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How is an experimental particle physicist evaluated?
As an undergraduate student majoring in physics, I intend to apply for a Ph.D. in experimental particle physics. I have known that working as physicists in this field is kind of different, as they are always affiliated to a collaboration (like CMS in LHC) and may appear as authors in loads of related papers, resulting in high citations. Therefore it seems traditional evaluations of a researcher (focusing on the citations or h-index) do not work when assessing an excellent and famous experimental particle physicist.
Thus I am asking:

How are particle researchers assessed in reality, in the case when a Ph.D. applier is searching for and comparing professors in the similar field, or when a researcher is going to find a position as an assistant professor? Does the specific role of a scientist in the collaboration (say, the group leader) matter in this evaluation procedure?
How does university ranking play into this? What are the probable differences between professors in particle physics who work at a higher-ranked institution (ranked by physics major) and those who work at a lower-ranked one – given that they are both affiliated to some big collaboration. This question comes to me since it seems one cannot distinguish a famous particle physicist by the conventional method which is performed by university ranking.

By their quarks (quirks!!) :) :) sorry - couldn't resist...

HEP PhD here.
What matters for a permanent position?

By far the most important factor is the "physics." You need to have innovative ideas about how to discover particles. On the small experiments, this can mean new approaches for detectors, analysis, etc.; on the larger experiments, this usually means new analysis techniques.
Another important factor is "leadership" -- you need to attend lots of meetings and make substantial contributions at all of them.
Though it's understandable that universities want to hire the highest-impact people possible, this does lead to a slightly toxic environment. There are endless meetings where everyone argues over factors of epsilon, and everyone wants to be involved in dozens of things but not put time into any of them. Skills, teaching, and knowledge of other fields/subfields don't count at all.

How is this measured?

The most important way is the letters of recommendation. You will need 3 for post-docs and up to a dozen for a faculty position.
"Official" positions such as analysis lead, sub-convenor, etc. help a lot.
Awards and grants also help, though there are not many of these for grad students.
As you say, publications don't count at all (at least directly), since there's no way to tell who really worked on what, everyone's name goes on everything (this is seriously different than most other fields, and introduces serious drawbacks).

Finally, let me point out that here are ~10 US HEP faculty jobs per year and hundreds of HEP PhDs produced each year (and the lack of new particles means that hiring is unlikely to accelerate). So, there is some element of randomness.
As for university ranking: more prestigious universities get more qualified grad students (or even post-docs), which tends to make their groups more productive. But at the faculty level, people tend to go where the jobs are; there will usually not be meaningful differences in the qualifications of faculty at the #20 school vs. faculty at the #80 school.

I happened to be a member of my college's executive committee when an experimental particle physicist was being considered for promotion to tenure. She was, indeed, a member of a huge collaboration, so a typical paper of hers had perhaps 100 co-authors. The papers provided no information about what, specifically, she had contributed (and we know better than to pay much attention to citation counts and impact factors). The information we needed, about the quality and quantity of her work, was provided by numerous letters from external reviewers. ("External" means not in our university.) Ordinarily, the college requires that most external letters come from senior researchers who are not co-authors of the candidate's papers, but an exception is allowed in areas, like experimental particle physics, where only co-authors really know about the candidate's work.  My recollection (about 15 years old and therefore somewhat vague) is that the letters gave us very detailed information, not only about what the candidate had contributed but also about how efficiently she had done her part of the work.

H-index is a simple metric - and as it goes for simple metrics, they are mostly used by people who are not in the field, or funding agencies. As you say, h-index just does not work in particle physics, where h-index naturally grows over time, just because you are a member of a collaboration. To give you a feeling, the average PhD graduates with an h-index around 40. I met a young researcher that changed experiment twice in his PhD career and because of bizantine rules continued to sign papers from all three big collaborations. His h-index was around 70 before his graduation. One particle physics collaboration puts the main authors at the top of author list. Some had the main authors only listed on a publicly accessible webpage that explains the measurement. Most of the time, a great deal of effort is spent masking who the lead authors actually are. While experimental particle physics represents the extreme scenario, other fields share similar issues.
How are particle researchers assessed in reality,
So, h-index is mostly meant for outsiders. People in your field - any field - judges by reputation. Reputation is built by being consistently successfull in leading original work, being a good disseminator, a respected leader, etc. How to measure things without looking at papers, you might ask?

The institution that awarded your PhD. Having a PhD at MIT or similar institution is the earliest sign of outstanding skills, and it is probably the one that sticks with you the most.
Your PhD supervisor. If you graduated with someone who is already famous in the field, and he/she highly admires you, that is the best walking letter of reccomendation you will ever have.
Talks/seminars. Great research work leads not only to highly cited papers, but to invitation to present your results at seminars at key institutions, or talks at key conferences. A hiring committee member will be able to map the (selected) papers you display on your CV to the talks you gave. While talks/seminars are important per se, it is probably the networking the follows that matters the most.
Breadth of research. In particle physics, that means working both in "hardware" - building/operating the detectors - and in "data analysis" -
producing the measurements themselves. If you collaborate on theoretical papers, that's a plus. By the way, "hardware" and theoretical papers have "normal" authors list, i.e. list only the main authors.
Prizes/awards. Admirers will nominate you for prizes. You will feel you have a shot at winning awards, and will apply to all of them. Prizes and awards lead to more prizes and awards.
Reputation prompts invitations to lead scientific efforts, that produce higher returns than working solo. Leadership in turn prompts additional reputation boost.
Luck. As pointed out, the number of High Energy Physics opening is so limited, and the number of PhD awarded so high, that you are most likely to get invited to interviews if somebody in the hiring committee already had a chance to encounter your work directly, and/or was impressed by a public appearance of yours.

How does university ranking play into this?
With this question you actually meant how to rank established professors. Established professors reputation works as for younger researcher - basically the points 1) to 6) above. You can replace Luck with Group size. Group size is basically a proxy of how a professor reputation gains her grants to hire postdocs, and aura to attract students.
As you can see, most of the above is actually pretty general, and holds for most field. What characterizes experimental high energy physics is the complete lack of interest in h-index (which would anyway just be a poor-man proxy for the points highlighted) and the extremely competitive scenario, that puts additional emphasis on visibility, networking, and a bit of luck.

Disclamer: I am a ex Expertimental Particle Physicist
In addition to the above answers...
Like any other social endeavor - and yes working in very large groups of highly intelligent people is a social skill rather than scientific; all the ills of the society at large also occur here. This includes all sorts of discriminations, politics, backstabbing, sleeping your way to top, plagiarism etc. It is just like corporate rat race but between very competent people who are motivated and have a whole lot to loose. Anything goes. Most of it is hard to prove.
You can present results and make a name only if you are allowed to do so. Every tiny career step will be hard.
If you keep your head down and learn and absorb everything this is the best real education you can have. Your are sharing room with Nobel prize winners and can see then in action. Hopefully you can learn their thought process. You can also be happy that at least for a short while you followed your dreams before life interrupts.


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Homework is to be submitted according to a guideline that is nowhere to be found
I am a new transfer student from a much, much smaller university to a semi-prestigious one. The first set of homework has been assigned (due in three weeks) and says it should be “submitted according to the TA’s guidelines”.
However, I do not see any guidelines on the university’s site, nor on the TA’s site. I also have not met the TA yet, and office hours have not been posted.
Whom and how should I ask for clarification?

Should I email the professor directly?
Should I email one of the three TAs (I don’t know which one will be marking)?
Something else?

If it is relevant, the subject is mathematics and homework is graded.

Possible duplicate of How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?

This doesn't need to be difficult: you can just ask any of the people running the class, either in person or by email.

Yes, yes. and yes (email all three TAs).

@jakebeal since I am a new student (and the environment is very different from my former university), I am unsure how to proceed. It also isn't too important yet as there is still some time before it is due. I would normally ask my classmates, but since I am new, I haven't gotten to know anyone well enough yet

@jakebeal I'll try asking the people I sit beside when I have class on Monday

@JeffE Are you saying yes to the 3 separate questions, or saying "yes" to only emailing the 2 TAs?

The most common arrangement is that each TA is assigned to specific sections, and marks the papers of the students in those sections. Probably each TA gets to set guidelines for submission (submit during class, submit to a central drop box, etc) according to their own preference.  As Nicole Hamilton says below, your own TA will surely explain their procedure when you meet them, so no need to contact anyone until then.  There's a fair chance your TA hasn't even decided yet as to what they are going to do.

I'm answering "yes" to all three questions.  Email everybody.

If you don't need to submit anything for 3 weeks and it's so early in the term that you don't even know who your TA is, I would wait until you do.  You can't be the only one who has no idea what your TA wants if you don't even know who it is.
There's a pretty good chance you'll get a short orientation in your section where the expectations will be explained and you can ask questions.

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Tips for revising manuscripts months later
While I tend to write articles quite quickly, whenever revisions come back from a journal, I find myself taking forever to finish them. Part of the problem is just that my mind is no longer in the same head-space as when I wrote the article, and so getting back into it is difficult. Also, changing the structure/flow of the paper after the fact I find painstaking.
Are there any good strategies for speeding up the revision process?
Just for context, I’m a PhD student in the social sciences, and work more with theory than with data.

