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Why is prestige and rank so important in academia?
Getting your PhD at a prestigious university, doing a postdoc at a prestigious university, publishing in fancy prestigious journals, etc.?

Doing a good job at your job is good?

Because there are far fewer available jobs than highly qualified people.  There has to be some way of choosing one hire from fifty or a hundred highly qualified applicants to a job.

What kind of answer are you looking for? For example, as stated, "because it impresses your significant other" is an answer.

So, it is basically a made-up way to pick people?

@cgb5436 huh? If you work at a non-prestigious university and publish in non-prestigious journals, and if you are really good, then your university will become prestigious and so will the journals.

The issue is that there are so many people and so much noise in academia. It's difficult to figure out what is worth giving attention to. Having prestige lets others know that what you're saying is most probably worth listening too.

Short answer? Because people are lazy and judgmental. Prestige and rank are not so important to anyone who isn't lazy and judgmental.

This certainly isn't limited to academia.

How about someone that works at a non-prestigeous university and published high quality papers in top journals?  Academic snobs will be bothered by the university.  Employers that care about your quality will look at the papers.

In an ideal world, the prestige(tm) of your alma mater doesn't matter. As a researcher, you will be evaluated by the quality of your research output.
But it turns out that the world is not ideal. In the real world, there are plenty of situations in which a researcher will be evaluated by people who can't look at the papers of the respective person in detail and make a fair judgement:

Hiring committees for academic positions
Companies hiring people "out of academia"
Panels in funding agencies
...

Especially when comparing different researchers to whom grants or jobs may be given, it is normally unrealistic to compare their research works in total. There is no time for this, and probably nobody is qualified for a real comparison if the candidates are not exactly from the same niche of a sub-field.
And in these cases, prestige matters. Being affiliated with a good university (or one that is perceived as such) can get you through initial screening rounds, and since the selection processes for positions at these good institutions are often quite competitive, being affiliated with a very prestigious university can give you a subconscious head-start in the heads of the selection committee members. Given that these processes are extremely noisy and often many candidates compete for the same position, such a head-start is highly valuable.

My thesis advisor said something like, "Well, if you went to a prestigious place and got papers in prestigious journals, then you must be good." So it provides info. That seems to correlate to what you are saying.

@cgb5436 Even if that were consistently true--which is debatable--the converse is false. Getting fancy opportunities is a lot better correlated with already having had other fancy opportunities than it is with quality.

We have an evolved basis for status pursuit. The persons with higher status attract mates more reliably, and the attracted mates tend to have higher status. It works both for men seeking women and women seeking men. This has direct impact on the reproductive success of the persons with status, and on their offspring who share in the penumbra of the higher status.  It is effective in many cultural contexts, and even transfers between many cultures. Here are just three items I found in a quick Google search.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1606800113
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1613351113
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_2571

So, to put it in colourful terms: Status is important because people with high status get all the girls.
Or rather, our ancestors with high status got all the high status girls.  So, any genetic predisposition and any cultural tendency to seek or gain status was reinforced by reproductive success.

If your potential employer judges you on the quality of the university where you got your PhD rather than the content of your PhD (e.g. papers), that is a bit of an indictment of them (lazy academic snobbery).  I'm not sure I'd want to work for them because I would want to work somewhere that my skills were actually useful and of interest.
Of course, if the PhD is not necessary for the job, then this isn't so much of an issue.

@downvoter - some feedback on why would be appreciated.


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How can I tell if other people aren't working on my project/problem?
I was reading some papers and I came up with some ideas that I think are interesting. But I am worried that someone else is working on it. It would be a waste of time if I try to prove something and then somebody else proves it first. I'm in math. What kind of ways are there to minimize working on problems that other people are working on?

Google scholar?

I am also in math, and from my experience you can not know... I have encountered dozens of cases (including myself) where different people worked on the same problem. But at the end of the day it was not a bad thing, in most cases all parties get to publish their results and usually this gives you an opportunity to build connections with other mathematicians.

In some fields, like CS, you attend a lot of conferences and talk to a lot of people and keep your eyes and ears open.
But it isn't possible to know everything. If you are working on a hot area just assume others are along for the ride. If your area is a bit obscure, then you may have the field to yourself.
But if you have a lot of communication lines open to others in your narrow area then you may get a whiff early enough. And that can open lines to collaboration, rather than necessarily leading you to abandon your thoughts.
And of course, read at least the abstracts from the obvious places to publish such work, as well, perhaps, as scanning preprint servers to see what pops up.
No guarantees though. I know two people who got simultaneous PhDs for essentially the same work done completely independently even though they knew one another. They just hadn't communicated their research. It took a year, actually, for both universities to determine there was no plagiarism and the work was independent. But the awarding of degrees is a slightly different matter.

Which early career stage are you at? If you are a PhD student discussing interesting topics for further study is one of the key tasks of your advisor, especially early in the PhD when you haven't yet found a thesis topic.
If you are a bachelor or masters student I would assume your ideas are closely related to one of the lectures you took, so you should talk to the lecturer.
In general figuring out whether other people are currently working on a problem is hard but senior people in the field usually have an idea who is working in the area and what they are working on.

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Is it possible to get a tenure-track assistant professor job at a research university if you don't work on a trendy topic?
I'm worried that I am not working on things that bigshot academics care about and that this is hindering my ability to get a good job. Is there any point in trying to become an assistant professor if I don't work on a trendy topic? On job applications they say something like, "We give priority to applicants whose research matches faculty interests." What that says to me is that if I work on the wrong research topic, that will tank my application.
If so, I think I should do the following:

Find which universities I am interested in.
Find the faculty there and read their papers and find what they are interested in.
Switch my research area to be that topic, ideally so that it intersects my own interests/knowledge base.

What do you think of my plan?

Consider a department/school where many staff work on topic X.  However, what's the point of hiring another person who is strong in X when the department needs someone to teach topic A, B, ... ?

Your plan is fine as long as you don't choose a topic unless you are really interested in it as the primary objective. What is trendy will change.
Note also, that R1 (Research Primarily) universities tend to have large faculties. Those faculties, collectively, have very wide interests, not just "trendy" ones. Many of them, senior professors, are less likely to work on what is trending at the moment, having built careers on more fundamental things.
So, the first two bullets are just right, with the third having some caveats. Do what you love if you are able, not what other people love.
And it is people in mid career and older who are likely to be dominant on hiring committees. If they are sensitive to the needs of assistant professors for collaboration then they might be willing to hire someone to work with them (trendy, perhaps), but only if it seems to have sufficient legs for the long run.
But, faculty interests in a research faculty are very broad, as you will learn.

There is a difference between "trendy topics" and
"things that big shot academics care about".
To increase the chances to get a good position in a research university you should definitely study something that enough people care about. But it should not necessarily be trendy. Though trendiness increases your chance in getting a better job, it is not a necessary condition: many bigshots are senior academics who are interested in what was trendy in their time, for example.
Overall, I would estimate that there is a tradeoff: as you work in a less trendy topic you need to be a stronger researcher to get a good job at a research university.

A famous-in-his field professor answered the question how much a topic matters for hiring junior faculty when asked during a class break as follows: "We hire the person, not the topic. If we think your topic was stupid, we will gently nudge you to re-focus."
Do what appeals to you, and excel at that.

Could you specify where and in which field this professor works/worked? When I was looking for faculty positions in mathematics in Germany not too long ago, I made the experience that the topic mattered enormously.

@JochenGlueck: Stanford, and mathematical economics/OR. The quote is over a decade old.

Thanks for your reply and for the details!

One of the things many mathematicians have trouble developing is what might be called "good taste" - a sense of what mathematics is genuinely interesting and can lead to further interesting developments. Some have so little taste that they declare that there is no such thing, and then claim the popularity of various research areas is driven purely by the entirely arbitrary decisions of famous mathematicians.
Good taste is important in research university level research for two reasons.  First, if you are in an interesting research area, at some point all the problems you are working on will be solved or found intractable, and you will need to find new problems, and you will be doomed to obscurity if you pick bad problems.  Second, at an R1, you are expected to have graduate students, and this means guiding them to good problems, at least good enough for them to write a dissertation.  Hopefully, you will also help develop good taste in your students, which is easier if you have it yourself.
If you have good taste, it's hard to imagine that you will be working on something that's completely uninteresting to everyone in a large department, or something that's uninteresting to everyone in a collection of smaller departments (all of which presumably you'll want to apply to).  (Matters could be different if you have some reasons, for example geographic ones, to want employment in a particular single small department.)  You might not be working on anything that someone at the department is working on, but you'll be working on something that's interesting to someone.  I might add that mathematics is more connected than one might think, and someone working in an apparently complete different area could be interested in your work because of some connection you don't know about.  Keep in mind that departments rarely want to hire someone working on exactly the same topic that they already have someone working on, because you wouldn't be able to advise students the other person couldn't, and so on.
Now, it is very hard to evaluate good taste for someone at the point in their career where they are applying to tenure-track positions, and faculty are naturally likely to think their taste is good, so one can try to fake good taste by emulating the tastes of others.  I suppose it's a strategy, but if you're willing to work on something you're not really interested in, why not go to industry and make more money?

