

I think your question could be reduced to "How can I get an expert understanding without being an expert?"  To which the answer is: You should study the topic until you are an expert.  It's never easy to become an expert.

One source is never enough to show consensus, so it cannot be easy to determine the consensus.

For the longbow read this book : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Longbow-Military-History-Robert-Hardy/dp/0857332481

I must sadden you. My general impression is that even for a professional scientist, getting acquainted with material not directly within one's area of expertise typically requires significant effort.

@AnonymousPhysicist: that's not the same. An expert is someone that participates to the establishment of the consensus, and know how this consensus was reached. It is not necessary to be an expert to know the consensus about global warming.

@Taladris No.  For example, one can become an expert in classical mechanics without contributing to consensus views on the nature of classical mechanics.  As for global warming, you do not need to be an expert to know it is happening, but you do need to be an expert to understand what academics conducting research on global warming are thinking about.  That was part of the question.

@AnonymousPhysicist That's very pessimistic. A fairly recent textbook will easily tell you what the scholarly consensus on any topic is, as long as that topic isn't the subject of cutting edge research. Want to know how skin cells look? Open a textbook on histology. Want to have a rough estimate of how many were murdered during the Holocaust? Open a history textbook. Want to know whether climate change is real? Read the reports of the IPCC. Want a rough idea of how stars die? Ask an encyclopedia. Want to know the consensus view on the impact of exercise on health? Read the WHO recommendations.

@AnonymousPhysicist Honestly, if the only people that ever know what the academic consensus is are academics in that field, it makes you wonder why people should fund research at all.

@henning, sgf, taladris I think you are all misreading the question.  The question is about what academics think, not about the truth/falsity of popular topics like climate change.

For any process you choose for determining current consensus on a topic, think how it can be intentionally abused in order to mislead you, or how it could accidentally mislead you. Areas such as global warming and evolution are good examples here: you can see how politics manipulates perceptions of actual current consensus ("teach the controversy", etc)

@AnonymousPhysicist your question could be reduced to "How can I get an expert understanding without being an expert?" Why? Knowing what's the consensus among experts is very different from "getting an expert understanding". The former does not require a level of knowledge that allows to understand the reasonings that led to the consensus, while the latter does.

@SantiBailors As I mentioned above, the question was about what academics think, not about their conclusions.  Academics think about the reasoning that leads to conclusions.

@AnonymousPhysicist It's about "the consensus view of what Academia thinks", not about "what academics think".

Good question! If you are a total layman popular scientific magazines or blogs like the Scientific American from Nature Publishing Group or scienceblogs.com are a first source to spot which kind of views are represented in the community. Articles therein are mostly written by current or former academics and scientists with educational background in a scientific branch and contact to universities and researchers. And they skim the most important articles in the primary literature or visit conferences in their branch. But don't rely on single articles, always compare several sources, but the necessary background to understand such articles is often lower as a broader audience is focused by those publishers.
From there you could dive deeper into the scientific primary and secondary literature over Google Scholar/Books by searching and reading review articles that summarize the longer or recent past of a distinct scientific field. In the best case such review articles are written by several authors. In scientific fields like for example dark matter physics you will not be able as a layman to get a picture how much percent roughly believe in the current paradigm or an alternative theory. Searching on Google Scholar with intitle:"name of theory/paradigm" might give you some hint how much researchers work/favor alternative theories and open questions.
(Hand) Books written by several leading scientists in a field are in general a reliable source, though often not covering most recent developments in a distinct field. Textbooks will often need a solid background in distinct underlying theories (consensus on these?), even for academic graduates and interdisciplinary researchers in a field. I think a total layman cannot understand them and textbooks are often written by experts of a distinct view/theory, not of competing theories, and not the main spot to discuss alternative theories, rather journals.
Concerning life sciences, published meta studies that analysed and evaluated the data of many published smaller former studies that refer to a distinct scientific question like for example "dying of bees" are a good first source. So here we have to distinguish between views/theories and data. But, if meta studies show that the data amount is too low or contradicting other data, then there can be no consensus concerning a distinct question.
If this all doesn't help you, skeptics.stackexchange.com is a very good site to ask which theory/cause is currently favored by the majority of the scientists or what the data favors. But like Scholarpedia and Wikipedia you cannot be sure the answers or articles are written by scientists with educational background in the related field. But as a layman, I think it is rather important to know if the majority agrees, are there ongoing discussions, is the scientific community in a field split up, what is the current paradigm and how much research is ongoing on alternative theories and open questions. Popular scientific magazines/blogs normally cover such questions. If you are interested in more details, asking on a related scientific sites on Stack Exchange is another option to get often a discussion/answer by several scientists or students in a field.

I agree with the comments and want to explain that one major problem with finding a "consensus view" in the scientific literature is that basically it is the job of scientists to try to falsify the current paradigm/theory/consensus, especially when there exists a strong consensus, but the theory is incomplete or doesn't explain everything sufficiently. But one also has to distinguish here between theories and facts/data. If you ask for instance if dark matter can be the only add-on to explain rotation velocity of stars in galaxies, then most astrophysicists would currently favor this explanation/view, though there are also astrophysicists who work on alternative theories/explanations. Those might get also attention (more than they deserve) in popular scientific magazines and this good from my point of view to foster falsifying theories. You could also ask is there a consensus on the general relativity theory and likely most of the astrophysicists would say it is currently the best theory we have before a unification of all physical theories. There would probably be a bigger consensus that space-time is a physical entity than general relativity is the final theory because, again, there are few theories in physics that have a "final" tag. The evolution theory in biology is maybe not perfect and covering everything, especially genes and epigenetics, but mutation and selection is the paradigm I would say 99% of biologists agree with. For climate science, to my knowledge, most in the community (>90%) agree that the data in conjunction with theoretical simulations points to human-made global warming. I show these examples to explain to you that there might be a strong consensus on data rather than a theory concerning a distinct question. In popular scientific magazines/blogs this difference can be more undermined than in scientific journals or books.
The minorities are and have to be covered in popular science, maybe also in a stronger kind than their alternative theory/view is really represented in the community. So if you really want to know if the majority believes in one theory, if there is a consensus, always check several of above sources like wikipedia, popular scientific magazines and blogs! You can also make a poll among scientists on consensus on data and/or theory, and Stack Exchange is maybe the best place for this currently, if you chose sites with a high density of scientists or expert/layman ratio frequenting it like mathoverflow.se or cstheory.se, stackexchange sites like physics.se are too much diluted by laymen for a poll to a mainly scientific audience.

Most of your suggestions do not indicate consensus.  Instead they indicate the views of a few people.  Of your suggestions, meta studies are the only ones that might be interpreted as consensus.  However, usually meta studies show the consensus data, which is different from the consensus views of scientists.

The problem with Scientific American (and, ever more so, the New Scientist) is that they tend to report on "exciting" things which are often the new interesting thing and thus not the stuff over which consensus has developed. They're also prone to being the views preferred by a small group of scientists who are pushing their take. Books written by scientists have the same problem, they are usually a personal view rather than a consensus take. Textbooks are drier but better for this.

I would add textbooks to handbooks. Both summarize the scholarly consensus or at least the most recognized positions and conjectures if there is no clear consensus.

@AnonymousPhysicist Thanks for the differentiation, I agree and added this. So I think we shouldn't separate data completely from view/theory as data doesn't mean much without a relating theory as complex and detailed as scientific hypothesis/questions have become.

Scientific American is a very bad source if you want to hear the whole story. You get a lot of individuals ranting that the consensus is wrong because their personal theory solves everything, while conveniently neglecting to mention any of its many problems. People often write in Scientific American and similar popular sources when they can’t convince real scientists but would like to pretend they can.

disclaimer: I'm no frequent reader of popular magazines but surprised everyone wants to publish in nature magazine, but not in the publishers popular magazine derivative :-) Maybe the german popular magazine are much less lurid

I would like to add the caveat that Skeptics SE, while usually quite good in terms of depth of research for the answers, occasionally falls victim to opaque modding practices (for example, wholesale deletion of threads without the usual "Comments deleted" message, leaving no evidence that a discussion took place at all), so the answers and discussion you receive from them may not exactly be representative of a broader consensus either.

