text:
Are PhDs always obligated to stay involved in research, even after graduation?
I have the impression that PhDs are expected to always be involved in research and have (or eventually get) some sort of peer reviewed publication, even after graduation.
I'm gravely concerned now about this PhD forever "branding" me into sticking to research output when this isn't the right choice for me.  I'm even going as far as considering dropping my Ph.D despite already proposing and nearly being finished with data collection. If I do not keep up with the additional expectations, what value does my PhD have? I'm likely going to cut my losses and go straight to working since it seems like a PhD means I'll always be expected to be involved in research in some capacity.

Do you know phd holders who are not in Academia? What is your impression about them? Where did you get the premise from?

"I have the impression that PhDs are expected to always be involved in research and have (or eventually get) some sort of peer reviewed publication, even after graduation."  Honest question: What gave you that impression? (In my country, lots of people outside of academia have a PhD and, thus, carry a "Dr." in front of their name - politicians, public officials, managers, school teachers, lawyers, etc. I genuinely wonder why anyone would consider them to be active researchers.)

Who would be expecting it? And in what way would those people have any say in what you decide to do?

You write "obligated" in the title, but "expected" in the text. That latter word is much softer and more ambiguous here: people expect things that aren't true all the time. But "obligated" also requires someone to enforce the obligation. Who do you expect that to be? (i.e. are you considering if there's some law to limit the allowed occupations of people with a particular degree, or that the Doctor's Guild would send their henchmen to punish any doctors that desecrated their Order by taking on mundate jobs?)

There are many careers open to people with doctorates and, as people, other careers that they might pursue that don't require doctorates. Some people will "brand" you as a researcher if you have a PhD, but that is incorrect. You are free to choose any career for which you are interested and can develop the qualifications. Some technical PhDs actually go in to management rather than academia.
Another common career path for a PhD is in small teaching colleges that put much less emphasis on research and much more on good teaching at the undergraduate level. There is some expectation of research but it is usually of a different sort than was done for the doctorate. For example a math PhD might do their research in math education (pedagogy) rather than in math. Such a career can be very rewarding and much less stressful.
But the important thing to remember is that you only have one life and you want to find a way to live it that is satisfying to yourself and others who might depend on you. If you find research at a high level to be overly stressful, there are other options, but you have to find them, and you have to work to develop the skills they require. Alternatively, find a way to reduce the stress, though that may require professional help.

I once hired a PhD as a technologist. They liked the hands on lab work and didn’t like chasing funding. Worked out well for everyone.

Other comments will elaborate but I'm currently applying to a bunch of job matching and internship services right now that should help me find a job.

I am a math Ph.D. and working in industry. I personally do publish once in a while, not so much because my position requires me to do so, but more because I like it. However, I have multiple colleagues with Ph.D.s in software engineering and related fields, and they do not publish at all. This is absolutely fine.
In addition, I have some visibility into what happens to my wife's Ph.D. students in psychology. The vast majority of them go into clinical practice as psychotherapists, some into other areas in industry. Again, almost none of them publish ever again.
Yes, there are research positions in industry, and some of them expect or require you to publish. But there are also many, many others, where the Ph.D. is mainly a signaling device, showing that you are self-motivated and smart enough to get a Ph.D. You are essentially competing with other candidates without a Ph.D. but possibly with a few years of work experience. Your task is to explain to the hiring manager that the Ph.D. may not have given you specific industry experience, but that it shows you can dig into the specific field you are applying to.
Naturally, most questions on Academia.SE about academia-industry transitions lean towards "research side" emphasis. People who chose the "go into industry and never publish again" path are less likely to post here, because they simply tick differently. The picture you get here is likely somewhat distorted because of this selection bias.

I'm even going as far as considering dropping my Ph.D despite already proposing and nearly being finished with data collection.

Be very careful about this. You sound as if you thought that a Ph.D. would be a hindrance on your CV. It won't. Even if you graduate without publications, that is still better than quitting 80% through. Finishing the Ph.D. shows that you persist in face of difficulties. That is a valuable skill.
(Note that I am saying to be careful, not to persist no matter what. Depending on your circumstances, cutting your losses may indeed be smart, and knowing when to quit can be quite as valuable as persisting. You need to weigh the additional effort required to get that degree against the alternatives. Just don't think that a Ph.D. will be a hindrance - compared to the alternatives, it most likely won't.)

"be a hindrance"..."it won't". It might, though (depending on location).

I appreciate this answer since it's definitely more nuanced in this case. I consistently feel like I picked the wrong field sometimes since Experimental Psychology specifically is one that's research based and I didn't realize I never had the capacity to be a full blown researcher (despite the skills I've developed through this program) until recently. Folks have to sell themselves to employers as well and that's not something I've ever been good at doing at all nor have I developed that skill independently (there's someone who I consult bi-weekly that helps me with that though).

An outside voice can be extremely helpful, especially for those of us that spend most of their time in an academic environment. Your university may also offer other kinds of support, since it has a vested interest in their graduates finding suitable work.

@user111388 citation needed.

@fectin: Why don't you also ask for citations for the more general statement that it wouldn't be a hindrance?;) anyway, anecdotal evidence: in my company (and in others in my country), phds are - at the beginning of their industry emploment - to be better paid than people with only a master's, even if they have no industry-relevant skills. This makes them slighly worse than masters. (which does obviously not mean  they can never land a job, I am also a phd and got hired:))

"because they simply tick differently" - or because they are subject to very different external factors.

@zzmondo1 "[...] since Experimental Psychology specifically is one that's research based". This may blows your mind, but sciences in general are all research based. Doing a PhD is learning how to be a researcher. Academia is research, PhDs do research. All is research, in all fields. Which fields would you consider "less research based"? Not to go for a discussion here, but there is probably some misunderstanding around.

Certainly not. There's nothing stopping you from retiring and becoming a homemaker even if you have a PhD, as long as you have the $$$ to support yourself. Less extremely, there are plenty of jobs that ask for a PhD, but do not involve research. Example.
It sounds like you're unfamiliar with the job market (the assumption that you can "go straight to working" is a red flag). You should definitely get familiar with your local job market before making decisions like whether you should quit your PhD. Go to your local jobs portal and find what jobs are available that you can already do, and preferably apply + get some interview practice, before making such a decision.

I'm currently looking into job matching programs for those with disabilities like myself. I just got approved for vocational rehabilitation in addition to the Federal Workforce Recruitment Program so I'm going to see what I can get matched with that'll fit what I'm capable of doing at the moment. As for job markets, it looks like everything I can do is kind of scattered all over the country (US).

It has never occurred to me, nor have I previously heard any academic colleague express the idea, that a person who pursues a PhD should remain involved in research. Indeed, most of the PhD graduates that I know personally, are not involved in research!

There are also plenty of jobs that don't ask for a Ph.D., but for which someone with a Ph.D. might nevertheless be well qualified.

The short answer is no. The longer answer is you need to decide what you want to do. In your previous question you said you would graduate in May of 2024. That means you have done the lion's share of the work required to finish by now. If that is so, put the energy you are putting into worrying, complaining and posting on this site into finishing. A LOT of your concerns will dissolve when you have completed your dissertation, gotten your committee to sign off and are 100% ready to graduate. I know students like you that have gotten 90-95% of the way and quit. That is stupid bcuz it makes all of the challenges you worked through pointless! A PhD will help you significantly more than it will hurt you. Like publishing your work, it is up to you to push through and get it done. You can question. You can doubt. You can't quit!