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Does it make sense to say that if someone was hired for an academic position, that means they were the "best"?
I know a professor who claims he was hired because he was, in his words, "better than everyone else." But isn't it possible that one person on the hiring committee thought he was the best applicant, another person thought someone else was the best applicant and that he wasn't even close, and a third person thought a third applicant was the best? It seems hard to say that someone on the hiring commitee was wrong and that actually the person who got the job offer was unanimously the best.

If that professor wasn't being sarcastic, he's got issues. As to the rest: obviously, yes.

@gnometorule - now, they could actually be the best egomaniac around...

Is the professor in question actually claiming that the fact he was hired  proves that he was the best?

Was this in response to some prompt/question, such as "what was it that got you hired to your position"?

@BryanKrause Not really. We were just chatting about the job market and his experiences.

Okay, I ask because it seems like it might be a reasonable way to try to get across that there is no formula on the job market - the "best" candidate that applies that round in the eyes of the committee gets the offer.

I guarantee you that a lot of people's idea of "Best" is very different. A large part of who the best candidate is would have to rely on if that person is someone I'd want to work with. My favorite example is Denis Rodman, who was a peer of Michael Jordan, got cut because he was too difficult to work with. In this case "best" doesn't mean raw talent.

At most, he was the best candidate to accept the position. (He may not have been the hiring committee's first choice, even if the committee was in unanimous agreement about the various candidates' suitabilities, but one or more other candidates turned down an offer.)

I am counting down the days to where one of my offhand, in jest, remarks gets posted to Stackexchange for an in-depth analysis....

So did your prof receive 2 or 3 nobel prizes?

@Marianne013 - I could post a question about your comment if you'd like...

Why is this specific to academia? Is there a difference in the way professors are hired compared to any other industry, that would result in a different presumption of "bestness"?

@Barmar what I find mesmerizing is that this gets posted to academia.se, while in other lines of business it would simply be dismissed with common sense :)

@Barmar So...kind of yes? I think every single job in academia has more qualified applicants than positions these days so the hiring discussion is at least which of these qualified applicants is best. Vs. software development in my area of the world, we are so understaffed that we have no problem offering a job to every qualified person that we interview (we might be a bit picky about what qualified is, but if you make it over the bar you get a job offer even if you were the worst of the group that made it over the bar).

@user3067860 But the idea that there is an objective "best applicant" for any job is hard for me to swallow, and it's no more true in academia.

@Barmar Yes, the actual "best" is obviously not a thing. But...well, it is like if it is graded on a curve vs. graded on a standard. If you are graded on a curve the from grade alone you might not know how objectively good you are but you know where you are relative to others, vs. the opposite if you are graded on a standard.

But the whole point of the question is whether the professor can actually claim to be "best". It's not like we give all the applications a test and then hire the one with the top score (and even if we did, the question reverts to how good the test is at determining qualilfications).

@Barmar It's not a literal test with grades and it's not necessarily objective or even explicitly done, but if you have multiple qualified candidates and only one job do you a) flip a coin to decide which one to hire, or b) try to figure out which one is somehow "best" for the job? Probably most hiring committees go with b.

@user3067860 When hiring someone for a job, what you usually get is the "most acceptable" or "least bad". And when there are multiple people providing inputs, you make compromises. It's just wrong to use something like "best" to refer to such fuzzy decisions.

It does not follow from the fact that a particular person was hired for a job that they were the best available candidate with respect to any given criterion, nor the best overall.  But if they indeed were the best available candidate overall then it does follow that a job offer was extended to them.  The latter is more aligned with "I was hired because I was better than everyone else" than the former is.

In actuality, in a pool of applicants there is a mix of attributes with some stronger in some areas and weaker in others. A committee will match those strengths and weaknesses against the requirements of a job.
The sorting isn't a consistent linear scale and it is even possible that a candidate who wasn't "best" on any criteria but had a mix of attributes that was considered most appropriate by the committee will get the job.
From the person's own standpoint, however, it is good to feel proud of yourself when you get a desired job. Saying you were the best is harmless enough on its own. Being arrogant, however, is less welcome.
"Better than everyone else" is true in the sense that the committee treated them the best fit for the position overall, not on every criteria.

Also consider department politics; someone could be selected as a compromise candidate or because it was a faction's turn to select a candidate.

Or the "best" declined the offer.

@PieterNaaijkens, so "best that could be had", I suppose. ;-)

@MaartenBuis, I once saw a case where the senior faculty deferred to the wishes of a new faculty member for a specific person who wanted to work with her. It wasn't that they weren't "best" in some way, but it was decided they would be best for the department at that time. Lots of possibilities.

and one might add that certainly compensation is also a factor.  Chairs or whoever is empowered to make the agreements have a budget, one that they might not fully control, as well as other important pieces of the puzzle such as insurance in places like the US that they definitely don't control.  The "best" person - or top 2 or 3 - might have been offered the position but declined it because they couldn't be satisfied with the compensation.

In Germany "vitamin B", or being favored by the right people can easily compensate research impact of over a thousand citations difference, to be picked for the job. Also, power hierarchies are relevant. Sometimes other faculty members in the commission don't want other big fish in the pond, so they might find some reasons to pick a candidate that won't shake up the status quo too much.

What the hiring committee decided was that the successful applicant was the best suited of those in the applicant pool for that particular job.  For a position that's primarily or wholly teaching, the "best" researcher isn't necessarily the best suited, and vice versa.  Similarly with the other axes of the decision matrix.
He may very well have been no one's first choice, but the committee members differed about first choices and he was the majority's second, or even third choice.
No, it does not make sense

Or even that the first choice turned down the job offer...

"for that particular job"....at that particular time, with that particular budget, in that particular environment, with its particular needs, &ct.
The successful applicant is definitely "the best" in some sense, but only a trivial one that barely generalizes outside that specific situation.

... depends on the meaning of "everyone else" and depends on the meaning of "better".  Maybe a more nuanced answer is that this person was judged to be the best qualified in the pool of candidates at the time the offer was made.
"everyone else" would depend on the pool of applicants.  If there was only one other applicant, this person would indeed be "better than anyone else".
Additionally, "better" depends on better at what, and who does the evaluating.     If a job is posted in number theory, and there is a fantastic applicant working in differential equations, the latter might be better than all those with a number theory background, but the job might still go to a number theorist.  Even if the job is broadly advertised, it is quite possible that internal departmental politics is involved, because -- say -- one candidate could collaborate with a committee member, or works in the area of research of a committee member.  It could be the acknowledged top candidate has an intolerable personality so the committee will overlook this "better" candidate.
Hiring someone is always a matter of compromise.  While it is likely that anyone hired is well qualified, it's not clear this person is "better than anyone else".

"Best" in the eyes of an employer means a lot of things. Most affordable of the applicants. Most qualified of the applicants. Best interpersonal skills of the applicants. Best balance of competing interviewer opinions... you get the picture. But none of that has any meaning if there's someone out there who is yet more affordable, more qualified, has better interpersonal skills... and yet didn't apply.
This means your professor is both completely right and entirely wrong. He's certainly the best the department could hire of the applicants - and that means absolutely squat. Hopefully his work ethic matches his sense of self worth.

Most affordable of the applicants who accepted the offer.  There may have been better people applying, who either declined the offer, or even decided not to continue the process before getting an offer.

We always hire the best. Everyone who works here can say that they were hired because they were the best. There just might be some less flattering qualifications for "best".
They were the best that could be found, or the best who found us, given a short window of time to apply for a position, and successfully went through whatever negotiations they had in mind for compensation or other details. I mean the technical best might have been the one who decided the commute was just too long, or the one who couldn't talk us up enough in the negotiation phase, so they refused the offer, but clearly that means that they weren't the best choice.
So, the one we hired was definitely the best. At the time. Given the constraints. From that particular candidate pool. As far as we could tell in that moment.
(but still totally the best. I mean, that's why they hired me. I was the best!)
I guess, in summary, it makes sense to say it, but only in the sense that it is, after looking at all factors, a truism.

