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What value does one derive by doing research as an undergrad vs spending that time in coursework/projects
For background, I'm currently enrolled in the honors college for both my majors (CS and Econ) in my university. Honors for each major means that I have to take 1-2 courses per major where the only focus is research.
While my "main" major is CS (the one I spend the most time on, will use for jobs later), I'm not sure I want to do honors there. I could be taking grad courses that go deeper into topics that interest me and can do research on the side (ie as part of a prof's group) without those credits.
For Econ, I'm more concerned. I've heard it's more important for an Econ student to do honors and it would be much more difficult for me to do research without the designated courses. However, I don't plan on going to grad school for Econ as of right now (I'm thinking about doing an MBA/masters in CS if it helps). Furthermore, basically every place I apply to doesn't care whether I've done honors or not.
I joined for the learning and experiencing research in undergrad, but it seems difficult to justify when the same time/credit hours can be spent doing something else that would be more applicable to jobs (ex. taking a grad lvl deep learning course).
How would I go about evaluating whether the honors is worth it in either major? What value does one derive by doing research as an undergrad?

This question seems similar but is not because the honors college asks more out of the students and most of the answers seem to focus on that rather than the tradeoff between research and other course

You should do undergraduate research in order to decide whether you want to do that kind of graduate research. Don't jump through arbitrary hoops if you don't know why you're doing it.

Research is totally different than anything else you do in schooling. It's the distinction between learning what everyone else has done before and learning something no one knows yet (no one ever).
Do you need to learn truly new things to be a productive member of society? No, you really don't. Our society is really advanced, and almost all the work out there is about doing things people have done before. You could spend your whole life learning what other people know and never come close to learning it all.
Do you need research experience for a non-academic career that doesn't involve research? No, probably not. That said, depending on the research environment you can also get exposed to a lot of more broadly applicable job skills as well when you do research.
You'll have to decide for yourself whether research is worth it. It's hard, probably you'll fail in almost everything you do as you get started unless you're given a very simple project, but you can still learn a lot. If nothing else, you might learn whether research could be a path for you in the future, or whether you should avoid it.

How would I go about evaluating whether the [research] honors is worth it in either major?

I would suggest two paradigms.
Start at the goal and work your way back. What job is it that you want to get? From your post-grad plans, I'm guessing you want to be something like a manager in a tech company. More concretely, it sounds like your next step is to get an MS in CS from a reputable school. So, you should determine which of your alternatives will help you to reach these goals. In some sense, this is a normal career decision rather than a peculiarity of academia.
Cast a wide net. The challenge with the above approach is that it's hard to set goals in your early career, when there may be jobs that you haven't even heard of, or things you enjoy / are good at that you haven't even tried yet. So, consider that you should try many different things and develop many different skills before you settle on a narrow path. While there are many possibilities, research is a good/common choice because:

Research positions are often available for college students, are usually compatible with students' schedules and levels of experience, and are easily understood (or even expected) by employers and grad schools; and
Most research projects are longer-term endeavors that require learning skills that are useful "in the real world"; so, the benefits of getting some research experience are not limited to those who want to pursue research careers.

I'm not sure I want to do honors [in CS]. I could be taking grad courses that go deeper into topics that interest me and can do research on the side (ie as part of a prof's group) without those credits.

This seems like a well-reasoned decision. Here, it seems like "getting honors" would actually reduce your qualifications (which is a failing of your college!). Sometimes it's important to do painful things just for the accreditation (e.g., PhD candidates need to finish proofing their thesis!), but this does not seem to be one of those times.

For Econ, I'm more concerned. I've heard it's more important for an Econ student to do honors...however, I don't plan on going to grad school for Econ

I suspect the comment about honors being important pertains to graduate admissions in economics, which is very competitive. I seriously doubt that getting "honors" in your second major would much matter in other contexts. For example, when I interview recent grads (for permanent R&D positions), we only care about their relevant experience and knowledge...even GPA is not weighted very heavily, and a lack of departmental honors would make no difference at all.


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Evaluating Internships
I'm an undergrad student and am confused as to how I would approach evaluating internships. In places like CS, it's easy to know that Google, Facebook, etc would be good places to intern. In other majors, it is more difficult. How would one evaluate the prestige/value of an internship?

The value of your internship will highly depend on your career plans. I'd suggest asking a couple of teachers to start with.

@m.raynal Would professors be able to advise about non-academia career advice

Yes, it's possible that some if them have been in the industry before themselves.

@user760900 - most undergraduates that professors interact with do not go on to post-graduate studies, much less academia in general. But, what are you asking them to evaluate against?

You need to define what "good" means for you.
For example, you claim that as a Computer Science major, doing an internship at Google/ Facebook would be "good". If you are trying to impress your friends, it is most certainly "good". No doubt the name recognition of these companies might help if you are looking for a job in IT where you can convey to recruiters that "I did an internship at Google therefore I am skilled developer".
My personal opinion is that an internship is good if you are able to develop some new skills, learn about yourself in terms of what you like/dislike in terms of workplace environment, job etc. I see it as an opportunity to try things out. I wouldn't place value on an internship solely on the perceived edge it might give you for later employment, although this is a criterion to consider.