Going to finally follow up with everyone from the bottom up (yours happened to be at the bottom). I'm going to be honest and say that as far as what I want to do goes, it's a bit out of my hands since I'm in vocational rehabilitation, the federal workforce recruitment program, and applying to two more programs that will match me with jobs (and even internships) which will accommodate me accordingly.

Your questions were not about any of that. Unless your other questions and comments are lies you do have some agency but you are panicking about all of these other things. The truth is your PI, your PhD committee, your PhD program and your institution have a vested interest in you graduating successfully. You need to concentrate on what is within your power to make that happen and do it, if you want to obtain a PhD. If not, quit. Its no more complicated than that.

@jason_white I see. Maybe a part of me is still thinking back to when my first PhD advisor dumped me before she was slated to leave my program anyway. My current advisor took me so he could graduate me but I am worried with the budget cuts and whatnot how much my institution is really vested in me graduating successfully at all.

@zzmondo1 Frankly, I think you are beyond help. A part of you seems to be looking for a way forward but you insist on dwelling on past, present or future challenges. The reason few ppl have terminal degrees is bcuz it is hard. That is not to discount individual challenges but it is to say you have to fight through them. Your previous comments suggest you are close to completion so I would say you have fought to get this far and should not give up BUT If you think the challenges are insurmountable just move on to something else that will you and us time.

@jason_white I've had a lot of folks insist on me dwelling but you're the first to explicitly yell me that I'm beyond help. That definitely hits hard. I should have also clarified but my last comment was meant for me to postulate as to why I'm doing what I'm doing now. I'm not going to quit and take into account concentrating on what I can do to achieve things.

@zzmondo1 Never listen to ppl that tell you to dwell on things you can't control. Doing that is destructive and a waste of time. That is a sure fire way of undermining anything that you are trying to accomplish. I am happy that those voices have not inspired you to quit. I wish you the best bcuz I know it is hard. The moment your committee signs off on your dissertation I guarantee you will feel so much better about your future.

Absolutely not. I quit my postdoc and academia for good 12 years ago. Never published anything since, never attended any conference, never got involved in any kind of research, not even at my current company. Made a lot more money than I could have in academia even if I became a tenured full prof, and have enjoyed my work a lot more than I did in academia.
Stephan Kolassa's and other answers are very good. My point of writing this is so that you know there are many like myself who have quit research and academia and never looked back. By all means, finish your Ph.D. if you are close. The value of your Ph.D. is simply that you can say: "Look, I can solve a difficult problem if I want to." The best way to sell yourself to an employer or a customer is to know the field of business inside out and know where you can add value. Then pick highlights of your past experience as proof of credential.
For the sake of completeness, I spent 7 years in academia: 4 for MS + Ph.D. at a top ten (whatever that means) U.S. engineering program, and a little less than 3 as a postdoc also in engineering. The Ph.D. + publications gave me immigration benefits and a good starting pay. I reviewed articles for a journal here and there only to help my friend, who is an associate editor, when he finds it hard to find another reviewer for a paper.
Basically, work on whatever the heck you want and for whoever the heck you want, as long as you can sustain yourself (food, housing, security, family obligations, etc.)

Nope.
I'm in industry now and doing a part-time PhD in nothing related to my profession.
I have no plans on going into academia afterwards.
You have no obligations to anyone by virtue of having your PhD.

Publish or perish applies only to academic position which require promotion after hired as assistant professor. Then you have to do research to be promoted to associate professor then to full professor. In such cases, universities put time limit on promotion, and if that is not met they let you go. So you may follow other advices given by others for other jobs.

I have the impression that PhDs are expected to always be involved in research and have (or eventually get) some sort of peer reviewed publication, even after graduation.

Only if you want to. I am a mere BSc, but I work in a team that develops mathematical modelling software, where something like half the staff have doctorates. We are "commercial R&D" if it needs a label, and will occasionally do a presentation at a conference, but our usual output is software and patents.

I have the impression that PhDs are expected to always be involved in research and have (or eventually get) some sort of peer reviewed publication, even after graduation.

If you mean outside of Academia then it is statistically unlikely that your PhD means much, not to mention following up on it.
I am now trying to recall one of the PhDs I met or worked with in the 30+ years I have worked in high tech across the world. And I cannot think of any, out of the maybe 20-50 I can think of. Myself included.
This of course does not account for the very few who were expected and wanted to do actual research.
Out of sheer curiosity, I had a look at our current government - there are 4 PhDs and the last thing they are doing is research.


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How to do research when your teaching workload is very high?
I finished my post-doc and am now faculty of computer science in India. My university was established just 5-6 years ago, and I was hired 7 months ago. My teaching workload is very high: two classes of 70 students each, no TAs. I am always either in the Head of the department's room or in the class. I am honest about this thing; I am not complaining.
My research area is theoretical computer science, but it seems that I will not be able to continue my research due to my workload.  In my university, there is no motivation for research (no funding, and it does not matter to the university), but I am interested on my own accord. My contract is vague (just says "teaching and research activities").
Please suggest me some solution that allow me to do research at the same university.
Clarifications:

The real problem is that I have to prepare the teaching slides and preparations at home, time which I could have used for research. I try to wake up early to do research, but half of my time goes in preparing slides and teaching. I try to work on holidays for two-three hours.
I spend so much time in the department head's office because the head needs to sign forms for students. I have to wait 2-3 hours per day, along with the other faculty members, until he is ready to meet with me. Yes, this is inefficient, but trying to improve this would probably be seen as disrespectful.

Did you talk about the problem to anyone in charge there that could help you, guide you, or solve the problem?

If other faculty members are waiting at the same time, can't one person wait and notify everybody?

It is unimaginable to me that you are spending 15 hours/week just waiting to see your department chair. You might consider another question to ask about this specifically; even taking into account the subtleties of Indian culture, it seems like there has to be a way around this.

@MitchellvanZuylen Or, y'know, have the department head notify people when he is around, eliminating everybody's need to wait for them. Or put whatever needs to be signed into a designated letter box. Or eliminate the need for the department head to sign off on classroom papers (??) entirely. Like, this entire situation is so far removed from how I expect a university to work that I really don't know what to say about it.

I was once a student in India in engineering (undergrad and Masters). Based on my experience and what I would change about it, I would suggest having TAs for your course (intelligent and motivated students). Many students in India would want these sort of opportunities but don't because universities. And if you can pay them all the better, but I would hazard a guess that motivated students would do it without pay as well.

@rma -- Can you confirm whether you have the option to work while waiting?

@
cag51
Yes but it may be crowed sometime. More than five persons.

I think in an interview somewhere Karen Uhlenbeck mentioned that at the time when she published some of her best papers she was teaching two courses per semester, so it's definitely doable.

