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What does it mean for a professor to take on someone as their PhD student?
To give more context, I am in the US.
I am a first-year PhD student in CS, and I was admitted without an advisor. Over the first semester, I have talked to many professors to see if our research interests match. Finally I decided to work with Prof. X, and I told him that. He then followed with a plan for a study project related to his research, eg, playing around with his codebase, reading his lecture notes from his previous special-topic course. So far, we have had two weekly meetings, and he suggests we should meet every week and I should email him if I have problems in this study.
In this case, has he considered me as his PhD student, or someone on probation as a candidate? I think of him as my advisor, and I follow what he suggests me to do. But does he think the same way? He has never announced something to indicate our student-advisor relationship. In our meeting, we have only discussed problems on actual contents of the subject, never about something else such as whether to give me an office space, whether to fund me as RA so I do not have to TA.

In my mind the answer I want is whether I am officially a PhD student of Prof.X. But how do I phrase it so it is not too awkward to confirm with him? Or should I just silently believe that it is already the case?

I know right now the project is a non-research study, so should I ask him about office space or RA now or later when I actually start researching?

The department continuously tracks me as "in search of advisor", so I think I am urged to give them an answer. But with my current situation, I do not know what to say to them.

Taking on a PhD student is a serious, multi year commitment that many professors would not make before getting to know the student and gaining an appreciation for their abilities and personality, for example by having them do a research project under the professor’s supervision for a semester.
By contrast, having a couple of meetings with a student, discussing some project ideas and allowing them to play around with your code base is not a serious commitment, or much of a commitment at all really.
The professor is your adviser, at least informally, only after you (or they) “pop the question” and the other party says yes. Not before. You should not assume anyone is your adviser until that’s said explicitly, just like you should not assume you are engaged to someone because you went on a couple of dates with them.
Even then, it’s best to have things documented in an email and inform the department of your change in status. Whether they will consider the transition a formal one that requires any paperwork will depend on your department’s policies. Doing things formally will imply a slightly higher level of seriousness and commitment on the part of both yourself and the professor. At the informal stage, even if there is a mutual understanding that someone is your adviser, it is not set in stone and not uncommon for one or another of the parties to decide it’s not working out and decide to back out of the relationship.

I understand that there is usually a transition from trying working with a prof to being completely trusted and accepted as a PhD student. But for how long should this trial phase last? I do not mind taking some time to get to know each other this way, but it seems like the department is pressing to have a yes/no answer from me about advisor seeking (they have sent out two general advisors to discuss this issue with me). Compared to other students who are admitted with advisors, why it  takes only application review for a prof to commit to them, while for me it is a long game to play?

That would depend on the professor. It’s totally possible they are happy taking you as a PhD without a long trial period, you just have to have a discussion about that. And if the department is pressuring you, it might be a good idea to go and talk to the head of your graduate program and make sure you understand their expectations, and that they in turn understand what your situation is.

There is no single definition of what being an advisor means and entails. The one common thing is, well, the advising part. Apart from that, advisors don't have to do anything (this might depend on the country, at least in Germany being an official PhD advisor means first and foremost just that, all the rest is optional).
So from what it sounds like your professor is your advisor (meeting regularly and giving you input etc.), but if that comes with an office and whatnot will probably depend on your individual situation and university.
If you have an otherwise good relationship with the professor, speak with him about your concerns, I suggest starting with something along the lines of: "As the department needs me to chose an official advisor soon, I wanted know if I can officially put you down as my advisor."

In Germany, does the advisor need to approve the dissertation at the end or is that entirely a group activity based on the defense?

@Buffy There is a group decision after the defense, yes. The Group normally consists of several professors (some of which could have been also doing some co-advising on the way to the thesis) including the main advisor.

How about a signature? The US also has a group decision, but probably guided by the advisor.

@Buffy For each PhD defense, there will be a dedicated exam committee which includes the advisor. At the defense, the chair of this committee (not the advisor) will prepare some form of a report that is signed by all committee members. This is only at the very end though, the advisor (and only the advisor) also needs to approve during thesis submission already, and, much earlier, when someone is to be admitted as a PhD student.

@silvado, I'm sure it works that way in some places, but it isn't universal.

@Buffy That was for Germany as you were asking about that, and I think it is quite universal for German universities.

@silvado, ok. Thanks. I forget that Germany is much more uniform in its regulations.

There's no standard process for this. I strongly suggest you talk to your director of graduate studies first to get a sense of the approximate process, not just for the issue of declaration of PhD advisor, but the whole process of completing the PhD program.
Most PhD programs are not very formal when it comes to "declaration of PhD advisor", until it comes to a point in your PhD studies when a faculty member has to organizing a committee and sign some paperwork. In some PhD programs you have (1) the qualifying exam, (2) the preliminary exam and (3) dissertation defense. There are usually two types of qualifying exam: (1a) you take a series of written exams or (1b) you give a presentation on some topic based on your study of a collection of papers. (1a) does not require a PhD advisor. So if your program uses (1a),(2),(3), then formally declaring a PhD advisor during your first year is not necessary if you have not completed (1a).
And as for your questions:

has he considered me as his PhD student, or someone on probation as a candidate? (etc.)

Most likely he's still trying to figure out if you are a possible candidate. You had only two meetings with this faculty member -- call him X. You are studying his notes from a special-topics course and so there's still some time before you can engage in the research work of X. However X is willing to guide/advise you once a week in person and also will answer your emails. Honestly this is the most valuable thing for you right now.

In our meeting, we have only discussed problems on actual contents of the subject, never about something else such as whether to give me an office space, whether to fund me as RA so I do not have to TA.

... so should I ask him about office space or RA now or later when I actually start researching?

You'll have to wait for him to initiate discussion on the RA-ship and office space.

The department continuously tracks me as "in search of advisor", so I think I am urged to give them an answer. But with my current situation, I do not know what to say to them.

Have an informal meeting with your graduate director, update him/her with your progress (your meetings with X, etc.), and ask the director when do you need to officially declare your PhD advisor. If the grad director tells you to do it right away, then talk to X and ask him for his permission first. There's a high chance that the grad director will tell you to wait till you have met X for at least one semester.
PS: It is not a disadvantage for you not to declare your PhD advisor early. It takes times for a faculty member to figure out your background, your work ethic, your interests, etc. It also gives you time to understand the expectation from this faculty member. It is not always a bad thing for the advisor and advisee to part ways.

About the department, the qualifying exam is 1b indicated above. About the professor, I reached out to him at beginning of the first semester. Awkwardly, he said he would have probably taken me on at the application process but I listed him very low... and he showed an interest in working with me, but suggested I connect to other facaulty as well. I performed pretty well in his course for the first semester, and found him helpful. I am really commited to working with him, as I have turned down some other profs. I guess it would be terrible if he turns out to not want me as his student.

For the "presentation" type of qualifying exam you will need an advisor to guide you on the study of a collection of problems. You should still check with your grad director on the general process. Most programs expect their student to finish the qual in 3 years. Extension beyond 3 years is possible but requires a letter from the advisor. Don't worry about listing him low on your initial list. You have not met him then and couldn't have known that you would do well in his class. Don't worry about him dropping you. Just work hard and learn as much as you can. Good luck.

In the US it is actually typical for a student to start without having a dissertation advisor. Often they have an academic advisor who can answer questions about coursework and general progress until they are replaced with a dissertation advisor.
Usually (maybe not universally) the advisor signs the dissertation when it is done and probably participates in the defense at the end. In some cases their role is to assure the other members of the dissertation committee that the work does, indeed, measure up. This is often needed if the committee comes from different sub-fields and may not be as familiar with the work as the advisor.
So, make it official by just asking them if it is appropriate to list them formally at this time.
My own case was similar in some ways (math, though). I asked a couple of people if they would take me on and the ones I asked said they had no ideas for a project that we might work on. But they pointed me to a more senior faculty member who did agree. I don't remember (50 or so years ago) anything about paperwork, but it would have been easy after he said yes.
There was also a weekly (or so) seminar attended by a few faculty (those I'd approached, for example) and their students in which research progress and ideas was discussed. So, there was some sharing beyond just that between the formal advisor and their students. This is more likely in large departments, of course.