It is very unfortunate that one can give only one upvote for a given answer.

I was hired for an academic job because I impressed the dean.  I didn't impress the committee beyond the minimum for the dean to hire.  This turned out to be unfortunate for everyone involved, including me (at least in the short-term!)  Even if everyone is impressed, it doesn't necessarily mean "best" as there are many hiring factors.
The things cited as examples in the OP's question are certainly possibly true.  Sarcasm can always be a factor, determining when it is present or not is sometimes difficult also.

You get hired for a position if you are available and if you are the person giving the best value for the least amount of money.
Say there was just a damning report that women and ethnic minorities don’t get jobs at your university. So suddenly a black woman applying for a job becomes very valuable. Or you are supposed to work closely with an institute in France, and suddenly someone who speaks and writes French may not be the best, but very valuable. Or someone who is extremely good at their science but has a personality that makes others quit is not acceptable.

You have a causality issue (better -> hired or hired -> better), an issue in scope (who is considered?), and an issue in definition (what does "better" mean?).
You state he says:

he was hired because he was, in his words, "better than everyone else."

If someone is better than everyone else who were considered at the time, according to whatever criteria are important for the people who assessed them, it would be logical for them to be hired.
So indeed, better -> hired is quite logical.
But again, that is among the pool of applicants, and according to specific criteria, which may be "years of experience", "technical ability", "pedagogy", "number of publications", "quality of publications", "charisma", "popularity", "good looking", "cheap", "good golf buddy", "family friend", etc.
That, however, doesn't necessarily mean that him being hired means he is better than everyone else considered for all possible criteria (or even any at all that would matter to other people than those who made the decision), and much less that he is better than everyone else in the world.
So hired -> better is not necessarily true, much less if he implies that that he would be "better than everyone else in the world" (there could have been a single candidate!), or a reason completely outside of what most people would consider "better" (like a personal relationship to members of the hiring committee).


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How can I tell if my research interests are trendy?
It seems that for publishing papers, it's better if the topic is a trendy topic. In pure math, it seems that these topics include moduli stacks, geometric Langlands, and derived algebraic geometry. Unfortunately, I don't know any of those things. How can I tell which topics I should pursue?

Your question is an interesting and general one, not limited to pure math.

There are one or two, or three, or a hundred, or a thousand other trendy topics too. Ask your advisor.

It is interesting to check other people thoughts. My understanding is that the applications of category theory to machine learning, neural networks and algorithm synthesis (e.g. all the Isabelle/Coq formalization efforts of full space of reinforcement learning algorithms starting from AIXI by Hutter) is stuff that is going to explode with immense applications and business opportunities. You should do this in category theory, because machine learning (automatic theorem proving and theorem discovery) should apply to any branch of math. And who said bad things about category theory!

You should pursue what interests you.  If you don't have any interests, then graduate research is probably not for you.  Without passion for the topic you really can't succeed.  Your adviser, otherwise, is the person to look to for guidance but really this should be a decision that is based on some interest on your part.

Just a thought on your premise:

It seems that for publishing papers, it's better if the topic is a trendy topic.

That's a problematic assumption.

You only know what's trendy after it has been published, not before. Like the stock market, it is very hard to predict the idea market.
More specifically, you don't know if what's trendy now will still be trendy in two to six years, which is when you might be able to publish results.
(All equal, it seems more likely that the hype cycle has reached the "trough of disillusionment" by then. If so, it might even be best to stay away from trendy topics.)
There is more competition in trendy fields. You don't invest in stocks when they are expensive (in high demand/trendy), you invest when they are cheap (less demand/not trendy). So why would you invest in a topic at its prime? When researchers with more experience are flocking to the top outlets, you're better off looking for a different niche.

Having said that, identifying stale topics is easier than predicting trendy topics. Clearly, these are best avoided. By and large, however, don't worry about trends. Chose a topic that you are somewhat good at and that makes you curious. The former gives you a head start. The latter makes it more likely that you get the project to fruition and publication rather than abandon it. And if you don't succeed in publication, at least the journey was fun.
There's always a trade-off between versatility and specialization, but branching out into a different area at some point after your PhD is a skill that looks good on your CV.

Related: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/268293/is-there-a-linear-mixture-function-that-can-fit-the-gartner-hype-curve

Or at MO: Pros and cons of specializing in an esoteric research area

To add onto this good answer, the most impactful papers are those that start a trend, not those that join an already existing one.

Aw, but I want to read more papers about science that was developed in Star Trek scripts.

I think this might be poor advice. Studying things for the sake of it without regard for topicality can hurt you in the academic job market. Hiring committees want to see evidence that you can move into a new areas, create understanding where there is ambiguity/confusion, and (most importantly) get grants for it.

@ComptonScattering I'm a sucker for pointed statements, but I've toned it down a bit (see edits). The main point remains, however: Regard for topicality is nice, but predicting topicality is hard. If you have a good prediction method, I'm looking forward to you posting an answer.

Haha I wish I had a prediction method. To clarify, I don't think your points are wrong, just that they need to be contextualised within a realistic understanding of how the system operates. The points you raise a part of a tension: if you only chase trends you'll forever be in races to understand things that aren't your expertise, and you'll expose yourself to all the risks which you highlighted. However, ignore trends and you risk producing research which nobody wants, and making yourself irrelevant. I think the best one can do is try to strike a balance.

@ComptonScattering well put.


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What are the best ways for postdocs in math to find research problems?
Is it a good idea to attend seminars and then try to generate new research problems? Once I attended a panel and a senior mathematician said, "That's like asking how a composer makes music." Not very helpful.
One tip I read was to ask for variations, e.g. modify hypotheses. The issue I've run into is that it sometimes leads to almost identical results with no new ideas or techniques. In other woeds, slight variations on known results. Those almost never get published in good journals.

This seems like a duplicate of your past question (linked above), and very very similar to How do I know what the important problems to work on are? I realize you may still be stuck on this point, but duplicate and near-duplicate posts are not allowed; consider adding a bounty instead.

FWIW, I agree with the "senior mathematician" -- if you have reached the post-doc level, I suspect you should be able to generate research topics (though I'm no mathematician). From a distance, I can't tell whether you just didn't learn this as a grad student (did you have an unusually bad experience in grad school?), or if you have learned it and are experiencing the normal difficulties in a hyper-competitive field. But there is no simple answer; this is a skill that takes years (usually under supervision) to develop).

In the entire 50-60 year history of our low-ranked, small PhD program, as far as I can tell there have been zero pure math PhDs who have gotten a postdoc or indeed done any significant research after graduating.  Most 40-ish ranked PhD programs have maybe one pure math graduate a decade who goes on to do a postdoc or write more than a couple papers not in a write-only journal in their career.  It's a difficult and competitive field where all the interesting and easy problems were solved a century or more ago.

[deleted my intemperate+unhelpful comment]

@AlexanderWoo sorry for the random tag, but can I ask you what all those math PhDs do after graduating if they are not able to go further in the academic path? Does your institution have some statistics in that regard?

@Amelian - why don't you ask a new question?


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Am I supposed to establish contact with potential postdoc mentors at a university before I apply there?
How important is it that the people on the hiring committee have already talked with me before and know who I am, before they see my application? Is this what everyone who gets the postdoc offers does?

"supposed to" is a bit strong, but it is probably useful to do so in most cases. This would be especially true if the professor is responsible for funding the post-doc which is pretty common.
If the call for applications is pretty specific as to the desirable characteristics of a candidate then it is probably even more useful to contact them. A bit less so for a general call. If you think you fit the position "to a T" then yes, it is worth the effort.
My usual suggestion in these cases is not to flood people with information on a first contact. Offering a bit of useful information along with your interest and a promise to send more information is probably enough.


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How important is it for people on hiring committees to have heard of my recommendation letter writers?
When I applied to grad school it seems like the only places I got into were places that had someone on the faculty who knew one of my recommendation letter writers. How much does that matter? For example, if they are colleagues and/or work in the same area?

Its importance is 3.8 on the importance scale.

It does matter considerably, I think, though perhaps not decisively. Why should it matter at all? Aren't we supposed to be getting away from good-ol'-boy networking? Yes, but/and, still, it is hard to know the benchmarks for the opinions of someone one doesn't know at all. "Exceptional" can mean very different things for different people, obviously, depending on their environment, experience, etc. And, no, we don't generally require extensive bios from letter-of-recommendation writers, so...
So, yes, prior acquaintance matters, but maybe not so much for bias-y reasons as for (quite reasonable) comprehensibility of the relative senses of the opinions.

