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How are junior professors evaluated for promotion?
This is a naive question, coming from someone who has never had an academic job. I'm asking what is involved when a junior professor is promoted. My question is wide, since I don't understand academic life. Some answers are obvious, but I'd still like clarification:

Funding. Professors I know seem to be obsessed over funding. They're constantly writing grant applications and are constantly unhappy at how much of a lottery it is. However, since the professors are presumably paid a salary by the university, so what if they fail? It's not like the university will stop paying them, will it? Especially if the professor is tenured.
Does the source of the funding matter? Suppose Alice is a beginning professor. One day Bill Gates calls Alice and says "I'd like to be your PhD student, and I'll give you $1 billion of funding". Will her head of department be delighted? Will Alice immediately be promoted to full professor? Is the idea behind the $1 billion that Alice will now be able to hire an army of postdocs and PhD students (can she actually do this especially if the university doesn't have office space for them?), which will boost the department's research output and therefore improve the university's ranking? If so, does that mean academia is essentially "whoever has more money wins"?
Suppose that Alice had won $1 billion at the sweepstakes instead, and decided to put that money into her work (can she do this?). Does the same scenario as the above play out?
Research output. I imagine this is related to funding - if one has more funding, one can hire more postdocs and PhD students. But at that point, it's the postdocs and PhD students that are doing the research. The professor might have his or her name on plenty of papers, but never as a first author. Presumably, the papers will look good on the postdocs' and PhD students' CV, not so much on the professor's. Is that the case?
Teaching output. Presumably this must count for something or there'd be no reason for departments to have "best teaching" awards. I also imagine that departments will try to spread (mandatory) teaching loads around so everyone teaches roughly the same number of courses. This doesn't include Honours, PhD etc students however, and as far as I can tell different professors have different numbers of PhD students. Is it an advantage to have lots of such students? The obvious answer is "yes", but if so, I don't understand why professors don't just take on students until they hit capacity. They probably have a lot more prospective students than actual ones, especially at big universities, which is why the admission rate can be so low. If this is related to not having funding to pay the students (aren't students expected to pay for their education? This certainly applied at undergraduate level), does this mean that a self-funded student will have no trouble getting admitted even to prestigious universities?
Other ventures. I imagine this must count for something, or I don't see why a professor would agree to serve on a journal's editorial board. It's usually not a paid position, and it's time-consuming. I also see professors do things like start companies and try to sell commercial products. Question: why would the university tolerate this? It means the professor is putting time into something unrelated to the university. My contracts with (non-academic) employers typically have a line "you are expected to devote your full attention to affairs of the company". Does getting involved in these non-university activities help with getting promoted?

Would someone kindly provide an answer for US universities or should I open another question?

I don't understand why professors don't just take on students until they hit capacity students cost time, bad students are a waste of time (once you reached the point where you don't need to polish your cv).

I don't understand why professors don't just take on students until they hit capacity, some professors do exactly that and the students are quite unhappy because the professor has not enough time for good quality supervision.  And at a PhD level, students are usually paid, either with a grant (UK, US, some other countries), or employed and unionised and paid with a separate scale (Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia).  It wouldn't surprise me if taking on a self-funded student was prohibited (by union rules, for example) in some places.

Bill and Alice would have an insurmountable conflict of interest in your scenario.

As for point 4, the university not only tolerates community service like sitting on an editorial board; such services are often a requirement for promotion.  It benefits the reputation of the university if researchers become known for initiatives that benefit the wider community.

Yes the university pays salary to the professor. But a professor is often head of a research group and therefore needs staff : PhD students, post-docs, research engineers and more. Equipment costs money, employees in the group cost money to hire.

"Presumably this must count for something or there'd be no reason for departments to have 'best teaching' awards." Or: "Best teaching awards" are created to fill the gap that teaching otherwise doesn't count for anything.

This question is incredibly broad, verging on unanswerable--you could tighten it up by specifying a general location, field, and type of institution (since you've accepted an answer, you might as well make it UK research institutions in the biological sciences).

I agree with @1006a  ... this depends a lot on the field.  In some fields, outside research funding is nonexistent.

I'm most interested in the sciences, but can't narrow it further - I'm also interested how things are in other countries. Hearing that outside research funding is nonexistent in some fields also makes me curious what academic life in those fields is like, too. Personally at least, partial answers are fine; Ian Sudbery's answer provides context to help me extrapolate.

I don't mind splitting the question into smaller pieces, but I don't know how to choose the smaller pieces.

I must agree with others that the current version is too broad. Can you break it into: funding and  research, teaching and being an advisor, others (e.g. journal's editorial board)?

Voting to re-open because I don't think this is too broad. It will, naturally, depend in some situations, but I think there's plenty of room at the moment for useful and productive answers.

All of this is going to be very field- and country-specific. I will answer for biological/biomedical sciences at UK universities.
The career progression at most UK universities is:
Lecturer → Senior Lecturer → Reader → Full professor
In the UK there is no such thing as tenure unless you got it before 1987. However sacking someone from any job in the UK is much harder than in the US.
Promotion from lecturer to senior lecturer usually involves demonstrating:

You can secure on-going substantial funding for your research. This means getting multiple grants at different times that bring the university substantial overheads (not all do).
You have some leadership role in teaching – you have created new modules and now co-ordinate them, or are lead for a degree program or a reaching in a sub field.
You have at least one major admin role in the department, such as head of admissions, chair of the equality committee, head of outreach, exams co-ordinator etc.

Reader is normally a purely ceremonial position, that comes with no salary or benefits increase and usually awarded in recognition of a being a leader in your research field.
The big step to professor (also known as  a chair) is generally entirely research-based (although some places are now awarding professorships on the basis of world-leading innovation in teaching). Promotion to professor usually involves obtaining references from international colleagues saying you are where it is at in your field, worldwide. You will have brought in funding above and beyond what is normal, probably more than once (e.g. funds to start a research institute, or a large, multicentre program etc). You will become your universities leader in whatever it is you do i.e. Prof Such and Such, University of Neverland’s chair in X studies.
As for your specific questions

Funding is all. If you don’t get funding, you can’t do research. If you don’t get funding, you definitely won’t get promoted. In my university, if you don’t get funding you won’t pass your probationary period to get a lectureship, and at many places if you don’t keep getting funding, you are in danger of losing your job.  Not all funding is equal, because not all funding comes with overheads: that is, if I apply for a grant to buy a $ 100,000 piece of equipment and the funder gives me $ 100,000, then the university gets nothing. There are different ways of seeing this. You could see it as the university wanted to profit from the grant. Or you could see it as the university needing to find the funds to pay my salary, heat, light and clean my office etc. Making the university a lot of money is primarily what gets you promoted.
Research outputs. A cynic would say that as far as the university is concerned, research outputs are adverts that allow you to get more funding. Either by advertising to funders that you are worth investing in, or to companies that might want to licence your tech, or to student choosing a uni. A special case of this is the quadrennial ranking of universities by the government on their research outputs.
Teaching output matters in so far as having a reputation for good teaching helps you recruit undergrad/masters students. As for PhD students: in my field at least, getting a student is treated like winning a small grant. A PhD students costs someone around $ 195,000 over the course of their four-year studentship ($ 85,000 in tuition fees, about the same again in stipend for the student, and about $ 25,000 in research costs). Any student who can come up with that themselves is likely to be welcomed with open arms. Very few can.
Being an editor and sitting on committees is a service to the community that even universities recognise is necessary for academia to continue. It also brings prestige. For the professor, being editor of a leading journal is a good way to demonstrate you are at the top of your field. As for companies: if you are starting a company, you are likely to be doing so using IP licensed from the university. Spin-outs also look good when a university is try to demonstrate to funders/government that they are good at doing research that has an impact on society (the so-called impact agenda). In the US of course, once you are tenured, you can spend your time doing whatever you like.

Point (3), likely to be welcomed with open arms, are you quite sure?  There may be policies or regulations that prevent this.  I know one professor (in Sweden) who turned away a self-funded PhD student because he didn't want to lead a group where some PhD students were employed, unionised, and reasonably well paid, whereas others were just-about-managing and in a much more fragile situation; he thought this would be poor for group cohesion and thus for overall productivity.

@gerrit The answer does say it's for the UK, where PhD candidates are most definitely students, not staff.

@origimbo I realise that, but I wonder if there may still be policies (for good or bad reasons) to not welcome self-funded students with open arms.

@gerrit From the fields I or friends have been involved with, then yes, if the student clearly doesn't meet academic standards (and will thus drag down completion rates) they might have problems. Ditto if the institution literally doesn't have physical space to run any more students. On the other hand if they're at least borderline, have the money in the bank, or a firm contract with an industrial partner, and a suitably qualified supervisor lined up, then I've never heard of problems.

Thanks for answer. Follow-up question. You write "If you don't get funding, you can't do research." Can you elaborate? I'm under the impression that all it takes to do research in some disciplines is a computer, possibly software licenses (e.g. Matlab), and journal subscriptions. That doesn't sound expensive at all.