It's much worse in experimental fields, where, in case of particularly long review time, one might have already dismantled the experiment by the time the reviewers' comments arrive.

Further to corey's comment, you could, once you have submitted the article, print yourself off a copy and hand-write notes on it to remind your future-self of your headspace. It reminds me of writing comments on code. If you write  program, you should write comments; not just for others, but also for you, should your code ever need review.

Give working on the revision the highest priority within your research tasks. After all, this is the last step before getting your results published, so it's best to get that off your table as fast as possible!
As first step when you get the reviews, go through them carefully and note / mark every comment which you think requires you to revise something. Then, for each marked comment, make a plan how to address that point, and think about what a good sequence for working on the comments would be. For me it works better to first address the more large-scale points, but that may of course differ from one person to the other.
Deal with each comment one-by-one: make the required revision in the paper, and directly after (or maybe before) that write the corresponding response to the reviewer's comment in your response letter.

If you have a comment that raises issues with the overall flow of a section (for example something like "The introduction does not clearly lead to the problem that the author is dealing with."), it may be most efficient to rewrite that part from scratch instead of trying to revise it. Then you can also simply answer something like "The introduction was completely rewritten to address this point".

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Writing a function name in a normal paragraph in my dissertation
I want to mention the name of an specific function (or method) that I used in a experiment in a normal paragraph in my dissertation. What is the best way to do it? Considering that the official dissertation format that my teachers gave me doesn't mention how to do it.
For example:

"... with the Java programming language we can use System.nanoTime ..."

Is this a question regarding the formatting?
In this case I would use a typewriter font. In LaTeX this is simple by using \texttt:
... with the Java programming language we can use \texttt{System.nanoTime} ...

This looks similar to

... with the Java programming language we can use System.nanoTime ...

In Microsoft Word, you could simply use some font, such as Courier New.
However, you should check with your supervisor if this is OK for him or her.

Yes, thanks for adding some info about the non-LaTeX scenario.

Or \lstinline, if you're using listings and have specific formatting set up for your functions.

Why \texttt rather than \verb (if not having the listings package included)?

@leftaroundabout There are some drawbacks related to \verb.
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/2790/when-should-one-use-verb-and-when-texttt
I had quite a good experience with always using \texttt since it seems to be more reliable and versatile. Maybe this depends also on personal preferences.

@J-Kun on the contrary I'd say \verb is more reliable, in particular for anything source code related, since it never misinterprets symbols as LaTeX syntax. Particularly relevant to function/method names: it has no problem with underscores. Of course, the option to include LaTeX commands is why \texttt is more versatile indeed, but for source snippets that versatility is mostly a burden.


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How should I deal with feelings of discomfort related to race?
I need a specific class to graduate.  However, it's only taught by a single instructor who happens to be of a demographic group that I'm uncomfortable around.
How could I complete the required coursework given this discomfort?

Because I'm sure that this question'll get a lot of rude/abusive flags: folks, please consider that questions like this can be teaching opportunities.

@Nat I read this question many times (the original version). I am inclined to think it's troll. Of course, I cannot be sure. I am going to wait and see. In order to respect your opinion, I take no action on this post (no flag nor vote to close)

It is not a troll. I would appreciate some actual help.

This seems to be all about YOUR attitude - as you have not mentioned any action on the part of the professor that is outside of the normal professorial behaviour - you need to do some learning...

@Nat There is little evidence that this turned out to be a "teaching moment." And I think your edits significantly distort the content of the question. If OP is worried that some old white dude teaches the course "Intersectional feminism in the context of the BLM-movement", OP might feel uncomfortable with the demographic group of the instructor too, but the context would be very different. Does the world really need more racists in "Business Management?"

@MichaelGreinecker We need less hatred in the world.  Even if someone's a raging bigot, what good would come from suppressing them and encouraging them to brood on their feelings in isolation?  It seems that humanity would be better served if we try to encourage understanding.

Hopefully, I'm not going out on too much of a limb here: it is highly doubtful that a graduate student would encounter such a problem, even if said student was racist, simply because the stakes in graduate school are higher for the student and one would hope that a serious grad student would have the right mind to push through the experience. Voting to close.

I am an undergraduate

Please [edit] your question to elaborate why you are feeling uncomfortable and what exact problems you have. Otherwise answering this is a broad guessing game.

I am an undergraduate -- Yes, I am aware of that (your question is tagged as such). My comment was about why your situation is unlikely to apply to grad students as well (situations that undergraduates find themselves in are not on topic here unless they can also apply to grad students).

You wouldn't be the first student ever to feel uncomfortable around an instructor due to demographic membership.  In this case, it may be due to race.  In others, I've seen students who've been sexually assaulted by the other gender feel uncomfortable around instructors of that gender.  These feelings are unfortunate, though they seem to happen in the real world.
It's kind of an XY-problem, though.  We have overwhelming empirical evidence that instructors of all races can be excellent teachers.  This is, it's unlikely that the instructor's race is the true problem; rather, we might consider the unpleasant feelings about race to be the true issue.
You might consider reflecting on your feelings about race and specifically why it's a problem for you.  Professional counselling may help to reveal the issue.  And depending on your institution, such services may already be offered to students.
In the long run, it'd seem healthiest for you to learn how you truly feel and seek to address whatever emotional causation this particular situation may reflect.

The above answer is a quick one that I haven't had time to fully consider yet.  Ideally, this sort of question would be addressed more thoroughly.  Just trying to help guide the issue in the right direction, such that a teaching moment isn't lost.

You're right. I think I'll drop the class and hope for better luck next semester. Delaying my graduation won't hurt that much, my parents will pay for everything.

@user87174 Do you really feel that uncomfortable around the other racial group?  I mean, honestly, that seems like a pretty big long-term problem that'd be healthier to address sooner than later.

@user87174 think long term: I assume you want to have a fulfilling job. Do you really think you can avoid interacting with people from a specific racial group for the rest of your life? Right now is the time to deal with these issues, before they are going to seriously hinder your career. This is what professional counselors are for. Once you graduate it will only be much harder to make use of such services. So now is the time to do something about it: Get help, and don't drop out of that course.

Take the class with this professor.  You are most likely uncomfortable with this professor's race because of minimal exposure to interactions with this person's race.  The real world is full of people that are different than you, and becoming comfortable with that is part of being an adult.  Interacting with people that are different than you, whether it be race, sexual orientation, religion, etc. will help you grow as a person and open your world view, which is a huge part of the purpose of college in the first place.


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What is the difference between patents and research articles?
Both patents and research papers are the original works of the author which are never attempted by any other person in academic domain. So what distinguishes a patent from a research article ?

One is practically a contract, following legally strictly defined content and language, while the other is about disseminating information to a community, doing so with much different content and language

Possible duplicate of Does applying for a patent first make it more difficult to publish (or vice versa)?

Patents are for protecting intellectual property. Papers are for the dissemination of research results.

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Springer’s book-chapter sharing policies
Last year I submitted an article to a peer-reviewed book to be added as a chapter. Finally, my article got accepted and it is ready for publication. The publisher is going to be Springer.
I would like to share a copy of my article on my website and with my colleagues through the university repository. My concern is that I am not sure whether I can do it or not.
Springer has some sharing policies for journal articles. You can share a preprint version with a link to the published one (via DOI). However, it is not clear whether I can do that with a book chapter.
Can someone with similar experience clarify this?

I generally recommend putting manuscripts online before involving the publisher, that way the manuscript is already public. For the OP, the manuscript can be put online, if no agreement has been signed. Otherwise, the signed agreement will need to be check to see what is permissible.

@Salias Have you signed an agreement?

Hi, I have not signed anything. I just got a notification by email that my paper was accepted and ready to publish. However, I have found something that may have the answer to this. I have posted it as a response.

If you (nor your co-authors) haven't entered into an agreement with Springer, then you have no obligations to Springer.

@Salias: I'm not a lawyer (and in particular, not your lawyer), but just because you don't remember signing a piece of paper doesn't mean you have not entered into a contract. You might have done so by sending your chapter in for review, for example, which may or may not mean that you are already prohibited from sharing your chapter.

Hi @RQM. Thanks very much for your comment. I think the same way. For now, I haven't taken any actions as the book will be published in a month. After that, I have decided to contact Springer editors. Also, my University requires me to send then a preprint copy (or an open-access copy) for their repositories, therefore, they should have an experienced legal team for this kind of issues. I will update this thread as soon as I have finally solved it.

This is the answer I got from Springer for a smiliar question:
"Thank you for getting in touch. Springer doesn’t have a green OA policy at this time. Chapter authors would need to choose the gold OA route. We are able to offer gold OA for chapters already published (retrospective OA) in cases where the authors need to fulfill a funder OA mandate.
Our policies regarding OA books can be found here: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/policies/book-policies
Please feel free to be in touch if you have further questions—I’m happy to help."