You should not spend too much time with a professor that does not indicate a commitment, at least verbally. This was the mistake I made assuming the professor will take me as his student, but professors easily change their minds. This happened to me. After one year, my funding was discontinued and all the blame of not finding an advisor was put on me by the department, although numerous times I clearly told the graduate director that I suspect that professors have exploitative tendencies and asked him to put his weight on the process. He preferred not to get involved and let it slide. I dropped out due to lack of funding. I suspect this department was over admitting PhD students, as they need many teaching assistants for their growing undergraduate CS degree program. Because lots of students had issues with finding advisors and they were continuing to give more admits. This was a top 50 US CS PhD program.
Note that you are free labor for the professor. No one prevents him from taking advantage of you, except his ethical values. Department head and even the dean will turn a blind eye and will cover that up to save the brand name of the school.There are plenty of evil and cheap professors who take advantage of and suck the blood of poor PhD students.
For my case, most were new assistant professors who needed to exploit as many PhD students as possible to increase their chance for their future tenure review. If an established or a well-funded professor spends his time on you, this is a good indicator that he is serious. Usually, an established professor's time is more valuable than time spent for being cheap and taking advantage of a student.
This happened to me and I had to drop out of the PhD program after my first year. I was assigned to introductory CS courses with busy and crowded labs and office hours (10-15 hours of student interaction per week), not including the time for weekly meetings and grading solving exercises. Whereas some incoming PhD students served as TAs for easier courses spending no more than a couple of hours per week and they have easily found advisors who offered RA positions. I think the department had a tiering system and professors knew that we were there only for Taing and being exploited. Actually, a professor that I talked to subtly hinted to me about this. But at that time I could not understand that. Now looking back I can connect the dots.

I am so sorry for your situation back then. How can I tell if a professor is committed to me to help me grow, versus treating me as a means to their end? Should I check with my prof right now? Do you think a more senior professor is more likely to commit? P.S. most CS PhD students here are admitted with an advisor, and unfortunately I was admitted from the left-over pool.

Depends on the graduate director. Mine was a soft nice guy type who only talks but never finds a solution or intervenes. Tiger types will take initiative and will solve the problem. For my case, I suspect they were exploiting students as TAs. Also, lots of other students were struggling to find advisors. It was a known fact in the department which you only learn when you arrive there. I asked an established professor at another institution and he said that graduate director did not do his job well.

I can't recommend any strategies, If the professor is a senior one with a big lab and good funding, usually, he is trying to asses your capacity. He should have an idea about you, at least before the half of the semester. You should try 3 labs or so in a semester. Prof must definitely have a good idea (does not have to be official) about you after a semester or so. If he is unsure after a semester, move on.

Unfunded senior professors also look for free labour to exploit. If the lab has lots of phd students with research assistantships that is a very good sign that professor is senior and respected. If a lab is full of phd students who do teaching assistantship that is very bad.


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Can I contact a corresponding professor before I accept a grad studies offer?
A professor/department provided me with an offer for graduate studies in engineering in Canada.
The professor and I talked briefly before I applied, but the project(s) I would work on during my studies is still unclear.
Is it appropriate to contact the Prof. before I accept to talk about the projects again?

Will you have a masters degree when you start, or just a bachelors? And, if a bachelors, is it for doctoral study or masters?

Doctoral - but why does it matter

It matters in the US, and it matters what degree you already have if in the US. It also matters where you are. Different places in "North America" might have different answers also. There isn't a uniform system in such a big place.

Okay,  so back to the question: should I contact ?  So if Masters dont contact, if PhD contact ?

If you provide more information about your situation, you will likely get more (better?) answers. We can't guess and we can't answer for all the world.

What information do you need ?

For starters, you didn't respond to my second comment. Degree you hold. Degree you seek. More specific location if possible.

Bachelors, Masters - Held, PhD- Sought.  Electrical Eng.  North America.  Canada.

If exclusively Canada, then applying the tag might wake people up with specific knowledge there. Not me, sorry.

Is it really that different than USA.

Yes, there are (I believe) some important differences. Some of the Canadian processes are like US and some like UK. I don't want to give a possibly misleading answer.

How are UK and USA different

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Sending the same proposal to multiple funding agencies
I am planning to submit a proposal for possible funding. There are three sources of funding I can apply for, and unfortunately the evaluation periods all three overlap. Typically there exists an option to state this while submitting. I am wondering if such a statement has any impact on the chances of being funded (of the three grants, I much prefer a specific one). Moreover, two of the agencies uses external reviewers and since my proposed work builds heavily on the previous efforts of three persons (one of them a prolific reviewer), there is a risk in reviewer overlap. I wonder how a reviewer would perceive this. In particular, would a reviewer be less inclined to recommend a second proposal for funding if they have already recommended a first on the same topic? PS I was advised not to make any statement of overlap. Is this an  unofficial custom?

Talk to the program officers from your funding sources.  Some funding sources encourage simultaneous submission; others discourage it or even forbid it.  There is no universal rule.

It really is better to not do it. At least simultaneously (might be ok if the proposal was rejected).
If you absolutely have to go ahead, try to fine-tune and change the proposal as much as possible according to the agency requirements.

I am sort of in a predicament where I have to submit at least two of them. I could skip the third.

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Should you get your masters degree from a different school then the one your received your bachelors from
I received an associates degree in computer science from a junior college and then transfered to an university to pursue my bachelors degree. I am almost finished with that and I plan on continuing towards a masters degree. A lot of classmates tell me that you should get your masters degree from a different school then the one your received your bachelors from. Is this true? Why? Should you get your PhD from the same school your got your masters?
EDIT:
Thank you all! This helps me a lot!

It is commonly accepted that it is generally better for a student who is going on to an academic career to get their PhD at a different institution from where they got their MS.  For an academic, the place where you got your PhD is generally more important than where you got your bachelor's degree and that it is important to have a PhD from the very best program that you can get into.  Studies have shown that PhDs from the top programs are much more successful than PhDs from lower ranked programs.
There are lots of middle tier universities with good undergraduate programs that adequately prepare students for graduate study but that don't have very strong graduate programs.  If you're at one of those institutions, then you'd be well advised to "move up" to a better institution for your PhD.
You've asked this question specifically about your MS degree, where this is much less of an issue.  If you're getting a terminal masters and planning to work in industry, then it probably won't hurt to get your BS and MS at the same institution.  If you're planning to get your BS and MS at the same institution and then go somewhere else for a PhD then having gotten your BS and MS at the same institution won't be a problem either.

FWIW my BS, MS, and PhD are from the same institution, and I don't feel that it has had any negative impact on my academic career.

Interesting, I wonder if it's field dependent. One of my organic chemistry professors once said that he felt like his entire career was spent trying to make up for the fact that he got his BS and PhD from the same schoo.

As for your question regarding Why?
As far as I understand this is to be able to get more academic exposure to different ideas. One could imagine that someone who trained for around 8-10 years in the same place might leave with some bias from working with the same people and being exposed to the same ideas for that period of time.
I completed my BS and MS at the same university and then traded institutions for my PhD. This wasn't as much for academic exposure as finding the best program for me. However, having made the switch I have appreciated the different environment and meeting new people. I have only positive things to say about going to a different institution for more advanced degrees.
This advice is most relevant when considering institutions for a PhD. Someone who is pursuing a terminal masters degree probably doesn't need to worry much about going to a different institution.
Of course you will find many people who agree and disagree with this rule. I know several people who got all their degrees from the same institution and are doing just fine and others who decided to go to a different institution. The bottom line is you need to find the program that is going to fit you best.

Depending on the university and place, doing one's Bachelor, Master, and PhD in the same university does by no means always imply that you keep "working with the same people".

It is not necessary to get your masters degree from a different school then the one your received your bachelors from. The choice is entirely yours. Although there are a few things to consider while making your choice;
1) the job prospects in the area: what are the chances of you getting accepted by your potential employers.
2) your choice of subject and area: Computer Science is one of the STEM subjects which has favorable job prospects all across the US. But it would be easier for you if you were to earn a degree New York then job hunt in New York rather than in Alaska.
3) research and compare the reputations of Unis and tuition fees: it would do any good if you found out that your undergraduate uni has greater reputation than your new uni. The reputation of a Uni matters to quite an extent when you are getting a job after all your studies.

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If something is publicly visible in the Internet, does it mean I can use it for research?
I am talking about images in particular. If I collect a dataset for non-profit purposes (research) and an image is publicly available for anyone on the web (i.e. I can see it in google image search results, and the access to corresponding web page is not limited), does it mean that I can use it, if I mention source?
For example: 3d models themselves might be not available and cost money, but their previews are freely accessible by anyone on the web. Can I use these images as data for research and distribute an archive with these images freely? (including text file with authors of these images and URLs to pages!) Images themselves are available for free.
Or, I might collect a list of these URLs and publish a large txt file with these URLs so that everyone could download them if they need. That should not be a violation, is it? If I one downloads images to train an algorithm?
I feel like that is somewhat different from using images for educational or illustrative purposes.

The exact details will be situation and geography-dependent, but your situation may be covered by fair use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

@Harry , thank you, I did not know about this term!