@user3727079 Even if that's true in some disciplines, all of the rest of them are much more expensive. In my field, it costs about $600 to run an MRI for an hour and powerful computers and upkeep isn't cheap. Plus, neither is space

@MorganRodgers are you saying it's possible to pay one's colleagues to cover the teaching load? It sounds weird that this is acceptable if Bill Gates & Alice have an insurmountable conflict of interest - viewed another way, Bill Gates is paying Alice, the university and the department $1 billion in tuition fees.

@gerrit no supervisor would be forced to take a PhD student if they really didn't want to, and there is some basic quality control (you must have a undergrad degree in a related subject for example), but academic ARE under a lot of pressure to take self funded students.

@user3727079 I did say i was talking biology. My grants run to about £0.5M. About half of that is staff costs. Both my own, and that of research assistants. In my dept we don't so much 'buy out' classes as pay for the research time the uni is already giving us: my contract is for 50% teaching, but the uni must pay for the other 50% somehow. People who have many grant will tend to be givien a lower teaching load, but we are all expected to do some teaching however much time has notionally be committed on grants.

"Funding is all. If you don’t get funding, you can’t do research." this is true even in subjects that don't need a lot of funds (e.g. in computer science, there is a lot of work you can do with just a computer, some paper and some pencils).  Promotion is still predicated on bringing in large quantities of grants.  Research income is more important than research output.  I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide if it is how it should be ;o)

In response to [research output] The professor might have his or her name on plenty of papers, but never as a first author. Presumably, the papers will look good on the postdocs' and PhD students' CV, not so much on the professor's. Is that the case?
No. Being supervisor of successful PhD's and postdocs is a good thing of course. Each field has its own conventions where the supervisor is placed in the author list (2nd author, last author, ...), which are usually familiar to people working in the field (or deciding about grants in a specific field). Therefore, being in the supervisor/professor position on papers does look good on your CV.

Not all fields have the convention where the supervisor is senior/last author.  I work in atmospheric physics/Earth observation, and the supervisor is usually 2nd author.

Thanks @gerrit, didn't know about that. I included the info in my answer, trying to make if valid for all fields/systems.

And in my field, the supervisor is not automatically an author, and authors are always listed alphabetically.


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As a part time volunteer, how can I ask my advisor to let me work independently, so that I can have a chance at first authorship?
TL;DR As a part time volunteer, what is the best way of communicating to my professor that I would like to be able to work independently on a project of my own to work towards a first authorship paper, rather than playing second fiddle to a full time graduate student?
Hello!
I am planning on applying to MD/PHD programs next year, and to that end, I am volunteering in a lab and trying to get some research experience and a  publication under my belt.  My primary goal of doing research as a volunteer is to be able to independently complete a project and obtain a first authorship paper, even if it's a very small one.
This may seem a bit crass to say this straight out, but with a first authorship paper, I believe I can show admission committees that I am able to independently perform research at a graduate level, so this is my utmost priority.
I have been working part time (~10hrs/week) at a lab as a volunteer, working independently so far.  I entered the lab a couple months ago and independently researched and explored the lab's field of study until I came up with what I felt to be an interesting and novel project.  I communicated the details of this project to the professor a week ago and he also seemed very excited by the potential implications and findings it could yield.
To my dismay, at this week's lab meeting, this professor more or less assigned one of his full-time graduate students to the project I proposed to him last week.  He heavily implied that I would be assisting this graduate student.  As a part timer, I know that 10 hours a week would definitely not be able to keep up with a 40+ hour a week full timer, so a first authorship on this project seems increasingly out of the question.
I'm not trying to obtain credit for work I didn't do, nor am I trying to find shortcuts to an easy first authorship paper.  I know both things are not possible, nor is it my wish to game my way out of hard work and effort.
However, I do want a fair shot at being able to independently do my own work, even if it's for 10 hours a week, in order to achieve a small first authorship paper that I can claim as my own.
I don't want to present an image to the professor of being greedy, scheming or not a team player, because I honestly don't feel that I am any of these things.  However, I do have my own goals for working hard and volunteering my time, and I need to be able to fulfill my goals or else I am wasting my time.
I know professors can get defensive about "cutting" a larger paper in half into two smaller papers, so that seems out of the question as well.  I want to ask my professor if I can work on another project (if I can come up with another one), but that makes me seem like I'm being difficult/uncooperative.
TL;DR As a part time volunteer, what is the best way of communicating to my professor that I would like to be able to work independently on a project of my own to work towards a first authorship paper, rather than playing second fiddle to a full time graduate student?

In general, you should explain to your advisor that you are really interested in taking the lead on a research project, and ask if there is any way you can do that in the scope of your role in the lab.
Some suggestions:

Have this conversation sooner, rather than later. It's easier to sort out before too much work has been done on the project.
Ask "What do I have to do to..." rather than "Can I...". As in, "What would I have to do to be able to be first author on a paper coming out of this project, or another project?", not "Can I be first author on this project?" (He may say something like "I think that to submit a paper by December, we'll need to put in around 60 total hours per week of work" - and then you may decide that you can't do that, but that second authorship and a great letter of recommendation is better than no paper. Or not.)
Don't assume that your solution - working independently - is the only one. For example, your professor might suggest that multiple papers are expected to come out of the project, each with a different focus, and you can "specialize" in a certain part of the project and be first author on the paper on that part, even while collaborating on the project as a whole. Be open to other suggestions.
Don't assume that you have the full picture. For example, this grad student may be working on the project with you for a few weeks just to get you started, or on the side while also pursuing another project. Etc.

Note that just like you have goals and want to put your time towards them as efficiently as possible, so does your supervisor. Supervising one student per project, especially when that one student is a temporary part-time student without much research experience,  may not be an efficient use of his time. (That doesn't mean he'd never agree to it; it does mean that you may have to be flexible about what kind of solutions you'll accept.)

Thanks, I can tell that this advice is sound, particularly the part about asking "what would I have to do...".  I have some anxiety about broaching the topic of wanting a first authorship paper.  I have never explicitly stated this with the words "first authorship paper", and I don't want to come off as some kind of pompous, over-reaching volunteer.
Is the best way of stating my intention to just be upfront about it from the beginning, or should I want until I have more concrete results/contributions under my belt before I have the right to use the words "first authorship paper"?

@ays0110 I wouldn't lead with that. More like, "As you know, I'll be applying to grad school next year, and I am hoping to have a publication on my CV for applications. Do you think that's realistic? What kind of papers do you think will come out of this project in that timeframe, and what kind of role do you think I could play in them?" Then after you've discussed possible papers and what would go in them, it's natural to ask "What would I have to do to be first author on that paper?"

Thank you very much, I'll think on your advice and hopefully have a conversation with my advisor soon!

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How would people evaluate a journal article if the journal discontinues to publish at a certain stage?
I was navigating the Graduate Journal of Mathematics, which is a comparatively new peer-reviewed mathematics journal. In its mission-statement, the journal mentions that it takes inspiration from a similar journal that was discontinued in 2000: Le Journal des Elèves de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. There are lots of published articles from this journal, but it is closed now.
There are there other mathematics journals which were also discontinued at a certain stage. For example, LMS Journal of Computation and Mathematics was discontinued in 2015. I guess there are other journals in all subjects which are later discontinued and maybe later some new journals evolve from them just like the mentioned Graduate Journal of Mathematics.
My main motivation for the above questions is the following:
Suppose someone publishes an article in a journal and later the journal gets closed. How would people evaluate the work from a journal which is closed? I know the work will remain valid as long as there is no error in the article. But, would people acknowledge the work equally even after the journals is discontinued?
Especially, in some countries, a Ph.D. degree is awarded on the basis of articles published in a journal. Suppose, this journal is later discontinued. Should the author worry about their Ph.D. award even if the journal gets closed, provided their research work is valid?

If the journal was considered reputable at the time it published a paper there should be no issues afterwards. Some journals close for financial reasons, though I don't know about the specific case. Others are victims of a changing environment, with new publishers and new publishing methods coming along. Some specialized journals close because the field they cover has become de-populated as the larger field changes focus.
And no, a degree should never be at risk for such things. "Prediction is hard. Especially about the future." (Stolen, but I don't recall from where.)

The quote is often attributed to Yogi Berra, although as he is also said to have pointed out "I didn't actually say half the things I said".

The only way to assess an article is to read it. This holds true for high impact journals, low impact journals, and defunct journals all the same. They are all capable of publishing incorrect results and I'm not sure it happens any less frequently at big, high impact journals.
As for what causes a journal to close, the answer, as others have said, is usually money. It is possible that a journal is shut down by a publisher for other reasons though. I believe Wiley has been trying to clean up Hindawi's lineup and has shut down a number of journals that were "paper-mills". It's also possible that a journal published by a society or other independent group might just run out of steam. Or the field or niche of the journal might shrink or disappear. None of these reasons change how you assess an article (except the realization that a journal is a paper-mill, though in that case the articles will hopefully be retracted outright).
So, with that in mind, no degree should be at risk if a journal closes. Papers published in order to meet the requirements of the degree were still peer-reviewed and are forever available on the internet. Also, while publications are important for a PhD, I would argue that most universities are awarding the degree based on the dissertation. Which, while there may be a requirement to publish portions of it, is defended on its own merits.
The only reason I would be concerned is if there is evidence of academic misconduct. For example, there are more than a few cases of researchers having PhD's revoked for blatant dishonesty. I suppose you could also get in trouble if you exclusively publish in predatory journals that are discovered, shut down, and all their papers retracted (including your entire body of work). But that is an extreme case.

