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Is it usually possible to transfer credits for graduate courses completed during an undergrad degree in the US?
I'm currently an undergraduate student planning out my coursework for the next couple of semesters, and I wanted to ask if taking graduate courses as an undergrad allows them to be transferred to a PhD program. These graduate courses are not used to satisfy any requirement for my undergrad degree but would just be extra courses that I'm interested in taking.
I understand that different graduate programs have different rules on transferring credits, but to give a specific example, in UIUC's graduate school handbook, they say:

Graduate students may request to transfer credit earned from another institution to be counted toward a graduate degree. This is generally limited to a maximum of 12 semester hours. Credit that can be transferred must be graduate level credit that meets the following additional criteria:

that has not previously been applied toward a degree or other
transcripted credential,
that is graded graduate-level credit from an    accredited
institution, and
for which the student has achieved a    grade of B or better, or
received a Satisfactory grade in the case of    a
Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory grading mode.*

I don't think these requirements are particularly unique; from what I've read, there's at least a few schools that have requirements similar to this.
Suppose I take a graduate course...

that does not count towards any requirement for my undergrad degree
that is graded (not audited)
in which I receive an A

Would I then have a decent chance of transferring that course?

That depends entirely, as you seem to recognize, on the policies of the accepting institution and has no general answer.  It isn't something to lose sleep over, though. If the courses appeal to you and you can do them, then why not? They probably make acceptance more likely in any case if you do well.

Not an answer, but a comment: in the U.S., in math, I don't think transfer-or-not of credits for basic grad courses is any sort of substantive issue. Don't worry about it. Very often, you can "test out" of basic grad requirements... or, at worst, find that "required courses" are easy if you have a great background. "Credits" don't have much to do with getting a PhD...

I think the UIUC policy is fairly typical, some low limit. And it is also a "request," not something automatic. In my program, we could actually only possibly waive the first year stats sequence (so like 6 credits), not the substantive courses.
I would not plan your courses with the goal to shave time off your PhD program. It is probably more likely to not happen than to work. Even if you can't waive the courses, they'll be easier.


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Is it normal for a journal to offer to transfer a rejected manuscript to another (more expensive) journal?
Recently, a submission of mine was declined as not suitable for the journal, but with the rejection came a request to transfer the manuscript to another journal owned by the same company.
However, the other journal has a higher (four-figure vs. zero) publication charge.
Is this standard practice? How often does this happen?
I wouldn't call it fishy, but it has what a German might call a Geschmäckle to me...

Well, turn down the transfer then? I've never encountered an article 'processing charge' (page charges, yes) so I would find it very rude.

Sorry, "publication charge" is the word. Doesn't make a difference though. I agree with you. Just wondered how often this happened since I've had this happen twice in four article submissions (of three articles in total).

Is the second journal reputable? Has a "Geschmäckle" either way, but in a different way....

Is the second journal "open access"? Such journals typically have high fees to authors.

@Buffy Yes, the second journal is open access.

@cag51 I would say less reputable than the first one, but by how much I wouldn't be able to tell. Clearly not too bad.

As a Schwabe, the use of the word Geschmaeckle very much entices me to write an answer. But @Bryan Krause already has what I would have written myself.

This reminds me of Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Signor Garamond, the proprietor of the fictional Garamond Press, frequently refers authors to another publisher, Manutius; he fails to disclose that Manutius is a vanity publisher which he also owns. The 2 companies share resources, including the building (they have entrances in parallel streets).

@SimonCrase In cases I've seen this there was absolutely nothing hidden about the association of the second journal with the first.

This has been a growing trend where flagship journals are creating separate open-access side-journals.
Usually, the flagship journal is very selective and publishes only research findings applicable to the broadest audience: the catchiest, trendiest, most impactful work, as judged by the editors and reviewers. Since these are very popular journals to read, the publisher can charge high fees to libraries, since every university wants their researchers to have access to the latest and greatest work. Therefore, their costs and profits mostly come from these fees, and they may not need to charge the authors anything.
The secondary journals may be no less scientifically rigorous, yet do not have the restriction of publishing only the most broadly impactful papers, so they don't need to be as selective. That also means they aren't as "must-read", and instead use an open-access model where journal costs and profits come from authors' fees rather than subscribers.
I don't think it's unethical as long as the parameters are made clear, but it is important that researchers familiarize themselves with academic publishing models. There are both benefits (public accessibility, completeness of the academic record) and drawbacks (costs to the author, conflicted incentive structures for rigor) to the paid open access model.

As an author I would reconsider here. It is unfortunate that the flagship journal rejected the paper, so maybe a secondary journal with a publication fee is the way to go. But whether the secondary journals of this particular company are the most suitable ones for this paper is a new question that is totally independent of the flagship journal.

@quarague Certainly, but there's nothing wrong with the journal making the offer. However, at least in my field, there are going to be publication fees practically everywhere except a couple rare top journals and some special projects that are known more for their publication strategy than their paper quality. I'd be thinking more about impact and readership than fees: is there another journal where the work will be more visible/read?

Something still sounds backwards. If the first journal is less selective, why are they rejecting the paper? And if the flagship is more selective, they'll have less chance of being accepted there.

@Barmar I don't understand; it's the flagship that is more selective and doing the rejecting and passing to the alternative. What is making you think otherwise?

@BryanKrause I misread, I thought the flagship would be the more expensive journal.

@Barmar. It is, but not to the author.

@MadPhysicist Yes, that's where I got confused reading the answer, I didn't notice that it was different charges.

This is a perfectly reasonable request. It would not really be possible to transfer your manuscript to a journal not owned by the same publisher, so that is not cause for concern. I do not know how often it happens, however I have been part of submissions where we did decide "OK let's submit to Journal A, and if they bump us to Journal B, that's fine too."
You will just have to decide if the new journal is suitable. Price may be part of that decision.
The advantages of accepting the transfer is not having to create a new journal account and you probably don't have to change format.

Saving time would be an (important) advantage of accepting the transfer request, I guess.

@kricheli It could perhaps be faster.

Formatting and creating online accounts range at the very bottom of my preoccupations when I decide on a journal for submitting my articles. I don't really see how that's a criterion for anything.

@N.I. Well, yes, it was supposed to be kinda tongue-in-cheek. The point is it's not a shady offer - just an offer.

@N.I. In some fields, formatting might include completely rewriting the abstract, introduction, methods, results, and discussion to fit journal requirements for length limits or structured heading requirements, reorganizing figures and tables to meet object count limits, changing dimensions of figures to fit specific column widths, etc. Not just changing the reference format or some lines of LaTeX.

It is an offer not a request. The company refused publication in Journal A (perfectly fine) and offered publication in Journal B which has completely different conditions (it costs a lot more money and is probably less prestigeous). Whether that offer is attractive is a decision for the authors.

@quarangue I don't think there's a meaningful difference. The rest of your comment is covered in my answer

This is very normal, because there's a lot of competition for papers among publishers. If you take up their offer to transfer to another journal in their stable, then the publisher keeps up their revenue (this applies even if you do not publish open access - subscription journals need papers too).
It's unlikely the publication charge factored into this decision, since the overriding one is scope: by making this transfer, they are implicitly saying that the new journal will not reject your paper as unsuitable for the journal. If they can't say this, then it doesn't matter if the new journal charges more, less, or no fees.

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text:
APA 7th query on journal titles
In the APA style guide, it states:

Capitalize only the first letter of the first word of the article title. If there is a colon in the article title, also capitalize the first letter of the first word after the colon.

So just to be clear, if the article title is "Sentiment Analysis of US Airline Twitter Data using New Adaboost Approach", do I downcase it myself and cite it as

Eswaran, P., Santhosh, M., Krishnan, A. H., & Kumar, T. (2019, April). Sentiment analysis of US airline twitter data using new adaboost approach. International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT), 7, 1–3.

Yes, that is what the style guide says.

Well, I don't know about "Adaboost," but Twitter should remain capitalized.

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Responding to a reviewer who asks to clarify a sentence containing an irrelevant word
In one of the papers, I have mistakenly written a wrong/irrelevant word which makes the sentence vague. The sentence contains review of somebody else's work. The referee is  confused and has asked for an explanation about that sentence. Shall I directly express that I have made a mistake and include the correct sentence  ?

Is it possible that  the reviewer reject paper because of this ?

No, you are unlikely to get a rejection for such a thing, but you need a correction.

What do you think a review is for, if not for the reviewer to identify aspects of the paper that they think need work, and the author, if they agree, to address those issues? "Shall I directly express that I have made a mistake and include the correct sentence ?" As opposed to what? Obstinately insist that there's nothing wrong with the sentence, and the reviewer is just too dense to get it?

Why would you not fix / improve the sentence?  Why would you not mention that you had done so in your response to the editor?  Of course, the revised manuscript would not contain any reference to the original wording, but otherwise, I don't think I understand the nature of your uncertainty.