In a comment you said "I have to wait sometimes 2 hours some time 3 hours". Assuming you don't have to prepare for the meeting during this time, you could use this time for some or all of the following:
1. You could bring hardcopies of papers or books with you to read over during this time.
2. You could bring with you a paper you've been asked to referee, and work on that.
3. If you can have a laptop computer with you, then you could spend the time looking over papers or books or preprints related to your research that you have downloaded to your laptop.
4. If you can have with you a laptop computer with internet access, then you could spend the time scanning over online journal table-of-contents pages and paper abstracts, or looking though sites such as arxiv, for publications that you might want to look at in more detail at a later time.
5. If you can have with you a laptop computer with internet access, then you could spend the time downloading papers relevant to your research, rather than doing this possibly lengthy (depending on the internet speed you have) drudgery time-sink work at other times, times that would be better spent on research-related tasks that require uninterrupted periods of time.
6. You can also take care of teaching tasks such as lesson planning, writing lecture notes, grading student papers, and/or updating daily student attendance records. The last is probably not something you have to do, but I included because it is intended to be suggestive of any of the many mindless but time-consuming tasks that you probably need to take care of. This would free up time for research that you would be spending on this stuff at other times.
At least some of these are things that people do when a lot of their time is spent travelling by train or subway or plane, and this is certainly not new. For example, the author of this review of Hime's 1894 book The Outlines of Quaternions begins by mentioning he (pronoun almost certainly correct) became acquainted with quaternions around 1862 during one of his many and frequent steamship trips made from Holyhead to Kingstown [a 64 mile trip across the Irish sea to Kingstown (southeast portion of Dublin), lasting approximately 5 hours between 6 PM and midnight].
For what it's worth, I did #4 a lot for years in a non-academic job I use to have (laid off a few years ago, but not for that or any other performance reason), and during the past few hours I've been doing #5 (math journal volumes at google-books) while taking care of contract work I now have (editing math items for a couple of high stakes graduate school admissions tests).

+1 Laptop would have been my suggestion, but you did a better presentation that I would have.

Thanks Dave L Renfro

I should mention that #5 is no longer much of a problem these days, downloading articles is basically instantaneous even with quite slow Internet.

@Tom: I agree, and after this appeared I realized that I might have put too much emphasis on #5 by including it separately. In my defense, I was actually doing it at the time, but with more time-consuming volumes of a certain math publication from the 19th to early 20th centuries (downloading from google books; something I've done off and on for many years), so #5 was a bit on my mind at the time. And even if the download time is only 30 seconds or so, when you have over 100 to do . . .

Actually, it seems that most of the files for the volumes of the periodical I mentioned are not all that large. However, there have been others (e.g. scientific society proceedings) in which the volumes were routinely over 300 MB, and a month or two ago there was one in which two of the volumes were each a little over 1 GB (one of those two took nearly 90 minutes, but local internet speed was a bit slow when I was downloading it).

Let's rephrase your problem:

I am being paid to unload boxes for 8 hours a day
I would like to play soccer, but all my time is dedicated either to family, sleep, or work unloading boxes
How can I play soccer more than a few hours a week?

Renegotiate your contract, change the job, or cut sleep/family/personal time to accommodate your other desires. There is no other way.

"Get better at unloading boxes" should also work.

@Allure: I suppose "Get worse at unloading boxes" is another (untenable) possibility, where "getting worse" means doing the job less thoroughly so that it takes less time, although to be fair, it's hard to see how to put this into practice for unloading boxes (which I actually did during Summer 1978 at a university bookstore).

That's not a very good analogy. A marginally better one would be "I was hired by my local football club to play soccer. But, the job also involves a lot of unboxing. In theory my primary role is soccer (because football club!); however, my boss cares more about the boxes. Turns out boxes come with a lot of timecruft like cataloguing, and sitting in the club manager's office for hours to report on boxes. At the very least I don't want to lose my football skills. Does anyone have any tricks to speed up cataloguing/unboxing". I don't think "Quit football or stop sleeping." is a good answer.

@TasosPapastylianou, that's not the case here I'm afraid. The university of the OP is a mostly teaching university. So he was hired to mainly unbox, while "lured" by a promise to be part of a soccer team and the prestige and freedom that goes with it. As I've explained in my answer.

There are already a few ideas how you can use your waiting time more effectively, but what I don't understand is why you have to wait for your department chair at all. If you and your colleagues all spend hours daily waiting around, it's quite frankly in the clear best interest of everybody, including the department chair, to reconsider the processes in play. Simple, obvious ideas include:

Having the department chair (or their secretary) notify everybody when he comes in to get your stuff signed.
Establishing a post box where you put stuff that needs to be signed.
The department chair making rounds when they come in to sign everybody's papers.
Or getting rid of signing all that stuff in the first place. I don't know what specifically you need to get signed all the time, but if it happens daily it is certainly too micro-managey and your university should seriously consider why it does not trust faculty to do their daily job without the approval of somebody higher up. I understand that cultures vary, but everybody (including the department head) would profit tremendously from a more empowered faculty. As you say you are still a very young university, so there should still be hope to re-consider your general way of working.

That all being said, it is not clear that doing these things would actually give you more time to do research. You say that the university does not care about research at all, so there is a distinct possibility that at some point all of this waiting-around time is eliminated, but now you are expected to teach 3 courses rather than 2. At this point it's back to aaaaa's answer - if your university does not value research, you will never be able to convince them to give you time to do it.

I rather doubt that OP, as a junior teaching faculty, has the ability to implement these reforms, as obvious and needed as they might be. Still, +1 from me for the last paragraph, which is a very good point.

@cag51 Not directly implement, but I have to believe that there is a way to convince leadership that teachers spending a significant amount of their paid work time waiting around is good for nobody. This being a very young university maybe that's still growing pains, and people are open for suggestions? Maybe the department head simply isn't aware how much time gets burned waiting for them? If they are aware and are still unwilling to change anything at all, it might honestly be time to move on for OP, because that sounds toxic as hell.

This is a very common problem nowadays, unfortunately. Academics struggling to get positions take up mostly teaching posts, lured by mostly-teaching institutions that advocate their posts as standard academic positions having potential for "research".
In my estimation you have about four options:

Work extremely hard to make time for research. Make yourself extremely effective. And work yourself 24/7. This way you'd get some research done, but this is not a sustainable work habit.

Work very hard as above, while minimizing and in fact neglecting your teaching job so that you squeeze more time for research. This is not sustainable, but after two to three years you'd establish a good research to be able to move to a better university.

Try moving now to another more research oriented university.

Try to renegotiate your workload (not really possible by your description though).

After 2 or 3 years, you might if you are lucky have good enough research to move to a more research-focused university

I know this situation seems bleak, but it is possible to do research in these conditions.  Karen Uhlenbeck mentioned that she wrote some of her best papers when she was teaching two courses per semester.

Preparing slides is a daunting task. However, you get better with time and hopefully you will teach the same courses next year, so, breath in breath out, you will have some time to do research in one year or so.

Here they change course each year.

It's not a big change all the time, isn't it? So, basically after one-two cycles you should have your slide stack that requires only minimal changes.

@Rma But how many possible courses are there for you to rotate through?  Eventually you should be repeating classes some, no?

Was going to offer a similar suggestion, next quarter / semester / year, you can update and re-use the slides. If you teach a new class, you could try to appoach the professor who taught it before you and ask to swap slides or course material. With 70 students in the class, you're presumably teaching introductory or mid-level CS, not a seminar on bleeding edge topics. Surely you can review existing slides on slideshare or other online sources. Remember, it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be great. (or at least, good). And congrats on landing a teaching position!

@
Kimball
30 b.tech course I can get any one of them.

