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Why isn't there a doctoral degree that does not involve a major project?
I am trying to find a doctoral program without a capstone, project, or a dissertation, because I do not find a value in doing a project.
But why isn't there a doctoral degree that does not involve a major project?

You may not see the value of a project, but the purpose of a doctoral degree is to learn how to perform independent research. No amount of coursework is going to teach you that skill; that is why (meaningful) doctoral degrees without a thesis, project or dissertation do not exist.

Why do you want a doctorate? Historically, this degree shows that you are able to be an independent researcher. Currently, there are professional doctorate programs that do not require dissertation (e.g., some M.D.s, Doctorates of Physical Therapy, Doctor of Pharmacy etc) but these prepare one for a specific career.

Why do you want a doctorate, then? The value of a (non-medical) doctorate is that you are more likely to be hired for jobs that require people who can work independently and finish a major project. If you don't want to do that, you don't want those jobs, either.

Since we cannot give recommendation on specific programs, I've edited the question to keep it on topic. Let me know if it's ok.

Perhaps the OP means to ask specifically about PhD, rather than professional programs. Maybe OP is interested in teaching, and wondering why research expertise is often considered a prerequisite for teaching undergraduates? That seems like a more interesting question, not sure if it's been addressed on this site before.

I disagree with the close votes; this is not a shopping question.  The actual question Why do doctoral programs require dissertations? is on-topic.

The doctoral degree indicates that you are ready to "do research" yourself. A Ph.D. (or similar doctoral degrees) is essentially your qualification to join the academic community as a fully fledged researcher. Until this time, your research, e.g., for a Master's thesis, was conducted under close supervision by your professor.
The community believes that the best way to find out whether you can conduct a research project yourself is, in fact, to have you conduct a research project yourself. This is what the dissertation is all about. (Of course still under supervision - after all, you are still learning the ropes.)
No amount of classes or coursework will prepare you adequately for the realities of research, just as you can't get a driver's license through a written test only, without demonstrating that you can indeed drive a vehicle.
I strongly recommend that you reexamine the value you may see in a doctoral project.

Is that true for the Ed.D. degree? I don't think so, but don't really know.

I'm not sure I agree with this answer: I think the other answers and the comments on the OP make clear there are lots of doctoral degrees that are NOT Ph.Ds, and the philosophy (accidental pun?) behind those degrees is not always the same as the PhD. I would suggest editing your post to say "The PhD degree indicates..." A Doctor of Nursing, for example, indicates a high professional status sufficient for advanced teaching and duties, whereas a PhD in Nursing would indeed suggest a research focus, likely focused on nursing practice (vs. a PhD in, say, rheumatology).

@BryanKrause: you have a point there. I may well be blinkered by my own fields' conventions. Then again, it would be helpful if the OP gave the field she or he is in.

So first we have to distinguish between PhD's and the EdD, MD, JD type of degree.
If you are getting a PhD in something then you are the world expert on that narrow topic.  That is the point of the PhD, at least in the sciences.  You need to be able to solve a problem no one has solved before.  You have passed your professors.  Some fields, such as engineering, use some form of project rather than a written document.
The coursework is designed to prepare you to begin your doctorate.  You are used to undergraduate or masters programs where you take a class and learn something.  The purpose of the courses is to add to your personal knowledge in the topic.  In a doctorate, the purpose of the courses is for you to learn how to think about problems.  In some fields, such as accounting, the content knowledge is pretty much complete at the masters level.  A PhD in accounting isn't about knowing more knowledge in accounting, it is about researching the consequences one accounting standard has on society versus another.
Most people never finish their dissertation who get through their coursework.  There are two possible reasons.  The first is a lack of discipline and commitment, but the second is that you have chosen a problem that you cannot solve.  Generally you could avoid the second by being careful, but it does happen.  A PhD is intended to be risky.
The EdD, MD and JD and a handful of similar professional degrees substitute rigour, exams and methods to show they have sufficient expertise in their fields that they no longer need supervision or their fields require postgraduate supervision and so in some fields, such as medicine, the doctorate is granted prior to the "project."  It is not enough to have an MD to practice medicine as an independent person.  You then need to pass an exam, then get an internship, then pass another exam, then become a resident, then pass another exam then become a practitioner and possibly specialize and take yet more exams to show you could be a "fellow," in a professional society.  You will then take continuing exams to show you should still be practicing.
So, in medicine, the MD is granted before the "dissertation" phase.
The courses in a doctorate are not there to teach you everything you need to know.  They are there to prepare you to know how to learn on your own, everything you need to know.

It's worth noting that many country's PhD programmes have no coursework.

It's helpful to point out that nobody considers an MD, JD, or EdD to be an equivalent degree to a PhD. This is why we have things like MD-PhDs running around. They're not intended to develop researchers, they're intended to be professional degrees.

@David I agree, and I think this answer acknowledges that; importantly, the original question said "doctoral" rather than "PhD"

@David I would disagree with the statement "...that nobody considers an MD, JD, or EdD to be an equivalent degree to a PhD". People who studied at Universities and did a doctoral degree on their own know that these degrees are not equivalent. However, I personally know several people (who did no doctoral degree) who do not distinguish between a medical doctor and a PhD. I live in Germany. It might be different in other countries.

@daniel.neumann You're absolutely right. I was thinking of people who were in these kinds of programs.

@David Many EdD programs are professional doctorates (akin to MD or JD), but not all are. EdD research doctorates are the second most earned research doctorate (after PhD) and, at least as of '08, were considered equivalent to a PhD by the US Department of Education. That is, tons of of EdDs require a dissertation for graduation the same way a PhD or ScD would.


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Handling unrealistic expectations of progress
I started a postdoc recently. My advisor has unrealistic expectations of progress. I was hired to implement feature X in their software (among other tasks; this is just the first). I have implemented X in a software written in language A, but have no prior experience with language B that their software is written in or framework C that their software uses. I did not know that they wanted someone to program in language B until the interview, and I explicitly stated that they should look elsewhere if knowing language B is critical as I don't know it. Language B is not known to be an easy language to pick up, though learning it has been on my to-do list for a while.
In multiple meetings recently my advisor has been pushing me to start implementing feature X now as if I've forgotten that's first goal. I know that is the first goal, which I politely stated multiple times, but I've emphasized that I need more time to get familiar with their software, the programming language, and the framework. I don't see myself making the changes I outlined for at least a month, probably longer. And I think my advisor would get angry if I took that long and might even fire me at the end of the probationary period (which is in about a month).
What should I do in this situation? I've tried to emphasize that it will take time for me to get up to speed and this is not avoidable, but this doesn't seem to satisfy my advisor.

@Roland This is a computational science question. The first step is to implement some software, the next steps are using the software to answer some scientific question and improving the software over the state-of-the-art. I am looking for answers in an academic context. That might be different from a normal software engineering context.

@Roland because that's how some STEM labs roll these days. The lab head would need code monkeys to work on otherwise something very niche (research), are senior enough to not have a need to learn these instruments and given the code quality of an average student/researcher, tech debt keeps piling up which is later solved by hiring even more students solely to maintain this overgrown in-house project the lab was doing for the past 5-10 years. Not that much different from a poorly run software company, really - no wonder people quit to industry in droves.

Your hurdles could be summed up in two points:

Proving that you are capable
Proving that a capable person would still take at least a month being posed a problem you are facing.

Note that in order for the advisor to adjust their expectations, the second one would be enough. To that end, an independent evaluation would be helpful... But do not expect it would go exactly as you think it would go.
I have seen this interaction play out time and time again: a good programmer would often quote a longer time to implement some feature than a bad one, but the success comes to the business-aligned one. With the advisor acting as your employer, you have to understand that having no feedback whatsoever for a month from a new hire is a little too much risk. Oh, and writing perfect code is not allowed: the typical employer would sooner accept a huge tech debt than a big delay in shipping features, especially at the early stages. It does get complicated with legacy projects.
That makes finding some way to show your work the best option you have.
Given the system is most likely hard to navigate - mock up everything, implement the feature with hardcoded values instead of fetching real data from other parts of the system, show it. Break down that month you have quoted into something more digestible and explain in layman's terms what are the issues you are dealing with. Reading a book on the language and studying the codebase for that long is not going to cut it, sorry - on this job or, indeed, most programming-heavy jobs out there.