Just a note on proof-reading:  It's really helpful to read a paper out loud before submitting it.  I once had something important to send and made an obvious grammar error, but I didn't catch it till after sending.  Reading aloud will really help catch such things in the future.  Of course, this doesn't address your current situation.

Yes, it is proper to admit to a minor error and make the correction. I'm assuming that it makes the work clearer to others as well.
Everyone makes such mistakes. There isn't any issue about it, nor about saying thanks for the "good catch".

It's also proper to admit a major error, too.

I agree with the excellent answer by Buffy.  Your own post describes it as a mistake, so take the opportunity to correct this mistake, and thank the referee for spotting it.  This is a routine part of peer review so there is no need to agonise over it.  In terms of your response-to-referees you would typically write something like this:

Referee: There appears to be a grammatical error/irrelevant word in the sentence on Line 6, p. 12, such that I cannot understand its meaning.
Agree - revised: Thanks for catching this error.  I have revised this sentence to make it clearer.

The reviewer was confused by the sentence, so other people will be confused as well. So it should be changed. The improvement is only small, but the change is also very small. Change the sentence to be not confusing, and notify the referee.
If you don't agree with the referee: The referee was confused, so he or she is by definition right.

Yes, you must state your error clearly and add the appropriate words. It is crucial to be open and truthful about any errors in your writing. You can apologise for the error and describe how the proper sentence should be understood in your answer to the referee. This will clear up any doubt for the referee and help them grasp the article more thoroughly. To avoid such errors, it's also crucial to properly proofread your work before submission.


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Is it ethically okay to share an article that is in arxiv and under review?
In the ML word, it's a common practice to upload a paper to Arxiv when it is still under review. But is it okay to share it with other people?
Let's say someone writes a paper for congress. And while the paper is under review, he decides to share it with other researchers of the area.
Is it ethically fair to do that?

They put it on Arxiv - that is sharing it already.

One thing is uploading it on Arxiv, other is sending intentionally to researchers of the same field.

It isn’t like Arxiv is secret. Others in your field are perfectly capable of searching for it as well. The whole point of Arxiv is to share preprints quickly and easily.

I see your point! Many thanks!

If a paper isn't ready to be seen by your enemies, it isn't ready to submit to the journal yet!  If an enemy sees your paper on Arxiv (or elsewhere) and send you their criticism, they are really your friend.  Much better that than leave the job to reviewer 3!  ;o)

Check the policy of the place where the paper was submitted. Some are fine with anything, some would reject the paper because of the arxiv copy, and some are ok with an arxiv copy as long as you don't advertise it too much until the end of the review... (for (double)-blindness reasons, not copyright)

@MarcGlisse this could raise an issue for double-blinded peer review?

@CarlosMougan The point of double blind reviews is that the reviewers should not know who the authors are. Some places consider that a preprint on arxiv already breaks this anonymity. Because allowing early preprints is desirable, others make some compromise, where it is ok to have preprints and the reviewers are encouraged not to try too hard to identify the authors. But that becomes hard if the author contacts people or gives a talk or something that draws extra attention, so some places try to limit it... So read the specific guidelines when you submit.

@MarcGlisse that is the answer that I was looking for!! Many thanks! If you make it an answer I will accept it

It's common and ethically just fine to share work with specific others at any stage of research, even prior to the advent of preprint archives/in fields where preprints remain uncommon. It's your work. You can share it to get feedback, to inform others of work you've already done so that they don't waste their efforts, etc.
I would not recommend sharing work unsolicited broadly to people you don't know. That's less about ethics and more about politeness around unsolicited communication. There may be cases where you want a specific individual, preferably someone you have already met, to give feedback on your work; then it's fine to share with them (you may want to ask first something like: "I am working on XYZ, would you be willing to have a look at it and offer your thoughts?"). If you want to share work broadly, however, the way to do it is with a preprint. It's fine to point people to that preprint through other means, like on a social media account, but don't spam them; that's not unethical, but it is rude.
Exceptions: patentable work is legally complicated. Don't share such work without understanding the legal implications. Additionally, if you are under any additional contract terms for the work you're doing make sure you are aware of those terms, like if you are being funded by a private company.

Well, don’t put patentable work on Arxiv. Never had to have that discussion with the patent lawyers, but I’m pretty sure I know their take on it…

@JonCuster "Don't put it on Arxiv" I think is pretty obvious. I'm less aware of what the implications are of sharing all or parts of the work with other outside individuals, and I assume it depends a lot on jurisdiction.

Until you give up copyright you can share with anyone you like. Even after, informal sharing is unlikely to raise the hackles of the new copyright holder. They will often give you a license for such things, in fact.
But if it is publicly available on arXiv, just point them to it there.

I won't comment on the ethics, but I want to point out that by submitting your paper to a conference, you agreed to some terms, and it would be a good idea to check those terms. Those terms may have constraints on what else you can do with the paper, either for copyright reasons, or more interestingly to ensure some anonymity in double-blind reviewing.
Having a copy of your paper on arXiv makes it quite easy for a reviewer to uncover your identity. Some conferences with double-blind reviewing thus forbid anything that can help identify you (including uploading to arXiv) until the end of the review period (at least). Some allow anything and trust reviewers not to go looking for the information. And others have some intermediate policy, for instance allowing a preprint on arXiv only if it was uploaded long enough in advance (so it doesn't show up on news feeds during the review period?), or forbidding to give a public seminar about the paper (this could also be to ensure that the conference gets some kind of exclusivity, is the first place where the paper is presented, but I have seen it argued as a way to preserve anonymity). If you personally send your paper to some people and one of them happens to be a reviewer...


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how can I save and load my bibliographic search in Scopus and Sciencedirect
Can I save my bibliographic search in scientific databases, such as: Scopus or
Sciencedirect for loading my search later?

Why can't you just enter the same search parameters at a later time?

Googling for 'sciencedirect save search' brought up a number of places that tell you how to do it. I didn't try the same search on Scopus. On Web of Science one needs to have set up a personalized page, I presume the others are similar...

A response regarding Scopus (you need to have an account for that):
Conduct your search and click on "Save" (just below the text which tells you the number of results).

Your saved queries will be stored in the homepage of Scopus, under the query bar, next to "Search History":


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Finding more recent review articles
How can I find a more recent review article in a topic I am interested in? I have found a review article on biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles published in 2015. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2015.03.015) How do I go about finding more recent work done on the same?

In addition to Google Scholar and searching for work by influential scholars, as suggested by GrotesqueSI's answer, it is often helpful to look at the works that have cited the reviews you have found already.
Frequently, new reviews will cite previous reviews of the topic, especially in fast-moving fields, so as not to waste space describing the same information. The review article you linked has 100+ citations, and maybe one of those is by a newer review.
Also, if you can find a landmark or high-impact article in the field, it is almost certainly cited by all good reviews, so looking at the "cited by" list of such an article is often helpful too.

In my field, 2015 is considered quite recent and it would be unreasonable to expect there to be much in the way of "more recent" work. However this may be different in your field.
One place to start would be to use Google Scholar to search the keywords associated with the topic you are interested in, and to restrict the searches to publication after 2015. A more labour intensive but, perhaps, more targeted way forward would be to specifically seek out the work of influential scholars cited in your 2015 article and see if they have published more on the topic since that date.
Finding sources of information is not easy. Expect to spend some time on this.

I recommend that you use Google Scholar to conduct a forward citation search. The basic logic of this strategy is that any decent literature review conducted since 2015 should surely cite this 2015 literature review. This logic is surpisingly sound under a system of peer review because even if the authors of the new review somehow missed the 2015 review, competent peer reviewers should alert them to its existence and ask them to include it.
So, based on that logic, here's how you would do it:

Look up the article in Google Scholar.
Click the "Cited by [numer of citations]" link:

Browse through the 193 results (as of October 13, 2019) to see if there are any new literature reviews.

That strategy should exhaustively identify any new literature reviews from now and the future.


text:
How to export search results from Elsevier?
I am doing a systematic review and I am cataloging my searches.
I've already exported the search results from IEEE, and from Springer, with one click to an CSV file.
So I wonder how to do the same thing with the Elsevier site https://www.elsevier.com/search-results
In the IEEE site I've just clicked here and saved the CSV file. Same in the Springer site.
Does anyone know how I can download from Elsevier?

I suppose you mean Scopus?
If you have your results page, there is a grey horizontal menu bar on the top of the search results. It contains the link "CSV export". This is where you have to click on, then you can select the metadata you wish to download.
Make sure to first select the documents, perhaps the box "All" left to "CSV export", before the link "CSV export" becomes clickable.
See an example here:

This site is the same that I've post ? This sidebar is not appearing for me.

Oh - I thought you were talking about Scopus. In the Elsevier search you linked to, I do not see any possibility to export the results. - - Just to make sure: The Elsevier search does not show any papers, but only results pertaining to Elsevier's website, books and journals (not on paper-level). Is this really what you want? Because if you want to have data about papers, then you would need to use Scopus (which belongs to Elsevier).