I can feel your frustration. But as others have alreasy mentioned, you get the hang of things after some time. In my case it took me the first 1-2 years to work faster and more efficiently when i started my new role.
However, before you get to the grips of things you may need to work during evenings and weekends. Universities with high teaching loads do make it difficult for academics to research, but if you want to improve your cv and perhaps move onto your next job this may be the only solution.
Or if possible, talk to your hod about this issue, and whether you could spend your time more efficiently? (I.e. visiting hods room on specific days of the week rather than everyday?)

I hope summers are available for research.

Summer are basically designing documents related to the course curriculum. There are 8 holidays in a year including winter and summer.

I know that the question is serious, but sometimes a bit of humor is fine...

... review the 3 papers of my first 3 PhDs ...

...go to international conferences

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Undergrad: is it reasonable to have a syllabus policy about prolonged student absences from my course?
To establish course policy for prolonged student absences which lead to a poor grade half way into the course, do the following modifications to boundary conditions in the syllabus seem reasonable?

course staff needs to be notified prior to prolonged absences
course staff cannot doubly-educate/train students who are behind.
TA meeting/zoom time is for understanding learning objectives
previously covered, not private lectures/tutorials for catching up
due to missed lectures.
students with a score below 50% by week X will be recommended to drop
the course.
an incomplete grade will only be given when there are 3 or fewer
missed assignments (not exams).
students not in compliance with the above conditions
will receive a grade based on the total score at semester end

Unfortunately, it seems that boundary conditions in the syllabus need to be continually appended, because if not, students potentially could just take time off from the course and try to salvage everything upon return.  Thus, guard rails in the form of syllabus policy are needed to keep students on task & timelines.

Could you please clarify what exactly it is you are asking? Right now this feels more like a statement/description than a question.

Talk to your institution. There are almost certainly policies in place for cases like this, and you should not bake your own.

Modified the question about what's being asked.  I will need to research if there is institutional policy. fyi - i never want personal/private medical data/information from students.  My chair states that there's no dept policy on prolonged absences resulting in poor performance, and that salvaging rests with the individual faculty.

Is attendance compulsory? Then it makes sense to require a note from a doctor. It does not have to state medical details, just acknowledging inability to attend. Is there course mark determined mainly by a final exam or by various smaller marks throughout the year? That will change the procedure strongly. In case of one final exam the only concern is that the student sufficiently prepares for it. Is there only one exact date for the exam or can the student come at various dates? That also changes a lot.

Prolonged absences aren't necessarily planned absences.

How does this address absences outside the student's control, eg, in hospital for an emergency, then travel a long distance to another hospital for major heart surgery? It is necessary that everyone be reasonable about absences of all kinds.

Taking these a few at a time (and writing to teaching situations as I understand them to be in the US):

course staff needs to be notified prior to prolonged absences
course  staff cannot doubly-educate/train students who are behind.
TA meeting/zoom time is for understanding learning objectives previously covered, not private lectures/tutorials for catching up due to missed lectures.

These are OK policy-wise, but have no teeth, or a penalty associated with enforcement (your last item notwithstanding).  What do you do for the students who inevitably just don't choose to go along with this?
For the second item, rigorously publishing and adhering to your prerequisites should largely address that, but there will always be cases where students who have passed their prereqs still don't understand the material well enough to thrive in your course.  Welcome to post-secondary teaching.  It may not be your responsibility to teach them that material, but in today's teaching environment, where you can scaffold a course in multiple ways without doing much work, you at least owe it to the students to tell them how to catch up.  Also, it would be wonderful to communicate to the teachers/departments teaching and grading the prereqs when the students don't understand the material in courses that they got passing grades for -- but this may be a matter for your department chair to diplomatically take up.
If by "behind", you just mean that you don't want to simply repeat lecture material for students that don't come to lecture, yes, that's frustrating.  Perhaps you can just add an attendance requirement to the grade scheme, and make it worth enough to have teeth.  Alternatively, you could make your lectures available on video. Yes, I know that has impacts on attendance, and nobody likes lecturing to empty rooms.  This is an issue many of us deal with.  The most success I've had with this was to personally manage access privilege to each lecture, with students who needed access for legitimate reasons emailing me with their excuses.  This is marginally more work for me.  Also, COVID isolation policies forced me to abandon this plan, but those are going away.  It felt manageable when I tried it, though, and I believe I'll go back to it.
For the third item, write it down all you want to, but it remains up to you to train the TAs how to deal with such situations, or it won't make any difference what you actually write down.

students with a score below 50% by week X will be recommended to drop the course.

My own opinion is that this is unwise.  Curricula and requirements are very complicated things.  Depending on what your course is, and who needs to take it to graduate, this action may have many unpleasant unintended consequences -- for the students, for teachers of "upstream" courses, for your department.  I'd urge you to discuss this with more stakeholders before simply implementing it and letting the chips just fall where they may. I've seen policies like what you'd like to implement in action, and had a ton of very real problems with them.  The way it worked for me, as an academic advisor, was to receive a list of students who were told to drop an important engineering prereq (an some of the letters the students received were really poorly worded and demoralizing), and it was essentially a list of underrepresented minorities that I advised.  "On-ramp" issues for certain students are very real, and need to be identified and fixed.  My own attitude is that if our admissions department is accepting students, then we owe those students every effort to thrive, and excluding them from classes doesn't meet that goal.  In the case I encountered, my reaction was to go to the Deans with my observation, and tell them that if we couldn't find a better way to resolve this, that I would be following up with a civil rights attorney on behalf of my advisees, as these students were being separated from 4-year STEM degrees in ways that might not have been fair or necessary.  In response, we found a better way to identify these students before they found themselves in trouble, and to move them through a slower sequence of prereqs that would give them a real opportunity to hit full speed and still graduate in 4 years with an engineering degree.
While I know the situation you're trying to fix is right up there with the most frustrating things a post-secondary teacher can encounter, I don't believe that your policy can really fix things.
It would be much better to formally warn students in this situation that they are very likely to fail the course, and let them make their own decisions about what action they need to take.  It would be Much, Much better to identify those students very likely to fail before their failure (or forced withdrawal) is carved in stone, and help them to identify what needs to be done to pass.  It would be much, much, much better for your school to find a way to deal with on-ramp issues more effectively, and this involves the professors that notice them making a bit of noise.

an incomplete grade will only be  given when there are 3 or fewer missed assignments (not exams).

This seems like a reasonable policy on incompletes.  I'd probably try to word it better, and pop it in the syllabus, and make sure students hear and understand your incomplete policy on the first lecture day.  My personal preference would be to provide the date certain by which grades of incompletes must be discussed, leaving an "out" for students with true last minute dire emergencies.

students not in compliance with the above conditions will receive a   grade based on the total score at semester end

This need not be said.  In fact, EVERY student should be graded the same way, which is how you say the grade will be generated in your syllabus.  Adding a line like "missing items will receive grades of zero" should be sufficient.
My own preference is to not write a syllabus as if students are expected to find themselves in trouble, or for those students likely to find themselves in trouble.  Write your syllabus to let every student know what is acceptable behavior in the course, and hold them to it.  My personal opinion is that until you know the students, they all deserve the same answers to the same questions, and that not doing so is letting confirmational biases work their way in to your processes, and that's sub-ideal.

I have found that half of my course syllabi consists of "needs not to be said" stuff ("cheating will be reported to the disciplinary committee", etc.). I think emphasising things that should be clear but have historically not been is not the worst thing in the world.

@xLeitix Unfortunately, you are right. The obvious is not obvious. Especially today, every loophole becomes a slithergap, an escape route, a bottomless pit.