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Is it acceptable to graphically illustrate the steps of a research proposal?
I am currently preparing a research proposal with limited number of pages. As a picture is worth a thousand words; I was wondering if a graphic illustration could be provided that could highlight the different steps involved in the project. Would providing such an illustration enhance the proposal? I never came across such illustrations. Any directions for the same?

Note that the answer will surely depend on the policies for the institution reading the proposal. Whether sensible or not, if there are restrictions that the submission must be text only, you don't have much choice.

We have used several graphics in a proposal:

to illustrate the problem to be solved
to illustrate extensions of the state-of-the-art,
to illustrate dependencies and relationships between several subprojects.

This was a large joint project (collaborative research centre) in computer science sponsored by DFG (German Research Foundation).
The application was successful, but I don't know whether the taste of reviewers for other disciplines or funding agencies differs.

Disclaimer: I have not had the pleasure of being on the reviewing end of the grant process.
It is not only acceptable, but may be a good idea. First, remember that your proposal is not being read in a vacuum. The reviewer is sitting in front of their assigned pile and, depending on how long they've been at it, may be feeling a bit fried.  Anything which helps them quickly get to the stage where they 'get' the point of the proposal is helpful.
You will want to include accompanying text, but it's hard to imagine a situation in which graphically showing, for example, your overall experimental design won't help the wad of text listing factors/levels/replicates etc. make more sense.

I have been reviewing a lot of proposals and dissertations in my field looking at exactly this! I wanted examples of how people scope their work in the Intro and the illustration they provide for it.
Many of them have a chart. This chart provides a map of their work that they can then refer back to (for example, each element in the chart is a chapter). It seems to work much better than just using words. I will be writing mine soon and have been considering having two flowcharts, one that breaks down the problem into different pieces and one that maps out my solutions.

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Is it legal to add your publications to ResearchGate?
I recently created a profile on ResearchGate. And to add your publications list it requires you to upload the paper. Is it legal to upload published journal articles on public servers, where everyone can download it for free?

it requires you to upload the paper — Actually, the software only requires you to upload a PDF file.  If you're worried about legality of uploading a paper, you can always upload a substitute PDF file containing the sentence "This paper is available from the publisher at (url/DOI)."

You don't even have to upload your papers. Or did they change anything in the past couple of days?

Don't use researchgate at all. They are spammers & There are only students there, no experts. And everybody uses Google Scholar to search, so simply upload it on your personal home page / institutional repository if permitted by the license agreement.

@nxkryptor Are you going to select one answer among the ones having been published?

@Anony-Mousse in my field, plenty of senior scholars are on ResearchGate, and it's the first place many people look for things.

@SimonW uploading to your own homepage, arxiv etc. is surely still more effective; and just because someone has an account there does not imply they are actively using it. Whrn I checked the discussion on RG it was students only.

@Anony-Mousse I think everybody ignores the discussion sections, but in my area RG is where people look for papers. Use of ArXiv is not common, and personal websites are far less discoverable.

Both ArXiv and personal websites are easy to discover with Google & Google Scholar... and ArXiv is very popular here.

I'm a member of RG, without being really active in it though, and I have only received very few spamming e-mails. On the contrary, I find it a convenient way of asking for the personal copy of a paper than I have no access to, from its author. And although it hasn't worked for me until now, if more authors join, it will be a very easy way to spread the knowledge

Important information pulled from my answer to a duplicate question: in case the publishers sue, the Researchgate terms of use state that the uploader is responsible for fines and legal costs, not them.

First of all, as far as I know, ResearchGate does not require uploading PDF files in order to add your research work to your profile in this website. However, it is very important to explore the possibility of uploading them, as it gives more visibility to your research and makes it available to more people. That is why I think your question is very interesting.
As @AnonymousMathematician and @gawdzilla already said, it all depends on the policy and agreements established by the publisher. You should ask the publisher. Period.
Now, I want to add some extra information about the alternatives we have to share our research without breaking any publishing agreement or rule.
Normally, there are several versions of a paper till it gets finally published:
a. The editor version: This is the final version of the paper, as it is published in the journal, with all the copyright stuff and so on. It is the final PDF, let us say, the one you normally keep as a record of your research.
b. The author version: This normally refers to an accepted version of the manuscript. It is the version that is finally qualified by the reviewers and accepted to publish by the editor. It is just your manuscript, just raw text (and tables and figures and so on), not usually formatted with the final journal style. Sometimes it is also called a postprint version.
c. A preprint version: It is also a sort of author version, but it usually refers to the submitted manuscript version before the reviewers do their job. It is the first (submitted) version of your manuscript.
So, in fact, I've listed them in a sort of reverse chronological order. :D
Now, if you want to make your research as visible and accessible as possible in ResearchGate (or other scientific social networks such as Academia.edu, etc.), which possibilities do you have? Let us see:

You can upload the final (editor) version of your paper, as long as the publisher allows you to do that, but I do not think this happens very often. [Actually, there are some journals that follow an open-access policy, meaning that the authors keep the copyright of their work. But, anyway, you have to follow and stick to the final publishing agreement and see if you are allowed to distribute your paper by yourself, etc.]

If not, you do have other options:

You can upload the author version. You should also check with the publisher if you are allowed to do so. Sometimes there is an embargo or vesting period and, after that period, you are allowed to publish or distribute the author version of your paper on your own.

You can upload the preprint version. Publishers normally allow authors to publish or distribute preprints of their manuscripts, normally as technical reports. Anyway, you should ask the publisher, just in case.

If none of the above options apply, then you always have the option of adding this text at the end of the 'abstract' field in the ResearchGate record for your paper:

[ Full text available at http://... ]

Now, I want to add some practical examples from my own experience. Hope it helps.
In my case, I usually publish the preprint version of my papers as technical reports in the official repository of my university department. It is a quite common practice among some researchers in my field. Among other benefits, it prevents evil reviewers or editors to copy or plagiarise your research. Anyway, as I told you above, you should check with the publisher whether you are allowed to do so or not.
Now, this is an example of case (3): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273349919_Optimal_Design_of_Pre-control_Plans, which contains a preprint version of this article that was already published as a technical report.
And here you have an example of case (4): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45101373_Predicting_the_duration_of_chemotherapy-induced_neutropenia_new_scores_and_validation, which contains the abstract for this article I have coauthored. I will upload the author version in February 2017, when the 36-month embargo period finishes, according to the publisher rules. [Well, it is not actually an example of case (4), as you can see a full version of a preprint in this ResearchGate record. But the preprint is quite different from the final version in this case, so when I am allowed to upload the author version, it will replace the current preprint version.]
As a final remark, please, notice that it is not technically the same publish a research paper than just disseminate, distribute or propagate it. However, I have used them as synonyms in this answer, as sometimes it makes no real difference in the context of your question. [Actually, I think (I am not sure of this) that what you do in ResearchGate when you upload an author or a preprint version of a paper you have coauthored is not techincally publishing it...]
Hope it helps. Any comments to this answer will be welcomed. It is always good to learn new things...  :)

@nxkryptor This should be the correct answer.

Is it legal to upload published journal articles on public servers, where everyone can download it for free?

It depends on the publishing agreement you signed, which should specify which rights the authors and the publisher hold.  The allocation of rights depends on the journal (and the field you are working in), and sometimes there are modifications or addenda for a specific paper.
You should keep copies of the publishing agreements for your papers, precisely so you can refer to them at times like this.  If you don't have them, you can get an approximation by looking on the journal's website to see what their current policies are.  The policies could have changed over time (and in principle the publisher could still enforce a stricter policy you agreed to in the past), but it's probably safe to post a paper online if the publisher allows it as part of the current publishing agreement.  If you're feeling nervous, you could always ask the publisher whether you could follow the terms of the current publishing agreement for your paper that was published long ago.

You can check on Sherpa/Romeo the standard policy of most publishers, even if it does not replace completely checking what you signed.

Researchgate recently added a binding arbitration clause to their terms of service, taking effect 1 Dec 2017. I stronger encourage people to delete their accounts.

As mentioned in the other answers, it depends on your contract with your publisher.
http://www.howcanishareit.com/ indicates given a DOI whether a paper may be shared on ResearchGate or similar websites:

Also, as Benoît Kloeckner mentions in a comment, the RoMEO Journals database contains thousands of journals, labeled with their archiving policy (preprint/postprint/publisher's version):

Except of the database:

Of course, your contract is the reference, whereas those two resources are just approximations.
PS: ResearchGate has quite a bad reputation due to its spam/impersonation/etc. tendencies e.g. see Should I send a "cease-and-desist" letter to ResearchGate?

