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How to choose a post-doc offer
I was offered a post-doc position at 2 institutions where I was invited for an interview by a PI.
I am also invited for 2 more interviews the next couple of weeks at different institutions.
Both institutions who sent the offer letter are expecting an answer and I think they assume that I will accept the offer. This is what I got from the conversation.
I am really confused because I do not want to ruin my reputation if they get upset when I do not accept their offer. All what I did is that I showed interest during the interview. Is there any advice on how to professionally decline an offer without offending the PI. Also what is the best advice on how to choose between the 2 offers? Should I go to the 2 scheduled interviews or would I be confusing myself even more?

I would check out the postdoc tag. There are many related questions and answers on this site. Here is one: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16063/what-is-the-best-way-to-turn-down-a-postdoc-offer?rq=1

Does this answer your question? What is the best way to turn down a Postdoc offer?

Please ask one question per post.  Attend interviews if you might accept the job.

(1) It is perfectly normal to reject offers. The other side (professors, universities) rejects application every time they make an offer, and they know that, often, applicants apply to more than one position. You might want to be open about this, i.e. that you are considering another offer at a different institute as well.
(2) How to choose which offer is best depends on many factors, a lot of which are personal. Where do you want to work in terms of location, which institute fits your personality and ideal workplace, which group is bigger/smaller/more successful/gives more room for personal contribution? What about salary/teaching obligations/availability of lab space/equipment and research participants (if you need some)...
Ask some questions during the interviews to see which place suits you best. Maybe even walk around in the city, if this is of importance for you.
(3) As pointed to in (2), go to both interviews and then ask for information that will help you make your decision.


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Is above average number of years spent on PhD considered a red flag in future academia or industry positions?
I am currently working on my PhD in a Canadian university. I already had a master's degree before joining the PhD program. In my department (chemical engineering), the normal timeline for getting a PhD is 3.5-4.5 years (if joined with a prior master's degree). We take only 2 courseworks in the first semester. More are taken if the advisor or the committee instructs one to do so. Rest of the time is dedicated to research, TAship, etc...
However, due to my own mistakes (taking too much time initially to explore the research area and scope) and wrong decisions (investing too much time of a day in developing my hobby), I will be defending later this year with the total PhD duration equalling 5 years 4 months.
I will have 4 publications (in decent journals) by the time I graduate. I also have couple of other works that will eventually get published. I am not concerned about my publications record at the moment as that's something in my control and which is directly proportional to the hard work I put in the future.
My question is: Will my above average number of years spent on a PhD be considered a red flag in future academia or industry positions?

Perhaps it is a false notion that time spent on phd is indicative of ones future outlook, but i can see asking how often it is used for hiring,etc.

Indeed, it hardly seems important.

If it were, half of all Ph.D.s would be red flagged (pedant's note; assuming symmetrical distribution).

One particularly sluggish student started his Ph.D. in 1970 but only graduated in 2008! His excuse was that he got rather side-tracked while playing in a band.

I've protected this question since it's drawing a number of mini-answers that would likely do better as comments.

@jakebeal: The difference between comments and answers is not their length. Mini-answers are not valid comments. (Doesn’t mean that it was wrong to protect though.)

@Wrzlprmft Right: my concern was less about length than about quality.

@jakebeal: My previous comment still holds if you replace length with quality. But we digress.

@OscarBravo: That's nice, but Mr. May probably isn't getting tenure track anywhere other than a recording studio.

@Wrzlprmft Digression? On Stack-Exchange? How could that ever happen?...

I'm pretty sure this question has been asked before.

It's well known that there is a significant amount of variability in the time that it takes for a student to finish a PhD, particularly in programs with more rigorous standards. My own graduate department, for example, preferred people to finish in 5-6 years, but was somewhat infamous for allowing some to take as long as 10 years.
In fact, I would venture to say that it is the opposite. I would typically consider it a red flag if somebody took a shorter than usual amount of time to obtain their Ph.D. Typically if you have a really good student, you don't graduate them faster, but instead you graduate them in the normal time but with a much stronger portfolio of results. Shorter-than-usual Ph.D. studies, on the other hand, are typically a sign of somebody rushing to depart the program by meeting the bare minimum of requirements.
Bottom line: if you've done good work and have good publications, the fact that you took one more year than is typical for your department will barely even be noticed, let alone held to be significant. This is even more true for most industry jobs.
If somebody does actually ask you, however, focus on the first of your reasons (time spent figuring out an appropriate area of focus) rather than the latter reason (time spent working on out-of-work projects), as the second may be of legitimate concern to future employers.

I strongly disagree with this sentiment. I have been a professor in a large university and now work in industry.

When students would enter my group, I would make it clear that they have funding for exactly X years. I do not bend the quality standards of what a PhD requires just so that somebody can accomplish this goal.

If they could not finish within the allotted timespan, then they will have to seek additional funding after that. I have one example of this occurring in the past where the student did not meet the quality guidelines, and so had to seek additional funding to continue working on their PhD

@bremen_matt So, you would not have allowed Brian May to complete then...

I make it extremely clear from Day 1 what the funding is for every student. I never had a slush fund of money that would let me support a student even for an extra month. Grants that a Prof receives are usually very specific about how the money can be spent. To even apply for a grant, you typically have to lay out a very detailed budget of personnel costs, equipment costs, travel costs, etc. I cannot use the equipment budget to pay a salary. So to answer your question... no. If I felt that the work did not merit a PhD when their funding expired, then they would not get a PhD.

If a student is close to being finished, then they can either: 1. choose to finish the PhD on their own free time, 2. Seek additional funding to continue their research, 3. Search for a job to pay their bills and work in their free time, or 4. Stop working on their PhD all together

In fairness, if it is clear that is a student  is falling behind, then I will tell them directly as soon as it is clear. I had one PhD who I had to sit down with in the first year and explain that they were falling significantly behind. I felt that this was the only fair thing to do so that they did not waste their time.

@bremen_matt Brain May probably has sufficient funds to support the extra time he needed and could probably pay the running costs of the department as well....

@bremen_matt I am glad that I was not your student. That seems to me a very rigid and punitive attitude, especially given the potential for research projects to run into problems that have nothing to do with the student.

@bremen_matt I am a long-standing member and one-time chair of my (large flagship US public top-5) department's faculty hiring committee, with several former students of my own in faculty positions.  I strongly concur with this answer.  The quality of the work matters far far more than the time to finish.

The quality of the work is the most important thing. I would not let somebody graduate if they did not meet my quality threshold just because their funding ran out. In my field, 3-4 years is the standard PhD length for somebody coming in with a Masters. You will rarely find funding longer than that, and in fact it is very difficult for me to even justify funding for longer than 4 years on the grant application. So if I saw upwards of 5 years on a CV, my thought is... why did this person take several years longer than normal? The answer better be because they produced some amazing results

@jakebeal I understand how this can feel too rigid and punitive. However, if there is no additional funding, then what do you propose I do? Tell the student to take their time? I make it clear from the beginning that I have procured them funding for X years. I can make no promises beyond that time frame. That is the truth, and telling them that they can take their time and everything will work out is just blowing sunshine

In addition the department I worked had no "department funding" as may be common in some US universities which I worked with. So there was no chance that i could easily pull money from there. There was a university-wide pool that I could recommend that the students apply for, but the stipulations from the university to get that funding were that they had to apply themselves.

@bremen_matt It's not about making promises upstart, but being good enough in planning in some buffer funding to cover for the occasion where students's Phd projects take a little longer (or shorter) than initially planned. While I don't agree with the inverse assumption of the answer - in its generality - either and it's obviously valid to stick to a fixed time employment contract, typically it's in the interest of both, student and professor that the project get's completed and not abandoned at 90%. So I'd consider it part of a prof's responsibility to plan funding budgets with buffers.

The buffer is built in. Try to finish in 3 years if you have funding for 4. I may come off as a pessimist, but my viewpoint is tainted by my experience. My PhD advisor, who was 50x more experienced and well respected than I, went through a funding dry spell of about 2 years, and during that time had to have some very difficult discussions with his students. I never want to be in that position.

@JeffE But this answer goes too far saying that time is inversely correlated with quality and that too short a Ph.D. will hurt the candidate. I agree w your experience that quality is what is important and that time is irrelevant - but that isn't what this answer says

Regarding the 2nd pargraph (shorter than usual time to PhD): I don't think we have the same perception in pure math.  If someone finishes in 4 years in the US (where the standard is 5-7), I think most people are impressed by this.  That said many people in pure math also do stay in the PhD program for longer than needed for their thesis to build up a stronger portfolio (which is a more recent trend), but if the person already has a very strong portfolio I don't think staying an extra year is that important.

@bremen_matt Absolutely - quality matters the most. If a student will take longer than their funding, discuss whether they have options to support themselves when the funding runs out. I know a lot of PhDs who took long. I also know a PhD who finished insanely fast considering his workload. He is a massively productive high achiever. One of the most driven and successful people I know. I'd say as long as the student is productive they deserve the opportunity to work out how to reach completion.