What stemmed my question was that a student missed the first two months of everything (comp labs, lectures, quizzes, homeworks, etc.) due to "personal reasons," and is now back with one month left, and "can not afford to drop, so I'll just complete the assignments, and meet with you and the TA every week as a substitute for missed lectures."   Would it be fair to other students who participated in everything to not deduct for late submissions, missed attendance?  Can this student get an A+?

Another thing, I am adjunct, and am not on campus when not lecturing.  This is no different from a calc instructor I once had who was a mathematician at Ford Motor Company.  I enjoyed the fact that she was at Ford and unavailable, because it forced me to realize that I need to get my act in gear, since she won't be around for help.  Come to think of it, one my grad nuc engin profs worked at Ford full-time.   Thus, I don't have office hours -- the TAs do.   I also don't have that kind of time, so students are informed during course intro to meet with TAs.

@wjktrs - then wouldn't it be a lot more straightforward to just make a policy on the penalties for late work that apply to everybody?  For example, in one class, I don't accept late hw and I drop the lowest hw grade.

@Scott Seidman - wouldn't you eventually get pushback from the dept, however, that it's impossible not to accept late homeworks/labs?  What if a student misses 2 months like my student did? Graduate later?

There are draconian policies, and there are less draconian policies.  For example, for hw, I just don't take late work.  It prevents me from getting solution sets out to students.  If a student needs to miss a hw, it can be dropped.  For major assignments, like lab reports, I accept late work, with a half letter grade penalty, and students can choose whether they hand in something less than stellar, or wait to hand in something better with a penalty.

@wjktrs If a student misses two months, then they will (1) get a zero on a few hw's (2) lose a half letter on major assignments (should they eventually turn them in), and (3) probably do very bad on their exams.  Their grade would be calculated, and if they fail, they fail.  I've been doing things this way for years, and have yet to receive major pushback.   Students with major issues, like health, can always negotiate for an Incomplete, but there need to be real reasons.  Students needing real accommodations have routes to that, as well.

Needless to say, what I've written here is more than backed up in my syllabus, and I spend about a quarter of the first lecture going through the rules.

@Scott Seidman - Thanks for the wonderful comments and answer, which I have accepted.  I'm in stats, which is in school of engineering.  Students in the engineering stats course typically have no issues. But students in the biomed stats course (n>130) in psych, chem, neuro, pre-med seem to be in their "comfort zone" too much.  Of late, I say to myself "I wish I only taught engineering students for everything, since I know they would say "you're class is not that challenging for me."  Not true for biomed students, which have much more excess baggage -- hand-holding, babysitting.

In a comment on another answer, you provided some context for the question:

What stemmed my question was that a student missed the first two months of everything (comp labs, lectures, quizzes, homeworks, etc.) due to "personal reasons," and is now back with one month left, and "can not afford to drop, so I'll just complete the assignments, and meet with you and the TA every week as a substitute for missed lectures."

"Hard cases make bad law." This is a specific set of circumstances that have arisen this year, and may not arise in future.  Your proposed syllabus modifications presumably can't be retrospective, so they don't help you deal with this individual. I would therefore suggest focussing on the bigger picture. The following questions seem to be relevant, and should be addressed in your syllabus:

If a student misses a class, how should they catch up? At least some student absences will be for indisputably-valid reasons (you probably don't want to deal with someone throwing up in your classroom!), so explain what a student should do if they miss a class. Do you have recordings of lectures? What other resources/support are available? How does a student find out what - specifically - was covered in each lecture? Which textbooks cover the material? You could certainly include a note here that "catching up is the student's responsibility, and staff cannot be expected to repeat a class".

What does a student need to do to pass the course? No doubt this is already covered in your syllabus, but your question suggests that your current policy doesn't actually reflect your expectations. If you believe it is essential that students complete all homeworks, or attend 80% of classes, or get 60% on Assignment 1, or whatever - then build this into your grading policy. Obviously, as part of this you may need to consider your policy on late/unsubmitted assignments.

What are your expectations for office hours/TA support/etc? How much time is on offer? How will you manage a scenario where multiple students show up with different questions? Once you have set these rules, you need to be firm about enforcing them (and support your TAs to enforce them too).

If all of these questions are answered clearly and fully, it seems like your current situation would be avoided (or at least, could be dealt with by reference to your published rules).

+1 for “hard cases make bad law.” Or more succinctly: if you don’t have a late penalty and the student uses your regular office hours without depriving other students, then they’re not really doing anything wrong. The only law change that really seems necessary is perhaps a better late policy

These seem reasonable, and I don't see any real problem with doing as you propose. Still, since you asked....

An incomplete grade will only be given when there are 3 or fewer missed assignments (not exams). Students not in compliance with the above conditions will receive a grade based on the total score at semester end.

The first sentence of this is the only one that really "needs" to be in there, in that it is a policy that students could not otherwise be expected to know. For that matter, you should be sure that this policy is enforceable; incomplete grades may be handled by the college rather than the instructor. (In particular, I am concerned that you may end up denying incomplete grades to students with many missed assignments, when the reason for the missed assignments is precisely the reason that the incomplete is needed in the first place).

course staff needs to be notified prior to prolonged absences

I am not sure what the purpose of this is. Prolonged absences may not be planned, and even if they are, the student only needs to contact you if they will be unable to meet deadlines or other course requirements.

course staff cannot doubly-educate/train students who are behind.
TA meeting/zoom time is for understanding learning objectives previously covered, not private lectures/tutorials for catching up due to missed lectures.

I think this is better left unsaid. Your office hours are arguably for the students to use however they see fit; however, if multiple students show up, you can prioritize the ones who have been attending lecture (or divide time evenly). Outside of office hours, you can bluntly refuse to do anything except answer specific questions that were not covered in lecture.

students with a score below 50% by week X will be recommended to drop the course.

There is no need to tell them this; you can just reach out at week X. Or, you could put this in your syllabus instead of reaching out individually at week X. Doing both seems like overkill.

In addition to what the others have written, please double-check your institution's policies. At my last university, your syllabus policy as written would violate the university's rule codex, since students with a legitimate reason for their absences are entitled to certain accommodations (within reason). These included prolonged medical issues, emergencies, specific disabilities, etc. . Not differentiating between a student who just didn't turn up and student who was hospitalised would not have been permissible.
Even if there is no official policy, I would encourage you to check what the guidelines are for such cases. For instance, my university had an "equivalent work" guideline, where students who wanted to still have the same grade would have to show equivalent work (within the constraints of disability) to those who took the course the intended way. If a student missed 2/3rds of the class, it's patently absurd that they would be able to follow the remaining third as usual while also submitting all the late assignments and using all the TA time. Since there is no way for them to achieve the equivalent work, and the grading policy of what needs to be achieved applies equally to everyone by default, they fail (or withdraw, or incomplete depending on your institution).

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Is it ethical to be a co-author on every paper that comes out of your group? Especially if these leads to authoring hundreds of papers per year?
I just learned about a professor whose group published 300 papers in 1 year. I found that the professor is an author or co-author on every single one of them.
I understand the argument that in some fields, PIs deserve to be the last author on all papers from their group. I am not soliciting opinions about the reasonableness of this practice in general. I imagine that in most cases, the professor can reasonably track all the papers, and there is no issue.
But certainly there is no way a PI can make an intellectual contribution to 300 papers per year, right? Does an ethical issue arise when the supervisor's group is so large that the supervisor is getting authorship on papers they are barely aware of?