In most cases, is not legal at all. Normally you should only post the author version or post-print which is an accepted version of the manuscript. And always respect the embargo period (12-24 months...)
Anyway, you should always check your Copyright Transfer Agreement. In many cases it's legal to post the author version in your institutional repository but not in ResearchGate

When you published your paper, you did transfer the copyright to the publisher. You did have to at least agree to, or even sign the "Copyright transfer form". It is a legal contract, and it governs your rights, depending on the publisher/journal policy.
Different publishers have different (default) policies regarding the rights, retained by the authors (I am talking here about Springer, Elsevier, IEEE, etc.) Some of them allow you the publication of your paper on your page, but not on specialized sites (like Researchgate), since those are their direct competition. Some of them allow you only the publication of final submitted manuscript, before publisher's editing was applied, on your web page, etc.
Please read the copyright policy of individual journal or even better, publisher. In case of conference papers, it depends on the publisher of the proceedings - if the organizers did publish the proceedings themselves without the external publishing house, ask them (but usually they will be fine with publication elsewhere).
So, to sum up:
1) Read what you signed when you submitted your paper to the journal/conference - the "Copyright transfer form"
2) if 1) is impractical or impossible, check the copyright policy of the journal/proceedings publisher.
3) As a last resort, ask the publisher.

I've attended publishing talks from publishers. As advised by some above, it is necessary to check with the publisher for publishing guidelines.
Usually, you have to wait for the paper to be published. Then, if the publisher allows, you can upload your manuscript copy.
BUT do always check with the publisher in question to avoid violating any terms.

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Could not get along with any advisor, is it ego?
During my academic studies, I have always been ambitious in pursuing academic research with no luck. I have not gotten along with any of the professors whom I attempted to set up an advisor-advisee relationship with. This was not due to my lack of knowledge or incapability because they acknowledged my competency many times.
I have started to think that they were too lazy to adjust to my eagerness and wanted to take it easy. Maybe they thought that I will be a burden for them. Also, I get the impression that they hate me, because of the disgust they seem to exhibit when I talk about the work of leading researchers in the field. If I do not follow or discuss the leading researchers work how can I contribute to the field?
Please give me some advice on ego problems of academics, and how to politely show them that their research is inferior without making them hate me.
I am very respectful. But my former professor asked me if I do not like his work. I criticized the professor's work, and professor could not tolerate to it. If I was wrong prof could have told me the true value of the work, instead he stayed quiet and took revenge on me. I always choose wrong persons - I can't recognize good and bad people in my relationships. My love life is also a disaster. Always credit bad ones in every aspect of life.
I am in a 3rd world country in the Middle East. Here, finding someone with an inferior work is like finding a water in a desert. My intention is using them for future Ph.D admissions in the western world. I am interested in their connections and network. But, they hide it from me, they want me to stay with them forever, and then they hate me. They are usually western educated PhDs - from the ones that return back and usually produce low-quality papers.

I'm not sure I have an answer, but working with someone whose work you find inferior can't be helping matters.

Yes, but I am in a 3rd world country in the Middle East. Here, finding someone with an inferior work is like finding a water in a desert. My intention is using them for future Ph.D admissions in the western world. I am interested in their connections and network. But, they hide it from me, they want me to stay with them forever, and then they hate me. They are usually western educated PhDs - from the ones that return back and usually produce low-quality papers.

I'm having a hard time understanding your question.  What does it mean that they "kicked [you] from the deck of the ship"?  that your "hands were always empty"?  Can you give concrete examples?  Those phrases sound like your interpretation of the situation, but your interpretation might be faulty: so if you can give us raw data (concrete examples, specifics of things the faculty told you, specific examples of what happened or the basis for your interpretation), we might be able to better advise you.

From what you write, it looks like you might need to focus less on the advisor's ego and more on your own.

Voting to close as unclear, because there is hardly any information about the reasons of you being kicked out.

"My intention is using them for [...]"... you know, the ONLY thing I appreciate in your writing is your honesty.

I don't think I can summarize it very well, so I suggest just reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_criticism and doing some research on constructive criticism.

You need to start taking at least some personal responsibility for this situation, because I find it unlikely that all of your professors are at fault and you are not to blame for any of this.

I think that this answer on a similar question, says it all: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/45739/10042

Note that one of the marks of a pro is being able to work productively with people you don't much like. And as others have said, when "everyone" is doing something, the problem is probably not their egos but may be yours.

Look at it this way. Imagine yourself as a professor. Now imagine a student wants you to be their advisor. Say this student clearly thinks your work is inferior. Say the student wants to use your network to make contact with other potential advisors, because they feel they and their ambition are too good for you. Would you be likely to put the time and effort required of an advisee relationship into working with this student?

It's interesting that the part of your personality that is causing problems with your professors is the same part that will probably make it hard for you to take anything useful away from the answers posted here. One thing all your problems have in common is you, so it makes sense that you might be part of the problem.

@Compass is correct, use your superior logic to deduce that the only common denominator here is you

Looking at this 'question', I see a rant which I can describe this way. I am so amazing and everyone else sucks so much. Why do all the people whom I do not like and do not hide my disappointment do not like me if I am so thoughtful and amazing?

You should look up the term "propriety", and perhaps also "tact", I believe you require practice in both of these areas. Understand that no matter how gifted you are, you are not so exceptional as to ignore behavioral norms. When given the choice people in positions of power will opt for a decent human being before they opt for a self-centered elitist. This may be what you're combating even if you don't yourself realize it.

"They were too lazy." Perhaps it is your personality to blame others for failed relationships? Maybe you aren't good at making connections with people for some reason. Remember, the only thing you can change is your approach, and this question indicates that there is quite a lot of room for you to change.

In particular, if you are so clever, here's a question for you: What do all of your interactions with potential advisors have in common? Answer: You are the main thing they all have in common.

Why is everyone so aggressively condemning this question? One needs to take a moment to consider the context in which OP is. It's possible she/he is in a country with very low academic standards where professors are appointed for reasons that have nothing to do with their academic qualities. This student is evidently very disappointed, to me it might very well be that everyone in that given university objectively sucks. And I feel for this person's loneliness and frustration.

@CapeCode Maybe the OP's university objectively sucks, he is intellectually superior to his possible advisors, and their research is inferior. So what? He wants introductions and networking that would help him towards PhD admission at a better university. His current strategy does not seem to be working, and I would not expect it to work. The more helpful he can be, the more he can support rather than diminish, the pleasanter he can be to work with, the better his chances.

To make it a bit clearer for you: It is totally unacceptable in academia for a student to tell a professor that their work sucks. Maybe you are right (probably not) but they are there because of reasons, and they have way more experience than you.

@CapeCode Isn't that though like saying " I don't like you, but since I have no other choice would you go to prom with me?" ... Even if that is the case, trying to work with somebody and criticizing his/her/its work is not a good combo...

To paraphrase: "Thank you sir for speaking with me, finding someone like you is like finding water in the desert. But your work is inferior to the leaders in the field. However, if you work with me you have a chance of improving your track record." - In what culture anywhere does this have a snowball's chance in hell of working? If you're so smart, surely you're aware of research on flattery- those who know they are being flattered will still respond more favorably than those who are not flattered. Your strategy seems to expect the inverse to hold.

Simply imagine someone saying: Please give me some advice on ego problems of question askers, and how to politely show them that their questions are filled with pride without making them hate me. Also, tell me how to avoid reading the wrong questions - I can't recognize good and bad questions in my use of SE by their title alone. Always credit the bad askers in every corner of SE.

Simple diagnostic question: Do you agree or disagree with the answers so far? If you disagree, why?

Back when I was in grad school and everybody I knew lived with roommates due to housing costs, some sets of roommates got along well and some had serious problems sharing space with one another.  Over time, I noticed that while most people had mostly decent experiences, there were certain people who I knew who always seemed to end up with nightmarish roommates.  The same way, while most people seemed to have their share of ups and downs in their love life, certain people always seemed to end up with nightmarish relationships.
Was it just bad luck or a bad environment?  Generally not: when a person has an unusually long string of failed relationships, usually that person is somehow involved in creating their luck.
I tell this by way of suggesting that you may want to reflect on your own choices here.  Are you poisoning the relationships with your professors by holding a contemptuous attitude towards them?  Is your ambition somehow leading you toward selecting professors who are incompatible with you?  Is it something else entirely?
It's impossible for we strangers on the internet to tell what's really going on for you.  It is certain, however, that every failed advisor/advisee relationship that you have been involved with has at least one thing in common: you.  It's worth reflecting on that and seeing if you can figure out something that you can change in your own attitudes that might make it easier for the next one to be better.