Do not be too legalistic. Finding what is legal or not may involve quite some work, and you may easily reach the wrong conclusion if you are not trained in law. Moreover, something can be tolerated even if it is not officially allowed.
In your case, I would recommend that you share your chapter. The worst that can happen is that you are asked to remove it from the website and/or repository. But usually, big publishers go after platforms such as ResearchGate, not after individual scholars.

Digging in a little more, there is an statement on Springer self-archiving policies regarding books. It was a bit hidden and difficult to find. The statement can be found in this link and says the following:
Does Springer's self-archiving policy also apply to books?
No. Book publishing is a different business model, and this policy does not apply to books.

You haven't published a book and you haven't signed an agreement, so this isn't relevant.

Ok. I will ask the publisher then about the agreement. That was very helpful, thanks for your help :).

You can put a draft online prior to signing the agreement.

Then it will be public before the agreement right? Good idea.

Yes, public before the agreement, but make sure the agreement doesn't forbid prior public versions or require such versions to be removed or ....

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How to handle a paper by a reviewer who wants to be paid?
A reviewer declines to review a paper because he wants to be paid. Some time later, this reviewer submits a paper to the journal (or to another journal who's aware of what happened – very possible with today's editorial management systems). How should the journal handle this?
Possible options:

Pretend we didn't notice and review as normal.
Write him an email to tell him we're aware of it, but are reviewing the paper anyway because we're a magnanimous journal.
Charge him a submission fee which we then use to pay the reviewers for that paper only.
Charge him a submission fee which we then use to pay the reviewers for that paper only, plus some extras which we use to pay the editor.
Desk reject because "our reviewers are on strike because they're not paid so we can't find reviewers for your paper".

I'm concerned taking retributive action will come across as petty and / or lead to a lose–lose situation. However, not taking retributive action doesn't feel right either – if the reviewer is not willing to review unless paid, then it's hard to expect other people to review (or handle) his paper unless paid either.
If it matters, only the first part really happened: The reviewer used the "decline to review" button with a reason that went something like: “Sorry, I don't review unless I'm paid. Feel free to contact me again to discuss rates”. Still, this decline reason is logged in the EMS, so it can happen in the future.

Does the journal charge readers for access to materials written by authors supported by public funding?

You might be interested to know what compensation you might want to give to reviewers something beyond money as contemplated here. Also, Are you the only editor or there are more, or you are not an editor?

Well, did you pay the reviewer?

When the potential reviewer said they want to be paid, did you explain to them that reviewers of academic papers are normally not compensated? Do you have evidence that this was something other than them not understanding what is normally done for reviews of academic papers? In almost all areas: You asked them to do significant work for your company. They asked to be paid for that work. That's completely normal, almost everywhere, with relatively few exceptions (e.g. reviewing academic papers).

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I'm confused. Did their declination ultimately have consequences for the other paper? Or did the journal just find other reviewers? If it had minimum impact on anyone before, then I don't even understand why this is a question.

It is unclear to me why this person was listed as a reviewer. Was it an active action by this person to sign up for this?

@pipe no, we registered him after seeing one of his papers (which matched the one being considered).

@Allure to be clear - did you initiate contact with them, based on previous work seen/published, to request they review a paper without them having agreed to this role? So before your contact they wouldn't have believed they were registered as a reviewer?

@Folau yes, that's correct.

@NajibIdrissi: I considered your comment to be addressed by revisions 4 and 5 to the question.

@DmitrySavostyanov yes, unless they're published open access. I don't however see why this is relevant.

@KonradRudolph no, we did not pay the reviewer (in fact we didn't even contact him again after he declined).

@Makyen no, we did not explain to the reviewer that reviewers are normally not compensated. I can't prove that they weren't aware that this is normal, but it seems very implausible they aren't aware. It's common knowledge among academics (I've even had undergraduates ask me why reviewers are not paid). This reviewer is also an established academic, with a PhD and multiple published papers.

@DmitrySavostyanov or the authors could pay for open access, we don't charge readers for access to peer-reviewed materials, expect reviewers to add this value for free, and consider penalising them when they request payment. Whether the journal is open access or not, the latter half still happens. I don't see your point.

First of all: Is there a rule that you need to be available as reviewer if you want to publish in that specific journal? People decline reviews for all sorts of reasons (often lack of time, which may or may not be the case), and I never heard that somebody got "punished" for that.
Your reviewer wanted to get paid. It is very unusual to pay reviewers, but on the other hand, it is not per se unreasonable or offensive to ask for compensation for work.
I would see it this way: Either you establish a general rule that authors must be available as reviewers or you accept that some people do not review papers (although they publish).

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Any potential reviewer with appropriate expertise who declines to review for a journal is effectively saying "my time is worth more than that". This individual is trying to find an equitable middle ground. Sure, paid reviewership very uncommon and totally outside the norms of academic review, but it's completely indefensible to take vengeance on this person because he feels that journals don't appropriately value reviewers' time.
Anything other than accepting the submission and reviewing it like any other is petty, discriminative, and potentially damaging for your journal's reputation. I know I would have serious reservations about submitting or subscribing to a journal that rejected papers irrespective of their content and based solely on personal vendettas with the author (option #5).
Peer review isn't a mechanism to get back at people.

+1 The person in question declined to review. They gave the journal an additional option of paying them to get them to review anyway. Why should suggesting that count against them?

@JiK Why would suggesting that count against them? Well, there are situations where it would count against you to give an additional option of being paid for something you are normally expected to do for free. If a student comes to me asking for an extra office hour, saying no is reasonable, but saying I will only do it if the student pays me is obviously unacceptable.

I find your first sentence confusing. Reviewing is paid zero and everybody's time is worth more than zero.

@DavidRicherby Reviewing has non-zero value for reviewers. It can fulfill a sense of duty or contribution to the scientific community, it can add to a CV, or it can be good practice for critical assessment of literature. No one would be a reviewer unless they got something out of it, which typically comes in the form of non-monetary intangibles. For this person, the intangibles aren't worth it. They consider their time more valuable than what they'll get out of it, so they want cash to make up the difference. The fact that reviewers get zero pay doesn't mean they get zero value from it.

@DanRomik: all employment contracts I've had in academia did consider reviewing as part of my professional duties. In that sense, I have  been paid for reviewing (yes, I've been working overtime - but that's an entirely different discussion IMHO, there was also lots of overtime not going into reviewing...).

@DanRomik "Well, there are situations where it would count against you to give an additional option of being paid for something you are normally expected to do for free.". Well, outside of the army, household duty or, apparently academics I can not find many examples where people are supposed to give away personal belongings (which time really is) for free. "If a student comes to me asking for an extra office hour" I am not sure exactly what you mean by that... if this student is asking you to tutor them in your spare time, would charging for that be unacceptable? I would hope not.

@StijndeWitt yes, charging your student for tutoring would be unacceptable. See here for more discussion on this.

@DanRomik Sorry but the linked discussion is about tutoring a student that is following your class and you are grading (power difference). I think it is beside the point. You are not normally expected to give away private time for free. But if the reviewer were to charge the author I think there would be a clear conflict of interest (as in the linked article), but as he is charging the paper I don't see such conflict (as it is the paper's interest to have high quality reviews).

@StijndeWitt you might be interested in the lecherous millionaire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lecherous_millionaire). In this thought experiment, the millionaire offers the woman an extra option she would not otherwise have had, but still seems to be behaving inappropriately.

I'll go a little outside the box here and say:
You should pay him and all the other reviewers for reviews.
While certainly paying the reviewers is not a common practice nowadays does not mean it should not be.
In the current world, where each and every scientists is needlessly overloaded with bureaucracy, the amount of students in classes, numbers of those classes and students one has to mentor grows bigger and bigger, and the competition for the very survival - the grant money, requires more and more effort and submissions and work - time is a very precious resource.
It therefore is completely reasonable that a person is not willing to give that resource away for free.
Academic publishing is already one of the best ratios of income to money invested of all businesses in the world.
Maybe the journals could do the right thing here, and give something back to the scientific community. Community which produces the product they sell and give it to them for free.

"It therefore is completely reasonable that a person is not willing to give that resource away for free."  That's like saying that it's completely reasonable that a person is not willing to give away friendship (or parenting or love...) for free.  People do so because of reciprocity.  Paying money for referees would, at best, open a huge can of worms.

@PeteL.Clark I do not know about You, but I have little love or friendship for publishers.

I have virtually none.  But refereeing is not a service contributed to the publisher; it's a service contributed to the author and to the academic community.  I referee your papers because I want and need you to referee mine (or something similar but with more parties).  Paying referees would open several cans of worms with respect to quality, fairness and conflicts of interest.  It is also really naive to think that the publishing companies will provide this service out of their current (enormous) profit margins.  Or so I believe, anyway.

The purpose of peer review is to ensure the scientific integrity of a journal. I have a hard time imagining an arrangement where paying reviewers doesn't lead to perverse incentives and integrity problems.