@knzhou Sadly, I have to agree with you, but it was not always like this. In the past Scientific American was a prestigious, highly respected magazine with schoarly, erudite articles about a wide range of topics, and its letters to the editor were known for fractious but polite debates among luminaries. The decline began in the 1980s, but it really went down the toilet when they switched to the small format.

It really is not the job of scientists to try to falsify the current paradigma/theory/consensus. The philosophy of science has moved on a long way since Popper's (now falsified) thinking.

@EnergyNumbers Popper's philosophy of science is still widely held and "It really is not the job of scientists" is more opinion than fact (or in Popper's terms: a question about which model you pick). Claiming that any philosophical model has been falsified shows a deep lack of understanding about how philosophy works. And even in most modern philosophies of science the idea that a scientist's job is to falsify current theories is definitely present.

In general I think Wikipedia - as much criticized as it is - is the ideal place for a layman to look and should be definitely the first place to look. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but even in the case of opposing views at least both views will be clearly laid out. And given the two example questions (transfer of learning and fetishism epidemiology) posed by the OP both are touched upon in their respective Wikipedia articles. It definitely seems to be a more balanced source than popular science magazines (even if it makes for a far less interesting read).

With Skeptics.SE there is a huge focus on making sure to source everything (even into the absurd occasionally and the moderators tend to not apply the rules to themselves often and pick and choose to whom and how they apply), so the idea is that regardless of whom writes the answer, the answer will most likely link to high quality third party sources.

@EnergyNumbers You’re really misinformed if you think Popper is outdated or “falsified”. Instead, his views, occasionally refined, are still very much the working model of how research works best. It’s true that there are different schools of philosophy of science but it’s wrong to assert that Popper is no longer influential, or held by many as being essentially correct. That would be akin to saying that Darwin is “falsified” because we now know about genes.

I initially upvoted, but I really disagree with the new last paragraph. SE is not the scientific community, it's just a bunch of anonymous geeks on the internet who think they know something.

@henning I agree and changed it, though I think few sites are very good for polling, most not :-)

@EnergyNumbers out of interest, what do think is the current paradigm in philosophy of science, I read a lot about it up to evolutionary epistemology, but agree with other commenters that poppers falsification of consensus/paradigms is still one of the most important prime movers for scientific revolutions. If you falsify a theory to be incomplete in some aspect, that's still one of the most important task a scientist can do and armys of physicists tried to falsify until this decade quantum mechanics, with no success! :-)

@DavidMulder My university does not allow wikipedia as a scientific reference in a scientific thesis. A problem is also that a layman cannot judge if a wikipedia article is under major edits, very incomplete, etc. For a Review article, longer blog article/essay the author normally invested a lot of time to deliver a comprehensive and complete analysis of an issue. I agree so that different sources should be checked and compared

@user847982 It's not a scientific reference, unless in those rare cases where an encylopedia would be an equally good reference. However encyclopedia's in general are ideal for laymen. Are they always correct? Of course not. Can an article be in need of major edits? Of course. Still as far as enclopedia's go it's probably the best and you might want to take a look at this section for some research in the topic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#Assessments (totally intentionally linking to wikipedia yes) (and yes, not all of those are positive)

@user847982 odd that for someone who's read a lot about it, you haven't moved past the paradigm of verifiable/falsifiable, which is merely the dead hand of Popper. If you insist on a paradigm, then I'd say that roughly speaking, it's seeking the most parsimonious explanation that gives the most useful explanation of observed phenomena.

First off

sometimes I find interesting things in google scholar by using it kinda like google but usually, I don't.

you should not be doing this, because it will mostly result in you not finding much, as you've experienced. This is not because you're a layman, but rather you are not asking a very specific question. Scientists in general do not probe questions which are as broad as

what is the distribution of different of sexual fetishes in the
  population

This question is extremely broad and complicated because it talks about "different sexual fetishes" in the entire population. It needs to be more specific after taking into account a lot of different factors. Let's take for example fetish A, and the country of England. We can then start to formulate a very specific question.

How has the portrayal of fetish A through long-duration televised media affected its perception in the millenial Indian population in England?

or a bit broader

Exploring the positive and negative sentiments millenial Indians hold towards fetish A across England

I do not think, this is a question you would ask.
You need to take a holisitic approach towards exploring science. In no certain order,

One of the best ways you can learn about science is by connecting with scientists and science communicators via twitter.
Use Wikipedia as much as you can
Become a part of citizen science projects
Subscribe to science channels on youtube (my favourite one is Kurzgesagt)
Subscribe to print publications like the Atlantic, which has an extremely good science section. I would suggest New Yorker, but personally I don't find it to be very consistent.
As said before, ask your question on Skeptics.SE
If you do keep on using google scholar, use the filter panel on the left to look for only Reviews and filter for articles published in the last five years.

Scientists will almost always have differing viewpoints regarding the existence, reasons behind, and median income relationship of fetish A. So when you do read a review, be sure to pay close attention to the authors. If you have read a review by the same author before, skip it. We scientists are humans, and we tend to push our own views in the reviews we write. A completely impartial review is hard to come by.

For a layman, listening to the podcasts could be a nice shortcut. But not just any. There are some podcasts out there in which scientists discuss their ideas and their challenges. I personally found it a great way to understand the consensus of their field.
Of course, since it's a conversational medium, there can't be much math/dirty works. Yet, it's not free of it either, meaning that you should have some prerequisite on the concepts at least to follow.
The main problem maybe is that and not all the fields have such podcasts. Additionally, I also find it hard to find the correct podcast. I list the ones I know, hoping that the recommendation system of the podcast app you use guides you to some show that you might be into.

Too lazy to read the paper by Sune Lehmann.
Stimulating Brains by Andy Horn.
The joy of x by Steven Strogatz.

I like this question very much, and was curious to see the answers and hoped I might be able to apply some of them.
On reflection I realized that, unfortunately, this question cannot be sufficiently qualified such that it becomes answerable.
Academia and study are fundamentally an imprecise process of guesswork. Our brains are not 100.0% perfect at derivation, inference and system modeling. The majority of our most significant and useful discoveries were accidental and/or the result of arbitrarily being in the right place at the right time.
Not only are we using torches with all-but-flat batteries in them, we're really touchy about the correctness of the mental models we've worked on thus far. (Especially when research trusted for years abruptly gets thrown out...)
We cope by this by banding together and forming superstitious cliques of agreement about which is The Correct Answer (or, in some cases, The Correct Opinion) to a particular problem or domain. Those with the best marketing skills stay in the race as long as the perspectives and models they propose remain just beyond our abilities to fully reason about them.
I may well be wrong, but I think that you're not really asking for information, but are instead trying to find the social group you resonate the most with.
I don't fit in either. It's okay.

This has been anonymously -1'd. I am very interested in constructive feedback regarding misunderstanding of the question on my part.

It's not a misunderstanding. I simply disagree with your relativistic epistemology. Most scientist would. Also, I'm not sure how practically useful this answer is for someone who, like OP, is a non-expert and tries to identify the scholarly mainstream view on some topic.

and sorry for the fly-by downvote.

Thanks very much for adding the constructive criticism behind the -1. I agree that my view is relativistic (and TIL epistemology :) ). It's something I'm still figuring out. I also know I'm not great at articulating ideas properly yet; the above is a bit of a lopsided caricaturization.

If only there were a network of Q&A websites where you could post such queries and get answers from experts, with a voting mechanism to establish consensus (or lack thereof).  ; )


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What's the admission criteria of a mathematics master program (especially in Europe)?
My question is about the admission criteria of a mathematics master program. I am at my final year of undergraduate study, and I am going to apply to a mathematics master program (especially in UK and Finland).
To be more specific, I wanna apply to UK. As far as I know, UK universities' mathematics program is usually 12 months. Since I wanna continue the PhD after the master, will this program suit me? And about the Finland, there is no detailed core courses requirements on the website, so I wanna know the specific requirements.
Edit: If I hold a UK mathematics master degree, can I continue my PhD degree in UK or other Europe countries? In my impression, if I want to apply for a position of PhD, I have to prepare a year earlier. But if I study in UK, I will not have that time to prepare. Is that right?