I am very respectful. But my former professor asked to me that if I do not like his work. I criticized the professors work, and prof could not tolerate to it. if I was wrong prof could have told me the true value of the work. but stayed quite and took revenge from me. but youare right i always choose wrong persons.

I cant recognize good and bad people in my relationships. My love life is also a disaster. Always credit bad ones in every aspect of life.

@academicwasteland : I do not mean to be rude but it seems you have a tendency to read between the lines. From your comments above, it seems you didn't spend even a few minutes to really understand what was written in that answer. So my only suggestion is to 1) take a deep breath 2) re-read the answer as slowly as you can and 3) ponder over it. Perhaps you will see something different.

Self-serving bias: "The bias in which individuals tend to ascribe success to their own abilities and efforts, but ascribe failure to external factors"

There is only one way this answer could be improved: by re-writing it in yodaspeak.

@academicwasteland Maybe you are attributing too much capability in reading your feelings on other people - if you harshly criticize your professor's work, without mollifying what you say, it's going to sound like you're insulting him.

@Moriarty LoL...so true it is. reflect on your own choices you must...

Nice answer. But I think it also might be the culture difference. We have a post doc from Middle East who is exactly like this.

I don't think OP's situation is comparable to students in a dorm. If you are in a country where 'professors' are appointed for the silliest reasons, like because they are of royal descent or what not, you have reasons to be angry of their blatant incompetence. I have been in such a country, people get ridiculous grants to study in a bogus program somewhere in Europe or the US and come back to a cosy government job. And then it's like retirement. Very frustrating to anyone who has a bit of scientific ambition.

Yes. If someone has had 6 advisors, and he got along great with 5 of them but had real problems with 1, then maybe that one was a fool, or at least someone whose personality just did not mesh with his. But if someone has had 6 advisors and didn't get along with any of them, it could be bad luck, he's just hit a string of 6 fools in a row. But probably not. He probably needs to examine his own behavior.

Telling someone that his work is "inferior" is almost never going to lead to a positive outcome. For a student to tell a professor that his work is inferior just sounds arrogant and presumptuous. The professor has many years of experience. The student has, what, maybe 4 years? Of course it's possible that the student knows more than the professor: the student could be a genius, the professor could be incompetent, or both. But even if it is true, pointing it out is not a way to make friends. It's like telling your girlfriend that she's ugly. Even if true, this will not help your relationship.

Generally, you get back from a relationship what you put into it. In your next attempt at a student-advisor relationship, I suggest concentrating on two questions:

What can I learn from the advisor?
What can I do to help the advisor and the advisor's other students?

You are dealing with intelligent people who typically have more life experience than you, have met more people than you have. They probably know how you think of them.
Suppose you met someone who believed themself superior to you and who intended to use you only to get access to your contacts and network. Would you like that person? Want to help them?
If you go in with a wish to learn and help, appropriate to the relationship between student and advisor, you are more likely to have a positive experience.

Not so much an answer as a suggestion:
There are (at least) two types of students who think they are right and the professor is wrong: those who have done something correct beyond what they professor can get their head round, and those who are so clueless the professor cannot communicate to them why they are wrong.
I have no way of knowing if this applies in your case, but I would suggest at least considering whether it's possible you fall into the second category. Even if the answer is 'no', the process itself may help you.

As a student that often fell into the first category, it was interesting to navigate professors who had never run into students like me. Most of those relationships went poorly. However, a good 2/3 of my Professors liked me enough that they were eager to write me recommendations. So, from my perspective either the OP is in the second category, or doesn't have the tact to pull off being in the first category.

@Rick I think perhaps there is a third option: the OP is trolling. Certainly this question has triggered a strong reaction and a lot of attention.

@Rick There are also professors unwilling to take the time to wrap their head around what you are saying...

Of course, I may be wrong (note my attitude here!), but here are some insights of mine, based on my reading and interpreting your question. Firstly, it seems to me that your ambitions (and, by the way, I am rather ambitious as well) cloud your judgement and, thus, an objective professional assessment of both yourself and your advisors, who are essentially your colleagues.
Secondly, your knowledge and capabilities in general do not automatically imply that the work of your advisors or other colleagues is inferior - it is all a matter of opinions and, more importantly, perspectives. Just because you have a particular opinion (via your subjective "lens" or even objective perspective) on a subject, it doesn't mean that you are right and they are wrong (and vice versa!). It is worth repeating: most things in research (and in life, for that matter) are matters of perspective. Plus, a scholar IMHO should be modest/humble and open to other opinions. The key phrase in that regard is being tolerant. You can pursue your own opinions and agenda, but do so in a diplomatic way, without hurting others' feelings and ego and, thus, damaging professional relationships. In particular, when presenting your "correct" views on the subject, position them not against others', but rather as an alternative. You can use various verbal approaches to frame your views as alternative. For example: "what do you think about ...?" or "I was thinking about different approach ...?" or similar. This approach that I've just described above is very much applicable not only to your own views, but to the work of "leading researchers in the field" - of course, your should follow and mention it, but downplay the "leading" part (which, by the way, often is a very subjective aspect) and concentrate on ideas themselves.
Thirdly, unless the relationships you're talking about are too damaged, try to repair them by using the approaches I recommend above. If you feel that it is impossible, consider changing your advisors and apply the being-humble-and-tolerant approach to new professional relationships.

The formatting of this post is really distracting.

@Reid: That's your opinion, based on your personal preferences. I prefer seeing some emphasis, which IMHO improves readability, instead of staring at a wall of words.

OK, well, I've edited it to my liking, so readers can decide whose version they prefer. For what it's worth, I like your answer, just not the typesetting.

@Reid: Looks good. I just wanted to pay attention to specific aspects, hence slightly larger amount of emphasis. Not a huge difference, though. I'm glad that you liked the answer itself - that's what matters most.

@Reid: Thanks for posting that; your version is much easier to read.

I have [suggest-]edited it into this answer. There is no need to emphasise every other bloody word; if nothing else, emphasising too much dilutes the effect, ruining the point of using emphasis in the first place.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit: I rejected your suggested edit. Firstly, because "every other ... word" is too far from reality. Secondly, because "too much" is a relative term and your personal opinion, which, along with other 7-10 people on this site, is not representative enough across the potential audience. Thirdly, because I did not like your wording of stated changes, in particular, the word "obnoxious" - next time try to be more respectful to your opponents and their work.

@AleksandrBlekh: Literally none of those are valid reasons to reject a constructive edit that a substantial number of people have agreed with (per comments). But whatever, carry on mate...! You are not an "opponent". Finally, please try to be more respectful to other people and their eyes. ;)

@LightnessRacesinOrbit: By emphasizing that much I wanted people to pay attention to those specific aspects, which I consider important. That was my intent and any edit, potentially damaging the OP's intent, can be rejected and it's a valid reason. Even though the suggestion is constructive, it is not necessarily best option. 7-10 people IMHO is not a substantial enough number, based on the site's audience size. I meant opponent on this issue. (to be continued)

@LightnessRacesinOrbit: (cont'd) As for being respectful to other people, I'm always respectful, however, that doesn't mean I should agree with their opinions. As for people's eyes, I'll take that into account and will try to minimize my emphasis efforts, where possible, however, what about a majority of readers, who doesn't have a problem with emphasizing per OP's intent? Anyway, I hope we understood each other :-).

7-10 is more than enough. You only need four to pass a suggested edit! (Unless the OP gets involved).

@LightnessRacesinOrbit: You misunderstood me - "7-10" refers to number of people, expressed their opinion by upvoting relevant comments, not voting on the suggested edit itself. Plus, unfortunately, the OP got involved ;-).

@AleksandrBlekh: Yes, that's exactly what I mean. You got involved before any of those 7-10 people had a chance to give their opinion. Or anyone else. A shame.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit: I was not aware of other people's actions, when voting myself. Plus, there is a reason why OP's involvement overrides others' opinions. Finally, please stop acting disrespectfully, before I appeal to moderators on that. My conversation with you is over.