Define "publicly available" and "available for free". Just because something is on the internet and your browser can download the image from a server doesn't mean you have permission from the creator to use it in your own work. IANAL, but be very, very careful here.

@gerrit Creating a research database of materials is different to using images in a presentation. I also think this question could have two different answers depending on whether the database was or was not subsequently made publicly available.

PLEASE stop being so fast to mark things as dupes without reading them carefully, people. The other question was "Can I use pictures off the internet in presentations". This one is "can I use them in my research" - as I read it, it's NOT specifically about publishing or distributing them.

There are at least three largely-unrelated questions buried in here. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, and in any case its correctness may vary a little according to where you are.
The first thing to establish is that "appearing on the internet", whether in Google Images or elsewhere, does not mean that something is in the public domain. Something may be public domain, or it may be copyrighted with a permissive license, or (most commonly) neither of these may apply - although you can configure Google Images to search for pictures with public domain and/or Creative Commons licenses.
Now, the three questions:

If something is available online can you use it in your research? I don't see any copyright reason why not, since you're not distributing it; downloading an image to perform research is not fundamentally any different to downloading an image (in your browser) to view it.
You might need to be careful that your research (which you presumably do want to distribute) is not a "derivative work" of the copyrighted material. Reporting something like "50% of pictures on the internet are of cats" would not be a problem, but for less clear-cut cases - for example where part of the original material remains - you might want to check.
If something is available online can you redistribute it? No, or at least not by default. Not unless it is public domain or licensed in such a way as to permit this. "Fair use" considerations may modify this answer in some jurisdictions.
Can you distribute a list of the URLs of copyrighted works that others could download for their own research? Probably, but there have been some attempts at really bizzare laws in this area in some countries, due to websites that provide links to pirated movies, etc., that they do not host.

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How should I discuss about a paper with my potential supervisor who is one of the authors of that paper?
Last week I met my mentor (and also my potential supervisor) for my PhD. He suggested me to read a paper which is also related to my master's thesis.
I read that paper and some questions popped into my mind and I want to share them with him. Also, I would like to impress him and show him I fully understand the paper. I wonder how I should talk about the paper with my potential supervisor.

I second @astronat: just approach them and ask.

“I would like to impress him” — I recommend against this, it’s bound to backfire. Don’t try to impress. This either happens automatically, or not at all.

Organise a meeting with him, sit down and say "Bob, I have a couple of questions about that paper you suggested I read last week". And then ask the questions.
Don't overthink this. It really is that simple.

If you're trying to impress your supervisor, which is totally reasonable for a new graduate student trying to establish himself, there are a several things you could discuss.

Mention the good things about the paper, and how it compares to related work.
Mention the shortcomings in the paper, if you mention shortcomings not mentioned in the paper itself, even better. Go further and mention how these shortcomings could be fixed.
Suggest how you can build on top of this paper for the masters thesis you intend to embark on.
If there are things you don't understand from the paper make an effort to do your homework and try to understand them. If after your best effort you don't understand something, mention to your advisor you are not quite sure about a particular thing. If your advisor is a reasonable person he/she will try to explain the concept to you or point you to relevant resources if he/she doesn't understand it.

At a high level you should think critically about the paper. Weigh the pros and cons, and think about how you can use this paper in your research. These are just some general questions to think about when reading any paper.

Mentioning shortcomings, while it may be academically impressive, might have the opposite effect on a personal level, especially when you're under pressure to make a good impression. I'd recommend establishing rapport before doing that. (I also believe this question is less about the academic side, and more about the personal side of the situation.)

Unless your observations contradict a foundation of the paper, mention its positive points.
If your observation derives directly from the paper, show the logical connection, and how it may enhance the paper's points.
If your observation is tangential to the subject matter of the paper, show the tangential relation, and if there is a semantic relation.
If the field of study admits for some formal proof, give some sketch of how you might prove your point.

The OP said "some questions popped into my mind".  I would suggest the most likely question that a new graduate is going to have about a paper that a potential PhD supervisor has written will be of the form "I don't understand ..." (about a specific point). Your answer doesn't address that.


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What does graduated mean in the Netherlands?
I have been admitted to a Master in the Netherlands, but my diploma will be awarded after the enroloment date there. However, the university says they can process my admission if I send them an official letter stating that "I have graduated", completed my course work, and that the diploma will be awarded later.
In my country and university, the list of students that will receive the diploma is authorized by the Academic Council first and diplomas awarded later. When the list is issued, the Council gives a letter stating that you are graduating. I am not sure if such letter is the equivalent to what the Dutch University needs. Anyone at a Dutch university knows what they exactly want?
Edit: Official documments at my University are issued in Spanish, not in English, therefore I have to get the document translated by an official translator. Hereby, I want to the document to be sharp enough to avoid changes in sense or missinterpretations in any stage.

Is there any chance you won't get the degree? I think they just want to make sure you will fulfil the requirements.

Another way to describe this (which is very difficult to misinterpret) is that you are eligible to graduate.

@Davidmh After the list issued by the Council, its official: You ARE graduating, and there is no turning back.

@Moriarty  That might be a good term to use. The official letter won't be issued in English, instead I will have it in Spanish and then officially translated. That is the reason why I want to have the most precise terms and to avoid miss interpretations.

I'm Dutch and did my bachelor/master and PhD studies at a Dutch university (Utrecht), but can't claim to know exactly what they want; for that you'd really need to get in contact with the people at the university who are in charge of the admission procedure.
That said, I think they want an official confirmation that you passed all requirements necessary to get your degree, and so it seems that the council letter might be sufficient.

Agree, they mean whether you have passed the requirements ('geslaagd' in Dutch).

I also got my graduate degree in Spain and sent the transcript in Spanish to the Irish university where I did my PhD. They took care of everything else. Administrators understand there are different systems and will usually do their best to accommodate you, but because of the different systems they might not have a standard procedure.
What I suggest is that as soon as your transcript is ready you send a copy to the Dutch university asking if that is enough (they might even have someone who speaks Spanish in their office) and at the same time send it for official translation to English in case you need backup.
As for the diploma, I would not worry too much, I collected my graduate diploma itself (i.e. the piece of paper) after my doctoral one.


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should I include offer letter from a different institution in my application for a faculty position
I have a offer letter from a very well-known group in my field for a postdoc position. The proposed starting date would be early next year.
However, I am currently also applying for a faculty (assistant professor) position at a different institution.
Should I mention this offer in my application for the faculty position (on cv or cover letter) and/or include the official offer letter?
update:
there is another sublety for one application. One faculty position I consider requires experience abroad (i.e. not in the same country) of at least 1 year. I only have 6 months but the postdoc offer would be abroad giving me the 1 year total if I take it before starting the faculty position. Should I then mention the offer?
my field is health and medical sciences

@Elzo I would hope that having an offer letter from this very well known group would increase my chances for the faculty position. Everybody knows this group in my field.

@Elzo this is exactly the question

About update: so, does the job at the Different Institution start in over 6 months from now, and you expect to be done with the postdoc stuff at the Well-Known Group before that? Otherwise, it's hard to see how it's relevant.

Definitely not. That is part of a commercial negotiation between you and a third party. It is nobody else's business whatsoever.

Are you going to do the postdoc position? You could always just accept it, and then you're not listing an offer but an actual position (one that you will hold between now and your start date in any other position that you're applying for). Of course, that limits you to definitely doing the postdoc, since if you show up having not done it there could be questions...

I think that it would be unwise to include a copy of an offer in another application.
But whether you inform them of the existence of an offer is a bit more subtle. I doubt that anyone will rush to hire you just because you have another offer. They will evaluate you on other things as usual. So, at best, mentioning the offer initially gets you nothing.
However, later in the process if you need a decision and they are delaying making it, you can let them know that you have a deadline. Whether that helps or hurts is also subtle. Whether it is wise, or not depends on the nature of any relationship you have been able to build with them. In the absence of any relationship, it might hurt more than help. It is easy to just cross you off the list unless they are very interested and have few other interesting applicants.

To be blunt and clear, if anyone had done this on any of the previous hiring committees I have been on, we would have rejected them instantly. They would not have even been long-listed, let alone short listed. Having another job offer is not a reason for anyone to hire you. Indeed, it indicated a number of negative things:

You are the sort of person who goes all the way through the process of getting one job but still fishes around for something "better": read, you waste everyone's time
If they do want you, you are likely to try to pull off some sort of bidding  war for you, increasing your package etc. That's annoying to everyone.
You are implying that the research group you have a PostDoc offer from is somehow better than the place you are looking for a Faculty Position from. Like some temporary position is as good as a tenure track one. Ouch!
You are lacking in subtlety, diplomacy, and general workplace etiquette.

