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How can I be competitive in pure math research if I don't get a postdoc?
I want to do good work, but I don't have the benefit of a postdoc advisor to bounce ideas off of. I applied for postdocs but didn't get any offers. Now I'm just reading papers in my room on my own and trying to generate stuff, but I end up with "observations." At this rate I'll never publish in a top journal. And I'll be competing with postdocs who have the advantage of working with postdoc supervisors who give them projects to work on that will get published in good journals. What should I do?
Here's a concrete example. I was reading two papers, both on similar things. I wondered if it was possible to extend one of the results using ideas from another paper. At first I didn't have a good understanding of either paper, because I hadn't read them carefully. Then once I really understood what was going on, I realized that it's actually very easy and the proof can be given in a few lines. So I still prove things, but it's without any guidance and the result I get ends up being an "observation." Not an Inventiones paper. At this rate, all I will end up with is minor results that aren't publishable in good journals. What do I do?
I know I can do math. But I'm not in a situation that will lead me to be competitive and I want every advantage I can get.

Pure math or applied math?

Pure math. I edited it.

Why don't you have any guidance available?

@Buffy because I didn't get a postdoc. Academia StackExchange is where I go for guidance now.

You've finished the doctorate and lost contact with your advisor and the institution?

"[T]he result I get ends up being an "observation." Not an Inventiones paper." This is a really strange perspective to have. Do you understand that it's not a reasonable goal an ordinary mathematician, especially one fresh after a Ph.D., to aim for paper in Inventiones? And that in fact most mathematicians never get to publish at that tier? Are fully aware of the range of journals in your subfield that you can submit to, or are you just comparing you work to the work of the best of the best?

@AdamPřenosil: Look at tenure-track candidates in math though. They all have at least 1 paper in the Inventiones or Annals. It's not that rare. Not fresh after a PhD, but within 2 or 3 years.

"Look at tenure-track candidates in math though. They all have at least 1 paper in the Inventiones or Annals." This is simply not true. At least in my field, but I doubt that it's true in yours either. In fact, I probably don't personally know a single person, tenured or not, who has a paper in one of those journals (although that's probably a matter of my field being slightly less popular than, say algebraic geometry or group theory).

@AdamPřenosil I know several. I think they had help from more experienced mathematicians, though. That's what I'm getting at with this question.

@cgb5436 Okay. I'm still very skeptical about your claim that all tenure-track candidates in your field (you said in math, let's suppose that you meant in your field of math) have at least 1 paper in the Inventiones or Annals.

There is no such subfield in math where all recent   tenure-track hires had a published paper in Annals or Inventiones. You are simply misinformed.

The good news is that you don’t need an Inventiones-level paper to get a tenure track position. Most people who get a position at my department do not have such a paper. That is even true at departments that are better ranked than mine.
The bad news is that you have correctly diagnosed that not having a postdoctoral position puts you at a significant disadvantage. I’ll go even further: if you cannot get a postdoctoral position with a reasonably good mentor who can help you advance in your research, you will not be able to have an academic career.
So, your focus should be on making yourself attractive enough so that someone will want to offer you a postdoctoral position. That means writing up and publishing whatever results you have that are not yet published. And it means networking, through your adviser and other connections, to identify opportunities. And, of course, applying to whatever positions you can find that seem like even remotely realistic prospects.
As for getting new publishable results all by yourself: this can be an extremely difficult thing to do for someone at your career stage, and for some people it will be impossible. So, it’s worth trying fir sure, but don’t neglect other approaches, such as collaborating with your adviser or other people you got to know during your PhD. It may well be the case that the best use of your time right now is not to try to do new research, but to publish the work you have already done and to promote yourself with the goal of securing a postdoctoral position, which will set you up for continued success.
Good luck!

I appreciate it. I didn't apply to any UC schools last fall but I think I should. The system is a bit complicated since they don't use MathJobs. Do postdocs need a mentor? My adviser told me that he never had a "postdoc mentor," by which he meant, "so you don't either." But he did talk to senior faculty. He certainly didn't stay in his room, which is what I am doing, not out of choice.

@cgb5436 I’m sorry to say it but you seem to be getting some bad advice. Yes, postdocs in pure math absolutely need a mentor. Moreover, at a department where there isn’t anyone who is interested in being your mentor, you almost certainly won’t get offered a postdoc. If you want an academic career, do yourself a favor and seek detailed advice from a knowledgeable, experienced person who knows you and understands your specific situation. (You can also ask questions here of course, and that might be a bit helpful, but I don’t think you’ll get the kind of specific advice you need this way.)

Times may have changed, but when I had a postdoc in pure math it did not occur to me to ask my supervisor for a project.  My supervisors supported me in many other ways, like snagging me invitations to conferences and helping me interpret referee reports.  That said, I got advice from a lot a mathematicians at that time, including from supervisors.  I still got advice from my former PhD advisor.  I also talked to mathematicians I met at conferences.  This was before the internet, so I imagine it is a lot easier to met other mathematicians these days.
I found it easier to keep up with math topics when there was a local seminar.  One can then present your results and get an idea of what confuses others prior to sending the paper to a journal.
The main benefit one gets from a good pure math postdoc is reduced teaching and travel funds.  That is, time and money to devote to research.  You need to seek resources for one or both of these.  This seems to have gotten harder than in the past.
You told us you did not get a postdoc position, but not what position you did get.  If you are unemployed and hungry you need to ignore this advice and focus on food and shelter.  I am writing this assuming you have something like a visiting professorship with a full teaching load.
Since riding a supervisor's coat-tails is not an option, I suggest you start developing your own areas of research and cultivating your own list of collaborators.  These days you need not ever met someone in person to write a paper together.  Instead of sending a small observation to a modest journal, consider discussing your observation with some mathematicians that you know and see if you can develop a joint project.  If you don't know a dozen early career mathematicians in your area, you need to met some.

That makes sense. i am only working part-time because I want to have enough time to work on math. During the pandemic I moved back to live with my mom. I don't make enough money to live on my own. I make myself work on math for 4 hours a day. The main problem is that I am working in complete isolation. I think I would be more productive if I had people to talk to. I think sending my short write-ups to senior mathematicians and getting their feedback is a good idea.

I also don't know how people have 10 publications in math during their postdoc unless they had a senior mathematician giving them serious help.

Most math Ph.D.s (who remain in academia) end up at an institution with lower reputation than their Ph.D. institution.  So look for a position at such a place.
If you are near a research math department, they will likely be happy to let you attend talks given there. Or even let you hang around at a departmental tea.  Probably you should just listen for a few weeks before you try to discuss your interests with them.

I had thought about attending talks. I just thought it would be awkward since I'm not employed at that university. But I will ask if it's OK.

The most difficult part of attending talks could be parking...

Not an answer, but too long for a comment.
You have asked several questions here about your academic career that suggest it has not been going as well as you hoped and asking how you could fix that.
Try to think more about how your career might evolve in broader terms than wanting to be "competitive in math research".
You have earned (or are about to earn) a doctorate in mathematics, so you have proved some theorems. Write them up and submit them to appropriate journals - places where people who work in your area will find them. Work at getting your mathematics out into the world rather than about the rankings of the journals. Find coauthors who share your interests, independent of their prestige.
Look for a job at a where you can enjoy the work at level appropriate to your abilities. That may be at a place that values teaching along with research.

You have earned (or are about to earn) a doctorate in mathematics, so you have proved some theorems. Write them up and submit them to appropriate journals. I did. After almost 2 years I received a 3 sentence rejection from one journal. Then I submitted it to another journal and I'm waiting to hear back.