I suggest asking the question about UK master degree and what it qualifies you for as a different question.

@TommiBrander Thanks for your suggestion, I will edit it.

For general information on the master's admissions in Finland, see the Study in Finland website: http://www.studyinfinland.fi/how_to_apply/masters_admissions
For particular programmes, you'll have to check the website of the university and try to find the relevant information there. Here is an example from University of Jyväskylä: https://www.jyu.fi/en/apply/masters-programmes/masters-degree-programmes/mathematics/admission-criteria
The basic requirements seem to be an English proficiency and bachelor-equivalent degree in a related field. Since the programmes in different countries vary widely, applicants will be judged individually, so it is impossible to comment on the meaning of having or not having taken certain courses, especially since "geometry" might mean Euclidean geometry or differential geometry, and you might be applying for a program with a focus on differential geometry or something else.
If you are a good student and someone at your faculty has connections to mathematicians in Finland, do ask for them to write a letter of reference and otherwise let the people at the target university know that you are applying.
Relevant keywords in Finnish:

maisteri (master)
maisteriohjelma (master programme)
maisteriopinnot (master studies)
pääsyvaatimukset (admission criteria)
matematiikka (mathematics)

Thanks for your answer! Sadly, my university does not have the connection with Europe universities, should I directly write a letter to the professor in Finland to state my study case?

For PhD studies that answer would be yes. For master studies I cannot really say, but I would suggest more on writing a good motivational letter or such, if such is asked for. It should cover most of the same ground.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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If authors leave out diacritics, should I correct them or leave it as written?
While preparing a bibliography, I have noticed that some authors' journal titles have not used diacritics correctly. For example, some authors have written "Miguel Angel Asturias" in their titles rather than Miguel Ángel Asturias.
Should I be referencing these titles exactly as they have written it, or should I correct them?

On the one hand, correcting the typographical errors/limitations of the past feels like the right thing to do. On the other hand, the sole purpose of your reference is to allow other people to find that particular source which has those particular errors or limitations.

Used incorrectly: correct it.  But, no diacritics used at all: leave as-is.  For example, "Arzelà" is often seen with the wrong accent on the final "a" or an accent on the "e" instead.  Correct those.  But do not correct "Arzela".

@GEdgar This seems prevalent but I haven’t yet found a good explanation: “Arzela” isn’t any more correct than “Arzelá”. Both are simply equally wrong. Transliteration isn’t really a valid argument in the age of Unicode.

Possible duplicate of Should diacritics be kept when citing a paper written in an abundant diacritics Latin-based script language?

@GEdgar It’s complementary rather than a duplicate, and (looking at the current votes) the consensus recommendation is the exact opposite in both cases.

Are we talking about (mostly) non-English names in the titles (diacritics in the titles of paper), or other about authors of other papers incorrectly citing other, non-anglophone, author names?

If talking about titles, I think you would run into a same problem as with UK and US spelling (some journals actually enforce which flavour of English is to be used). So, if you found a paper on "Spelling choices in academic organisations" you wanted to cite in a journal enforcing US-spelling as a standard you would not change the title to "Spelling choices in academic organizations".

@KonradRudolph Actually, the typographical accents on the letters a, i and u have been inconsistent in Italian (since they can denote only one possible sound, unlike é vs è or ó vs ò which denote different sounds). In fact, in handwritten Italian the distinction between the two types of accents is almost never made.

@DenisNardin That may be true in Italian but it patently isnʼt in other accented languages.

@KonradRudolph Of course. I was just trying to explain why the accents on Arzelà might have been inconsistent

In my opinion you shouldn't change the title.
The purpose of your reference is letting your readers find the referenced work, so changing the title (even if it is to correct a mistake) may make this harder or even create inconsistencies in scientific indexing services.

I'm pretty sure, though not positive, that search engines are sensitive to this issue.

I would expect you to be right. But then, you are citing a title and not re-writing the same sentence, so I feel it is best to leave the original title as-is

@Buffy Changing a couple of characters in a long-ish string will make little difference to a modern search engine. They're already able to deal with spelling mistakes, and they're aware that some searchers and authors will use accents and some (especially those with English-language keyboard layouts) won't. As a simple test, Google and Bing both accept "Dónäld Trümp" as the president of the USA. "Ďôñåłđ Ţrümp" causes more problems: Google returns zero hits, whereas Bing returns what looks like a set of pages chosen by a random number generator.

@DavidRicherby Internet search engines generally handle this well. Others … not so much. Case in point, my bibliography manager fails abysmally when faced with this issue, it only performs exact matching. I’m not defending this (and I strongly advocate correct spelling, including correct accents) but it exists, and is an actual problem.

@KonradRudolph Argh, why is computer software so bad?

Don't DOIs alleviate this problem to a great extent? At least if it's modern and published bibliography.

@ComFreek They do for works that have DOIs in citation formats that allow them. Not so much otherwise.

To add to the answers already posted: authors themselves sometimes avoid diacritics, presumably because they (used to) complicate indexing and search as well as increase the likelihood of citation errors. A colleague of mine decided to forego diacritics in his papers and on his Google Scholar profile for this reason. So if you suspect that might be the case you'd be better off not changing anything.
The situation is different when a reference to an old paper has been mangled through a citation chain. This happens fairly often with author names and can make it a nightmare to track down the original paper. And even if it doesn't, it is sometimes obvious that the paper is indexed incorrectly - for example, the first and last names of authors are inverted. These cases call for a correction although that doesn't seem to apply here.

A lot of journals these days have their complete archives digitized. One can very often find the correct citation data just by Googling the paper's title, leading to the original publication.

Yes but in many old papers citations only contain the first author's name, a journal abbreviation and little else. I've often run into cases where one of these was misspelt which made it really hard to track down the original.

This is really opinion based. I am happy my surname contains one letter beyond basic ASCII table...
The reasons I purposely omit the accent are:

Inconsistent encoding. You know, UTF-8, CP1250, Latin2,... All of them use the space beyond plain ASCII but in completely different manner and no-one knows what are the default settings.
There are many accents that may look similar or same for different people while the sorting algorithms may not see the similarity at all
There are many font families that does not support the accents properly, draws some random glyphs or leads the setter using completely different font or return the character code.
Many people may struggle even more reading my name when faced with the additional complication (accent).

Imagine what can go wrong if your surname is Štěpánek (Stepanek, %C5%A0t%C4%9Bp%C3%A1nek). Please, try to read aloud the name before following the link to Wikipedia, where the pronunciation is shown.
From the cited author's perspective, I'd be happy to be cited using plain ASCII charset. My name won't be crippled by encoding issues. I'd be also happy when my name will be dispayed in same way through whole document, the correct way preferably.
From the referencing perspective, the thing that really matters is that the reader can find the cited resource properly. DOI, ISSN, ISBN, Journal tags etc. are the true keys to follow when looking for the references. Author Name(s) and Article Title fields are "optional extras" for the reader. I've seen many articles where the reference contained only the first author name and the Journal Tag (for example: S.H. Sheng et al. / Acta Materialia 61 (2013) 4226–4236).
My advice is:

Be consistent throughout your documents.
Be sure you use basic Latin letters or the correct forms.
Be sure all the letters are printed properly. If in doubt go for the safe plain ASCII.
If in doubt, do not hesitate to contact the author what form is the correct one or what form they prefer.
Be sure there are identifiers independent on the (possible) name misspellings.

I know of one husband and wife who quite often write papers together: one has kept their diacritics and the other has dropped them.

I don’t see how dropping the diacritics from Štěpánek would make the pronunciation easier. If anything, the existence of the diacritics alerts readers to the fact that the pronunciation might be unexpected.

If the author didn't use diacritics it is absolutely wrong to add it. But if they did, you surely should not remove it just because it hard to pronounce for you. I do not use diacritics in my nickname here. I do use it in my papers. Please do not remove it from my name, it is my name and I do not want it to be bastardized in official places.

@KonradRudolph I've added the pronounciation only to jokingly show the struggles the weird-named ones have to face. On the other hand, I have 80% chance to pronounce you name wrong too.

@Crowley I used to live in France and the chance of having my name pronounced wrong was close to 100%. I now live in the UK and I guess the same is technically true but I stopped perceiving it so a long time ago. You’ll probably do just fine pronouncing it.