Basically, don't do this. It is a very bad idea.

thanks for this clear answer. I updated my question, what would be the right thing to do here?

This is a rather extreme answer. Particularly item 1, which sounds very unreasonable. Really, it is wrong to simultaneously apply to multiple positions and not jump on the first offer that comes along (especially for a postdoc when you were hoping for an assistant professorship) but hope to get additional offers and do whatever you need to to maximize your chances? That’s news to me and everyone I know (but maybe we’re all “that sort of people” you were referring to). What am I missing here, GrotesqueSI?

@ssquidd Please say that person asked for feedback on their application materials...

(To be clear, I agree that including the other offer letter is a bad idea. Mentioning the offer itself may or may not be a good idea, depending on many specific details as discussed in Buffy’s answer. But the absolutist tone of this answer does not leave a good impression, especially item 1 as I said.)

@DanRomik The main issue is the total lack of diplomacy. It comes off as completely disrespecting the institution that offered the post doc: an institution that went through the whole search and hiring process, who disappointed other candidates, and who gave the poster a sincere offer. Yes, one should take something better if it comes along, but to so overtly use this other offer as a springboard is crass and a fantastic way to burn bridges.

@DanRomik apologies if you felt the tone was harsh. I'm basically giving the senior faculty "are you stupid look" that ssquidd mentioned in their comment, only in typed form.

You sound like a very sensible person and I generally like your answers a lot. This one seems off the mark. Ruling out candidates for committing a minor social faux pas (even assuming that the action we’re discussing is such a thing; if done correctly it doesn’t have to be) doesn’t sound wise or fair to me, nor does jumping to conclusions about someone’s character based on such tiny amounts of evidence.

@DanRomik People are generally on their best behaviour when applying for a job. If this is the OP's "best behaviour", it's hardly "jumping to conclusions" to consider how they might behave in "normal" situations, and betting with the odds is usually a good strategy. Recruitment isn't about looking for the ideal candidate (because with limited information you have no way to achieve that). It's about making the lowest-risk decision that someone is  good enough.

Ehhh, I totally believe you someones application like this would get binned, but getting an offer letter isn't "going all the way through getting a job" and the OP is doing nothing wrong by looking for something better

I agree with @DanRomik, this attitude seems unreasonable (although that doesn't make the answer any less valuable, as it shows that hiring committees may be unreasonable in this way). 1: No, it just shows the person is not willing to give up on the chance of a permanent job to take a temporary one, which is normal. 2: I don't think there is any reason to think this - unless you're paying less for your faculty position than other institutions are for their postdoc positions, the other offer isn't a negotiating tool.

3: On the contrary, it says the candidate is not applying merely because they have no other options, but because they genuinely want this position. 4: If by "subtlety and diplomacy" you mean "being less open", I'm not sure that's a good thing.

I agree about the "not including" part, I disagree about "not letting know" in general. E.g., clearly the candidate thinks the tenure track is better than the postdoc, otherwise they'd not apply now. But I agree in this case --- I just don't see what the candidate wins from letting it be known, "the others think I'm good enough for a postdoc, so you have to agree on my lecturer skills"? If anything, the committee concluded "This one is safe, won't drop out of academia, no need to give the edge on that ground" and take another (e.g., minority/underrepresented) candidate.

@DanRomik Again, fair if you think I am being unreasonable, but think of me as representative of a likely make up of the committee. Sure it may be unreasonable for the reasons you say for the committee to think my 1, 2, and 3, but they are very likely to think it.

You do not show a letter addressed to you personally to other people without the sender`s (explicit or implicit) consent.
Never, if you have any doubt, unless you get a formal court order to do so.


text:
Can I add an "author contributions" section to make clear that I did all the work on a paper?
I have a paper where I have many co-authors and most of them did not contribute much. As a PhD student I am in a weak position to reject such inquiries of senior faculty.
To address this, I want to add a section on author contributions. However, the journal where I have this paper under review does not have this section as a default.
Is it still OK to add this or how should I proceed to make it more clear that I did all the work on this paper?
UPDATE: thanks to all, I am overwhelmed with the feedback I got. Based on your advice, I decided to not take any actions and make this a lesson learned for future situations. As the paper is already under review it is also too late. In the future, I will try to convince "coauthors" to be mentioned in the acknowledgements instead.

@corey979 yes, I'm first author. The paper is in a more biomedical journal that also covers aspects of economics. In economics it is very uncommon to have many co-authors. In health it is almost the norm.

To clarify: Why are they authors?

@Haque from senior faculty: "your paper is relevant to my field, I offer to proof read it (i.e. correcting 2 typos) for co-authorship."

Proofreading a manuscript in exchange for authorship is highly questionable, even unethical if senior faculty use their position to pressure you into agreeing. In the future you can offer them an Acknowledgement instead of co-authorship to avoid having to reject them completely.

Your statement would essentially be the opposite of co-authorship. So those people will likely not accept this.

Have you talked with your advisor about this?  What did they say?

@spore234 Your comment calls for another question: What can I do if I have offered authorship in exchange for a clerical contribution and now regret it? I'm not sure that what you're proposing here is prudent, but there may be other ways.

@spore234 depends on what you mean by "many"? More than 4 is rather unsual I would say, but then again no one will care about a section that describes that you did all the work in economics anway. What counts is the publication record and the reference letters

@SAFEX this paper has 6 authors, including me. 2 of them did nothing. I can accept having the other 3 on board, they did not contribute to the writing or data analysis, but without them I would not have had access to the data.

@Kimball my supervisor is a nice guy and I like him. I told him about this issue and he agreed that we should put more emphasis on good scientific practice in the future. Nothing happened since then.

@spore234 But this is something that happens a lot in economics finance and people understand that some coauthors (usually employed by big gov organizations) simply provide data but didnt do anything... I wouldnt worry too much. in any case: no one in economics will care about the section you propose but about overall publication record and lettrs of reference

Relevant Big Bang Theory episode.

I'm usually all in favor of contribution sections (I've been at the border between medical and natural sciences for a long time, and I've met this custom in medical papers). However, for the present situation I agree with @ElectronicToothpick that for a paper already submitted and under review it is too late to take any such step. IMHO the starting of this paragraph should already be in the first draft of the paper that is sent around.

I've found contribution sections a nice instrument in situations similar to yours: having coauthors where a substantial contribution to the paper is not clear or did not happen.
PhD students are often not in a position to question higher up faculty on whether they should not be coauthor without significant risk to their standing. The contribution section can hand over part of this to the editor who is not in any dependency situation with possibly gift coauthors.
While I've not yet seen any coauthors being thrown out of the author list by an editor, I've seen author order (1st authors) being changed on the basis of the contributions section.
Even as the main author of a paper (in the sense of doing the major part of writing up and integrating the various coauthors' text contributions) I would not write up any but my own contribution to the paper. I usually start a "Contributions" paragraph and then  "CB did this, that and that." plus a comment that everyone please fill in your contributions. That way, the "small" coauthors have to spell out that they did not do anything substantial - or they may spell out valid intellectual contributions that you didn't even suspect like being the source of the idea for solution your supervisor told you as a starting point.
I also think (hope?) that everyone who truly did not contribute substantially will find it very embarrassing to spell this out - and may retract their wish to be a coauthor and say they'd rather be acknowledged.
But even if that doesn't happen, again the editor or worst case the reader will know that they didn't contribute.

I'd like to point out that I think contributions sections genuinely useful for readers as well - in case you have to argue for including one in the future:

Particularly in interdisciplinary papers, readers may want to get into contact about a variety of things. Saying who did what allows them to directly contact the person they look for.
And, of course, in any situation where it is important to judge the actual contribution (e.g. if someone wants to check expertise in an application).

I think you need to consider for a moment if this is in your own benefit.
Depending on how you go about it, adding such a section without your contributors knowing can come off as a backstab, and hurt your relationship with your contributors. Especially since the paper is already under review, and you seem quite adamant to have it included. If you do let them know (and review) beforehand, it might still come off to them as off-putting that you are adamant about discrediting their contribution (in your own words "I did all the work"). Sure they might not have written the paper, but is it really true that they contributed nothing of note? It is very common for supervisors who do reviewing or who only give advice to be listed, even if they have not written any original text. Other academics are aware of this, so what do you really gain by asserting yourself as the sole author?
If you do chose to include a contribution section, make sure that you go about it in a way that does not hurt your relationship with your colleagues, something which is far more important than the exact credits of one publication.