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How do I know which research directions are the most "fundable"?
I am interested in doing math research that will be fundable. I don't work on anything fancy or prestigious like the p-adic Langlands correspondence though. Should I try to move in a direction where my work will be trendy, and if so, how can I do that?

For a first approximation, only applied math research is fundable.

What are the differences in funding between pure and applied math?

Funding rates and amounts in applied math are much higher.  If the application is health-related, even higher, as the NIH has 5 times the budget of the NSF for a much narrower range of subjects.  Applied mathematicians in my department regularly get funded (and are expected to for tenure and promotion).  Pure mathematicians (like me) do NOT get funded (and are not expected to for tenure and promotion).

@AlexanderWoo: This seems to be country-dependent, though. For instance in Germany, it's not uncommon for pure mathematicians to get funding.

Here's a list of projects that received funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) in 2022 with the funding type "Sachbeihilfe" (in mathematics such a project often consists of the funding for a PhD or postdoc along with a minor amount of additional expenses). One can find various projects from applied math and also various projects from pure math there:

Link to the DFG project list

@cgb5436 please add a country tag

The easiest approximation is to simply go and see what funding agencies are funding. The NSF and ERC (and most other government agencies) keep public records of previously funded projects. They list calls for proposals on their websites, which usually include a list of eligible topics.
Of course, you should ask yourself:

Do any of these topics interest you? If you are going full-blown cynic, and doing research purely for getting funding, perhaps consider a switch to industry. You should do research because you enjoy it!
Are you in a position to do better than others in this topic, so as to convince funding agencies to pick your project?
How competitive is this topic? If a topic is heavily funded, it naturally attracts lots of researchers. This may mean that it’ll be harder for you to get your research funded. Going for a less popular angle but with less competition might actually be a better strategy.

The less popular topics attract less calls. It's the "dining street" phenomenon. If you are a lone restaurant, and out of the way, you better be excellent and survive the "word-of-mouth" phase to take off. If other restaurants join you in your location, this is apparent competition, but is actually good for you, as it attracts more people than otherwise would know about you. Once the whole street becomes a "dining street", the competition may, once again, work against you. There's a sweetspot. Similar with research topics.

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What resources are available for academics of color to navigate academia from postdoc onward?
Many people have commented that there is a "hidden curriculum" in academia. In colleges, there are student groups that discuss issues related to race and ethnicity. In industry, there are some professional organizations and mentoring resources developed by people of color that are specifically designed to help other people of color navigate the work environment. These panels discuss barriers that people of color face, like the "glass ceiling" in promotion to leadership positions. One example: Stanford Business School has a (not free) Asian American executive development program. These resources tend to be geared towards people in a non-academic workplace.
As someone who is currently not in industry, my question is: What resources, if any, are available to me in academia, from other researchers of color that I can access? Normally I would just talk to senior faculty, but on issues in academia specifically related to race/ethnicity, there might not be many (if any) non-white faculty in the department to turn to.
Here are some of the things I have in mind that it would be really nice to have someone in a more senior position to discuss with (I'm Asian-American):

microaggressions
decline in diverse hiring in economic uncertainty (https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v8-15-308/)
why faculty of color have lower tenure rates than white faculty and what the implications are for me
things I should be cognizant of as a minority in a predominantly white department
what faculty of color have to do differently, if anything, to succeed
senior leadership positions, and how to increase representation in those roles
which departments are more welcoming for faculty of color

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How to find collaborator for maths research paper?
My problem is regarding How to find collaborator who is interested in my ideas and complete the research paper. How to find someone like this.  In paper , have completed statement of every theorem and most of there proofs. Some of work reminds.
I have completed some work on polynomial representation in terms of other polynomials this gives consequences many results, it also connected with waring's problem and  sum of Power series ( Faulhaber's Formula),  we can express any number in decimal whose digits are cubes, one piece of work recently i have asked here  on mathoverflow https://mathoverflow.net/q/461431/149083 .

This is a very big question and depends a lot on your context - what kind of institution do you work for, how much research track record do you have, etc.  There are some good suggestions here https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/68134/88659 but if you want genuine help, you need to provide much more context, e.g. what's your situation (e.g. grad student), what have you tried already, why do you need a collaborator specifically, ....

Why can't you finish it on your own?

What you are asking for is generally very difficult unless you are associated with a large university. That gives you the opportunity to discuss ideas with several people, a few of whom might have interest, depending on the topic.
An alternative is to attend (many) conferences and use the time between talks and in the evenings to speak with people in the field.
You could also write to authors who have published closely related papers and ask if there is interest in your ideas. You may or may not get answers, however.
But all that is difficult since math specialties can be very narrow along with interest in such topics.
You may be faced with doing the work on your own and then getting feedback only from reviewers of submitted papers.

I have also found that it is very easy to find collaborators when you are ready to talk about/work on the problems that interest them and next to impossible when you want to get someone to work on something that interests you (unless miraculously the interests coincide, which doesn't happen often). So, I always start the new contact with trying to solve the other person's problem and only after that do I nudge them gently in the direction I want to go.


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Reply of journal manager and actions of handling editor doesn't match
I have submitted my manuscript (computer science field) to an Elsevier-published journal. It has been "with editor" for a month (after getting the manuscript number). Two weeks after submission I had mailed the journal manager to get an update about any developments. The manager acknowledged that it was unusual to remain in the "with editor" status for so long (two weeks) and said he had written a mail to the handling editor to take quick action and invite reviewers for my paper. Two weeks elapsed after this (total one month after submission), and the status still remained "with editor".
I mailed again requesting for an update. The reply again acknowledged that this situation is unusual. The journal manager notified the situation to handling editor and editor in chief, and assured that quick action will be taken.
Four days have passed since then, things remain the same.
The journal manager talked of "unusual" and "quick action", but the handling editor appears to be not responding.
What is the opinion of this community on the situation, what may be the future course of action, is it a cause for concern ?

Please have some kind of understanding. Currently, there have been 229,358,215 Covid cases and 4,706,953 deaths due to it in the whole world.. Maybe the editor have problems finding reviewers, maybe the editor themself is sick. There are all kinds of possibilities. Please be patient. After all, it has been only one month so far

Does this answer your question? What does the typical workflow of a journal look like?

What is the opinion of this community on the situation

Maybe the handling editor is tardy, or they are sick, or on vacation. Alternatively, the handling editor is giving it their best shot, but it is difficult to find qualified reviewers for your submission. If you have never been editor before it's difficult to appreciate how annoyingly time-consuming it can be to find good reviewers, especially for submissions outside of your core expertise. Nobody is happy about this, but sometimes it simply takes a month or longer to assemble the three reviewers most reviewing procedures expect.

what may be the future course of action

There isn't much you can do but wait. You are of course free to withdraw, but if I'm being honest a month of wait time really isn't all that long in computer science. If you submit to an Elsevier journal you are normally expecting that the first review round will take 4-6 months all in all.
For the same reason I would also not recommend starting to write emails after a delay of only two weeks (or, even worse, a few days), even if "prompt action" has been promised to you. It's easy to come across as unusually pushy and demanding.

is it a cause for concern ?

Not really. I could imagine that there is a world where a journal eventually "gives up" and desk-rejects a paper after trying to find reviewers for the submission for a long time, but I don't think I have ever heard of this.
It's much more likely that your editor will eventually assign reviewers, or that the Editor-in-Chief steps in and assigns a new handling editor.