This doesn't really seem like a question that can be answered in any meaningful way, but that nature article was kind of interesting.

"What are your insights?" really isn't a good type of question for this site.

This professor knows more emojis than I do.

The link OP includes does not say that this is from a single professor, but from the "Biomedicine Laboratory, Department of Life Sciences,
Presidency University." If this is a large lab, then this is possible. If the head of the department insists to be included as author on each paper, then he may have 300 publications in a year, but that doesn't mean anything.

Big boats carry lots of people.

I took a stab at editing the question to bring it more in line with what we can answer here.

@cag51, unfortunately you have changed the meaning dramatically.

Maybe it is hidden somewhere that I missed, but the image doesn't make the claim that I can see that someone claimed authorship on all the papers. The "we" could well be an entire department with several independent groups of authors.

@Buffy - actually, the original version said: "(Yes, he is on all 300, I checked his Facebook)."

@Buffy Let’s leave to the OP to decide whether they are OK with the change or not. On a side note, that’s why it’s better to close as soon as possible off-topic or unclear questions, to avoid such kind of questions being answered before the necessary adjustments.

@Buffy - actually, the more I review it, the more I find your objection puzzling. To me, this is an absolutely exemplary edit that transforms a rant into an interesting question without greatly changing the meaning. If you think that the question was unsalvageable and no edits should be attempted, then it's very curious that you would post an answer. Anyway, I deliberately didn't hammer the question back open, so the normal process can play out.

@cag51, I answered the original version. I think the answer is still valid, as, in some circumstances there isn't an ethical issue. I don't deny that there could be one in some other circumstances. But do we really want this to be a judgement or condemnation of the practice in some fields of the PI always being last author? I know some feel that, in itself, is unethical, but I withhold judgement as it isn't my field.

@cag51 Hum, that was a good edit. Academia.SE is unironically becoming my writing skills improvement coach.

Thanks. Buffy had a point though; we don't want an opinion poll about whether a field's common practices are a good idea. Took a stab at improving further.

This is the Google Scholar page of the University. https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_org&hl=en&org=6760821013347586605. I doubt that his name is on all of the papers

Who cares?  Personally I'm disimpressed by this kind of publication record; I assume someone who publishes so much could easily make a bigger contribution to their field by concentrating their work on fewer, more significant pieces of work.  If this person is subject to some perverse incentives that encourage this kind of behavior, then we should work on changing the incentives.

It is impossible to make a "significant" contribution to 300 papers a year. In my opinion this is scientific misconduct. See for example the "The White Bull effect" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1734216/

The threshold for significant contributions is much less than 300 papers/year.  Else this person would already be recognized as a genius.  Of course the solution is well-known: restrict funding applications so individual applicants can list at most 10 or 15 or 20 papers over some set timeframe in their CV, thereby removing the incentive to co-author 300 papers a year.

As much as I find this example baffling, the standards of contribution may be low. If you sit down in a meeting on Monday and say "try X primer protein", by Tuesday it solves an issue 10 research groups were having, they each quickly churn out a paper (common in COVID times in biomed), and by the next week you have your name on 10 papers, all for less than half an hour of work. In more regular parts of academia, the technique would likely be published as a separate (highly-cited) paper, but it also does not always make sense. This case (IMHO) is bad, but then how does one set a threshold?

How does 168 in a year sound? That's three a week, or so? The reason I ask is simply that Erdos managed that many in 1966. ... but only around 65 in 1958, the next highest year.

This article seems relevant.

It probably wouldn't be possible in some fields like mathematics, but in other fields it might be entirely appropriate as the criteria for authorship varies.
In particular a PI of a large and well-funded research group who has hands in a lot of pies simultaneously might show up as (usually) "last" author on all of the work done by the group. They make the research possible by drawing in funds and approving research areas of students and postdocs.
Note also that in some areas like high energy physics a given paper might have hundreds of authors all of whom were essential to carrying out the research. All those people likely work on several things simultaneously.
And, in almost every system there will be numeric outliers. Special conditions might apply that wouldn't in almost every case. Someone with a huge circle of collaboration, for example, who is able to spark a-ha moments in their colleagues, breaking logjams. I think Erdős must have been like that in math, but not at the 300/year level.
To answer the headline question, if it were "gift authorship" then it wouldn't be appropriate, but the individual circumstances matter. One can't expect that the number of papers per year is normally distributed.

Note, of course, that the linked image says "we published", not giving context as to who we are. If that was the head of a department, writing for the entire faculty and students, it would be entirely possible, not even especially remarkable in a large department.

I can get your idea, but still, 300 papers in 1 year? This stinks. It makes me wonder about having bots help writing (as this professor actually mentioned he wrote 100 book chapters that year).

@Jef, one would need to look at the journals. I don't know whether they are reputable or not, but, again, the distribution likely has a long tail. And they are unlikely to be sole authorship in any case. I doubts that it is bots, though.

Seems possible that a large biomedical lab might well have gotten some 300 papers (perhaps many short notes) out on Covid - folks were doing a LOT of work...

@Jef, possibly if you code-up the bots yourself, and train them yourself, then you get credit for anything they write. :)

@Jef We have had these biobots in academia for a loooong time, they are called students.

I voted to reopen


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Will it weaken my application if the professor only "co-signs" a letter of recommendation written by a post-doc?
I am going to apply for PhDs. Since I am applying to a large number of programs, one of my referees gave me two options:

Reduce the number of programs I apply to (or at least, the number of letters of recommendation that this professor must provide), or
List the post-doc who mentored me as the referee, and the professor will only co-sign the letter.

In choosing between these options, I am trying to understand: how much will it weaken the recommendation letters if the postdoc is the referee and the professor only co-signs?

15 is indeed ... a lot. Do you still have time to narrow down your targets?

related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/179167/in-how-many-universities-should-i-apply-for-phd-in-us

I consolidated some of the confusion in the comments into an edited version of the question. Please feel free to make further edits if I missed anything.

One question: I assume two other professors are also writing letters, and they don't mind writing 15 of them for you. Are these others letters very strong? Or is the above professor your primary research supervisor, and the other letters are just writing generic things?

How it will be perceived is difficult/impossible to say, since it is individuals that receive the letters who will judge. Perhaps not a lot of problems, though. The co-sign will help.
But, your path seems pretty clear. Prioritize your applications, with the professor being the recommender of record on the most important ones and the postdoc on the others.
Note, however, that "most important" doesn't necessarily mean the highest ranking universities, but the ones you think have the best chance of admitting you. It is good to apply to high ranked universities, but sub-optimal if you restrict your applications to just those. Make a wide search.


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As a PhD student in theoretical physics, what fraction of my time (if any) should I spend on background material rather than my research problem?
I am a theoretical physics PhD student in the initial years. There is something which has been bothering me ever since I have started my PhD till today i.e whether one should  completely focus on research all the time? Let me clarify:
I understand that PhD is about becoming an independent researcher and that is why most of the time should be spent on the research problem and reading relevant papers. But as everyone knows in research one picks up relevant tools along the way and a consequence of this is that one learns things only specific to the problem and may miss the global picture or may still have gaps in understanding.
For example, I work in Quantum Field Theory and often I am working in super specific areas then I wonder whether I should divide my time between research and reading background material of my field i.e excellent books on QFT like that of Coleman, Weinberg ( properly from page 1 onwards) etc( coursework is often fast, so It is not sufficient).
My advisor says that I should completely focus on my research problem all the time but I feel like by doing this I would not have a good grasp of the overall framework, QFT in this context.
What should one do? Devote all time to research or divide it between research and reading of important texts? Of course when I say divide the time, it is like 80-20 between research and parallel reading

Are you in a location with a seminar in your field so that you also get a sense of what is going on by listening to other people present their research?  I found that I learned a lot of the broader ideas in the field through osmosis in this way.  (But a couple weeks ago, there was something basic that I didn't know that tripped me up while reviewing a paper.)