@AleksandrBlekh: .... pot meet kettle?!

There hasn't been a lot of discussion about the issue of contacts and networking, so I'd like to take a moment to address that issue in particular.
A network of colleagues, mentors, and collaborators is fundamental for the success of the modern academician. That network is cultivated over time, but is based on both competency and respect. If you do something to violate someone else's trust, you poison your relationship with that person, perhaps irreparably.
As an example, I know of several long-standing "relationships" that have soured when faculty members tried to send unqualified graduate students to other groups to work as postdocs, knowing that things probably weren't going to work out, but not saying anything in advance to the other advisors. As a result of this, how can the receiving graduate student trust anything the old advisor has to say? That poisons the well.
Another way to cause problems within your personal network is to introduce into it someone who's going to cause more problems than help you. Someone who has a bad attitude and is unpleasant to work with is one of the big things to avoid, because you just make your life (and everyone else's) that much more difficult. (How do your advisors know, for instance, that you won't treat their colleagues the same way you do them?)
Until you give an advisor reason to believe that you won't cause more trouble than you will be helpful, they're simply not going to trust you, and therefore they almost certainly won't take the time to take advantage of their connections to help you out.

It sounds as though you enjoy comparing the work of your supervisors to the work of leading researchers in the field, and talking to them about the inferiority of their work.
They do not enjoy this. They signal to you their lack of enjoyment by expressing disgust, and you've noticed that signal but carry on anyway. This happens repeatedly. They don't wish to spend their time defending their work to someone who is in their eyes an obnoxious novice, and who is in any case applying an irrelevant standard. Almost everyone is inferior (in some sense) to the leading researchers in their field, that's what "leading" means. There's no need to bang on about it.
If you have no respect for their work then you should not have applied to work with them in the first place. They'd rather have a student who is enthusiastic about what they do, who wants to contribute to it, than someone who spends his time criticising them, and who wants to talk about how much he prefers other people.
Either apply to work with someone you respect, or consider very carefully whether you enjoy these discussions so much that you prefer alienating supervisors rather than give up criticising them in this way.

Please give me some advice on ego problems of academics

It's very easy, through ego, to think that your opinion is the only important one, and that everyone you meet has an obligation to listen to it and either accept it or else disprove it to your satisfaction. Learn from these experiences that this is not true, and that's why it's an ego problem for you. Other people do not share your high opinion of yourself, and they're perfectly able to show you the door instead of put up with it.

how to politely show them that their research is inferior without making them hate me.

They know what their research is, and they know what the leaders in the field are doing. It is not polite to presume that they'll benefit from you showing them your views on the matter. However unremarkable their research record is, yours is even less remarkable, and that's how it's going to stay unless you can drop the ego. If you apply to work with someone, work with them, don't try to explain to them how you think working with them isn't worthwhile.
You say that your goal is to get contacts and recommendations. By no means am I certain that this is best done cynically, but if that's the route you're taking then stick to the goal. Wanting these people to agree with you is ego, and it's distracting you from your goal. Try agreeing with them, you'll get a different response.

You can ask your former supervisors what they thought of your collaboration. Ask it in an open, non-offensive way. Do not go into arguments, but write down their answers as verbatim as possible. Then re-read the answers at home, and try to conclude what the most important message is.

Given the lack of data about why this fellow keeps getting moved on, this is the best answer.

It is also relevant to why the OP is not getting networking introductions. If a supervisor had some problem with the collaboration they would not want to pass that problem on to their friends and acquaintances. My answer was based on the assumption that the issue is supervisors picking up the OP's attitude to them, but it could be something else.

Could not get along with any advisor, is it ego?

In short, yes...first and foremost, yours. Most of the problems we experience in relationships originate in ourselves, our attitude toward the outside world. The attitudes of others toward us are but a consequence, a reflection of this. This is a difficult concept to accept for those of us brought up in the Western philosophical empirical tradition, which looks for causes in the external 'objective reality' (which still turns out to be in the eye of the beholder).
In contrast, the Eastern philosophical tradition begins with the internal, subjective self.1,2 In this tradition, questions of the "why is this happening to me" type have a default answer: because I have done something to deserve this. The cause is invariably within. The external impact that we suffer (or enjoy) as a result is merely a natural consequence of our own ego-driven choices. I choose to use this perspective to address questions concerning relationships and attitudes, because in my experience this perspective has proven vastly more effective in achieving the desired positive change, or at least in providing a proven recipe for it.

How to politely show them that their research is inferior without
  making them hate me

This is like saying, "can you tell me how to politely tell people their looks are inferior, without making them hate me."
Lets think about it. How many examples do you know when pointing out others' deficiencies did not undermine one's relationship with them? Self-esteem is a very fragile asset which people naturally seek to protect from harm. When they detect possible threats to the integrity of this asset, they naturally act to remove the threat. Basic psychology. Typical results are either avoidance or confrontation. Hardly the recipe for making the world a better place!
There are certainly ways to talk about research without harming egos. EVERY program of academic research has flaws. There are no perfect theories, every theory is only as strong as its weakest claim, methodological step, or piece of evidence. Academics aren't dumb. They have a good grasp of the field and more often than not, realize (if only privately) the limitations of their research. What they definitely do not need is anyone rubbing their nose in these issues.
Surely there must be ways to manifest your brilliance in ways other than this.  It is a matter of consciously reorienting your focus and attention, from the negative to the positive. Leave the negative and the weaknesses to others to sort out. Focus on what your professors do right, find what in their experience, wisdom, or skills is worthy of respect. You might have to try harder with some than with others, but everyone possesses such qualities and characteristics.
Thus, it is a matter of personal choice. What do you choose to concentrate on in your interaction with this person? Making one choice will result in straining of the relationship. Making another choice will result in the growth of professional collaboration. Cause and effect. But the chain reaction of change for the better must begin with you. Waiting for others to change is only wasting time. One must always begin with oneself.
How you react and what you point out in others, inevitably comes back as either a blessing or a punishment. If looking back, you see more punishment than blessing from your interaction with advisors, what has to change here? Only one thing: the intent and purpose with which you approach the interaction.
So find the things you can appreciate and respect in others, and cultivate these aspects in your perception of these individuals as scholars, colleagues, and your advisors. Leave the deficiencies for them to sort out on their own. Trust they have the wherewithal for that. If you are not seeing it happening, then there must be reasons.
The role of an advisee is first and foremost the role of a student. Appreciate the opportunities to learn and gain experience, which advisors can provide for you. If critical reflection reveals weak points, make a mental note, learn from their mistakes, but it is not your place or your responsibility to blow the whistle on them. As your own experience shows, doing so bring nothing good. So, learn from your own past experience, and work on changing your perspective during interaction with other academics.
The problem is not all these other people, the problem is deficiency in understanding of how to interact with them in a positive and productive way.
Arrogance comes from disrespect, and disrespect comes from insecurity. A useful exercise is to ask yourself, "What am I compensating for by not being nice to people?"
Start by working on yourself to cultivate humbleness, respect, and kindness toward others, and the solution will emerge.
If you don't want to be knocked off the ship, don't rock the boat.
Give them the benefit of the doubt and instead, train your critical eye (which apparently you have perfected) on yourself, first and foremost. This is a difficult and unpleasant exercise, but if you try it earnestly, it will pay dividends and make you a more sensitive and positive human being. These effects will extend far beyond the professional relationships, and you will see positive transformations in your relationships with relatives, partners, friends, and complete strangers.
Changing oneself is difficult. But it is the only way to see guaranteed progress. You seem to possess the reflective capacity to accomplish this. The very fact that you asked this question suggests that you might suspect that you are doing something wrong. This is the first step in the right direction. Good luck!

I would be less offended by someone telling me my looks are inferior than by someone telling me my computer programming is inferior.

"In contrast, the Eastern philosophical tradition begins with the internal, subjective self. In this tradition, questions of the "why is this happening to me" type have a default answer: because I have done something to deserve this. The cause is invariably within." This sounds rather close to "blame the victim". Eastern philosophy citation required, please.

@PeteL.Clark, and Patricia - change makes sense and post has been revised, thank you for your feedback. However, I would note that the content of this forum is based on individual perspectives. If your views differ, that is not reason enough to request that others' responses be changed to match it.