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Are there unfair rejections in reputed journals?
I submitted manuscript to a reputed journal(computer science field). It was desk rejected after 6 weeks. Summary of reason given by the editor are

It is purely a paper applicable in the field of "computer network" and do not match the scope of the journal
Performance evaluation is based on simulation and not on real world data

I feel the reasons given by the editor is unfair . Because

The journal website itself states that they encourage "theoretical and simulation based paper " in their web page

I have sufficient reasons to believe that my paper is within their journal scope

Rejecting the paper if the journal is not interested in publishing is acceptable. But what makes things sad is the time they took to do the same and for reasons which I feel is unfair.
I have politely mailed my defence for the issues raised for the rejection to the journal
My question is

In general, does author's opinion on the rejection matter ? If communicated , will someone read it ?

What are the extra things we should consider while applying to a journal, given the paper is good and within scope of the journal?

Are there instances of unfair rejections in reputed journals ?

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

It is up to an editor to shape the contents of a journal.  An editor may like to 'see' certain technology or ideas or hot areas.  A journal on simulation may be focused on simulation technology as opposed to its use in computer networks.  For example, it is interested in a simulator that allows one to simulate the universe on a standard desktop computer.

@VitaminE thanks for the comment. But i want to point out that the website of the journal explicitly states that they "encourage" results based on simulations. Agreed that editor in chief have freedom to accept and reject paper according to his/her wish but, "wish" is subjective and arbitrary(which is unscientific). There should be a code of conduct isn't it? People in this forum consider my views as a debate and do not take it personally.

@user5777338 probably you misunderstood what it means by 'results based on simulations'.  If their interest is 'simulation', they may be interested in the performance of a simulator.    If you phrase your paper to focus more on the 'simulation' as opposed to a problem in computer networks, you may have a chance.

There are unfair rejections, however there are also deserved rejections where the editors don't put enough time into writing the reasons down so that the real reason for rejection is clear to the author. This happens because they have very many papers to handle and not enough time. It is well possible in your case that the general topic and approach of your paper were fine but at the standard of that journal they look for more insight and originality (of course not knowing whether this is so in your specific case).

@Christian Hennig. Yes editors are experts and are busy. But they still do it for the sake of academic power that comes with the work. But people pose as if they are doing charity. No offence, it's ok to work for academic power . No one does charity in a competitive world , but why pose it as a charity ?

@user5777338 As far as I understand no one here knew you come from a developing country before you mentioned it in your second-to-last comment, so I am not sure how you can claim that you have been discriminated based on your nationality.

@user5777338 of course “provenance” matters.  It shouldn’t but it does.  There are several studies showing that just changing the affiliation of the authors will result in different refereeing outcomes.  I can’t find the literature on this but it’s there.

As frustrating as this situation is to you (I've been there), all these questions you are asking are not productive, and the answers won't help you move on with the project. The best thing you can do is to think hard about why your paper was rejected. The easy answer is to blame it on the editor and call it unfair, but all that does not matter. Usually, there are reasons why your submission was perceived as not fitting, even if the rejection was "unfair". What you need right now is to think about these reasons and see if you can avoid them for your next submission.

Yes, there are always unfair rejections. Editors are human, too, and they have many papers to handle. But we'd have to hear also the other side of the coin to know if yours is really one such case.
In any case, at this point your energy is better spent on submitting the paper to another journal rather than trying to argue with the editor at this one. It does not matter whose fault it is; just move on. To improve your chances, before you submit your manuscript to another journal take some time to review your introduction, conclusions and cover letter, trying to show how your paper fits with current literature and the scope of the journal.

I’m not sure the reasons can be fair or unfair: they are subjective but it’s not necessarily the same as fair.
The editor (or an associate editor) looked at your paper and figured this would not be very useful to the readers.  Take it to mean just that: you probably sent your paper to the wrong journal.
Now 6 weeks for a desk reject isn’t that bad: editors don’t stop their work whenever your submit a paper, there might be a backlog etc, and the handling editor is likely busy with all kinds of stuff.  6 months is excessive (but not unheard of) but 6 weeks isn’t that bad.
Next, it could well be that the editor asked a couple of people to function as referees and these guys replied something like “not interested”, so the editor had a look and decided it wasn’t up their alley, or it wasn’t worth the trouble considering how many submissions they receive.
Finally, if the manuscript was desk rejected, why would you want to fight this?  Do you really expect the editor to change his or her mind after 6 weeks?  Even if you convince the editor and the manuscript goes to regular refereeing, do you really expect the the paper will be quickly published?  In other words, if you fight this you have no guarantee it will be published  (remember the editor chooses the referees), and even if it is published it might take quite a long while.  So pragmatically why not find another journal?

Thanks for the answer. Yes know I have to move on and I have. I am not arguing with that editor and do not expect to reconsider the decision . My point is, in a fast moving technology world 6 weeks is a lot of time. May be a long review time is justified for fundamental branch of science because fundamental science age very slow. But in tech world things become obsolete very soon. So editors waste authors time and still expect "cutting edge research manuscript" in their journals. That's sort of contradictory

Your expectations might be a little high when it comes to review times, whether or not you think your work is time-sensitive .  Do you yourself depend on work published in the last 3 months?    If you really believe you work is this critical, consider uploading it on a preprint repository (v.g. arXiv) so the result is public before it is peer reviewed.

First, all those published papers that I have read, I can't comprehend how many of those work will actually land as a product either by the researcher or by some company. I understand the need for novelty. But I can't understand how editors judge "level of novelty". Is there any mathematical or logical scale that judgement?

@ZeroToHero.Tech is time sensitive. Any engineering background person will know ...6 month is a very long time in tech world ...Ask any developer how often they need to update skills of they want to be on top of things


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What factors to consider for choosing a MSc program in Computer Science for someone who wants to get a Ph.D. position later?
I am interested in pursuing a Ph.D. program after completing my Masters. How can I compare different Master's programs in Computer Science based on my long-term goal and choose one? Should I check a specific ranking or ...
When I search the internet about how to choose a Master's program, most people talk about salaries or finding a job after graduation, but that is not my intention and I am interested in getting a good Ph.D. position after graduation.

Why do you want to do another MSc in CS?

@user151413 I don't. It's going to be my first MSc. Currently, I have a BSc in Computer Engineering.

We don't allow shopping questions that compare or rank programs/journals/fields, etc, and a question of "where should I go" also depends on individual factors. Your title, though, is okay, but I fear that the details about particular programs in the body dodges the rules a bit and may invite answerers to answer the against-policy part of the question.

@BryanKrause Thanks for telling me. I didn't know. I edited the body of my question. Can you please read it once again and tell me if it is ok now.

Yes, thank you; you could consider adding some of the other details of parameters you're considering if you keep them vague (if you'd like those points specifically addressed in an answer, that is). It's possible someone else has already asked a similar enough question that people will vote to close as a duplicate, but I think with these edits you escape the shopping/individual factors close reasons.

Is this for the case that you already have a specific area of research that you are interested in? If yes, you can have a look which researchers are at the universities under consideration and see which direction you are more interested in. Otherwise, it's a bit more difficult.

@SMMousaviSP Sorry, I misread. Regarding your original question, I would vouch for the program with a longer master thesis, especially if you want to do a PhD in a place where this is also common (like ETH). Maybe this is my German perspective, but I feel that after a long (often 9-12 month) thesis one can judge people's research abilities much better. (Note that the 30 ECTS are not always the full truth, and the thesis is in fact longer, with the credits split between the thesis and some "master seminar" or the like.)

@user151413 Thank you. Unfortunately, some universities in Germany make admission decisions in mid-July. If I wait until then and don't get admission, I will also lose the admissions I already have. One thing that I always hear about German universities is that they primarily only care about your GPA. Is that true? I have a good resume, my GPA is 17.84 / 20, and my last 2 years' GPA is 19.01 / 20, and I ranked 1st. IELTS 8.0, good recoms and several projects in the area I'm interested in. But I must mention I studied at a 1200+ rank university and no papers. Do you see me as a good candidate?