You read it. In principle this applies to all articles, including those published in prestigious journals. Prestigious journals still occasionally publish papers that turn out to be completely wrong.
When you don't understand the paper, then (and only then) you could rely on secondary factors like where the paper is published in, but it should be clear before you start that this method is indirect at best, and you should not use it if accuracy is important. If you're going to use the method anyway, you can Google for the journal's citation metrics before it closed.
As for what causes journals to close, every case I know of has been for financial reasons. Finally, the journal closing doesn't mean all the papers it's published are now incorrect, so a degree will never be revoked for this reason. See this question for scenarios where a degree might be revoked (note it is very rare to revoke a degree).

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What does the request to send a resume including a commented list of maximum 3 selected publications mean?
I am a PhD student in Mathematics and about to apply for a post-doctoral position. "A resume including a commented list of maximum three selected publications" is requested.
What does the above sentence mean? What is a commented list? I have one publication and one revision recived from a journal recently, I have other 4 reprints communicated. So in total i have 6 papers. So how many of them  should I mention in the resume ?

What do you mean by "4 [p]reprints communicated"? In case they were not yet published in (or accepted for publication in) a peer-review venue, then you have one peer-reviewed publication, not six. Of course, in that case it makes perfect sense to list your other work as "manuscripts under review" or whatever, but they are not peer-reviewed publications.

I would have to see the complete instructions to be sure, but I expect they want to know what your main publications are, why they are your main ones, what they are about, and what your contribution was.
Especially the last point is important. Your potential employer doesn't care if you have a paper in the most prestigious journal if your contribution was trivial. They want to see that you can do something on your own. Choose papers that you're the single or main author of, where you can say that it's completely based on your own work.
You can and should still list everything on your CV, but only select and comment on a maximum of three.

The exact sentence was " send a resume including a commented list of maximum three selected publications". A professor just send me the pdf file of the application form. I am not sure about the weblink of the notification. But I am thankful for your advice in the answer

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Which website contains impact factors of all journals?
Impact factor for individual journals can be found on their website. There are several impact factors in use, like the 2-5 years impact factor, real-time impact factor (i.e., monthly update), Scimago impact factor.
I have found Academic Accelator which provides the 2-5 years impact factor and the real-time impact factor (i.e., monthly update). Then there is Scimago journal ranking which also contains the citation impact factor and classification of journals into four categories Q1,Q2,Q3,Q4. Then there is another place called Resurchify which also reports journal impact factors.
Which website is an authentic source that contains impact factor of all scientific journals ?

Does this answer your question? Where can I find the Impact Factor for a given journal?

Well, nobody reports an impact factor for my personally-curated in-house boutique scientific journal. The fact that I've only published one issue and stuffed the only copy in my bottom desk drawer is no excuse...  Anyway, it seems to me that you have already noticed that many places report many different 'impact factors' of a variety of journals. There is no one true universal reporting place.

@Sursulasupportsthestrike, it answer my question somewhat. Yet I want to know about the authenticity of academic accelator. Is it good source ?

@learner I don't even know what "authentic" is supposed to mean in that context. Everyone can define any kind of impact factor and publish it somewhere. Does that make it "true"?

@Sursulasupportsthestrike, authentic means those are believed to be correct impact factor..

The only journals that have impact factors are those indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science, as they calculate and release the annual Journal Citation Report (as J.P. mentioned already) containing that metric. Thus, only the official impact factors contained in that report are "authentic". But as you have found, there are a handful of other citation metrics including Scimago Journal Ranking, CiteScore, Source-normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), and others. Each of these metrics is slightly different and not directly comparable to each other or to impact factor. You can certainly use them and some may actually be better than IF, but they are not the same thing. Importantly, they are not inauthentic or incorrect, just different.
It's worth noting that sometimes sketchy journals will advertise these metrics in place of a an IF, watch out for that. Having (or not having) an impact factor doesn't mean a journal is good or bad, but lying about it (or trying to pass off another metric as an IF) is suspicious. On top of that, sometimes aggregate websites are not particularly careful about reporting IF and will scrape any citation metric and add it in that place.
Unless you have Clarivate's JCR, you have to rely on journal-reported impact factors. And any free website aggregating these (unless they have access to the original report) are probably scrapping the IFs from the internet. So again, they are not necessarily inauthentic. They may be outdated, misreported, or in the case of predatory journals, made up though. So really all of those websites are reasonable ways to try to quickly compare impact factors (or other metrics) but be aware that you'll need to verify the info that they provide. As far as I know the only way to have the complete list of impact factors would be to purchase the JCR at the source.

Typically, the term "impact factor" refers specifically to the trademarked journal index owned by Clarivate. It is released annually as part of the publication Journal Citation Reports, which is available at jcr.clarivate.com and requires a subscription to access.


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Can we detect plagiarism from/in a podcast?
Is there a way to match content

of an article from a podcast source,
of a podcast from an article source or
of a podcast from another podcast source?

I haven't heard of any tool that can check plagiarism from/in an audio source. If such a tool does exist, how efficient and reliable is it?
EDIT: There is no specific purpose for asking this question. It is just out of curiosity, since I am listening to a lot of podcasts nowadays.

I think this is an interesting question. You might get a more useful answer if you [edit] the question to tell us why you want an answer.

A data driven AI might be able to do some things. Otherwise it seems like a pretty hard problem.

Are you asking about plagiarism as a concept about scientific integrity, or just about students breaking the rules about copying stuff? I think the answers being given here are about things from different domains. Student dishonesty is a bit easier since their transgressions are usually less sophisticated.

Is this a "please help me cheat" question?

I doubt that anything currently exists. I don't, however, think the problem is infeasible. But it is very hard.
First, plagiarism is about ideas, not words. One can plagiarize without using any of the original words. Second, plagiarism is about the creation of the ideas and claiming them as your own. Both of these are difficult problems.
First, one would probably need both things to be in a common format, probably written language. This part currently has solutions that mostly work, but it is the easiest part. Second, the actual meaning of the words would need to be extracted and probably also structured in some way.
Finally, the system would need to watch out that the ideas weren't just being expressed but were being claimed. I can certainly speak and write about relativity without plagiarizing Einstein.
I think it would be an interesting research problem, but I also think that it would be pretty far in the future before such a system could eliminate most of the false positives and false negatives.
A data driven AI system might be the way to attack it, but these are still subject to many false decisions.
But it needs to be an intelligent agent to make the call. A person can use transcripts and understand the meaning and the intent. A sufficiently sophisticated AI might also be able to do it, but it is still a bit beyond where were are, especially if you require a low fault rate.

Copyright is easier, since it is about words (pictures, sounds, etc).
Likewise, students copying things to cheat is generally easier since they will most likely be copying words rather than extracting the ideas/semantics from the words and there is an implicit assumption that the intent is that the ideas are their own.

TL;DR Google already provides a transcript for all YouTube videos.  Getting them to give it to you might be difficult.  Even with it, you may have to role your own since transcripts aren't student essays.
You could if you are willing to get transcriptions of every podcast
Just like with written plagiarism detectors like Turnitin, the database of existing work, which is always growing, would need to be very large.
If the Podcast is on YouTube, Google does an automatic speech-to-text on anything uploaded, so you could at least compare between YouTube influencers, assuming Google is ok with you downloaded thousands on thousands of transcripts.
You can also pay Google cloud 0.6 cents per 15 minutes to do as many transcriptions as you want.
The hardest part will be getting high-quality transcripts.  The transcripts won't have punctuation, so off-the-shelf checkers, like Turnitin may not like them.
The algorithm is pretty simple, compare word list in the student's work with your existing database and see how many word list overlap.
Just like with Turnitin, it's not proof the student plagiarized, you'll still have to have a human in the loop.
EDIT in response to comments
Whatever you do, a human will have to listen to both podcasts and determine if the student podcast either said exactly what another podcast said (obvious plagiarism) or simply restated what was already said without adding new information or analysis.
No computer program (like Turnitin) can measure the contribution of work.  No contribution = plagiarism.

Hmmm. In the words of Turnitin: Turnitin cannot identify incidents of plagiarism. Nor can it prove that a student has not plagiarized.


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Academic postdoc: Interview process time insights
I had an informal meeting via Skype for a postdoc position that I am highly interested in, speaking of which, I was invited for a formal interview soon after. I was asked to give a talk to the lab (online) about my PhD work. The talk went well and there were questions that I answered in the best possible way I could. I was then asked to talk to the lab members in the absence of the PI. After that, I asked about the next step in the process and was told that they would reach via email.
How long should I wait before I feel, my chances to get the position, have gone? Should I wait for two to three weeks? What is the normal time for the process to complete? Any insight would quiet my fears.
Thank you for your time.