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All options except 1) and 2) seem completely unprofessional to me.  5) is, strictly speaking, a terrible lie.  You imagine that the author will figure out that you are being sarcastic rather than actually dishonest, but they may not.  4) is perhaps yet more unethical: as an editor of the journal you punish the author by paying...yourself??
As for 3), you are offering a  selected individual author the right to pay for their refereeing -- what if they take you up on the offer now and in the future?  What if you get other offers by authors to pay for their refereeing?  How will you maintain fairness and prevent conflicts of interest?  What a mess.
Lots of people turn down referee requests all the time, generally without giving reasons or giving reasons that don't really explain anything ("Sorry, I'm too busy.")  This particular academic seems a bit naive about how the refereeing process works and that came out in their reply.  But they'll learn if they stick around.  You could take it upon yourself to offer friendly advice -- i.e., some version of 2), although the text you give reads as pretty snarky to me -- or just assume that the data point of your experience will be filed away.
Selectively enforcing what you perceive to be ungenerous refereeing practices just doesn't make sense to me because you have so little information about who the good and bad referees actually are.  Don't you think there are much more senior academics that refuse most or all requests because they are "too busy" or pawn them off on their students (possibly without giving credit, which I feel is really problematic) or spend way too long with requests gumming up the works or contribute totally superficial, unhelpful reports or only contribute reports to settle their own scores or......There is way too much here for any one editor or journal to wade into, I think.

Follow the journal’s publicly advertised policies.
I assume that the journal has a web page with a text titled “Instructions for authors” or “Journal policies” or something similar. This is the place where the journal indicates that the journal will not accept already published papers, double submissions, papers that aren’t typeset in Comic Sans font, or whatever. The journal is free to make its own rules about what papers it is willing to consider, but needs to advertise them to prospective authors, since it is unprofessional to waste people’s time.
If the journal’s advertised policy is to refuse to review papers from authors who previously asked for money to do a review for the journal (or something more general that includes that situation as a special case), then you not only can, but in fact you must follow that policy and let the author know you cannot consider their submission.
Otherwise, you have no legitimate reason to treat the submission any differently from any other one.
As for whether it would make sense for the journal to have such a policy: well, no. Like others who posted answers this seems terribly pointless and petty to me.

I agree with the answers that say that it's unethical to single out a submitter for retaliation because they annoyed you when you asked them to review.  If you want reviewing papers to be a requirement for submitting papers, then you need to have a clearly articulated policy that says so up front.  This is the case irrespective of whether they refuse because they want to be paid, or for some other reason.
The question you need to ask yourself is, are you sure you want such a policy?  Crafting such a policy in a way that would be fair to all people involved would be hard.  You have to answer questions like, how many review requests can you refuse and still remain in good standing?  Are there valid reasons that might excuse a refusal? How do you verify them?  How do you ensure a fair distribution of review requests? What do you do about people who want to submit but have never been asked to review?  The list goes on and on.
Equally importantly, are you sure you want people writing reviews grudgingly?  Reviewers who are only doing the review because it's a requirement for getting published are likely to do a mediocre job.  You can expect such people to put forth the minimal effort required to meet whatever standard you set.  Some won't do even that, and so now you have to find a way to review the reviews.  The end result is likely to be that the quality of peer review in your journal will go down because poor reviewers will no longer be self-selecting out of the reviewing pool.
It stinks that some people free-ride on the peer review system, but any effort to punish them or force them to participate is likely to backfire.  The best thing you can do is to treat them like any other author and leave it to community norms to encourage people to do their share of reviewing.

As a reviewer, I would be happy to treat this paper just like any other.
I consider that I do get paid to review papers, in the sense that my employer expects that I do a small amount of reviewing. If this person is refusing to review on the grounds that reviewers don't get paid, perhaps they don't currently have a position where reviewing is encouraged.
People who can't use work time to review (perhaps because they are outside of academia) should still be able to publish papers, and IMO they shouldn't be expected to review in return - though of course they can still be asked!

I think it's tremendously hypocritical of the author to submit to a journal knowing other reviewers will do uncompensated labor for his work, but not to do the same for theirs.
That being said, "being a good person" is not typically a submission requirement.
Option 1 is really the only appropriate option. All of the others seem vindictive and petty, and if I found out a journal was doing that, even if it wasn't to me, I would be much less likely to submit to that journal in the future, consider reviewing/joining the editorial board, etc.
The potential damage to your journal's reputation isn't worth it.

Regarding your first point: if they have a general objection this may be true, however if they are selectively refusing to do this for companies that make huge profits (you know the ones) whilst still reviewing for journals that are open access or non-profit they may not be hypocritical (even if you, personally, disagree with their stance). We cannot discern this from the Question asked.

@JackAidley The problem is this isn't between journals, it's within a journal.

From the question "or to another journal who's aware of what happened". Hypocrisy is much more likely if its to the same journal.

@JackAidley Fair, I missed the "or". Yeah, the hypocrisy statement only really applies to exactly the same journal.

@Fomite just to nitpick a bit more (since it’s fun :-)), it’s possible that the author’s financial situation is unusually bad and does not enable them to take on non-paying duties (which would come at the expense of a second job they have to work to support an ailing relative, say), but that this is a problem that doesn’t apply to most reviewers. The author would then logically think it’s okay to expect their paper to be reviewed by unpaid reviewers while also refusing to referee a paper for the same journal themselves, without being “tremendously hypocritical”. Anyway: nice answer - upvoted.

About hypocrisy: The author might have the concept that the journal should pay all the reviewers, not just himself (as often journals charge quite a bit for access, this could be possible).

@DanRomik: I don't think you need to go as far as supporting an ailing relative. They may just not be paid a wage right now, neither by an employment contract in academia nor by a research grant that would consider participating in the publication system a professional duty.

"I think it's tremendously hypocritical of the author to ~~submit~~ give the fruits of their labor to a journal knowing other reviewers will do uncompensated labor".

@StijndeWitt The authors he didn't want to review for did the same. Within a single journal its very much "For me, but not for thee."

@PaŭloEbermann That is likely his stand. But by submitting to the journal - which he knows doesn't pay - the author has shown they put a higher premium on getting publish than their principled stand.
I don't blame them for that, but I also don't think it's particularly heroic.

A journal accepts articles because it depends on publishing articles.
People don't pay for publishing by reviewing.
People review for whatever reasons and are paid with fame or a good feeling.
There is no connection between reviewing a paper and submitting one.

are paid with fame or a good feeling plus their salary.

@CapeCode but not from the journal. And especially not with being allowed to publish.

@DonQuiKong Point is that if you as a potential reviewer are not in a position where you can review during work hours, that means you are being asked to do it for free, whereas otherwise it's just a part of your job. Huge difference!

@StijndeWitt not for the journal.

The policies of any journal should be public and consistently applied. Having a policy that you have to be a reviewer before you can be reviewed is irrational, I think. There are many rational reasons to refuse any particular paper for review. But if you have a policy that the complete refusal to review for any reason, including that you want to be paid, could lead to desk rejection is a different matter.
One large problem here is how to state such a policy so that it isn't too narrow. A policy that complete or consistent refusal is not acceptable is difficult to state specifically. It needs, in my view, to be stated as an expectation. We expect that our authors are available to review the works of others. That is (approximately) what you want, but applying it too rigidly is a mistake.
But then, the question arises about how to handle such situations in practice.
Actually, the journal should handle a problem like this much earlier than the situation described. It may be that the "reviewer" just doesn't know how the game is played and that reviewing is seen as a contribution to one's peers. To be a professional is to offer this service and, by cooperating, others will, hopefully, do the same.
Therefore, send a letter to the person when they first refuse for this reason, explaining the process and the fact that reviewers are never paid and that paying them would increase the costs to readers as well, given that there are more reviews done than articles published.
At that time, let them know that, while it is possible to refuse any given paper for review, if they refuse to participate in the process at all, then their future work won't be accepted as a matter of policy.
I have refused to review papers for a variety of reasons, often because I felt I didn't know enough of the subject to do it justice. No one should have to make reviewing their first priority. But if they refuse to participate in a society as constituted they won't be welcome in it.
They are, of course, welcome to work for a more rational system if they like. The current system has many practices that should be addressed, but we have, so far, presented only partial solutions, and most have their own negative consequences.

“But if they refuse to participate in a society as constituted they won't be welcome in it.” — The person in question is probably more than happy to review pro bono for a journal that doesn’t charge exorbitant publishing/subscription fees, or has otherwise questionable business practices. At least that’s usually the case.

@cbeleites, actually, I agree that the policies should be available and not secret. Not everyone reads the policies, of course.

@Buffy: but then it's clearly their own fault. Whereas here I don't even know enoug details about the reviewer's reasons for asking for money to allow myself a judgment. Maybe they just refuse to participate in a society as constituted because they are not a member of the society of academic employees whose wage includes publication activities... Aynways, please add that the matter of policy must be publicly viewable policy so i can upvote ;-)

@cbeleites, not requiring an upvote, of course, but I make a fairly complete rewrite. I avoided originally making a suggestion for a rational policy but finally attacked the issue. I'm not sure I have quite the correct nuance.