I have no idea about admission in CS. But generally in Germany admission for BSc/MSc goes by grade, which is converted according to some standardized schemes for applicants with a degree from abroad. Those schemes are university-dependent (the one where you got your degree from!), so you might try to figure out the conversion rule.


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If it takes a very long time to get a referee report, does that mean the referee wanted to sabotage me?
A few years ago, I submitted a paper to a journal. After one and a half years, I got a 3 sentence report that was negative. There were no helpful comments on how to improve the paper. The paper was rejected.
It makes me think that whoever wrote it is trying to prevent me from getting a job.

Answers-in-comments and other advice has been moved to chat. Please remember, the system only lets us move to chat once.

For these types of situations, you should apply a variation of Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity/laziness/professional incompetence."
I doubt this was intended to sabotage you, or with any malicious intent.  More likely the referee was just bad at their job, and the editor failed to deal with it.  In any case, waiting one-and-a-half years for a perfunctory rejection is an unacceptable outcome and represents poor journal practice.  The editor should have been on top of this and arranged review within a more reasonable time (e.g., by sending to an alternate reviewer).  You could write to the journal editor to complain if you want, or simply state the name of the journal here in this forum so that others can avoid.

The editor should have been on top of this and arranged review within a more reasonable time The trouble with this is that all the editor can see is that there's no guarantee that a new reviewer will agree to paper & submit a review faster than the original reviewer.

Sure, but the editor presumably already has a history of working with previous reviewers, and therefore has knowledge of reviewers who are reliable and could give a review on time (or even at short notice if the review is already overdue).  They also should be keeping track of bad reviewers so that they never solicit reviews from them again.  It seems silly to me to let the editor off the hook for a one-and-a-half year review process leading to a perfunctory review; if that isn't an editorial deficiency then it is hard to see how anything would be.

Yes, I agree taking 1.5 years is too long and the editor should have done something. I just meant to say that the editor cannot "arrange review within a more reasonable time", because once a reviewer does not submit a review, there is no way to suddenly acquire a review immediately; the paper is always going to be late relative to the average. It still does not have to be that late, though.

We don't actually know that the editor wasn't already trying to fix a review. This could be the second or third reviewer the editor sent the paper to, and from that last reviewers pov they responded in a very timely fashion.

@Allure: Yes, I think we're in agreement on this.

@Clumsycat Yup, that was also my first intuition. The "Hanlons Razer" explanation for a 1.5 year review is that it was incredibly hard to find a good reviewer for this paper, and sending this terrible review back is essentially the editor giving up. This is certainly (extremely) disappointing as an author, but editors rely on volunteers, and can't force somebody to do a review ...

100% agree here. It sounds like your reviewer was either lazy or overloaded. I'm actually impressed that the reviewer situation actually works at all to be honest and that this isn't more common. Really, think about it. These journals source content for free from academics, then they review that content for free from other academics, all along the way there are no incentives other than prestige and good citizenship in the community. How does this story not happen more often?

Hanlon's razor and the golden rule answer quite a lot of the questions on this SE ;o) +1

As other answers point out, in all likelihood this was simply (0) a manuscript that did not meet the required standards of publication, (i) extreme tardiness on the part of the reviewers, (ii) negligence on the part of the editor to not push reviewers harder, (iii) laziness on the part of the reviewers to not give you more feedback.
But, and that's where I'm really going: You can't ever know whether it was the reasons above or indeed someone trying to sabotage you. Nobody is ever going to tell you who the reviewer was, and even if you knew, you couldn't know that person's motivations. So here are your choices:

Assume tardiness, negligence, laziness in the people in your community.
Assume malice and intent to sabotage you in the people in your community.

Since these are your colleagues, and since it could be anyone, how are you ever going to go to a conference and look people in the eye if you assume the second choice above? Do you want to live a life where you have to assume that everyone out there could be out to get you? Could you be happy if that were your attitude toward your colleagues?

I just don't get why it took 1 1/2 years to receive 3 sentences, because everyone has told me that this is extremely unusual. If this were typical, I wouldn't suspect anything.

@cgb5436: Once you've been in academia longer, you'll find that the publication process is in a sufficiently dysfunctional state that a case like this is not as unusual as you might hope.  It's certainly not the typical review time, but it happens (and shouldn't).

@Ben Well that sucks. Oh well shrugs

@cgb5436 You are completely justified believing that it is outrageous that reviews take that long. I don't want to normalize it -- I believe that those among our colleagues who believe that that is acceptable are not considering the effect on those of us who don't have permanent positions yet, and are willfully being arrogant about it. I do think that their behavior is a disgrace. But it is not unusual, and I don't think it is useful to consider it malicious or intended to sabotage.

@cbg5436 Was the reviewer who gave you the 3 sentence negative report the first and only reviewer? (it took 1.5 years) Or were they actually the second/third/fourth reviewer the editor submitted your paper to in order to review. (it took <1.5 years for that particular reviewer, but took 1.5 years all told)

@CGCampbell: I don't know what happened behind the scenes. All I really know is that I submitted my paper in 2020 and got the 3 sentence negative report in 2022.

That was actually what I meant by what I said. What you saw was a year and a half wait for a terse negative. You have no idea (and in a blind review process cannot know for certain) what went on behind the scenes.

@CGCampbell - when you order food in a restaurant, do you care what happens behind the scenes, or you just want your food to come under 1.5 hours? OP is not running a journal. They have no reason to care what the editors and other people PROFITING from their work do behind the scenes.

Interpretation of this situation depends on some details: you said in comments you asked for updates, and they said it takes a long time.  In my field (pure math), while getting a perfunctory report after such a long time is unusual and far from ideal, it does happen from time to time.  While it's reasonable to be upset about this, and certainly the editor did not handle this well, there's no evidence given that this was intentional sabotage.
Here are some things to keep in mind:

In some fields, refereeing is often very slow, and I think long delays became more common during the COVID-19 pandemic.  I've certainly experienced a number of long delays recently, both due to slow referees or editors dropping the ball.  But even in normal times, a referee or editor may have health issues or pass away, creating extra delays you don't know about.

You did not necessarily see all of the comments that the referee wrote.  The editor or referee may have decided to keep some more critical comments from you.

Sometimes referees accept but don't finish their job.  One possibility is that this happened to your paper, and the editor had to ask someone else after a year or so, and this was the report they gave after a few months.

That would be very unlikely at a reputable journal. The editor needs high quality advice. Someone who knew you personally should have disclosed that to the editor. Editors cultivate reputable and honest reviewers, but can't control timelines.
More likely they got busy (or forgot), did the review very late, were unimpressed with what you wrote, and gave a minimal report.
Even for a disreputable journal it would be unlikely since they are likely happier to publish things of low quality if you help pay the bills.
Eighteen months is a long time, however. You should have asked for updates prior to this happening and possibly withdrawn the paper if no progress was being made.
You didn't say if it also was a rejection, nor whether advice from others helped you get to a better place. Hopefully you worked out something positive, or can submit elsewhere.

I did ask for updates. Twice. The response was a generic response saying that they're sorry but it takes a long time.

What field are you in?  I assume someone having to provide feedback on a theoretical maths paper will take much longer than someone looking at the results of an medical case study.  It is also surprising that the journal sent the paper to one referee only to start with.
One can always withdraw a publication if it takes too long to get the paper refereed, to submit it to a different journal hoping for a faster turnout.  Having said that, for some fields the number of possible and available refs is small, so one might just get to the same referees.
Knowing nothing about your manuscript, your accusation nevertheless comes across as extremely offputting.  As we are not in the position of giving any informed comment, anything is possible in the spectrum going from you submitting a very poor and tedious paper, to the referee being actually malicious.  In addition, some editors are actually very bad at managing the refereeing process (for what we know the editor might have sat on the manuscript for 17 months, and the referee might have been quite fast), and you seem to discount that.
Just so we are clear -- this is the internet, and any complaint about the issue there can only have two outcomes: people validate your position, or not.  If you are correct, this is the very worst place to deal with the issue (you have a supervisor, right?).  If you are not correct, anything goes.  Nevertheless, you pose a real world problem which has near 0 chances of being resolved here.