The time can be highly variable as there may be several people who need to give approvals and they may not all be available in a given time frame. There may be administrative issues that they need to resolve, etc.
I suggest that you wait as long as it takes, but ask for an update after two or three weeks. But, if you have other options, don't give them up and continue any necessary process in case it doesn't happen after all.
Keep a positive, but slightly skeptical attitude until you sign formally.

Another source of variability is that there may be a large delay if someone else is offered the job, whether or not they accept it.  During the period that the first offer is being considered, other candidates will typically be left in the dark about what's happening.  If that other candidate ultimately turns down the job, you may get a later offer.


text:
Applying for postdocs / lectureships - sorting bad advice from good (UK, mathematics)
Long story short: I got my PhD a few years ago, and am currently in a temporary job. Anticipating future job applications, I found myself an experienced, senior local mentor. My time in this job is now almost at an end, and I've been submitting dozens of job applications, including to jobs far "below" the one I'm in now. These applications have so far all ended in rejection without interview. So I quietly reached out to some other experienced members of the faculty for their advice.
What I'm experiencing now is a case of too many mentors spoiling the broth. I have been told variously that, in order to get a job, my main, most urgent priority should be:

writing higher-quality papers to publish in top journals
polishing and publishing my older preprints, even if they're not so high-quality
speaking at conferences/seminars on the wider international stage
organising conferences / similar community admin
applying for more grants

etc. etc. I've also been given a list as long as my arm of things that are not my most urgent priority, but are still important. They're all great pieces of advice individually, but I'm finding the lack of coherent prioritisation overwhelming given the few months I have remaining, and I'm struggling to imagine how I could achieve some of these things even if I had a year or more left.

How should I be prioritising my time in the remaining few months? (For the purpose of this question, my goal is to end up not being forced out of UK academia without another job lined up.)
How should I prioritise my time in my next temporary job, if I manage to find one? (For this question, my goal is to end up with a permanent research/teaching contract in the UK within the next few years.)

Edited to add extra background information on request:

I'm in pure mathematics.
I've written several papers that have been published in good-to-very-good, well-known journals, though nothing nearing e.g. Inventiones. The preprints that I haven't yet submitted are likely to be similar. Of course, I'm working on more and better, but I am worried that I'll be forced out of academia long before any of it is finalised, much less published.
I have spoken at conferences and seminars internationally, a couple of times. I'm on the lookout for more opportunities.
I have never organised a conference or done any big admin work like that: my living situation is far too precarious to allow it, because of the lack of stable job.
The amount of smaller admin work (e.g. peer review, session chair) I've done is very limited. I'm on the lookout for opportunities, but not finding anything.
I've applied for a couple of small awards, and I'm in the process of applying for my first grant. Most of them I'm not eligible for, because they don't replace your salary, and need to be co-signed by an employer willing to pay your salary (which I don't have).
I'm aware that postdocs and fixed-term lectureships are different jobs. I include them because their job descriptions are almost identical and because I am applying for both. If you can only answer on one, or have to answer separately for each, please do.

This seems difficult to answer without knowing your particular case, and, as you have seen, even then.

@TommiBrander Well, I've witnessed a small number of people disagreeing over my own particular case, so I'm opening it up to SE for a more statistically representative sample. I'm happy to answer some questions on my particular case if needs be, though I'm not sure you should really need to know the details of my case to be able to tell me whether e.g. not having organised a conference is a dealbreaker for employers.

Have you considered that the advice isn't objectively 'good' or 'bad' but everyone's experience is different and different advice is good for different people / different reviewers / interviewers. Remember, it is humans making decisions on whether to give you a job and they're all going to have different decision making process.
Remember when people give advice they're usually telling you what worked for them. If A works for 60% of the population and the opposite, B, works for the other 40%... does that make B bad advice? Or should you consider whether A or B will work better for you?

@E.Rei I don't understand this comment. Did you just read the paraphrased question in the title, rather than the whole post? Different interviewers of course have different priorities, but that doesn't mean that there aren't general trends in the things they care about, and I am interested in maximising my chances. In that case, even if B is not 'bad' advice, switching from B to A gives me a 50% higher chance of getting a job, and I'd very much like to know that.

(Besides which, I have no evidence that your invented 60% and 40% figures aren't more like 90% and 10% in real life, and in that case, yes, I'm very comfortable saying that B is bad advice, at least for the average applicant.)

If you are interested in statistics or research concerning the matter, then you should ask about that. As is, the question explicitly asks how you should spend your time, rather than what statistics say. If you do want to ask for advice, rather than statistics, then giving your field and how much you have already done each of the possible top priorities might help people who would like to answer.

I'm not asking for statistics or research; the UK system seems to be changing so quickly that I doubt this exists anyway. (Though, if it does exist, and it answers my question, then obviously I would like to be pointed towards it.) I am just asking for the opinions of a larger population, in the hopes of extracting some kind of trends, rather than a small number of entirely contradictory data points. I'll edit my post to take the advice of your final sentence into account - thanks.

Nah I read the whole post. I think your premise is a little off to be honest. If you're here looking for advice, my advice would be to listen to both sides of each argument and decide for yourself rather than seeking THE RIGHT ANSWER based on the fact that the majority of people believe. The majority of people on the internet can still be wrong anyway... points to Facebook comments sections about vaccines

@E.Rei As I've said several times, I'm not looking for what the "right" thing is to do, and there is no "argument" that I need to weigh up; I'm looking for the thing(s) that I need to prioritise, in my limited time, in order to have the best chance of landing a job. It's a perfectly reasonable question, and I think asking the advice of people with experience in both getting jobs and interviewing other people for jobs is a good way of going about that. Thanks for your comments.

Well, to me, all 5 should be things that you have been doing already. Which ones do you think you have covered well, and which ones have you not?

@JonCuster I haven't organised a conference - how could I? Conferences take a year or more to organise. I've never had more than a year's assurance that I'll be able to stay in any particular job / city / country (or even academia as a whole) since my PhD. Funding: I have applied / am applying for everything I can, but most awards (so I am advised) explicitly state that they won't pay your salary, and my employer isn't willing to co-sign these sorts of applications because they don't want to keep me on. [...]

[...] The other three I think I've done perfectly well (commensurate with career stage), but I've been told I need to do them more, which is why I included them.

Fair enough. On the conference side, is there a conference you regularly go to? Have you been a session chair? Why could you not be on an organizing committee? That stuff just means being in the same general field - people move around all the time. But, keep doing what gets you better known in the field (some combination of those things), and keep applying.

Yeah, that all makes sense. There isn't a single conference I go to regularly, due to the moving around. People are starting to recognise me in the UK and abroad, but I've just never been asked to e.g. be on an organising committee, or to chair sessions, or for that matter to do peer review, and when I've offered I've been told it's all already under control. I don't believe for a second that there are no such opportunities in the wider world, but I'm struggling to find them as someone out of the loop.

Unless things have changed enormously in the UK, postdocs and lectureships are dramatically different positions.

@user2705196 Would you care to expand that into an answer? I'm talking about fixed-term lectureships, of course. All I know is that their job descriptions sound more or less identical, and everyone I know in my career stage applies for both indiscriminately.

My advice would be:

write more applications

Academic job hunt is a gamble. Boosting your CV does improve your chances, but it is still a gamble. There is no security in this game and no guaranteed strategies. Places which seem to be a 100% match can reject you without an interview, and places where you barely meet the role specification can shortlist you. There are often more criteria than are written in the job specification and there are often several competing agendas each Department wants to fulfil.
A few months is not enough to publish your  best piece (review process may take years). Speaking at conferences may help, but realistically even if a professor will love your work and would like to hire you, they may not be able to do it immediately, unless they have funds to spare (very rare and unlikely situation in the UK). Organising a conference takes more than a year.
tl;dr:  polish your CV and application pack, submit more job applications and (if you have time) prepare a Fellowship application, e.g. to EPSRC

All advice is good. All advice is bad. Every candidate is different. Nearly every post doc position is different, at least at the hiring stage.
The important lesson is that every candidate will have to make her/his own case for the job. You will need to extract from your background all of the things you have done, as well as your basic work ethic, that makes you the best candidate for the job.
The next most important lesson, perhaps, is that you will likely face a lot of competition. But everyone in the pool will represent trade-offs. You will be (seen as) better than some on some measures, and not as good on others.
Your past is your past. You can't change it. You probably can't add enough in the short term to make much of a difference. So, just make your best case and good luck.
One thing you can do, proactively, is to make your case on paper and then have a trusted colleague give you feedback on it. Not just advice on whether it is "good enough", but what specific things might be added/dropped/changed to strengthen it.

I appreciate the fourth paragraph of this answer in particular, which is a very direct answer to my question. But I'm confused as to how the rest of this answer relates. On your last paragraph in particular: "have a trusted colleague give you feedback" - my post starts with telling you that I've done this, several times over, and that's where the trouble started!

