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Advantages and disadvantages of doing a PostDoc
Maybe the answer to this question varies depending on the field of study. I am asking it from an Engineering perspective. I am currently enrolled in a PhD program in Mechanical Engineering (carried out with an industrial partner) and would like to join a research department in the aeronautical/aerospace industry.
For PhD students in a similar situation, what would you consider to be the main advantages (and disadvantages) of doing a Post-Doc ? Should you target a better ranked university than where you did your PhD, same level or lower ? or should you rather join industry straight after finishing the PhD ?
Feel free to share your thoughts and experience. There's probably multiple answers to this question.

Advantages compared to what? It really depends on what you want to achieve in your career (industry, a professorship, something else) if a postdoc is a good idea or not.

Good grief: apply to all the postdoc positions you can find!  In the current job market there is no need to do any "targeting" at all.

Can you tell a little about your goals? Can you tell us what the other options you are considering are? Industry? A faculty job? This is hard to answer as is.

I am going to edit the question according to your suggestions. Thanks for the input !

While the question is a good one, I'm afraid that the answers will be so area dependent that they'll fracture. And limiting to just the OP's area will make the scope too narrow.

Closely related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2206/what-are-the-tradeoffs-involved-in-taking-a-postdoc-at-a-top-university-versus-a

I have a situation somewhat related to yours: I did a PhD in engineering with an industrial partner, and I'm now a post-doc researcher in a reputable university. It sounds, when you say 'doing a postdoc', that you have the impression that it is the logical 'next level' in the sequence: bachelors - masters - PhD - … but it is not.
There are no 'advantages' or 'disadvantages' in being a postdoc researcher for a while. It's just that, with some rare exceptions, you will not get a faculty position right after you graduate from your PhD.
The time spent as a postdoc is usually the time where you gain experience, hopefully make your peers aware of your existence, publish (or finish publishing) the chapters of your PhD thesis and maybe that study that you feel will make you stand out, etc. in other words: giving yourself the pedigree that will make you interesting for an academic hiring committee.
Since you have no intentions of becoming a professor, there are no real reason to 'do a postdoc', unless there aren't any other options (which I assume is not the case for you, as an engineer with experience in translational research/industry).

You would like to join a research department in the aeronautical/aerospace industry. It seems to me joining industry straight after finishing the PhD is the most logical next step for you.
I can think of only two reasons you want to do postdoc, one is that you really want to stay in Academia and the other is you cannot find a good industry research job after you get PhD.
If you have some unfinished academic research after you have done PhD, doing postdoc may or may not let you finish it depending on what postdoc you can find. But, once you go that route, you may be further from industry. Good job opportunities are sometimes instantaneous. Grab it or lose it.
I am an industry retiree from the sector you are in. I know for fact that they need and they should have more PhDs like you to do more research.
If you want to do postdoc for whatever reasons and your ultimate goal is to join industry, I think the rank of the university you do postdoc does not matter much. The usefulness of the research topic does matter. Industry wants profitability.
Lastly, if you really want to stay in Academia, then don't go to industry after PhD. You could feel unhappy. In that case, postdoc with  high rank university is what you want to do.


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What are your thoughts about "Research Assistant Professor"?
I came across a job post of "Research Assistant Professor" in the biology/medical field. This institution (ranked #50-100 in National Universities) states that this is a great opportunity to get research mentorship before initiating the tenure clock. The successful candidate will get lab space, equipment, and personnel support for their research projects. However, this is a 3-year temporary position and there is no guarantee that you will transition to a tenure-track position by the end of the third year. They want to see you get an NIH R01 first.
What are your thoughts? If I am interested in a tenure-track position, should I choose a 3-year Research Assistant Professor position at this institution (ranked #50-100 in National Universities) rather than a Postdoc at a world-renowned institution (e.g., Ivy League schools, Stanford, MIT)? Just curious about your strategy.

Seems better than a postdoc in terms of research/publishing opportunity. And there are no guarantees after a postdoc either.

True. The bright side is that I would become an internal candidate by the end of the third year.

From your user name - are you a clinician and is this role partly a clinical role or have clincian-training responsibilities?

I don't think there can be a general answer about future outcomes for a position like this. It seems like a bigger investment for the department than a typical post doc spot, though, which may be a positive.
I would look at the history of the position in the relevant department. Are there tenure-track faculty there that came from this path? I'd also ask current tenured faculty in the department, not just in leadership, for their candid opinions on the future of tenure-track slots in the department. It might be that these positions exist for political reasons that make future tenured spots unlikely, or it may be that it's a good introductory role.
Good luck.

It's possible that a Research Assistant Professor position remains only a Research Professorship, meaning that it's not TT and you have to self-fund with grants. However, I would think that a Research Assistant Professor who is publishing and obtaining grants as PI could be more competitive for TT positions in general (at other schools) than a postdoc who is not a PI. A postdoc also has a time limit, whereas a Research Professorship can usually continue indefinitely provided that you are self-funding.

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Why people without publication can have a good placement?
I am browsing CVs of some new AP who graduated this or last year and take on an AP as their first position in a prestigious EU university. I surprisingly find that none of them have successfully published a journal article when they were on the job market and till now the average publication record of them is one article in a Q2 journal. And I know some PhDs with one to two publications in a Q2/Q3 journal didn't find a tenure and so did a postdoc after graduation and even then they obtained a faculty position, the universities they join are not as good as the former group. Neither of them graduated from a university that is apparently superior to the one where they get professorship, nor a huge difference in the academic background of both groups can be found based on my observation of their CVs (I mean, ranking of the Univ in the field of economics, conference attendance, research field, language and programming skills, etc). To note, the field I talk here is Economics. I am indeed confused. Why? Does it mean in social science, publication is not that important?

Are these permanent positions or fixed term positions?  Are you sure this isn't a situation where certain "postdoc"-like positions at that particular university have unusual titles?

This is a question where any answer would be very dependent on the particular field of study.

Another natural possibility is that they’re in a subdiscipline where the primary scholarly output is books and not journal articles.

Another natural possibility is that this is a discipline and a country where people's suitability for positions is judged primarily on the quality of their dissertation, which need not appear in a journal (or may not yet have appeared in a journal).

Economics graduates are typically hired on the strength of their “job market paper” in the US. A publication from your “second year paper” or something co-authored is considered a bonus.

@Dawn You maybe right. You remind me of the potential difference in their JMPs which I cannot assess.

@NoahSnyder I am sure they are real AP with a probation period like tenure track

Also keep in mind that a typical JMP in economics is 100 pages (including appendixes), solo authored, and takes 2-3 years to publish after submission. You start to see the problem.

@Dawn In Europe, we are typically required 3 papers to be publishable and choose one of them to be our JMP. I am unsure the length of it, but the whole dissertation is usually ranged from 150 to 200 pages. And the JMP I access from those new AP's CV, they are approx. 50 pages. It is not totally the same as the US.

Journal articles can take a long time to go from "accepted" to "published". Maybe they had some accepted articles.

TIAA-CREF has published an excellent article regarding The Changing Faculty Workforce Models by Adrianna Kezar of the University of Southern California. and can be found at the following URL: www.tiaa-crefinstitute.org
In a nutshell, the document details changes in academia resulting from several external influences that have impacted the traditional faculty model and essentially reducing the tenured faculty to just about 30% of the total faculty employed at US institutions of higher education. On top of that publishing as the key academic initiative for tenure, evaluation has changed as well. As one other pointed out books are one such alternative as are presentations, teaching, service work, and many others too numerous to mention here.
The result for those wanting to make academia a career, the days of tenured professors, earned through publication to certain journals are on the way out. I have seen this myself in over 20 years working as a professor with a Ph.D. In the face of increased accountability, governments are starting to gauge the number of graduates who find employment making them more accountable for the money they receive, this trend will continue to change the traditional academic institution and its faculty.

Food for thought. Thank you!

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Should I justify the organization of chapters and sections in the research paper?
I am using a research handbook written by Creswell to guide me in writing my Bachelor's Thesis.
Specifically, I followed his research design model.
Should I justify why I structured my Methods Chapter the way I did by saying that such structure was recommended by Creswell?
For example, I may say that Creswell suggested that this section should be included in the research design.
I live in a developing country. My institution has no specific style guide.
They underestimate undergraduate research, but I cannot wait for my supervisor to tell me what to do as long as my sources are authoritative.
Here is a link of a summary of the book.
I cannot consult my supervisor at the moment nor wait or state why here.
Thank you

What do the instructions say that you were given? What are your institutions style guide's on the subject? What did your supervisor say when you asked?