+1 for handling earlier and saying that matters of policy have to be spelled out beforehand. And that all kinds of policies have their own difficulties :-)

Variation of #2? Wouldn't go any further than that.
Deviating from your normal review guidelines is unprofessional, and it's possibly an ethical issue if it ends up affecting the published content. If the paper is good enough for review and there is normally no fee, then send it for review.
However, given his qualms about unpaid reviewers, it might be reasonable to warn him that he's submitting to a journal that does not pay its reviewers. It is entirely possible he may want to withdraw his paper due to ethical concerns over your practices.
This may be unprofessional in some eyes, but it's the only ethical way to needle him over his hypocrisy (he's essentially demanding a service he refuses to provide)---and the communication should remain entirely confidential regardless of his response.

I agree with the many other who think #1 is the way to go. Or rather, a variant that I'd call #0: there shouldn't be any pretending you didn't notice. Acceptance of a paper should IMHO solely depend on scientific merits and content (includes whether the subject fits scope of the journal) plus possibly pre-specified fees. Pre-specified fees could also be a payment in kind, i.e. saying that for every manuscript you submit, you have to do so many reviews.
As for reasons not to review, I don't see how "I cannot afford to put in the time" is worse than saying "I don't have the time" or just not giving any reason. If you consider "I cannot put in the time without being paid" not a good reason, then surely neither is no reason a good reason.

In my field, academics are usually employed. And the employment contracts I had in academia always considered not only writing up research into manuscript form but also reviewing as part of the professional duties. In that sense, I've been paid for the vast majority of reviews I've done. Just not by the journal. BTW, there are macro-economic estimates of these costs (STM report 2012, p. 21 last paragraph
If I were journal editor receiving such a request, I'd be tempted to say "Please send us your/your employer's billing address and VAT number otherwise we cannot prepare a reverse invoice. If you act self-employed, we'll need your VAT number or VAT exemption and tax number. We'll then be considering what we can offer."
And I do see the point that a publication system that pays reviewers, collects fees for submission and reading and pays out royalties to the authors (or their employer, in case of employment contracts) may result in almost a zero-sum game in terms of money (even if we'd divide all the profits of Elsevier, Springer and Wiley)  - at the additional cost of huge burocracy. But it would lead to an immense increase in common academic knowledge about international tax rules... Even though you can count me as one of the very few people who are not immediately scared off by the fact that receiving fees does cause tax payment and reporting duties, I'm not sure the gain in fairness of even an ideally fair system of those fees is worth the hassle.

I'm freelancer now, but still have some projects that are very close to academia, and still do some research. Let me add a point of view from that perspective, because that's where I can see me being the reviewer in your question. I'd have explained, though, that as opposed to people being paid by grant money I'm freelancer and do not have any project covering the review of your manuscript - and that at present I cannot afford volunteering the time for the review. Taking the scenario further, as an author getting response #2 I'd answer that I feel at least as magnanimous as I'm not paid by any project for preparing the manuscript*.
I'd like to point out that I'm fine with the current system if there is a project that at least somewhat covers these activities (I do have one such research project right now). And I'm fine with volunteering time even if there is no such project, but within limits.
But I do have to say that I have some disquieting experience with academics on permanent employment contracts who do not see any more the difference between having and not having an employment contract. (If I'm the one in question, that's fine - I can deal with that professionally. But I do get upset if this attitude hits former students who are out of job and are expected to work for free.) And that alarm is triggered by seeing many responses here on academia.sx that claim pretty much noone is paid for reviewing when my estimate is that the vast majority of academia.sx users do have academic employment contracts which include publication duties (please comment that you are not paid by projects if that's the case so I can update my world-view).
* I'd rationalize to myself some of that time as going into marketing. And in fact, I would not try to haggle for payment, but do foresee me haggling with journals whether if I volunteer my time for writing the manuscript, they could throw in open access. Or leave me more rights than usual.

I don't know that an editorial decision to not accept the paper is necessary here.  I also don't think sarcasm is appropriate.
I would accept this paper for review, and send the author a strong email suggesting that future submissions will not be welcome if he or she agrees to participate in the publishing model of this particular journal.
This way at least the author will shut up about reasons for turning down a review request, and just say "I'm too busy".
Alternatively, if this seems too harsh, I wouldn't say the papers are unwelcome, but I would clearly let the author know that to submit a paper to a journal for which he has philosophical objection to reviewing for seems like hypocrisy.

Why not

Reject his paper, informing him that your journal's QA process works by having its potential authors do unpaid peer reviews, and hence, willingness to do unpaid peer reviews is a condition for being an author.

Only do this if this is actually your policy, and you uphold it strictly.
Other than that, only your first option seems reasonable. Never make it personal.

So a first time author, such as a graduate student, is by policy not to be allowed to publish there?

A graduate student is a potential author.

The suggestion seems unrealistic. People can always say yes, they will review, and then don't do it. What is the journal doing in that case? Withdrawing a publish paper? Or are potential authors not allowed to publish until after they review something? Then, again, grad. students and a lot of people early in their academic careers would simply not consider the journal, as they cannot afford the artificial delay and extra hurdles this represents.


text:
When should I appropriately use adjectives and adverbs?
I heard using adjectives and adverbs should be avoided; which scenarios should I use adjectives and adverbs?

I think excessive use of adjectives and adverbs should be avoided, but in general? Uh, no.

Keep in mind that there are many sources of bad advice about academic writing.  Some people loudly announce that their own preferences are universal rules, while others insecurely obsess over every rule they've ever heard anyone announce.  If you run across such a rule without a compelling argument behind it, you have no obligation to take it seriously unless you observe that most people in your field really do follow it in practice.

If I said "Look at this really super cool study for more information" removing the adverbs and adjectives would give "Look at this study for information" which may contribute to the density of which one writes.

This advice, taken literally, is absurd. Adjectives and adverbs are perfectly reasonable parts of speech, and there is no inherent reason to avoid them. If you pick up any piece of academic writing, it should be clear that nearly every sentence includes them, and could not reasonably be expressed without them.
I count four in your question itself: "academic", "another", "specific", "proper". I can't imagine how you would express your question without any.
It is generally good advice in academic writing to write concisely and avoid unnecessary words. And it is a little easier to add unnecessary adjectives and adverbs to a sentence than some other parts of speech, so they may deserve some extra scrutiny. But avoiding them altogether? Nonsense.


text:
How will the 2013 US government shutdown affect NSF postdoc applications?
Does anyone know if there will still be NSF postdocs offered (the current deadline is the 16th), given that the NSF website is currently down due to the government shutdown in the US?
Also, in case it is still open, if anyone has the PDFs that could previously be found at
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5301
regarding the information, application process, and forms to be submitted, perhaps they could mirror a copy on a website, and post the link here?

Documents are posted here.  Extra text so I can actually post this.
I should note that some of the documents are specific to the Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, but some of them are general-purpose (I came to this question from MathOverflow).

Excellent! I am sure you have helped many people by this.

@CharlesMorisset, sorry, I don't quite take your meaning, could you explain what you're asking me to do?

I think the answer that we don't know.  It depends on when and how the shutdown is resolved.  As long as the NSF gets back up to its previous funding levels, presumably it should be OK.  I think it's quite likely that the deadline will be pushed back given how close it is, but it's hard to know until something happens in Washington.


text:
Do automatic tools to check thesis exist?
I am currently writing my bachelor's thesis in Computer Science with LaTeX. The thesis is written in English. I use aspell for spell checking, but I think there is more that could automatically be checked:

Writing "style" (e.g. warnings for "I", "me", ...)
Grammar checking.
Wrong citations (I use bibtex)
Missing figures or tables
Duplicate lables

Is there a program that checks writing style for academic work?

See the following question on the TeX stack exchange site:
http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/6333/grammar-checking-tool-for-use-with-latex

Missing figures or tables, duplicate labels, etc. are all identified by LaTeX and BibTex and generate warnings when the .tex file is compiled.

If you have some math formulas: Spotting LaTeX math common mistakes

We have a site specifically for [softwarerecs.se]

@EnergyNumbers I understand your recommendation, but I doubt that the answer provided here would have been as focused on academia over there, so I for one am glad it was asked here, where I found it very relevant

I use a Academic Writing Check for most of my academic writing, including my thesis. It checks for:

passive voice: don't use the passive voice if you can help it.
duplicate words ("the the"): this has saved me many times.
wrong abbreviations: for example, i.e (no second period)
bad typography
and some others

To check missing or duplicate labels, I use pdflatex (with this very cool Makefile). It prints a warning message anytime some of the above occur.
I'm not sure how you would check for wrong citations, but pdflatex will tell you about undefined references. For certain words you don't ever want to occur, just use grep.
The last check I do is for overfull hboxes, you can visualize them in your document by setting this in your preamble:
\overfullrule=5pt

I found that on the LaTeX stack exchange, you will no doubt find the answers there a great resource as your write your document. Good luck!

Do I understand it correctly that I have to use it with vim? Or is there a possibility to use it as a standalone command line tool like aspell?

From the README: "The script can be called in multiple ways: ./checkwriting ". I just call it from the command line.


text:
Are European schools experiencing the same cost raise as American schools?
After factoring in government subsidies (or lack thereof), is the total price for one year of undergraduate education in Europe increasing at a rate similar to America?