There are times when prior acquaintance with the letter writer may well count against the candidate, particularly if previous highly-recommended candidates did not work out well. But that is also a comprehension of the relative opinions.

Doesn't that mean that students whose letter writers are well-known have an unfair advantage? You could have two students with the same application except for the person writing the letter, and assuming that the letters say exactly the same thing, the applicant with the more known writer will have an edge.

@cgb5436: It is an advantage, and I would struggle to call it fair, yes.  But there is so much "unfairness" of this kind in the academic (and the non-academic) world.  Someone of a higher socio-economic status has a not fair advantage; someone who grows up close to excellent schools has a not fair advantage; a student of area X whose parents are professors of X has a not fair advantage.  In this case, the best we can do may be to inform students that this sort of thing matters.

@PeteL.Clark I guess it's better to tell the truth than to pretend that it doesn't matter. I think the mentality of, "Why should we hire from this low-ranked department when we can get someone from this high-ranked one?" is very common.

I'm not sure I have ever heard of a single one of the letter writers of any of the grad students I have taken on.


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How to come up with more research projects
I am trying to come up with more ideas for math research. It's hard because I don't know which problems are doable or interesting to other mathematicians. My former thesis adviser doesn't seem to have any ideas. I've been attending some online seminars, but even then it's hard to know who is working on what.

How many times have you posted some variant on this question? What are you expecting different in an answer this time?

Talk to a lot of people. Share ideas. Visit other institutions. Go to conferences and meet people.
Keep a notebook of potential research ideas. Revisit it often. Update it often. When you have a thought about some older idea, add it to the page(s) for that idea.
In math, think about variations on a theme. What has been done? What is similar to that that might be valuable. How can variations in definitions and axioms lead to new things. Lots of advances in math have been just this sort of thinking.
Dive deep into some problem areas and seek insight there. What is really going on that isn't obvious from the proven theorems?
What would it mean for something to be "sort of true"? "Sort of continuous"? Higher dimensions, lower dimensions, fractional dimensions??? Can I apply ideas from "that" field to "this" field?


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What distinguishes the people who get academic jobs from the people who don't?
Is it that the people who land the jobs are harder working, or better at networking, have more famous advisors, have more prestigious papers, or something else?

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I took a look at the question history in your profile and got the impression that you experienced a considerable amount of frustration in academia so far and are trying to understand how to proceed by asking rather generic questions about "recipes for success". You certainly have my sympathies, but I doubt whether asking this kind of questions will really be helpful for you. (For instance, what kind of answers did you expect for the question here other than "It's a combination of a lot of factors, some of which are not under your control - and to be honest, probably nobody knows for sure"?)

May I thus suggest that you try to reconsider what it is that you really want to achieve/understand and that you try to ask questions in the future which are more specific and more targeted to your situation?

What distinguishes the people who apply for academic jobs and get them from the people who don't? - Answer to the title as written is the ability to produce results.

Pretty much the same question, closed though: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/201481/what-sets-two-phds-apart-in-the-academia/201515#201515

All of those things. A good economy. Lots of retiring old professors. Luck. An open and friendly personality. Some obvious "fire" in your gut about pursuing questions. Teaching ability. Flexibility. Luck. A wide search. Oh, and Luck. Ideas. Insight into your field. Willingness to share. Did I mention luck? Persistence. Being able to speak, even if you find it difficult as an introvert. Supportive colleagues/advisors. Willingness to do more than the minimum asked.
And, luck, of course.

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None of the current answers have mentioned small liberal arts colleges (SLACs), so I'll add a few things from this perspective.
I am a tenure-track faculty member in mathematics at a SLAC in the US who was on the job market in 2017.  Although some of the items mentioned above definitely affected my application process, here are some other factors that I saw have a big impact:

I was very deliberate in practicing my teaching.  I served as an instructor of record (not just a teaching assistant) for multiple courses while in graduate school, completed a certificate in college teaching, and tried to TA a wide variety of courses.

I was meticulous in the preparation of my application materials.  The graduate college at my university hosted a handful of workshops on the subject and even offered individual career consultation, both of which I used.

Despite being somewhat introverted, I was careful to present myself during interviews as enthusiastic, energetic, and excited about working with students, faculty, and even administrators.  (It's important to note that this was honest, too!  It was all about marketing myself as effectively as I could.)  I did this by asking targeted questions, presenting my own ideas, and more.

These things didn't just help me!  I found that my colleagues who were also successful in their applications to academic positions tended to be strong in these areas as well.
I think this is still on topic, but I highly recommend Karen Kelsky's book, The Professor Is In.  It was an easy read and invaluable to my application process.  Along with providing useful advice on subjects both large and small, it also helped to make me a much more confident applicant--something whose value should not be understated!

I will second this answer. You can still do good research at a SLAC too, as long as you learn to manage your time wisely. You do really need to have a passion for teaching though, and that can be cultivated too.

At the level needed to get a tenure track job, talent matters a lot.  People downplay it because it's not something that anyone has much control over, and it's better to worry about what you do have control over.  But one can't simply pretend it doesn't matter.

I strongly disagree.  Nearly all the tenured faculty I know work hard and come from privileged backgrounds.  I can only think of a few who might have had "talent."  Usually perceived "talent" is really education or random chance.

It appears @Alexander-Woo has a compelling worthwhile point there. 'Talent' might be subjected more likert than to binary. Dictionary gives ...natural aptitude or skill... Yet, it's more fluid, dynamic and has uncertainty: Talent in the workplace can refer to both innate abilities & mastered skills. While talent is a natural aptitude that emerges effortlessly, skills are acquired abilities developed through learning & practice. In HR, “talent” can be high-performing and high-potential employees, varying based on context

Sure 'talent' might be due to early childhood education rather than anything someone is born with.  At the point where you are a graduate student, this doesn't matter - you can't change your childhood.  If at age 20, you only have two slots of working memory (and yes that does seem to be the problem some of my undergraduate students face) instead of the average adult's three or four, you're very unlikely to manage to be a professor in almost any field.

@AnonymousPhysicist this doesn't mean they don't have talent. Overstating the role of random chance is a copout.

@giorginguyen On the contrary, human nature is to find "causes" where they do not exist.

@AnonymousPhysicist Also, don't forget the Matthew Effect.  It operates in academe with a vengance.

If you're asking people who have academic positions what's required to get an academic position, they're going to downplay luck and ascribe their success to talent instead.

I both agree and disagree, talent matters a lot, but it's well-known from sports, e.g., that if all competitors are talented (i.e. it's part of the early minimum requirements so to say), the influence of talent on success reduces quite drastically and other factors such as luck (as mentioned by Buffy) appear to matter much more.

@anomaly, going along your argument, if you're asking people who have not succeeded to secure good academic positions what's required to get a good academic position, they're going to downplay talent, and ascribe their lack of success to bad luck.

@Dilworth: And yet this question was asked on the academia stackexchange.

@anomaly, indeed, a website of which most users are probably not full-time tenure-track academics in the major academic institutions in the world.

Something that hasn't been mentioned is a lack of financial motivation. Academic jobs, especially for early career researchers (and "early" here can be as late as mid 30's), tend to pay less than the private sector. There's a lot of people out these who probably could have stuck it out if they'd have been willing to take another temporary research post with middling pay and an uncertain future after that. But for people who want to move into a bigger house, start a family and so on, the private sector usually offers a better paid and more stable alternative in those early years, if perhaps a less interesting occupation.

Until they pay grad students and postdocs better, academia will always be primarily for the rich.

@cgb5436 spot on. I really think that my answer (i.e. gender and race) is driven by wealth.

The obvious response is
Gender and race
The fact that it is not the first thing coming up from academicians is a clear indicator how this is a poorly understood issue.
Please have a look at the example of (ex-)professor Christopher Jackson, who tried to bring up the (lack of) diversity topic in the rather conservative world of geoscience, receiving only backlash and being totally unsupported by the institution he was affiliated, or the statistics coming from Germany, where the 35% of completed PhD identifying as women
are matched by a ~20% of people identifying as women have the professor title.
Demographics of completed PhDs and Postdocs (or Assistant Professor) by race shows similar filtering out of ethnical minorities in the US, with the exception of the extreme increase of people of Asian ethnicity doing more PostDocs (yes, one may say that Whites are discriminated to do a Postdoc but ... one should check what will be the resulting distribution by putting in the same bin PD and Assistant Professor, both a Postdoc and Assistant Professor position can be taken afterwards a PhD and rarely one would prefer a Pd to a Asst.Prof...).