How you may improve your post perhaps: YOu may want to include a link to "Cresswell". That may provide further perspective to readers on this website. Do you have an adviser and has (s)he suggested this book/resource? Do you have examples of theses that have used "Cresswell" to organize their content?

If I take your question correctly, it sounds as if you don't know whether to refer to the styleguide that informed you to structure your thesis in a certain way. So, in your introduction, you have a section such as:

The next chapter of this thesis describes the background literature. Chapter 3 outlines the methodology and so on. Chapter 4 presents the experimental design, whatever … Finally, chapter 7 concludes and provides further possibilities for research. This structure is suggested by Cresswell (19xx)

If that's what you're thinking, then I would say no; don't reference the styleguide that you based your thesis structure on. Just like you wouldn't cite, for instance, the AP styleguide for your spelling conventions.

A style guide isn't really an authority for this, even if you're following its advice. Structure should be designed help the reader understand your overall argument, the paths you took through the literature etc. So your explanation of why the work is structured in a particular way should be aimed at that set of decisions (constructing clarity to serve their reading) being made explicit to the reader.

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What is the best way to schedule an office hour appointment with big name professor?
What is the best way to schedule an office hour appointment with big-name professor?

Directly email him.
Email his secretary, asking for an appointment.
Talk in person causally first and ask his preference (if possible).

I am in a school where some professors do not have a regular office hour, and occasionally, my email is ignored (or replied three weeks later) even if the email is short. Almost all of them have a secretary, who knows the professor’s schedule completely.

Then contact the secretary, she might get you an appointment or forward your email or ask said professor.

Should be similar as for a small-name professor.

@CapeCode Not so much. There will be administrative staff for the entire department, but in most departments only Important People get their own admin support who would know their calendars.

By all means, contact the admin assistant and be extra super nice and polite because they have more power than you might think. Even if they don't schedule appointments, they'll know the best way to reach him.

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Why do papers not have a table of contents?
Most papers (at least in maths, but I believe this applies to other subjects as well) don't have a table of contents (TOC), but dedicate the last paragraph of the introduction to essentially the same purpose. What's the rationale behind this?
I think TOCs are a much better solution. They minimise the burden on the author (no need to come up with creative ways of structuring a TOC in plain text) and are easier to skim as a reader (I know precisely what information to expect in a TOC, as compared to plain text where the author might hide additional information among the TOC stuff).

I can't tell why this is that way, but my solution has so far been to remove this "signposting" at the end of the introduction without replacement. I personally don't think papers, especially shorter ones as common in Computer Science, need a TOC.

Many publishers (e.g. Nature) offer interactive tables of contents when viewing papers online, but not in the paper/pdf versions.

It's mainly about the length. Long papers can have a table of contents. From the top of my head, Gowers's "A new proof of Szemerédi's theorem" at around 100 pages does have a table of content.

In my field, 99% of the papers are Introduction, Method, Result, Discussion, Conclusion. They don't need a table of contents

Related: What's the point in “the paper is structured as follows”?

IIRC, articles in the journal "Reviews of Modern Physics" always include a table of contents.  As one might guess from the title of the journal, these are review articles, and so are generally quite long.

Two or three of my longer papers do have a table of contents.  Mathematics.

The very long review articles sometimes do.

I wonder if it would be helpful to publish the pdf with bookmarks inserted to show the structure (as a quasi-TOC).

Almost every law review article has a table of contents.

@xleitix I always try to leave out this paragraph that I suspect everybody always skips. Usually it gets added in by a co-author or a reviewer

If it's a page-limited paper, then - the page limit...

The purpose of an overview paragraph and a table of contents are different:

The table of contents serves to quickly find a specific section of a document so you can start reading there or extract a specific information. This is something that rarely makes sense with most papers, except if you start at the conclusion/discussion, which is however easy to find anyway. Even if you want to do this, finding the table of contents would cost you more time than it saves you, given the shortness of most papers. So my answer to your titular question would be: Because there is no need for it.
The main exception to this are long review papers, which however usually have a table of contents.
The overview paragraph serves to briefly summarise the paper and explain its semantic structure to the reader, usually somebody who is reading the paper from back to front. This serves to address certain expectations the reader may have had after the introduction (“don’t worry, we didn’t forget this important aspect”) and draw connections between sections (“our work in Section 3 provides us with a framework to evaluate our method in Section 4”). All of this is not possible in a table of contents.
Now, some papers just have a straightforward structure, and there is nothing about it that needs to be elaborated to the reader. In this case an overview paragraph would indeed be nothing but a written-out, tedious-to-read table of contents and should be skipped in my opinion.

In fact, the idea that a math paper that is not short would be well served by having a table of contents (TOC) is one that I "discovered" at some point relatively recently.  Based on a perusal of my own recent papers and preprints here, it seems that the threshold for a TOC being useful in a math paper is somewhere between 13 and 17 pages.  (I believe that I put a TOC in a six page paper a couple of years ago and took it out in response to editorial comments that it was not necessary.)
Let me make some further comments:
1) Some structural redundancy in a paper is a very good idea.  Often the introduction repeats things that were just said in the abstract and these same things occur later in the paper as well.  Although there is a lot of room for good writing in making this repetition most useful for the reader, certainly such repetition is highly useful if done properly.  I don't think having a TOC obviates having a part of the introduction in which you say what you will do in your paper.  Rather, having a TOC frees you up from saying what will be in your paper in almost exactly the same comprehensive way as a TOC in paragraph form.  Instead, in the introduction you can talk about why you are including the material you're including in each section.  See e.g. here for a paper with a TOC in which the introduction nevertheless ends roughly as you say is not necessary.  Here I think both are helpful because they serve separate functions:
if you want to know why we are including the Schwartz-Zippel Lemma in our paper, the introduction explains it.  If you want to know exactly where each of several versions of this result occurs, you should see the TOC.
2) I have found that a TOC is perhaps even more helpful for the authors than for the readers, especially when there is more than one author.  In a medium to long math paper, sometimes you get the idea of (e.g.!) taking subsection 2 of section 5 and inserting it in between subsections 3 and 4 of section 2 because you see something to be gained by such an adjustment of the logical sequence.  But then you also have to worry about what else might be disturbed by such a change.  It is then really helpful to have a detailed TOC, because rather than having to keep a mental picture of the intermediate pages of your paper, you can flip to the TOC and allow your eye to do some of the work.  If you just wrote all the material yourself, maybe it is not so bad to keep it all in mind.  But if some of it was written by your coauthors, this gets hard.  Moreover, if you do this kind of thing more than once, then your encyclopedic mental picture of the paper does not update so easily.
3) A TOC is also more or less useful according to the titles of the various subsections of your paper.  If you have no titles at all (which is not unheard of), a TOC would be ridiculous.  If the title of Section N is "the proof of Theorem N," then a TOC does not seem necessary (and good for you for implementing such a simple, transparent format for your paper).

Of my limited experience with older papers I am inclined to conclude that papers used to be much shorter (most papers before 1980 I read were about 2 to 5 pages). At that length an additional table of contents was not necessary  (in addition to the one of the journal issue - at that times an issue was an actual booklet and also would have needed additional paper to print and ship). So I suspect that there is a historic reason.
Note that some journals which usually publish long papers have a toc nowadays (e.g. Acta Numerica).

I see - I was reading mostly math papers many from Russian journals - they tended to be very short…

@Dirk, and how long would they have been if they had included complete proofs? :)

@CarstenS  "The proof is left as an exercise to the reader."  GODDAMMIT

There are a lot of papers out there, and they compete for eyeballs. One common practice in mathematics (I do it periodically) is to skim the arXiv and look at the first page or two of each of a bunch of papers, to see if there are any I want to read more closely.
If you want to promote your work, it is arguably in your best interest that the first page be "interesting", and many authors judge that jumping straight into the introduction serves this purpose better than a table of contents.

If you skim the arxiv, then (probably) before you even click on the paper, you read the abstract.  If you like the abstract, you're willing to click through to the paper and perhaps wait a few seconds to get it.  I don't find it very plausible that if the first page you get is a TOC then you say "I guess I'm not interested after all."

I second @Pete, the theory in this answer is simply incorrect. Several of my papers have tables of contents and it never once occurred to me that a TOC would interfere with the paper's ability to pull in a casual reader's attention, either on arXiv or elsewhere. The decision of whether to include a TOC or not is based purely on whether the paper is long enough to make the inclusion of a TOC a genuine convenience for the (more than casual) reader.