@DavidRicherby now I remember where I've seen your name before! xD

@TasosPapastylianou Hello!

Out of the box, I'd pronounce the one name ShtyePAHnek and the other StEpanek. Not sure if the first is 100% correct, but the second is certainly a lot more different from the correct pronunciation, I supose

This is, perhaps, a judgement call. I would correct them. There may be "reasons" why the original wasn't accurate, even if it is just not knowing how to produce the letters of an expanded alphabet on your keyboard. I suspect, but don't know, that the diacritics might actually change the meaning in a few cases. But in this case it is proper to "honor" the person named even if it is a bit out of sync with the one doing the citing.
But others might disagree, believing that, when quoting, it is necessary to be precise.
A solution, of course, is to put the corrected name (or other word) in parentheses, following a quote. Or, some would write ... Angel [sic]... to indicate that the original is being preserved even though incorrect.

I'll also note that search engines seem to be sensitive to this issue and find the item correctly. For example searching Google or Duck Duck Go for "Gabriel Garcia Marquez" behaves correctly even when the name is in actual quotes. It also finds items that don't correctly accent the name. Likewise a search that has the proper accents finds items that don't.

Should I be referencing these titles exactly as they have written it, or should I correct them?

Look for those authors' websites; other published work; and especially works they published all by themselves. If the lack-of-diacritics is an outlier, I'd say add them; otherwise leave them out.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава

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


text:
Should I disclose my academic dishonesty on grad applications?
I just graduated in May this year (2023), and in my last semester of senior year, I was caught cheating on an exam and have academic dishonesty on my record, and I'm trying to apply for accelerated nursing schools for 2024/2025. If the application on NursingCAS does not ask you about past institutional actions, do I need to address them? It is not on my transcript but in my internal records. Though, if asked, I will be honest. I want to understand when to disclose it. If I disclose it, do I need to provide all the details of how I cheated or just the cheating, what led to it, and what I learned from it? (i.e., in April of 2023, I was caught cheating on an exam.) I was also told this is not on my public records, just locked up, and only if the law asks will they provide this information.

Does this answer your question? Should I disclose academic misconduct on a grad application?

Not the answer to your question, but this will come out if you apply for a security clearance because investigators will ask at your college.  In that case, and not the current one, it will be best to reveal this on the application for the clearance.  Buffy's answer below is right for your current situation.

@RazvanP: That's a very weird claim to make. Doctors disciplined by state medical boards are three times more likely to have been singled out for unprofessional behaviour while at medical school ... business students “who engage in dishonest behaviour in their college classes were more likely to engage in dishonest behaviour on the job.”. Radiologists routinely cheat on radiology exams.

Mentioning these of course doesn't make it more acceptable to cheat, but I think you shouldn't be so confident in how much educational or even medical institutions care about eliminating cheating.

No, you don't need to volunteer such things. If the university at which this happens considers it a closed issue then you should too unless you are asked. Then, I suggest you be honest in answering.
But, as with many human failings, it is good to let the past be the past. Presumably your university applied whatever punishment they thought appropriate, so you should let it go.
And hopefully you have learned, and practice, better behavior. Especially in a health related field.

Thank you so much! I wanted to have a clear idea. I definitely learned a lot from the situation and my shortcomings, and I will continue to grow from the case. I understand that integrity and ethics are very important in the health-related field, so such behavior is not accepted. I knew that then and know that now, but I made a poor judgment call in the midst of fear and I've definitely taken necessary steps and will continue to take necessary steps to make sure that this will never happen again.

You've served the sentence for your crime... No point punishing yourself further

@Premedstudenf2023: I agree with Buffy's answer. It is enough for me (and I think many other morally fastidious people) that you commit to being honest if asked about your past, and moreover have taken necessary steps to ensure that you don't fall into dishonesty again. I wish you all the best, and I hope that nobody will hold that past mistake against you in the future! =)

@user21820 thank you for your kind words! and I will definitely be honest and I do not plan on hiding the situation, but just wondering if it something to put forward or just wait till they ask.

I agree that if the form doesn't ask, you're not required to volunteer it. However:
Everyone who cheats says they regret it and they learned their lesson and they would never do it again. And it's almost always a lie. The only thing they regret is getting caught.
You have an opportunity here to volunteer truthful information that could harm you, and there would be no consequences if you chose not to do so. I wouldn't even say that you're ethically required to volunteer the information; this would be above and beyond. But you say you're a better person now? This is a chance to prove it, if you so desire.
I'm not advising that you definitely do this. Being as honest as possible is good, but there is a risk. You might mitigate the risk somewhat by including a clause stating that the records of the cheating aren't public, but that you felt you needed to admit it in the interest of honesty. It's still a bit above and beyond, but it makes it clear that you aren't just saying this out of fear of being caught again.

I have talked to many nursing schools admissions addressing my circumstances in an honest manner, and most said that they appreciate the honesty and the vulnerability but we don't need that kind of information if it has been dealt with the university and not on the transcript. In the schools that do ask about this, they also thanked my vulnerability  for coming forward with that information and that it won't affect my application as they've seen much worse and those people still became nurses. I understand that most people regret only when they get caught, but that is not the case.

I may have cheated on the exam but in the end I have cheated myself and I regret doing that knowing I have the capability to do well, but just had poor judgement in the midst of fear thats the reason why I regret what I did.

Glad to hear that you were open about it and that it seems to have worked out for the best.


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Examples for non-math department students to be used for Calculus course
This semester I am a teaching assistant for Calculus. There are many students from different departments like International Relations, Economics and more taking the course. The course is comprehensive. For example, we gave the "epsilon-delta" definition of limit, we find the derivative of functions using the definition of derivative, find the equation of tangent line that passes through a point on some function. I am trying my best to explain what are we doing during class; I draw graphs to explain formal stuff, give daily life examples while finding a delta for a given epsilon. However, I can see the pain in their face and that bothers me a lot because I want them to understand or at least pass the class with a relatively high grade.
So, can you give me some examples related to your department that I can use in Calculus, or some advice about to increase the level of understanding of the course? Any answers will be appreciated, thank you.

Maybe would be more suitable question for the math.stackexchange?

Ask this in the Mathematics Educators StackExchange.

"give daily life examples while finding a delta for a given epsilon" I am puzzled, but intrigued, by that.  How does finding a delta for a given epsilon relate to (non-mathematical) daily life?

In short, my example was: I am cooking and in order to make my meal taste "the best" I have to add 8 gram of salt. So I said that close to the best I feel  if  I add an amount of salt between (7.9,8.1) or something between 7.5 and 8.5. As we do in taking a limit, we exclude the point 8 from the intervals, so, that was my explanation.

@PeteL.Clark, what is your opinion about my example, is there anything missing or how could it be improved?

Don't insult your hearers by inventing far-fetched examples.

Instead of the cooking example, perhaps try something like the examples I posted here.

@Karl, well, why do you think like that?

An example should not be fabricated, state the conditions and assumptions under which it is correct, and not contain parts that are pure decoration.

You're in academia, not primary school. If a prof tries to teach abstraction (or rather save me from having to abstract) like to a ten-year-old, I feel insulted.

Um, why are you trying to reinvent the wheel?  There is no shortage of calculus textbooks that contain examples and problems that are labeled as being relevant for this target audience.

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


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open-note essay exam with the questions given ahead of time, what is considered cheating?
I'm taking a class this semester through an online program.  We have an essay exam due on Thursday every week that is open-book, open-notes, etc., we're even asked to cite the textbook and other course materials.  The professor emails us the question or questions two weeks in advance.
I've been preparing my essay responses ahead of time, then submitting them after I open the exam, I work 2 jobs and so I rarely have the time alotted to sit and write the essay, I figured this was ok since it's open-notes.  Last week I was slammed with work and didn't have as much time to proofread my own essay for grammatical errors so, not really thinking of it as a test so much as a regular essay, I asked my mother to look it over and sent the rough version to her in an email, she found one sentence fragment and on run-on sentence which I only changed when I put the exam into the online submission portal.
Jump forward to today, I was trying to look up my grade and there was a note saying there was no submission for my essay exam.  I knew I had submitted it but freaked out and in a rush, emailed my professor offering to send him the email sent to my mother (early in the day on Thursday) as proof that I had basically finished the essay Thursday morning so there was no reason not to have submitted before it was due that night.  (We get no confirmations on submitted work and there are no timestamps on past work submitted online) I also sent him the word document on my computer with the basic essay, pre-changes.  He responded basically just saying he would forward it to his grading assistant, and that's it.
My question is, could I get in trouble for cheating since I had my mother proofread the essay ahead of time?  I have the emails from her proving she only looked at grammatical stuff but it didn't occur to me until after I sent the email this morning that this could be considered academic dishonesty since it's called an "exam" and technically I received outside help.  Thoughts?