Not asking for general advice. Ask for advice on a specific draft. See what they say about precisely how you present yourself.

Yeah, I've done that too, with CVs, research proposals, teaching statements, etc. Most people I speak to agree that they are very well written and presented and so on - they just think that I should have more on my CV. It's more of what that they don't agree on.

Be yourself. Don't be them. Build where you are most able. Make your best case. Don't think of it as a spreadsheet optimization problem.

Priorities:

Tactical execution of the job search (lots of applications, beat the bushes).
Applying for grants (more work per contact than 1, thus lower priority).
Racking up more easy pub count by cleaning up and publishing preprints.  Need to be able to take credit for that stuff.  It is low work and decent return.

I would put doing serious new papers as the lowest priority.  Not sure what you are doing now, but would probably decrease the time spent on this.  Don't be obvious about this--people should still think you are toiling away--but shift your focus to job search.  Postdocs are not very well paid anyways and it is expected postdocs will be looking for next gig.  Just think it is a lot of work and likelihood of a result is low.  Plus it's very unlikely to help you in time.
I would definitely use every chance you can to do a talk (and then line up some interviews in same location).  Just give your standard thesis or current research overview talk.  No extra work to prepare stuff.  But make sure your travel is funded.  Don't fly around on your own.

Thanks for your answer. Can I ask what you mean by "beat the bushes"?

Incidentally: unfortunately, the first piece of advice I was given by a trusted colleague was to produce big new papers. My PhD supervisor was also very heavy on this, even going so far as to dismiss seminars and conferences and grants as "nonsense" and "a waste of time" at my career stage. So that's most of what I've been doing, until very recently, when it transpired that this wasn't working for me because it wasn't actually producing measurable outputs in the timeframe.

I disagree with your advisor.  You won't have those big papers created and accepted in time to affect anything.

Do a Google search on "beat the bushes".  The top result gives a definition.


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Publishing master's thesis
I would like to write a peer-reviewed publication from my master's thesis (in mathematics).
I don't know how to ask my supervisor, and actually, I don't know what to ask.
He suggested the initial topic and provided feedback along the way. I don't know if he wishes to be involved in the writing process, and in fact, one reason to contact him would be to get his opinion on whether my work is worth publishing.
Should I simply ask what he thinks about writing the article, or should I already propose him to be co-author?
Any additional tip is also welcome.
Thanks!

I suggest you have that conversation but primarily to ask if they think the work is worth publishing. Also ask for possible venues.
Don't propose he be a co-author but you could ask how much, if at all, he wants to be involved. Depending on his answer you could then explore authorship, but raise the value to you of sole authorship if he thinks that is appropriate. Note that sole-authorship would have value if your career path is in academia. Most(?) of us in math don't consider proposing the topic and giving feedback to be grounds for authorship, though they should earn an acknowledgement.
But make a judgment about their personality also. And evaluate the conversation in real-time about their likely reaction.
In math, it is usual in mathematics for an advisor to defer to the student for sole-authorship unless the case otherwise is very clear.
Note that if other faculty members are familiar with your work then you could also ask their opinion about its publishability.


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How do advanced search options work on Cambridge Core?
I am trying to conduct a publication search on the Cambridge Core database but do not understand how the logical operators and quotation marks work on that site (and even if they do).
Here's an example of my problem:

If I search for: (Topological) OR (Data) I get 133326 results.
If I then search for (Topological) AND (Data) I'd expect to get LESS results (since I'm looking for the papers which mention both terms. Instead I get the same 133326 results.
If I add quotation marks: ("Topological") OR ("Data"), the search yields just 36 results. I feel like adding quotation marks in this case shouldn't even affect the number of results.
Finally, running with AND and quotation marks yields more than the above search! ("Topological") AND ("Data") yielded 1866 results.

Does anyone know how this works? I couldn't find information on their website.

FWIW, it does not seem that it supports the usual search tools. Quotation marks work, but looking for "Algebraic" OR "topology" has only yielded 8 results, all of which had OR in the title. Without quotes, it works better, but nor OR or AND works. Pipe operator does not work, either. It seems you can only search separately topological, data, and topological data and build the Venn diagram yourself. User guide has no mention of advanced search tools, either.

@Lodinn I thought that might be the case. Thank you anyway for your advice


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Expectations for authorship as a PhD student creating a novel dataset
I am a PhD candidate in strategic management and entrepreneurship developing a new dataset for my dissertation on entrepreneurial ecosystems. I will compile extensive firm-level data on startups and resource maps of regional ecosystems.
My goal is to leverage this dataset for several publications to jumpstart my research career. I plan to pursue my original research questions for the first 1-2 papers.
However, other faculty have expressed interest in also using my dataset for their own projects. I want to collaborate, but am unsure what level of contribution would justify co-authorship.
My questions:
As the creator of a novel dataset as a PhD student, what are reasonable expectations for authorship on other papers using this data?
What specific activities demonstrate an intellectual contribution significant enough to merit co-authorship?
How involved should I be in the research process, writing, and revision?
When does reliance on my dataset alone become insufficient for co-authorship?
What are effective strategies to proactively negotiate authorship agreements up front?
Any guidance on norms, perspectives, or advice from the community would be greatly appreciated! I want to avoid assumptions and be reasonable in my authorship expectations as an early career researcher. Please let me know if any part of this needs clarifying.
Thank you!

I guess I would focus on (1) assemble the data set, (2) write your first few papers, one of which is about that data set itself, then (3) consider allowing others to use the data set on condition of at least referencing your now existing work.

You (likely with your supervisor as coauthor) could publish information about your dataset in Data in Brief (see link below) or another journal that accepts standalone articles about data. When you make the dataset available to others, create notes to go with it, and in those notes include information about how to cite the dataset by referencing your publication in Data in Brief (or whatever journal you go with). If you take this approach you won't be a coauthor on all the publications that make use of the dataset that you created, but you will get credit for creating it.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/data-in-brief


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The institution where I got my degree is merging with another, how should I list it on my CV?
The university from which I obtained my undergraduate degree (A) has announced that it is planning to merge with another university in the area (B), to form a new university (C).
How should I list the institution on my CV after the merge is completed?
The answers in the related question here suggest that I should list the new name if the university changes name. I feel that this would be disingenuous however - it's not as simple as the university changing names because two separate institutions with rather different reputations are becoming a new one.
At the same time  I worry that if I simply keep the old name then it might be harder to find on (for example) university rankings sites, unless the person searching knew to look back in time.

I would do this: "University A (now University C)"

@peterh I feel as if that is concealing the fact that it has been created through a merge. An area of concern is that (for example) A has a reputation for being pretty average in certain areas, while B has quite a good reputation for those. If C ends up having a great reputation for that area, I wouldn't want anyone to think I was using the name of C to cover up the average reputation of where I actually did the study.

Does this answer your question? How to refer to a university that changed its name?

As peterh says in a comment, for a simple name change you would write "University A (now University C)". If you want to emphasise that it was a merger, not a simple name change, you could therefore write "University A (now part of University C)".


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Is it okay that I don't meet my project supervisor until I can reach a certain subgoal of a long project?
I am doing a project in my university under supervision of a professor. This project constitutes many subgoals. My supervisor told me to meet with him to discuss about the project. But I couldn't reach my weekly subgoal yet. Is it okay if I don't meet him until I reach my weekly subgoal?

It is always better to meet and discuss. Delaying would harm the progress. What if you can't complete the subgoal in following week?

It is useful to meet with your advisor on a regular basis, even if (especially if!) you haven't achieved everything you had hoped to since the last meeting.
Otherwise, you risk getting stuck in this "Avoidance Cycle":

(Source: PhD Comics)
Also, meeting with your advisor may be helpful because:

If you haven't achieved your goal because you are stuck on something, your advisor may have a suggestion to help you get un-stuck.
If the project is delayed because some part of it took longer than expected, your advisor may want to re-arrange or re-prioritize parts of it to adjust for the new time frame.
Having to report back on a regular basis motivates you to keep making regular, if incremental, progress.

But these are only possible if you keep your advisor informed of what's going on - whether the news is good or bad.

Okay. But, if I can't reach my subgoals in time and he asks about those, how should I tell him about the problems gently?

I couldn't agree more with this if you are avoiding your advisor more than likely they know it.  It will never hurt to meet with your advisor either so I can't recommend it enough.

@FarabiSiddique You won't be the first student he has who has run into unexpected problems! Just tell him what the problems were. You don't have to be "gentle", it's all very normal.

Yes, "gentleness" is irrelevant, although, at the same time, there is much misleading mythology about this. Your advisor can help you. Or, of not, then they also are far less likely to blame you for not being able to do things that they cannot do themselves. I understand that a certain number of "advisors" behave relatively childishly, or in adherence to mythology, but it is nearly impossible for The Novice to (successfully, without plotting out their own fatal failure) play along entirely... so, you must/should/can derail (and also in your own mind) misguided mythologizing.