There is a reason why this bothers me. The paper is in a borderline health and economics journal. While it is common in health to have many co-authors, it is very uncommon in economics. Many economics journals even restrict the number of co-authors. In economics, many ca-authors = less contribution from each individual, and this is clearly not the case in my paper.

Regarding the second sentence: The OP should hear that modifying a coauthored submission (in any but the most trivial typo-level ways) without notifying one's coauthors, or notifying them too late for them to voice their opinion on the choice, is extremely unethical.

@Greg Martin. I agree, I should have been more explicit about that.

I'll take an even firmer stance than @ElectricToothpick: Don't
To put this another way, what's the cost-benefit analysis?  The cost is that you could make a reputation for yourself as someone who looks to gain too much of the credit.  This is a reputation that will hinder your ability to get on future papers.  The benefit is that you get more credit for this paper.
In the papers that I have read, there is the tendency to assume that the order of authors is in decreasing contributions.  I have seen one author contribution section; it was in a paper where the two authors wanted to make it clear that they were equal contributors.  In that case, the response of the the folks with whom I was talking about was along the lines of "Oh, that's nice."  Had the contribution section been more along the lines of "The first author contributed 90% of the data", it would have been very jarring to us.  The only time that this sort of a thing wouldn't look bad would be if an advisor wants to make sure a student gets credit.  But there are other ways to do this.
You can get more credit as the primary author in other ways.  Principally, if you are the face that champions this paper; e.g. in conference presentations or future papers, the ideas from this paper will become tied to you without needing to intentionally draw attention to yourself.
Now, granted, my papers have been in a different realm than yours, so maybe there's a practice of this in Econ.  I think the easiest way to answer this question is to ask you how many of the papers you have read include a section like this?  If you can't point to a sizeable percent of papers that include contribution sections to denote primary contribution, the inclusion of the section is liable to draw more negative attention than positive.

thanks, I tend to agree to not do it. I just wanted to add that "author contribution" sections are very common. For example in the BMJ, one of the major health studies: https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4880  Here, "GDC was responsible for the patient involvement aspects of this work" which is a strong indicator that he did not do much. He is also second to last author, the least prominent position.

@spore234 Good to know.  This looks more specific to the individual field than I had thought.  The only other advice I would then give is that you should follow the norm of the journal to which you are submitting.  In the article you have linked, very specific tasks were linked to co-authors.  If you can do something similar, it should mitigate any impression of credit-seeking.

I agree with @L_W's comment. Proofreading a manuscript is in general not a sufficient intellectual contribution for coauthorship, although it can certainly be recognized in an acknowledgments section. You may wish to consult the authorship guidelines promoted by an organization that's authoritative for your field and journal. In fact, a major reason such guidelines are written is to prevent exactly this sort of abuse, where senior academics can extend their CV by a few hundred feet by nominally contributing to dozens of papers.
As an example, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors says:

The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

[…] All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged

Other answers have pointed out that by telling the "coauthors" that they aren't coauthors, you will rustle a lot of jimmies and obtain little to no personal career benefit. This is perfectly true, but would playing along with them be consistent with your own ethical sense? Would you feel good admitting that you did this to some hypothetical bright-eyed undergraduate who looks up to you? That's what I ask you to consider.

I am assuming that you are mostly concerned about getting full credit for this paper on the job market. I would offer three solutions.
First, if you have a supervisor who is sympathetic to your point (and who agrees to this strategy), you can make them the “bad guy.” Then you can say that your supervisor said that you cannot add any additional authors at this time. You might even be able to say that you have been advised that proofreading needs to be handled as a note in the Acknowledgment section/statement, rather than authorship.
If the supervisor is not willing to go this far, then you could ask them to emphasize your primary contribution to this article in all letters written on your behalf on the job market. This would be very standard and would do the same thing as a contribution statement, just in a more private manner.
Finally, you could purposely look for a health Econ journal where this type of statement/disclaimer is more standard. If it is a journal norm, then your colleagues can hardly object to your including it. You might even be able to use the fact that you have to write such a statement to remove people whose contribution would give a bad impression .

Do this only if the supervisor agrees!!!!! (Just to emphasize this important point.) Otherwise, she could lose her allies and you her sympathy.

Ah yes, that was implicit. I will add.

If some author needs to be removed maybe they can go to the acknowledgment section (if the journal/field have this section too).

@llrs Right, that is what I was saying in the last sentence of paragraph 2.

Dawn, my impression is that you remove them entirely from the article, I would remove them from the author list, but note their contributions under Acknowledgments (Which in health related fields is were a proofreading task ends up)

@llrs I am agreeing they would go in Acknowledgements. I will try to clarify more.


text:
Interactive papers
I have been working on a mathematics paper for some time now, and I had the idea that instead of publishing just a regular paper, I could create something that is "interactive" to encourage a reader to engage with the concepts, and facilitate understanding. My criteria for "interaction" are the following:

There should be visible movement in the paper itself

The reader should have the ability to control some aspect of this movement.

I will still decide exactly how this can be used to make the reading experience easier, but for now I would just like to know if this is something that is commonly done, and if so. If anyone has any pointers or links, on how to get started.

My understanding is that papers are "old-fashioned" by convention, and very technical by intention; so an interactive format wouldn't be very popular. But interactive blog posts and "demos" are amazing and very popular, even in academia. It's very common to publish a technical paper and accompanying blog post and/or demo, I suggest you do that but make the blog and/or demo interactive.

i.e. a jupyter notebook accompanying your paper?

Don't do it! Any method you use will be obsolete in 5-10 years and/or will rely on a server that won't be online then, and then your work will be lost to science. By all means make an interactive demo, but keep it separate from the paper and don't make the paper rely on it.

@N.Virgo to be honest - I usually don't bother hunting for papers that are not available digitially. So if you used the medium "print" 20 years ago, and nobody likes your stuff enough to write about it in a book or scan it. Guess what: your method of publishing is obsolete and lost to science. And this is what always happens if nobody bothers transferring stuff from the old medium to the new medium. And given how much content is available in html form on the web I highly doubt that html will be obsolete in 5-10 year without an excellent way to transfer to the potential new medium.

@FelixB. I think you're over-optimistic. I'd be surprised if you can find a website that is (i) 5 years old or more, (ii) interactive, (iii) not actively maintained, (iv) still online, and (v) still works. If you go to 10 years the task will be basically impossible, because almost any interactive web site from that era was made in Adobe Flash.

I already did: https://distill.pub/about/ (started in 2016, check (i), on hiatus since 2021 so (iii),  and obviously works and is online). Since it was a journal and gave out DOIs they pretty much promised to keep that running indefinitely. Okay this is a bit tongue in cheek, but I think the point is: Don't self publish (neither in print nor interactively). If you do, nobody except you feels responsible for keeping it accessible, which is essentially a guarantee for it to become unavailable. But that does not mean don't do something interactive

@FelixB. I think "on indefinite hiatus since 2021" is a fairly good indicator that articles published in that journal will stop working as web technology moves on. They might continue to maintain them for some time, but reading the text about the hiatus I get the impression of a small group of people whose enthusiasm has already waned, so I wouldn't expect that maintenance effort to continue indefinitely. (And that was my point above: for anything interactive to exist indefinitely, someone will need to maintain it indefinitely, until we have an interactive platform that's as stable as pdf.)

@N.Virgo that maintenance effort is orders of magnitudes lower than the reviewing/advising effort for new papers. Given that they already invested this time, I doubt that they would not care about it continuing to run. And while reviewing of articles requires experts, keeping it running can be done by any CS intern. So as long as there is funding for that it is going to be around, which I am pretty sure will be forever (I can't imagine that a doi doesn't have any more strings attached than a normal website btw).

@FelixB. 'I usually don't bother hunting for papers that are not available digitially. So if you used the medium "print" 20 years ago, and nobody likes your stuff enough to write about it in a book or scan it ... your method of publishing is obsolete and lost to science.' I hope you don't really believe this. Many people do still go to libraries. Maybe you don't bother, but other people do.

@toby544 in the areas I am interested in, there is enough literature, that you can't read everything anyway. And if it is more difficult to access I usually have alternatives available. And it is a lot less fun to read typewriter equations than LaTeX equations so I certainly have a bias for more recent literature. Most of the time there is a scan available anyway, only books were ever a problem and then there were always alternatives so yeah...

@FelixB. OK. That is a more sensible and moderate statement than "your method of publishing is obsolete and lost to science." In my areas too there is enough literature that you can't read everything, and alternatives are usually available. But I have still got many useful bits of information by going to libraries.

@toby544 the point I am making is: I don't really read print. Which means, for everything I am reading, someone has made the effort to digitalize it. It is reasonable to assume a similar kind of preservations effort for things which got a DOI assigned to them. I wanted to express, that a method being obsolete (e.g. paper) doesn't mean that the content will be.