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Understanding "prerequisites" for undergraduate research with a certain professor
I'd like to do research with one of a few professors within a certain group in my (American) university's Computer Science department. I'm having some trouble contacting them, but I'd like to understand what I can do, as an undergraduate student, to increase my chances of getting research with one of the profs I am interested in.
The group they are in teaches only a few undergrad classes, which, as of next semester, I have completed all of. Yet I was, through a series of extremely unfortunate class schedules, unable to be taught by any of the professors I want to research with, although next semester I will be taught by their colleagues in the same group. I talked to a couple TAs and other profs, who said to "just get better at the research topics in question", although this seems like altogether unhelpful advice given the gap between a first year undergrad and a professor's research.
There are no classes that really delve into the exact research that the professors I would like to research with do, although the class I am taking next semester covers the basics of what the group is about.
What can I do to understand what the "prerequisites" for being a research assistant to the professors in question would be (beyond just "get better")?

The "prerequisites" are really going to depend on the field that your professors of interest are publishing in. Which will lead me to the next point: if you're interested in this field, read some publications from these professors or other professors/experts in this field, then stop by their office hours or talk to them and mention your interest in the field and what you can do to gain more knowledge.

Since the qualities that an individual professor is looking for is intensely personal, there is no substitute for actually communicating with them. Mine would be different from the person in the next office, certainly.
You need to solve the communication problem before you can get anything specific. I suggest that you might want to contact the department office (or chair) and explain that you are having trouble contacting the professor in question and ask for advice.
But there are a couple of things you can do. You say you have already taken the courses that this group normally teaches and probably represents their interest. Normally, I'd advise doing what you have already done. So, I'll assume that you are basically prepared. But you haven't indicated whether any of them are actually interested in supervising undergraduate research. Perhaps it is a very rare thing with them. And you aren't known to them in any case, not having taken the key courses with anyone in the group.
Perhaps your attempts to contact them have been ignored for some reason or combination of reasons. But you might consider the following:
Write up a simple CV, describing the relevant courses you have taken and any research you have done around those topics. This should be a page or less.
Write up a simple SoP (Statement of Purpose) saying what you might like to do and how you think you would be successful doing it. This should be (perhaps) half a page.
You don't want to say too much, or you'll be ignored again, but you need to make an introduction to them. It is hard now, with the pandemic, but the ideal way is to go visit in person and deliver these two documents.
A third thing you might do is get a letter of recommendation from the professor you took the key courses, in which that prof introduces you to the others.
To summarize, treat this as you would an application to an educational program.

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Motivation and presentation not explained in the paper
My conference paper got conditionally accepted, but one of the remarks of the reviewer was: "The presentation and motivation are not explained." I'm not sure what to think about this. English is not my native language, so I'm not quite following what does this means.
What doeas "presentation" in the paper means? I was at the conference, and I have presented my work, but I guess that definitelly doesn't have anything to do with this review.
And about motivation, I'm not quite following how motivation is not explained? Can someone point to a few examples that explain this issue?
I hope I haven't done anything wrong quoting one sentece from the review. Also, I'm really sorry if it is something that happens quite often. Oh, I forgot to say that I'am a mathematician.:)

I guess these are hard to answer without reading your paper.

Yes, I was worried about that, but at least I hope that somehow I'll got the answer. I have to try.:)

Presentation == describe your work better (language, graphs if applicable, structure, etc.); Motivation == explain better why you investigated this, and why your findings matter (also relation to prior and other work, if applicable)

I agree with @gnometorule.  It looks like the reviewer wrote a sloppy comment.  I imagine the reviewer meant, "The presentation needs improvement, and the motivation should be explained better."  Presentation means how you present your ideas.  I suppose the reviewer felt that the ideas could be presented more clearly.  Motivation makes the reader care about your contribution.
Hopefully the reviewer also made some specific comments that will guide your revision process.

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Locating the journal in which a paper was published
I found a singular paper on an extremely specific CS topic on arXiv. How would I find which journal this paper has been published in?
I ask because I would like more detail on this paper, however according to various questions on this site, the authors of the papers would be inclined not to respond if the paper is not already published. Being a first year undergrad, I have no intention of "stealing" their research or doing anything close to what their paper suggests, however I would appreciate a look at the code as the paper is slightly unclear about a few methods used.

Did you try searching on Google / Google Scholar?

It's unclear looking at the two paragraphs: are you looking for the publication venue, code, or both?

@GoodDeeds I did. It does not show up anywhere on GScholar but the arXiv link. I'm ultimately looking for the code, but I understand that it is unlikely they will share code if the paper is not published yet. Hence, I am asking about locating the publication venue so that I may determine if it would be insulting to write an email to them asking about the code

It's quite possible it hasn't been published, especially if it's recent, but even older arXiv papers may have been abandoned without being published or split into other works.

@BryanKrause The paper was first put on arXiv almost 8 months ago. How would I find the works it has been split into, given that none of the authors have anything on GScholar beyond the arXiv preprint date. If it has been abandoned, would it be appropriate to email asking for code?