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


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Should I tell my tertiary education provider about my autism and ADHD diagnosis?
I have high functioning autism / aspergers syndrome comorbid with ADHD.
During highschool I went undiagnosed, but always suspected I was autistic. I had a few Dr's comment but I didn't really agree with them at that time.
Fast forward now, I got my psychiatric diagnosis, and also found out that I had ADHD. I don't care about being autistic, but finding out I had ADHD and treating it is what really impacted my life the most.
I can conduct myself well socially but have significant difficulties in particular social situations in specific contexts -- ones that I do not have any experience. In addition, I learn in very specific ways and methods.
I'm hesitant to inform my school about this because I don't really consider it a disability. I don't really care that I'm socially clueless (I prefer to be alone most of the time anyway) and my ADHD is being treated and working well so far. I have a few sensory issues and routines but they are under control. My emotional regulation is fine. I'm very "anal" at particular things.
My degree somewhat aligns with my special interests, and I've learnt to better manage doing things I don't like (which was legitimately impossible without my ADHD medication).
Country: Australia, but will appreciate other perspectives
Age: 19, M

I do not have ADHD .I am supposed to be a " Functional Autistic " whatever that clinical term means .I went through the University system as a normal person .I did fail some stuff that others found easy .I felt that it was better to pass normally albeit specialising in repeating some courses.I felt that if I had got the Profs to make allowances for me it would have meant earlier graduation but it would have devalued things .Now that I am middle aged I realise that this was the best approach. for me .If you can pass normally then it is best that you do .

@Autistic That's what I plan on doing unless I find myself in a negative situation.

Good ! in the good old bad old days you had Exams and there were candidate numbers . Sample final Exam scripts from Commonwealth countries like Aussie , NZ ,Kenya etc went by boat to britian . This is why graduation was in may and not say december .This meant that the quality of degrees was more uniform .So the people marking your exam questions dont know if you are Autistic or anything else for that matter .

Well, whether you think it's a disability is irrelevant, because it's important information for the school to have. I don't ask for and receive this kind of information because I think the student won't be as capable and needs some kind of crutch; I get it because that's part of who they are and I want to teach that person, and I need to know what will allow or prevent me doing that job effectively.

If you are in the U.S., and if you are referring to post-high-school education, there is a sort of bifurcation, by law and custom: there's no point in mentioning any sort of trouble unless you have registered with "disability services" (or equivalent), who will negotiate on your behalf with various departments for reasonable/purposeful "accommodation" (about extra time for exams, or quiet rooms for exams, etc)
In that context (again, in current U.S. college or university) individual instructors are explicitly not to make any judgements about disability issues, about accommodations, etc. After all, they/we are not experts in understanding such things.
Similarly, (other) chronic medical conditions (since the previous is biochemistry, presumably) are not within the purview of instructors. E.g., the side effects of anorexia or bulimia can be occasionally debilitating. Despite being able to make inferences, I do not want to intrude in peoples' private lives, so I do not ask for any sort of detailed explanation for anything. "Medical issue" (as reason for absence or "incomplete") is more than enough.
It is unfortunately true that the "immediacy" of most classroom/exam situations (such as demands for "class participation") are biased against shy or nervous or ... people. The typical rationalization for this is that it is often unhelpful "out in the world" to be shy or nervous or ... so to operate in a way that penalizes that is merely a presagement of what is to come? (Um, wait, don't people pay tuition, not to be filtered only, but to be educated and assisted in that education? Nevermind.)
You might make a more informal remark, as pseudo-apology-in-advance, explaining possibly unusual behavior or reactions as due to ... whatever you'd care to say... rather than a negative-critical reaction to whatever's happening in class. But something more on the order of "I have some personal issues that may cause me to behave quirkily at some points, and I don't want you (the instructor) to think that it's at all a reaction against what's going on, it's just me". Or to your taste. No reason to give more details to any reasonably sophisticated college/university instructor in the U.S. (Of course, some are not sophisticated, and further, often themselves having issues that make such sophistication difficult, sadly-ironically.)
A bit ambiguous answer, but reflecting the legalities and intentions of current U.S. stuff, I think.

If "tertiary education" = undergrad, I've seen a similar situation in the UK. Eligible students would need to register somehow with the accessibility office. Then, the office would inform departments, which special arrangements are required. E.g., some students would be given extra time for tests. Overall, I think it makes sense to contact the appropriate office (accessibility office, disability office or whatever it is called) and register if you are eligible. Even if you don't need any assistance now, in the future something may arise.

I followed you pretty well until you started using the ellipses.  At first they seemed to stand in for "some other neurological difference," but then they seemed to branch off toward something else, or some other things, I wasn't really sure.  Could you do some editing, starting approximately at "penalizes... presagement"?

This is from U.S. experience:
I have Asperger's Syndrome (I refuse to use the DSV-5 revision of Autism Spectrum Disorder) along with Bipolar Depression.
The way I have been going about things has been to work things on my own as long as possible, but I am registered with my campus's Disability Support Services office, just in case.
I have only needed to use the support services in a few situations.
I do tell my professors that I have A.S.(mainly due to the fact I do not hide anything), and that at times I may intensely focus on one task and lose track of what is going on in the class, and may need redirection.  Some are understanding of this, some are not.  This is where the support services comes in.
Personally, I advise letting instructors know about that which may hinder your ability to fully learn what is being taught.  There are certain caveats however.
You need to get a feel for the general attitudes of your professors, and of the departments you are in.  This will help you in determining how to broach and explain the topic.  And to know if explaining your disabilities will end in a positive or negative outcome.
Here in the USA, even though we have our Americans with Disabilities act, and mental disabilities are recognized, we still have intelligent individuals who do not view mental disabilities as true disabilities. (Have run into a few professors with this mindset)
Good luck with things.  I wasn't diagnosed as A.S. until my Junior year in High School 2001 at age 17.  34 now, and I still feel as if I am socially at the level of a 12 year old, but intellectually where I should be.  Still working on it though lol.

I liked what you said about "just in case."  Sounds sensible!

@aparente001  I also have dysgraphia, which is making my Japanese 1  course somewhat difficult, and I am wishing I had requested help for the course at the start of the semester..  Hiragana/Katakana are so much fun sarcasm to write/draw when you cannot make a straight line to save your life.  Just another thing I need to work on, asking for help when I need it, and to stop being so stubborn.

It's never too late!

Many faculty will recognize ADHD and autism.  Some of them will also have ADHD and/or autism.  I've worked with faculty with these diagnoses.
It sounds like your concern is that people will try to "fix" you, and you don't feel broken.  In this case, your best option is to be open about your diagnosis and feelings, rather than leaving people guessing about what you want and need.  Keep in mind that it's normal for faculty to help students, without regard for their disability status.

At the many faculty with ADHD/Autism....I can attest to that.   After bouncing around from psychologist/psychiatrist for over two decades, you begin to be able to figure other people out as well.  I have had a few professors that I swear are somewhere on the spectrum near Asperger's (I will continue to use that term even if the DSM does not)

It's a very personal decision.  Perhaps that is why I see two close votes at this time.  (It might be helpful to edit the question and focus more on what the pros and cons might be.)
In this day and age, I personally don't see any cons.
Possible pros:

Medication effectiveness sometimes varies over time, and it can be hard to predict when and what sort of changes may occur.
Establishing eligibility while things are going well could prevent possible delays in supports being provided, if the need were to arise.
If a need were to arise, it would be easier to get supports if one were already familiar with the procedures.
For some people with neurological differences, it is liberating and empowering to bring the differences clearly out into the open.  (Analogous to "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud.")  However, this point is especially individual.  Not everyone will feel this freeing effect.
Sometimes it's hard, especially with a new diagnosis, to know what supports will be helpful, and how much difference they can make.  Figuring this out has been, for my son at least, an ongoing process.


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Will a paper be retracted if a flaw in released software code invalidates its central idea?
Say I have written code that performs a physics calculation. After this, I get a paper published based on the results of the code. In the interest of advancing the progress of science, I upload the code used for the paper on, say, GitHub. I also post a link to my code on GitHub on my website. I do this to facilitate discovery and use of the code by those who are interested in my results. Imagine that someone, in the process of reproducing my results (using the aforementioned code), discovers a flaw in the logic of the code. Correction of this logic flaw leads to invalidation of the central idea of the paper.
Will this lead to retraction?
Will there be any positive gain to me as a result of publishing of the code?

FWIW there has been a movement in Computer Science towards releasing source code, so results can be reproduced. See  https://www.artifact-eval.org/motivation.html

Positive gain? Sure, you will go to heaven instead of hell. Seriously, behaving ethically is always a positive gain.

If the paper is wrong, learning that you need to retract it is the positive gain.

All the answers, comments are so deep and insightful I am having a really hard time deciding which one answer to accept.

What is someone builds a machine assuming your findings were correct, and it malfunctions and kills a lot of people because it turns out it was incorrect?

Shouldn't you be validating the result to make sure both the logic and program are sound before publishing?

@mast How many pieces of software do you know that you can say are 100% bug free?

@JBentley Only a Sith deals in absolutes. But there's bugs, and there's crippling bugs invalidating the central idea of the paper. You'd need quite a bug for that or very crappy software.