@FelixB. I can understand that you don't read print, but apart from that it is hard to understand the point of your last comment, especially the last sentence. And it is completely wrong to say that paper is "obsolete" - that word is very strong and refers to a thing's status in the whole of society, not just a tendency or one person's preference. Typewriters are obsolete but paper is not.

There was such a journal for machine learning:
https://distill.pub/about/. But it was put on indefinite hiatus due to burnout of the editorial team.
Format problem
Perhaps most generally you have the problem of choosing a format. LaTeX is the standard in mathematics, but it is not suited for interactivity. This immediately puts you into the position of having to use non-standard tools to create your paper. Using non-standard tools generally leads to more effort.
For example you might decide to use html as it is very suited for interactivity, but then you have to figure out how you

cite stuff (as most of the citation machinery, bibtex or biblatex is geared towards LaTeX). Of course you could do citations manually but then you have a ton of extra work.
how to actually write equations. Html doesn't have machinery for maths, so you will end up either with MathML (would not recommended) or MathJax, KaTeX-like javascript libraries. Dealing with that is overhead.
how you convert it back to pdf to get a journal to accept it (which then also means you have to be able to style it for the journal. And the journal typically expects LaTeX so it will at best provide .sty files for tex)
...

Distill wrote some javascript code to enable citing, but it is mixed up with their format and should probably be factored out as a standalone library. I started an attempt once to create such a citation library (bibcite) but abandoned it (due to time constraints). It is working somewhat, but does not look good, links are broken at the moment and I never got around to creating hover overs.
Related projects

LaTeXML is an attempt to convert LaTeX to html automatically (their goal is to convert the entire arxiv to html cf. ar5iv.org). It is relatively brittle in my experience, and it is limited in the interactivity department as the origin is static latex (you can hook into it to make it add javascript though, for simple stuff like collapisble proofs).

PreTeXt takes the other route, you have to write xml (which can then be converted into both LaTeX and html). People use it mostly for books (e.g. Discrete Mathematics) the styling and layout looks a bit dated, but that could be fixed and they have good support for interactivity. But they also have a custom cite style which does not work well with citation libraries like Zotero, which might be the reason people stay away from it for papers. At least I don't know of any papers using it. It is much more stable than LaTeXML since it forces you to use a stable XML sublanguage and there are validation files baked into an extension available for VSCode. Editing is still not as comfortable as LaTeX since there are no such things like synctex letting you jump to the code generating a specific part of the pdf. And the paragraph tags are quite annoying to be honest.

Manim is a python library geared towards rendering math videos, which are generally not interactive so it probably does not suit you.

Reactive notebooks like Observable (javascript) Pluto.jl (julia) or with more tweaking Jupyter (mostly python, but also R and julia) allow some interactive plots. You could supply these as a supplemental with your paper. But chances are that few people will look into the supplemental much less get them running. Observable is probably you best bet as they are easier to host, so you could provide a link in the paper.

Enhanced Markdown like Quarto (which is based on the older R-Markdown, which only worked for R)

Data Dashboard website makers like Dash by Plotly (python) and R shiny

Perhaps this attempt (typst) at a LaTeX replacement will turn out a better foundation for interactivity in the future (although they do not exist at the time of writing - this is mostly a reminder for my future self)

Conclusion
People are thinking about this problem. But since everyone is time constrained and there is probably very little funding to create tooling there is not much of a toolchain to create such a paper. And without the ability to easily create such papers, there aren't enough papers to fill a journal so I wouldn't expect there to be one (I certainly do not know of one).

Regarding citations when not using LaTeX: LaTeX is the standard in mathematics, but it is not the standard in all fields that heavily use citations. So there have been quite a lot of tools that have been developed to help with citations and bibliography, and many of these tools work regardless of which software you use to write the paper (even including bare word processors).

See for instance Wikipedia: Comparison of reference management software

@Stef sure, but those other fields will generally not use html but Microsoft Word perhaps. And Word is ill suited for interactive papers as well. At least I am not aware of any field using html for papers. And I doubt that there is any if not even computer science does that.

@FelixB. Many journals which allow to view an article in html rather than as pdf, see e.g. https://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.13.041008#fulltext As of now the authors still submit the paper in Latex or Word, and then it's converted in some – probably semi-automatic – way by the editors. Primary strength of Latex is organizing text on paper pages, which a dying medium. I would think that ability to generate html from Latex might actually save it from obsolescence.

A possibility would be to provide, in addition to the paper, code that the readers could interact with. URL to the code could be provided directly into the paper (i.e. in a "Data availability" section). Depending on the editors and the journal, the code could be hosted either by the journal (e.g. as a "Supplementary Information") or independently on a GitHub repo. If you are providing code in Python, an interesting solution is to organize it as a notebook, which allows to separate sections that the readers can modify and play around with from these that should not be modified. Other alternatives exist for other languages. As an example, I am thinking about this tutorial on Kalman Filtering, which can be read as a classical textbook but also includes a lot of interactivity via notebooks.

Really good answer


text:
Top 3% in Reference Letter when applying to Yale
I am applying for a master's program at Yale university. My advisor has given me a draft of his reference letter for me. Overall it is a very nice letter, and finishes "[name] always shows great interest in [field], is enthusiastic, and a talented young scientist with great prospects. I rate them within the top 3% of their peers."
I don't know whether to ask for this 3% sentence to be removed. Is it good enough for Yale, or would I be better off without it and letting the rest of the letter stand alone?

I always thought that showing a reference letter to a student is unethical.

@Mihail Why? I always thought the receiver showing the letters to students without the writer's consent or knowledge may be problematic, but how the writer and the student, presumably having a personal relationship, interact is their own business. In fact, many people would even go as far as to say non-transparent letters themselves are unethical (and in some jurisdictions and fields, uncustomary or even illegal).

@Mihail - that seems to me to be an American norm. I've always sent (or better to say, included) my own reference letters anyway, so it's not like I wouldn't see them.

Just take this high compliment for what it is.  Don't try to edit or second-guess it -  your advisor has already spent enough time on it. Presumably they have more experience with what makes a good reference letter than you... :)

3% strikes me as an odd percentage to pick, might it be a function of the denominator N? I wonder if means you are the best among the ~30 people your professor has advised.

In my experience, letters of recommendation do not really matter. I also think top 3% is just  fine.

I don't get it - what is the problem? Do you expect something better than "top 3%" ? Do you think Yale will say that is poor?

@xngtng precisely because of the personal relationship. There is a pressure of not being able to tell to a student "you're not good enough for me to write a decent letter" and so we have a math society where not just gpa gets more and more inflated but also the praising adjectives in recommendation letters.

@Bob in what fields do letters of recommendation not matter? I've heard they can make and break careers in mathematics

@SidharthGhoshal I use to know, socially, a college professor who was on the admission committee for Rutgers University Computer Science department. He told me that letters of recommendation are general ignored. Also, I applied for a teaching job and a local community college in the computer science department. The person that interviewed me claimed to be good friends with one of my references. The reference claimed to be good friends with the person  that interviewed me. The person that interviewed me never called my reference. I did get a job offer.

Interesting that happens to be my alma mater so I’m a bit surprised considering some folks there have told me it matters a lot. It’s said in many circles who your recommenders are is most important for at least grad school admissions. Now in your particular example let’s call the interviewer, A and your reference B that, it’s possible A thought “well if B is willing to endorse Bob then surely Bob is competent” hence there wasn’t a call. Its not clear with that specific example that your references didn’t serve some purpose.

Also to be clear I agree with you on the basis of jobs vs grad school. For a job any random reference doesn’t really mean much. So often it’s just a test of “can this person find 2 warm bodies to vouch for them” in the corporate world at the non senior levels at least

I show my students drafts of the letters I write for them. I don't expect or ask for suggested changes, except on matters of fact I might have gotten wrong. Let it be. It's a strong letter.

If your institution is known for sending people to places like Yale, then I think that this is a very strong recommendation. I've written things like that for students after some thought about other student's I'd recommended. And also thinking about what I'd be able to say about future candidates.
You can substitute that professor for the institution, if you like. If the professor has sent people to top institutions and they have succeeded there, then, again, it is very strong.
I'd hesitate (at least) to ask them to remove it when they are trying to say you are a "top" candidate. You don't need to be the best they ever saw (and probably aren't) to be well regarded.

+1 ". You don't need to be the best they ever saw (and probably aren't) to be well regarded." This so much!