It certainly takes longer to provide a full review of a math paper than for many other disciplines. But it shouldn't take any longer to provide a review of the form "not good enough for this journal: reject", which is all OP got.

Probably yes if they were harboring an old grudge. It may or may not be intentional. The person could be in bad mood.

I saw this post in LQP queue. I usually would recommend deletion for this kind of answer. However, given that the paper received rejection with short report one and half years after submission, I kind of think this answer makes some sense.


text:
I'm having trouble coming up with research problems I can solve. What should I do?
I'm in pure math and I'm trying to come up with interesting research projects to work on. How can I find interesting problems?
Also, I'm not even a grad student or postdoc or assistant professor. I completed graduate school. I was going to start a postdoc, but I was prevented from going, due to a pandemic that has killed over 6 million people. I eventually gave up the offer. Now I am staying at home and working a part-time job, but I am completely isolated. I want to publish good papers in good journals but I don't have any interesting problems to work on and I am not talking to anyone. I don't have a publication record and I don't know what to do. At this rate, I will never have any publications! I cannot go on like this. I need to do something different.
Should I just ask people if they have any problems that I can work on? If the answer is no, then what should I do?
To become a serious mathematician I need papers.
To produce papers I need results.
To get results I need to solve interesting math problems.
To solve interesting math problems I need interesting math problems to solve.
I am stuck at this step.

You should revise your thesis according to the referee reports, and resubmit, possibly to a different journal...

You're not alone. Finding a (good) problem to work on is a challenge for everyone, even for established mathematicians. Many smart professors told me that they had a weak semester\year during their first postdoc, so you are not alone, its a shock for everyone

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/71810/19607

If you do not have a natural continuation for your phd work then you cannot hope to advance alone. Did you have an advisor? Discuss with him/her about this. Usually, PhDs can get jobs teaching in universities, in some parts of the world. If you manage to do this then you could have opportunities to discuss with other professors there. It is difficult to give advice. The situation is not as simple as you describe in your last paragraph... Problems to work on come on their own if you are on the right path.

I'm not in math, but my understanding is that math is at least like other fields in that new work builds on old work, so the best place to find new problems is to look at solutions: read work that is being published in your field. Papers may either explicitly identify places where they've fallen short or implicitly there may be openings in the areas they do not reach.
Unfortunately, knowing which of these problems are likely to be solvable or are of the highest interest is really a matter of experience, and there's no shortcut to experience.
You say you are isolated and not talking to anyone; it does seem to me to be nearly impossible to continue in research without academic connections that you can talk to people through. However, even without an academic appointment, universities may host talks and other events that are open to the public. You'll need to make more effort to find these sorts of things if you aren't part of a department that communicates them to you.

Should I just ask people if they have any problems that I can work on?

This option does not seem appropriate to me for a person in your situation, though if you have close personal contacts it may be reasonable to discuss with them. Cold emailing or similar is probably a waste of your time and everyone else's.
If you haven't successfully published as a PhD student, it seems to me that you may be holding your expectations of yourself too high if you expect to publish "good papers in good journals" all alone. Academic publishing isn't easy to learn, and it's supposed to be a central part of the apprenticeship process that is a PhD degree.

Especially if there are universities near you that run seminars... these are usually open to the public, and can be a way to meet people, see what current activity is about, and maybe ask for a little advice from more senior people in a seminar that touches your specific research interests.

Also, some seminars not even near to you may be "hybrid", meaning you can attend by Zoom, if you just get the address from the organizers. Go to depts websites to see what seminars they offer, etc.

@paulgarrett To become a serious mathematician I need papers. To produce papers I need results. To get results I need to solve interesting math problems. To solve interesting math problems I need interesting math problems to solve. I am stuck at this step. I will see if there are seminars. I don't know how to phrase things. It may be weird to e-mail an organizer and say, "I'm not affiliated with your university whatsoever; can I join the seminar?"

You don't have to emphasize that you're not affiliated with the university! (Especially for hybrid/remote seminars.) Honest intellectual endeavor is the real point, not "affiliation"...

@paulgarrett I went to a Zoom seminar last week. I still don't get how to get from this to an open problem that will lead to a publication. That's because I am an outsider and I think I need to become an insider. Most of the people who attended the talk were already insiders (meaning, they knew each other, wrote papers on the subject, etc.).

@cgb5436, it's not a short road, for sure! And, yes, you should expect that many or most people "are connected"... after all, they would want to be, etc. I'd recommend continuing to attend (with video), so that you are recognized by the others... And ask some reasonable questions. You do not have to try to pose as an expert.

Well, @cgb5436, it's indeed awkward if, truly, no natural questions arise from your thesis. I'd say you were short-changed by whoever suggested that to you. In the best of cases, "momentum" is hard to conserve, in the fact of discouragement. Yes, "writing books", even high-end monographs, is not the highest-status-scoring activity, and is a perhaps-really-really-surprising amount of work. I'd think that all you can do is hang around at seminars until something resonates with you, whether or not it's a continuation of your thesis. And, no guarantee of how quickly that'll happen... dang.

Is that the main way people find open problems to work on?


text:
How do I decide a field of study for grad school and whether to do a Masters vs a PhD?
I'm a sophomore in college (undergrad) so I still have a while to go before applying to grad school. I am currently majoring in CS with a minor in Bio since I am also very interested in computational biology and bioengineering. I am definitely more interested in research than going into industry, at least right now, since I have participated in research during my time at my undergrad institution. I have a few questions on applying to grad school.
How do you go about deciding which subject to study in grad school? I am majoring in CS but am interested more in working in computational biology specifically, so I am unsure whether I would apply to a CS program or a Bio program.
Even after deciding a subject of study how do you go about deciding about whether to apply directly to a PhD program or to do a Masters program first? Specifically: I know I am interested in research but does this necessarily mean I should do a PhD or is a Master's fine? Are PhD programs harder to get into than Master's programs and should you apply to a mix of both PhD programs and Master's programs or just one or the other?
I would appreciate if people could share any of their experiences with any of these questions.

If you’re looking at this in terms of preparation for a career, research what you can on what potential careers look like, what they entail and demand of you. Keep an honest, open mind. There are no guarantees.

In the US, most people who aspire to a doctorate apply to doctoral programs at the end of the bachelors degree. A masters along the way isn't necessary and might even cause a delay (though not necessarily). On the other hand, many doctoral students earn a masters during doctoral study, sometimes just by asking for it and filling out a request. Other times a thesis might be required. But you don't need to apply again for doctoral studies.
As to your studies, I'd suggest that you look for universities that have actual computational biology programs, or at least a few professors who specialize in that. Taking a pure CS or pure biology program might take you afield of your goal.
And no, a doctoral program isn't (appreciably) harder to get in to. In some ways it is a bit easier, since doctoral programs often come with a TA position (and a stipend and tuition waiver) and universities often need those TAs to help in the undergraduate program. TAs are not always open to masters students, nor is tuition waiver usually granted.
But apply to several programs, not just a few. And not just the "top 10" programs in the country. The broader your search the more likely you will find something suitable.