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Consider a job in academia to be a good thing (many who work outside academia deliberately choose that path as it is preferable for them, or hunt across both and see where their career goes). [the below don't apply to all those who don't want a job in academia, frankly these also apply to getting jobs you want in pretty well any industry]
Luck - jobs are advertised in areas that align with their skills, at a time they are looking, in locations they are willing/able to live.  Are the jobs you want in places you have a legal right to work?
Expertise - in the field/topic, in writing grant applications, in writing papers, in supervising students, in teaching.  The most competitive jobs outside academia are every bit as competitive (or more) as those in academia.  To get into highly selective jobs you do have to be good.  Talent does matter. If a place receives 50 employable applications with only 1 position available, it's not enough to just be good you do need to stand out.
Your network and how well they have worked for you. The concept of sponsoring is important here.  Some people are given opportunities (usually because of their network) unequally to others who work just as hard, are just as talented etc. Sometimes they get these opportunities because they know how to make themselves stand out to people who can offer them, other times not so much (bias and privilege are real and play out here strongly).  These opportunities often lead to outputs that make a candidate more competitive. This can be everything from inviting someone to be on a grant, bringing an undergrad onto a paper, hiring someone to do a small amount of work in your lab, being a supervisor, funding conferences/travel experiences etc.  Without hard work these opportunities get you nowhere, but you can definitely capitalise on them.  These are also all things that most people cannot offer equally to everyone.  I can offer every student equal access to a resit of an exam, I can't supervise every student who applies, hire every student who wants a summer project, help every student write their first paper etc.
Your own efforts, ability, and willingness to work the political side of the system and make it work for you.

Academia really isn't some special workplace completely distinct from all others [I've worked industry, government, and academia professionally].  There's some things that are differentiators from other sectors (true of all sectors/fields) but half that battle is understanding it is just an employment sector with pros and cons.  This question reads more about what differentiates people who get jobs in academia than those who can't despite trying than about what's different between people who choose academia vs those who choose any of the many other options - the latter question I feel varies a lot more by discipline though and is harder to answer.

While academia isn't completely distinct from all others, isn't it equally true that academia has its peculiarities distinct from others?

In other words, academia is special for being academia, it's not special for having humans decide which humans get which outcomes (with all the biases and imperfections that it suggests).

@semmyk-research yes Academia has peculiarities that are different.  But so do tech startups, government, retail etc etc etc. The biggest difference between the majority of people who do not work in academia vs those that do - is that the overwhelming majority don't try to. I personally do not feel my answer would be significantly different at a high level if you asked me what helped people land jobs in industry or govt (in my field). The details differ but harder working, better networks, prestigious past success as the OP suggested is true most places ime.

Poorly designed research metrics, such as h-index or number of publications, are a major distinguishing feature.
Anything that can be checked quickly will be used to narrow a large applicant pool.
That's not much help to applicants.

Metrics and metrics gaming are a well known issue in the private world
https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/110317/employees-are-gaming-their-performance-metrics-instead-of-doing-whats-best-for

I see you are a physicist.  This is $not$ necessarily the case in pure mathematics, a lot of people who have been hired recently at my department in Math actually have quite low h-indices if you look them up on Google Scholar.

Your answer reminds me of the old saying that "academic committees [such as hiring or promotion] might not be able to read, but they can count" for things like publications.


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Data availability statement for a mathematics paper
I am submitting a mathematics paper and was informed that I need to add a "data availability statement." However, this isn't a paper for a medical journal or anything that analyzes data. There isn't even any data to make available! Should I just put down something like, "No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article"? I contacted the person from the editorial office, but she was more or less useless and just rehashed that I needed to include a data availability statement.

The journal probably expects some boilerplate statement. For example, Springer Nature have some suggestions, such as

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information files).

or

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

You could also check comparable papers from the same journal or publisher to see if there is any standard statement. Overall, there are often sweeping policies to include data availability statements etc., and it becomes one of those bureaucratic things where a field needs to be filled out even when it doesn't make sense. Hence boilerplates.

Thanks. I'll use the second one because that seems most accurate.


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As handling editor, should you invite mainly reviewers for manuscripts authored by people from a different country?
Further to my recent question on a similar topic (As handling editor, should you invite only female reviewers for manuscripts authored by women (eg 1st, last, and/or corresponding)?), I am wondering whether same or different country reviewers should be preferred.
Indeed, as Chief Editor, Associate Editor, or Handling Editor of scholarly manuscripts, mainly but not solely focusing on cardiovascular disease), I have often the last say on which potential reviewers to invite.
It could be argued that different-country reviewers should be more impartial and provide a more externally valid appraisal of a scholarly manuscript (of course keeping review quality high).
Probably, the first author country should be most factored in, but also the other authors', as well as the last one's or the corresponding one's are relevant.
Evidently, this question applies only to peer-review approaches based on open or single-blind review (the author does not know who is reviewing), but not to double-blind review (neither the authors knows who is reviewing nor the reviewer knows who is authoring).
Is this reasonable? Is there any evidence in favor or against this approach?

In my opinion, it is uneeded. Reviewers could be biased on other grounds than citizenships.

I think the answers at your other question apply here too - essentially, "no".

Always choose a reviewer who is an expert in the topic area and capable of doing high quality work (this latter part is quite important).  Equivalently, you select people who are experienced in generating high quality work.

Country of authors/reviewers has no impact.
Source

We use the EasyChair conference management system to manage submissions and reviewing. During submission, each author’s name, institution, and country are provided to the system. Based on this information, we generate some additional covariates as part of our exploration of the behavior of single-blind vs. double-blind reviewers. To begin, if there is a single most common country among the authors (even if not the majority country), we associate this country with the paper. For each (reviewer, paper) pair, we then compute the following six Boolean covariates:
...
v) Same country as reviewer. We wish to study whether knowledge of the authors allows a reviewer from the same country to treat the paper preferentially. This feature is true if the country of the paper as defined above is the same as the country of the reviewer as provided during the EasyChair registration process.

The paper reaches three conclusions about single-blind vs. double-blind peer review (see the results section). Conspicuously, none of them are based on the country of the authors/reviewers.

I find your reply very interesting, but still the trial you quote simply compares different means of blinding... The section on country/gender is basically observational... Am I right?

@GiuseppeBiondi-Zoccai what does the paper say?

The paper basically is a trial allocating multiple reviewers to a single paper... with a single- vs double-blind approach to invitations... therefore, my take is that this comparison can be considered for hypothesis testing purposes, while the other analyses are mainly exploratory...


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Do same-year editorials contribute to impact factor?
In many journals, original articles are accompanied by editorials.
It appears to me that these do not increase the impact factor directly, as same-year citations are not eligible for impact factor calculations (see here for further details):

Thus, they mainly increase indirectly the visibility of the journal and its works.
Is this correct?

For an n = 1 perspective: I serve on an editorial board for a journal was told front matter such as editorials and some types of perspective papers count for citations, but not number of articles.
Also, getting articles online early gives them more time to be "cited" before the time window closes for impact factors.
So, journals will try to optimize the system and publish high-impact editorials and perspectives.
Journals also like to get materials online quickly for impact factors (as well as better statistics for submitting authors).
Note: These rules always seemed nebulous to be and subject to change. Also, a cyclical person might question the gaming of the system by journals.
Sorry, I don't have any documents to support my observations.

An even more cynical person (cough) might worry that there is too much emphasis on impact factor by authors.

Yes. I would agree that most parties who care about the numbers are playing the system.


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Is there an equivalent to journal impact factor for scholarly book publishers?
I am considering writing a monograph or editing a multi-authored book. Before proceeding further, I would like to pick a suitable publisher to show them the book proposal.
To choose, I would like to see a quantitative estimate of scholarly success. I am thus wondering whether there is an equivalent to journal impact factor for scholarly book publishers?

Thomson Reuters offers the Book Citation Index.
Interesting side note: I just found this publication by Kayvan Kousha and Mike Thelwall (2014) (posprint for free on ResearchGade) stating that Google Books is a good source for Book Citations, "despite  its  lack  of  a  public  citation index."

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Is peer-reviewing a manuscript by a coauthor of yours truly ethical?
Whereas it is often considered unethical to manage as an editor, associate editor or guest editor a manuscript from a researcher with whom you have coauthored one or more papers, this does not typically hold true for peer-review.
In other words, it is considered acceptable by most editors for me to review a manuscript from one or more authors with whom I have coauthored one or more papers, and even authors with whom I am currently collaborating.
But is this truly ethical?

It is considered unethical by many editors. Perhaps you can elaborate upon your experience of "most editors."

Consider a small field, with few really knowledgeable people who are - in most likelihood - well acquainted. Conclusions left as exercise to the reader.