A submitted Paper should not have a TOC, and even if it has one, it will be discarded by the publisher.
A Scientific Paper, is not a Book.
Scientific Journals which publish a collection of submitted, and previously peer reviewed Papers create their "ToC" by extracting Paper approved Abstracts.
Serious Journals will also publish Separats. Which are standalone articles of the current volume being published. Alongside they may publish a leaflet of abstracts which you can receive and make a decision if you're going to get the whole Journal or just a Saparat: a single Paper you are interested in, on the field of your research.
Because a Paper deals with one theme; one subject; or one particular problem alone. Two of them, make two separate papers. And will be reviewed separately. And therefore will require a separate entry on ToC of the journal being published.
Why on earth should or would a Paper of a given scientific article have a ToC of its own?!
A typical structure of a scientific paper will or should contain:
TITLE;
Author(s);
Institution(s);
[keywords];
Abstract.

Intro (to the subject);
sampling, material(s), method(s), and other technicalities.

Procedure;
 Explication;
Discussion;
 Result(s) (+graphs, tables, figures... ).

Conclusion(s) / Summary.

Bibliography.

of which, few are mandatory and an optional 2nd, or 3rd language abstract.
And that's all.

Oh yes you did, A 'cone' is as good as any physical or chemical 'material'; a section of it, is a 'sample'; a method is a formula; a technique is a manor; say a calculus, or even a calculation machine etc.

'A submitted Paper should not have a TOC, and even if it has one, it will be discarded by the publisher.' This is probably news to Dan Romik and Pete Clark and, for that matter, the editors of the Annals of Mathematics: a concrete counterexample to your statement is 'The Tits alternative for Out(F_n) I' by Bestvina, Feighn and Handel published in the Annals in 2000 with a table of contents.

@ShaneORourke -There's a reason it's called a Paper. Not a book, not  A Libretto,

While it is very often true that a TOC is not needed this kind of dogmatic insistence One True Way (tm) is not helpful.

The thing, we scientists, call an Abstract is by far more advanced than any form of ToC.
Real alias True Scientific Journals, publish a leaflet of Abstracts alongside the Journal. They also publish the things called Separats, etc, etc, - things you people, bullying me here, know absolutely nothing about. I've edited a Journal of Pure and Applied Sciences for 20 years,  And I know what I'm talking about. You don't and I care less if you continue not to.

Seriously, I do not think there is any imperative either to have or not have Tables of Contents in papers, nor that it is true that abstracts supercede TOCs, nor that "people here" are not "scientists" and so on.


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Does a PhD student and first author choose the journal or their supervisor?
Does a PhD student and first author choose the journal or their supervisor?
This is in the case where negotiations have failed.
Who should get the final say or keeps this right?

I feel like this might be a bit of an A/B question. If a student and their supervisor disagree on where to submit the article, there are more significant questions to ask than "who gets to pick?". For example, "who's right?".

It would seem quite likely that the supervisor has a far better feel for the quality of the paper and likelihood of fit, timely acceptance, and publication with different journals.

If negotiations over something this small have failed, that relationship has much bigger issues than where to submit a given paper.

@JonCuster unfortunately not the case this time, and I think it's a conflict of interest.

Why is it a 'conflict of interest' in any way? Please edit that into the question. A disagreement perhaps, but where is the conflict of interest?

All authors have to agree to the publication of a paper, and any author can veto signing away the copyright.  So, keep negotiating :)

Isn't it morally wrong and unethical to control a paper that he/she didn't write, and only has their name because they are the PhD 'supervisor'? Isn't there any kind of protection law or even university policy dictating more rights to a 1st author?

@Rain Basically, no.

I realize now how important it is to research into a prospective supervisor before researching a PhD topic. Thanks Lev and Buzz.

The first author gets no more rights than any other author (and in some fields, like mine, authors are ordered alphabetically).  I would say that it is unethical to put your name on a publication to which you didn't intellectually contribute, but once your name is on it, there are no protections to the first author.

@LevReyzin: once your name is on it, there are no protections to the first author – Only that the supervisor’s name isn’t on it as long as it isn’t submitted …

And your supervisor can veto your paycheck and thesis.

@Rain: and only has their name because they are the PhD 'supervisor'? – That’s unethical to begin with.

Publishing and signing away one's copyright are not nearly the same thing. Sometimes publishers demand that you do the latter in order to publish in their journals, but there are plenty of publishers who don't (or don't, under certain circumstances).

@user71659 If you think your advisor would actually do that, you need a new advisor.

@JeffE What makes you think that doesn't happen? And there's always "Sorry, we're low on cash, you'll have to TA next semester."

@user71659 Oh, sure, lots of bad things happen, and there are lots of bad people in academia, just like everywhere else. But you don't need to help them.  If you don't trust your advisor to treat you fairly, get out.

Things you should consider:

Your supervisor has much more experience in submitting papers than you do. It is considerably more likely that they have a good idea where is best to submit your paper than you do.
Almost all journals will be charging a sum of money for publication. What is the source of this money? Who is in control of it? Most likely, it is money coming from funds controlled by your supervisor and not by you. This gives them greater leverage.
Delay in publication due to squabbles over where to publish are likely to harm you more than your supervisor. They, presumably, have multiple papers to their name and probably multiple students producing papers that they will appear on. This is, also presumably, one of your first papers and one you will need to get published to either graduate or land yourself a good job in academia after your PhD.

All these points count against you. You have the right, of course, to fight for the paper to  be submitted to the journal of your preference but you should consider whether this is really a battle worth fighting. In my opinion, it is likely you will be better served by choosing a different hill to die on.

"Almost all journals will be charging a sum of money for publication" - that's not true, or at the very least is field-dependent. In biology, unless you want to pay for gold open access, most journals are free to publish.

@user2390246: Which major biology journal does not charge for publication? Open access fees are usually higher but, IME, there are charges regardless. And there are also additional charges for colour figures and so forth to be considered - including, absurdly - on online only journals.

Providing there are no colour figures and the article conforms to length requirements: Nature, Cell, Proc Roy Soc B, PNAS ...

That's a pretty big 'providing' I would say.

@JackAidley It isn't. Overlength? Put in supplemental, or find a different journal (don't put a full-length paper into a letter). Color? You should make B&W compatible figures anyway because many people will print it out on a B&W printer.


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If the same paper had many contributions in many fields, can I cite each contribution separately?
I am writing my thesis in computer science and have some issues.
I have several papers with more than one contribution in many fields (enhancement on several algorithms).
I want to mention each algorithm with its enhancement separately. Can I cite the same paper in different paragraphs in the literature review?

Why would you not be able to do so? As long as it's clear you're citing the same paper.

because I am actually organizing the resources in the literature review according to some criteria so I was worried if citing the same paper might consider not proper way for writing.

Yes. You should cite a paper every time you talk about it (unless you talk about it multiple times in rapid succession and it's clear that you're still refering to the same thing). There is no "rule" that says you can only refer to a paper once.


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Is it possible to become a professor in a field where you don't have a PhD degree?
I am a economics major student who will be applying for PhD programmes pretty soon. I am quite interested in economics, but I find myself even more interested things related to probability theory, such as stochastic processes. And if I ever get into a econ PhD programme, I'm pretty sure that I should be looking for co-advising from the math/statistics department if allowed.
So I am curious about what happens in academia if you ever find yourself more interested in a topic that you don't have a degree on. If you can write some good papers during your PhD, can you find good career opportunities in that field in academia even if you did not start out as a "professional" scholar in that field?
Any idea would be very much appreciated!!

Have you considered financial maths or econophysics?  Both of those fields combine economics and stochastic processes.

Yes, it is possible to cross over between different fields following the PhD-level studies. However, in general, this tends to be more applicable to "interdisciplinary" fields that can fall into multiple disciplines. For instance, the engineering department I studied at hired people with PhD's in applied mathematics and physics, because their research fields—in fluid mechanics and interfacial science, respectively—meshed well with the research interests of the department.
To give a counterexample, however, it will be much harder to make the case for a high-energy physics person to move into another discipline, just because it is so strongly identified with physics.
Thus, if you have a PhD in a field such as mathematical economics or econometrics, it will be a lot easier to make the lateral shift. However, if you're in a more "traditional" subfield, that move becomes much more challenging.