To add to @Buffy's answer:
The sort of computational biology you will do in a CS program will be different to the comp bio you can do in a bio program. Specifically comp bio programs will probably offer you the opportunity to select groups working in both types.
Comp bio in a CS program will probably be focused on the development of new algorithms, frameworks and abstractions, and the implementation of these into new tools. Here you will probably apply your new tools to some biological problem to demonstrate they work, but the details of that biology is secondary.
Comp bio in a Bio program will probably be focused more on solving a specific biological question using computational tools. As a computational biologist how came from biology myself I describe my self as a "Biologist who just happens to conduct experiments using a computer rather than a pipette". I do occasionally generate new tools if its necessary, but its my focus, or the focus of anyone who works in my group. If you choose this route it is important that you still work with a computational biology group (or at least a supervisor) - don't end up being the lone computationalist in an experimental group without a computational mentor.
(a third entry way into comp bio is via statistics).
The final point is to answer:

Specifically: I know I am interested in research but does this
necessarily mean I should do a PhD or is a Master's fine?

If you want a research career, you need a PhD.

deciding about whether to apply directly to a PhD program or to do a
Masters program first?

Buffy has observations from a US perspective.
In the UK, traditionally people in the life science apply directly to PhD programs from undergrad, but masters are becoming more common, and in our last admissions round we only admitted people with masters degrees, but they are not officially a requirement and plenty of people do get onto PhD programs without them.
In continental Europe, you will definitely need a masters degree.


text:
Thesis writing - should I write "will be discussed later" or "as was discussed previously"
I am writing my MD thesis, which is about therapy for MS, and some drugs come up in more than one specific subchapter. Should I discuss them in detail in the first subchapter they come up in, or should I discuss them in the last chapter they come up in?

You could also think about a specific section/subchapter for discussing all of them.

A rule of thumb I like is: use forward references sparingly if at all (i.e., structure the paper so they are rarely if ever needed).

The answer varies: Readers will sometimes expect introduction there-and-then, in others they'll expect a delay, some readers will be divided. Regardless, generally avoid will be discussed later and as was discussed previously, use section references to guide the reader.

I couldn't agree more about section references. Information is not linear. You want to resist the urge to have your thesis tell a story, where more information is revealed as you work your way through it, or where you need to remember what you'd previously read.

@McHobbes "You want to resist the urge to have your thesis tell a story"  That's surprising advice to me as I would advise my students that is exactly what they should be doing. (Of course, this could just be a different understanding of what "tell a story" means.)

@MichaelMior Telling a story is a good thing, but having a thesis or paper read like a mystery novel isn't.

@MichaelMior Of course, different people could have different preferences and, as you suggested, our preferential differences may be a matter of our individual understandings of what "tell a story" means. But, from my standpoint, if I wanted to glean the information that a thesis or paper is meant to portray, I don't want to be left wondering until a climax where the pieces finally fall into place. That's essentially the point I'm trying to make.

+1. Forward references should be specific and *limited to where they're really needed. Some basic introduction is probably required at the first mention, but as little as possible so as not to disrupt the flow.  A (sub-)section reference works well, page is probably excessive. LaTeX makes it easy!

@McHobbes Agreed. When I talk about telling a story, there should be significant spoilers :)

I tend to find forward and backward references that provide more context to be useful, such as: "Section 4.3 presents experiments that show that mint chocolate chip ice cream significantly reduces MS symptoms" and "This chapter presents experiments, as motivated by the discussion in Section 1.2, on the effect of mint chocolate chip ice cream on MS"

Several thoughts.

Think about who might read your thesis, and why. Put yourself in
their frame of mind. Then structure your thesis the way you would
like to encounter it.
Do tell a story - the one that's right for that reader.
Do use section number references rather than just "earlier" or
"later".
If you can look at other theses in your program you can see what they
do.
Ask your advisor.
Don't worry too much about this. Whatever you do will be OK.


text:
Presenting a paper on a video
I want to know about copyrights for presenting a paper on a public video.
For example, can I explain and show text and pictures of last month's good papers on a specific topic in a video on Youtube? Does this violate the copyright?
In the caption and video, I will mention the paper's Journal/Conf and authors, but I want to make sure if this is okay to do. Or should I ask directly from each journal?
Thanks.

How big is the audience, or do you intend to publish the video, say on the internet?

On the internet,e.g. on a youtube channel.

Which jurisdiction? If you're interested in North American law, there is a probable duplicate question Is it "fair use" to use figures from a publication in monetized educational material?. A similar question on Law.SE discusses the case of European laws: CanI (sic) use the figures in research papers or books for YouTube videos under fair use?

Note that the world of YouTube has started to operate under rules that are somewhat replacing our legal framework... Here's a fantastic video about the greater picture that is very relevant to your question. https://youtu.be/1Jwo5qc78QU

Also, you will get better answers on the law stack exchange than here. I suggest transferring your question.

You are proposing to republish material that is almost certainly under copyright. For that you need to be careful. The easiest way is to ask the publishers who are the most likely copyright holders.
If you are one of the authors of a paper you probably have license for some, but not all things.
But, you are limited by fair use. Just as you can't quote too extensively from a publication in another, even with citation, you can't put too much of the text in a public facing video.
Images are even more of a problem. While they may not take up a lot of room in a printed publication, they can convey a lot of information, similar to quoting a lot of text. You might need specific permission for each image.
The problem is that "fair use" is a judgement call and the copyright owners might object. One of the considerations of fair use is whether the new work diminishes the (economic) value of the original. A video might well do that. Ask the publisher to be safe.

Caveat: copyright law is a local issue. It varies a lot from place to place. What might be allowed in one place might not in another. But the internet is "world facing" generally.


text:
How to prevent burnout and recover from burnout fast
We have 7 subjects to study every semester. You must be thinking "Oh that's a lot". It is not actually if you look at the exams. I am from India, here 90% of exam questions are already fixed(they come from past papers).
PS if 7 days a semester is an issue then no student should be performing well. There are lots of students who perform well even though I come from a really bad college.
Now you might say I might not be as good as others in engineering and that is why burnout. I have actually excelled my academics before engineering and interestingly, I never faced this issue of burnout before. I actually used to study even more around 15 hrs everyday when I was younger. Also it is not like I am a weak student. Now you might bring your argument "Oh you can be great in college but university is a different thing", here is the catch I am good at university until the exam comes when I have to study at high pace for long hours. I actually study for 10+ hrs every single day. Now you might say "Why so?" Because I need it as simple as that. No I don't do lazy study during exams or wrong study methods. I have literally read every book there is to "how to study engineering subjects" And I have found my sets of things that work perfectly for me.
No, smartphones etc aren't my distraction. My only problem is that I get burntout after some time of serious study(generally after a week or so). The problem is that our exams last around a month, that is why getting such burnout is very harmful for grades..
This is really really hampering my grades in exams. Please don't suggest to drop courses as that is not really feasible(I am in final year and I don't want to delay my graduation) as well as I do believe there is definitely some way I can cope with this burnout rather than dropping courses. I don't believe I am not capable enough to deal with thing like burnout if I can focus 10 hrs per day studying. I simply don't know the techniques that most people know and that is why I keep getting stuck in burnout rut. I am sure those my friends who are getting good grades in exams have also overcame this. Now of course, if I ask them they won't tell me as competition is very tough in India and people are generally unhelpful specially students, they will just joke and tell "Oh i don't study that much"...and bla bla.. I hope internet is different though.
We have 3 days gaps between exams. Say today our exam occurs at 2 PM. Then we have holidays for 3 days and our exams start at 2 PM of 4th day from that past exam day.
It is not like I study 10 hrs in 1 go. I study for 45 mins and take 15 min break. That is how I do it. The only time I don't get burn out is when I study for 6 hrs everyday rather than 10 hrs. But the issue is my performance drops to below average when I study for less time as I fail to finish my syllabus.