At my state school in the US, in-state tuition+state subsidy has not increased faster than inflation over the past 20 years according to numbers I’ve seen.  That is, all the increase in tuition is balanced by a decrease in state funding.  But it’s hard to find good data on this in the US so it’s going to be hard to compare.

In the UK universities have received about £10,000 (15,000 USD) in tuition and fees per student per year. This has been pretty constant with small increases over the years. Students who are not part of the EU are expected to pay the fees in their entirety "up front". EU students who are not part of the UK pay £6000 a year up front. For UK students the rules vary amongst Scotland, Wales, and England. In Scotland university is free for Scots. I am not sure how much, if anything other Brits pay. In England, the fees just rose from £4000 to £9000. Students don't have to pay until after they graduate and begin making more than £25,000 a year.

Are they allowed to discriminate between UK and EU students?  I ask because in Sweden I was told that Sweden could not legally ask different tuition fees from Swedish and EU-outside-Sweden students.

In Scotland, undergrad degrees are free for Scottish students and for EU citizens. English, Welsh, and NI students, however, have to pay the same fees as they would pay in those respective places, so about £9000 a year. This is because in the EU, all EU citizens have to pay "home rates" for Uni throughout the EU. However, fees can vary INSIDE a country. Thus Scotland, in the spirit of reciprocity, conforms to EU rules and charges EU students nothing, but charges English students as much as a Scottish student would be charged to study in England.

Technically Scottish Unis charge fees but they are waved by the government. And you only get a certain number of years paid for to complete your undergrad degree: the 4 years of the Scottish degree (English degrees are only 3 years) plus 1 or 2 more for various circumstances.


text:
How should I cite an invited paper?
My discipline is Telecommunication engineering and I am writing a paper for an IEEE journal. I want to cite an invited paper published in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. My question do I need to mention in my citation that the paper is invited? If yes, how? As part of the original article name or the journal name or somehow else? Same with correspondence papers which are not full length articles, but short ones on some emerging area. What does IEEE say about it?

No, cite it as you would any other paper. You do not mention the paper status (“invited paper”, in your case; “review paper”, “perspective”, “editorial”, etc.) in the citation, unless that is formally part of the title (which it typically is not), or unless the citation style explicitly calls for it (IEEE does not, and I know no citation style that does).
In IEEE's templates and LaTeX classes, the only place which mentions invited papers is a command to indicate when your paper is an invited paper (here for IEEEtran):

Special paper notices, such as for invited papers, can be declared with:
\specialpapernotice{(Invited Paper)}

A nitpick: "paper status" sounds to me like something that includes "in review" or "submitted", both of which should be mentioned to make clear that e.g. a seemingly conference-published paper is not yet accepted at the time of the citation. (I am not sure what to call "invited paper", though; maybe "paper type" (sounds fine for the other examples you provided), or "paper submission mode".)


text:
How old is too old for a PhD?
Are there any age limits (formal, informal, or guidelines) that schools use when deciding to accept someone into a PhD program? I'm most curious about the upper age limits. For example, will most schools accept someone in their 40's? How about their 50's?

Personally I would be heavily surprised if a university does use age as a factor especially if one is still in the working age range

Related q: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/902/age-and-graduate-school

possible duplicate of I want to do research but I'm too old for a PHD

I'm a little surprised this is being marked duplicate of a question which was posted 2 years after this question was posted (July 2014).

@earthling few years ago, an 80-year old student in my uni graduated with a PhD.

In the last week I read of a couple with a combined age of 142 (as headline writers like to put it) both graduating with doctorates in archaeology: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/double-doctorates-in-archaeology-for-sligo-grandparents-1.2892714

@ShaneORourke Maybe there is a wordplay with archaeology there...?

I would say there is no "too old."  But there is such a thing as lacking the ability to competently fulfill the requirements of the task you are undertaking.  Things such as the ability to adequately master new knowledge, or deal with the stresses that come with said work.

Dead. Dead is too old for PhD.

Possible duplicate of Age and Graduate school

@RichardErickson The link you posted in clearly related. However, that link is about how accomplishments are viewed in the light of age and this question is simply whether or not there are any hard limits on age. I consider them distinct but I'll leave it for the community to judge.

I would imagine most institutions would consider it discriminatory to judge on age, and in some places it would just be illegal. The real consideration is always whether the prospective candidate has a reasonable chance of success. Having appropriate education, or a reasonable substitute is of course the main criterion, though demonstrating research-level ability always helps (research publications etc.).
Personally I have seen PhD candidates of all ages. There's some skew to the distribution across disciplines (business and history for example often have higher proportions of older doctoral candidates than, say, mathematics), but this seems to be more a socio-cultural thing than any institutional influence.

I completely agree with this post. There was a 6x year old PhD candidate in my old group that worked 4 days of the week for a company, while 1 day in the week he would be working on his research. He needed a bit longer than more 'traditional' PhD candidates but still finished his PhD successfully.

@bas what university was this? I doubt top schools allow for part time PhDs. Must be a state school, or some European country?

It was at a European institute yes, with his PhD being funded by his company.

At the university where I work, there are no limitations or guidelines on appropriate age ranges for a Ph.D., and I'm sure this is true throught the US since age discrmination would be illegal.  In practice, we see the opposite problem regarding age: the application rate in mathematics is very low after the mid-20's, although we would be happy to consider older candidates.  It may be that they just aren't interested in applying (if you have a family or are used to earning a high salary, then going back to school may be difficult or unappealing; furthermore, everyone is exposed to enough math in childhood that perhaps relatively few people first discover a fascination with it at an older age).  However, I fear that there are people who would really like to go back and get a Ph.D., but who do not apply, because they believe they are too old to do mathematics research or because they do not believe they will be admitted.  That would be sad, since I've known several extremely successful mathematicians who entered grad school well beyond the typical age.

If only your message was more widely publicized!  I'm writing as a mid-50s PhD student who looked at dozens of department web sites at top research universities. I can't remember a single mention of older applicants and whether they'd be well received or successful in those PhD programs.  I had to in-person interviews, and neither said anything positive about older applicants.

I'm 65 and now applying to grad schools (computer science).  I just completed my second MS (in CS), the first earned many decades ago in mathematics. I'm only applying to some highly ranked programs. We'll soon see!   :-)

This is a slightly different view of some issues raised in a recent answer.
That answer stated some of the disadvantages of being a mature PhD student, but missed several major advantages that mature students can have, especially if they have worked in their field of study.
I worked in the computer industry from 1970 to 2002, when I left to become a CS graduate student, completing my PhD in 2009.
Long hours. The article asked "Are you ready to pull all-nighters and push yourself to the limit (mentally and physically)?". I was definitely not ready to pull all-nighters, and never needed to. I had spent decades on projects far more complicated than one student's studies, and knew better than to leave a hard-deadline task until just before the deadline.
Over-long working hours lead to mistakes and reduced productivity. It is much more efficient to mix work with plenty of sleep and a reasonable amount of exercise and relaxation. Mature students have had more time to get work-life balance under control than recent graduates.
Not well paid. The article seemed to assume financial dependence on the PhD program. That is true for most recent graduates. Mature students, especially after successful careers in a technical field, may have other financial resources. I supported myself and paid my tuition out of my investment income while living in a house I owned.
Background knowledge. This is the area where a mature student may have the biggest advantage. There is an immense difference between passing an undergraduate course in a topic and spending several years of one's working life living and breathing it.
Staying employable in the computer industry for decades requires continuous study. I had already read some of the assigned papers for seminar courses, and earlier editions of a couple of course textbooks. Studying was easier in college because I could get advice on what to read, saving me the effort of working out what I was going to need to know next year.
After the PhD. In my case I took a year off to celebrate after the PhD, and enjoyed it so much I retired. I can still use my skills answering questions on StackOverflow, helping a college robotics team, and participating in open source software development. That is an option I would not have had thirty years earlier.
If I had looked for paid work, I would not have considered jobs as a postdoc or similar. That would ignore almost all of my resume. I was more likely to return to industry, because I prefer a pure technical path that the academic world does not seem to offer.

I think my answer was misread. I didn't want to point shortcomings of mature graduate students. I simply wanted to put out there some issues that one should think about before plunging in, according to my limited experience. In your case, you had all the correct answers and succeeded. Good for you! However, I've seen mature PhD students failing because they didn't think about these stuff. I simply wanted to say "Follow your heart, but make sure you think about these points before they bite you!"

@electrique I didn't see your answers as pointing out shortcomings, but as having been written very much from a young person's point of view.

+1 Just got my PhD at 57. Didn't work long hours. Was able to do most of my research during work hours because my area of research was of interest to the company, so I had a good income.