@Mast not necessarily. I've had quantum mechanics simulations with a missing term before, and depending on where you've made the mistake between the algebra and the code, that can be very hard to find while not having an obviously wrong output. Sure you should double/triple check every step and get someone else to do the same, which should catch it, but sometimes this kind of thing will slip through.

If the main idea in the paper has been invalidated by the correction in the code, you would do well to try to retract the paper yourself. This is just a point of professional ethics. It also protects you in a way from future claims if people don't examine everything thoroughly.
The journal may not be able to actually retract the paper, but might be able to post a note (printed or online) that the paper has a flaw (noted by the author, hopefully).
But others, relying on the original thesis of the paper might be misled in their own work. You really don't want that to happen.
Honesty in science is assumed. Make it so.
You might also be able to publish a better paper, based on the corrected code. Work toward that end.

Is honesty really assumed?  I’ve encountered or heard of so much dishonesty that I am slow to believe anything.

@WGroleau it's likely very field-dependent. There are undoubtedly areas of science where there is a pressure to produce specific results, not necessary the most correct ones.

It's not only conflict of interest.  Sometimes it is (or seems to be), "that guy's conclusion says I was wrong, and therefore I must fight it."

I think in many areas people take a "trust but verify" attitude.

It is true that there is dishonestly in science as there is in anything else. But without assuming honesty, science cannot proceed. Each paper I read contains years and years worth of experiments. There is no way each reader of this could repeat the experiments. I have to assume that the author isn't making up their results.

@IanSudbery and that's also why, if someone is found out to do shit like that (fabricate results) his reputation is gone and he will hardly recover from that. Nobody wants to collaborate with someone that cannot be trusted to do proper work and might take you down with him/her if they are uncovered.

The assumption of honesty necessarily comes with a very unforgiving approach to demonstrated dishonesty. Your colleagues need to be able to trust that you've given them your very best understanding of the truth, and if they can't they will (and should) freeze you out.

@FrankHopkins This is another reasons to be open with your code and data: If you put everything in the open, its much easier to argue you made an honest mistake rather than trying to pull a fast one.

Will there be any positive gain thanks to the publishing of the code to me?

Publishing the code is necessary to make the calculation reproducible and the results verifiable. If I were the referee of your paper I would likely insist that you publish the code. So the “positive gain” would be that your paper will not be rejected outright. It will also help your reputation and build up other researchers’ impression of you as a serious, careful scientist who understands what it means to do good science.
Besides, what you are asking is essentially “is there a positive gain to behaving honestly”. I’m not going to enter a philosophical discussion about honesty and its benefits here, but just think for a second about what you’re saying. Even in a specific context of academic research, your question can be rephrased as “I am thinking of hiding information about the way I did my research that would be essential for other researchers to verify my results. Is there a positive gain from not hiding this information?” Again, think about what you’re asking.
It’s clear from the question that you are in fact a person who is motivated by a desire to advance science and wants to do the right thing. That’s great, and the conclusion is that it is your duty to disclose the relevant information about your research that would enable other researchers to check your results. If the results later turn out to be invalid, then you and the journal you published in would need to deal with it in an appropriate and responsible way, either by issuing a note pointing out the error, or (which typically would happen only in really extreme, egregious circumstances) by retracting the article. Honestly I don’t think this is something to worry about too much. As long as you’re acting in good faith and doing your best to do good science, you are adding to the sum total of human knowledge and your work has value. That’s what matters, and that’s what you will ultimately be judged on by your peers in the community.

Edit: my opinion about requiring authors to make code available as a condition for publication generated some controversy in the comments, but I find the arguments for allowing authors to withhold code to be quite weak. I suggest that people think more about this issue, and consider in particular the fact that the Nature Research family of 148 journals has exactly the requirement I suggested as part of its official policy:

Reporting standards and availability of data, materials, code and protocols
An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. A condition of publication in a Nature Research journal is that authors are required to make materials, data, code, and associated protocols promptly available to readers without undue qualifications. Any restrictions on the availability of materials or information must be disclosed to the editors at the time of submission. Any restrictions must alsobe disclosed in the submitted manuscript.
After publication, readers who encounter refusal by the authors to comply with these policies should contact the chief editor of the journal. In cases where editors are unable to resolve a complaint, the journal may refer the matter to the authors' funding institution and/or publish a formal statement of correction, attached online to the publication, stating that readers have been unable to obtain necessary materials to replicate the findings.

I think it is a valid question to ask if honesty or sharing information will be detrimental to a scientific career.

@J.FabianMeier agreed. I hope you also think my answer is a valid answer :-)

@DanRomik Insisting the code is published might work in some fields, but not in all. In my field (turbulent combustion), the codes are closely-guarded and massive -- our solver is close to 1M lines (500k core code, 500k pre/post/utilities/etc.). It would take months to reproduce results on supercomputers, plus months of training to be able to do all the steps needed to compile/run the code. So while noble, publishing code and checking results is not practical in all fields.

It also depends if the research was publicly funded or not. Much research is privately-funded or self-funded. Requiring them to give away their technology in order to be able to share their discoveries isn't necessarily for the best.

@ASimpleAlgorithm anyone is free to do research in private and not publish the results to protect any technological or commercial secrets. When you publish the results, by definition you are entering them into the public domain of scientific knowledge. It’s a two sided deal: you get credit for your work, and everybody else gets to use, verify and build on the knowledge you created. So, within reasonable limits, any self-respecting journal should require you to make any data needed for verification of your results available to their readers, including code. Don’t like it? Don’t publish.

@tpg2114 I understand that the norm in some sub-fields does not make release of code a requirement for publication. That doesn’t mean the norm makes sense. On a philosophical level, withholding code has exactly the same status as withholding experimental data or deliberately obfuscating your description of your research methods to prevent other researchers from building on your work. Yeah, people do those things too and get away with it. It doesn’t make it right.

@DanRomik Yes I understand your position. Perhaps you are missing mine. If the code itself was the "result" then it belongs in the paper. If it does not belong in the paper, then the paper must be a complete description of the result. In which case your additional requirement for sharing code is not a requirement for research results but for technology above and beyond what is needed. As for data by the way, data is often the result, e.g. an analysis of a clinical study, so that position makes more sense in many cases.

@tpg2114 I often hear this argument, but imagine if I did an experiment that relies on very specialized equipment that only I have, costs $1 billion to build, and each experiment costs $50 million in materials. Clearly, it is very impractical for me to make the materials or the equipment freely available to any would-be reproducers. Is that a reason to give up on reproducibility? Your case is similar - maybe 1M lines can't go on Github, but you should be willing to at least send a hard drive with code&data to anyone interested (they can pay for the hard drive and shipping). (cont)

And even if it requires a supercomputer, you should still do it for the one guy who does have a supercomputer and months of training. In fact, that one guy becomes the only guarantor of the scientific legitimacy of your work, so you should go out of your way to be nice to him, not hide your code. And just because it requires a supercomputer today doesn't mean it won't take 5 min on a smartphone in 20 years. Papers are forever, after all.

Although I don't agree with @DanRomik (although I sympathize). Until journals start mandating that you provide source, I think it is safe to say that you have every right to publish and your work is a priori bona fide science. But if reproducibility proves an issue, then those things may be called into question. If the code contains trade secrets, there are ways around that: Embargos or NDAs, for example.

@DanRomik I'm not sure I would agree that withholding code is the same as withholding experimental data. I'd happily send people my result files so they can process them also, just like experimental data. But, I wouldn't send them my wind tunnel, compressors, lasers, and my test section when I am done an experiment. The code is tool, just like the experimental rig and all the diagnostics are a tool. The data they generate is free to share, however.

If you don't publish your code, preferably thoroughly documented, you haven't described your actual methods. Refusing to provide code, that is infinitely copiable practically gratis, because you wouldn't provide experimental equipment is frankly ludicrous. "You wouldn't download a wind tunnel."

@Trusly journals are already mandating this. See the edit to my answer.

Authors should typically be required to provide code to back up results of code they had supposedly written. Definitely. And yes that means that some software companies should not be able to publish certain results, and may need to be constrained to industrial "hand-waving-claims" tracks.

@tpg2114: "It would take months to reproduce results on supercomputers, plus months of training to be able to do all the steps needed to compile/run the code." -> Months is better than years. Publish the code :-)

The Nature comment is not clear if the code is required to be public or whether the code is required to be provided on request. Do you happen to know which one it is?

@Buffy is certainly right that Science itself gains a lot if people publish their code. Papers without code (the norm in many scientific areas) are hard to reproduce or build upon.
But you ask what you gain from this, or if it might harm your career.
First of all, it is unlikely that somebody finds a major flaw in your program and it is even more unlikely that a journal will retract the paper because somebody else (not you) requested this. Most of the wrong or doubtful results just stay in the literature.
What is much more likely: Somebody will actually use or extend your results, and help you improve them. So he/she will cite you or work with you on a future paper. This is definitely something you want.

it is unlikely that somebody finds a major flaw in your program, yet, the OP hypothesises that such a flaw has been found.