How much time do you have between now and your next set of exams?  How burned-out are you currently?

We have generally 3 days gap between exams.  I had 4 days gap till next exam. I was burnt out a lot for 2 days, but currently not so much. But I am asking this because I am sure I will feel this again in future.

So you are in the middle of exams?

yes @NAMcMahon i am in middle of exams.

It seems you might be confusing 'burnout' and 'exhaustion,' different levels of severity.

@Aruralreader can you guide me a bit about how to cope with exhaustion? I think it is burnout tho.

@Preeti: If you are exhausting yourself, there is good advice in the answers below. Most professional careers are happy to extract every last ounce of your energy, so you need to care for yourself. Prolonged or repeated periods of exhaustion can also lead to cognitive changes and adaptations, some healthy, others not, which in turn can lead to burnout. This can be pretty devastating for folks who'd been driven by emotion or adrenaline and can take months or years to recover from, if at all, so it's best to avoid that pit. If you're headed in that direction, the first step is professional help.

Although debating the points made in the question itself is usually regarded as unhelpful, there are quite a few things wrong there. Exaggeration ("I have literally read every book there is to [...]") aside...

I have found my sets of things that work perfectly for me.

Apparently not. You are having burnout issues (and good thing you have figured it out).

I actually study for 10+ hrs every single day. [...] Because I need it as simple as that.

You need it to achieve what exactly? This is a kind of thing you can afford at 17 but your body will nope out of it by mid-20s. It is an absolutely unreasonable schedule.

No, smartphones etc aren't my distraction. My only problem is that I get burntout after some time of serious study(generally after a week or so). The problem is that our exams last around a month, that is why getting such burnout is very harmful for grades..

Congratulations, you have started figuring it out. Your friends indeed do not study as much - longer study does not mean better. In fact, no (normal/healthy) human being can possibly stay very focused and productive after working super hard for a week or so, which does indeed happen to you. Being well-rested and taking care of your bodily needs (light exercise, healthy diet) makes one accomplish more in 4 hours than some who chooses to ignore it does in 10. Going past 50-55 hours a week does not really increase output even on relatively low-skilled jobs.
Researchers do tend to work long weeks but that is not just sitting down and thinking really really hard about the problem without any breaks. There are some movements towards four-day working week which you probably have heard about. Generally less strict and fewer working days does not mean less productivity.
And finally, very very importantly...

I am good at university until the exam comes when I have to study at high pace for long hours

If you study like you are supposed to during the semester (and you seem to do or at least think you do), studying for the exam should be super minimal, to the point you reread the material for an hour or two and go for a walk in the park. Seriously, your brain health matters. Both for performance itself and more than your current academic performance could ever be.
Needing to study so hard for an exam specifically suggests it would reside in your short term memory primarily, kind of defeating the purpose of the study itself! What's the point of taking these courses and working really really hard and then burning out if after that burnout your brain would eliminate the very thing that tortured it in about two months' time?

Thanks man one thing that you figured out here "you need to study hard again during exams even before you studied earlier". I will keep that in mind. I have finished studying all subjects, yet I need to study them as a whole during exams. Thanks a lot for criticism.


text:
Single author or joint paper with a famous author?
A postdoc X is in the early career phase (< 6 years after PhD) in a field that needs lots of publications. X is working in a group whose leader is very famous in a slightly different but still overlapping field and very supportive of X. However, due to time constraints, the leader is unable to devote time to X's research, including extensively reviewing manuscripts. X wants to become a professor in the natural sciences.
X's current portfolio of publications includes middle-author papers and last-author papers. X is also writing a paper completely on her own, it is almost finished. This question is about this last paper.
If you are on the committee that will select X for a professorship position, what do you see as more favorable (everything else remaining the same):

Single-author paper from X

X is the first author, and the famous person is the second author

Please provide reasons for your choice.
P.S. The identity of X is completely irrelevant to answer the question.
P.P.S Negative voters please comment your grieviences.

Are you X? There's no reason to write hypothetically here

Who is X? Are you talking about yourself?

Does X current portfolio contain output from their current (postdoc) lab?

Yes, all output mentioned is from the current lab.

What is your field? The importance of author order, as well as the weight of single author papers varies enormously across fields.

Possible reasons for downvotes: 1) People do not like the hypothetical writing style. It's distracting. 2) Missing information that's necessary to answer like your field while containing a bunch of other extraneous detail. 3) Asking for reasons for downvotes when people are already commenting reasons that they might downvote.

Then I don't mind the downvotes anymore, more are welcome. 2) X's field is physics. 3) Says a lot about the constructive criticism of the downvoters.

What would this famous person actually do for this paper if X is already writing it on her own and the famous person is too busy to devote time? If they aren't contributing much/anything and X is just adding their name I would say don't do it. It's poor practice to include authors who don't make a scientific contribution as an author (see gift authorship), although lots of academics do it. Including a famous person as an author does help boost citation counts though (if you/a committee are interested in such things)
If they make a significant contribution, improve the paper, and help get it into a top journal, etc. Then including them would be very positive and I would go for it.
This is probably very field dependent, but I think having some single author papers looks good. It at least allows X to more easily make the case that they are the driving force leading the research, rather than someone who just does what they're told to do by others. Demonstrating independence is one of the key things required to successfully make the step from post-doc to a permanent faculty position.
In summary (given the limited information):

If they are making a significant contribution then include them as an author
Otherwise, publish as single author.

X would totally see more citations as having a positive impact! Would you weigh demonstrating independence over more citations?

@quantacad, me personally - yes, I would weigh independence over more citations. Especially in this specific situation (other papers already published with 'famous person') But I'm in the UK and (officially at least) they value quality/independence over citation counts. Other places value citation counts very (most) highly. (for context: I have multiple single author papers in a field where this is not common, and have a permanent faculty position at a top UK university)

Practical considerations.

Ethics and morals aside, the question is how influential this paper by X will be.  If this is simply a normal "good" work, then having a celebrity as her coauthor would be beneficial for X`s CV.  If however this work is to make a really big splash and to be cited over years to come -- then its author X may consider sacrificing the immediate benefit of coauthorship with her boss, for the sake of later reaping a major harvest of being the only author of a gem.

Moral considerations.

Once an extremely talented young colleague asked for my permission to add my name as a coauthor of one of his works, because that work was largely based on my ideas.
On the one hand, I felt unable to accept this offer, because I had not actually been working on that paper (and my ideas used in it had already been published and openly available). On the other hand, I realised that this colleague wanted my coauthorship to give themselves weight in the community. I politely declined, explaining to this colleague that I was doing this solely on the grounds of ethics, and not because I doubt the quality of the paper or do not want to be supportive. As a compensation, I offered to this colleague to write a most praising reference letter, should they need one. Also introduced them to the right people, etc. And then I was astonished when I saw that one of those "right people" agreed to coauthor that same paper.
When I told this sad story to my friends, they reproached me, saying that the young colleague was building up their CV, and that it had been so wrong and senseless of me not to provide my coauthorship as a means of support. An old-fashioned stubborn type, I still believe that I did a right thing, though my stubbornness was frowned upon by the friends I consulted.

It really depends what the conventions are in your field. If the conventions are that you publish with your advisor, it may be seen as odd that you worked in a well-known group but failed to interface meaningfully with your advisor who is viewed as an excellent scientist. If your field does not care, then simply having worked in that environment is likely enough, and the specific authorship will not matter.
The advice I would give you is as follows:
#1 do not engage in gift authorship (though in this case it should be clarified that gift authorship is more of an issue with people putting random well-known scientists with no real affiliation on their papers, not so much group leaders they work with, even though the latter could veer that way, the opportunity for meaningful contribution is actually likely)
#2 DO try to engage with your advisor meaningfully. Attempt to work with them to craft a manuscript (and refine the research done) together. Pick their brain. See how they write and pay attention. You may have to be a bit more patient as they are very likely extremely busy, but in my experience it will be worth it. If your advisor is so well known, then they have experience in publication, writing, how they view things, which can be valuable to you as you head into your independent career. So try to engage them meaningfully for your benefit, and let them earn their authorship credit.