I know this is an older question but recently similar questions have popped up. So, I'll give my input as a recently graduated PhD.
My answer: It's never late to do a PhD, but you need to be well informed what you are signing up for. I explain.
Long hours. During my PhD I needed to work crazy hours. It's a creative process that can consume all your time. I was thinking about my work day and night. It's easy to say that I'll work 8-5 on my PhD, but I don't know any PhD student that managed to do that. You can count for lost weekends, lost vacations, sleepless nights before the big conference deadline, etc. Are you ready to pull all-nighters and push yourself to the limit (mentally and physically)? Is your family ready to accept this state of living? Will your wife/children (if any) show understanding?
Not well paid. Then, it's the financial part. Some PhD positions are well-paid, some positions (e.g. in most UK unies) you just survive, and other are unpaid. At the age of XX, you are probably used to some specific quality of life. Are you willing to sacrifice this for doing a PhD? If the position is paid, then does the salary cover your current expenses? If it's unpaid, do you have the financial resources to support yourself and your family for 4-5 years?
Background knowledge. How up-to-date are you with the current developments in your field? Many people start their PhD right after the master studies, thus they are in the studying mood and usually are up to date. You might be required to take some of those graduate level courses. These assume some background knowledge. Do you have / remember that? Especially in technical fields, you need to keep updating all the time...
After the PhD. Then it's the reason. Why do you want to do a PhD? Is it for the knowledge? After the PhD, what do you dream to do? If you plan for an academic career, you should know that you'll have to start from a lower position (postdoc, lecturer, etc.) and work your way through the ranks. Early-stage academic positions demand a huge amount of time. If you want to go for industry positions with PhD requirements, they usually have an experience requirement, so be prepared to start low.
My experiences. I believe age by itself is not a problem. I've had a colleague in his 40s doing a PhD and he did an excellent job. On the other hand another student in his 50s that gave up after 6 months. His computer skills were very bad and it was clear that he lacked (or had forgotten) key knowledge in the field (electrical engineering). Although we all tried to help him out, the pressure was too high and at the end of the day, you have to carry your own weight.
Good luck in whatever you decide!

I recall one case at Ohio State where someone who had retired from the US Army at age 55, then entered graduate school in mathematics.
Ohio State also had a program where tuition is waived for anyone over age 65 (or was it 60?).  I recall a few such people taking a graduate course in math, but none working on a Ph.D.

The University of Maryland has a similar program.

My great aunt took advantage of such a program at a college in Brooklyn, amassing two additional undergraduate degrees. She was a student until she passed away at age 100.

I received my PhD at the age of 65.  I have a job working in my humanities profession as an adjunct and getting the expected pay for it.  I have been hired for the maximum amount of hours permitted. My department chair seems to like me. My position is not a lucrative one but a retirement job. It is a job where I can research and write at my leisure without worrying about having to publish.So, jobs are out there and if being in your 30s, 40s, 50s plus is stopping you, think about what you really want from academia -- careers in teaching colleges are increasingly going on-line. The old-time professor has retreated to the nursing home. Academia is now more about corporate structure and business modeling. All academics should have updated computer skills and ready to learn anything new placed upon the desk. Publish on line. Team up with younger co-workers. Be passionate about the job at hand. In some ways, I am lucky.  I do not need a tenured position. In surveying the field, I'm not sure I would want one.

It really depends on which institute you are attending. I did my undergrad at UC Irvine where it was very rare to see older grad students. Most grad students at UCI were accepted directly from their undergraduate programs but at the University of Nevada School of Medicine (UNSOM)  where I am doing my PhD, most students have a few years of experience and so are a few years older ~30+. It never hurts to call the program head directly.

I am 73 and in my second year of a PhD program. It will be my second doctorate - the first in law and this one in sociology. I also have an MBA which I earned after I became 70 years of age.
I really never think about my age; I just do it because it's what I want to do.

That's inspiring

This truly is a super thread and posts like yours are so heartening, inspiring. Thank you and all the best for your phd!

If we agree that PhD holder at any level in academic position primary duty is to stimulating young scholars to correct path then expertise is vital. Consider a professor with years of experience in industry can profoundly support youth to learn meaningful objects than naïve one. the most shortage in developing countries academic education clearly is that scholars really don't know what is expecting them after graduation. skillful professor equipped with advanced theory and IT capability has profound affect positively rather very young tyro who still needs help. the best age in my opinion for PhD is in range of 35-45.

No age is too old, but your prospects for what happens after - what you might be able to do with your degree - do change.

It always amazes me that there are so many questions about what the maximum age for a PhD is and none about what the minimum "age" (experience) should be.
In my opinion, no one should be awarded a Ph.D. without a minimum of 20 years of professional experience. With the sole exception of doctorates "honoris causa" that could be awarded at any age, to recognize the merits of the true geniuses that so rarely appear.
Therefore, every educational institution should not only allow, but prioritize, the return of professionals who can contribute knowledge and experience in their work areas and want to share his/her knowledge in the form of a thesis.
At least in my country every year there are thousands of new doctors under 30, whose PhD thesis do not deserve the wood of the tree in which they have been printed.

Are you sure you are not confusing a phd degree with a medal for successful professionals?

First, it's (where I am) 3-4 years after a master degree. Next, a phd is a recognition that one did useful scientific research, not that one revolutionized the world. This one can do after 9 years of studying. Just like a Bachelor degree is saying that the person knows the basics of their field, a phd degree does not say that the holder is the best. Also, it would be bad to generally give degrees only to industry researchers as companies do not do research for mankind's advancement, just to make more money. For example, I don't know of any progress in companies regarding literature science

(@user111388) NP problem: a problem that allows an exponential number of articles and thesis stating that they are better than the previous one.

I don't understand what is this supposed to mean. Anyway, a phd thesis does not have to be better than the ones before. I think the recognition you are looking for is a "professorship".

A PhD is not a DSc. The latter is all but forgotten and the former is often used as if it were the latter. All of this is a bit strange and the result of a convoluted history, but this is where things stand.


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I am preparing the presentation of a co-authored research, who owns the copyright?
I have a question about copyright. When I make a presentation based on my research (together with co-authors from other countries), who owns the copyright of the presentation? I think, only I have the copyright since I give credit to my co-authors.
The problem is now that the university (I'm living in Germany, if that is important) tells me that they have to copyright on my talks since they pay me.
Do you have any answer for this or any comments?

There is a difference between exclusive right of use and non-exclusive right of use. Does your university just want to distribute copies of your presentation, or do they want to stop you from distributing it without their consent?

You have to give credit to your co-authors. But they are still your co-authors and as such also have certain rights of use. The university can have a right to get some license from you (e.g. for distributing it via their web site). However, legally they need to get a license from all co-authors as well.  This is a most complicated situation if co-authors are not employees of your university and are even in other countries. But usually the purpose of a presentation is to make it public, so  asking "Can we put it to the web site?" yields a "Go ahead." - and that's a license.

German copyright is very different from UK or US copyright. In German law, copyright always belongs to the author(s), and cannot be given away. What you can give away are the various rights of use.
The question here thus should be whether your university has a right to use your presentations, potentially even an exclusive right to use them. In the case of computer programs, §69b of the German copyright law explicitly states that the employer has the exclusive right to use the work.
I am not sure whether a lawyer could argue that your presentation is a computer program - maybe he could if it is a tex file :). Otherwise, as F'x writes, it depends on your work contract. If there is not an explicit statement in your work contract that the university has the right to use any copyrighted works that you authored during your employment, they will generally not have such rights. In the typical employment contracts at German universities, such statements are not included.

+1 for “The question here thus should be whether your university has a right to use your presentations, potentially even an exclusive right to use them”. This is the conclusion I reached while reading the Wikipedia page quoted in my answer.

I think a presentation would be treated more like a text, or figures, or a movie, not like a computer program. There the employer has rights to obtain rights of usage, but it is not automatic as with  programs, and the author usually retains more rights. However if this is a German university, the OP should definitively have a look at his working contract: many PhD students have contracts that actually don't cover the research work. The wages are paid for teaching seminars etc. And things are yet different with scholarships...

Post-scriptum: in addition to the answer below, there are a few things that are crystal-clear:

The copyright of figures already published has probably been transferred to the publisher; copyright transfer agreements usually allow you to reüse them for academic talks and the like, but you don't own copyright for those.
If you use text or figures produced by others (and not already published), then you don't own copyright for those.

Such questions are very specific and are best answered by a professional, also known as lawyer. In fact, it certainly depends on the country your work in, but also the type of contract you signed with them. But, anyway…
Under US law, the copyrightable by-products of research (articles, talks, book chapters, etc.) are generally not considered as work-for-hire, and thus you retain authorship. Citing Wikipedia:

However, articles published in academic journals, or work produced by freelancers for magazines, are not generally works created as a work for hire, which is why it is common for the publisher to require the copyright owner, the author, to sign a copyright transfer, a short legal document transferring specific author copyrights to the publisher. In this case the authors retain those copyrights in their work not granted to the publisher.

(I don't regard Wikipedia as a particularly authoritative source, but it happens to match the existing practice of requesting authors to transfer copyright to journal publishers, not their universities.) It's somewhat of a gray area, in that some institutions actually claim such ownership, and the merits of such claims have not (to my knowledge) been much tested in court.
Note that situations can be more complex than that. For example, it seems that in German copyright law employment grants the employer an exclusive license to your work:

While exclusive licences are almost as powerful as copyright transfer, the author always retains some rights to the work, including the right to prevent defacing and to be identified as the author. Employment agreements are frequently construed as granting the employer an exclusive licence to any works created by the employee within the scope of his obligations.