I have started to think that they were too lazy to adjust my eagerness
  and wanted to take it easy.

There is an old good saying "Think big but take baby steps". Ambition is a good thing, but only when your ability can afford it.
If you consider research of your adviser(s) easy, their papers low-quality. Can you do similar research, write the same quality papers? If yes, start by doing it. Having low-quality papers is still better than having no papers. Experience of writing (low-quality) papers can also help you to write better papers. Take baby steps.
Leading researchers are great. But less-known researchers also deserves to be respected. The fact that they are in a position that you are dreaming to reach (western educated PhD) means there are something you can learn from them (if you really want to learn).

Often big names in a field are the big name because their work represents a well established status quo.
The "small names" are often exploring alternatives that if successful would represent a major deviation from the tried and tested. They are in essence the potential big names of the future. If you show up very excited about the status quo it's hard for them to be enthusiastic about it because that research represents the here and now, not the big deviation they're hoping to unleash on the field when the peices come together.
In short by focusing on the rock star names you're probably limiting your exposure and lacking the vision for revolutionising the way a field approaches a whole class of problems. This, combined with a view that the less established work is inferior doesn't exactly endear yourself towards people.
Finally when I read your point on egos my initial reading misinterpreted it - I thought you were referring to another seemingly large ego in the situation than the one I think you meant to refer to. You would do well to consider that.

During my academic studies, I have always been ambitious in pursuing
  academic research...

That is a positive quality

All the professors whom I came across with or I attempted to set up an
  advisor-advisee relationship with, in some way kicked me from the deck
  of the ship.

If it is one or two, it may be rough patch, but if it's many, than maybe you need to change your approach. Sometimes when we show we are too ambitious, people do not take kindly to. This is human nature.

This was not due to my lack of knowledge or incapability because they
  acknowledged my competency many times.

It's great to have knowledge.

However, at the end of the day my hands were always empty. I have
  started to think that they were too lazy to adjust my eagerness and
  wanted to take it easy.

They say "Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all". This fragment "they were too lazy to adjust to my" shows you need to work on the heart part. I'm not saying what they are doing is right or wrong, but when you wish to change a situation, you need to look within first.

Maybe they thought that I will be a burden for them. Also, I believe
  that they developed a kind of hate and dislike to me because when I
  talked about the work of leading researchers in the field, I could
  feel the disgust in their faces. If I do not follow or discuss the
  leading researchers work how can I contribute to the field?

Not only you are showing your ambition (without heart), and you feel they are lazy, they probably think you are comparing them to leading researchers, basically telling these advisors that they are simply not good enough for you.

Please give me some advice on ego problems of academics, and how to
  politely show them that their research is inferior without making them
  hate me.

Look at how you can change yourself before blaming others. I have had personal experience with this, and continue to do so. Many times I ask God (or Universe or whatever you believe) for help in tough situations.
All the best.

There is always the option of pursuing academic research on your own. Nothing stops you from reading the scientific literature in your field of interest, doing your own research, writing your own papers and getting them published. Without the benefit of close supervision, this is going to take more effort, but it will allow you to collaborate with others on a more equal basis.

Working alone is both incredibly isolating (and scientific research is isolating anyway) and has an incredible amount of overhead. That's not taking into account necessity for specialized equipment and the necessity to earn a living doing something else.

What you have to remember is that professors have a LOT of students to deal with. So if you demand something from them, then that will probably be met with rejection.
From my own personal experience, I didn't really build a rapport with professors at first. I just sort of hung around some of the nicer ones and talked about subject matters, etc that went on in the class. Pretty soon they just came to me with opportunities or at least hinted at something they had going on.
My thought is build a relationship this way. Don't go to a professor demanding something just go there and talk about something in the class. Try to go to ones who are polite and open to discussions.


text:
Is it a bad sign, if reviews are completed very early?
My manuscript was sent to the reviewers of an Elsevier journal around 10 days ago. Today, I logged into EES and saw that the status has changed to Required Reviews Completed. I couldn’t believe it. My impression is that my manuscript is likely to have been rejected by the reviewers. Am I right about this?

"My impression is that my manuscript has been rejected". Why do you have that impression?

Hey. Have you asked this question twice?

There is a difference between the two question in the time frame, but it still looks like the two questions where asked by the same person with the same intent.

@TheDarkSide: The time frame is clearly different here, what would make this a different question (which also could be generalised to other publishers: “Is a quick review good or bad”). Yet, there are striking similarities between this question and before answering this, the asker should clarify that this one is indeed different (or that the other one was unintentionally misphrased).

Wrong. I read the other question but it's not my question.

Why should I misphrase anything?

@user34526: What is your field and do you know the average review time of your field and this journal?

@user34526: From our point of view, it was likely that you were the author of the other question. In that case, it was likely that you unintentionally misphrased that question such that it did not reflect your intentions and, to avoid invalidating the existing answers, decided to ask another question that did reflect your intentions.

Required reviews completed means required reviews completed! Nothing more and nothing less.
There are particular seasonal patterns for the journals, to be flooded with a lot of manuscripts at some times (lets say this time ~ May-June), while Sept-Oct are less hectic months. Likewise, referees, who are generally faculty members at universities, are less likely to review fast in the middle of the semester, and more likely in the period when they are free and not away for visits or conferences. It is possible that you sent your manuscript at an opportune moment. Another possibility is that the editor of the journal may himself have chosen to be a reviewer. Another possibility is, you used a method which was pretty bread and butter for the reviewer, so he didn't have to waste time trying to understand what you did.
I can sense your surprise over the time period of just 10 days, but no need to panic here. (especially until the editor reaches out to you.) Nothing more can be said till then, reviewing over in 10 days may mean instant rejection, but it may also mean an acceptance if the reviewer was very well familiar and saw no issues. Nothing can be conclusively said until the referee reaches out to you.
Hope that helps :)


text:
How to include advisor’s name onto research paper
My advisor helped me with my year-long research project. Should I list him as an author or under ”contributor” and do you have a link to a format for how I should do this?

Ask your advisor.

There are several different opinions on this question.

Strict interpretation of "authorship": An "author" of a scientific publication is somebody who contributed directly to the research as well as to the writing of the publication and can be held responsible for any mistakes in the publication. Several style guides for scientific publications require this interpretation when determining the authors list. According to that interpretation, you would not add him as an author.
Loose interpretation of "authorship": An "author" is a major contributor at least to the research itself. According to this interpretation, you could add your advisor as an author.
"My chances of acceptance are better this way": some people ignore morality and simply put their advisor on their paper as an author because their advisor may be a repected scientist in this field of research, and the mere presence of his name on the publication may improve the chances of being accepted.
"My reputation will improve more this way": On the other hand, some people may choose to explicitly omit their advisors' names from their publications for thinking that an accepted publication with them as the only author will improve their reputation more than a shared publication where it is unclear which author did what part of the job
"He demands it": Some advisors are the bosses of their PhD students and simply require their student to list them as authors, in order to improve their own publication list.

Personally, I'd got with the honest way, Number 1, and optionally thank your advisor in an "Acknowledgement" section (usually the final section of the paper, right before the bibliography). A typical acknowledgement reads
"The authors wish to express their gratitude towards [person] for [deed]"


text:
How to deal with editors who abuse their position?
I have the impression that the two main editors of a prestigious journal published by a well known publishing house have “confiscated” the journal for their own interests. In brief, they publish papers of their students, which do not match the journal’s quality going by the citations they subsequently receive and make other questionable decisions.
Is there a way to bring this kind of bias and/or conflict of interests to the attention of the publishing house?

I suggest that you just submit somewhere else.

I edited your question to remove the part about your paper as it does not relate to your core question – appealing against reviews is something different than appealing against editors. You may ask a separate question about this, but I guess that it has already been asked here. Please check whether everything is still according to your intentions.

There seems to also be a presumption that the publishing house is run by fools who aren't paying attention to their journals. Are you sure?

@JonCuster A surprising number of publishers don't pay close attention to every single journal that carries their imprimatur.

Sure, but the higher the prestige factor, the more worries about slipping these days...

@JonCuster the publishing house is run by fools who aren't paying attention to their journals: Elsevier, Springer, ...?