Normally I would say you should listen to your advisor.  But, in this case, I'm wondering whether there is a mismatch between your ambitions and your advisor's ambitions (for you).  The right strategy is probably different depending on whether you're aiming to just produce enough results for a dissertation and perhaps enough papers to get a permanent position that is mostly teaching and relatively little research or if you're aiming to eventually do research that makes you a Nobel Prize candidate.  (Of course your aims should depend on your talent level!)

I don’t have a full answer, and what I do have is anecdotal, but from experience the background research bleeds into your research problem quite a bit, and I would say is almost an extension of your research question. For me, it’s general relativity, and as I’ve come to better understand GR at its more fundamental levels, my more specific research topics have benefited greatly from new perspectives and new tools I can use because I better understand the fundamentals.

You should specify which country you are in.  Expectations about the length of PhD programmes can vary significantly from country to country, and that will affect the answer.

My recommendation is to figure out roughly how much time it's reasonable and sustainable long run for you to think really hard (maybe this is one or two hours a day?), and then commit to spending that much time every day on your research problem. Then you want to also not waste the rest of your working day, even if it's not being spent on hard thinking. Learning stuff is one very reasonable use of this lower key time, another reasonable use is lightly skimming papers so you have a better idea of what's going on in the field, as is doing some research work that doesn't require serious thinking (sitting down and doing some calculation you know how to do, for example). That said, once you've gotten far enough to start writing papers or your thesis, I'd suggest prioritizing writing pretty heavily among these secondary activities.

One of the important things I realised during my PhD is that I can't work at 100% efficiency 100% of the time. I found that by procrastinating by doing "useful" things, rather than, say, er, idly browsing the internet, I'd become much more productive over a longer period of time. Maths inspiration only hits at odd times and infrequently so -- at least for me -- and knowing when to sit down, drop everything, and do some work was a really, really useful skill to develop. Seminars, reading around the subject, solving other interesting problems etc are all good examples of good procrastination.

I don't think there is a "one-size-fits-all" answer that will work for everyone. I think it's useful to be aware of two extreme scenarios, as well as a few practical considerations. Then you need to decide how to spend your time.
The first extreme is that you narrowly focus only on your research problem. For example, let's say you are computing electroweak loop corrections. You can spend all of your time learning how to use special software to calculate Feynman diagrams, intricacies of the Standard Model, and generally become an expert calculator. If you work hard and are lucky, you may produce several papers in your area. However, you may find it difficult to move into a new area, or to understand the context for what you are working on. By hyperfocusing, you may also not have the feeling of "joy" that comes from satisfying your curiosity and learning new things. On top of this, you may find your knowledge consists of a hodgepodge of unrelated tricks, instead of seeing and understanding interconnections between methods you would get learning things systematically.
The other extreme is that you spend all of your time reading a general book like Weinberg, cover to cover. (And it will take all of your time to read and understand every word in Weinberg). If this goes well, you will be exposed to a lot of topics and you will gain a systematic understanding of the foundations of the field. You will likely be able to understand research papers more quickly and ask better questions. However, you won't be directly solving a research problem and you will not be learning things on the cutting edge, which means you won't be making demonstrable progress toward your PhD. You should also be aware that Weinberg's book in particular is notoriously difficult to learn from. Often people say they use it as a reference, or come to it after they have learned the subject well from another book. There is a real risk of floundering, in the sense of spending a lot of time trying to understand a minute detail in a book, and then in the end discovering it is not really that important, and at the end of your effort you have nothing concrete to show for it.
Of course, you want to avoid these two extremes. Having said that, I think most PhDs are closer to the first extreme, than the second. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Your goal in a PhD is to become an expert in a narrow domain. That requires intense focus. I also have generally found that having a specific problem to solve will force you to read relevant literature more carefully and understand it more deeply than if you were just browsing that same literature abstractly.
Additionally, there are some practical considerations:

You may have funding tied to a tight timeline, in which case you will want to prioritize producing work that will lead to a thesis.
Your advisor may be unhappy with your rate of progress if you spend too much time reading a textbook and not enough on your problem, which may cause friction. Generally minimizing friction with your advisor will make other things easier (such as applying for jobs).
You may find that you can produce work at a rate your advisor is acceptable with while also doing readings on your own. You might even be more productive, since maintaining a fresh and interesting perspective on your field can keep you motivated and give you fodder for asking questions.
A common approach is to work simultaneously on two research problems. (You probably don't want to do more than this if you are the person doing the majority of the work and you are just starting out). This kind of naturally forces you away from both of the extremes above, since you will get a breadth of knowledge by having two focus areas, but you'll also avoid being "lost at sea" with nothing to show for it.

What I would probably recommend is establishing the rate at which you need to work to be productive in research and meet (even exceed) your advisor's expectations, and then fill in the remaining work time you have with outside studies.

For the "initial years" of doctoral study the answer would be quite different in different places. For example, in US most students spend a  couple/few years in advanced coursework preparing for qualifying examinations, so the question wouldn't arise here. But other places the research phase starts much earlier.
So, rephrasing it a bit, starting in the research phase of the degree, your advisor is approximately correct. Most of your time, almost all, should be spent on your research project(s) with readings and such as necessary to advance that research. Perhaps you do need to read somewhat widely in your field to do that.
However, reading in your narrow research topic area is natural for any academic. You need to keep up with what is happening and how it affects your own research.
There is a mental/psychological issue that comes in to play. If you spend too much effort on too narrow a subject too intensely, burnout is a possible result and you need to avoid that or it will set you back. You need to take breaks from intense study to do other things. Some of those things could be "lighter" reading, though still in physics. But you also need some exercise and sleep and human contact and ...
I doubt that any recommendation like 80/20 would be very valid in general and you need to work out your own work schedule. Let your body and your mind tell you what you need to do at the moment. Your mind will likely also work more efficiently if you give it a break now and then. The big ideas won't go away when you do this and the mind works subconsciously quite efficiently, but do something to keep the blood flowing if you want to be productive in the long run.

I think you're looking at this a bit sideways.  With your mentor, work out a reasonable schedule for your graduate work, with deadlines and milestone reviews.  The two of you should agree on the deadlines and the targeted completion date.
Once that is done, you need to do whatever you need to do to meet those deadlines.  If you're spending 100% of your time on this, and you are still falling behind, you need to sit down with your mentor and work out more realistic deadlines.
If you find you need to spend 80% of your time to meet the deadlines, then 20% of your time is available for more general studies.