I work at a large finance/technology company and have been on the hiring team for nine new members of our department in the past two years.  Three of them have PhDs.  I've interviewed dozens of candidates and lost track of how many PhDs were among them.  I myself have a PhD, and generally look out for things like the field, subfield, years at school, etc, when I first get a resume.
I have never once brought up the amount of time anyone has done a PhD, and have never heard anyone else mention it.  By the time a room of people are discussing a candidate, we are talking about their group interview, technical challenge submission, one-on-one Q&A performance, general team fit and other characteristics that would directly affect the job.  We have a limited amount of time to discuss these things.  If a coworker ever brought up such a detail without immediately leading into a point about something greater, like a potentially dishonest resume, I would straight up ask why we are spending time talking about it.
The only exception I could conceive of is if the opening is for some sort of academic-like research position, but I have no experience hiring for roles like that (or in academia at large).
Virtually nobody in industry cares about how long a candidate takes to do a PhD.

+1 "Time to complete Ph.D." is an irrelevant detail compared to metrics with which we measure candidates.

In my department the normal time to finish is 4-6 years, but there were some cases with >6 years too.  And they are all doing fine in academia as well as industry.  As long as you have something concrete to show your output from a PhD then you should be good.

I recently hired several people for our company. If I saw that somebody took more than 5 years to get a PhD, a red flag would go off, and I would actually start looking at their dissertation to get a sense for whether the extended time was actually necessary. (5 years 4 months probably wouldn't trip my alarm though). In my view, a long period of time completing a PhD should only be warranted for an exceptional dissertation.
One way to mitigate this would be to indicate why the PhD took so long on your cover letter. For instance, one candidate took approximately 10 years, but had a severe medical issue for several of the intermittent years. That is valuable information to me as the one screening the applications.
I would just add one more point. And that is that typically, we will screen literally 100 candidates for 1 position, all with fairly similar backgrounds. So while it may seem unfair to just quickly judge a candidate based on how long it took to acquire a PhD, I will use every tool at my disposal to try to get that stack of 100 seemingly equal candidates on paper down to about 15 candidates that we can start calling for prescreening interviews.

If 5 years 4 months doesn't trip the alarm, doesn't that mean that the red flag only would go off if someone took more than 6 years?

As long as the work is solid I don't think taking more that five years should be a problem. (P.S. I'm upvoting because "this answer is useful" and provides a different point of view.)

Also +1 for the different perspective.  Not that I agree - in fact, it was my experience that advisors tried to hold onto their top-performing PhD students while they were quick to push through under-performing PhD students.  But, regardless of whatever the truth may be, that different application-evaluators will see the same information differently seems like a good point worth demonstrating.

Typically people would not actually list the fact that it is 5 + 4 months, but instead just list the months and years they started and finished. So just breezing through the applications, it would probably just look like 5 years.

As somebody who does a lot of technical interviews for consulting: In my experience up to 1.5 times the "normal" time is not a red flag under the following conditions:

Acceptable publications/results (patents, project participation) are proven
Potentially other circumstances (family, job etc)
Switch of topic/subtopic
Switch of advisor/difficult advisor
Failed approach to topic
Group moved
New field in group started (5 years in not a super-big amount of time for setting up a clean room for lithography to getting the first results)
Skills learned (Yes, in many reputable groups candidates usually are very focused on their central topic, good for academia, not so good for industry)

...and many other factors.
Most of them are to be explained/discussed in the interview, however the publication/patent/project record and skills is something which I typically check based on the CV only before deciding for an interview. Make sure that you are prepared to clarify your motivation during the interview for continuing the PHD)

I am glad you mentioned family circumstances. Many women in my program who had kids during the PhD took an “extra” year. Similarly those who were trying to time going on the market to handle a “two-body problem.” I don’t think we were penalized on the market for the time aspect.

"Red flag" is a definite exaggeration.  There is probably some correlation of faster Ph.D.s being stronger, but it is weak.  Even there, there is huge variability.
I find the variability being more with longer Ph.D.s having some very outstanding people than the converse. Disagree with the answer above that sees short Ph.D. as a red flag (or at least mild negative).  I see it as mild positive.
As for your papers, that sounds fine.  You've checked the boxes (stereotypical "three strikes and you're out").  At this point, I would not be wistful about your grad school career.  Although it is natural human instinct to be so at this stage.  It is not unusual to have some wheel spinning during this time.  But you got the job done.  Finish up and move on with a smile on your face and looking for next challenge.

I took seven years to finish my Ph.D.  As far as I can tell it's never hurt me at all.  If anything, staying longer helped a bit because CV looked better when measured in the standard unit of "years since Ph.D."

In what way? By since Ph.D. do you mean since starting or since finishing? If starting, that would mean it looked like you got your Ph.D. ages ago and so were more experienced. If since finishing, it would look like you'd just graduated and so were really up-to-date with research. I can't really figure out which you mean...

The standard measurement of "age" in academia is the number of years since you finished your Ph.D.  So your CV is usually being compared against other people who graduated at the same time, not other people who started their Ph.D. at the same time.

A PhD is a very individual experience -- most people hiring one will know this. Many people finish quickly because they have strong results, or finish late because they were doing valuable work and being well treated. Similarly, poor students might take short, ordinary, or long times as well. What matters is the quality of your academic output and the letters of reference / teaching reports etc. People will either hire you for specific things you have done or specific expertise, or they hire you for the kind of contribution you can make to their department or lab as a person, or some combination of both.

Is above average number of years spent on PhD considered a red flag...?

Not a red flag, but it could make your potentional recruiter apprehensive if it took you a very long time. How many years are we talking about here?

... PhD duration equaling 5 years 4 months.

Oh, then no problem. I mean, you won't get "magical glory points" for being very fast with your PhD, but no. You said you got decent publications, so it should be ok.
Of course, that doesn't guarantee you'll get a tenure-track offer anywhere :-(

It might but indirectly, because you are a bit older. While I don't have a picture for industry, in academia I would say that is of minor impact.
It can even don't show up in an interview or audit, when the activity of the candidate has been up, of quality, and constant.

There are some legal limitations for mentioning the years during which you studied.
For instance, in the USA the period of the academic study is not mentioned on resumes. This is to prevent employers to estimate one’s age, which is also not mentioned during the job application.
For the reason mentioned above, at least in the USA, how long it took one to do their PhD is irrelevant when they solicit a position.

In Argentina for example PhD tend to last 6 to 8 years after master studies that take around 6 years. However if there are no max age requirements to apply for further positions I don´t see why taking 5 years would be a problem.
5 years spent on a PhD with no scientific production at all, well that could be a red flag. But with 4 publications in your portfolio..... you can know for sure that you have made a decent PhD!

Hiring at the junior level in academic economics is based on the prediction of the person's future performance (at a senior level it may be partly "buying" publications for the department, thus past performance). The prediction is partly about whether the person will get tenure or not.
To predict future publication output in a specified timeframe (tenure clock), the time taken to produce the current output is helpful information. I would divide the current quality-adjusted papers by the number of years taken to produce them to estimate the output per year, then multiply that by the length of the tenure clock and compare to the tenure standard. The number of years for past output includes both the PhD and other research positions, for example research Master's, working in a research position at any institution, etc.
I do not exactly know what you mean by a "red flag", but a longer time to PhD conditional on the same output is a negative signal. The signal is continuous in the length of time, not a discrete cutoff in the style of ">6 years and you're disqualified".
A similar adjustment as for time can be made for the number of coauthors.

I would claim it is rather the opposite.
A good student you want to spend much time working together with.
A bad student just takes time and resources and gives nothing.
So it makes sense to get rid of them faster and hold on to the good ones.

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Can our thesis supervisor forced us to publish the thesis paper?
I am an undergraduate student and I wrote my thesis in a group (5 members). It is a academic procedure that in the final year we have to perform thesis which have 3.00 credits and we have a supervisor for this.
we have completed our thesis paper and everything is OK according to our supervisor, we have completed every correction in our thesis report. After every correction is done the rule is that we have to submit our thesis report in a book format(black book). After that our external and supervisor gives us mark based on our performance as it is a academical course.But thing is that now he wants to publish our paper in a journal and conference, but we don't want to publish.
Since we disagreed, he don't want to publish our result and don't want to give us marks. Does he have the right to do so? Can he forced us to publish that paper with him? Now, he wants a bond sign in a application, in the application it is included that "We are bound to our supervisor that as long as our paper won't published in two journals and one conference we can't withdraw our academical certificate and mark sheet and we all have to bear all the cost in the procedure of publication and we are bound to meet with in any circumstances it doesn't matter we are in a job or anything and we can't deny to meet with him" the main thing is that from the beginning it was not included and we were not aware of this kind of issues. This agreement was not included at the beginning. What should we do?

Could you edit your question to explain why you don't want to publish?  Usually one really wants to publish one's work.

I don't understand what you "signed". Was this at the start of the work? What does it say?

"now he wanted a bond sign in a application that we can't withdraw our certificate and mark sheet as long as our thesis paper is not published." I'm sorry, but this makes no sense.

Yeah, I (still) have no idea what you're talking about. (1) Why don't you want to publish, (2) what does your professor want you to sign -- the last paragraph makes no sense, and (3) what happens if you don't sign?