So how do I do that in Scopus ? I've just found the journals and their H-index and all this metrics, but not the metadata from the list of the search. Thanks again

Does https://www.scopus.com/ work for you? If you cannot get search results like that, then you might need to ask your university library if they have a Scopus subscription. (And if they do not have a Scopus subscription, you could use alternative and free databases...)


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Time for journal reviewing / referring in mathematics - Is there a recent study?
In the question: Lengths of review process of mathematical journals a nice question was asked and answered: how to compare journals in terms of time for the review processing. The article cited in the answer is quite nice http://www.ams.org/notices/201310/rnoti-p1390.pdf but is from 2013. Seven years after, are there some similar studies which can tell what kind of backlogs/ times needed for mathematical journals to accept / reject articles? A young mathematician asked me this today and I gave him the link, but a more recent one would certainly be more helpful.

This is the same report from November 2019: https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201910/rnoti-p1713.pdf

Thanks a lot. That is exactly the answer I needed. Why not putting it as an answer and I will accept it.

The American Mathematical Society provides regular (annual, I believe) on journal backlog times. The latest can be found here: https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201910/rnoti-p1713.pdf
Depending on your subfield it may not contain data on all relevant journals, but it is quite comprehensive. The reports are published in the November issue of the Notices of the AMS, which is also available online.
The data in the report is based on information provided by the journals itself.

Thanks, that is exactly what I was looking for. It is a pity that most of the new free journals are not there, but it could be improving in the future.

A general source for many, many domains beyond just mathematics is SciRev, a site where authors submit reviews of their experience with the peer-review process at many (hundreds or thousands?) of journals across many disciplines. If you click on the "All reviews" tab, you can then search for journals by name or discipline; it includes many subfields of mathematics.
For me, the most useful feature of SciRev is that I use it to track my personal peer-review process, and then when a final decision is received, I can conveniently submit a review of my experience with that journal.
However, the downside of a site like this is that it is entirely self-reported, so without a large number of submissions for a given journal, you cannot consider the averages reported there to be scientifically valid. That said, it probably has reports for more journals than a scientific study like the one you originally mentioned, so it can at least give an indication of delay times.

Thanks. I did not know this website. In mathematics, there are very few results, but maybe if the website is used it can be helpful.


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Is it a must to write a paper in passive third person, for all types of papers in all journals?
As I read in some papers, most verbs in a paper are written in the passive third person. For example: "This method was experimented; satisfying results were achieved..."
My question is, is this a must and all types of papers in all journals should be this way? For example, if I write "I experimented with the method", is this wrong and editors could reject the paper? If the answer is yes, what is the reason that the author has to write the paper that way?

Nope. Depends upon your field, journal, and even personal style.

First person quickly sounds like you're bragging, but that's a matter of taste. I usually only use the first person to emphasise that sth was wilful decision, i.e. sth that others could very well think differently or even know better about.

An influential physics paper had a cat as a co-author because the paper guidelines said to use “I” for papers with one author and “we” for papers with multiple. The author didn’t feel like rewriting the paper after learning his mistake. www.atlasobscura.com/articles/in-1975-a-cat-coauthored-a-physics-paper

I know of some mathematicians that write their papers in the first person singular. As an experiment, I once wrote a paper that way. It was harder than I thought, as I kept reverting without noticing to the usual "we".

The answer will likely vary strongly by field, so it helps to mention which field.

I think a lot of academics are under the incorrect impression that academic writing is supposed to sound dry. They avoid figurative language, creative formatting, and varied punctuation. At the end of the day, you want to write something that people enjoy reading and that doesn’t violate any contextual rules or standards. All else the same, write something that is compelling.

Regarding the closure first  vs. third person is not quite the same as active versus passive voice.

Have a look at the style guide of the journal you're targeting. It has the only authoritative answer to your question.
Having said that, passive voice is not a "must" in the sense that active voice were unheard of in academic writing. Here is a paper written in active voice, first person singular.
Common preferences for either active or passive voice differ between disciplines. (I've heard that in mathematics the first person plural is fairly common, i.e. "we".)
Preferences also differ between authors. I find the first person singular active voice most authentic, simple, and lively. It is often emphasized, however, that passive voice sounds more neutral and objective.
When deciding which voice to use, consider the style guide first, then your discipline's customs (ask your peers!), and your personal preference last.

In mathematics, one often writes in a conversational or argumentative voice. Just like you would punctuate a lecture with flash forwards such as “we will later use this to prove blah blah blah” so do you do in papers.Some subfields of philosophy and CS are the same.

Papers may be written in whatever voice you choose :-)
Some journals might specify, but contra. @herring's answer, I don't recall any biomed journals requiring one or the other. Some "authorities" argue that this passive voice is less exciting or authentic. This is probably true in regular writing but makes methods sections a string of "I/We did X. Then we did Y. Then we did Z.", which is also jarring.
I suggest deciding based on what need to be emphasised in each sentence. Sometimes, the only important part of the sentence is the thing that was done. Use the passive voice there.  For example, you might write something like:

After thawing, tissue samples were fixed in 4% PFC, dissolved in 1x PBS, for 15 minutes. They were then prepared for immunohistochemistry by washing them in 1x PBS (5 minutes), permeabilizing them (2X SSC for 5 minutes), and dehydrating them using a series of ethanol baths (70%, 95%, 99%, 100%; 5 minutes each).

Here, no one really cares who processed the tissue samples--it could be the first author, it could be the last author, or it could even be a robot or an external company. The reader cares about what was done.
Other times, the identity of the do-er is more important. These cases call for the active voice. Consider something like this:

Other Folks et al. (2016) collected data from a broad sample of cells. However, we hypothesised that this effect only occurs in a specific subpopulation of dividing cells. To test this, we used.... "

Because the text compares your work with someone else's, the reader cares about who did what. The active voice emphasises this, but maybe steals a little thunder from the actual action.

An editor for a linguistics journal removed all pronouns that referenced the researchers/writers in an article, and turned the sentences into passive voice sentences.
Scientific journals, especially those involved in reporting scientific experiments, tend to favor the use of passive voice.
Anyone writing papers or making presentations to people in the field of English (such as during  MLA Conferences) should make sure to avoid the passive voice.

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How significant is it to publish a scientific "review paper" in 6–10 impact factor journal?
I have published my thesis to an international conference but it was not anything reputed. However, I do not have access to lab now. I have been asked to be a part of a review-paper writing team and a book-chapter writing team. I am not sure which will have greater impact during my admission in grad school and among researcher community.

Can you specify your field - reviews and chapters are looked on differently in different fields. And an impact factor of 6-10 for example, would be high in computer science, average in biological science and low in medicine (as far as impact factor can tell you anything).

Difference seems to be a bit marginal.

What do you mean by "do not have access"? Because of the rona, or because you've graduated?

My field is Material Science. To be more specific application of nanomaterials in textile.

I do not have lab access as I have graduated.

This really depends on the field and the venue...
In my own field, book chapters are almost useless for your goals - they come in two flavors: those where already accomplished authors write reviews of a subject and are considered highly but are written by people who do not need an introduction, and those solicited by publishers looking for cheap content they can resell. There are other fields where book chapters are a pretty central part of publishing.
That said, review articles can be basically the same: those where established researchers convey their wisdom are highly respected, but typically the authors have sufficient credit already. In my area, an impact factor of 6-10 is pretty good, though also low for a journal that trades in the review arena: highly influential reviews in review journals get tens to hundreds (sometimes thousands) of citations, so those journals have inflated impact factors.
With the limited information you've provided, I'd assume the review article is better, if indeed the journal is a good journal and not somehow inflating an impact factor with false citations (not an uncommon thing). The more important advice I would offer is for you to check the specific circumstances with an advisor you trust. Your thesis advisor would be a good start.

My personal view is that the review article will hold more weight with an admissions committee, because it is more likely to be peer reviewed in a serious way. If the journal is well-respected, and particularly if the review is an "invited" one, then being part of the author list is a good way to say that your (or your group's) opinion on the topic of the review is something well-regarded and seen as important by your peers in your field.
However, one caveat is that if the book chapter was invited and the review article wasn't, then the book chapter is more or less a "done deal" in terms of acceptance and publication, while the review paper may or may not be accepted (or even considered) by the journal you submit it to. In that case, depending on your timeline, getting something published, no matter whether it's a book chapter or review article, would be the top priority to make sure you can claim it on your application.


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Should Conference Paper Reviewers Conduct Preliminary Literature Searches Before Evaluating Submissions?
I am curious about the extent to which reviewers should engage with the existing literature before evaluating a submitted paper.
Specifically, is it advisable or expected for reviewers to search for related papers and examine the cited references within the submission before forming their assessment?

One hope that reviewers selected for conferences are already engaged with the literature.

Literature search should be done by the author before submission...

of course they should, the bigger question is rather: do they?

This has something to do with the deadline given to the reviewer. Sometimes reviewers are asked to submit a review in a week or so, and of course everybody knows they have other stuff to do, so the editor (or generally the person who asked you to review) may know they can not realistically expect that.