@user2768 I am not aware of many explicit and formal regulations in clinical medicine. Can you provide some references?

I think it's very difficult for this not to happen in small fields, as Captain Emacs says. In my case, I can guess who one of my peer reviewers probably was. This is why double blind is the best way. Is it truly ethical? Probably not, since it's hard to be indiscriminate if it's someone we know. Peer review isn't a perfect process, and this is one of the holes in the system. The fact that you've posted the question indicates that you don't think it's ethical. If it bothers you, mention it to the editor in the future, I suppose.

@C26 How is peer reviewing papers of your coauthors related to whether the peer review is double blind? If you collaborate enough that it is a problem, then you would also recognize their work.

Maybe my ethical sense is inadequately developed, but I don't really see an ethical problem here.  Of course, if I feel that I cannot objectively evaluate someone's work, then I should not agree to be a peer reviewer for it. But I don't see that co-authorship correlates (or is widely expected to correlate) with such a lack of objectivity. Some of my best friends are not among my co-authors, and some of my co-authors are people whom I don't know at all except for the email exchanges that produced our joint paper.

Where double-blind review obtains, we would need to start with a broader question—something like "if I am able to discern the author of a paper I'm reviewing, is it ethical to continue".

When you are being asked to peer-review a paper authored by somebody you have collaborated with (or are collaborating with), you should be aware that you are on a slippery slope.
The very least you should do is:

Ask your self the question whether you think that you can provide an objective and unbiased review.
To inform the editor (or whoever invited you) about this.

There are situations where it might be acceptable, and situations where it is not. It is certainly not acceptable when you have a clear interest in the outcome of the review process (think of reviewing a grant application, where you would be benefiting somehow).
From the other hand, when you are (one of) the clear expert on a certain topic, and had only a superficial collaboration with the authors, it might be acceptable (in some narrow fields it might be kind of unavoidable).

+1 for informing the editor: leaving the judgment of bias up to someone who is unbiased, or at least much less biased, is always a good move, and if the editor still wants you as a reviewer they can at least objectively evaluate your recommendations for the paper: if you are full of praise and another reviewer is more lukewarm, they might need to solicit an extra opinion.

I think you have to discuss this topic much more nuanced.
Sometimes, people become co-author on a paper where you also collaborated, without you actually knowing them very well or at all. In this case, another author on the paper (likely the principal author) knows both you and the other co-author, both of you did their part, and that's how you ended up being co-authors. Under such conditions, I would not object when you review a publication in which this other co-author is involved. You hardly know them, so you are reasonably objective in my opinion.
On the other hand, if you are talking about people with whom you are regularly collaborating, whom you regularly invite for co-authorship and they do the same with you, whom you know very well, and with whom you potentially have a collaboration going on right at that moment; then this is something completely different. I would never agree to review a paper where any of those people played a significant role in performing the study, and I would consider it unethical to do that, because you can hardly be objective anymore.
Having said that, I must admit that there is still a lot of leverage. You may have ended up being co-author on a paper, where you still have a very professional relationship with the principal author (i.e. they were not members of your work-group, supervisors, etc.) and are still reasonably objective, although you published with them in the past. Additionally, as Captain Emacs already pointed out, some fields are small. At some point you know basically everyone in that field, and may have engaged in collaborations with lots of them at some point. It is in noones interest to significantly reduce the pool of potential reviewers just to stick to some over-the-top rules. I normally decide for myself if I can be objective in regard to certain authors, and decline to review if I cannot (and inform the editor if I know any of the authors on a significant level). And I just hope, other reviewers are doing the same.

I will speak about the practice in my field, and leave my judgment to the end (below).  I think that in some areas of applied mathematics it is quite common to referee papers written by one's former coauthors.
In one subfield that I work in, I very frequently review papers written by someone who I have previously coauthored a paper with.  This is partly because I have co-authored papers with a large portion of the active researchers in this particular area (it is quite small).  In most cases, the editor (who may also be a former co-author) is well aware of this relationship.  I can often tell who has refereed my own papers because there is a small set of possible referees and I know them well.  I find that the most insightful and critical reviews almost always come from people in this small circle, because they know the area so well and can much more readily spot deficiencies.  Meanwhile, reviews from people who are not well acquainted with the area are often quite superficial; reports that ask for minor revisions or no revisions in the first round are typically from such people.
My sense is that this small community is willing and able to provide serious criticism among its own members.  The fact that most of them have worked together in the past (and may again in the future) does not stand in the way of this.  That claim might be harder to defend in any field that is "softer" than mathematics, since reviews will necessarily be more subjective.

I'd say it's unethical if one of the following apply:

Your bias (potential or actual) is not made clear to everyone involved in the paper selection and review process (that coauthor; the editor; the other authors on the submission; the other authors on all submissions for that volume).
Satisfactory notice of the situation is not made to the readers (although I'd say it can be more general than naming everyone's names). (*)
Your being the peer doing the review can be avoided - that is, there are other capable peers, who are less biased (potentialy and actually) with regards to the submission, who might review it.

If everyone was duly notified, including the readers somehow, and it can't be helped - which can often be the case in smaller fields of research - you're ok ethically in my book.

(*) - This point can be ignored if it's well known than just one or two prominent people are doing all the reviewing, in which case there's an inherent bias by the very setup - but readers can be expected to know about it.

In my field, readers almost never know who reviewed the paper.  Is 2 something that actually happens?

@Kimball: Don't you have listings of who's on the program committee? When you know only one person on it understands what you're doing, then the review which actually gets the paper is likely his/hers. As for item 2 - I have no idea whether that happens or not and where. If it doesn't happen in the journal you're reviewing for, you should request the editor to add a note to the forward / editor's introduction section.

We don't have "program committees" for this.  I often don't even know if I am the sole reviewer or not (though usually I can guess).

@Kimball: See my edit.

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Accuracy differences for artificial intelligence paper
I read a paper about Rumor detection and they used BERT as an unsupervised language representation, fine-tuning it using a small dataset, and combining it with a supervised learning model to provide an enriched text representation of the content of the rumor, Now I achieved the same accuracy using sentence-Bert, what are the differences between these two models and I want to know if their model is slower than mine or not, they did not mention the speed on their paper.
they also have another paper with lower accuracy can I mention the paper that has lower accuracy to compare it with mine?

What do you mean by "what are the differences between these two models" in the sentence? Could you please rephrase your question, it is currently hard to understand.

welcome to academia!
Now, you are the expert in the field and probably more in a position to answer "what are the differences between these two models" part than anyone here ;p
The only relevant to academia.SE bit needs addressing though. You are aware of their paper showing an accuracy same as yours and choose to cite a different one, with worse accuracy, to present your own results in a favorable light and possibly invent a reason for your work to have merit and be published. Nope-nope-nope.
It is a serious lack of integrity, you should never ever do such a thing (being a reviewer, I'd do you a favor and assume incompetence rather than malice but it's still not what you want, is it?).
You are supposed to be impartial with respect to who produced which result. If you can't find a legitimate reason for your work to exist, other than your lack of preparation/prior knowledge, keep working.
With all that said, however, your approach does not need to be strictly better than known results to be of interest: maybe what you did is easier to run on a new dataset, maybe it would likely generalize better, maybe there is a reason to think it'd run faster. To answer any of that, you have to figure out how what they did works, how is it different compared to what you did and what other relevant research exists in the field. Normally, you learn all that before you do the bulk of your own research but it's normal to find out more as you get some elbow grease. Just do not bend the reality in order to not have to work on conclusions and future research.

Thanks, So can I mention both papers and say my approach is only better than one of them? or do I just need to address the one with higher accuracy? the paper with higher accuracy is for 2020 but the other one is for 2021

@NargesSe If I were you, I'd look for other research on the topic and compare to that as well, unless the topic is super narrow (sorry, don't know enough of NLP myself to figure it out on my own). So 1) What's done in NLP to do feature embedding/representation of sentences in general? 2) What's so special about rumors making it harder or making it possible to do a better job than when considering text in general? 3) What these guys did and what have you done and why do you think your approach may be beneficial to develop/employ?

Cite one or both but crucially, do find and describe other relevant work as well, even if it's less tightly connected to yours. Grabbing one or two articles and saying "we did what those guys did but better, also not really sure what's the place of our work in the grand scheme of things" is just no bueno.


text:
Details on MSCA projects
Recently I saw an advertisement for a phd position within an MSCA doctoral network. I know the title of the network project  as well as the grant number. Is it possible to get the details of all the individual projects involved with this network?