@cag51 (1) we wanted to publish but he forced us to publish the paper. if he only wanted to publish then that would be okay but the thing is that he wanted our sign in a conditional and terms application that includes as i mentioned.  if we don't sign then he will block our academical progress as well as we can't get our certificate from the varsity.

RE your first sentence -- there is an impasse because he is forcing you to do what you already wanted to do? Sorry, this is getting more confusing...

See the Dean or Head or other advisors and Don't sign anything until this is sorted.

publication is not in that procedure. only procedure from the beginning is we have to complete our thesis work, defense our paper, make a complete report and then its done. we are good to go. but he is forcing us to publish that paper with him.@cag51

Thank you for your advice. we will definitely try.@SolarMike

@BobBrown i have edited my query please read again and help me out.

@AzorAhai i have edited my query please read again and help me out

@shuvo You added a lot of unnecessary details, but it's still unclear what "a bond sign in a application" is. If you are translating something, maybe you can give the original name so someone can help you out with the English? Also, you've quoted something, but that really doesn't sound like something someone would write in an official form. Is that an actual quote from this bond?

@shuvo  OK... the problem is you don't want to pay a fee to have your work published, right?

Your professor may be expected by the school and/or funding source to publish work done with students. They may not have required you to sign that at the start because they never expected anyone to not want to publish like this.

I could not understand what the contract is about. Please use punctuation.

I cannot really understand why publishing your thesis would be a bad thing. Most students would be happy if their thesis is published.

General answer: you should talk with your undergraduate adviser. These are the people in the department of your university who specialize in resolving academic issues and conflicts, they will help you.
To me it seems that you have fulfilled the requirement (writing thesis) but now your supervisor is adding extra requirement of publishing. Maybe that was part of the deal from start, maybe it is something new. You should also mention that now the supervisor basically rescinded their approval of thesis and block your academic progress.

no that was not part of the deal from the start.

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How do I get feedback after a failed tenure-track job search?
This year I went on the job market early (one year before the end of my postdoc). I applied selectively but to about 30-40 positions across a few countries. I had one campus interview. After the campus interview, I asked for feedback and the only information I got from the hiring committee chair was vague praise and that the department just chose someone else.
Is there a better way for me to try to obtain feedback about what happened while I was on the market or about my file? I feel lost on how I can possibly make my file better without a second set of eyes.

What type of feedback are you looking for? For the position with an on-campus interview, they clearly felt you were a potential hire. But, what distinguishes the final choice from the interviewees can be hard to quantify in a way that is actionable by those not hired.

Did you apply to places where you know people? Potentially they can tell you something like "so-and-so's letter was not so great" or "I tried to get you an interview, but others felt your research is not focused enough".

On top of what @JonCuster said, some departments have a "no-feedback policy" for different reasons, but mostly because 1) nobody on the search committee is willing to spend time writing detailed feedback emails to rejected applicants, and 2) the simple fact that you got an interview is already very encouraging (it is the most difficult step, in terms of the ratio of number of applicants versus number of interview invitations) so their feedback would probably just be something like "keep trying".

I'm probably getting to close to the "American way of thinking positively no matter what", but there is no such thing as a failed tenure-track job search: it was just a first attempt, and hopefully you learned a lot from it. Your future applications will be better, you will be more apt to identify where and how to apply, you are more organized, etc.

This is more of a future advise and does not answer your question: for the next round, knock on the door of all the faculty of your current school. Asked them if they have ever been on a search committee, and if they are willing to take a look at your application and give you honest feedback on the weaknesses of your application. Most people do, even those you haven't talked to before. You can also ask for general suggestion for applying strategies and networking that would help your application.

How did you ask for feedback?  There's a difference between asking "Why didn't you hire me?" and "Do you have any suggestions for how I could be a stronger candidate in the future?"  You will still often not get anything precise back, but one way has much better odds of getting something useful.

I think it's only worth getting feedback if you didn't make the first cut (interview).  In case of interview, they consider you a qualified and potential hire.  You couldn't get meaningful feedback in those cases.

I think I have basically three advices (and I feel like you already know them):

Don't overthink it. There are millions of reasons why you may not have been a good fit for the position you applied to, and only a small fraction of them depends on you. Internal politics and unspoken needs play sometimes more than the content of your application. Don't blame yourself, that's the best way to get discouraged without being able to take action.
If possible, get inside feedback. If you knew someone in the department where you applied before applying, you may ask them (preferably in a clever way, i.e., not "Why didn't you hire me?" but "Do you have any suggestions for how I could be a stronger candidate in the future?", as pointed by Kimball). You may not get a honest feedback, you may get a disappointing answer ("Well, actually, the chair wanted to hire the lecturer from the beginning"), but it doesn't hurt to ask.
Look for fresh eyes. If you have a friend or a close colleague in the field, ask him / her to review your application (resume, cover letter, statements), your job talk, your teaching presentation (if there was one), and the list of places where you applied. That's the best kind of feedback you can obtain.

If the search committee answered your cold email with a "generic answer", don't insist. You'll never get more details, except, maybe, in a decade or two, at a conference, in a negligent way, by someone who work there.
Also, you may want to look in a couple of months at the listing of the department: you may spot who actually got the job, and compare your profiles. This information may or may not be useful, but it may to some extend satisfy your curiosity

spot who actually got the job, and compare your profiles What if their decision seems puzzling?

@Thomas : then you'll definitely know that you weren't told everything about the position, or that they had particular needs, and / or weird criteria. But you'll know for sure that it wasn't your profile that wasn't "strong enough", you just was not the best fit.

Regarding the last point, while it's a good thing to do in general, it may or may not have anything to do with how a candidate is selected once the interview stage is reached.

The fact that you've gotten to the interview stage but no further might also be because of your job talk.
I think you might want to get someone of sound judgement in your current institution to look at your presentation.
I say this because I have seen more than one promising candidate flush their chances right down the drain with an ill-planned talk. In the current hyper-competitive environment, even one mistake might be one too many.

Op had only 1 campus invitation, so I guessed (s)he gave only 1 job talk, so I'm afraid something is flawed with your premises. On top of it, I don't see how you can tell that the job talk decides everything: refusing to teach certain classes, interacting poorly with the people you meet, being too nervous during lunch… There are multiple ways to "miss" a campus visit. And, as I wrote, not getting the job doesn't mean that you "missed" your visit, it just means that someone else was a better fit, and the reasons for that could be numerous, and independent from the quality of your visit.

@Clément, your points are valid, but it is also the case that a clumsy job-talk can be fatal...

@Clément I have modified my answer slightly, but the basic point stands.

First off, comiserations on the unsuccessful job search. I'm still going through my own job search.
I can tell you how I have had some very limited success in getting feedback:

Apply to departments where you know people, even if you don't think there's a chance of getting a job there. That way people you know and trust get to see your application, which crucially includes the recommendation letters.  Seeing your whole application means they can give you helpful feedback. In particular, if one of your letters is so-so, they can tell you. Of course, they won't tell you too much due to confidentiality, but they can tell you if some letter was a bit bland or if your application on the whole seemed too narrow or something like that.
After an interview, ask for feedback from the person you know best in the department. Don't ask the department head or search chair -- they are too busy to give meaningful feedback, too senior to sympathize with you, and too smart to risk getting in trouble by leaking confidential information. Ask someone who you know that doesn't have an official role in the hiring decision.

Don't expect much in terms of helpful feedback, but anything you get is valuable.
(I've been interviewing in computer science departments, so the story may be a bit different for math.)

That strategy has the underlying assumption that a department person outside of search committee is privy to the applicant information.  It may be possible, but if the search was conducted ethically, I wouldn't expect them to know anything.

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Chances of getting accepted into a conference with conflicting reviews
I submitted my paper for publication in a very good computer science conference. When I got feedback for rebuttal:
I had one review that said my work wasn't relavant to computer networking in any way, and that they couldn't understand some abbreviations in the abstract like RIPE.
Then I had another who said that my work is very useful to the research community and even asked for a copy of the library I wrote.
Last, I had a reviewer that just told me to make my images larger and to include a better literature review.
I tried to rebut as best as I could, especially against the first review, but knowing that this is a high profile conference, what are my chances of being accepted? It really didn't seem like the first reviwer understood much of my work.