Moving from an economics Ph.D. program to a job in a mainstream math department will be difficult.  There will be the practical difficulties (are you able to teach as broad a range of courses?), the incentive issues ("If he's so great, why doesn't the economics department hire him instead?  What's in it for us?  If he's really a mathematician, why did he go to grad school in economics in the first place?"), culture clashes (mathematicians will have no idea what a working paper is, won't know whether the American Economic Review is any good, won't recognize the names of letter writers from economics or care as much about their opinions, etc.), and so on.
If you turn out to be a superstar, you'll have more flexibility, but anyone less gifted will have to work very hard to fit in.  In particular, to have any real shot at this you'll have to:
(1) Demonstrate that you have a broad background in mathematics, in particular in the areas that are not used in economics.  I.e., you'll need to study mathematics to the extent that nobody would guess you didn't go to math grad school.
(2) Publish papers primarily in mathematics journals.  An economics paper, even a very mathematical one in an excellent journal, will count substantially less than a mathematics paper.  if you have more economics papers than mathematics papers, then mathematicians who support other candidates will use this as an argument for why the economics department would be a better fit for you.  (And they will convince many people by arguing that if the economics department wants you, then the math department would get the benefit of having you around for free, and if they don't want you, then maybe that's a bad sign.)
(3) Find leading mathematicians to write letters of recommendation for you.  There's a widespread belief that recommenders lower their standards a little when recommending for other departments, or may not fully understand the standards or needs of these departments, so math departments will on average pay less attention to a letter from an economist than from a mathematician.
All this is unfair, but these issues are real.  If you might want to work in a different department, then you should start preparing as early as possible.
P.S.  You'll also run into other cultural issues.  For example, economics candidates regularly get tenure-track jobs in top departments straight out of grad school, while mathematics candidates almost never do (i.e., the number of people who do this in a typical year is 0 or 1).  This may work to your advantage, for example by giving you a chance to do a postdoc and improve your credentials, but it's something you'll have to deal with.

Thank you so much AM for the enlightening and detailed guidance! But I am still curious about what you refer to as a "mainstream math department". I guess it's very hard for economists to do meaningful work in pure math. But how does probability theory count here? I know in some schools probabilists are under the math department. But in most other schools (and some top ones like Berkeley) they are under the stat department. And econometricians are actually quite well-equipped with probability theory. I would very much appreciate it if I could hear more of your comments on this.

By "mainstream" I just meant one that calls itself "Department of Mathematics" or a similar name, as opposed to statistics, operations research, etc.  (or, occasionally, a particularly interdisciplinary applied math department, although this is unusual).  A statistics department may be more open to this, although points (2) and (3) above could still be obstacles.  Outside of economics departments, business schools are particularly likely to understand and value background in economics.  The best case scenario would be a statistics group within a business school (for example, Wharton has one).

One additional difficulty of doing this, which may indeed be a hurdle, is that it will be difficult to teach undergraduate courses within the new department, because you may not have the background to do so. This will cause a course assignment problem for the head of department, one which could be avoided by not hiring you. On the other hand, you will be capable of teaching cross-disciplinary courses giving the education provided by the department a new angle, which may be appealing to the department.
Duncan Watts, of Six Degrees fame, switched from Physics to Sociology. It's hard to imagine a more extreme cross-over.

The issue of teaching undergraduate classes is a significant one.  I know people who have tried to do something similar, and the main difficulty they've reported is convincing departments that they'll be able to contribute to teaching general undergraduate courses.  (One way to address this is to make an extra effort as a PhD student to find opportunities to be involved with courses in the other department, but this can be difficult.)

People care about teaching undergrad courses? Although it surely isn't common, I know of two other (well known) sociologists who had higher education backgrounds in Physics, Hubert Blalock and David Greenberg. I would suspect the other way (from sociology to physics) would be much more difficult (and hence more extreme).

The issue is not always concern for undergrads, but rather annoyance that if one department member is only able to teach a narrow range of courses, then they may always get to teach what they like, while other faculty may have to pick up the slack by teaching more frequently outside their own subfields.

Thank you Dave for the important reminder. I see how the teaching issue might be an obstacle here now.

@AndyW: Small departments certainly must have this concern.

@Vokram Don't let this discourage you.

Thank you Dave I won't :) I guess even if it turns out hard to get a tenure or teaching position, one can always do some research in that field whenever it he is interested, which should already be enough to satisfy me.

Not so hard for Duncan Wells. Physics is a "hard" science, sociology a "soft" (social) science. Soft sciences welcome hard sciences (but not vice-versa).

My father, a retired engineering professor, told me that some fields that are "feeder" fields into others, lend themselves more easily to the "crossover" process.
In your case, mathematics is a "feeder" field to mathematical economics. My father felt that it was relatively easy for a math (or engineering) PhD to cross over into economics (as he did in his later years), because most economists feel that their field does not have enough mathematics. In fact, many senior economics professors of his time recruited graduate students with strong "quant" backgrounds to work with them.
The reverse is not true. Most mathematicians would find it hard to take an Economics PhD "seriously" as a mathematician. It is said that mathematics is the "queen" of sciences, so its practitioners don't feel the need to cater to "lesser" fields.

Definitely. Economists are routinely hired at finance departments, as well as public policy, public health, and even marketing departments. Sometimes they have appointments across different departments including statistics. For instance Francis X. Diebold has appointments in the Department of Economics at Penn, as well as the Finance Department and Statistics Department at Wharton.


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What to do when asked to do something that seems unethical by a co-advisor which might result in losing credit for my work
I am doing a course project, and my co-advisor contributed to my design with tips and comments - nothing major. When the system started working he told me no to reveal all the details while presenting my work in the class.
That didn't feel right. I believe that the course instructor has the right to know all details about my design, and naturally, his name should go on any publication that comes out of this.
I heard my co-advisor telling another professor that my work is "his vision". I hate being in a such weird situation. I feel like my co-advisor is willing to unethical things for his own benefit (As an example, he refused to write me a recommendation letter to prevent me from leaving the university).
Also, because designs have to go through a fabrication step which takes along time, I feel that if he put his hands on my design I will lose credit for my work. He already told me that he will have one of his other students complete the other step. I am afraid that he will say that the other student did more work so he should be the first author of any publication coming out this or even remove me from the whole picture. Given his history, I cannot trust him now.
Moreover, I intend to leave the university for PhD somewhere else in about six months (he doesn't know that), so I won't be there when the work finishes.
How to handle this issue ? Should I reveal everything to the course instructor and start a fight with my co-advisor ? or accept this which is byound my tolerance?

Why should the course instructor's name go on a paper about it? What did they contribute?

It's his course. The whole project is part of his course and he pushed us to do something that can be published.

I mean he thought me the material needed to complete the design.

Will he work on the paper and contribute ideas?

I will know this after I present my work, but probably yes when he sees the potential for a publication.

OK, there's really no "of course" when it comes to authorship.

Pushing someone to do something is not in itself sufficient grounds to be a  coauthor. There has to be an intellectual contribution.

A good rule of thumb is that a (co)author is someone who writes. So if your instructor writes a section of the article, he can become co-author. This is a rule of thumb, so exceptions exist. However, you have to give good reasons to add someone as a co-author who does not write or exclude someone who has written. Being in his course is not enough.

One way to make sure your contributions are known, and credited when needed you can make them known to as many people as possible.

You shouldn't start a fight with your coadvisor, but you shouldn't let them push you into an ethical compromise, either. (Or perhaps into a deeper ethical compromise — most instructors expect course projects to be the work of the students, not the students and their advisors.)
If you're not comfortable hiding details from your class/instructor, say so. Directly and professionally, without accusing him of shady behavior. Exactly as if your coadvisor were a responsible, ethical, adult human being.

he refused to write me a recommendation letter to prevent me from leaving the university

This is where I would normally write "Walk away". Your coadvisor is using you. Fortunately, it looks like you've already figured that out.

Moreover, I intend to leave the university for PhD somewhere else

Good.

(he doesn't know that yet)

Not so good. Why are you keeping this a secret?

Thanks for the answer. I didn't tell him because I think he will make my life harder. He even told me "No other university will look at you and you should stay and not waster your time applying".

If he actually believed that no other university will look at you, why wouuld he waste his time working with you? Walk away.

He seems to have a very good reason for keeping it secret. Openness is nice if you can afford it or the place has a culture of it, but it's by no means a foregone conclusion.


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FOIA request for full NSF awards proposal and report
Related to this question on mathoverflow…
Indeed, I just found out that to see full proposal or later reports. One needs to file a FOIA request, as described here.
So I am curious if anyone has done so? And how is the process like?
In particular, can the requester remain confidential after the request (so other people will not know that I made the request)?
Additional follow up question: What kind of people can file FOIA request? Does it have to be US citizens? Or just anyone working in US? etc..

Actually, one only needs to file a FOIA request if your polite request to the PI is turned down.  Ask the PI first.