You cannot access the full proposal or grant agreement as they are not public but you may find some information on cordis https://cordis.europa.eu/ though the individual project will probably not be there. Your best option is to google the project name or search euraxess to find the job offers and/or the call documents


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Phd in Statistics
I do not have prior experience in research in academic institutions but I do work at research and development as statistician in a top multi national company. Do I need to do some research in academic institutions before applying for phd in a top school ?

Where do you intend to apply - what country? What degree(s) do you hold?

are there colleagues in your current position who worked in academia before joining your company who you could ask for advise? Prior to covid I would say: just have a cup of coffee with them, but... The problem is that some work done by companies is really interesting while others is (academically) boring and irrelevant. So based on the limited information you gave us, you could either be a really interesting candidate or one that ends up on the discard pile immediately.

The top schools in the US do require some research experience. Ph.D. is a research degree. The number of seats are few whereas many people who are applying, already have publications. Hence, even if they don't mention research as a requirement explicitly, people who have that, definitely have an advantage over others who don't.
However, if you have a degree from a top institution and a good GRE score (above 320), it will help. Your industry experience in a top multi-national company will be beneficial too.
I don't think that you need to have academic research experience per se, industry research experience will do as well. If you have done dissertations during your undergraduate or graduate studies, those are research experiences too. Add them to your resume. Just remember getting at least one or two academic recommendation letters, especially from your dissertation supervisor.
Last but not the least, do not put all your eggs in one basket. Besides applying to some top schools, also apply to tier 2 schools and have some safety options. For a Ph.D., the reputation of the school is not as important as the faculty fit. Perhaps a tier 2 school will be a better fit according to your research interests.
Try your best and you might have a shot.

Generally speaking, prior research experience is not necessary for applying to a Ph.D. program because a doctorate program is supposed to teach and train you the research skill. Often, a researcher gets the first (real) research project done in his Ph.D. thesis. However, prior research experience is (always) a plus to get into a doctorate program.

Is this applicable for top schools also? Like Stanford or harvard etc. Or may be the top 50 universities in the world ?

Yes, it applies to any school. Top schools may have tougher competition. So prior research experience may allow you to have more advantages in getting into their programs.


text:
If I quit my PhD due to mental health concerns, what are the chances I can do a grad program (later) at a different university?
TW: Depression/suicide
TL;DR Thinking of quitting my PhD; Don't want to because of the perception that I'd be closing some doors on my future, but in my heart of hearts I know it's probably in my best interest to do so for my health.
Before I get into it, I would like to note that I am receiving professional help. I'm writing this post in hopes of getting clarity from those who have maybe seen similar circumstances.
For context, I moved from the US to a certain Southeast Asian city-state to begin a PhD in computer science, of which I am only in my first term. I like what I'm doing, I enjoy research for the prospect of proposing new knowledge, and I am certain that this career path is a good fit for me over the software engineering work I've done before. My goal is to work in industry, but in a research position (i.e. OpenAI or something similar).
The problem I'm facing now is that basically everything I'm experiencing outside of my program makes me feel somewhere between unhappy and severely depressed. Even after the initial bouts of homesickness that have since subsided, I have been thinking constantly about quitting the program for my own safety. In recent weeks I have had to come to terms with the fact that I suffer from severe mental illness which may kill me if I do not prioritize it.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been especially unkind to my mental health, which combined with some issues in my interpersonal life and the shock of expatriating alone has come to a head with a diagnosis of major depressive disorder and a few suicidal episodes. I am receiving treatment, though I don't think it has been long enough for me to make a clear-headed decision about it, and I am seriously concerned for my mental and physical well-being. Taking a 6-month leave of absence is possible for me under the terms of my funding, but I have a gut feeling that I may not be equipped --now or ever-- to live so far from my family. Maybe it's culture shock, maybe it's the pandemic restrictions, that may only be clear in hindsight, but right now I can't picture myself surviving the entire four years abroad.
That said, I worked really, really hard for what I imagined was the only opportunity to enter this field, and worry that by quitting I'll essentially be shutting that door permanently. As myopic as that may be, I have read quite a few accounts (mostly on Quora) of people saying that quitting here would make it nearly impossible to justify to another admissions committee that I can perform the task. I know if it even is possible I'd have to take enough time to stabilize my mental health first, but what I'm hoping is that it would be reasonable to go industry/concurrent masters > PhD or industry/concurrent PhD if/when I am ready. It is probably also worth noting here that my study habits have suffered from the things listed above; while my term is not over yet, my current academic standing is looking rather poor.
I tend to muddle my own questions with too much context, so I suppose what I'm really asking is if there is a path back to a PhD if I were to quit here. Are mental health concerns a sufficient justification for failing the first time? Do I address this failed attempt when applying again (my suspicion is yes)? I have seen people suggest to others who were further along or suffering physical health concerns to try postponing their defense or taking leave, however, I don't know how long it will take me to find the stability to pursue this again, and likely never so far from home. I also know that PhD students are expected to be able to handle personal stresses and outside factors alongside the degree, so it seems like mental health isn't viewed as such a significant barrier, but there seems to be a rising attitude that we should treat mental illness the same as regular chronic illness.
Anyways, thank you internet strangers for reading this. I appreciate any insight into my situation and future prospects.

"academic standing is looking rather poor" are you still getting your Master's degree or are these the PhD courses?

These are PhD level courses; I'm still in the first half of my program. I'm actually not sure if there is a concurrent MS, as the online literature for my school doesn't mention it and I haven't had the chance to talk to my director recently.

I am not asking to suggest you taking MS courses, no worries. Your academic stand is not very relevant (nor will impact your future), those courses are more about passing/not passing and (ideally) providing you tools necessary for your PhDs, the grades are not important (nor they imply anything about your PhD).

Thank you for clarifying, that actually clears up quite a bit of worry.

How long have you been living there? It took me about three or four months to settle after an international move. Perhaps if you give it time, your perspective on your living situation will improve. But you may not want to risk waiting that long, which is understandable.

@EarlGrey I know from a university in a SEA city state, that you have to maintain a minimum GPA of 3.5 (or so), otherwise you cannot continue with the PhD program. Might be different for his faculty, but one should check that before declaring that grades are not important.

@lalala thanks for the clarification.

There are thousands of reasons for which one may have to quit a PhD, they are all equally valid because you do not need to disclose them, not even in your CV.
Let's assume you quit your PhD now, not having the chance to suspend or put on hold your current PhD opportunity. You take 3 years leave (doing whatever, from being a waiter to doing internships at NASA, I do not know), you then decide you want to try to give another shot to another PhD opporutnity.
How will your CV look like?
You have many options.
You can put your time spent at the Southeast Asian in the education field, mentioning the course you followed, programs you learned, techniques you have been introduced to.
You can put your time spent at the Southeast Asian university as a "Research Assistant" or whatever title is equivalent to the job defined in your current working contract, because being a PhD is also a job.
You can even put nothing, leaving a gap. Please note: gaps in CV and their importance are a self-sustaining myth, especially when applying for a PhD, there are questions about gap year only because people thinks that gaps in the CV deserves to be investigated, because so must be.
So, at the interview, when asked about the gap you can say it was for personal reasons.
Or you can also go fully open, say you took time to improve your mental health and mitigate the impact of the pandemy and of your status of being an immigrant (you may want to double assess this, if you disclose it if applying again for a PhD position abroad), there is no harm in doing that, and if saying something like that harms your application, you should be grateful you avoided the chance of having horrible persons as supervisors.
Good luck, and take care of yourself.

I think/hope that it is possible. I've turned down a PhD offer from my undergraduate advisor this year and currently I'm taking a gap year. So basically, you can say that I quit my PhD program. I had several interviews with other professors. Most of them seem to understand that how you feel about your program, your advisor, and your life is one justified reason not to continue a PhD program (which I hope is not a euphemism of you are disqualified). While I told all of them that I quit a PhD program, only part of them actually asked what happened.
That being said, I'm not saying that quitting a PhD is just fine, because taking a gap year/doing something else does not necessarily make you feel better.

Your health is more important than a PhD degree. Having said that, many universities value the health of their students and employees and have resources in place to further that. These could be counselors, doctors or nurse-practitioners who are specifically tasked with finding ways to make the university work for members with health problems. These could be staff members tasked with helping PhD students with all kinds of matters.
Also consider your supervisor. Despite all the horror stories here and elsewhere, most supervisors are just decent human beings, who, upon hearing of your problems, are more than willing to think with you about possible solutions. Maybe a letter of recommendation, to make it easier for you to apply to an institution closer to home. Maybe (s)he has good relations with an institution close to your home and can arrange longer research visits to that institution so you can balance time spent at your current institution and time closer to home. Maybe something else.