I don't know of any statistics on this, and it almost certainly varies by field, conference, and even reviewer.
But a good reviewer for a conference presentation will be a lot like a good reviewer for a paper. They should already be fairly familiar with the field, they should check the recent literature, and so on.
But the standards for some conferences will be different than for some journals. Some conferences welcome work that is less polished than would be right for a journal. This could be purely practical (there are some conferences that have trouble getting enough submissions, especially with shrinking budgets for conference attendance), it could be a way to encourage students to present, or it could be a way to get the latest stuff, before it is "finished".
The author of the presentation should still do their job, but ... it pays to check.

In theory, I don't think there is much difference between a conference review and a paper review. In practice, at least in my fields (business management and computer science), conference articles tend to be shorter and the deadlines tend to be much tighter. So, the main difference is that reviewers tend to spend less time on them and write shorter reviews.
So, I will answer for both journal and conference papers. A reviewer who wants to write a good-quality review might very well read some related articles and do some literature searches as part of their peer-review process. This depends both on how familiar the reviewer is with the topic and on how much time they are willing to spend. (Even if the reviewer is an expert, it is unlikely they are an expert on every major aspect of the article. They might be an expert on the theory but not on the methodology, or vice versa, so might want to read up on the aspects they are weaker.)
Coming back to my original point on the difference between conference and journal article reviews, it ultimately depends on how much time a reviewer is willing to spend on an article. The more expert and experienced a reviewer is on the topic, the less they will need to look up supplementary materials, but the less time they are willing or able to spend on the review, the less time they will look up supplementary materials, even if it would have helped the quality of their review.
So, ultimately, it depends on how high quality a review a reviewer is willing to submit. If reading references would help increase the quality and the reviewer is willing to spend the time to do so, then they may. If they are not willing to spend that extra time or do not feel they need to do so to write a high-quality review, then they won't. It is hard to expect more than that of a volunteer.


text:
Asking an external professor for a feedback on my BSc. thesis
In my senior year. I have put so much effort in writing my thesis and my supervisor didn't even read what I have done or even bothered to do his work, I wrote my thesis in a topic in mathematical analysis. I think it is interesting to read, no new results but, there are many undergraduate publications that are just interesting to read and contains no new mathematics! so I think my thesis is interesting to read.
All undergraduate journals I found requires a letter from the supervisor, I can't get a letter from him because:
1. He didn't read it and he won't
2. My relationship with him is not good
I thought maybe I should ask an external professor to give me a feedback but, who would do that!
I am even embarrassed to ask for such a favour. I just want to learn even if my thesis is not as good as I think it is, it is okay but at least I would then know why and learn something!
If I had it published. It would then help me when I try to apply for scholarships and stuff.
Can someone suggest me a solution or something?
Do other professors normally agree to review other student's work?
Thank you.

Having a poor relationship with your supervisor is a more important consideration than publishing an undergraduate thesis, I think. Perhaps you should address that in whatever way is open to you.
If you contact a professor at another institution blindly, you are pretty unlikely to get much of any feedback. That is especially true currently due to the general disruption of the pandemic.
Hopefully you have a better relationship with some other maths professor at your institution. I would talk to them. Perhaps they aren't able to give you much direct advice, depending on their own field of interest, but they probably have some circle of collaborators and might be able to introduce you to someone who can give you some feedback.
If a letter comes to me from an unknown student it is easy to ignore, but harder if it comes from another professor who is known to me.
If this is impossible, then there is another option. Find an institution to which you would want to apply for graduate school and find a professor interested in analysis there. Start a conversation with them about becoming a student there and also mention your thesis, giving the title, say, if it is informative. Don't go into detail about it or your desire for feedback in the initial contact. And don't send the thesis initially. If you get any response at all, then you can ask for advice on the thesis.
An additional idea about publishing your thesis is that an undergraduate journal might be willing to accept a recommendation from the department head rather than the direct supervisor in some situations. Perhaps not, but it might be worth having a face-to-face with the head in any case and ask for some help.

I don't understand the first two lines, do you mean I should tell openly the professor I'm asking for his\her review that my relationship is not good with my supervisor?

No, I wouldn't say that at all. Certainly not initially. You could probably say that to the department head, though. But the first paragraph suggests that you should do what you can to improve the relationship with the advisor. Perhaps nothing is possible, of course.

Yes, I got it, well I am in a bad university and he is a really ugly person with no morals so, there is nothing I can do about it, I am just working hard to get a better education in a decent place. Thank you very much sir for your advice :)

Look for other magazines that don't require such a letter.  (Do they all?)
Find a professor that you can talk to. Or a postdoc.  Or a visiting scholar.  Some won't give you time of day, but some will be OK for a conversation.  Then maybe talk about what you've done that was interesting.  (Make some notecards and then be able to show/talk about the topics on the board.)  Keep it a little lighter than "read my manuscript".  That's a little leaden to be expected to read amateur work.  But a meeting where you are able to say interesting things like
"lots of people want to have geometric interpretations of analysis and say that is novel, but they most likely think in areas or volumes.  I like to think in decision trees and nodes.  It's not really novel, as Russian authors from the 50s like Guestanovitch have written this way.  But it's kind of rarely seen nowadays."
[Made up example...I don't know analysis...but you get the drift.


text:
The concept of state of the art references in review of a paper
My question is that what improvement in introduction of a paper or other parts of paper the authors should do when the reviewers wrote the following sentence:
The authors have missed many important state of the art references
Thanks in advance

It means you need to figure out who the reviewer is and then make sure to cite everything by them.

You must have missed some crucial references, by the reviewer or others.

I think the statement is very clear. Wether your literature research was incomplete or the reviewer just wants two of his own papers cited once more, we cannot tell.
Make sure you can exclude the first possibility, then try guessing, and either be bold in your rebuttal letter, or cite some more.
(If the reviewer gave no hint to specific references, I'd suspect that you might have a somewhat grave problem: Either you paper is indeed crappy, or that reviewer just doesn't want it published, or wants it delayed, for his own good.)

I recommend that you do the following:

Make a best effort to look up the most recent articles related to the parts of the article that the reviewer critiqued in their other comments. Most likely, their other comments would suggest the areas that they are most concerned with.
Before you complete your revisions, write a direct email to the editor that is handling your submission and explain in advance your difficulty. Show them the list of references that you have additionally added (to prove that you have already made an effort), but explain that since the reviewer did not specify what they consider you are missing, you do not know if that would satisfy them.
Do whatever the editor says.

The advantage of this approach is defensive: when you do eventually submit your completed revision, it would be very difficult for the editor to reject your article based on insufficient references. At the very least, if that is the only problem that would otherwise lead to a rejection, I would expect them to give you at least one more round to revise your paper according to the references that the reviewer would then explicitly list. (And if the reviewer still does not explicitly list the missing references, then you would be justified to politely say, "I have tried my best to respond.")

Hm. Might work, but acceptance of a paper is not supposed to be the reward for making a good effort and doing what you're told to.

@Karl, that's why I said, "if that is the only problem that would otherwise lead to a rejection". As you rightly imply, of course OP would need to take care of all other issues. My answer only talks about this one issue that OP raised.


text:
Would a manuscript be rejected if the cover letter is missing?
Recently, I have submitted a manuscript for publication consideration into a journal (impact factor: 2). However, I realized that in the final PDF proof the cover letter is missing.
I think I have forgotten to include it.
Does this mean that the article would be rejected or will not be processed?

I don't know what discipline you're in; in my discipline, cover letters are completely pro forma, and I can't remember the last time I've read one.

Can't the cover letter be sent now, as you realized it was forgotten, as soon as possible? Why wait with it?

Not sure about this case but the answers give you some possibilities. I just wanted to say something a bit OT. For well reputed journal a missing cover letter should imply no publication. Unless the work is so important and the person who first get it recognize that. In practice: the cover letter for Science or Nature is likely more important than the paper itself.

Just send the cover letter now and apologize.

You said, "I realized that in the final PDF proof the cover letter is missing". Are you absolutely certain that you forgot to submit the cover letter? Cover letters are not part of the PDF proof in the journal systems that I submit to.

Hi, good news! the manuscript is under review!! Thanks for your comments

The Editor nerver asks for the Cover Letter.

@Tripartio you are so right. I have no certainty of that. However, in other cases (and journals) I have seen the cover letter in the PDF proof.

It is doubtful that they would reject it out of hand, but possible they won't process it as an incomplete submission. If the submission was through an online system, see if you can update your submission. You might also contact the editor directly and ask for advice, providing you can get contact information.
But, failing that, I suspect that it will be noted and you might be contacted.
If it is rejected (desk rejected), it would probably be done quickly and then you can take further action. You might be told why it was rejected and you might then be able to resubmit.
I suspect that such things happen frequently enough that the journal has procedures for dealing with it. You may learn something quite soon, perhaps directly and perhaps via the submission system itself.

It is very unlikely for the paper to be rejected solely for the reason of the missing cover letter.