Has he mentioned anything regarding cheating? According to his answer he did not show any reaction in this direction.

No he didn't, I'm just a very anxious person to the point where this sort of thing will give me panic attacks until I know everything will be ok.

I think the other answer is a bit more scolding than is necessary.
Your professor has your email to your mom, didn't comment on it, and forwarded it to the person responsible for recording grades. It sounds like what you are worried about is not a worry to the professor, and it sounds like your professor is quite a reasonable person where technical issues are concerned (i.e., by accepting your evidence that the work was done).
If I were in your position I'd concern myself more with making sure your submissions are fully accepted in whatever software you are doing the submission with in the future - hopefully the software provides some sort of feedback or way to check.
You can also consult the course syllabus to see if there are any specific policies on what is allowed and not allowed for exams. I don't think you are crossing any lines by asking for proofreading help (presuming you are not taking a course where proofreading is a major skill that is being taught). I also don't think it is necessary to explain yourself to your professor unless you find a written policy that makes what you did clearly against the rules: by sending the email, you haven't made any attempt to hide what you did so there isn't really anything to come clean on.
Besides that, I would stop worrying about this and focus on any other studies and responsibilities you have. You're doing fine.

The only other answer here when this was written was mine. I didn't intend it as a scold and have made an edit to clarify.

Your university will probably have policies about what kind of assistance is acceptable in assessments. Depending on how those policies are worded (and whether they were written with this kind of open-book exam in mind) it's possible that this might be considered an infraction, at least technically.
With that said, your actions make it pretty clear that you weren't trying to get away with something shady. Your professor would never have known about this assistance if you haven't emailed him. That's not the behaviour of somebody who's trying to cheat.
I'd start by checking those policies. If they don't put you in the clear, then contact your professor, something along these lines:

Dear Professor, As I mentioned previously, I asked my mother to proofread my essay for spelling and grammar issues. I assumed this was okay because I was thinking of it as a homework assignment, but I've just realised that you might have different expectations for a take-home exam. Can you please let me know if this is an issue? I apologise if I misunderstood expectations about this.

(This is pretty similar to Buffy's advice, but I've framed it as "was this a transgression?" rather than assuming that it was.)

Normally, collaboration is the big no-no on such exams. So, the question is, did you collaborate with your mom on the essay. I think probably not, but your professor is the only judge. If he doesn't raise the issue and you get credit for the essay, then he doesn't find your action objectionable.
But if you are called to explain or accused of cheating, what should you do?
I would suggest that you explain exactly what happened, in person, to your professor. Admit to a transgression, but emphasize that the content is yours, so the transgression wasn't in producing the ideas. Note that he only learned your mother was involved because you informed him of it, so you weren't being deceptive. Expect that you might not avoid a penalty, but I don't know your professor's policies or personality.
You have learned a lesson, I guess. You can't unmake the past. An apology, at least, is probably expected. But if you want to keep a good relationship with the professor for the future, don't complain overly. If the sanction is severe, ask if there is some way to make it up.
Think more about the future than the past.


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Routine for effectively proofreading accepted paper
When I am fortunate enough to have a paper get accepted for publication, I often dread the final round of proofreading before I submit the LaTeX source files. Often, I read the paper start to finish multiple times and make incremental/superficial changes, but always have a difficult time calling it properly "proofread". In addition, I find this approach (multiple full proofreads) seems less useful for checking technical aspects of a paper (e.g., mathematical derivations or involved pseuedo-code) which is arguably more important.
I am wondering what types of routines people have developed for this situation. I would prefer to be much more systematic, as my current approach is both inefficient (time-wise) and doesn't seem very effective. Specifically, what do you do in order to call the paper "proofread" and feel comfortable sending it off to never be edited again?

Lots of existing Q&A here at https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/proofreading including https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86533/how-to-efficiently-proofread-my-own-mathematical-paper https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?page=1&tab=Relevance&q=proofreading also may give you additional hits that haven't had the tag added.

Thanks! These are very useful. The last question (see recent edit) is really what I am most interested in, and past Q&A didn't seem to cover this.

As a minor... or maybe not soooo minor ... point: the last few percentages of perfection are stunningly more expensive than any other part. Not to mention statistical futility of removing all errors. Even with "theorem provers/assistants", while they give certain assurances, we are left to wonder about their own correctness, etc. "It's turtles all the way down." :)

@WazyMaze I'm not sure I follow how that really changes/adds anything, besides perhaps some measure of "aww $&@% it" that's going to vary by person to person (along the lines of paul's comment) and be "opinion-based" regarding "feel comfortable".

It is very difficult to proofread your own work. You brain knows what you want to say and too often, in my experience, you "see" what isn't written because your mind produces the correct statement. And, my experience is that the harder I try the worse I do. Fatigue? Reinforcement?
My best advice is to make a deal with a colleague in your (sub) field and collaborate by proofing each other's work. Their mind doesn't have preconceptions about what is (should be) on the page, so they are much more likely to catch those things, especially those at the margins, that your mind refuses to see.
I no longer have the opportunity for that (retired) and I often find truly bone-headed errors in my technical writing. I've swapped symbols for "and" and "or" for example creating true nonsense.
A text editor at a book publisher can help with this, but they aren't often used for papers, and they often lack the required technical expertise.
I often find my own errors if I lay the work aside for a while and come back to it, but that doesn't work very well for papers. A week's pause is probably untenable.
Get fresh eyes if possible. Even a graduate student might be able to do it for a bit of cash.

@EthanBolker, precisely. Unintentional, but it proves my case. Fixing...

Two things that our group follows for every submission:
(1) Atleast two people read it together (our submissions are always multi-author, so this isn't hard to arrange). This is typically the lead writer and a co-author. It helps because the chance of two persons simultaneously missing an error is low.
(2) Reading it out aloud. Vocalising somewhat takes your brain off the driver's seat, and you're less likely to gloss over things that are incorrect but obviously understood by you. I imagine this would be difficult if there are a large number of equations, but otherwise it is surprisingly effective, and fast.


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How to deal with poor scientific articles that seemingly reached the right conclusion?
I am writing a paper and some of our findings validate the conclusions from an already published peer-reviewed article in a respected journal. We also find things that differ.
However the authors of the paper uses techniques that are not ideal for making their conclusions, and furthermore, some of their data look particularly weak to me, i.e. I do not find that they substantiate their claims. For example, there are immunofluorescent images that simply look black.
How do I discuss and reference a paper, that seemingly come to the right conclusions, but do so in a manner, I am not sure about?

I am writing a paper and some of our findings validate the conclusions from an already published peer-reviewed article in a respected journal. We also find things that differ.

That is all good and normal.

However the authors of the paper uses techniques that are not ideal for making their conclusions, and furthermore, some of their data look particularly weak to me, i.e. I do not find that they substantiate their claims. For example, there are immunofluorescent images that simply look black.

Often (especially when it comes to experiments) the choice of technique is down to what is available to the authors, and what their expertise is. This is generally understood, and it's left for later papers to improve on methods, analysis, data, etc. In fact, an earlier less-than-perfect publication, while not great for the scientific record, helps position and justify your own paper.
Also note that it's possible they had better data than made it into the published figures. Sometimes the picture quality deteriorates during the publication process, sometimes the authors do not know how to make high-quality graphics, and sometimes there are outright mistakes. It might be worth reaching out to them asking for more details.

How do I discuss and reference a paper, that seemingly come to the right conclusions, but do so in a manner, I am not sure about?