The accusation that you are making is both very serious and not simple to prove.  People often make such accusations from a deeply biased perspective, and it's easy to get written off as "sour grapes."  At the same time, serious misbehavior and manipulation of journals does happen.
I would thus suggest that the first thing you do is to gather some scientific evidence of the journals' scientific misbehavior.  You claim that the editors preferentially publish their own students' papers, and that these papers are poorly cited.  This is a claim that can be backed up by data analysis.  Both academic genealogies and the journal's publication and citation records are publicly available records.  Tabulate the behavior of the journal before and after the editors you are suspicious of took over.  Compare it to the behavior of peer journals.  Plot the data.
In doing this, you may discover that you are not actually correct in your accusations.  It's easy for this to happen due to confirmation bias, and especially when we feel passionately about something.  If so, then you have saved yourself a lot of trouble and embarrassment.
On the other hand, if you discover that you are correct, then you have everything in hand that you need to seek the reform you want.  First, you'll need to be clear on what positive action you want to be taken: "don't do that" isn't very actionable.  Do you want the editors to step down?  Do you want papers retracted?  Do you want something else?  Then you can go to the editors (who might be unaware of their own bias), the publisher (who may or may not care), and to social media in general.
Remember, however, that the prior probability of such accusations is that of an angry and biased person or a crank, and you need to work hard to overcome that impression in every interaction.  You will need to be very careful to hold yourself to work based on facts and clear, reasonable requests rather than passion if you want to get the results you seek.  I might suggest Lior Pachter as one (possibly controversial) model to follow: he is both very aggressive and very precise, careful, and data driven in the way in which he calls out what he sees as significant scientific problems.

Hi jakebeal, It looks like I am not allowed to answer anymore. Thanks god that this country is not ruled by people like the moderators of this blog.

@PaulVisoianu I'm really not sure what you are talking about, since you're allowed to comment and that typically means you can post questions and answers as well: perhaps you would like to clarify?  And I'm also not sure why you are telling this to me?

I was telling you that I do not care that my paper was "rejected" and that I posted it online. It is already read and cited and I am NOT a cranky old man. I also told you that I can prove the accusations I made towards the 2 editors of that journal. Our young colleagues should know that such problems may exist and not be discouraged by such cliquey behavior. I also told you that I replied to the editors but I did not get an answer yet (after almost one week). I will see what to do next.


text:
Should I change “colour” to “color” when incorporating a Canadian article into an American book?
I’m working on a book, written in American English for an American market. I’ve asked a Canadian author to contribute an article which will be included in its entirety in the book and attributed to her. She uses the colour spelling, while the rest of the book uses color – should I change the spelling throughout her article to color to conform to the house style or leave it as is?

No way. Fight the pouwer!!

Is the book a compilation of contributions, or is it meant to be a unified work?

"IMHO it shouldn't matter." Welcome to Academia Planet Earth.  Many things that shouldn't matter do matter to us...

Thanks for all the input. The book is not a compilation of contributions... it includes three articles from other authors, but the majority of the text is written by one author and intended to feel unified. @200_success

Changing the spelling of a single word, in multiple places, from British to American English seems odd. Enforcing a particular writing style (e.g., American English) on all authors is fairly common. Ideally, you will have a professional copy editor edit the book. The copy editor will need to be given stylistic guidelines including spelling, word usage, abbreviation, citing, referencing, numbering and many other aspects. Once the chapter has been copy edited, it should be returned to the author for her final approval.

Thanks so much. My instinct was to keep it as is, but I didn't want readers to be caught off-guard. We'll see what the copy editor does, but I'll leave it as colour for now.

If the book is written in and for the north American market, then it makes sense to use American English. However, irrespective of your choice, I agree with @StrongBad that you should be consistent. Choose one dialect and stick to it.


text:
How should I cite two different translations?
I want to cite in MLA style two different translations of Alcestis by Euripides. However, I’m mostly citing one the content of one translation, not “the translator’s comments or the choice of wording”, although I do that, too.
Here are the works in question:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10523
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0088

Cite each translation where you use it, just as you would if they were different works.
To ease any confusion on the part of the reader, however, it would likely be a good idea to also:

In your introductory material, note that you are using two different translations and why your are doing so, and
Call attention in the prose when you use the unusual translation, and why you have chosen to use that one instead in this circumstance.

Do I use the same (Euripides line_no) parenthetical citation for either version?

No, you will need to distinguish the two, much the same as if you had two books by Euripides.


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Where to send my research work for evaluation?
I have been doing some research (not connected to any university) on my own and written articles on different theories and models and hypotheses of management based on the application on maritime fiels. Some of the articles are only few pages and some are incomplete and I am still adding to them. These are my own work in the field but this is research-oriented and relates to the existing knowledge (not new knowledge) on the research topic that I have selected but it is totally my view. It may not contribute new knowledge beyond what’s currently available.
Now my question is: How do I know what is the value of my write-ups. Do my articles really mean anything? Who can tell? Where to send them to get an idea of these papers’ worth?

These are my own work in the field but this is research-oriented and relates to the existing knowledge (not new knowledge) on the research topic that I have selected but it is totally my view. – I fail to understand this sentence.

It seems that what you are looking for is a peer review. This is the first step after you submitted your work to a scientific journal that covers your field of work. Its purpose is to ensure the quality of your work and the contribution it makes to ongoing research. This said, in order to publish something in a scientific journal, you should have brought "something new" to the table. Nonetheless submitting your article will certainly lead to some feedback.
The second option I see and that you should consider first is finding a person on a close by university, who might help you out by reading part of your article and giving you some feedback.

Note that having people available to review your work is one of the reasons for enrolling at or working at a university...


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Must my ex-advisor be a co-author in new research after the defense?
When writing papers about new research made from my doctoral research results, after my defense, must my doctoral advisor be included as co-author?

Who may and who must be included a co-author varies widely from one field to another.

Well, since your advisor didn't have to be a coauthor before the defense....

The traditional role of authorship is to clarify who (significantly) contributed to the work being published. Doctoral advisors often contribute actively to the research being performed, and thus are included as co-authors on that particular regard.
However, they should not be included as co-authors automatically. Only if they have actively contributed towards the paper's ideas, implementation and/or writing. The least that can be expected is that they contributed to the paper's ideas (during your supervision) and that they have read and edited the paper being published.
That said, it is usually expected that you invite contributors to co-write a paper, if they have contributed significant ideas. If your doctoral advisor did that for the research you made during your PhD studies, then you should invite them for those particular papers.

After obtaining the PhD degree you're expected to establish yourself as a scientist who is capable of doing research on their own. Having your PhD advisor as coauthor to papers you publish after graduating runs contrary to this goal. If you did independent research as a postdoc, but add your PhD advisor as coauthor (by default or for some specific reason), then that could potentially reflect badly on you. The situation is hence different from a PhD student, for which it is probably beneficial to add their supervisor as co-author. In case you are accustomed to grant your supervisor co-authorship, whether it was warranted or not, you should now become less inclined to do so than you were previously since it might not serve your interests. Still, you can and should of course include them if it is warranted.

If the former advisor contributes in some significant way, then yes, he or she should be included.  If no direct contribution is made then no.  However, if this is an extension of your doctoral research then it would be quite appropriate to have your former advisor review a draft of the manuscript.  This could help to prevent any unintended slight that might be perceived by excluding the name from the paper.  This is always wise if the advisor is a big player in the particular area of research.  If you remain in academia you will soon be seeking funding of your own and it helps to remain in the good graces of research community.


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What are the benefits of being a convener/chair of a session in a conference?
I wish to submit a proposal to a conference to chair a session. To do this, I will have to spend a lot of time to think about many things such as the objectives & scopes of my session. But I am wondering about the benefits/ achievements after all these.
What could be the benefits/ achievements useful for a researcher involving in such activities?

Like so many other things, this is quite field-dependent. In my field, there are no benefits to chairing a session except that the session won't happen unless somebody does. Of course, your description makes it clear that conferences in your field are different than in mine, but I think it's important for future readers to know what kind of conference session they're reading about.