It is highly likely that you are going to be contacted (using an automated system or personal email) about an incomplete submission or the submission process itself will continue without the cover letter at all.
I would say, missing a cover letter might have an impact on the following:

The potential delay between the journal realizing that the submission is incomplete, communicating that to you, and you resubmitting.

The cover letter can help to assign the associate editor/track editor and, to some extent, select the reviewers. If the cover letter is not present in the submission, it might either take slightly longer or lead to some time/choice inefficiencies that could potentially be avoided.

Sometimes, the cover letter contains substantial necessary information. Say, there was a previous submission to this or another journal some time ago, and you want to inform the editor about that and point out some crucial details that are new in this submission. Or explain why the presence of additional/supplementary materials for your paper is necessary for the review.
In that case, leaving out the cover letter simply does not help to build your case in the best possible way.


text:
Is it reasonable to not study previous research to avoid bias?
I am currently a student at a tech school and otherwise unemployed.  I’ve never been a scientist or published a paper.
So I am a little skeptical of some results I have been hearing about experiments using computer simulations, and I would like to at some point do my own experiment.  (The topic is among differences in gender, homosexuality, global warming, etc., i.e. a topic that can provoke emotions.)
I figured that I should probably learn as much about research as I can before I do any experiment.  On the other hand if I learn how exactly the others did their experiment that would bias how I construct mine.  I would be prone to solving problems by doing the same thing rather than coming up with a new way to test it.
So does it make any sense to limit the study of existing experiments for the sake of more diverse testing, or should I try to learn as much about them as I can?

If you attempt a research experiment without ever learning how, or gaining expertise in the field you are trying to contribute to, the most likely outcome is that you will do it totally wrong, get meaningless results, and not even recognize that or understand why.

If you're reading 'emotional rhetoric' then you're probably not reading serious research papers. Mass-published popular science books are not the way to get into research.

There is also a risk that you will select the commonest, most thoroughly explored, technique and merely reproduce what was done ten years ago.

As already mentioned, having an idea and having a research contribution are different things. I had an idea about representing parallel computing overhead once. Then I dug into the literature, because I thought someone must have though about it before. No one did. Then I did all the computations and write-up. Only then it was a research contribution that got accepted and published.

To cite a lecturer at my department: If research taught me anything, then it is to be humble: Almost every thought has already been written down better than I ever could by other people.

Imagine that you think you have figured something out. Then you want to publish your results and methodologies, but you have no similar research techniques to compare yours to, and in addition will your list of references be zero? That does not sound like the peer review process will go well.

Wow thanks for all of the answers everyone.  I've actually never got this many responses to a question before.  I guess the answer for the most part is yes I am just tricking myself into being lazy.

Jessica B - I try to looking things up in Google Scholar or my schools research portal, but typically at some point or another I'll do a general Google search.  I wanted to keep it short and to simplify my concerns for any biases I might have while not changing the topic to that, I put that in...  You know I think I'll just take that line out.

One more thing it's not that I wanted to neglect studying the topic at all, I just thought that maybe I could withhold looking at a particular set of experiments.  Again thanks for all the advice.

Even Newton saw further "standing on the shoulders of giants".

In science you use mostly models, and you only use them in a very limited domain. You should see them as tools, not as religious beliefs. You can always switch your tools. Trying to come up with a tool on your own will help you understand why others have made and used the tools they did.
You can at every point, if you can think logical, decided to not use a certain assumption for your model without proving or examining it, therefore "forking" your model from that model someone else used. This requires discipline and logical thinking though, if you rely on intuiton, you will be biased.

You should write down your thoughts now, then get on and do the proper research, before trying to do any experiment, if you wish to be taken seriously. While there is a need for radically different ideas, most research succeeds by following what has been done before ('standing on the shoulders of giants'). It is very unlikely that you will come up with something amazing without any reference to all the other intelligent people who have thought long and hard about the issue.
If you did come up with something, but without reference to any other work, the likelihood is that you would be seen as a 'nutcase', or at least viewed with deep suspicion, until you could explain yourself very clearly. Your research should not be about simply accepting what others have said. You should think critically about it, and question their assumptions and conclusions. For the most part, you do not find new ways of doing things by working in isolation, but by looking at what others have done and making different choices where you aren't fully convinced by the justification for their choice.

Also, always question your own choices too.

This is a great answer, but at least in the bias part the asker seems to have a point. Researchers worldwide might even unconsciously follow the herd instinct too much. It may be a good idea if the scientific literature would more clearly separate the problems and the tried solution, so one could potentially first only read about the challenges, then think about own approaches and only then about the approaches of others.

@Trilarion I wrote this answer before the question was edited.

@Trilarion You are right but don’t you think that this is addressed by the first sentence in this answer?

@KonradRudolph It is addressed in the first sentence and I think this answer is great, but I wrote the comment to indicate a general issue that I think could be addressed even more. I think the asker also has a point.

It is very unlikely that you will come up with something amazing without any reference to all the other intelligent people who have thought long and hard about the issue. Often, genius and insanity are pretty hard to tell apart, particularly in the area of research..

Yes. In order to come up with something original and not just reinvent the wheel, you have to be aware of what else is already out there precisely so you can direct your thought in such a way as to avoid it. And that also matters not just in things like writing and doing research, but also like writing fiction or other creative arts as well - the good artist is familiar with a lot of the other art out there, both to be able to have an idea of what tropes to violate to try and get something new, and also of the techniques which can be applied to accomplishing the new art or improved upon.

Truly "out of the vacuum" originality is exceedingly rare, if not even nonexistent by now, given how much has already been done before. Much is based on improving previous work or springboarding off of it. On the other hand though, how can someone "think critically" about that research without sufficient background knowledge in the field to know what the standards and the basis are, without also learning said background "solely on trust"?

E.g. you can't really critically analyze studies done in medicine, for example, without extensive knowledge of medical research procedures and perhaps also the practice of medicine itself. (Which is why it's hard to cut through all the "bs" out there totally by oneself coming from, say, medical crack (quack) pots, esp. very sophisticated ones, who can site seemingly technically detailed (but likely, flawed) studies to 'support' their dubious claims, instead of ultimately having to just put faith in experts more knowledgeable than you, at least until you have accumulated sufficient background

in an uncritical or less-critical manner that you can finally then begin to evaluate critically.) I guess the reason I ask is so many people say "question everything" but in my experience it seems idealism runs head-long and hits with concussive force into reality on this one (and thus I find it irritating and headpopping when it is mentioned, the dishonesty) and there's nowhere near enough time in a human lifetime to master every field of knowledge under the sun or in which you will encounter claims.

@ff524's comment on the original Q is pretty applicable. You need background expertise to formulate the study, logically it applies you also need it to be critical of the material too since if you do not understand how a correct study works, you cannot spot an incorrect one - period.

In many fields, finding good methodology was a long and tedious process. You gain nothing by repeating this process, if you can manage in one life time at all. However, if you do not use a reasonable methodology, your research will likely be without value.
For example, consider that you have twenty drugs and try to investigate whether any of is good for the common cold – without any knowledge of methodology going beyond basic statistics. You might do something like testing each drug with hundred test subjects suffering from the common cold and consider the drug good if it is significantly more than half of the subjects state that their condition has improved after a few days. When doing so, your research is completely useless as you ignored the placebo effect, multiple testing, the final duration of the disease, and the unreliability of self-reports. Without any knowledge about previous research, you would not be able to identify all these mistakes on your own. Just consider all the adherents of esoteric healing methods, whose beliefs are typically based on such mistakes.
That being said, you should not blindly accept established methods, but try to understand why they are the way they are and assert their validity on your own. This is not only a relevant control mechanism but it also makes you aware of the methods’s limitations – which is a relevant when applying them.
As already suggested, you should probably write down your current ideas as well as any that arise when studying existing research, and evaluate them afterwards. Chances are that your approach is either flawed or a reinvention of the wheel.

It does not really make sense to limit the study of existing experiments for the sake of more diverse testing for the following reasons, and possibly more:

A methodologically sound study or experiment design must be free of biases as much as possible anyway. This means that no matter what you read or know, you have to pay attention that your biases (or the biases of prior research) are not reflected in the study design. I recommend you take a research-methods class and study the scientific method, statistics, behavioral study design, etc. on a more generic level before you get started with research. Learning about these things will also enable you to evaluate prior research better.
You will for sure not be able to publish your results without including in your paper a review of previous work on the topic. You will have to read and write about all sorts of previous work. This doesn’t mean you should take them for granted. In fact, if you focus on a specific bias or limitation that is problematic in previous work, and conduct a study that addresses it properly, that may be easier to execute and publish, compared to a completely novel angle.
It is highly probable that at some point, somewhere, some other researchers have noticed the issues you are noticing, and addressed them. This may be work that is dedicated to the issue; but you may also find this in a section (usually named limitations or discussion) in a paper about a study where the issues are evident.

If you are just getting started on this topic I would actually suggest that you write up a literature review on the topic – survey the papers written before, summarize them, highlight important findings, point out issues, etc. Write it in the form of a paper. Even if you don’t get to publish it (which you may try), you can recycle it to provide background in an original research paper.