It's quite reasonable for you to be invested in the content of your reference letters. That being said: Knowing how to phrase reference letters, and how they will be read at various institutions and in various countries, is a skill that develops over time with experience. I think your default assumption should be that your advisor has more knowledge than you about what is good to include in reference letters.
If your advisor specifically asked for your feedback on the letter, you could raise a point about that sentence and ask for more information about why he included it and what it conveys. If he didn't ask for feedback and is just showing you the letter as a courtesy and for encouragement, I think you should trust his judgment.

are you in a large cohort? If so, top 3% is quite good. I've had referees include this line in letters before and including a statement giving the number of people in the cohort could be useful context in the letter. As to the standards of the university, I think this is less important, but I can't speak to Yale specifically.

Why would the quality of a given percentile be a function of the size of the cohort? If anything, if you're in a cohort of only 30, the top ~3% is the best you can be, possibly you should be ranked even higher but with only 29 people to compare to, you just can't be better than the 97th percentile/top 3%.

good point, wouldn't it be that in a smaller cohort it's less competitive to be in the top?

Why would that be?

@BryanKrause presumably if the professor has taught a thousand students, his/her judgment of "top 3%" carries more weight than a professor who has only taught fifty students, thanks to larger sample size.

@Allure But then that's not specific to what realkevlar is referring to... it has nothing to do with the mention of "3%", but to literally any subjective judgment.

@Allure there is a thing called normal distribution ...


text:
How to find a research supervisors and a research team?
I am finishing my master’s degree in computer science this year. After my first year I understood that I have a big passion for research in the field of AI and cognition. However, the research questions that I have are strange. I am trying to understand memory and implement its abstract mechanisms (more similar to Neural Turing Machine, than RNNs and LSTMs). However, I can’t find people who have an interest in this field. I am fearful that I’d have to resort to other topics that I am not really interested about, and pretend that I enjoy it. Moreover, I am required to conduct research during my last semester and present the work that I’ve done.

Reach out and talk to the faculties and propose your project. They may not have listed every single idea they are interested in on their page. And most faculties are more open to master projects since that's basically free...


text:
How can I work well with a fellow student whose speech I cannot understand?
I am a graduate student, and I am having trouble understanding one of my cohort mates. They are an international student, and it is often impossible for me to understand their speech well. They are obviously fluent in English; the problem is that they have an incredibly thick accent. I can sometimes make out a few keywords then reconstruct, but I struggle a lot, and I do not want the resulting awkwardness to negatively effect my relationship with them. It would probably make them feel unwelcome if I were to constantly ask them to repeat themselves, or constantly tell them I don't understand, so I would appreciate advice on how to navigate this situation in a kind and considerate way.
How can I do so in a way that both:

Effectively addresses the reality that I can't understand what they're saying, and
Does not make this person feel unwelcome, and does not make them feel less able to work collaboratively with me and with others.

Perhaps the only real answer is to just put up with the inability to communicate for a while, and over time, I'll learn to understand them better. It's also possible for their accent to naturally become more understandable as they spend more time in America.
Could saying something to the effect of "I really value your contributions to our work, and I enjoy spending time with you as a colleague and friend. I have trouble understanding sometimes, so I will probably ask you to repeat things often; I apologize for this, but I ask just because I want to hear what you're saying" be helpful, or better to not be so direct about it?

It seems to me that this is off-topic, since the only "academic" aspect here is that the OP is a grad student - but honestly, they could be asking the exact same thing about a relationship at work, or in an undergraduate program, or in any other situation where people mingle for extended periods of time. Given that there are no close votes and three answers already, I hesitate to vote to close. But I really think this would be much better at interpersonal.SE.

Hope it's not a Brit with a normal British accent whom you do not understand ;)

Communicate in writing (via e-mails).

@Mark - I'm A Yorkshireman. I once worked for a couple of years with a lad from a small fishing village in East Lothian. That makes us, technically, both native English speakers. After working in close quarters, 6 days a week, after about three months I finally kind of tuned into it & became the only person in the building who didn't say 'pardon?' every single time he spoke. It kind of became a standing joke - in an inclusive way, he was as amused as we were. We joked that he spoke 'Accent with a trace of English.' ;))

@Tetsujin - I once read a newspaper story about an elderly man who was picked up on the street in London, seemingly in a confused state. He was brought to the police station but nobody could understand a word he was saying. They thought his speech sounded Polish, but the on-call interpreter said not. I don't recall what further steps they took before it emerged that he was a Geordie (from the Newcastle area of north east England), and had lost his false teeth. A teacher told us when were seven that Cornish and Hebridean people wouldn't understand each other. Mind you that was 1959.

We had a guy on a project with a severe speech defect whom most people had great difficulty understanding. But his close colleagues learnt to interpret his grunts and would translate them for others. It's surprising what's possible if people work at it.

The advice that I've heard is to not be shy about asking people to repeat themselves, asking clarifying questions, and asking if you've understood them correctly. That's recommended by this article, for example:

If you are having trouble understanding a non-native speaker of English, the kindest thing you can do is to ask clarifying questions. Don’t pretend to understand, nod your head and smile, joke about it, or tease them. This is both unprofessional and unhelpful.

I think this advice makes sense. After all, if someone is speaking to you, that means that they have something that they want you to know. If you ask them clarifying questions, you give them the opportunity to communicate what they want to communicate. If you don't ask them, then you're denying them that opportunity.
I have a very small amount of experience being the person who has an incredibly thick  accent: I once spent a month in Mexico, and I know only barely enough Spanish to communicate. Being in that situation, I already know that it's hard for people to understand me, so I don't find it disrespectful at all when people ask me for clarification. Quite the opposite, in fact: if someone asks me for clarification, they're telling me, "Even though it's hard for me to understand you, I still care about what you're saying." Communicating in Spanish is hard for me, and being asked clarifying questions makes the situation much easier, not harder.
Obviously, there are respectful and disrespectful ways to ask for clarification. Saying something like "Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you, can you repeat that? Are you saying something about the cafeteria? Are you asking where it is?" is respectful. Saying something like "What? Speak up! Huh? What? I don't understand! What? What?" is disrespectful.

As someone whose native language is not English and have a lot of colleagues with very thick accents, I feel that I can offer a perspective on this.
At least in my institution - a big, research-intensive institution in the UK - having a thick accent is very normal. Even those who have been in the university for 10+ years can still have a thick accent, but as far as I'm aware very few people mention it. In my department, we have a lot of Italian, French, and German colleagues, but you just get used to it - you learn, for example, that this particularly Italian colleague overcorrects their pronunciation of 'h' so that 'ham' will sound like 'am' and 'am' will sound like 'ham', and you learn that this particular French colleague won't pronounce 's' at the ends of words. After a while, I don't think anyone finds it any different to getting used to a different English-language accent that they aren't used to (be it West Country, Cockney, Scottish, Irish, Southern American, etc.). It hasn't stopped our department from being productive and having good old debates in seminars (and in meetings).
It's very nice of you to think about this, but your colleague is probably self-conscious about it already, so it usually won't help for you to mention it and they won't mind repeating themselves (so long as you are not obnoxious or condescending about it - which I would think you aren't, since you are being considerate). You will get used to your colleague. It might help if you understand the phonology of your colleague's mother tongue though - our department is a language department, so everyone does in fact know Italian, French, German etc. at least on some level.

Yeah, well said! with the thick accents already existing in the UK! I cant imagine a foreign accent that is harder to understand that a Liverpool or Glasgow native accent.

@AnderBiguri well, I have myself been in the situation of talking to Glaswegians and couldn't understand one single word. But I don't agree that the existence of such dialects is an excuse for anybody to not try to be understood as best as possible. I remember a guest lecture by a finnish professor where afterwards everybody agreed they had no idea what the lecture even was about. That's just a waste of everybody's time. Maybe it's possible to learn understanding such an accent, but you can't realistically learn every possible specific accent of every foreign speaker.

@AnderBiguri - you know when you've been approached by the Glasgow branch of the Mafia because they make you an offer that you can't understand.

@leftaroundabout yeah I agree. But it should be a two way effort. In any case, we all just need to get used to it, getting rid of an accent is hard.

English is not my native language and I tend to disagree with other replies suggesting to be overcareful.
I would be happy to hear that my accent is too thick to understand so that I can show more effort. It's not condescending unless you deliberately want to insult me; and usually I can tell insults from non-insults. I realize that there is nothing wrong in having an accent by default.
What is condescending is to not mention my thick accent and make all my communication efforts to go in vain. If I'm suggesting an idea and you are missing my points due to an accent and not reasking, I would think that you don't value my ideas, which would affect my job and my social relationship.
Just be honest and respectful. Your assumptions that I can't take honesty or I lack a chance to improve my accent are the actual condescending things (personally for me) in this post here.