This was more an answer to Will there be any positive gain thanks to the publishing of the code to me?

Will this lead to retraction?

With due respect - that is the wrong question. You've said that, in your scenario:

correction of this logic flaw leads to invalidation of the central idea of the paper.

That's not possible. Either the central idea is valid, or it isn't (let's not quibble about a logical "excluded middle" or semi-validity etc). Publication doesn't validate or invalidate it (and again, let's not quibble about Schroedinger's-cat considerations). If it's valid, then a flaw in the code only means that the code doesn't prove/establish the idea. If it isn't valid - then it is imperative to, well, humanity, that an article claiming its validity not be published as though the idea were valid. Wouldn't you agree?

Will there be any positive gain to me as a result of publishing of the code?

This phrasing of the question comes off a bit selfish. There are obvious positive gains, generally, from publishing the code. Why does it have to be about the benefit for you personally? You're a scientist, my friend - put your ego a bit to the side here.
But, yes, several gains (not by order of significance):

Your result/finding will be better and more widely accepted.
The potential for future collaboration with you will increase somewhat.
Working on the code and getting it to a releasable state may yield additional results, or perspectives on the same result.
Other scientists would be better able to conduct research based on your results (yes, that is a positive gain, despite the potential for others "stealing your thunder")
People will think somewhat more highly of you as a researcher - you can "put your code where your mouth is".
Someone might figure out a flaw, allowing you to retract your paper (yes, this too is positive - you certainly don't want to have a baseless paper on your record, do you? Retraction is better than living in infamy, so to speak.)

Could you explain, why? i was always under the impression that often hiring comitees would probably not notice or care about a single invalid paper (provided there are a lot of other good papers), while a redacted paper does smell strange because this happens not so often. Do you have other experiences with this? Or references? Moreover, why would someone not redact their invalid paper if this is beneficial for their career?

@user111388: Because misleading the community about an invalid paper to maintain the credit for it is a grave offense. It's the retraction that doesn't/shouldn't matter. If you're saying that one can just misrepresent the paper to the hiring committee, I suppose that might be possible, but it's immoral and detrimental to the academic community in general.

I am agreeing that this is how it should be. Absolutely, no question. I am doubting that this happens in practice. I would like to see references to that to become more optimistic!

@user111388: TBH, I don't know. But there's more to academia than hiring committees.

I agree. I ask because I understand your answer as "it is not only good for academi, but also for your career".

@user111388 I think einpoklum is reluctant to admit that dishonesty sometimes pays. And yet, not admitting it would be its own form of dishonesty. So yes, you have a point. At the same time, it‘s reasonable to believe that honesty is the best overall policy (from a purely selfish point of view), in the sense that one will achieve more success in life by being a person who cares about honesty and is honest as a matter of principle, even if in some specific situations (like the retraction thing) deviating from this policy might benefit them. Maybe that’s the point einpoklum was trying to make.

Let me give you an answer that does not appeal to the grand ideals of science, like reproducibility and advancement. You are asking "what is in it for me", which I - as a person who spends most of my time polishing and publishing simulation code - think is a very fair question, as this is something that will take up a lot of your time. After all, when you publish your code you will have to deal with:

Making your code readable - you don't want other people to look at your spaghetti, so a fair amount of time must be invested.
Writing documentation - no code is good without it.
Tech-support - should you be so lucky that someone will use it, they will require support.
Update schedules - you will certainly update your code, and you must now also update your public code. Without breaking existing features. And be backwards compatible.

As you can see, this is something which can take an awful lot of your time. So is it worth it? Yes, I think so. Otherwise I would not do it. Publishing your code allows other people to actually use your work. In my case, I am doing theoretical work. Publishing code allows people doing experiments to download my code and compare my theory to their data, without needing me. That gathers citations and reputation - something a young scientist needs. It also means that, since they can toy with the code themselves, they do not need me to understand their specific setup, in order for me to provide a calculation suited for them. This makes the calculation more precise than what I could ever do myself - again without me having to do the work.
Now, what happens if someone discovers a mistake? This is of course unfortunate, and it happens. Usually it does not lead to retractions, as few 'code bug' type of mistakes invalidates a whole paper - if it did, you did not do a through enough job of checking your calculations against common sense before submitting!
I have grown to like bug submissions. It means that someone else did the painstaking work of going through your code, and actually found something you did not find yourself. In the end it makes your results better, and without you needing to put in the effort.
All in all, it is a large investment to publish your code - but the returns can also be grand.

For any non-trivial code you should be doing the first two bullet points for your future self. They don't count as effort needed to publish the code. To that same category I would add writing a least a basic test suite.

Sure. But "should" does not mean that it is always done. There is heaps of semi-abondoned PhD-ware out there, which has formed the basis of papers.

If they really did find a bug that completely invalidates your results, then indeed the paper is invalid. You might as well retract it. In a perfect world you could then fix your code, analyze the correct results, and write a new paper - but in reality the journal may not be interested in another submission on this topic.
This is no different than if you measured a tower as 123 m tall, dropped some objects and concluded that g=2.9 m/s^2. If it was later discovered that you mixed up your rulers, and the tower is actually 123 ft tall, what do you suppose should happen to Experimental Evidence of Extreme Gravitational Anomaly in the Vicinity of Tall Manmade Structures?
It may seem like posting code on Github is bad because it creates a risk of such a disaster, with no corresponding upside. This is false. We can follow the analogy above - what if your experimental paper omitted the Methods section because "somebody might realize my methods are ill-suited and don't work"? What if you just didn't publish at all, because "there might be errors in the paper"?

If your code really is that wrong, it is better to retract ASAP. The longer your paper is out there, the longer Gravitational Anomalogists will read and debate it. It will gain visibility. Even if you try to hide the flaws, they will eventually be found, at least when somebody tries to reproduce your work. If you retract much later, there will be many more people who care about the paper and maybe even relied on it, who will now be pissed off. Your reputation could suffer much more from a day 5 retraction than day 500 retraction. Showing code is your friend here.
Without code, your paper is arguably irreproducible, hence it is not even Science. Showing code is your friend here also.
If you put your code up even before you publish, maybe after submitting a preprint, you can detect the errors early enough to prevent the retraction in the first place. Again, showing code is your friend.
If you have put your code up and it doesn't have a fatal flaw, people can be very confident that it is correct, because they can read it themselves. But if the code is not up, the only logical conclusion is that it may or may not be flawed. Nobody can trust your paper fully because they haven't seen the code. They may even assume you must have some flaw, because why else wouldn't you show your code? Showing code prevents all this.
If you make your code available, other people can write their own code based on your code, or even analyze their own data using your code directly. Then showing code is a very good, because you don't just get a publication, you get a citation.

Furthermore, there are ways of verifying your code. They're not perfect, but they can help catch a lot of bugs. Generally, you should aim to be careful and meticulous in your work so that there aren't huge flaws in it. You shouldn't publish things that have countless buried "surprises" just waiting for your fellow scholars to discover. So in reality, it shouldn't be that likely that your code is completely wrong. Therefore, by putting it on Github, you are risking very little (well, there's long tail) but you stand to gain a great deal.

I don’t understand how code only can prove anything.  An algorithm or mathematical formula can be stated and analyzed on its own merits.  Code that correctly implements the algorithm can’t reveal anything the algorithm doesn’t reveal, and code that incorrectly implements an algorithm cannot invalidate the algorithm.

@WGroleau here’s an example: in a recent paper, my coauthor and I proved a numerical bound for a certain geometric optimization problem. We developed a computer assisted proof scheme with an algorithm that produced a numerical bound that was rigorously certified as correct. Our paper gives a description of the algorithm that in practice could be implemented by anyone, but in practice it took us several months and nontrivial programming expertise to code. We put our code on github so anyone can check it’s bug free and works as advertised.

... If this had been someone else’s paper, without access to the code I would have close to zero confidence that the authors proved what they say they proved. The code really is essential, at least in this specific (pure math) context, and, I very strongly suspect, in many other contexts.

@DanRomik Aren't most physics papers published lacking their code see for example http://www.org.ch.tum.de/glaser/94(GRAPE_JMR_05).pdf

@TejasShetty maybe - I have no idea if what you said is true or not (the algorithms described in the paper you linked to look like they can be implemented in a few lines of Matlab code, so I hardly think that’s a good example of what we’re talking about here). Anyway, assuming it‘s true, what is your point exactly?

@DanRomik What I trying to say is that given that GRAPE JMR does not provide access to their code, would you still have zero confidence in it ?

@DanRomik I don't think so it could be implemented in a few lines ( 20  or so) for an example in python see the code by QuTiP. i don't think so there would be any significant difference in the length of python code versus a MATLAB code.

I do not know much in your field. In computer science (e.g., machine learning), I think no one can ensure the code is 100% correct.
To my point of view, I think two most important things in research are (1) idea and (2) presentation. Once you can clearly convey your idea to your audiences, I think that is the good article, which has its own value. As such, that paper should not be retracted.
However, we need to try our best to ensure all the reported results are correct (to the best of your knowledge) before the submission.