Just for record. For the follow up question. "Any U.S. citizen, foreign national, foreign government, state government, partnership, corporation, or association may make a FOIA request. Agencies are not required to process FOIA requests made by fugitives from justice or by an agency acting on behalf of a fugitive"

The name of the requester does not remain confidential.
A friend of mine was recently on the other end.  NSF contacted him to tell him that an FOIA request had been made for a copy of his proposal, told him the name of the requester, and asked whether the proposal contained any sensitive information that he wished to have redacted.
The general feeling was that making such a request, rather than contacting the PI directly, was unprofessional and borderline creepy.  I second JeffE's comment: Ask the PI first.

Definitely, filing a FOIA request without even asking the PI is incredibly unprofessional and creepy.  But I'd actually go further and say filing a FOIA request at all is more than a little creepy, even if you asked and the PI refused to send you the proposal.  In most cases it's an abuse of the FOIA system.  (If you are doing it to investigate what the government is funding, then that's a legitimate use.  If you are doing it to try to get a behind-the-scenes view of a competitor's research program, then that's unethical.)

@AnonymousMathematician: Well, I'm rather surprised at the comment! Say you are writing a grant that didn't get through, and you'd like to understand what the successful proposals had that you didn't - then, wouldn't you want to know what they contained? You may not have the best of relations with the author, who may even view you as a competitor, but since its ultimately funded by the taxpayers, I imagine that shouldn't affect your ability to learn from it?

I can understand wanting to see some successful proposals, but there's no need to see specific ones for that purpose.  If you ask around, maybe not everyone will agree to share their proposal, but many people will and you'll get plenty of proposals to learn from.  In particular, the ones you do see will be perfectly good examples of proposal writing.  FOIA requests are needed only if someone insists on seeing specific proposals that the PI isn't comfortable showing them.  To me, that strongly suggests that they are trying to study unpublished plans or information, which is unethical.

I guess maybe I'd analyze it as follows.  People such as reviewers or panel members have access to NSF proposals, and they are strictly forbidden from taking advantage of this confidential information.  I see someone making a FOIA request as being in a similar situation.  They are legally entitled to see the proposal, but scientific ethics do not permit them to use unpublished ideas or data taken from it.  Deliberately requesting information you cannot ethically use looks suspicious.

@TCSGrad: You want to see a successful grant proposal?  Send me an email.  Really.

Also, the PI and their institution's lawyers can censor anything of possible commercial value before sending you the proposal.  (Or so my university's lawyers have told my colleagues who have been FOIA'd.)  So if the PI is really offended by the FOIA request, you might just receive 15 pages of black rectangles.

@AnonymousMathematician: Well, that clears it up a lot more :) - true, most people may not object to showing grant proposals that are 5-10 years old, which still has enough information for someone new to the field!

@JeffE: I had actually downloaded your NSF CAREER proposal from your website, as a reference for a successful grant  - I'll definitely email you for some of the other grants you've listed on your homepage once I feel I've sufficiently assimilated that one!

Actually the motivation for me is to learn what other people are doing (imagine not everyone will explain in email in detail what they are doing!). My initial thought is that since NSF is a public organization, supposedly everything should be public and free. But apparently it has some restrictions... I am still curious though... In fact, why would PI put any "sensitive" information in the proposal anyway...

Additional follow up question: What kind of people can file FOIA request? Does it have to be US citizens? Or just anyone working in US? etc..

By the way, some people put almost all their full proposal on the website. For example, William Stein, http://modular.math.washington.edu/grants/  This again says my point---why would anyone put "sensitive" information in their grant proposal?

@AnonymousMathematician: whether creepy or not, realize that if the research is funded by the public, the public has a right to see what it funds. Unless there is a reason to consider parts of the material confidential.

@walkmanyi: I certainly think that the public has a right to see the results of research that they fund, and indeed I support open access mandates that require that funded papers be made public.  However, there's a big difference between the results of funded research and the grant proposals themselves.  The proposals include ideas which don't pan out (which could be embarrassing) and ideas which take time to work out (which could get stolen).

Actually the motivation for me is to learn what other people are doing — Read their papers.  Go to their talks.  Or just ask them.

@walkmanyi: Certainly the public has a legal right to investigate what's being funded, but there's no academic right to use unpublished information from grant proposals.  Research plans and ideas, partial progress, etc. are by default confidential.  Some people are happy to share them with the world, and I think this is often sensible, but others care about confidentiality.  If you learn confidential information about someone else's research program, you cannot use this information yourself or refer to it.  You must act as if you had never learned it, which is sometimes easier said than done.

@AnonymousMathematician: IANAL, but there seems to be an interesting interplay between the concept of confidentiality and release of information through FOIA-like requests. I wouldn't be surprised if the "confidentiality" we refer here would be only a vague concept without any legal backing. And even if not, I guess the material looses whatever confidentiality status upon release through a FOIA-like request. Consider journalists who normally refer to such materials and use them to advance their own careers. But of course, I see you point.

You're right that there is no legal protection, but this is true for lots of academic norms.  For example, there are no laws specifying who should be an author of an academic paper.  If you collaborate with someone, you are legally entitled to secretly write and publish a singly-authored paper describing your findings and just thanking them in the body of the paper.  However, academia would judge this harshly.  Similarly, it would be legal to obtain someone else's grant proposal against their wishes, develop their ideas yourself, and publish them, but it would be unethical.

(Journalism is a special case, because one aspect of investigative journalism is identifying cases where violating some form of confidentiality is justified for the good of society.  Similarly, if you discovered that someone else's research project was endangering people, it would be reasonable to violate confidentiality to avert the danger.)

OK. Now I have some very clear answer. The list of all requesters is in fact PUBLISHED on NSF website.
See, for example, all NSF FOIA request in 2010 (PDF)
http://www.nsf.gov/policies/2010_FOIA_LOG.pdf
The link is found at the bottom of this page:
http://www.nsf.gov/policies/foia.jsp

This is a really interesting list.  Thanks for pointing it out!

Wow, the stories that must be behind some of those.  Example: On 10/23/2009, Mark Spaulding of "Federal Prison" requested "All available disclosable data on
very large industrial lasers, especially as applied to the mining industry." :-O

@NateEldredge I think he may be an employee there, and what he requested just his personal hobby.. :) In fact "Any U.S. citizen, foreign national, foreign government, state government, partnership, corporation, or association may make a FOIA request. Agencies are not required to process FOIA requests made by fugitives from justice or by an agency acting on behalf of a fugitive."

@rptr: I bet that's just what Auric Goldfinger wants you to think.  (By the way, prison inmates are not fugitives.)


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Should you respond to a call-for-papers rejection email?
This question is related but I don't think it is a duplicate. I recently sent the abstract of my first paper to a call-for-papers for a conference. I received an email thanking me for the submission and then about a month later I received a longer email stating my submission was not selected.
What should I do now? I presume I could just leave it at that, or I could reply to them at least acknowledging their email.
However the conference is one I would be interested in keeping up to date about. Since they don't seem to have a website yet I am wondering if it would be appropriate to email back in order to acknowledge their email and request some information on how to keep up to date (maybe they have a mailing list) with the conference?

In many conferences, if you submit a paper, you are automatically included in a mailing list, whether the paper is accepted or not. If the organizing committee changes from year to year, the mailing list is passed along to the new committees. You know, conferences want participants ;-)

I don't get the question here. a) acknowledging the rejection is pointless and  a waste of time. b) asking for information/to be subscribed to mailing-list seems ok and harmless, if possibly unnecessary, assuming you're already on the mailing-list. So what problems do you foresee with any of this?

Whether or not you should respond to their e-mail depends on how you
want to be involved with the current meeting and the community
supporting the conference.

Acknowledgement of a rejection e-mail from conference organizers is
  generally not necessary unless they have requested confirmation or
  further information.

You mentioned an interested in "keeping up to date" with this conference, presumably with the intention of presenting here in the future. However, it may still be possible to participate in the current meeting if you make an effort to politely contact the organizers as soon as possible.
Every conference is a little different, since they are organized according to the preferences and constraints of the core group of researchers that plan and organize the meeting. Often there are poster sessions or other opportunities to present your work in lieu of a presentation if it is suitable for the conference.
Before you decide to contact the organizers, you should carefully re-read the original call and conference description. Since your paper was not selected for presentation at the conference, there may be a problem with: (1) the perceived quality of your submitted manuscript, (2) the format of your submitted work, or (3) the topic that your paper addressed.
Check the call and double-check your submission to make sure there are no obvious discrepancies that would disqualify your work. Make sure your paper is on-topic, in the correct format, and of suitable length.
If you are new to a subject area, or a particular conference, your impression of what it is all about may not match up with the actual meeting as well as you might expect. It may be that your submission was off target for this conference and could be amended with a little communication.

This is a once-off conference in the Humanities so there are no poster sessions etc so contacting them about another way to present was not part of my question. By keeping up to date I meant that I would have some avenue to know papers that are to be presented etc in absence of a website.