It's important to understand that conference acceptance decisions are not just a matter of adding up review scores.
There will be a discussion amongst the program committee members to weigh up the points raised by the reviews. The goal is for the PC members to reach a consensus.
If the PC decide that the negative review is not good (e.g., it seems like the reviewer doesn't understand the paper, or it raises silly objections), then that will be ignored and the paper is likely to get in.
On the other hand, it may be that the negative review makes a compelling argument or identifies a flaw that the other reviews missed. In that situation, one negative review can sink a submission.
The key thing for a selective conference is that you need someone to champion the submission and make an argument for acceptance.
In short, it's hard to tell.


text:
Is a paper a statement of personal belief (disagree with PI's writeup)?
EDIT: My field is cognitive science <- vagueness reflects broadness of subject area from social science through to basic neuroscience
Let's say some collaborators disagree on the interpretation and writeup for publication of their joint work. The rose-tinted solution usually offered is "talk it out and reach consensus".
Let's say one of the pair both is much more powerful than the other, and has no inclination to compromise. What then is the junior collaborator to do?
The fact there are not David and Goliath spats erupting constantly between PIs and PhDs/postdocs everywhere must be because
a) the situation has simply never occurred, juniors miraculously always agree with seniors, or
b) the situation has always resolved with consensus, PIs are always selfless, open and flexible, or
c) juniors capitulate silently, recognising both the necessity of conforming for their own immediate career and the apparent expectation of standing 100% behind something you had <<100% control over producing
It's the latter (italics) that I'm especially interested in and it marks the distinction between this junior scientists' dilemma and the ubiquitous "following stupid instructions angst" that all workers have.
In the non-academic working world the very practical and adequate solution usually offered is to state your concerns in writing and then meet the superior's demands to the best of your ability anyway. The goal is to distance oneself from the bad outcomes of the work by documenting one's own prior expression of misgivings, while respecting the chain of command. A further buffer against culpability for things imposed lies in the product of your work usually being "owned" by the company, not you / your reputation personally.
So somebody senior can make you produce a stupid product for the company to sell, and it is common (if not expected) that you might not have control over the final design, but you can critique and offer improvements, and if they're in writing you can point to them when nobody buys the crappy product. "I followed orders and I said this would happen".
The dilemma exists just the same for junior researchers - they get told to produce things and operate under a huge power differential. But they cannot disown what is produced in the same way. I have never seen a junior in a presentation come out and state "the experiment, collection and analysis was mine and is great, but this theoretical interpretation has nothing to do with me, take it up with my PI", for example. I suspect it would shock the audience because the culture is that every author backs every word of their collaborative output in a form of collective responsibility.
My question then is how can that collective responsibility be legitimate given the widely differing power between collaborators (especially the PI - PhD/postdoc relationship)? Is there some normative "out" that I've missed for the junior? Because if I'm right that (c) above is what happens, that means a big part of most juniors' induction into science is this coercion into complementing the emperor's new clothes.

Please add your field of research to the question. In some field much may be up to personal belief (soft sciences), in others I would say if you cannot agree and nobody can proof his statement, it should just not be included in the paper (STEM fields).

Thank you, I have added an edit

You may not have heard a junior researcher say, "the experiment, collection and analysis was mine and is great, but this theoretical interpretation has nothing to do with me, take it up with my PI," but I've certainly heard "my co-author did that bit, you'll need to speak to them."

It depends on what you mean with "come out and say" - during a paper presentation I would not say that, but in a smaller circle I have definitely heard people criticise individual aspects of their own publications.

Like @user2768, I've written to an author X of a paper (in physics) to ask for clarification of a particular point, and gotten a reply saying that co-author Y wrote that passage in the paper. (So I wrote to Y and never got an answer.)

It's a tough dynamic and there aren't universal rules. I'm not sure how to answer the original question because 'legitimate' isn't defined and the text rambles.
The central issue remains: how do varying opinions add up to a shared compromising publication in situations of unequal power? That describes almost every collaborative paper. There are many resolutions, including changing your mind based on new information. The bottom line is:
The shared paper requires compromise, and PIs have more power. Some of that asymmetry is appropriate and helpful to junior colleagues in the long-term. Some is not. If you're not comfortable adding your name to the best compromise you can find, then take yourself off the paper or don't publish it.
Also see: Can co-authors disagree in their own paper?

Thank you for getting to the crux in spite of my rambling, I would upvote you if I had the rep. My reference to "legitimacy" refers to the way in which this situation coerces dishonest statements of belief / conviction from junior researchers. The coercive nature of work is ubiquitous as I said but rarely are workers directed to behave unethically while also vouching with their own name as to the results of it. I regard "telling stories that I don't believe" as intellectually dishonest so was wondering if I'd missed some mitigation, or if science is just that ruthless (career over truth)

Happy to help. One shift I've experienced is I no longer view the published word as representative of my beliefs, but rather as a coherent, internally valid argument that might be useful. So it's fine with me if it's wrong: hopefully it's useful and clear in its wrongness, and the central point is not as a reflection of authorial intent. I would not wish you to sign your name to anything you feel is dishonest or unethical. That might be worth leaving the paper. Yes, there are certainly many pernicious incentives right now.


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Is it appropriate to use University/Company logos for Biography Slide?
I'm making a presentation for a close-group conference, and it's the first time when I am making a Powerpoint slide with my bio. I have decided to put the Academic Degrees + the acronyms of the University names as bullet points, then add the logos from each University/Company at the bottom of the slide. The reason why I would like to do that is to add Design quality to the presentation. This also leads me to the question: when is it appropriate to use logo's of universities/companies when they don't belong to you?
I saw in a previous post this advice about using the letterhead:

Once you're no longer affiliated with the university because you
  graduated or separated, then you should not use the letterhead.

Can it be the same for the logo on a presentation?

"Can it be the same for the logo on a presentation?" - it might in some way, but using a letterhead is rather equivalent to using the university's CI and slide template for the presentation. Insinuating that using an entity's letterhead is inherently equivalent to mentioning an entity (albeit by means of a graphic rather than "just" the textual name) may confuse the issue asked about.

The answers may depend on relevant local legal provisions, so you may want to state your location.

@lukeg: The answers to "is it allowed" does, the answer to "is it appropriate" maybe less so.

For information purpose this is unlikely a violation. The type of uses here is considered as nominative use. You're not infringing the institute or speaking on their behalf; it's simply "I graduated from XXX university and here is the name and the logo of that place." If you are very concerned, add a disclaimer at the bottom saying something like "Logos are for reference only, I do not represent any of these organizations."
I, however, do consider this potentially inappropriate. For audience, mentioning the name is fine, but slapping the logo, emblem, or seal onto one's work seems like a much bigger deal. I have the following concerns:

I specifically mention it because you said "design purpose." Most school have required design rules when their logo is used. For example, there can be no any alteration of color or scale, no neighboring art components, no incorporating into any other artwork, etc. If you want to slap them all side by side, or worse mashing them into a "design," chance is one of the rules could be violated. It's not a big deal usually (aka you are unlikely to get a lawyer contacting you), just bad practices. I seriously doubt a university will come after any alumni just because they showed the logo inappropriately.
Depending on the audience this action may appear insecure or show-off.
What does this add to the purpose above the name? I can see there is a point if, say, you have emblems in blue, red, and yellow colors, now you just need a green to complete your Harry Potter school color collection, then I'll think "ha, pretty funny." Otherwise, just putting the logo with the name feels redundant.

Here is a page on upcounsel if you wish to learn more. Regulations may differ geographically. Ask the schools for permission if you're in the slightest doubt.

"I, however, agree with one of the comments that this is usually deemed inappropriate." - just out of interest, may I ask which comment you are referring to? "The answers may depend on relevant local legal provisions, so you may want to state your location." does not sound to me like saying it is inappropriate, and I didn't mean to express it is inappropriate in any of my two comments (I actually think it is quite appropriate).

@O.R.Mapper, sorry, that'd be a mis-attribution after reading your comment. I have edited my answer accordingly. Thanks.

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


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How to find if a paper is in top 10% most cited articles in a journal?
I saw in some applications that some researchers state that their papers are in top 10% most cited articles, but they never state how they calculated this. I have tried Web of Knowledge and there are some metrics there, but the don't really match the text from those applications. For instance, I found this kind of formulation in one of the applications:

For the articles published Engineering category in 2015, the average
number of citations is only 1.22. This article is therefore one of the
top 10.00% most cited articles published in Engineering in 2015.

I saw that it was calculated using Google Scholar, but I don't know how they do it. Can anyone please help me to understand how can you see if you paper is in top xxx% most cited articles like in the text above? Is there a software for that? Or is there any relation with the h-index that can give that for a certain year?

Is "Engineering" a category of the journal?

I'm guessing yes, but I am not sure. In Google Scholar, there is "Engineering and Computer Science" category. I first thought that that's the one, but because I didn't understand it, I just assumed that "Engineering" might be a stand-alone category which is not in GS.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en

Did they mention the SD elsewhere?

Unfortunately not.

So now it is researchers, and not just administrative staff, who are doing the meaningless bibliometric work?

Go to Web of Knowledge and search by publication name. Then sort by citation count and find the 10% cutoff (e.g. if there have been 10,000 papers published in that journal, then the article with the 1000th highest citation count is the 10% cutoff). Then find the paper you're interested in, and see if it's above or below that 10% cutoff.

Thanks. Web of Knowledge may now "Publication Title" instead of publication name.

NB: This requires a subscription, cannot do with a free account.

In Scopus, you can use SRCID ( 17945 )  AND  PUBYEAR  =  2021 to query all publications from the journal Bioinformatics published in 2021. You can then sort by Cited by (highest). Here 17945 is the Source ID. You can find all Source IDs from Sources located at the page top.