It's best to be sure before directly criticizing the other work. If you're not sure, it's usually better to focus on presenting your own work in a good light by positioning it relative to the other work. It sounds as if you are in a good position  to do that here, perhaps writing something like "System X has previously been studied using technique A [1]. We use technique B [2], which has better time resolution and allows for more precise control of property c." This construction can be adapted to discuss the claims where you agree and disagree with the other work. Basically focus on your own work first and foremost, and argue why we readers should trust it over the other one, not why we should distrust the other paper.
I'll add the caveat that this obviously breaks down if you come to wildly different conclusions than in the existing literature. In that case there's no way around directly addressing their flaws, but then you really want to be sure.

There are at least two aspects to scientific papers, method and conclusion. You can critique either, but should do so using evidence. Likewise you can critique the connection between method and conclusion. There is no real problem with that. But you need to present the evidence to back up any claim so that it doesn't sound like opinion or preference.
On the other hand, if you have come to the same conclusions you may not have to include any discussion at all, other than a citation. It might actually be wise to omit any criticism if the other paper is well accepted. That may not be possible, of course, if you think the validity of your paper in some how depends on the problems in the other. In particular, you need to attack the issue directly if reviewers consider your paper to be just a re-work of known things.
In mathematics there is a huge body of "knowledge" for which all of the published proof is flawed. But we accept that "A new proof of KB's Lemma" as a valid thing without needing to explain, necessarily, how all existing proofs of KB's Lemma are flawed. Sometimes it is easier than others to side-step the issue of course. When reviewers don't see the value of the new work because it is "known" you may need to do more, or, alternately explain to them something about the flaws in the earlier work.


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Writing a comment, the consequences
The background: I work in a quite narrow field in physics. Recently I submitted a comment on a published paper. Before doing this I discussed my remarks with the authors directly and they gave me some interesting suggestions and comments. In the end they suggested to publish as a rapid communications instead of a comment. However, I was more convinced that it was something it should be corrected and replied that I find a comment more suitable (assuring them this is of course nothing personal). However, a bit after this my doctoral advisor said: "feel free to submit but please remove my name (you can acknowledge me for useful discussions and proofreading)". I have a feeling this is related to the fact that he has some limited contact with the authors.
My questions: Did I make the right decision of submitting?  Will there be any consequences in the future (regarding Refereeing). I really have nothing personal against they authors (which are in fact very competent authors who have published many interesting works).
I would like your opinions on this situation.

What's a promoter? (I assume a co-author with some special role.)

Doctoral advisor :).

Yes you made the right decision of submitting a comment to the paper. Publicly commenting papers happens much too rarely, for reasons that may be at least partly technical. (Compare publishing your comment to writing here at StackExchange in terms of time and effort.)
As for future consequences, nobody knows. But if your comment is good, journals editors could get the idea of soliciting you for reviewing papers.

my doctoral advisor said: "feel free to submit but please remove my name (you can acknowledge me for useful discussions and proofreading)"

Co-authors may remove themselves for many reasons, e.g., they don't feel that co-authorship is merited, they aren't confident in the results, ... You cannot infer their removal is "related to...contact with the authors [whom you critique]." Given that your advisor has suggested an acknowledgement (for their contribution) will suffice, I suspect they don't feel co-authorship is merited. But, you'll only know for sure by asking your advisor.

I do not really have a problem with the fact that he asked this (since he gave interesting comments I could implement). However, I had a very similar situation two years ago with him and then he responded totally different, e.g. supporting the discision. The only difference was that back then he did not have any contact with those authors.

As far as I can follow: You don't have a problem with him removing himself as co-author, but previously he didn't remove himself (in similar circumstances), so now you think there's a greater problem. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't: Ask him.

What this suggests to me is that you need to have more conversations with your adviser about their motives. If you don't understand why they didn't want to be an author, how can you learn from this?

Thanks for your reply. I asked him directly but he gave really conficting reasons (one time he said it is too much and i should write a paper and onother time he said the comment is not enough, which is weird since it was more substantial then in the previous case). It is sometimes very difficult to understand his motives for some of his actions. :)

@Feynman007 Saying "it is too much" and advising to "write a paper" might suggest that the advisor preferred a different (longer) publication format and that they were uncomfortable to put their name to a shorter piece. Saying "the comment is not enough" could be the same reason, that is, the advisor might again be advocating for a longer piece.

Agreed! But in my opinion a comment and a follow up paper should not be mutually exclusive.

@Feynman007 I'm inclined to disagree: a comment and a paper are mutually exclusive. Assuming I have correctly interpreted what a comment is from your question: I presume a comment is a published document? And conclude you cannot publish the same material twice. Leading to another assumption: I presume you have insufficient material to extend the comment into a follow-up paper, such that the paper contains enough novelty. Of course, a comment may lead to an independent publication, e.g., the comment uncovers a problem with some prior research and the independent publication proposes a solution.

Well in my case the comments corrects a mistake in the paper (a comment according to the journal website: "Comments are publications that criticize or correct specific papers of other authors previously published in Physical Review B"). It is maybe possible to extend the study (but in my opinion this is not certain and will take some time). That's why I chose to write a comment since I believe a correction is in order, in my opinion.

@Feynman007 When early public release is desirable (and extended study will take some time), you can use comments, as you have, or you can release an interim technical report, before publishing the full study later.


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Computer Science - final year project of undergraduate degree (individual vs teamwork)
I'm in the final year of my undergraduate degree in Artificial Intelligence. Thus, I have to choose between individual project or teamwork. In both cases, I believe that I can do well.
However, I'm going to apply to MPhil in Advanced Computer Science at the University of Cambridge later. So, my questions are:

Which choice gives a complete thought of my abilities?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each choice in this case?

The issue with working in a team is that the results can be greater than the sum of its parts , or much worse... Personally I would, and for my final year project did, go individual...

This answer will be just one sided. If you don't have experience working with a team, do that, and do it well. Modern software systems are built by teams and experience in working cooperatively is extremely important as well as valuable.
But make sure that the team works as a team, not just dividing up requirements into individual tasks. Take a leadership role if you have to in order to assure this. If you haven't investigated Agile Software Development in the past, nor applied it appropriately, then I suggest you take a look at it. It supports a tightly integrated team in which all members have knowledge of all parts of the system. In an industrial environment this means that the firm isn't at risk of knowledge disappearing if a team member leaves. But in an educational environment it can also mean that the team members (students) become educational resources for one another.
If you have a lot of such experience with effective teams already, then it is a bit of a tossup. Otherwise, it is an experience that can serve you well.

If the project is primarily building software, then I'll make a further recommendation. I generally suggest that new teams use XP Extreme Programming for their first agile project, not because it is necessarily better, but because it gives you a lot of advice on what to do day-to-day while you get used to the philosophy. It requires certain practices that need to be done faithfully. Otherwise it will fail like any other methodology.

Thank you for your valuable answer, but I will be so grateful if you add your full point of view (i.e. about the individual project too).

I don't have a lot to say, actually. I assume you've done individual projects in the past and are familiar with them. I would suggest, however, that you build any software incrementally, rather than all at once. Then you have something to show if you run out of time.


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What should I do during my PhD program to get a faculty position right after PhD, and how can I accomplish them? (Field: Statistics)
I am starting my PhD next year (2019), and I have some concerns.
I recall one of my Professors from my undergrad years was telling me that in my field (statistics), excellent Statistics PhD graduates are taken for a tenure-track Research Professor job directly after their PhD without having to do any postdoc. And I am hoping that I can secure a tenure-track faculty position directly after my PhD, because I will be around mid-30s by the time I finish my PhD (i.e. if all goes well), and I would like to land a good career by then.
What are the things that I should do during my PhD program to get a faculty position right after my PhD, and how can I accomplish them?
I will be taking my PhD in Statistics in Canada, but I want to get hired by research universities in US as a tenure-track Assistant Professor directly after my PhD, if I can.
Thank you,

It would help if you could say the country / continent where you will be doing your PhD, and where you want to work.  Hiring practices vary substantially around the world.  Also, "faculty position" encompasses a wide range of jobs; a big factor is whether you want a job that's more focused on teaching or on research.  I'd suggest different strategies depending on your answer, though I also realize it might be too early for you to know.