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Patent agent work from the research career perspective
Recently I ran across a number of patent agent positions, which seem to require significant scientific research or academic skills and experience, up to a Ph.D. level. After reading some patents, it is pretty clear to me that such role is anything but an easy job. Nevertheless, I am somewhat attracted to it due to the fact that it combines scientific research and innovation with intellectual property and entrepreneurship areas. I am curious about the following two aspects:

How the time, spent in a role of patent agent, is considered by the academic community from the overall academic/research career perspective? While we cannot talk about pure research productivity in that case, since inventions are made by other people, I am wondering about whether helping those people to formulate their ideas in a clear and defensible manner can be counted as an informal co-authorship of some kind. In other words, is there some ethical authorship credit that would be attached — again, informally — to patent agents' research portfolio and enable them to further return back to mainstream academia at some point?
Considering the above-mentioned point and, perhaps, other aspects, how difficult would be for a Ph.D. graduate without significant research portfolio (at the moment) to return to academia (as postdoc, then faculty) after having worked as a patent agent for some time?

I am wondering about whether helping those people to formulate their ideas in a clear and defensible manner can be counted as an informal co-authorship of some kind.

My impression (based on my own experience as well as what I've heard from others) is that patent attorneys or agents typically make no contribution at all to helping their clients formulate ideas in a clear and intellectually defensible manner.  Instead, the contribution is entirely on the legal side: formulating things in a way that is likely to pass the review by the patent examiner and any subsequent legal challenges, while at the same time claiming as much intellectual property as possible.  This is a very valuable contribution, but not the sort of value that most of academia rewards (it's simply orthogonal to the intellectual contributions).  It's possible that a law school or business school might specifically hire someone because of this experience, but for most departments experience as a patent agent would not count as anything remotely like research.
You could try to make a special argument for your case (maybe your activities would differ from those of the average patent agent), but you would face a lot of skepticism.

In other words, is there some ethical authorship credit that would be attached — again, informally — to patent agents' research portfolio and enable them to further return back to mainstream academia at some point?

This is no such convention, and you would have to be very careful if you made any suggestions in this direction (since it could easily come across as trying to take unfair credit for other people's work).
I don't have any statistics, but I believe returning to academia after spending time as a patent agent is rare.  I've known several people with Ph.D.s who became patent agents, and I've known of others, but I've never heard of anyone returning to academia afterwards.  (I wouldn't be surprised if it has happened, though.)

Considering the above-mentioned point and, perhaps, other aspects, how difficult would be for a Ph.D. graduate without significant research portfolio (at the moment) to return to academia (as postdoc, then faculty) after having worked as a patent agent for some time?

It depends on what sort of academia.  Let's assume you wouldn't be teaching law or business, so those aspects of your experience would not be relevant.  You could still make a case that your time as a patent agent gave you an unusually broad perspective on how your field is applied, and this could be attractive to departments.  However, under ordinary circumstances it could not make up for a lack of recent research publications.  If you keep publishing or apply to jobs without a strong research component, then you may be OK, but if you stop publishing, then it will be difficult to return to a research university, even as a postdoc.

Excellent answer (+1) - your insights are much appreciated and mostly aligned with my underlying assumptions (in regard to potential risks of that deviation from a mainstream academic career path). Having said that, I disagree with your point that patent agents' "contribution is entirely on the legal side" (note that patent attorneys are intentionally outside of the scope of my question). If that would be the case, typical requirements for patent agents of having a scientific degree and/or relevant knowledge and experience would IMHO make no sense and would not be established.

I think that requirement is because it's very hard to offer useful assistance if you don't have any idea what the words even mean.  (I've heard some depressingly hilarious stories from colleagues about gibberish that patent attorneys have said to them.)  My impression is that the bar for patent agents is typically set at "know enough that you don't screw things up by introducing mistakes or drive the inventors crazy", rather than "know enough that you can offer serious intellectual assistance".  However, I can't rule out the possibility that there are some specialists with greater knowledge.

Fair enough. Thank you for clarifying your thoughts. I guess, this aspect varies not only from person to person, but also from firm to firm.

From the perspective of our department: it makes no difference. It's just the same as any other job, inside or outside academia. That is to say, applicants are judged by the evidence they provide of being able to do world-class research.
That evidence can come from time spent in academia, public sector or private sector.
So it's up to you to build and provide that evidence. If time spent as a patent agent, estate agent, secret agent, travel agent or whatever helps you build evidence that you can do research, then that's helpful. If it doesn't, then it's not.
Similarly, if your role would be primarily about facilitating other people to do productive research, and you could provide evidence of that, then that would be helpful if you later applied for a post with the responsibility of facilitating other people to do productive research, for example a post such as departmental administrator.


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Revamping Paper Authorship, *or* Should Papers Roll Credits
A junior researcher with no reputation (as we've dropped the facade of double-blind review, reputation counts) may benefit from coauthoring with a senior researcher of established reputation, and may accept such a co-authorship with no more than a nominal contribution.
Surely if a senior researcher comes up with the idea, sends the junior researcher off to get his data, provides fruitful advice on where to look, critiques the data gathering methods proposed and refines it if necessary, reviews early to late drafts of the write up, indisputably that senior researcher deserves recognition of coauthorship despite never having directly given voice to the document.
How much advice does a professor have to give before he becomes an coauthor? Isn't the below image's last author listing wrong? Isn't it academic dishonesty on the parts of all of the authors to take and give credit where it is not due? Isn't it misleading to the readers of these papers?

Further, are these semantically unordered? Maybe this indicates we can drop that facade as well, since order apparently does have meaning (unless explicitly ordered alphabetically).
If we really care about people rightfully getting credit, perhaps a paper should list credits in the same way that a movie does.
Perhaps something like:
The Prestigious Journal of Import                    Vol XLVI No 2, June 1992

                            A Paper We Wrote

                      Primary Author: Sap, P. S.
                     Primary Advisor: Oliveira, L.
                           Reviewers: Lee, E. F., Nichols, S. T.,
                             Figures: Michael, C.
                          Dept Chair: Smith, B. S.

                                 Abstract
    The time has come, to talk of many things, of shoes, of ships, of sealing
...

Question:
Do we need to revamp how authorships are credited, do papers need to roll credits, a'la Hollywood? Or is all of this inferred by our list order, and it doesn't really matter who did what, all authors signed off on it, so current practice is equivalent to as if each of them contributed equally and in kind?

Credit for what? I never seen anyone really pay attention to the order of authors beyond the first author.

The idea sounds great, and some journals already seem to do something comparable (not directly in the author list, but as part of the appendix). My main concern is whether this will increase or decrease fairness and transparency. Generally, you seem to assume that the information given here will actually reflect reality, i.e., a prominent co-author that only served as figurehead will truthfully be listed as such. I think this is an optimistic view.

as it stands, this question is soliciting opinion. However, it could easily be modified along the lines of the existing answer - to ask what moves have been made in this direction.

Isn't there already a wealth of questions about authorship criteria on this site? Also, this question is opinion-based. 'Do we need to revamp how authorships are credited' Who's 'we'?

There is movement towards contributorship as a concept to replace authorship. Journals like Science and Nature (and others) ask authors to provide a list of each contributors contribution. Add to that a definition of what constitutes contributorship (Vancouver Protocol; see ICMJE for the following example):

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;

AND

Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;

AND

Final approval of the version to be published;

AND

Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In this case it is the publishers and editors who will have to implement the tools to provide the correct credit. As an author it is possible to volunteer the information in the acknowledgement. It is of course still possible to give false credit by faking entries for authors who have not contributed but I doubt any system will be perfect.

There is now the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) that is endorsed and used by many journals, for exactly this purpose. See http://credit.niso.org/, Elsevier endorsement, Wiley endorsement, Cell Press endorsement.


text:
Is it normal that journals strongly suggest a professional English editing service?
It is quite common for me to receive emails from the editors of a journal asking me, before or after the referees have given their approval, to review and improve my English. Then, the editor suggests a professional English editing service for this purpose.
My question is: Is this common practice, independently on the quality of the English of the manuscript (as an attempt to sell a service), or is it only for the cases where the English really needs improvement?
Here is an example of such an email where the reviewers had no further comments and recommend acceptance, but the editor asks for an English review:

The reviewers judge the technical content of your revised manuscript satisfactory. The English, however, is awkward, and needs improvement. Reviewer comments are included below and/or are attached.
The language quality must be improved. We advise that you seek assistance from a colleague or have a professional editing service correct the language in your manuscript, which can then be resubmitted to us.
AIP and the JAP recommend Edanz for authors who wish to have the language in their manuscript edited by a native-English speaking language editor who is also a scientific expert. Edanz is a global editing service with offices in Japan and China. Use of an editing service is neither a requirement nor a guarantee of acceptance for publication. Please contact Edanz (http://www.edanzediting.com/aip) directly to make arrangements for editing and to receive a quotation regarding price and time.
Please edit the ENTIRE paper.
Please indicate how the manuscript has been revised. Either include a list of changes that addresses each point indicating how the manuscript has been revised as a separate document titled, Response Letter or submit a copy of the manuscript with the exact locations of the revisions titled, Marked Manuscript. That will enable the editors to see whether you have complied with the reviewer comments.