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Mistake in replies to peer review
I recently submitted my replies to peer review to a journal. After submission I found out I had missed out on turning on track changes to the last part of my manuscript. Will this cause a problem? Do issues like this irritate journal editors and reviewers and lead to rejection of a manuscript?

Rather, it is the other way around that might of embarrassment to you.  :)

Did they specifically ask for change tracking to be turned on?  If so, then you should contact the editor and send in an updated version that meets their requirements.  If not, then don't worry about it.
Having to handle additional versions due to an author's mistake could be a little irritating to an editor or reviewer, but if they're expecting change tracking, then it would be more irritating not to have it.  Anyway, administrative issues like this, which do not affect the content of the paper, should not be a reason for rejection.

The editor may be irritated or not, but that shouldn't concern you. What you should do, however, is immediately send a corrected version with an apology. The apology should be sincere, but needn't be overly long or explanatory.
If it will take you a few days to get the manuscript ready, then immediately send an email if you can with the apology and the date he/she can expect the revision.
The editor would like to correct it quickly so as to avoid too may turns between you and the reviewers. They are interested in publishing a high quality manuscript, not in punishing authors.


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Can I write to a (prestigious) conference that I am interested in chairing a session?
I have a paper selected in a very prestigious conference in our field. Is it appropriate if I ask the contact person that I am interested in chairing any conference session? Note that I am a Ph.D. student as of now and not a faculty member or qualified Ph.D. doctor.

Why do you want to chair a session?

(i) I believe it will look good on my CV later in the future, (ii) It will give me the confidence to stand among good researchers in the room.

I think you've been misled.  I have never seen anyone list "chaired a session at conference X" on their CV, and I would literally laugh out loud if I did.  Your reason (ii) could make sense.

Yes, it's okay to volunteer to chair a session, but there is not a lot of benefit to it and you might be turned down.  People may see it as unusual, since it's not a prestigious job (certainly nothing to list on your CV).
It's important to have a chair who can keep the session running on time, provide appropriate introductions, and sometimes ask a question if there are no questions forthcoming from the audience.  These are fairly easy tasks, but if I was organizing the conference and I didn't know you, I probably wouldn't agree to let you chair since I don't know how capable you are in these regards.

In those (computer science) conferences I know, the PC chairs typically ask members of the program committee to volunteer as session chairs. If there are not enough PC members present during the conference, the PC chairs will ask other participants whom they assume to be sufficiently familiar with the topics of the session. They will certainly not ask a random PhD student whom they don't know.

For a very junior person, chairing a session could be significant service item to put on their CV, actually.  But conversely, somebody who is only a student is very unlikely to get to serve as a session chair.

You need to be able to stand up and stop big shots from talking if they exceed their time. I have seen chairs turning the mic off for people overrunning their time. Do you want to be the one shutting up some big guy?
Plus, you should think of questions to ask for every talk in your session, to avoid silent embarrassment after the talk if nobody else asks questions. There are cool talks where this is easy, but for some tedious ones this can be like squeezing blood from a stone.
I should say, it's a bit like in the army: if you are asked to chair, do it without making a fuss, but don't volunteer...

+1 to "Do you want to be the one shutting up some big guy?" For someone still in their early-stage career, this can be really really bad. Good point!


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How to address contradictory comments from two reviewers?
I have got reviews for a Survey paper in IEEE Communication Surveys and Tutorials.
I have got contradictory comments from two reviewers (R-I and R-II)
The first reviewer R-I says that the tutorial part (Section III, and IV) is too lengthy and the Survey is too short (Section V). He asked me to shorten the tutorial and expand Section V. The other reviewer R-II, on the other hand, says to shorten Section V? How can I address this? I do not want to shorten and remove important bits in Section V. Can I mention to the R-II that "I have been asked by R-I to expand this Section and since it is a survey, we tried to cover a large part of the topic" ?

Does this answer your question? How to resolve: Reviewer #1 says remove section X vs. Reviewer #2 says expand section X

I would tell R-I that your goal is to provide a tutorial to readers new to the area.  Note this as part of the aims/goals of your paper.  As for expanding the survey part, does he/she have a reason for that?  maybe you missed some literature? maybe you didn't provide sufficient qualitative analysis? this journal requires tonnes of discussions to help a reader compares and contrasts between works.  Maybe your discussions are superficial?   Similarly, for R-II, you can provide your rationale for having a 'long' Section V.  My advice is not to email the editor.  That's a waste of time.

While the other question noted by GoodDeeds may answer your question, let me note that the paper remains yours. The editor has probably seen the reviewers and is aware (or should be) of the contradiction.
I think the two reviewers had different needs. One had the knowledge so didn't need the tutorial and the other wanted to be informed generally. Think about that and about the balance, but the paper is yours. Think about whether there are really two papers here, though a tutorial alone might not be enough for publication.
The proper way (IMO) to respond to reviewers is to edit the paper taking their views into account, but not necessarily taking every bit of advice, which is impossible here in any case. And your suggestion about a response to the second reviewer is more appropriately sent to the editor.
Since it is the editor who will make the decision here, ask them for advice about the tutorial material and how including/excluding it from the paper would affect the decision to publish. Let the editor argue with the reviewers if necessary.

So do you suggest that I email the editor prior to submitting my revised version and review response, asking for clarifications?

@Sjaffry I would. Perhaps even ask for a quick call.

Asking first might save some time overall.

@Sjaffry Come with a plan, though. Tell the editor what you plan to do based on conflicting reviews, ask them to rule on whether that approach makes sense to them.

@user2768 'a quick call'? This just doesn't happen in my area!

@Prof.SantaClaus Make it happen ;-) Just ask the editor. It's uncommon, which is illogical, since it'd get things done far faster.

I would do what you think is right and let the editor make the final suggestions if any for changes.
I once reviewed a paper for a world class expert who was busy and asked me to do it.  Not that I am a slouch but still they use the reviewers they can get who seem to know something about the topic.
Also, reviewers prefer different styles of writing a paper.  The editor is the one you should please not the reviewer.


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How to write a thesis to transform into a book?
I am starting to write my thesis by the start of August this year.
I want to write it in a format so that later I can publish a book out of it.
How is it possible? Any suggestions?
Also, does this account for self-plagiarism? What are the key points I should keep in mind before start writing?

I would just focus on writing the thesis. If it is good enough to be published as a book, you will know when it is done. Regardless of what you do now, getting it into publishable form is going to be a huge job, and the problems will only become apparent once your thesis is finished. So what you do now is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to publishing your thesis as a book.

+1 Someone once told me that a PhD thesis is a very bad draft of a potentially very good book. It's plainly impossible to go right to the good manuscript and skip the shitty drafts.

For another view on this see William Germano, From Dissertation to Book. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/288463.html The author says, and I agree, that a dissertation can be turned into a book successfully.
Some differences between a dissertation and a book: topic (narrow vs broader), purpose (demonstrate knowledge to superiors vs inform learners), audience (faculty vs students & nonacademics), style (purely academic vs appealing, readable, comprehensible), and author authority (frequent citation of previous works for credibility vs creating something new from a position of your own authority). Academic presses don't make a lot of money from book sales, and they don't want to lose money on your book, so sales are important. The way to increase sales is to have a wide audience, which implies a broader topic and a different style.
If you want a career in academia, your first impulse may be to squeeze several published papers out of your dissertation. But if you're constantly recycling your dissertation into a series of articles and a book, your growth as a scholar will be limited. The lack of new topics will stand out on your CV when you're applying for jobs.

a dissertation can be turned into a book successfully. -- It can! But it needs to be turned.


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What to write in "outline of research program"
I am applying for a scholarship to support my final stages of PhD. One document required by the scholarship grant committee requires me to provide "Outline of the research program".
What should I write in this document? Note that I am almost done with my research and now I am almost finishing my thesis as well.

This depends on the purpose for which the scholarship is designed and also on who typically applies for it.
In either case you should describe both where your research has gone up to now and where it will go as you complete it, but the emphasis might be different depending on the intent of the scholarship. You should also say something about what you expect to explore after you finish the degree - problems yet to solve.
If the scholarship is intended for final stage support then the emphasis should be on the final stages and less (but something) on what got you to this point.
But if it is a general scholarship and is open to beginners as well as people like yourself, then describe the whole program from start to end, saying where you currently are in that process. In other words, more emphasis on the earlier stages than in the other scenario, but indicating that much of it is done.
Don't give the impression, however, that you are so close to the end that support isn't needed. Your entire degree is just a part of a "research program" that you can continue after finishing the degree.


text:
Can I ask conference chair to give me an early result?
I have submitted a paper in one of the top conferences in our field (IEEE Globecom 2018). Now, since this was my first time, I submitted to the symposium and now I realize that there are Workshops coming in as well. After submission of my paper, now that it is nearly 4+ months and I have written (and submitted) two journal articles. I realize the "written" quality of the Conference paper is not good and I am afraid it might get a rejection for this reason.
Can I ask the conf. chair to give me an early result so that I can submit the same paper in the Workshop with improvements?
conf (symposium) acceptance notification with come on 15th July.
Workshop submission deadline: 14th July.

If the deadline is July 14 AoE, you might just receive the notification in time.