Get used to thinking about what you want to accomplish first, before thinking about who it is going to bother!
Yes, I know this advice may not be categorized as academic per se, but try it out, nevertheless, please. I have been in situations similar to yours when trying to present out-of-the-box research to scientists who bare the title "experts" in their respective fields and if I learned something it is to never let anyone else decide the faith of your research. If you manage to raise in yourself the awareness of exactly where and how you stand defending your position with facts, rather than opinions, than, this is all you will ever need!
I know there are many topics in today's science when the public tries to get in the way and when people (mostly paid by parties who have nothing to do with academic institutions) are doing everything they can to convince everyone fictions are facts and vice versa but I believe there is only one reality and we are all living in it! I know I may sound trivial but I will advice you to adopt this principle when browsing through literature no matter whether if it comes from academia or not. Although everyone tries to shout otherwise, I myself do not believe academic journals are "safe heaven" for serious research only and parties who have the means can get their way there, too. This means you should build a kind of "compass" in your field as to what is likely the reality behind the observed phenomena and what is the position people with enough money are trying to put up for the whole world to see. Then, the important step comes-compare your compass with reality itself. This is where your experiments should come. If they work just fine, than probably you are on the right track to reality and somebody is paying money to somebody else somewhere in academia to silence something. If it turns the other way around-then, it is you who are out of touch with reality.
At the end of the all ends-There is only one world we all live in and everything else are private parties trying to wear "the academia skin". But no matter how much money and influence they could amass nothing can compare with observable experimentally verifiable data. I think this is all there have always been to the matter and if you manage to garner that sense of what you can prove and what you can not, than, you could manage the challenge of browsing through any source.

My experience has been that the danger of bias is much smaller than that of ignorance or of result duplication as lots approaches to a problem are obvious enough that nearly everyone tries them first; one must (I think) examine other approaches to find out what doesn't work so as to avoid wasting time. One cannot be original except by avoiding other approaches (especially the failures) or at least modifying them to work better.
You can eliminate bias by noting down your own thoughts before starting and keeping notes of your approaches and why you took such a path.

How could you commit plagiarism by not reading the literature? You may reinvent the wheel, but you can only plagiarise what you know.

You can greatly improve this answer (that is, take it out of the negative votes range) simply by removing the word "plagiarism". It has nothing to do with the question, and you are introducing an idea here that you obviously don't understand. As the other comments have indicated, there is absolutely no plagiarism if you independently come up with the same ideas that other people came up with. "Plagiarism" is a serious word--please don't throw it around meaninglessly.

OK. I'll try to get the point across a bit better. The music world often treats exact copies as plagiarism even though the accused didn't have access to the original song. It's a tricky business.

@ttw It's hard to imagine an exact copy of any non-trivial creative work as being anything other than plagiarism: the probability of exactly reproducing the original material is essentially zero. Copyright violation suits in the music industry are usually based on a claim that something sounds too similar to have been created independently, not on a claim of exact reproduction. In any case, I've removed my downvote and comment, since they no longer apply to your edited answer. Thanks for the increased clarity.

TL;DR: No, read as much independent sources as you can.
While one might (maybe rightfully) accuse you of looking for a justification for omitting a proper literature review. There is a philosophical part to this question. Which reinforces the study of previous research.
This answer consists of two parts: Criteria and Process
Your contribution to what ever field of research needs to satisfy certain criteria in order to be valuable. There might be a lot more criteria but the following two definitely need to be fulfilled:

Novelty
Falsification

While it is self evident that a contribution to a field of research needs to contain something new (this might very well be a new data-set), there exists the possibility that available data already falsifies your research. So in order to be sure that your theory/contribution was not already falsified you need to be aware of the rest of the research.
UC Berkeley created a very good overview of the complex process of the scientific method. Nicely showing (besides others) two characteristics of science:

Science is not linear, but interconnected/complex
Science is a adaptive in that the outcome of a test might be interpreted differently based on the community which performs the test/analysis.

Both approaches (limited and extensive review of the available literature) will influence the way research will be conducted and both approaches allow for biases to interfere with the research. Assuming that everyone is biased to a certain extend by the experiences of once life the limited study does not prevent biases it just does not add new ones.
Since biases threaten the research in both scenarios it is necessary to prevent (or limit) their impact through awareness and transparency.
Conclusion: In order to maximise the scientific value of the research a comprehensive knowledge/study of the available research is necessary to ensure novelty.

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


text:
Undergraduate Research going in a different direction than anticipated
For the last few months I have been working on an undergraduate research project with a professor. This was the first project I was given to work on. I want to pursue a phd after undergrad so I took this project on and have dedicated a lot of time and energy to the project as I really wanted to see it succeed. However, this project is in a branch of CS that is not related to their research expertise at all. So I have been on my own to to read papers to see what the SOTA is and try to come up with algorithms. In our meetings, the professor likes to see my work but the ideas he proposes show that this isn't their area of research and is unaware of SOTA algorithms. Furthermore, there is no one at my university who is specializing at this research currently. The way I saw research is to improve upon the SOTA or to develop innovative algorithms to achieve some task, however I don't see that happening without some expertise in the domain.
I have a very high amount of respect the professor, however I don't see myself getting very far by myself and without any fellow undergrad/grad students. Has anyone been in a similar situation? I want to ask for research directly correlated to the professor's areas of expertise but I don't want to be negative towards the professor as I am very grateful to the opportunity that was given to me. How should I approach the professor about my situation?

In my experience, my professors were not able to contribute much in terms of my thesis. They gave me lots of advice regarding the document's structure, the research approach, grammar, and the like, but not in terms of the actual thing I was writing about.
Their advice was great, and one that served me well over the years. Go out and ask on my own!
They pushed me to ask experts on my field, to approach professors from other Universities, and gain the knowledge and experience that I needed.

It is common for research to go a different direction than anticipated.
I don't know anything about your research or what a SOTA algorithm means, but yes, generally more compromises have to be made as an undergraduate research with regards to what sort of support you can get locally.

The way I saw research is to improve upon the SOTA or to develop innovative algorithms to achieve some task, however I don't see that happening without some expertise in the domain. I have a very high amount of respect the professor, however I don't see myself getting very far by myself and without any fellow undergrad/grad students.

I think if it's your understanding after discussion with your mentor that this is going to be a hard track, you would be wise to select a project closer to their expertise for this experience, and maybe keep learning about SOTA and you can return to it in a different institution or with a new advisor.
That said, you should sit down with them and say "I want to do this project: ... Would ou be able to advise me through this?" If they say no or prevaricate, find a good middle ground.

Sorry for not specifying. SOTA means State of the art.

@RayGreen Hm, well, your question is still generic enough that I would still suggest hewing a bit closer to what support you can get at this stage in your career.

Assuming you want a US centric answer, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Extending the state of the art as an undergraduate (or even in some masters programs) would be unusual due to factors you mention as well as time constraints. Pretty much anything you do that is acceptable to your professor will, IMO, be a strong benefit in a doctoral application.
Most people don't take up serious research until well into a doctoral program. Serious research, looking into the unknown and trying to learn something from it, is very time consuming.
Very few applicants to doctoral programs with only a bachelors will show any research at all beyond reading and summarizing what is already known. You are already a step ahead of the pack.
Keep on. Keep the professor happy and engaged.
It is probably late for this, but if you can manage attendance at one of the major CS conferences in your field, then you would have a chance to meet and speak with others, some of which might be interested. Presenting a poster, if possible, is especially good for meeting folks.

You can communicate to the professor that you'd like to collaborate with someone who has previously worked extensively in that domain.
Professors usually have a wide network, and are not new to collaborating - so your request won't come across as rude. In fact, the prof is more likely to be able to connect you to people in that domain than you yourself would.
In short, communicate.


text:
Should I accept an offer of being a teacher assistant without pay?
At my last statistics II class, the teacher said told all the students that, if one of us wanted to be his teacher's assistant for this course, they could send an email or arrange a meeting to talk about it. However, there would be no pay. This is probably because none of the students (including me) meets the requirements of having at least 160 credits (almost all the credits of a degree in my university) and have approved the course with at least a score of 14 out of 20 (We use vigesimal system). There is still the final exam remaining so technically nobody in the class meets that requirement.
However, at the very end of the class, at my turn to say goodbye, he offered me the position of being his TA. I jokingly said that if he received the payment and then transferred it to me, then I could be his TA. He laughed and then said goodbye.
Should I accept the offer? One part of a TA's job is to give a class one week before every practice exam in which they solve a couple problems of the problem set in front of the students. There are four practice exams in the semester, therefore four classes to give. The other part of the job is to review the exams and be in the class during the exams to solve doubts/avoid plagiarism. It's not a lot of work and usually there are two TAs per class so the work can be divided; however, I don't think it is fair that there is no pay because if the teacher offered that position, then he thinks that I'm as prepared as his current TAs (I also think the same).
On the other hand, my dad told me to accept the offer because then I can put it on my CV, become friends with the teacher (which means that I can ask him favors like a recommendation letter to help in a future project), and have teaching experience. Do these things compensate the lack of pay?