Hello, Thank you for your comment; I have edited my post to include the information that you are seeking

@CJ59 Actually there is a Statistics PhD graduate from my university who got hired at Harvard  University as an Assistant Professor straight after his PhD; his name is Luke Bornn and he is now a Professor at SFU.

@CJ59 and he graduated from his PhD in Stat in 2012

Obtain experience teaching a variety of courses.
Develop a wide network in the field. The better "known" that you are, the more likely a school is to consider you for a faculty position.
Establish relationships with multiple people who will be able to write you strong letters of recommendation.
Begin applying for grant money right now.
Publish relevant and impactful research.
Consign yourself to the fact that your friends in industry will make more money than you.
Get lucky and find a tenure-track position.

Your #5 should be #0.  PUBLISH!

Publish should be 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

I'm not convinced that #1 should be a priority.  In cases I know where somebody got a faculty position directly after the PhD (in applied math), teaching experience was not a significant consideration.  More important was the perception that the candidate was already leading research, rather than just following an advisor.

@Ketcheson Outside of a few top flight universities, every place will want some indication that you can be a quality teacher. At least in the US. Most places want a statement of teaching philosophy. These sound a bit hollow if you have never taught.

@JeffE: I actually disagree in this instance.  Teaching-oriented schools are probably the best bet to get a tenure-track position without a postdoc, and for them, publication record will not be the most important factor.  At least, I am at such a school, where we recently hired in statistics, and it wasn't the most important factor for us.  If I have some time, I will try to add another answer where I flesh this out.

As to #4: What sorts of grant programs can a student apply to, who hasn't even begun their PhD program yet?  Or even during a PhD program, for that matter?

@NateEldredge I helped in the application of an NSF grant. I was not PI, but I was included in the process. I am pretty sure though that graduate students can apply for grant money as well though. Maybe it would be better to say "Participate in the grant application process."

The most important thing is to be ahead of the publishing curve in your field. There is no better predictor of getting job interviews, job offers, and receiving tenure at research 1 institutes than being ahead of the publishing curve. If the average number of first author publications for new phd graduates is 1 and you come out with 4, you are WAY ahead of the game.
That does not necessarily mean publishing only in top tier journals. Publishing in discipline specific journals is also incredibly important.
That said, getting a publication in JASA is a pretty nice feather in the hat of a graduate student. That said, you don't need to hit home-runs in graduate school. A solid publication and conference presentation record will set you apart.
And for what its worth, there is nothing wrong with taking a postdoc after your phd, especially if its at an elite university. For example, you might want to get into bayesian statistics after you finish your phd. Well, a postdoc at the epicenter of bayesian stats at Duke would fit very well in that framework. Or maybe biostats at johns hopkins?
Postdocs also have the nice benefit of increasing your pedigree if you did not get your phd at an elite university. Research in hiring in academia strongly suggests that pedigree matters to hiring committees. If your phd is not at an elite university, a postdoc is a chance to add research at an elite institute to a resume.


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Do Research Papers have Public Domain Expiration Date?
Do research papers have a Public Domain Expiration Date? simmilar of what happens to literature books
For example, let's consider a research paper of James C. Maxwell: XVIII.—Experiments on Colour, as perceived by the Eye, with Remarks on Colour-Blindness, it is stored in here: link to www.cambridge.org website
It says: "Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1857" and if I want to purchase the article, it would cost me: USD35
This is an article published more than 150 years ago. How long do I have to wait in order to download it and use it for free?

If you have an academic appointment your library may be able to get you a free copy via interlibrary loan.

@EthanBolker  Yes, I know that, but I was wondering what was the case for someone who is not in the university

This question about law is off topic.

Not a lawyer, not a legal advice, but yes, all academic works are covered by the same copyright laws as eg literature. However, there is no rule against selling public domain materials for money (you can find plenty on Amazon).

You might be interested in the Unpaywall extension - https://unpaywall.org/products/extension - it will automatically find free, legal, sources of papers for you.

Does this answer your question? How long does it take before an academic article can no longer be kept behind a paywall?

@Buzz well, technically in that question the OP is asking only about the cost, here I am asking directly about the copyright because I don't only want to download it for free, I also want to translate it and post it on a website, although I guess the answer is the same

For 19th century papers, I have found Hathitrust very helpful: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

If they were published, they have exactly the same copyright protection as "literature books", if for no other reason than that all research papers are "literature" and in terms of publication no, there is not a difference.
Public Domain Expiration Date is a term I never met in 20 years in publishing. Google seems to feel the same way and it sounds contradictory.
All that's published will eventually fall into the public domain due to copyright expiration… quite the reverse of what you seemed to be asking.
Your department should have advisors qualified to help.

Please remember, whether you can get a copy for free depends quite separately on the copyright not of the content, but of the presentation… everything published - or, as it were, re-published - has a presentation copyright.
If, EG, I offer in print or on line anything by Chaucer or Shakespeare, Dickens or Wells the text is obviously generations out of copyright but my presentation is not, and if you want a copy I can charge what I like for it.

Greg, Robbie: please consider converting your comments to proper answers; answers-in-the-comments may be deleted.

I think I should change my title to: Do Research Papers have Copyright Expiration Date? Or is it ok to leave it as it is? Sorry, English is not my native language

From your question:

This is an article published more than 150 years ago. How long do I have to wait in order to download it and use it for free?

From a comment you posted:

Yes, I know I do still have to cite it, but I can't download it or use it for free. I have to pay even when it was published in the 19th century

As Buffy and anpami note, the original work probably isn't under copyright. But even if copyright has expired, there's no guarantee anyone will make it available for free. In particular, there is no obligation on the publisher to provide free (or indeed any) access to it.
In this case, there is a link to a PDF version from the Semantic Scholar page.

And, as near as I can tell, Semantic Scholar respects the rights of authors.

@Buffy as opposed to publishers? or do they also respect the rights of publishers?

@RossPresser Note that it is a CC0 license, which is Creative Commons' tool for releasing things into the public domain.

@RossPresser I'm not a lawyer, but I would hope that a simple scan doesn't arise to a new creative work. If that is true, they wouldn't be able to mount legal action based on copyright. If the uploader didn't scan their version, but obtained it from somewhere else, they may have agreed to terms of services limiting what they can do with it. (E.g. Google Books disallow removing the watermark you mentioned.) In that scenario, it would probably be difficult to hold a third part such as Zenodo liable. Perhaps Zenodo could be made (or convinced) to take the PDF down. But that is one for Law.SE

@Anyon: Correct. A scan is a mechanical transformation

It shouldn't be CC0: that's for putting something in the public domain; to mark that something already is in the public domain, you can use the public domain mark.

@MSalters: I agree with you, but you would be surprised at the arguments some people are willing to make.

@RossPresser Cambridge arn't "claiming the right" to charge USD35, they are just saying that it is work for us to provide it to you, we don't have to do anything for free, so give us $35 if you want it. If you look at the Penguin Classics range of books, they are all out of copywrite, and the text is generally available free somewhere, but if you want Penguin's physical book copy you have to pay for it.

I wonder if copyright transfers affect the public domain date in any way: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/213576/do-copyright-transfer-of-papers-to-publishers-affect-when-the-paper-enters-the-p

Well, regardless of the actual copyright situation, you can get it for free even now. Just use the DOI (10.1017/S0080456800032117) and use it at a, erm, (possibly not 100% legal) "Black Open Access" site called Sci-Hub. (The domain changes constantly, but it currently seems to be this one).
As regards a legal response, my guess is the following: Suppose that it is the UK's Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 that is applicable in this case. Section 12 of that act tells us: "Copyright expires at the end of the period of 70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the author dies" when it comes to "literary works" (inter alia). If I remember correctly, there is a low threshold regarding what constitutes an original "literary work", so I would not worry about definitional disputes with reference to that research paper you linked to. As I am sure that the author has already left the earth more than 70 years ago, I would assume that the copyright has already expired. However, I am sure that Law Stackexchange has gathered more knowledge on the legal situation than I have.

This latest instantiation of this stack's long-running argument about whether sci-hub and such sites are legal and/or ethical has been moved to chat. Additional debate in the comments will be deleted. Please also remember our code of conduct; we do not allow subtle (or not-so-subtle) put-downs.