This is the comment I most agree with.  I taught for a long time in a program that was 50% Asian students.  You have to be patient, and let the other person know what the issue is.  You don't have to make a big deal about it, but in private you can say something along the lines of "I don't always understand you, but I'm never gonna stop trying!"  More often than not the student replied "I can't always understand you either."

I don't know if this will help or not as it is a solution to a different issue. I'm very (not profoundly) deaf and while I don't really "read lips" I get additional information by watching the lips/mouth of the speaker. I seldom pick up a conversation otherwise.
Perhaps you could try that for a bit to see if it helps before you raise the issue with the person.
English is a weird language, actually. Their accent is as natural (to them) as yours is (to you). They may be having the same issue with your speech that you have with theirs.
Another speech issue is that most users speak with "continuous speech" where one word blends into the next quite naturally. We don't usually speak in "discrete" words. "Bu twee spee klike thi sins tead." It is difficult for some (myself) to get the sense of something unless I hear (or otherwise grok) the first word. I often have to apologize and ask people to start over. And then, I pay more attention and often pick it up. You can also reciprocate for others with different accents (or other issues) by somehow indicating you have something to say before you say it so that they can pay attention as needed.
If informal "lip reading" doesn't help, try one of the other suggestions. Just keep it friendly.

A couple linguistic issues/terminology problems in this answer. Saying English is "weird" is meaningless without a domain. Everyone speaks continuously, that's just how speech works.

@AzorAhai-him- but it is safe to say that English is more "continuous" than many other languages. German (which sure enough has its own share of weirdnesses!) does not have this problem, it's generally clear to hear where a word ends and the next begins, even if you don't understand any of them. (Unless the speaker is drunk and talking strong dialect...)

@AzorAhai-him-, my "weird" statement is based on the fact that English has had so many different components in its creation and development, especially Germanic and Romance. We have distinct words from both traditions for many concepts. Likewise they both influenced the grammar.

@AzorAhai-him-, and while other languages also use continuous speech, not everyone recognizes it as an issue in understanding for some (perhaps many) people. And in this particular context it is useful, perhaps essential, to consider.

@left uh no, it’s not safe. Drop a ref, then.

@buffy if you think the fact that we have a lot of non Germanic words is relevant to understanding accents, feel free to clarify that in your post. Likewise, it’s not like “most” speakers speak continuously and some speak “discretely.” It’s fine to introduce the concept, just don’t phrase it as if some speakers speak totally differently.

Communicate through written channels with this colleague whenever possible.
In this day and age of white collar work, much work is being done with one or more colleagues working from home.
As such, it should be possible to try to push as much communication with this colleague into written channels such as email or Microsoft Teams chats where his accent is no longer relevant.
If he speaks during an online meeting, just speak up and say you can't understand him, and blame the quality of your internet connection before asking him to repeat himself more clearly.

One tactic for an issue like this is to tell a small white lie and make the issue about yourself rather than the other person.
You could say, in private, something like ‘I have difficulties hearing/processing speech, so unfortunately you might have to speak a little bit more slowly / louder’. I guess this depends on how much you care about telling a fib like this, but it’s one way of resolving an issue without hurting someone’s feelings.
In the long run though, your ability to hear them will improve.

Actually, it isn't really a lie.

@Buffy I guess I am suggesting that you could say ‘I have a general hearing difficulty’ (untrue) rather than ‘I have a difficulty understanding your accent’.

Not really. Different accents are a fact of life (and language). It is about yourself, in fact, as much as it is about anyone. The OP has difficulty understanding someone else's speech. It is likely reciprocal.

@Buffy "The OP has difficulty understanding someone else's speech. It is likely reciprocal." Not really. Presumably the other student is much more used to hearing American English than the OP is used to hearing whatever flavor of English the other student uses. Having a heavy accent is a very different thing than having trouble understanding standard American English. It might of course be that the other student has difficulties with both, but nothing in the OP's post indicates this.

@AdamPřenosil Thank you for this very funny comment :-)

'I have difficulties processing [your] speech ...' It's not a lie, it's an omission which is not critical to the intent or meaning - much the same as 'I have difficulties processing speech [and it's sunny outside].' The fact that it's sunny outside does not change the meaning or intent - in fact, it obfuscates the point - the same as singling out the listener which [your] would do. If one thinks they're telling a lie, their delivery may suffer.

Lying is quite generally not a good idea.


text:
About career break in CV
I am going to apply for a postdoc position and there is an item about career break.
Having finished my Master degree, I got a position titles Director of Research in a College for about 6 years. In the meanwhile, I was visiting lecturer for some courses for different academic levels such as sub-bachelor, Bachelor students. After that experience I was involved in a research project as an assistant professor, then after 6 months  I commenced my Ph.D studies. I do not know whether the years before stating Ph.D ( 6 years as lecturer and director of research) is career break or not?

Do you mind rephrasing the question, it's a bit unclear at the moment (at least to me). Also what is a sub-bachelor student?

Subbachelor is an associative degree awarded to students who intend to find a job as technisian after completing their studies. I edited the question

I suspect that the intent of the question is to have you explain things that you did completely unrelated to your career and to your field. As such, the things you describe don't seem to qualify. I don't think they are necessarily asking about breaks in your academic progress (time between degrees), but they might be interested in that.
But the sorts of things you did prior to the doctorate would seem, to me, to be supportive of your case for the position and so should be mentioned somehow in your CV whether in this "section" or just in a narrative.
Some people need to take a career break to care for an ailing parent or child, for example, or because they are in jail (oops). In such breaks it may be impossible to do much professionally. Those need to be explained if they last more than a few months.

Totally. I'm on a "career break" because I am on parental leave right now. Nothing you describe is a career break. Indeed, time between master's and PhD is unlikely to be considered a "career break" no matter what happened in that time. In a way, your academic career starts post-PhD. However as @Buffy says, certainly mention those things on your CV, they sound very positive.


text:
Sending email to editor about reason of rejection of paper
My manuscript was rejected without sending to peer review, of course the editor whom I sent my paper is an expert in my field and he rejected it without any report. (it took one and half month with editor). Just the editor in chief told that the editor can not recommend this paper to publish in Journal X. Now I want to ask about sending another email to Editor to ask about his suggestions on my paper. For example, if he recommend another journal or some advice on improving my paper? Can I send such direct email to him?

The editor who rejected my paper is the editor of several journals, what about  sending my paper to him through other journals' which he is on editorial board as well?

Are you a professional or an amateur in the field?

@111388 I am early researcher

In a university, with a supervisor?

And can you tell if the responses https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/133511/rejecting-paper-with-no-report were helpful?

It is not the editor’s job to give you advice on how to improve your paper or where to submit it. And it is the editor’s job to do lots of other things, which usually keep them pretty busy. So at the very least, you’d be imposing on them by contacting them with such questions. You might get lucky and get some advice, but be aware that you are essentially betting on the editor being willing to spend time answering a question from a random person they don’t know and whose question they have no professional obligation to answer. If you lose the bet (or even potentially if you win the bet) it might not leave the best impression.
As a general rule, it makes more sense to discuss these sorts of questions with your adviser, a mentor, or a colleague you are on friendly terms with.

Plus 1. But at least I think the editor should be acting in a more prompt way. At least in my field and good journals more than one month for desk rejection is almost ridiculously long.

@Alchimista In the major journal that I am involved with most desk rejects happen quickly, but some do take a fairly long time. This is because there are "borderline" desk rejects where the two EiCs would communicate among themselves, potentially looping in an AE who would likely be handling the paper in case it's not desk-rejected. Given that all 2-3 involved people are senior (and busy) academics, a few weeks of delay can happen.

@Alchimista I think the word “should” should be thrown around way less often than it is... Anyway, more to the point, we don’t even know that this was a “desk rejection”. In math for example these days it is very common for editors to solicit a “quick opinion” ahead of getting a full review, which is not always communicated to the author. And while the quick opinion is meant to be quick (usually they ask you to answer in 1-2 weeks), the editor still has to find someone willing to give it, which can take time.

Editors don't read every paper completely before sending to potential peer reviewers. Asking him doesn't help you. Either the formal style (english, figure quality) or topic (abstract, introduction) or impact was not matching quality and socpe of this journal. At this point you have to ask and talk with your advisor and co-authors, not the editor.
Top-tier journals have acceptance rates below 10%. There is no time to advise authors of not reviewed papers.

Re "For example, if he recommend another journal or some advice on improving my paper?": I think both questions are totally fine. It sounds like the editor is a very busy person, so don't be discouraged if they don't reply, but I see nothing wrong with asking these questions.