Were the papers as well written as this question?

@PatriciaShanahan I am the author of both this question and the paper, so I would say yes. But, is the English of this question that bad?

No, it is that good.

@cinico: In my opinion, the English of this question was surprisingly good, given that you received such a mail. It’s not perfect, but it’s nothing regular copy editing could not fix (and probably en par with my own English) and far better than some papers I have seen published.

@Wrzlprmft it's common for authors with a non-English sounding name to receive this comment, even if their written English is good. Usually, at least 1 native speaker read my papers before I submit them. But I almost always get that comment.

@Wrzlprmft I should also add that it's not just me, it's common in my lab.

Did the reviewer comments address the quality/style of your written English? If so, these are the things you should seek to address.

Well, since some respondent appear to infer the quality of the papers from the quality of the OP's question, it seems fair to point out that it should be "independently of", not "on".

Is this a reputable journal?

@Emilie The main issue is not in the comment, but in the advertisement of a specific editing service.

@MassimoOrtolano that is why I made it as a comment and not an answer =)

I've seen almost identical wording to the third quoted paragraph on a journal website.

Is it possible that maybe some of the usage of language specific to the field could be causing this? This question has good language, but it probably doesn't include a lot of the kind of content your actual paper would. Certainly not the subject matter, and I wonder if that might be where some problems lie.

Note that some native English speakers also write very poor English. As a reviewer, I have been known to recommend independent copy-editing even for papers written by a native English speaker. I've even volunteered to do the copy-editing myself if I thought the technical content was good enough.

In one journal where I am familiar with the editorial workflow, the review form explicitly asks reviewers to rate the language quality of the manuscript. Based on this rating, the editor can tick an item similar to "Needs language revisions" when putting together the decision letter. The decision letter will then contain a paragraph that advises the authors to do a language revision. I am not sure at the moment whether a particular service is being recommended there.
The point is that such a recommendation can get into the letter easily, but will not be included by default. Probably the editor only wrote the first two or three sentences of the letter, maybe without thinking carefully about the exact formulation, and the rest is based on a customizable template. Nevertheless, it usually means that at least one reviewer was criticizing language usage, maybe even without giving specific comments on it. I would advise you to at least double-check on language usage, and if possible have it proof-read by someone else with very good English skills or a native speaker.
However, as long as the reviewers can understand the technical content well, these points are usually not decisive for the acceptance of the manuscript. Especially, as long as any language problems are corrected, I can't imagine that the editor will care whether you use the suggested language service or not.

While the other answers were very interesting and useful, for some reason I was more inclined to accept this one. Thank you all. We cannot afford to pay a professional editing service and I will revise the manuscript again more carefully. I also agree that extrapolating the English quality of my question to that of my manuscript is not wise...

Keep in mind that services such as Grammarly have free versions that address most of the issues that reviewers notice.

No, this is not normal. I have never received such a suggestion despite the fact that neither I nor any of my co-authors were native speakers of English, and there was no reason (such as name or affiliation) for any editor to assume this. I also never heard of anybody else receiving such a suggestion (which does not mean much, however). In particular, I did not receive such a suggestion when publishing with the same publisher (AIP).
Moreover, the first paragraph of your example mail does not seem to be an automatically generated or canned text block to me. Such text blocks are usually more diplomatic and would not contain words such as awkward. (The rest of the mail seems to be a prepared text block, however.)

Same here. I did, however, review manuscripts where I commented on the quality of English. But this was only when the English was so poor it was impossible to understand the meaning of important sentences, and this usually appeared in my comments to the authors.

I worked for a journal for a little while and we had our own in-house editors for English grammar and usage and journal style guidelines. In addition to excellent command of English, the editors were required to be educated and/or have experience in the field the journals were about (optics, in this case). Perhaps things have changed but I can't imagine the more prominent journals not having in-house editors.

https://www.edanzediting.com/aip (archived at https://archive.is/0N7B8 ) contains the AIP logo and «As a part of our cooperation with AIP, you will receive a 10% discount on Edanz services». Unless this 20 years old firm engages in egregious trademark abuse, it seems the AIP editor was not lying.

@ToddWilcox, that's one thing for a few minor edits, it would be a lot of work for a whole paper.

Normal or not (and it's abnormal), this practice is problematic because it's unclear if the editor has vested interest to recommend this particular editing service. There are many professional editing services, why just Edanz? If there is any agreement between the journals and Edanz in the form of a commission or kick-back, then I will not trust the judgment of the editor on my written English, as he/she will be inclined to be more stringent or even unreasonably stringent.
Moving forward, if that "awkward" troubles you, it may be advisable to seek help from a professional editor who is not related to Edanz. While many comments here praise your English, writing a question and writing a manuscript are of two different leagues and there could be grammatically correct but unconventional expressions in your work, so don't take those praises as a proof that your paper does not need to be edited. Meeting with an editor allows you to get a general scope of the problems, if any, and also provides an excellent chance to evaluate your overall English usage. When replying the editor, you may also indicate that you have sought help from a third party editor to edit your work.
Good luck.

Springer, AIP, and Biomed Central all have "partnerships" with Edanz. Authors submitting to journals from those publishers get a discount on editing services. It's not clear what the publisher gets, or whether there are any incentives for editors of journals from these publishers to recommend professional editing.

Thank you @ff524! That's a very useful piece of information.

Biomed Central says that they don't get any fees or commission from Edanz. Springer has the same statement.

I would assume that many authors would have trouble finding a service, so providing one of know quality can save the journals a lot of headaches even if they don't get paid for the referral.

Edanz probably gets more referrals by being recommended by publishers; the publishers get better written papers by recommending an editor.  Everyone is happy.


text:
Retracting CS (conference) papers
Suppose you learn of a confirmed fundamental error in a CS conference paper (for a reputable conference) that smells of gross negligence. Is there any way to get it retracted? Whenever I've asked, people told me that CS conferences don't do that—and I've surely never seen it for PL conferences (though this paper is on algorithms).
While we can't talk specifics, please assume I've already done all the due diligence to confirm the error, down to getting the authors to confirm it.
I understand such errors won't kill people directly as errors in life sciences could, but I'm still concerned. Maybe a more serious version of https://xkcd.com/386/, but still.
The specific case
Years ago (around 2009) I've confirmed the flaw with other experts of the field (let's call them A), who confirmed it with the authors of the paper (let's call them B). I was just an undergrad and not working in the field, so I didn't participate in the conversation. This paper is still cited years later by the authors (as a "preliminary version") without mentioning the error—though a later paper citing it changes a key equation and (maybe) fixes the problem.
*Those experts avoided publicizing the flaw out of professional courtesy—making enemies of the author would allegedly have risked hurting their publication chances. However, they (had to) go as far as citing the paper without mentioning issues in follow-up work. Out of respect, I hence won't mention even the subfield of algorithms or the conference.
I'm also outside of the field—I got involved simply because I was friends with one undergrad doing research with experts A and he just asked me help when he couldn't make sense of the paper by B.
EDIT: I forgot to specify why I say "gross negligence", and I agree that was bad on my part. Here are the neutral facts as best as I can recall them/verify them:

the included pseudocode has a type error in a crucial routine—if you index a matrix you need two indexes, not one. We started investigating because we couldn't make sense of the pseudocode. This was on a second paper specifically about the implementation. EDIT: All 8 accesses to the array in 21 lines have this type error, so it's no typo.
the algorithm fails on the running example. EDIT: by running example here meant the example used throughout the paper. But I rechecked and the offending example is just the 2nd they use.
the paper implements and benchmarks the algorithm it describes against a naive implementation, yet it didn't detect that the algorithm results are (EDIT) incorrect. After you've done 90% of the work, comparing results is pretty easy.