In the US, at least, nothing published in the 19th century is likely to still be under copyright. See https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html.
For the UK it is similar but very slightly longer in a few cases. See: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/copyright/duration.
Other places will differ, but probably not by a lot and most likely a shorter time under copyright.
But you still need to cite old works, even when they are out of copyright.
Maxwell's work is most likely to have lost copyright protection about 1950 since he died in 1879.
Any academic library should be able to provide a copy of such works, even if it has to borrow them from other libraries. Librarians are very good at finding such things and are generous about sharing them.

Yes, I know I do still have to cite it, but I can't download it or use it for free. I have to pay even when it was published in the 19th century

No, you don't need to pay. Ask any academic library, and even a few small, local, ones, to get you access. Even my small village library can get me things, even when under copyright. Even if the library doesn't have a copy itself, it can make an "inter-library loan" request.

yes, I know I can do that, but I was thinking in translate it into my native language so that I could improve my english and at the same time study physics. I was thinking that if I do that, maybe it would be nice to post it on a personal website, but since it seems to be still copyrighted, I am not sure if it would be correct to do that

No, it seems impossible that the work itself is copyrighted at this point. But if you found it in a book, then that book might, itself, have a separate copyright. But Maxwell's work is almost certainly free to use 140 years after he died.

then I am going to translate it and post it on a personal website, thanks

@Buffy It's a bit ironic to even talk about US copyright in the 19th century (and earlier). The entire business model of the early US publishing industry was based on reprinting non-US works with no regard whatever for foreign copyright. And of course the primary purpose of modern changes to US copyright law is to protect important US cultural icons like Mickey Mouse by successive increases in the duration of copyright.

In general there are two issues.

For a number of years, there may be copyright restrictions on what you're allowed to do with the paper or writing, even if you had free open access to a copy of it.
After copyright expires, you can do.pretty much what you like with it - but you may find you can't get hold of a copy of the paper without paying, or other contractual agreement, simply because while copyright doesn't exist on it any more, the specific copy you access may have been provided to you as part of a contractual agreement, or may only be provided to you as part of one.(But, if you acquire a copy without entering into a contractual agreement, then there is no way for a third party to legally demand/require that you act any particular way with it, or that you don't copy, modify, use or circulate it)

What that means is for example, if you copied an out of copyright version held by some pay-for-use library, because that's the only copy, they could sue you for breaching their terms of use, but they couldn't re-impose copyright on the material, or on other people.
Its not clear to me if public policy defence would in some times or jurisdictions mean they couldn't keep control or sue for alleged loss due to copying it, because that seems to potentially breach public policy - the entire aim of copyright law which allows financial benefit from control, for a limited number of years, not forever.  There's surely case law on that, and from memory there have been cases where this has happened.

There is also performance copyright, which applies mainly to music and plays. The original may be out of copyright, and you are welcome to copy and use the original manuscript as you like, but the particular performance and recordings of the performance are protected for a further period. But how that applies in this case, I'm not sure, if at all? perhaps only to collection works that contain significant parts of the original?

Not relevant here. That's the copyright in a specific instantiation of a play - I.e. of that particular performance (a new creative work, so to speak), it's not over the script generally.

Arithmetica is an Ancient Greek text on mathematics written by the mathematician Diophantus in the 3rd century AD.
It is out of copyright but why should you get it for free?  Either someone has to print it (they have to make a physical copy, and make a profit in order to stay in business), or they have to maintain a website that make such texts available. They are not obliged to let people access their website for free - why should they be?
Just because you can legally copy something without infringing copyright law, doesn't mean you can force the legal owner to hand it over.

Example
Suppose my great, great, great ... grandfather was Charles Dickens. I have inherited an unpublished novel of his. I am not required to publish it. I can keep it in my private collection and never show it to anyone. It is not public property - it is my property. However, If I was reading it in public and someone photographed the pages as I turned them, they would not breach copyright laws.

"why should you get it for free?" <- because once a couple of people have gotten it in file form, some of them will certainly make it accessible for free on the Internet, and then it will be free forever. Free is the - nearly inevitable - default.

@einpoklum - That doesn't address the question by the OP. There is something that they are unable to find online and they are asking how to get hold of a copy without paying USD35.

Indeed, my comment doesn't address OP's question - hence a comment on your answer, not an answer... I'm just explaining why OP should get the paper for free.

@einpoklum  - Okay, that's fair enough. It is the word "should" that I'm talking about.  There a difference IRL between what someone should be able to do and what they actually are able to do.

If you replace "should you" with "would you be able to", I'll un-downvote.

@einpoklum - I can't get the point you are making. I'll just leave things as they are.  I'm sure the OP can read these comments and decide for themselves if necessary. Thanks for your comment, feedback is always welcome.


text:
What are some useful tips that allows PhD students to produce many publications of good quality throughout the duration of the PhD?
I am starting my PhD in Statistics soon and while I will try not to burn myself out, I still want to publish as much as possible while I am in my PhD program.
What are some useful tips that allows PhD students to produce many publications of good quality throughout the duration of the PhD? I have no previous experience writing papers, so I don't have any general idea as to how I will do this.
Thank you.

Write a lot. (Seriously.)

If you want to publish a lot of (scholarly) papers you need a lot of novel/new/interesting results. To get results you need (a) a lot of ideas and (b) a lot of hard work to develop those ideas.
If you are lucky then maybe a third of your initial ideas will end up in a result that is interesting enough to publish. Some of the ideas will be so easy to develop that they aren't worth publishing. Some of them will be so hard that you can make no progress in a reasonable amount of time.
To have a lot of ideas you need a firm foundation in your field, both what is known and what isn't yet known, but worth knowing if it could be arranged. Probably you won't be able to find those ideas yourself, or not very many of them, so you can work with other people who have ideas and with whom you can develop synergistic relationships to explore the unknown corners of your field.
To become a writer, you need to write a lot (as user henning suggests in a comment), but it takes more. You need to learn what is worth writing about first.
Since you are unlikely to know everything, or why some things are important or not, you need feedback on your work (and your writings). This is one of the reasons for having an advisor. He or she should be both a source of ideas and a sounding board for the ideas you have and how you develop them. So build a strong relationship with your advisor.
Another source of idea will be any state-of-the-art lectures that you can attend and any recent papers that explore ideas but leave some questions unanswered.
So, work with a lot of people. Listen to them and read what they write. Try a lot of things, expecting to leave much of it on the floor. Get a lot of feedback. Give out ideas as well as receive them. Make ideas your currency. Work hard. Take a lot of notes so that when something doesn't work out, but might later, you have a structured way to remember what you did earlier.
Always have something with you to read. Always have the means with you of writing down a quick note on an idea.
Papers, again, represent the successful exploration and development of ideas resulting in something known that was unknown before you started.

If you are lucky then maybe a third of your initial ideas will end up in a result that is interesting enough to publish. — I think you misspelled "one tenth", or maybe even "one hundredth".

This was essentially the answer I was going to write. There is no magic formula. It's hard work and a bit of serendipity.

Buffy's answer covers what you need to get good content, so I'll add a slightly different take. I’m not sure how important conference publications are to you or in your field, but they can be considered at least on a par with journals in some fields. The big advantage is that they operate on stricter/shorter deadlines. They offer the chance to publish "work in progress", or sometimes just a more interactive audience, provided you have the funds to attend.
Assuming you have no shortage of novel ideas, and your writing is good, maximising publications during your (finite and short!) PhD years can be aided by picking your targets carefully. Find out the "call for papers" deadlines of good conferences (or special editions) and plan accordingly. If you have work that can be done "in parallel", prioritise so you can meet a deadline.
Plan for rejections, too - some papers take more than one submission to be accepted and you want to optimise the time between submissions (enough to get the paper up to scratch and meet the next deadline).
As for finding targets, it seems obvious but make sure you note what you are reading - which paper or conference did it come from? You can find out the rank of a conference using websites like conference ranks or assess a journal on its impact factor or other scores. Acceptance rates might provide consolation in the face of rejection! On their own, these metrics might be a bit, ahem, subjective, but they’ll give you an idea of how journals and conferences rank in your field.