You can certainly ask, but you should not expect or demand an answer. Conference organizers may have hundreds of abstracts they may need to sort through and it may not be possible to give you an answer until the notification date.

While you might get a negative result early you are unlikely to get a positive one before the listed date. That may be what you need, of course. But a committee process may winnow out many of the papers relatively quickly and spend most of its time on a smaller set of the (perceived) best papers. But even then, not everything can be accepted. Some committees work by asking members to "champion" one or two papers in the final decision rounds. It is possible, of course, that the dates were chosen precisely to prevent re-submission to the workshop. If so, your request will not be honored.

In this field (and this conference in particular), it's not an abstract, it's a full paper that goes through peer review by a very large technical program committee. So it's highly unlikely that they'll have an answer just because the reviews probably haven't come in yet.

@ff524 The reviews aren’t in less than a week before the notification deadline? That really happens?

@aeismail actually, in my experience with many conferences in this field, the reviews come in late and notifications often end up coming days or  weeks after the notification deadline...


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How to cite an unpublished internal (academic) report
In our graduate school, a Ph.D. student has to present has a research proposal in form of a confirmation report. It is an internal document but contains a lot of material that is well-researched. Currently, as I am writing my research paper, is there any method, I can cite this report (like uploading over arXiv etc. ?). Also,
is this method (of citing internal report) credible for reviewers of prestigious journals to accept such citations?
PS. This report is reviewed by our supervisors and a panel to judge our performance.

Upload only if this is your work!

You did not mention who is the author of this report - you or someone else?
Option a): Someone else:
If you are using it, you should cite it - like e.g. a personal conversation or else which should be cited. But maybe it would be appropriate to write the paper together if your fields are so close. For the reviewers (and readers) it would be crucial to re-phrase all relevant content of the report because otherwise the text is worthless. (see Should you cite somebody's Transfer Report? (Confirmation Report)? for other thoughts on this topic)
Option b): Your text:
Since the proposal was written by you, there is no harm in using the material in any section of the journal. You are not violating any copyright and it is not self-plagiarism since it was not published before.
If you want to cite it just to save some space, then please refer to the remark about re-phrasing the content above - the journal paper must be self-contained and fully understandable / reproducible and just citing it will not help.


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Advisor not letting me publish
I am a final year Ph.D. student and will graduate soon. My advisor is still asking me to run problems instead of publishing any paper on the work that I have already done over the last few years. I will be joining a postdoc after I graduate and he says I should keep working on these problems on the side after I graduate. Can someone please suggest me how to stay motivated.

What do you mean by "run problems"?

I work on simulation of models for different kind of problems. So these are generally run on our clusters or supercomputers.

I don't know what sort of hold the advisor has over you. Perhaps you are in a field that "requires" that he be a co-author on your work.
After you graduate, assuming that your postdoc is elsewhere he would seem to have little control over your actions.
But, if it is really just motivation that you want to maintain, you can always write the papers and see what you have. Even if custom prevents you from publishing now, it won't always and it might also serve to bring your thoughts together.
After you graduate and move on, your relationship to the advisor will also change and you should have more authority over your own actions.
I realize that this advice is somewhat optimistic and my field may be different enough from yours that it is inadvisable. But, my view, is that you should be treated with more respect.

In my field, my advisor has to be a co-author. He has always been very controlling and gives no freedom. He asked a former student of him who just graduated to do the same i.e. keep working on new problems without publishing. Also he writes very offensive emails sometimes if the former student does not get time to work on them, as he has a new job now. I am also scared that he might not give me a good recommendation later on, if I don't finish all the new problems that he tells me to do. This situation is really creating a lot of pressure for me.

@Rob91 What field are you in where publishing is not part of the academic process for your supervisor?

My best advice, then, is to escape at your earliest opportunity. If this is your last year, do what you need to do to get a good position elsewhere.

@BryanKrause I am in Mechanical Engineering.

@Buffy Yes I am hoping to escape in 3 months after I give my defense. I have got a postdoc position elsewhere, so I hope my situation improves when I join there.

Have you written the papers and the advisor stops them from going out?  Or are you arguing about this before writing them?  In general, in any situation like this, you are better off to write the thing up and then have the argument.  (Not just academia, but requests for money, etc.  I learned in the military that it's easy for your superior to say nobody gets leave...but it's harder on him to have to disapprove the leave chit.)
For one thing, maybe his opinion changes when the paper is all wrapped up in a neat little bow, and all he has to do is sigh off.  For another thing, maybe you decide to send it in without his OK.  (Not saying to do this immediately...just it is an OBVIOUS option down the road.  And heck, having it written, puts that option in the back of his head even without you mentioning it.)  \
In any case, don't have theoretical arguments about publishing, when you haven't even written what would be published!
Note that the work of writing things up is not lost even if the holdup remains.  You need to clarify your thoughts.  Also it is good practice for you.  Based on your question, I think you need to work on your written communications in English.  (Just a guess...and my grammar sucks...but you were missing a preposition in last sentence.) No offense if you are a non-native speaker...your English is likely much better than my whatever.  Just that's the game you are in now...good writing of English language papers is a key attribute of a scientist.  This is a perfect chance to work on fixing that. Helps remove a potential blocking factor (dependence on others for clear writing) and positions you to be an independent researcher.
In addition to writing technical English, it is good for you to get some practice being the moving force and positioning things for the literature.  You should decide what journals to go to and how to carve your work up into different publishable parts.  I recommend decent journals (1-2 ranks below Science/Nature, but NOT 3, nothing that requires page charges or is flybynight crap.  Professional societies ACS, APS, are usually good.)  For division, I recommend LPUs.  (Look it up.)  Make sure you get a copy of the notice to authors and follow it religiously.  Write the thing so that it is perfect and needs no editing by an advisor or editor...just typesetting into the journal.  Word is fine in most fields and even preferable to LaTEX.  But if it is a journal that requires LaTEX, do that.)
Don't work on this guy's stuff after you leave.  But don't have a useless argument about that, NOW.  Just leave and THEN don't do it.  Once you are gone and funded elsewhere, your negotiating position becomes a lot stronger. He will likely realize that 3/4 of a loaf is better than none.  IOW write up the results to date and get a decent paper (but lacking some things he'd like) because otherwise he gets nothing, no paper.

Thanks for the answer. So I have started writing the draft many times. But he nevers lets me just write. I have to keep running new problems on the side while writing and once something does not work with the new problems, I have to stop writing and focus on that problem. Last month, he suggested a completely new and very difficult problem and said the paper cannot be published without it. I am sure he will add many more things once that is done. Even our collaborator has become frustrated with him now. In the remaining few months, I have to basically write a thesis which he will review.


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Ethics behind communicating research after end of project and unemployment
So I have joined my first job in research as a research assistant on an industry-academia collaboration and I am supervised by some professors and a representative from industry is managing the project.
I am employed full-time and am one of the biggest "expense" of the project so to speak as far as the funding allocated to the university goes. It is worth nothing that as division of funding goes, our industry partners received more than 3x what the university received.
Anyway, my employment will come to end soon. However, this project partly funded my degree (I don't want to sound insensitive or ungrateful but the funding received for my degree was a trivial amount), which is totally unrelated to my research assistant work, and that is still ongoing.
The problem is that our industry partners, at the last second, indicated that I might be asked to give out presentation of the work done to the funding body. I have no information about the style of presentation; obviously, effort in preparation for a 10 minute vs a 2 hour presentation is substantially different. However, I will be unemployed soon and have no indication on whether this presentation will actually happen or not or when it will happen. Also one would be right to think that the details are vague as communication between my supervisors and industry partners has been really vague. Sometimes communication happens in 2-3 month gaps because the industry partners does not respond to attempts at communication but there is nothing I can do about individuals' behaviours.
Anyway, my professors want to show good will with our partners and are suggesting that we comply with the presentation. However, I have serious commitments like progressing on my degree and new employment. Sure, I can make some time in my new schedule but I don't think it's fair to expect me to do that. I also want to indicate that I have good relationships with my professors and that they are helping me with my degree, so I do not feel in a position to disagree with them.
So I am interested to know if it is normal to keep on working on projects beyond the project termination date, especially given my circumstance. I'm not aware of what my rights or obligations are in this scenario. Of course, each circumstance is unique, but I would appreciate any tips or pointers of how I can reason about this situation without harming relationships or becoming a dramatic situation.

looks like bad project management, when the final report of the project needs work/expertise of people hired for this project, who cannot be paid anymore for this task. Are you partly responsible for this or was the project report forgotten in the project plan and who managed the project?

All project reporting is OK, not a problem. It is that there is possibility of work beyond project reporting that concerns me. Project report was not forgotten and the project was managed by industry partners who are slow to communicate (2-3 months to reply to emails)

I don't collaborate with industry, so I won't leave an answer. But you have no obligation to work for free. And should not. It's not clear if your degree is over, but if your job ends June 30, and they need a presentation in August, then it's unreasonable to expect you to do it, especially if it involves travel. You should tell them that since your contract is over before the presentation date, you won't be able to do it. Part of supervising is planning for staff departures.