I wouldn't talk about negligence for an error in a correctness proof (which the paper seems to implicitly claim). And maybe the above is not gross negligence in this setting, but it does feel rather sloppy. I'm happy to be corrected though.
EDIT2:

The question starts with "Suppose you learn [of a case that...] smells of gross negligence", then focuses on retraction (not misconduct). You can question that assumption only if no such case exists. I do sketch one example but that's just supporting evidence; the focus of the question cannot be trying the specific case. I'm fine with also discussing this case, but I'm just trying to argue plausibility.
I still think in such a context one should compare expected and actual results, at least once you have implemented both. The guidelines of the German Science Foundation say "good scientific practice includes the following fundamental principles:... consistently and critically questioning all results". Which sounds common sense to me.
I'm sure aware of honest errors (which should also be corrected somehow). Nobody expects all proofs to be error-free and formalized.
Google suggests "negligence" can only be "gross" if it endangers people's life. I'm surely not suggesting that. If that's how it's understood, I apologize for that and amend to negligence.

Tossing around 'gross negligence' with respect to having an error in a paper makes this a highly loaded question. All researches make (and publish) 'errors' - we have early results, we misinterpret, we find out more later and reanalyze the problem. And then, we write a better, hopefully more correct paper. Now, the original paper with an error may still be useful to cite if it was the first to raise and describe the problem, even if the 'solution' was wrong.

The first paper cites 3 other solutions to the same problem and already a few variants. (Also I've edited the question to clarify whence this comes from, which I should have done earlier).

The first "gross negligence" looks like a typo. The second, a setup-specific quirk, or that they submitted the wrong example. The third can be sloppy analysis, or that they didn't bother to mention thinking it was obvious.

@Davidmh Based on your comment I must have been unclear and tried clarifying what I meant.

"if you index a matrix you need two indexes, not one." This is wrong. Just declare if the matrix that the matrix is row-major and access entries as [i+j*#cols] instead of [i,j] and you are good to go. (And that's how matrices are implemented in the end)

@FooBar I'm aware of row-major order, but nowhere else is this paper using this notation and it doesn't make sense here. We tried repairing the routine, but we managed to prove that the rest of the algorithm can't work whatever this routine does—the "type error" was just a starting point. But frankly, once the authors confirmed the paper is faulty, and since I won't name the paper (and nobody here does), I don't think it's productive to defend a paper you have not seen.

Correcting errors in conference papers is certainly possible---I have done so myself.
Most reputable peer-reviewed conferences are associated with some sort of society or organization that maintains their archives, e.g., IEEE, ACM, AAAI, and that society will generally have a process for correcting or retracting their conference publications that looks much like their process for correcting or retracting the articles of the journals they maintain.
In many cases, however, a conference paper is superseded by a following journal paper, which effectively becomes the final and archival version.  In this case, while the authors have been less than honest about the flaw in their original paper, the later correction means that adjusting this particular paper in the archive is likely not a critical issue.

I don't know whether the situation has changed since then, but when I asked Springer in 2008 whether is it possible to add a revised version of an LNCS contribution (or a link to an
externally stored revised
version) to SpringerLink, in case the published version contains a factual error, the answer was "We are not permitted to add or change anything to the lncs papers on SpringerLink.
The only thing we could try to do would be to introduce an erratum text explaining
the error. We can apply for this, but our erratum department may not approve it."

Where is an erratum (which is in fact a new article with doi and everything) for a conference paper published? If it's a special issue of a regular journal, OK, next issue, but otherwise? In a year, with the proceedings of the next conference? Not likely. Of course it would be simple to just publish it online, but that's still not the way journals work, is it?

I don't know how Springer does (or doesn't) do it, but IEEE attaches a correction to the "abstract" page in IEEE Xplore.

Ah, found info on errata for IEEE and Springer, but not ACM, at: https://supportcenter.ieee.org/app/answers/detail/a_id/1012/~/i-have-authored-a-published-conference-paper-that-has-errors-in-it.-who-should and https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/journal-author/frequently-asked-questions/3832

Publishing an erratum to a conference paper will be impossible, I expect, because the publisher won't care, if he still exists.
The correct way would have been to mention the error in the later paper and fix it there. And it would have been good style to cease citing the old one afterwards. But I wouldn't regard this as gross scientific misconduct. They are simply pushing their H-index a bit.
Whoever is interested will not trust the original conference paper anyway (which is rarely well-written and complete), especially if there is a later, proper article by the same guys on the same subject. I would read it only to find the differences and errors, which can be very enlightening.

"Whoever is interested will not trust the original conference paper anyway" - this is somewhat field-specific. In some CS subfields, the conference paper is the main thing, not necessarily followed up by any other article.

@O.R.Mapper This doesn't say good things about the relevance of said paper, does it? I mean if it is the only paper, and well cited, OK, but otherwise, i'll say it was just published because the author needed to be first author of another paper to get his PhD. ;-) Admittedly i'm not familar with the customs in CS.

"This doesn't say good things about the relevance of said paper, does it?" - it doesn't allow for any conclusion about the relevance of the paper. "Admittedly i'm not familar with the customs in CS." - no, obviously you are not :) (Note that CS is diverse. The customs vary even between subfields.)

Well. The OP says the conference paper was followed by a regular one, which he thinks was done correctly. And be that as it may, i do not believe that people in CS or wherever are not very suspicious when reading conference papers. They are writtten with a fixed deadline, and are not given the same care as regular papers by the average reviewer.

Well, the OP also says they are "outside of the field" and admittedly, journal papers are indeed the primary publication channel in most fields. Still, for all intents and purposes, in some fields, conference papers are regular papers.

I'm indeed from a different field of CS, but multiple sources confirm that across CS conference papers are often what matters most, see e.g. http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/38086/8966.


text:
Should I be worried about the fact that I will be too old for applying for tenure track positions by the time I complete postdoc?
I am 30 years old. I have spent 4 yrs in undergrad, 2 in masters and 5 in PhD with half a year of work experience in between. I have just finished my PhD and will start with a postdoc position early next year. Considering I spend 2-3 years in a postdoc. By the time I apply for TT positions, I will be 33yo. I have heard that hiring committees prefer younger candidates (<30) than older ones. Considering I have a good application, should I be worried about the fact that I will be too old for applying for tenure track positions by the time I complete postdoc?
I would be applying for TT positions in India, Canada and US.

Your time spent seems fairly representative of those in my field. There is not a large pool of people with similar experience as yours who will be under 30.

That is when I thought people applied for TT positions.

I wonder if the answer holds true if you add 10 years

Hiring committees do care about how many years it’s been since you got your PhD, but they more-or-less don’t care at all about what happened before you received your PhD.  I think you’ve misunderstood what people meant by “younger.”  I took 7 years in grad school and it caused no issues whatsoever.

I think that most places would ignore your age. In some places age discrimination is frowned upon, and can be illegal, though usually for much older applicants. But frowned upon in any case.
The few places that might are acting foolishly since it is your accomplishments and likelihood of success that should be the determining factor.
If you are in a place where this is endemic, think about finding a better place, though that is disruptive, of course. My former spouse didn't finish her doctorate until she was about 40 and went on to a great career in the US.

+1, and I will add: at least in the US, your age will almost certainly not appear on the job application. Hiring departments won't ask, and they won't know.

@academic Unless you put it on your resume, anyway.


text:
Improving a bound in a problem in "some cases" by using the extra information available in that problem which was unused in the earlier bounds
Suppose I am improving a bound in a problem in "some cases" by using the extra information available in that problem which was unused in the earlier bounds for that problem. However, in general, I am not able to show that my bound is better than the earlier bound. Can this result be considered to be a reasonable result?

this question is off topic here as it relates to a specific research problem. Try the math forum

There is no specific problem written out here, as far as I notice.

@TommiBrander Based on your profile, your research interests include PDE. This question may sound non-specific to you. But, can you imagine an English Literature professor would be able to answer the question?

@scaaahu No, presumably an professor in a field distant from maths could not answer the question. But there are many other such questions on the website. This is not a question about the content of research (how do I prove this or that bound). This is a question about academic writing and publishing. Maybe there is a meta-thread against this question, but at least the help center contains nothing about this question being off-topic.

I agree with @TommiBrander - asking whether improving a bound is generally publishable is not about a specific research problem. Actually, such a question would be applicable to some maths-related fields too. Moreover, we seem to allow analogous questions about algorithms, which a literature professor probably wouldn't be able to answer either.

The result might or might not be reasonable. The following would speak for it being interesting:

The special case is interesting. A good argument for this is that others have looked into it or that it has applications or other relevance in other fields of science or mathematics.
The method of proof is new.

But, in general, the only way to know is to write it down, talk about it and submit it to a journal and see what the response is.
When writing the result down, you will want to emphasize the relevance of the result and refer to similar results, applications and the new features in the proof.