What are your career plans? Academia?

There are a number of answers already, describing the intangible benefits of taking on this task.  These answers are all correct; the intangible benefits are real, they have value, and it's a judgment call on your part what those values are.
However.
Those intangible benefits would also be there if you were being paid the standard university rate for being a teaching assistant.  In other words, the value of the task is "The tangible salary benefits and intangible non-salary benefits."
The university has evidently come to the conclusion that the value of the intangible benefits are not sufficient, so they augment with the tangible benefits.  And yet you are being asked to do the task without them.
Are the intangible benefits alone worth it?  This is a personal decision only you can make.
But you have reason to be skeptical.

This depends on the system. When I was a student in Argentina, it was completely standard to start as an unpaid TA. You were hired officially, competition and all, and later when having paid positions at the university it counted for the "years employed" bonus. Eventually, as you had a bit of experience, you could apply and compete for the paid positions.

I'll go against the grain here and say you should not do it. You should not even consider it. Your response to the professor was spot-on.
I'm assuming that you and some of your classmates will meet the 14/20 requirement after finals, so I'll discuss only the 160 credit completion requirement. By setting the credit requirement for payment so high, the university has made it difficult to find TAs who could be paid. Why?
On the charitable assumption, the university wants TAs who are close to graduation because being a TA is a substantial commitment; for those who still need a lot of credits, the time spent as a TA could potentially impede their progress toward the degree. In that case, take the university at its word: since you do not yet have the number of credits, focus on completing your degree, not on TA work.
On the uncharitable assumption, the university doesn't want to pay TAs, and asks that TAs be close to finishing their degrees both so that few students qualify for payment, and so that those who do qualify will soon graduate and leave. Since the professor has offered you the job, to my mind this is more likely than the charitable assumption.
There could be a neutral assumption that those close to finishing their degrees are more qualified to be TAs, so they deserve payment whereas someone farther away from finishing is less qualified and should work for free. I'm cynical enough not to believe this. After all, the professor offered you the job. Why would he do that if he thought you were not qualified? And if you are qualified, why not pay you?
If the requirements for payment are out of his hands and he is simply abiding by rules, he needs to realize that the rules are unreasonable and to  take that up with the powers that be. He should make the case that it's not necessary for TAs to be so close to completing their degree requirements. If he doesn't want to do that, he shouldn't be asking for students to work unpaid. Asking you to accept the unreasonable situation is not fair to you.
Finally, most of the "go for it!" answers here are hand-waving away the actual work. It is not trivial to prepare four class meetings per term. Exam prep classes still require you to be as fully prepared for the exam as if you were going to take it yourself; to be able to explain complex material very succinctly when a student has a question, since the exam (presumably) covers several weeks' worth of material; and to deal with students' anxieties. That is hard. Academia tends to undervalue teaching, and to underestimate what it takes to be a good teacher—note how few questions on this site are about teaching rather than research, or the politics of doctoral programs, or submitting/reviewing a journal article, etc. Assuming you're conscientious and want to serve your students well, you will spend a lot more time on your TA work than it seems.
I don't know what country you are in, but in the US, academia is notorious for its poor treatment of front line workers who do the bulk of teaching, such as adjunct faculty. Your situation is not that different: unequal pay structures that both perpetuate and result from an inherently exploitative system. Those who want an academic career might heed the "intangible rewards" discourse of the majority of the answers here. But if you don't have a political need to be on the professor's good side, why should you buy into it?
Full disclosure: I have been a TA, both paid and unpaid, at various universities both in India and the US. Any time I took an unpaid position, it was for one of two overlapping reasons: I wanted to (re)learn the material myself, and/or I wanted the affiliation with a well-known mentor at a prestigious university. Neither of those considerations seems to apply in your case, so there is no reason for you to do gratis what someone else would be paid for. Do not accede in your own exploitation and prop up an unjust system.

Yes, generally, relatively-privileged people should not agree to do work, for free, that other (less-privileged) people might need income from. Yes, the potential need to solicit letters of recommendation, etc., certainly corrupts things...

"If the requirements for payment are out of his hands and he is simply abiding by rules, he needs to realize that the rules are unreasonable and to take that up with the powers that be." ─ This is the best answer. As long as students continue to do TA work for free, the university will not start paying. Sure, there are intangible benefits of doing it as discussed by other answers, but there are also benefits to not doing it, and saying why. You would get a lot of the same benefits from e.g. forming a study group, paid tutoring for high-school students, volunteering with a charity, etc.

If it won't interfere with your other courses and projects and it seems like fun to you, there is no reason not to do it. It is good experience in interacting with people if nothing else.
Your father's advice is also sound. But, unless you are looking for a career in academia, the direct advantages are rather minor. There are certainly worse ways to spend your time.
The teacher's faith in you is worth something, of course. Good luck in your future plans, whatever they are.

The main benefit of this activity is to gain some experience in the administration and teaching of a course.  If you plan to do teaching as part of your future career then this could be a useful starting point, even though it is not a paid position.  You can certainly put this kind of experience on your CV if it aids you, but it is likely to be something that aids you only insofar as it gets you paid teaching work later on.  As to the potential making friends with the lecturer, that is highly dependent on the attitude of your lecturer and your own social abilities; if you're not a particularly personable person then you might just as easily annoy your lecturer as make friends with him.  In any case, even if you are good at winning people over, that is a pretty thin reed --- I don't recommend doing unpaid labour for people merely to ingratiate yourself with them.
If you decide to take up this offer, my advice would be to have a preliminary meeting with your teacher and ask him what he can provide to you in lieu of payment for your work as a TA.  This might include an agreement that he will provide you with a letter of reference for your teaching work, or an agreement that he will prioritise you for future opportunities for paid TA positions, etc.

is likely to be something that aids you only insofar as it gets you paid teaching work later on
I disagree strongly with this, I'm not in the academic sector but someone with TA experience on their CV shows me that someone trusted them enough to pick them out to fill a responsible position - that's significant.

If you can foresee something where you would need a recommendation letter in the near future, then you should do it.
It sounds like this is minimal work, but will provide an opportunity for the faculty to know you better. This is important. I don't say this from the perspective of faculty trading off LORs for free labor, indeed that is not the case. However, a letter from someone who actually has something meaningful to say about you beyond the usual "Student X took my class and got an A." can be very useful. The minimal TA work is not just you doing labor, you actually do learn quite a lot by being on the other end of it (but it will have less value if you don't wish to stay in academia).

You definitely learn a lot by teaching, but I'm not so sure about that "minimal work" bit. The stuff on formal job description isn't necessarily everything you'll be doing, so it might be a good idea to clarify with the professor how much time you can spare for this, so it doesn't end up being a full time unpaid job.  (A TA is supposed to be a full time underpaid job! :-))

I've always said that in teaching something, one gains more insight than just studying it. That's to your advantage.
Being able to diversify and do something different from your chosen path, also advantageous.
This showing on a c.v, also advantageous.
Not being paid - a lot of apprenticeships long ago were like this, or at least poorly paid. It's the price YOU pay to get the experience - advantageous.
If instead, you could be earning good money in place of preparation and attendance, probably not a lot of help.
Working for nothing always 'cheapens' the job, but in fact, you'll be gaining a lot more than a financial reward - go for it!

Tangential comment: many internships are paid these days which was not the case even 10-15 years ago. Just something to keep in mind when discussing unpaid positions (they are becoming less common).

Your father is right, you should do it. The point is that taking one more course or doing one more project is not likely to be very memorable in the future - you'll still graduate with the same degree - but teaching the course will be something different that you can add onto your CV. "Different" is the key word here, you're certain to learn stuff of a very different nature that you would not have learned otherwise, and you'll get examples that you can quote to a future interviewer that you wouldn't otherwise be able to.
The drawback is you don't get paid. But is that actually a drawback? If you don't take up the position, how likely is it that you'll do something that pays you instead? If you're actually giving up paid work to do unpaid work, then it's a different story, but if you're going to not be paid regardless, then the "drawback" is more psychological than anything.
See also Is TA-ing worth the opportunity cost (of having more time for research)?

I agree with the positivesin the other answers, but you also need to protect yourself. By this I get it in a written contract that spells out all obligations by BOTH you and the University (not professor). Among many things, this should include performing the tasks at no pay (or perhaps a partial tuition waiver), what tasks are expected of you, how much hours, availablity of resources, what happens in case of an error or omission, nonperformance, and other numerous things may come up in the "job" of being a TA.
Best of luck to you.

In many places, such contract would probably not be enforceable, since it lacks consideration for both parties.


text:
Changing Subfields after PhD in psychology
I am trying to understand the degree of difficulty that a psychologist might experience changing subdisciplines (excluding clinical/school/industrial-organizational). For example, could someone who is trained as a developmental or cognitive psychologist later identify as a social psychologist? Or, could someone who is trained as an experimental psychologist later identify as a cognitive psychologist?
If your research lines up with that particular area, would you receive any barriers to using a label like "social psychologist" or "cognitive psychologist" if your PhD was not in that subdiscipline of psychology. Also, is there anyone who dictates those terms, like "social psychologist," as I know would be the case for a clinical psychologist who needs to get licensed.