Working for free devalues the labor of everyone in this "industry," and harms all of us.

The degree isn't over, so how does that affect the implications of your comment? I want to make it clear that work on my degree and work on the project are two different tasks but under the same funding agent.

When does your degree end, and when does the project end? And when might the presentation be?

The degree won't end in 3-6 months. The project ends in a month. and the presentation might be 1-2 months after project end.

I don't understand what "the degree won't end in 3-6 months" is supposed to mean. Don't you know when you'll finish your degree?

It should end in 3 months but there is possibility of obtaining an extension.

@gilevegox .... but are you going to get one? | Anyway, I'm asking because if the project is over, but you're still doing your degree and are still working with these professors, it would be reasonable to do the presentation as a learning experience (as long as you're getting reimbursed for your expenses). But if you are graduated and done with everything, you shouldn't do it for them unless they pay you.

I can imagine that the people to whom you would make the presentation at the funding body don't yet know who you are, if they've been dealing only with the professors and industry partners. I can imagine that, depending on your future plans, you might benefit from becoming known to them. If these imaginings are correct, then that would be an argument in favor of doing the presentation. (If they're incorrect, then ignore this comment.)

In my limited experience "working for free" at the end of a project is not how things should be, but is also not uncommon. It's a concern that you can raise, but if it's not a huge amount of work it may be best to just get on with it.
In my mind I'd draw a distinction between "They want me to give a presentation on work that I already did" - which should take you a maximum of a few days to prepare - versus "They want me to finish off research that isn't complete so that I can present about it", which could be another level of commitment.

If your degree is not finished and your advisor feels you should comply with the request to give a presentation, you may not have a strong voice in the matter.
To put it bluntly, college professors are used to getting work from students for bargain prices. And, because they control the gateway to a degree, they usually get what they want. That is a sad reality of academia. Not all professors are like this. But some indeed are. This is why academia.SE is full of questions to the tune of "My advisor/professor took advantage of my labor. What should I do?"
I would consider two points here:

If you have a good relationship with your advisor, address these concerns to him/her. In writing (email) is even better than verbally perhaps. Mention that you cannot do extensive work for free. Express your opinion professionally. You do have a voice here (albeit one that might be ignored).
Be willing to compromise. If your professor still asks you to comply, outline some parameters you would like to have in place. (Two examples below).

I would be willing to work 10 hours a week on this presentation, but I do not feel that I can devote more time to the project and still complete my degree in a timely fashion.
I want to partition some of my time towards seeking full time employment for after graduation. Is their an avenue for me to do such?

In short, you have a voice in this matter, but your professor might disregard your opinion so as to retain an industry connection. This is part of the politics of academia as a student.


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What do you do when you can not solve basic things?
I am a phd student in math. I am studying abroad. I need some advice.
When i started my Phd, my supervisor gave me a book and she(my superviosr) asked me to study it. In the first year, i passed 5 courses. Then, i thought, maybe that is good time to ask her(my superviosr) to give me a question.
She gave a question at once. Even, she did not think about it. I worked on it in several weeks, then i found out it follows from some paper.
She gave me another question. She did not think about it again. I workd on it several monthes but i could not move it. She gave another question from another area. I spent some monthes to read about it. Whenever i asked a question from her, she asked some basic question from me, sometimes i could not give answer to them. Then, when i came back home, i regreted a lot why i can not give answer.
I felt, i lost my self confidence. During of this time, i was studying a area that i liked and i was getting pretty good on it. In fact, i watched some lectures about it on youtube that helps me a lot. She gave me another question from another area. I spent some monthes to read about it, then she told me , she could not work with me and she wasted her time. That was big shock for me. I am working with my master superviosr.
I still have some problems. I lost my self confidence and there is a fear in body. When i am studying, i am scared a lot. I checked every thing many times . For instance, i check what is countable set.
She never helps me. All of my colleagues have been either taught ot given idea by their superviosors. She told me, i did not know any things, she told me, how i passed bachelor and master. On the other hand, she told me, i am good the area that i worked alone. I have passed all of my courses.  But, i am not good like before. I am really scared. That is so difficult to explain it.
I need to mentioned i have passed all of my courses during of PhD. This semster, i have a course but i was not good in the course at all, as i lost my self confidence.
I would like to be good mathemacian, but now i can not even calculate geometric series. I do not know how it happens that i can work in PhD but i can not solve basic things. I am scared to ask my colleages, even though, i ask here. Do you know all of basic things? Is it big problem sometimes we forgot basic things?  Baisc things means that things, we learnt in Bachelor.
What would you do in this situation?
Thanks in advance.

Welcome to Academia.SE. It's hard to parse this question due to the grammar and lack of paragraphs. I suggest you clarify what you are asking, bearing in mind that we cannot assess your ability to be a successful mathematician.

Thanks. I asked some questions. I would like to know, how can i deal with this problems?

You are not alone.

@JeffE i haven't seen anyone like me. I wish no one be like me.

I'll give two bits of advice. Both may be hard to do. The first is to relax. Some things in mathematics are just very difficult. The experiences you have had with the material itself seem completely normal to me.
But the second is to try to find a more compatible and helpful advisor. Your advisor may not be bad, but seems ill suited to help you with what you need.
I can't judge your math background, of course, but if you can pass graduate courses it must be ok at least. Maybe excellent.
Your inability to solve basic problems may be overstated. It may just be "brain freeze" based on your emotional state. It may be that you are better suited for longer reflection rather than quick answers. But, until you learn to relax you may continue to have problems. Many people use periodic physical exercise to help them relax and give their mind a rest from work. But perhaps you need something. You might even need to talk to a counsellor.
I think my own advisor was helpful, but day-to-day I worked on my own. He gave me problems to work on. The first was too easy, so no real challenge. The second was too hard, so no progress. The third was just right, though it still took a year to but the thesis together. I was lucky in a sense that I went through my low period before I met him and so had bounced back and was able to be more productive. But a low period is pretty normal for math doctoral students.

Thank you very much for your advice. I am trying to do it. I'm so nervous and depressed. But, I'm trying to do things as you mentioned. Thanks again.

Buffy already suggested, among other things, that you might meed to talk to a counselor. I think I need to emphasize that suggestion. The fact that you can do well in graduate mathematics courses but "need to check what is a countable set" and "cannot even calculate geometric series" suggests to me that the problem is not mathematical but psychological. And even if you didn't have any psychological problem before, the problems with your adviser may have produced one.

Thanks for your suggestion. Psychologist told me, i had to leave here. I can not leave here, because no one trusts me for starting new PhD.


text:
Writing grant applications as a new academic/faculty member
I am a new faculty member at a University. In the last 5 months since I started, I have applied (or in process of applying) 4 research grants (2 internal applied, 2 external in the process).
What I have found difficult is that for the current two external grants, I feel I need to do a lot of research myself, learn new topics, techniques, and/or algorithms. The call-for-grants do not exactly match my existing research expertise, though the domains are the same.
My question is about spending a lot of time researching to learn new techniques/tools/algorithms to be able to apply for a grant. Is it normal, or is my approach wrong and I should not apply for those grants? I am feeling a bit lost. It seems challenging to decide if it is wise for me to spend my time writing grants for calls not exactly matching my area.
Researching for my applications and writing them does not leave enough time for me to do my own publishable research (in a publish-or-perish culture) as I have to do teaching as well as other non-teaching services at university.

Which country are you in (or, at least, which continent are you on)? The European grant application process is rather different from the USA one, say. Regardless of anything, 4 grant applications in 5 months seems quite an overkill to me: you have time neither to prepare your applications properly (the main issue is the proposal itself; you'd better know what exactly you want to say there and that requires some thinking of the subject; and a badly composed proposal means an almost certain rejection), nor to do anything else. I would certainly slow that crazy pace down at least twice.

I am in China. I am an international faculty and hence I have limited options which support English language funding. Hence, this is another reason I want to apply.

You need to discuss this with the chair, or whoever is responsible for judging your performance.

My mentor told me, "If you aren't getting rejections on your grants, you aren't submitting enough applications."  That is true, with some caveats.  I think you ultimately need to be focused on a particular area.  You can move toward the boundaries of your area -- but, be careful about "chasing" money.  To develop as a scholar, you should think about creating a coherent portfolio of research.  When you look at grant opportunities, consider the likelihood of getting funded and whether that is an area you are really willing to invest your time.
The other thing my mentor taught me:  "Work to live. Don't live to work."  Keep that one in your back pocket.

I disagree with both statements. The first one, IMHO, should be "If you don't get awards, you should apply smarter, not wider" and the second should be "Find a work that can be a part of your meaning of life". But I'm an old-fashioned reptile in this brave new world :-).


text:
Submitting a paper to a new journal with responses for the rejection to the first journal
I submitted my paper in IEEE Transcations of XXX and got a rejection. But the comments were really helpful and has helped me a lot in improving the paper. But, unfortunately, I cannot resubmit that paper to this same journal again and now I am looking for another journal.
I am writing a proper response again every comment and thinking to submit the response letter as part of the submission to the new journal. The basic idea is to let the reviewers know that this paper has been reviewed (by reviewers of another journal) and improvements has been made. Will it somehow improve the chances of acceptance. (as I am in the final stages of my PhD now)
What does the community say?