Thank you for your answer! I haven't yet spoken to my advisor; I am waiting until I have had a bit more time to really consider my decision before bringing it up. I was specifically wondering if a failed PhD attempt due to health issues bars re-entry at a later point, but from the second half of your answer it sounds like that is not the case :)


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Submission for IEEE-template-based paper in Arxiv
Can we submit our journal paper(formatted in IEEE-paper style) in arXiv which is already submitted in IEEE journal for review(the paper's decision is not yet made)? or it's mandatory to publish the paper only in arxiv format
Regards

You should first check whether a preprint is allowed to be submitted or not by the journal. Few Journals do not allow it. Otherwise there is no template restriction on arXiv.

There are two main points to your question that I will address.
IEEE policy for preprints
For IEEE, you are in general allowed to post the submitted version of the paper on arXiv while it is undergoing peer review (provided your specific journal doesn't have policies prohibiting that, e.g. if it is a double-blind journal). This is outlined in the IEEE author's rights document (https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/rights-policies.html, with a nice summary here http://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/IEEE-Article-Sharing-and-Posting-Policies.pdf). Specifically, the policy says:

IEEE seeks to maximize the rights of its authors and their employers to post preprint versions of an article on the author’s personal Web site, on a server operated by the author’s employer, or on a server operated by an approved not-for-profit third party as specified in 8.1.9.G.2 below.

arXiv is one of the approved third-party hosting servers for the IEEE.
The main stipulation is that once the article has been accepted and issued a DOI, the posted preprint needs to be updated to include that information, as stated in the preprint policy:

D. E-PRINTS
Before submitting an article to an IEEE publication, authors frequently post preprints of their articles to their own Web site, their employer’s site, or to another server that invites constructive comment from colleagues and provides a publication time stamp. Upon submission of an article to IEEE, an author is required to transfer copyright in the article to IEEE, and the author must update any previously posted version of the article with a prominently displayed IEEE copyright notice (as shown in 8.1.9.B). Upon publication of an article by IEEE, the author must replace any previously posted electronic versions of the article with either (1) the full citation to the IEEE work with a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), or (2) the accepted version only with the DOI (not the IEEE-published version). IEEE shall make available to each author the preprint version of the article that the author can post and that includes the DOI, IEEE’s copyright notice, and a notice indicating that the article has been accepted for publication by IEEE.

This means that you are allowed to post the author-accepted version of the manuscript on arXiv (i.e. the one from after all peer-review is completed but before you submit the final files to IEEE for their formatting), but it must contain a link to the DOI of the IEEE manuscript. arXiv provides a mechanism to include the DOI on a submission, so you need to update the submission to have that.
Format of papers for arXiv
There is no "arXiv template" that must be followed, and so the exact formatting of the paper is entirely left to you as the author. If you want, you can use the same IEEE template you used for the original journal submission, or you could change it to be a different type (e.g. simply the LaTex article class, SIAM template, etc.).

No, that is often not allowed. Once an article is published, it becomes the property of the publisher (check with them first). In your case though, it may still be problematic after it is accepted. Therefore, you may come into problems if you make it available on ArXiv, i.e. if the content is usually behind a paywall but you make it available for free on ArXiv.

This is not true for IEEE papers, which the poster is specifically asking about. IEEE specifically lets you post to arXiv and still transfer the copyright to IEEE with no future problems (see my answer below).

ArXiv has no "format". You can publish using whatever format you want there.
Do check your journal's preprint policy though, because they might ask for certain things once your paper is accepted (e.g. to credit them as the copyright holder).


text:
Can't contact someone who should be an author
We are about to put out a preprint, and can't get in touch with one of the people who contributed to the project.  This person put in a lot of work, and really deserves to be an author, but they have quit science and attempts to contact them have failed.
Certainly, we can't list them as an author without their permission. But also it doesn't seem right not to even mention them on the paper.
What should we do?

Perhaps it is just my field, but I  would feel fine publishing the preprint without them, it's only when we get to "actual" publication that it gets more complex.

@AzorAhai-him-, given my (seemingly "radical") ideas about what "publication" means (math, in the U.S.), I'd not want to put on-line (literally, "publish") a preprint without a co-worker/co-author's name on it... because lots of people would see it, and reach conclusions about who did the work, etc. (Perhaps more people than would see a "peer-reviewed publication", in math, currently.) But the inaccessible co-author is a tough call...

@paulgarrett Well I'm not in math, so that's why I said "Perhaps it is just my field"

Conceivably, the abstract and/or first lines of the paper, perhaps parenthetically, could mention the work of your ex-co-worker X, both mentioning that they'd contributed substantially, but could not be reached, so are not responsible for any errors or misrepresentations in the paper, but do deserve credit for the positives.
This does not do any sort of standard "credit for (co-) authorship" thing, while it does "give credit" in a direct sense. Since, apparently, your ex-co-author is not worried about status points in academe, the lack of official status point garnering won't matter. The moral/ethical obligation of giving credit (without laying blame!) is still accomplished, I think.


text:
British Law Lecturer USA
Im a mature student, i am almost finished with my undergrad and looking to continue to a masters or maybe go straight for a PhD.
The end game is to emigrate to the USA to teach in the universities and partake in some research projects.
I was wondering, as i cant seem to find anything online. is it possible for a British PhD holder to teach law in the USA?

I don't see any obstacle, though most US law professors know more about US law that otherwise. But international law is a valuable field as well and UK might be a good place to study that. So it might depend on what you study and specialize in if you earn a doctorate in UK. If you know more about Scottish land law in the 14th century than anything else it will be quite a lot harder (I'd guess you know that).
The other alternative, of course, is to move to US for the final stages of your education. With an LLB from UK, you would probably be eligible for beginning doctoral study in US. See this post for how it works.
However, the total market for law faculty at the research level might be quite small, though a lot of undergraduate colleges probably have a pre-law program that teach fundamentals.

Thank you for your reply, i am studying for an LLB in law of england and wales and i have been tempted by the internatrional law LLM or the transcontinental organised crime LLM thank you for your reply.

Sticking with the "law of England" might be a mistake for an academic position in US, but it gives you a basis for branching out. Your "temptations" are probably pointing in the right direction.

I do not think you should get a PhD from anywhere to be on law faculty in the US. You should do research about what higher degree(s) you obtain. For example, many (most?) of the faculty at law schools either have a legal degree (e.g., a JD) or are cross appointment faculty.
For example, I browsed the faculty at Yale, Michigan, and Texas Tech. The majority of faculty have JDs, with some have PhDs and JDs, and very few having only PhDs.
Edit: Upon further research I see that the American Bar Association views a J.D. as the same as a Ph.D.:

WHEREAS, the acquisition of a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree requires from 84
to 90 semester hours of post baccalaureate study and the Doctor of Philosophy
degree usually requires 60 semester hours of post baccalaureate study along with the writing of a dissertation, the two degrees shall be considered as equivalent
degrees for educational employment purposes;
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that all appropriate persons be requested to
eliminate any policy, or practice, existing within their jurisdiction which
disparages legal education or promotes discriminatory employment practices
against J.D. degree-holders who hold academic appointment in education
institutions.

Based upon this new finding, I encourage you to see what US law professors have. Here are three ways you might find your answer:

Find a US law professor and ask them if/how they would hire somebody with a similar background as you.
Search faculty webpages until you find backgrounds similar to yours. Possibly even consider sending these people an email asking them for career advice.
Ask your question on a US legal forum where more lawyers may be present. Possibly the Law exchange page. I think your question is on topic here, but sites like that would have more lawyers.

Unfortunately JD has various meanings. For many purposes it is more like a masters, or even a bachelors. See: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/articles/2019-06-24/what-is-a-jd-degree. One school I know of (prestigious, actually) offered to upgrade Bachelor of Laws degrees for past graduates to a JD for the payment of a fee. But it is more likely to be a practitioners degree than a research degree. But usage varies, as I said.

Thank you for your reply, According to the University College London and study acrossthepond.com, the JD is the equivilent to the british undergrad LLB. it would be impossible to only have a PhD. one would need atleast an undergraduate degree first.

@Buffy I know. As a scientist, legal degrees are weird to me. However, the American Bar Association views a JD as equivalent to a PhD.

Hmmm. They would, wouldn't they? But they are an association of practitioners, not researchers. It is a very self-serving declaration.

@Buffy a very astute observation about the very self-serving declaration. I suspect the reputation of the school issuing a JD as well as the background of a candidate become important for hiring committees. Pure speculation, but the ABA's view is probably important for accreditation.