I don't think it would be appropriate or on-topic for us to list individuals (for any reason really)  that meet your criteria, so I've taken the liberty of editing that part out rather than voting to close.

This is likely a duplicate of either or both of the following. If not, recommend explaining clearly why not. (How) Can I switch from field X to field Y after getting my PhD? Switching fields in a postdoc after PhD, is that possible in psychology?

This answer is a bit more general than your question and I am not a psychologist.
In general, however, in a research field the biggest difficulty in changing subfields (or fields) is when the actual research process is different in the two areas. If that is not the case then one knows how to search the literature, pose questions, construct evidence, and reach conclusions. The process of writing is usually about the same, as is the process of gathering collaborators and others willing to work with you. In particular you don't need another degree and would be bored if you attempt one.
It is good to wait for such changes until you have established a base in your doctoral (sub)field, just to reduce risk to your professional career. It also gives you time and space to do the background reading in a new field to come up to the current state of knowledge.
But, since you have used the "job" tag, I'll add that studying one subfield and immediately, with no further ado, representing yourself as an expert as another is not recommended. Here the gatekeepers would be the hiring committees who would be, at least, skeptical.
And, you might need to be aware and learn of different ethical considerations in the different (sub)fields.
You are wise, of course, to exclude clinical areas from the question since dealing with actual humans and their issues is different from dealing with their data and one can do harm without specific training.
The "dictators" of such things, for entry level university faculty, are those who make tenure decisions and, more generally, those who review submitted papers for impact and novelty.

Note for the US. The US doctoral program, with the typical set of qualifying exams and preparatory coursework, is usually broad enough that a graduate has a comprehensive view of their field, across subfields, as well as their deep dive into their dissertation research. This normally leaves one moderately well placed for movement in the general area.


text:
How to write paper from PhD thesis?
I finished my PhD in October 2017. I have tried to write a publication from my thesis, however I am finding it quite a struggle. I am not receiving any help from my PhD supervisor. So my question is, what should I take into account in order to write a paper (I have not written any papers before)?
Can I write a paper from my thesis after the university has published it?

There seem to be two questions here, first something related to plagiarism or copyright if the university publishes your thesis, and second the fact that you have no idea how to actually write a paper because no one ever told you. Could you maybe add a little bit more context and turn the question into something that can be answered on this site? I think there is no such thing as a general guide on how to write a good paper, at least not one that is applicable to all fields. On that note, the field and the country might help.

@DirkLiebhold Do universities publish PhD theses? It seems problematic, because only the author knows what copyright agreements have already been made (e.g., when material has already been published in a journal).

@puppetsock That comment contains a ton of assumptions that all parts of academia are like the one you have seen. This need not be the case.

@puppetsock stapler theses are rare in my field. Here it works the other way around: write a book-lenght manuscript first, and then slice it into papers.

@user2768 Yes it is common for universities to publish PhD theses, and it is also common for journals and other publishers to accept work to be published in duplicate to a thesis (before or after). The thesis itself is not considered a peer-reviewed publication within most fields so it counts more like a preprint (even if the date is later than the actual publication). Some of this is going to differ by field and country, of course.

@BryanKrause You mean "published" as-in publicly available, rather than published by a publisher? The former wouldn't seem to cause the copyright issues mentioned by Dirk (assuming the author didn't assign -- possibly automatically -- copyright to the university). Regarding, "[t]he thesis itself is not considered a peer-reviewed publication," that surely depends upon the country the PhD was examined? In some countries, the thesis is the document that has received the most scrutiny from peers. (I wouldn't refer to a thesis as a publication, they aren't published by a publisher.)

I'll assume your thesis has the following structure:

Introduction
Background
Result 1
...
Result N
Conclusion

Each result chapter should be publishable (if not now, then later, with some additional material). You just need to prepend each result chapter with an introduction to that result (borrowing heavily from the introduction chapter of your thesis), append with a conclusion to that result (borrowing heavily from the conclusion chapter of your thesis), and edit (by compression and rewriting) into a standalone paper.

I recommend mentioning that preliminary results appeared in your PhD thesis, but that's not necessary.

This may be easier to do in some fields than others, and with some theses than others. In math, sometimes Result N is the one of significance and the others are just Lemmas that lead up to it, but have little independent merit. Some merit, of course, but possibly not enough for a paper. But it is possible they can still be utilized if they support other results as well. But it may be very difficult to write a paper about Result N without all of the others which make it possible. And yet, not possible to write all the other papers so that you can cite them. Of course, arXiv can help here.

@Buffy The assumed thesis structure is certainly better aligned with some disciplines rather than others! And it may not apply to the OP. (They didn't mention their discipline, so whether my answer is applicable to their discipline is unclear.) By result 1, ..., result N, I meant independent, standalone results. Not every thesis will contain such results. (But, it is strongly supported by The PHD Movie 2. Recall, "...most dissertations...are random collections of disparate work that are stitched together...")

@Buffy For the case that you describe, the thesis just needs to be compressed to a length suitable for publication. Many proofs, some lemmas, etc., can be omitted and references to the thesis can be included.

Shorten, shorten, shorten, and rewrite.
When writing directly for the thesis, people often are elaborate and generous. You have all the space in the world, and having 180 pages instead of 150 might be a plus.
In a journal paper you have, say, 10 pages of a condensed formatting and that's it. So, the writing has to accommodate this.
I have three suggestions:

In most cases you would like to pick some aspect of the thesis, not the whole work. So start from the relevant chapter.
It depends a lot on the writing style and personal preferences, but for me personally it's often easier to read a paragraph and to come up with a way to tell this in one sentence (i.e., rewriting) than to edit said paragraph to be shorter and more concise.
All things that are somewhat relevant, but too large or not immediately needed either land in the supplementary document, or you directly refer to the thesis for more details.

This is good advice, but I'll also note that in some fields, say Mathematics, it isn't always possible. In such fields there may be journals that will publish long papers, though possibly not as long as the thesis. But I think that being concise is good even for the thesis. That is to say, complete, but not pedantic.

As for any paper, you should first decide what is the exact topic of your paper, and especially what is the original contribution. Depending on this, you should choose a venue (journal or conference) relevant for this kind of contribution, and preferably appropriate for various criteria such as:

editorial policy, in particular length of the paper you plan to write;
acceptance rate: this depends how good you think the paper would be, and whether your strategy favours either a high chance to get accepted or the future value of the paper (the more selective, the higher the value);
editorial process, in particular length of the reviewing process

You have probably read many papers in your field during your PhD, so you have many examples that you can use as references. The fact that your paper is based on your PhD is not essential in the process. In particular, don't try to squeeze your whole PhD into a single paper, these are two different kinds of documents with different purposes and they should be designed in a different way.

It may depend on your university and country but many PhD graduates write papers based on their thesis, or chapters of their thesis, after completing their doctorate so this is quite normal. You will probably have to cite your thesis in any papers that you produce from it as it is a prior published work that you are expanding on.


text:
How badly will my future job prospects be affected after having my PhD graduation date extended by more than 3 years (due to health)?
Do I still have the possibility of a career in Academia? Can publishing merit (Qualitative and Quantitative) save me?

The date your thesis is accepted by your examiners is far more important than your graduation date.

@user2768 True but it seems relatively unlikely that the asker submitted their thesis, was examined and then fell so ill for three years that they couldn't graduate until they recovered. It seems much more likely that the health problems delayed submission rather than just graduation. Asker, please clarify the situation. (Having said that, it probably doesn't make much difference. "I had serious health problems" is a pretty good reason for taking a long time to complete a PhD.)

@DavidRicherby Mmmm... the title doesn't fit on my screen, so I only see "How badly will my future job prospects be affected after having my PhD graduation date extended (due to health)?" The three year part was missing. Terrible design by Stackexchange.

It will probably have very little effect. Most jobs / grants / fellowships / etc that are time-limited for early career researchers,

Are based on time since submission or graduation, and pay no
attention to when you started;
Allow you to argue for longer if
there has been documented sickness (as well as maternity, and some
other things)

The time taken might raise eyebrows on a CV, and if you are worried about not getting as far as interviews because of it you could consider mentioning in covering letters, but "I took longer because I was ill. Now I'm better" is a perfectly reasonable explanation that no sensible person will hold against you.
(if you can't say "Now I'm better", that may unfortunately be a different matter)

I am very gratefull for all your responses and comments. Thank you, very much all of you! Meanwhile, Mr. Richerby had added the inputs very correctly, I indeed missed the timeline as per the schedule year (according to the university) for submitting the thesis and so the graduation date.  But the point that disturbs largely is if I still have the possibility of a career in Academia? Or, if  publishing merit (Qualitative and Quantitative) can save me?