The following answer is based on my understanding of what it means to organise a symposium in a conference (i.e., commonly a conference session of about 60 to 120 minutes with around 3 to 8 talks all with a common theme, where the chair is the one to invite and arrange the talks and often provides a more general introduction to the talks). Obviously, I'm not talking about the more mundane task of merely chairing a session, which can be as simple as you being the designated person that ensures that each talk keeps to time.
You can build relationships with the other presenters in your session. If you are organising a symposium, then you will be contacting other possible presenters who you think may be attending. This often provides an excuse to connect with people you may only know through their research. For people you already know well, it can provide an excuse to catch up at the conference, which in turn can flow into research collaborations or other opportunities.
You are likely to get more people to your session, and those that come may be more interested in your topic. If attendees see that your session is all about your topic, then people interested in your topic are more likely to attend. In contrast if you present an individual paper, it may get lost in a more general session.
Chairing a session can help people see you as a person active in the topic.
Chairing a session can be something you put down on your CV, performance review, promotion application, grant application, etc. It's generally not a huge thing. In many, but not all, fields, conferences are more a means to an end. In these cases journal articles and grants are more important. That said, chairing a symposium that you organised does show some academic leadership that would count for something.

You are likely to get more people to your session - I don't understand this---in comparison to what?  Though the following sentence makes sense.  I also don't follow the contrast in the last sentence in that paragraph---in my field, chairs of sessions don't usually present.  Is it different in your field?  If not, can you please clarify?

@Kimball I guess I tried to make sense of the question. In my field (psychology/management) Sometimes a chair is just someone who introduces speakers and keeps everyone to time and may or may not be one of the presenters. This is mostly a menial but necessary task. Therefore, I assumed that the OP was asking about something more involved. The thing that came to my mind was when a chair organises a session on a topic. I've elaborated a little in my opening: ", where the chair is the one to invite and arrange the talks and often provides a more general introduction to the talks"


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Publishing similar/same paper twice? (regarding Economics Letters journal)
I've always been under the impression that you're only allowed to publish 1 result in 1 journal. However, Economics Letters states:

For instance, a theorist could submit to Economics Letters a
  thought-provoking example before the analysis is extended to a general theorem in a fully fledged paper that will go elsewhere. Similarly, an experimentalist or an empirical researcher could submit to Economics Letters some important preliminary results, where perhaps the threshold for robustness, thoroughness or completeness of the analysis is not as high as it would be for a complete paper.

Is this stating that you're allowed to submit early results of paper X to Economics Letters, then improve paper X until paper X is longer and more like a full paper, followed by a submission of paper X to an alternative journal? If it is what they mean, why don't more academics do this to boost their publication count? Economics Letters is actually ranked quite highly.

This is fairly common. For example, in CS, one might publish preliminary work at a conference, and then flesh it out for a journal (there's a "30% new material" rule in many journals to cover this situation). But to answer your question, doing this doesn't boost publication count except for very dumb ways of evaluating a publication list. Most people will list the conference and journal paper as one entity.

@Suresh Okay sure, thanks. Although this is actually a highly ranked journal (ranked A out of A*,A,B,C,unranked).

@Suresh: Most people, yes.  But I suspect most bureaucracies, no.  My university insists on conference and journal publications being listed separately in promotion and tenure cases.  (See also "very dumb ways of evaluating a publication list".)

Indeed. But since the question was "why don't people play this game more often", maybe the answer is: "because you play with the university bureaucracy less often than you have to face your colleagues" :)

@Suresh  Can I also confirm that I've correctly interpreted the passage? I can publish in two journals with the same paper basically (one longer/more developed than the other, of course)?

It does sound like it. Although the "longer/more developed" part is upto the editors of the second journal, who might feel free to reject the submission as being "too close" to the first one.

Taken from the comments as per request
This is fairly common. For example, in CS, one might publish preliminary work at a conference, and then flesh it out for a journal (there's a "30% new material" rule in many journals to cover this situation). But to answer your question, doing this doesn't boost publication count except for very dumb ways of evaluating a publication list. Most people (except university bureaucrats) will list the conference and journal paper as one entity.
Note that it is upto the journal editors of the second venue to decide whether the paper is sufficiently different from the first one. They are free to reject it even if you think the latter paper is a nontrivially expanded version of the first one.

Indeed. Economics Letters is a journal where people read summaries of papers and get a good idea of the literature coming out in different specialties of economics, before moving on to reading full technical papers in other journals. So yes, it is quite understandable to submit a summarized watered-down version of a paper to Economics Letters.


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Research Information System
My employer is considering implementing Atira PURE to help manage grant applications and grant funding at the university level.
Seems like it might have some benefits... but could also add a costly and unnecessary layer of overhead.
Any experience with this or the equivalent?

Is this On-topic? Seems more relevant to administration, than academia.

@NobleP.Abraham Academia is not only about research, administration is a big part of it… FAQ says “inner workings of research departments”, which seems to cover this question.

Administration is an inseparable part of academia. But about direct relevance of this question to research community ...

We use pure at our university to register publications. Maybe we also use it for other purposes, but I have only been affected by the publication part.
The registration of publications is a necessity, because the university uses this information to distribute money to different research groups (e.g. each year there is a bonus based on the number of published peer-reviewed articles in a recognised journal.
I've occasionally been assigned the task for my group to make sure all our articles were "registered in pure", and I can say that it works reasonably well. The interface is not superb, and I wouldn't like to work with it all day, but it gets the job done. I don't know anything about the alternatives.
It does also generate a fancy and completely useless person graph.


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Affiliation in the transition period between studies at different universities
I am in a "transition period" shortly after having finished my MSc, and shortly before beginning my PhD. In the summer period the academic life doesn't cease, though, and sometimes an affiliation is asked for at scientific events. I am going to a conference soon, and indeed the organisers need an affiliation.
Is there some rule saying what affiliation I should mention in a situation like that: the past one, the future one, both, or neither?

Be pragmatic. If you need to provide affiliation for, for example, presenting work you have already done, then use the old affiliation. It would be odd to provide your coming affiliation in such cases. Even later when you are at your new place you may want to use the older affiliation along with your new one to show where you did the work and where you are now. If you need to provide contact information not related to work you have done then the new affiliation migt be good. That said, however, it would be wrong to use the new affiliation until you become officially affiliated by a contract (equivalent). From this perspective your old affiliation can be used until the new one is official (find out by asking your new location when can be applied). There is of course not wrong to clearly state that you will be at your new affiliation starting such-and-such time.

Thank you, this clarifies a lot. Would you say the new affiliation can safely been used after the offer has been made, and first documents have been signed?

Yes probably but the best way is to just ask if you can use the affiliation and explain for what reason. this not only makes it clear to all ut also shows your activity before starting at the new loclity.

Maybe I'm a little too practical, but I would go with whichever email address will you be using most consistently in the future.  Presumably that's the PhD one, assuming you have access to that email address.  If anyone wants to contact you in six months that will be the more correct affiliation.

I don't agree with that. An affiliation is much much more than a contact address.


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How to tell my professor there's a system issue and remind them of writing the LOR at the same time?
I'm running into problems of not knowing how to politely remind my professors of writing me the LORs and informing them of a potential technical problem at the same time.
I recently had a professor who was trying to submit an LOR to University A seven times, but Uni A's system had a technical issue and didn't let him upload the letter at all. He contacted tech support but they never got back to him and, eventually, he gave up and asked me to ask for other professors for letters. This is a very reasonable request since the system was truly frustrating.
My problem is that I don't know if that technical issue will happen to others as well when submitting the letters, but I don't want to wait until the last minute for them to submit the letters and tell me the system doesn't work. It would be very risky.
So I want to let them know that Univ A's system might have this issue and want to have them trying uploading letters ASAP, so that if there's a problem, I'll have time to fix it.
But, at the same time, these are the same professors who are writing me letters for other universities, not just for Univ A, and I don't know how to frame the letter to remind them? Will it seem like I rushing them to upload all the letters to all the schools?

Telling you to go get a letter from someone else wasn't really appropriate for him to do, I think.  If all else failed he should have printed out the letter and mailed it to University A.

Explain it just as you described (avoid acronyms though):

Hello Dr. Smith,
I want to thank you again for agreeing to write LoRs for me for graduate school. This is just a reminder that they're due on December 42nd. Please let me know if you anticipate any difficulties with meeting this date.
In addition, please be aware that the computer system at the University of Mississippi at St. Louis at Berkley at Gondor may be having problems -- at least one of the other individuals I asked for a recommendation has had a problem uploading their LoR. If you have difficulty as well, please let me know as soon as possible so I can get in touch with the university's tech support staff.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Lavender S.

Very good answer.  One addition: I suggest getting in touch right away, regardless, with bla-bla-Gondor university to report the problem, and ask for alternative instructions.