I think it's better with the famous person as the second author. In both scenarios, X is the first author anyhow, so having the famous person there adds credibility to the paper. It also demonstrates the postdoc's ability to engage with influential people in their field and leverage their networks. It also shows she can collaborate effectively, which is crucial in academia. Of course, it all depends on the quality of the paper as well!
Edit: I guess I rushed to answer and didn't realize that the group leader would have no contribution to the paper. However, we are still talking about the group leader, so it would be strange if he/she were not included. Also, I don't know the politics in your group. If not including your group leader in the paper authorship will have negative consequences for your life in the group or a potential recommendation letter, then definitely include the leader.

There is no mention of collaboration. It would be a predatory form of gift authorship.

Leader is "very supportive of X", therefore, no pressure at all about authorship.

@Buffy I edited my answer but I still think he/she should be included. Group leaders often get authorships not only because of politics but also out of respect

@quantacad not respecting politics can swing feelings the other way. I'll insist on my opinion :)

@cconsta1 Having the famous person named as the second author just because "out of respect" is a form of gift authorship. It's unethical

It isn't a question of respect. The PI is expected to have provided guidance, helpful discussions, mentoring, and perhaps even more importantly, funding, resources etc. If hey have provided none of the above (and sometimes even if they did, but not much of it), they don't deserve authorship.


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Is it necessary to describe co-authorship in research proposal?
I am writing a research proposal for a possible university visit. I intend to also mention my recent publication where I am the first author. This led me to the question: Suppose I am writing a research plan, and I am the first/second/n-th author, is it fine to write "my recent paper titled..." instead of "my recent paper co-authored with...", as I also have to keep in mind the word limit. Will it be offensive to not mention the person I worked with in that paper?

Don't worry about it too much. Buffy's answer is great, but English "my" certainly encompasses things that are shared with other people. Just using "our" could be confusing without clear antecedents.

A simple and honest solution is to just describe "our recent paper" rather than "my recent paper". The list of authors will make it clear without more words. Or adding a few words, "the paper I recently co-authored..." would make it clear.
Just list the paper along with the author listing as published.
But you don't need to explain the specifics of the contributions, especially in a case like this. The author list is sufficient and if the field thinks author order is important for some reason, that list spells it out.
You might be asked to explain more about your contributions during the visit so be prepared for that.


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For astrophysics grad school, is an undergraduate major in "astrophysics" better than "physics with astrophysics focus"?
I’m currently a high school junior who wants to major in a math field or physics, and possibly astrophysics. At the moment, I’m looking at Notre Dame as an option for college, but they don’t have an astrophysics major: the have a physics major that lets a student focus on a specific topic like astrophysics. That allows you to take astrophysics classes while pursuing a physics major but not actually majoring in astrophysics. I would like to attend grad school afterwards for astrophysics as well if I decide to go down that path. Would this not-completely-astrophysics major hurt me as I apply to grad school?

This is off-topic here, as it is about undergrad admissions. But I think that the number of undergrad programs specifically in astrophysics is so small that graduates of other related programs are fine for entry to graduate school.

@Buffy: It's not really about undergrad admissions. The question is: will I have a hard time getting into astrophysics grad programs if I have a non-astrophysics degree? That's on-topic, since it's more to do with graduate admissions.

Yeah, this question seems fine to me....will change the title

@Lightbulb, modern astrophysics may not be what you think it is. It may involve a lot of routine such as analyzing and handling data from satellites. Anyway, modern astronomy is a branch of physics. If your college has an astrophysics department, you're probably fine, even if no majoring in astrophysics is available. You will need a lot of physics, Calculus, ODE, even PDE, and more or less CS. Please remove names of specific universities, countries, etc. whenever asking about such choices or it'll be considered "shopping". And Guest gave you SUPER tips – I agree 100% with all of them.

It's fine and probably even optimal.  for one thing, you don't know for sure that you will want astrophysics four years later.  And you are even open to math versus physics.
Do the general physics degree.  Gives you most flexibility. You can take a class or two in astro topics, but pick up general physics degree.  You don't even know if you won't like some other area when you learn it more (optics, solid state, etc etc.)  But in any case general physics program will serve you well for detailed astro study later. Make sure you get a solid grasp on mechanics your junior year, as celestial mechanics is an application of general mechanics
Since you already have some interest in a subfield of physics, I recommend not to major in math.  The nineteenth century math (hard calculus and diffyQ computations) is alive and well in physics departments but has been killed, buried, and pissed on, in modern math departments.  Also read why Dick Feynman left MIT math major.

Hmmm. Can't you get your point across with out the "body fluid" images?

@Buffy I’m surprised you consider this question off-topic, given your positivity to the other question I queried....

These are superb recommendations. Indeed, math majors neglect physics, mechanics, and differential equations. I'm not saying they should not specialize in abstract algebra or topology but total neglect of the fundamentals is a hideous malpractice. So the OP is MUCH better off not majoring in math unless he can study physics on his own. Even then, there's not gonna be enough lab work and abstract math might "consume" him. Abstract algebra might be covered at leisure, although it might require a lot of effort and time, especially when studied very deeply. The same goes for functional analysis.

No, no one cares. Admissions committees are well aware that different programs offer different things and use different names. The only things that matter are that you have a physics degree with good grades from a reputable school, and research experience (preferably in astrophysics).

Can the downvoter explain? This seems like a concise and accurate answer...


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Should I worry that my bachelor's degree will be revoked because I only completed half my internship hours?
This happened in 2016. In my college where I got my bachellor degree (no thesis required), one of the requirements to get that degree is to have 600 trainee hours at a company. The company send a letter to the college which states that I only worked for 300 hours as a trainee (which is correct).
However, Now I've just remembered that the college considerated the 300 hours as 600 hours. Should I worry that they will find out their mistake and revoke my bachelor degree?
I remember that I told the secretary that they were making a mistake but she didnt care and told me to go away.

You shouldn't worry about it

You shouldn't worry about it. The general principal is that the dean of the college that signed your diploma felt you had met the requirements. It would be unusual to second guess that decision years after the fact without a compelling reason (like new evidence of fraud).
We've had a lot of questions about degree revocation recently. Everyone agrees that this is extremely rare, and almost non-existent when the student acted in good faith and the university deliberately issued the degree. It is difficult to imagine a mechanism where the university would even notice the discrepancy, much less care enough to pursue the matter.
By the way, I recently gave the opposite advice to a similar question. But the situations are a little different--in the other case, there was a question about whether the degree had been awarded, and why it was awarded. Your degree was issued according to the normal process.

there was a woman in my country who falsified her highschool diploma, she was caught many many years later and the college who admitted her revoked all her degree. Won't that be my case because, both my case and her are administrative errors?

No, she falsified her high school diploma -- that most  definitely counts as "evidence of fraud" and not "acting in good faith." In your case, it's not clear why they accepted your 300 hours as meeting the internship requirement -- maybe a mistake, maybe some other reason -- but you did not misrepresent anything, and they accepted it, so you should be good. Best to let sleeping dogs lie.

thanks for the comments, I am not a native english speaker, what does "Best to let sleeping dogs lie" mean?

from google: "avoid interfering in a situation that is currently causing no problems but might do so as a result of such interference."