Agree with the answers below.  If you have done a good job, then reviewers shouldn't ask those same questions again.

"I am writing a proper response again every comment and thinking to submit the response letter as part of the submission to the new journal." Your paper should stand on its own, without separate explanatory comments.

Presumably  you "cannot resubmit...to this same journal again," because of the journal's policy. Maybe mention that, since it isn't generally true.

I am not sure if it is the journal's policy or not. But the editor has specifically told this. My guess is that this is the journal's policy.

I wouldn't do that, actually. Use the comments of the reviewers of the first journal to improve the paper as usual. Simply submit the revised paper to the other journal.
It is actually better that they look at it with a fresh viewpoint, rather than having their view possibly clouded by the opinions of others. Let your paper stand on its own.
You will get additional comments, of course. Hopefully they will also help you improve it further.

Don't do this. What'd you actually highlight would be:

Your paper has been rejected by another journal before (not a good sign; think of it as "if we publish it now, we're actually publishing another journal's rejects, and we're supposed to be a good journal!!")
You're not acting professionally. It seems like you've simply taken your submission to another journal and submitted it to ours, without having edited it to fit our requirements. If e.g. your cover letter also says "to the editor of journal A" and we're not journal A, your submission would be in trouble.
We can't use the original journal's reviewer comments & your responses. We don't know who the reviewers are. We can't tell if the reports are legitimate. We can't see if confidential comments were submitted.

Let your paper stand on itself, and don't send additional package with it.

Keep this very clearly in mind: The referee reports from your initial submission should be considered, by default, as confidential communications between you and the initial journal. You cannot send them to the new journal without explicit written authorization from the editor of the initial journal.
(This isn't quite a hard-and-fast, always-the-case standing imperative, but you should think very carefully about how and why you break the confidentiality of referee reports, and you should read carefully any statements by the initial journal regarding confidentiality. If the journal tells you that reports to are confidential, you break that, and they find out, they won't be pleased and you'll have a rather harder time the next time you submit to them, if nothing else. And there's a nontrivial chance that the new journal will be less than impressed by the breaking of confidentiality.)
Thus, you should weigh very carefully just how much useful information you can transmit in a response when you're not allowed to quote the comment that you're responding to. In principle it might be possible to broadly describe the types of concerns that were raised and then go on to talk about how you've edited the manuscript to fix those, but that letter just isn't going to be very effective.
All of which, of course, is over-ridden by the fact that this is a terrible idea to begin with, as already explained by Buffy and Allure. If the initial submission's reports were useful in pointing out flaws in the manuscript, then by all means fix them in the manuscript.
(In particular, if the reviewer pool for your topic is small and the new journal independently selects the same referees -- by no means an uncommon occurrence -- then those referees will be pleased to see that you've addressed their previous concerns. It happens with some frequency that referees will reject a paper on journal A and then get contacted by journal B to referee an unchanged manuscript; nothing spells death on a journal submission quite like that.)
Remember: the reviewers are part of the audience for your paper; in fact, they're the only members of your paper's audience that have both an explicit incentive to read your paper carefully and care about its contents and correctness, together with the opportunity to communicate all of their concerns to you. If there are parts of the paper where they didn't understand, or where they raised arguments which you would like to engage with, then address that in the text of the manuscript itself, where it will be available to the future readers who, like your reviewers, are likely to have similar concerns. Shifting those responses to a cover letter where they will be invisible to your audience does your readers a disservice.

I don't believe this is true.  The Journal has to protect the identities of the referees, as well as the intellectual property of the author.  I don't believe the author has any obligation to the journal.   I think including the review in a new submission is not a good idea, but I don't think confidentiality enters into that.

@ScottSeidman This will vary from journal to journal - many journals will explicitly mark referee reports as confidential and will be none too pleased should they find out they've been distributed - though there is certainly an ethical judgement to be made case-by-case, and nothing is written in stone. But, as a default option, I think I'll stand by this: pending specific consideration and absent clear over-riding reasons, referee reports should be considered confidential by default.

Depending on the field, your approach might be beneficial.

If the pool of potential reviewers is small, a reviewer might reject a paper he already rejected for the IEEE Transaction of XXX without having a closer look.
The editor can scan through the comments from the last review process and estimate how far your paper is from getting published. If the review does not request very major revisions, it might help you.

"The editor can scan through the comments from the last review process" - no, they can't. OP is (in principle) free to submit their responses to a new journal, but the referee reports are confidential communications between the author and the initial journal and they cannot be shown to a new journal without explicit written authorization from the initial journal's editor. Which then also means that the responses would be pretty useless.

A referee rejecting a paper they'd seen before without even checking to see if it had been changed would be ridiculous. Any such review would have to be either literally "I already read this and rejected it from another journal" or a copy of their original review, and both of those would be trivially refuted by the authors pointing out that they'd already dealt with the issues raised.

@DavidRicherby Still, you can't rule out referees behaving sub-optimally. That's an obstacle that can be overcome, as you say, but it is still an obstacle which entails spending time, effort, and emotional energy that one would rather spend elsewhere.

@E.P. Sure. However, I don't think it's likely to happen and, in any case, your position is that the suggested prevention (supplying the comments from the first journal's reviewers and responses to them) violates confidentiality so can't be done.


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How to approach "potential benefits to society of proposed research" question on a grant application for a pure math project?
I have been writing a grant proposal, where it is based in the UK. I almost did most of the application, but I have no idea for the following parts:
Benefits of Overseas Country: Describe any potential benefits to the overseas country and/or country of origin that will result from the proposed Fellowship. This may include supporting the development of a well-trained research community and promoting economic development and social welfare of the country through enhanced research and innovation capacity to benefit the wider society
Benefits of UK: Describe any potential benefits to the UK and UK research that will result from the proposed Fellowship
I am an early-stage researcher in pure math. To be honest, I see neither any benefits of my research to the economics nor to the UK. I would really appreciate it if one could give me some hints/examples. Thanks in advance.

Did you discuss this with your supervisor or line manager? What did they say?

@astronat : I am an independent researcher, and my supervisor doesn't help me.

"development of a well-trained research community"  That's your answer.

@DanielHatton I asked him and he said I should do them myself.

@AnonymousPhysicist could you explain a bit more?

I would suggest you start by thinking about the "supporting the development of a well-trained research community".  In the US, we have to do something similar for NSF grants.  This is called "broader impacts."  Try looking online for advice about writing about broader impacts to get concrete ideas.

@Kimball : Thank you for your useful comment.

@Kimball : Do you have any idea what is difference between Benefits of Overseas Country and of UK? because my answer is the same for both of them


text:
What should I do if the journal does not withdraw my paper
I have submitted my paper to a journal. I found out the journal is not as good as I expected, so I dropped an email to the editorial office two days after submission that I want to withdraw my paper. A week has passed since I dropped an email and I have not been answered and the paper has not been removed from the journal.
I want to submit the paper to another journal asap, but I am not sure that is polite behaviour; I think I should wait for the response of the journal. On the other hand, I was wondering what I should do if they don't respond to my mail.

"escalate" to a phone call? If not, send a fax/registered mail and then you are good to go with the second journal, you can prove you asked removal of the paper.

What do you mean "has not been removed"? Has it been published? Did you give them copyright already? How long as this been going on?

@Buffy : I asked the journal to withdraw my paper, but they have not removed the paper from their website. I submitted the paper 10 days ago.

What about  copyright? Did you assign it to them or not.

@Buffy : What do you mean by "assign"?As I said I just submitted the paper 10 days ago, so the paper has not been published. I want to submit the paper to another journal.

@Buffy the paper has been assigned to some number that means I submitted the paper to their journal

In order to publish a paper, a journal needs to hold copyright or at least a perpetual license from the holder. If you haven't signed anything then the paper is yours. I don't understand what you mean by "has not been removed from the journal". Is it visible to the public?

@Buffy: I have not signed anything; I just submitted the paper. I meant by "has not been removed from the journal" is my paper has not been removed from further consideration; the status of my manuscript at the journal website is assigned editor, so they have not removed my paper.

These things take time, even at the best journals. The paper is yours. They will catch up eventually. If you get other communication indicating otherwise, just repeat your retraction.

@Buffy : Can I submit my paper to another journal? or I should wait for their response

It is yours. Submit it as you like. They have no rights to publish it.

From the comments it seems that the paper has not yet been published and that you have not yet assigned them (given them) copyrights or license to the paper. You need to sign something for that to happen.  Being "in their system" but not publicly visible means nothing.
If you have notified them properly, the paper is yours to do with as you please. They apparently have no right to publish it after your notice. If the journal is disreputable, however, they might want to send you a bill for the efforts they have undertaken. I doubt that you need to pay it, since you don't have a contract to do so.
An email to the appropriate person is notice enough.
But, take more care in the future. Buyer's remorse isn't very flattering in these cases. "Sheessh, I bought the Ferrari, but now I wish I'd bought the Lambo."

Thanks for your answer.