Vash, I can't agree more with the concern you brought up in your question.
I'm also doing Ph.D. I also have background projects. To make the long story short, here's what I came up with.
I analyzed my day: I was surprised how much time I was wasting.
I bought a planner. I planned my day. I specified the hours for each activity. That was a crucial point. Initially, I just planned the activities without specifying time for them. That didn't work very well. Once, I specified the time it made so much difference.
I allocated times for background projects (low percentage comparatively to my Ph.D. work).
I forced myself to follow the allocated times exactly. That was very difficult. But I kept forcing myself to release the pen from my hand immediately once the time comes for the next activity, no matter where I was. I, somewhat, got used to it with practice.
Switching between activities is very difficult. Immediate concentration on another activity is very difficult. A diet and sleep regime helps me make it possible. Sleep regime is 9pm-5am every day (except for weekends when I don't setup the alarm). The diet is my recent discovery. I'm following Dr. Berg's YouTube channel. The health and productivity outcomes from Dr. Berg's diet advice are amazing without exaggeration (even though I don't follow his advice exactly). My concentration raised to the levels I have never experienced before.
I've been practicing this regime for some time. I'm very pleased with the results. Not only it helped me to advance my background projects, but I also started doing more in my Ph.D. work.
To sum up, doing everything strictly with accordance to the allocated time and strictly following the diet and sleep regime helps me advance my background projects without hurting my Ph.D. work (and even to the benefit of my Ph.D. work). But the regime must be followed strictly.

Your advisor's suggestion is a good one. You should completely focus on your research problem. As you progress, you will face some questions. Try to actively seek answers to those questions even when they are somewhat tangential to your problem. Also, one of the thesis goals is to put your research problem in the proper context. One learns about the context through discussion with a supervisor, attending seminars, and, of course, reading papers and books.
However, reading books from the beginning to the end at the Ph.D. stage may be a mistake. You must discuss and actively use the material to learn it well. Sometimes students are requested to do literature reviews and to seminars on these topics. This provides you with feedback and facilitates learning. That is the balanced way.
But, skimming through a book without actively using it is a waste of time.

"But, skimming through a book without actively using it is a waste of time." -- I mostly agree with this, but with the caveat that there are times I've found it useful to go through the table of contents of a book, or skim through a chapter, to build up a mental network of how different concepts are linked together, essentially making a skeleton. Then I can go back and "put meat on the bones" later by studying all the details. This is mainly useful to learn vocabulary or to get the overall picture, of course you shouldn't put too much time into this or believe you have really learned it.

That depends on what year you are in. If you are in first or second year of grad school, then I'd say it makes no sense to work on anything non-trivial research wise, if you don't have the necessary background knowledge to even determine what problems are open, what problems are interesting (to you), and what problems actually have a chance of being solved. This is especially true for QFT. So I'd spend most of my initial years just catching up on background knowledge.
Besides the textbooks you have mentioned (which I'd also add David Tong's notes to), you need to determine what branch of QFT interests you (CFTs, constructive QFT, gauge theories, etc.), and find a recent review/survey paper, and focus on trying to understand every classical results being covered in there. A common pitful in theoretical physics research is spending a long time on a problem, and later realizing that it has been solved by someone decades ago.

But most PhD students don't need this background knowledge themselves, because they can count on their advisors to provide it to them.  Your advisor hands you a problem that they tell you (hopefully correctly) is open and that they tell you (hopefully correctly) that you have a good chance of solving.

@AlexanderWoo that's assuming that your advisor is competent, which is a big assumption

If your advisor is incompetent, you have bigger problems and should quit your PhD posthaste.


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How well should one understand a PhD's topic when applying for a PhD?
I'm looking into applying for a PhD in math in Europe (I've seen positions in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Norway). A concern that I've encountered is regarding PhD advertisements that are recruiting people for an already established topic/area in mathematics. How well should I understand the topic in these cases? Take cohomology as an example, is it enough to know that it's within group theory and topology, which are areas that I like, or do I need to go through literature and be more thorough?
Personally, I don't really understand most, if not all, of these PhD pre-established topics, so it's hard to be and feel confident about sending an application and the/my future. Is this common and I should just trust that it works out at the end, or should the fact that I don't know about the topic already indicate I'm not suitable and should focus instead on applications with undecided topics?

All PhD topics need further study - that is pretty much the point of getting a PhD. Even if you think you know the topic, you really don’t.

Note that one of the most favourite questions asked of candidates in PhD interviews is "Can you describe our own research topic to us?" to see if the candidate has done some effort to try to understand it.

"How well should I understand the topic in these cases?" Why not just apply and let the admissions committee figure it out?

I wikipediaded the topic of my PhD my first day....

I edited to removed the phrase "moral issue" -- while you have a legitimate academic concern, the phrase "moral issue" usually means a concern related to something like ethics or religion, which does not seem to be the case here.

I just want to add that your topic may not really matter if you end up with a toxic supervisor who may change your topic completely. It's important you nail that down first I would say. Your idea about what you will do in your PhD will also change drastically before, after one year and after two years in your PhD. I would say have a look, but don't get too hanged up on it.

In most places in Europe (especially the places mentioned by the OP). It is expected that you have completed a master's degree before starting your PhD. The PhD program itself typically contains very little course work (or none at all). The expectation is that you will have followed some graduate courses that would prepare your for the PhD. Following the OPs example, if a PhD with a subject in cohomology is advertised, one would typically expect candidates to have completed at least a course in algebraic topology (possibly more). If you haven't, you will be at a serious disadvantage compared to other candidates. Not only in prerequisite knowledge (things can be learned), but more importantly in that you don't know the subject well enough to know if you will be passionate about it. This will make it harder to convince your potential advisor of your passion for the subject.
On the other hand, you would not be expected to perfectly understand subject of the PhD before hand (this is what the PhD for!). It is much more important that you are able to show a great aptitude at understand new material, and some ability to do mathematical research.
Two of the biggest risk factors in hiring a PhD that looks great on paper are:

That they won't be able to convert their promise as an excellent student to become an excellent researcher.
That they realize some time into their PhD that they are not interested in the chosen subject and become demotivated.

Anything that you can provide that can alleviate these risks, will likely trump any deficiencies in prior knowledge. However, as said above, the prior knowledge itself can play an important part in alleviating these risks.

There are no moral or ethical issues in applying as long as you are honest.
But how much you need to know depends on the system. In the US, not much prior specific knowledge is needed. In (parts, as least, of) Europe it is different. Many places require a masters degree to apply, assuming deeper knowledge. Some will look for research experience, though not necessarily specifically related to the topic at hand.
But in many places (Germany...) it may be necessary to apply to a specific advisor for a position in their working group. In such a case it depends on their needs and wishes and we can't predict what that will be. But, I'll guess that general knowledge in the field is usually sufficient. In general you don't earn a PhD to prove that you don't need one. It is still a learning process into which you grow. Most (probably not all) potential advisors understand that, but you will need to convince someone that you are ready to begin the task. (Note "begin the task")

You might never know what you will actually need. On paper, I did my PhD in Complex analysis and some algebraic geometry. However, all the actual work was done by various combinatorial methods.
The problems I studied did not really sound combinatorial at the start, it just happened that the main tool always ended up being some type of combinatorics.
So you do not know if you really are prepared or not (of course, it is good if you know enough mathematics to understand the problem).
Also, some programming experience will always be very helpful.

My friend's Master's thesis was similar. It was in statistics, but most of the work was at the boundary of discrete math and computer science. The statistical problem turned out to be simple, but getting the computational and symbolic results was way more work than anticipated. In fact, most of that work could be done without actually knowing statistics. But still, without it, the statistical result wouldn't be obtained.