In practice, an exclusive license is pretty much equivalent to a copyright transfers, because the only rights you retain are minor.

Just a comment about the copyright transfer: check with the journal you're publishing in about the rights you still retain. Most allow you to re-use your own work (e.g., use an image published in a journal article as a figure in a presentation).

+1 for Ask a lawyer.  However, if you want an objective answer, do not ask your university's lawyer.

I'm going to answer this question based on my understanding of copyright law in the United Kingdom. The general principles are likely to be the same in German law, however, for a definitive answer, you should consult an expert in German copyright law. I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice in any jurisdiction.
The author of a literary work - in this case your presentation - is usually the first owner of the copyright in that work.
However, if that work was created in the course of employment, then the copyright in the work belongs to the employer.
The phrase in the course of employment requires careful consideration in such cases. I assume that you are an employee of your university, and that you were employed to conduct research. I suspect that you were also expected, as part of your employment, to create presentations of your research. I assume that these expectations were put in a contract of service - the usual case for a university researcher. This is distinct from obligations under a contract for service - which would be more common if you were commissioned to produce a specific piece of work.
If you were employed to conduct and report research as part of a contract of employment - the most likely case given what I know of your situation - it would appear that any copyright in your presentation rests with your employer, the University.
You mention co-authors. I assume that these are co-authors of the publication(s) regarding the research which you are describing in your presentation. If this is the case, and your co-authors did not contribute to the creation of the presentation itself, then the copyright in the presentation rests with solely you as first author or, by virtue of employment, solely with your employer (the most likely situation, as I read it).
If, on the other hand, your co-authors contributed to the creation of the presentation itself, then they - or their relevant employers - may be entitled to be considered joint owners of copyright in the presentation.
I have been discussing the copyright of the presentation - not the copyright arising in any research publication. I assume that you have included in your presentation items such as pictures, plots or graphs which appeared in your research publication. It is most likely that copyright for these works vests with the publisher of the research article.
If this is the case - that your research has been published (including, for example a graph) and that the copyright in that publication has been assigned to the publisher (again, the usual situation), then the use of that work in another work  - e.g. using a graph from that publication in your presentation - may be considered an infringement of the copyright in the publication.
There is an exception to copyright infringement in several copyright laws which permits the use of copyrighted works for educational or research purposes. In this case, your University may well lay claim to copyright in your presentation as a literary work by virtue of their employment of you, however, they may also have to consider that they are able to use the copyrighted works included in that presentation (the plots, graphs etc, the copyright of which is held by the publisher of those works, e.g. the research journal) if the use is for research or teaching purposes. If, for example, the University decides to include your presentation - including a plot published in your original research paper - in a book, and then sold that book, the University is likely to require a licence from the journal which holds the copyright in the plot.


text:
Online resources for summer schools in software engineering?
I'm looking for an online resources that lists all summer schools of the actual year in a specific domain. Are there any sites? I just found one: Summer Schools in Europe, but this site seems to be a little bit outdated and doesn't have a lot of summer schools.
In my case, I'm focused on software engineering and Europe. But if it is a world-wide source I wouldn't mind.

You should also check this list.

Take a look at Dagstuhl Seminars. In that space some summer (and winter) schools on SE are frequently offered.
Their list is updated very frequently, and they make available a schedule of events about to happen for a couple of years. This way, you can organize your time (and money) to attend any school.

Dagstuhl Seminars are typically, though maybe not exclusively, invitation only, and are generally not summer/winter schools per se. (That said, there may be some schools offered.)

For software engineering maybe you can find sth here.

You can check ABC Business Academy Summer School. It's not software engineering specific, but it hits the broader scope of the topic.


text:
Can a response paper agree with the initial paper, or must it disagree?
A paper describes a computational method for solving a problem, and we made a significant improvement to the method and applied it to a new case study. Is it appropriate to publish a response paper?
Most response papers I've seen dispute the findings or methods of the paper they are responding to. Is it reasonable to write a response paper which agrees with the initial paper?
EDIT: It wasn't very clear when I first posted this, but the "response paper" I refer to is a specific mechanism that journals have for responding to an existing paper published in their journal. This is often called a comment or discussion paper. At Nature, they're called "brief communications arising". I might be the only one that calls it a "response paper," actually...

In general, 'comments' can be comments in support or comments in disagreement. Usually people tend to only submit comment when they are moved strongly to point out  a disagreement.
But, as question specifically referred to Nature's "brief communication arising" (BRA)  the answer is NO.  The BRA  notes that "Submissions should challenge the main conclusions of the Nature paper and contain new, unpublished data to support the arguments.". (i.e., pointing out errors, reinterpreting conclusions, coming to a different end result, comments to refute). Showing that there is an alternative method that is better than that presented in the paper doesn't seem to fall under that 'challenge' to the paper. (Unless perhaps you can write it as challenging some final conclusion that their method is the best possible ever? )
They offer the option to add extensive comments under the paper on the website. But then it will be difficult for others to be able to cite or even find your work. It sounds as if you should find a journal and submit your  your method as improvement in XX algorithm/method, citing the original Nature paper.
For comments and criticism there is a brilliant new service of pre- and post-publication reviews called Publons. For example, a recent and very harsh criticism of a sensational paper in Nature. Each review is assigned a DOI, so others may easily cite your comments. Also, it is well covered with Altmetric, which provides quite a visibility to your comment. Yet, no official impact factor for you reply publication.

After reading a little more I realized that the "response paper" system that journals use is almost always structured as three publications: 1. Original article 2. Respondent's critical comment 3. Original author's response. So there would be very little point in the respondent agreeing with the original author because then the third publication would be something like this.

The last paragraph is an addition to my answer. I might have not included the word 'brilliant'  as a descriptor as it is not in mainstream use, (i.e. people like me  (Carol) would likely be going the traditional  'comment' route mentioned earlier)  but as a statement of fact, it is a new service.

Uh yeah, I'm pretty sure the edit system is not supposed to be used for expanding an answer like this, especially in this case where the new paragraph doesn't address my question directly. That's what comment system or Community Wiki is for.

Every paper, in some way, is a response to everything that it cites. You can respond in agreement as much as you can in disagreement. An improvement is a positive response and you might couch it more in terms of a follow-on or follow-up without having to be negative about the prior results.

I'm not asking about "every paper," I'm asking about a response paper. i.e. what Nature calls "brief communications arising"

@foobarbecue, maybe you should add that to your question. I didn't know you meant something formal, so I gave an informal/philosophical response.

Ok, added. extra characters.

To be direct,

Not always

A response paper with respect to an initial paper, X, can come under one or more of the following categories.

A method that can outperform what is prescribed in X
An improvement over the method implemented in X
A conflict of results with that of X
A different approach to the problem stated in X
A sequel to X by providing additional information or different analysis

From the above, only 1, 3, and probably 2, applies so as to disagree with the initial paper, X.


text:
Single or double thesis for double major?
I am having a double major in my BSc, first one is Electrical and Electronic Engineering and second one is Computer Science [probably it was a bad idea because my cgpa is low, but anyways I have decided to do it]. Now it is time for thesis. Since both of the major are closely related, either I can go for a single big thesis that is something in between both of the courses or I can go for two different thesis. Now the thing I am concern about is that, single thesis or double thesis which one will look good at my Masters Admission Application?

what will be considered more valuable at my masters application?

In which field are you applying for a master's? Regardless, my advice would be to write one thesis. Two theses would be a huge amount of work, and it sounds like workload is already an issue for you if your gpa is dropping.

Write one thesis, so you only have to write one introduction and discussion section, and only have to go through the thesis formatting nightmare once. If you prefer two small projects, you can make two projects two separate chapters for your thesis and just try and figure out a way to relate them in your introduction and discussion.
Make the title of your thesis sound applicable to the field of study you want to get your masters in (no one will read your undergrad thesis on the admissions committee and I doubt anyone will care whether you wrote two theses or one).
You say you have a low GPA. Perhaps two smaller projects (still for one thesis) will allow you to collaborate with two different professors. Why is this advantageous? Because that is potentially two very strong letters of recommendation. Many undergrads have one good letter of recommendation and the rest are just professors that taught a course they took. If you have two very strong letters, that is quite impressive, and will do more to get you into graduate school than anything related to your thesis, short of publishing it in a peer reviewed journal.


text:
In which situations can I claim that additional data is needed for an existing research paper?
I wanted to write about a certain computer science topic, and after a while I figured out that the same research question was taken already. Still, I think that not all problems where addressed in this paper so I believe there's still room for me to conduct my research, and additional data would do be needed. Also, looking at the current research paper, I think it lacks enough motivation.
I'm finding it tricky to justify that. Any help or similar experiences are appreciated.

Isn't this a good question for your advisor? Lay out your concerns and ideas to them.

A paper rarely addresses all problems and it is normal for other papers to follow.
However, a paper that lacks motivation needn't demand a subsequent paper. That said, you might be able to identify new applications for the paper, which could merit a new paper.
If you're finding it tricky to justify [a new paper], then perhaps no new paper is needed.