8 months is quite recent, definitely too recent to be considered abandoned. It's probably just not published anywhere else.

"authors of the papers would be inclined not to respond if the paper is not already published"  Sensible authors will respond to reasonable requests about ArXiv papers.

This question is about the content of your research, and probably off topic.

You can certainly write to the authors to ask for the code even if the paper is not yet formally published. While the chance of them sharing it might be more if it is formally published, I don't think it is rude to ask. You could perhaps include some context on why you are interested, if you do so.
Nevertheless, to find out where a paper has been published (if any), you could try the following:

Search Google / Google Scholar.
Check the "Comments" metadata in the arXiv submission. The final publication venue is often mentioned there.
Check the websites, Google Scholar profiles, DBLP profiles, etc. of the authors.
Check with your university library.

You could check the databases of individual conferences, journals, or societies as well, but these would almost certainly also show up on a Google search.
For your broader goal of finding the code, a few suggestions, before contacting the authors:

Check the paper thoroughly, look for any links in the text, particularly in the introduction or experimental sections, and in the footnotes.
Search Google, GitHub, and similar resources. Sometimes there are third-party implementations available, in case that is helpful to you. If the authors have given a name to their technique / tool, searching by this name, in addition to the paper title, can help.
In certain fields, there may be specific resources available. For example, in machine learning, paperswithcode.com maintains a database of papers along with code by authors and third-party implementations. For several popular tasks, it also maintains leaderboards of methods and their associated paper and code.
Check the authors' web pages and their labs' web pages. A link to the code might be available in the publication list.
Check for implementations in future papers that cite this paper (unless the paper you are looking at is very new). Others may have compared their methods with that of the paper, and may have an implementation included in their own code. Survey papers are also a good place to look.


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Is it common to make seniority distinctions between coauthors of a paper in math?
Twice now, I've read a paper written by a prominent researcher and some other "younger" researchers, e.g. instead of being superstars they're merely professors, I guess. In the text, he is referred to as the "senior author", e.g. in sentences that read like "In [4], the senior proved this result which is relevant to us because..."
I was a bit shocked, to be honest, essentially because I had never seen something like this in (pure) mathematics. In my mind there was always the implicit assumption that all others contributed approximately equally to the paper, which explained the alphabetical ordering of authors in (almost) all papers.
How common is this? Have you seen this before, and if so, how often?

PS: Since I know this site, I'd like to state right away that I'm only interested in math, and even pure math if it makes a difference. I'm aware that customs differ in other fields and I'm not particularly interested in that. I'll just ignore comments to that effect.

I would think these are mere descriptions, and "senior" is a literal reference to age. I've seen similar wordings a few times (not a lot, it is not unheard of, but not particularly common), and in the cases I remember, it was never about status or prominence or contributions. Just something to write rather than last names or things like "the first-named author proved in ..."

I strongly prefer just using the authors initials to the standard but awkward “third-named author” phrasing.

Is it common to make seniority distinctions between coauthors of a paper in math?

This is uncommon. However it seems less unusual to refer to something one of the authors did, e.g.:

In a previous result [2] by one of the authors, it is shown that ...

or:

This builds on prior work of the first author [3], namely, ...

As  Andrés E. Caicedo says in the comments, I would assume that this is just a way to refer to one of the authors, similar to the above statements. That is, this is not a way to imply that they are more important, or contributed more to the paper. (If anything I would assume the senior author contributed a little less :) ) It may be a small gesture of respect, formality, or acknowledgement to the mentor of the work, but nothing more.

In my mind there was always the implicit assumption that all others contributed approximately equally to the paper

Yes, this is indeed the implicit assumption. Moreover, referring to an author as the "senior" author does not really contradict this.

I’d bet the relevant sentence was not written by the senior author!

I'll guess that this is pretty uncommon, but the situation itself is a bit uncommon. Perhaps it is just that the senior professor is mentor to all of the others and they want to honor the person. It may well be that one person produces a key result that the others then explore, develop, and they put it all together.
I did something similar (maybe even more rare) in my doctoral work. For one of the key theorems, the thesis and later publication, contains a proof by my advisor. I had an alternate proof, but his was more interesting and had potential for new insights into the field. My proof was more pedestrian. So, while I was actually sole author, his proof is contained in the paper and credited there to him.
But, I think you are correct. In pure math, a paper with several authors has a basic assumption that all contributed in such a way that it is impossible to rank who contributed "more" than others and so authors are listed alphabetically. Even if one person has an idea "first", others can be key to the exploration and development of the idea. Even "small" insights can have a big effect. It saves a tremendous amount of grief. I've been told that in applied math, different standards apply.
But honoring special contributions is also fine when it happens.

It seems rather unusual, and I consider it bad style to use a descriptor that readers will not be able to figure out unless they consult the list of references. (With "first author" you can at least get a reminder by looking at the running header.) It is, of course, possible that the first author is indeed the senior author, and in the context of the journal that might be an acceptable synonym.


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Department member writing reference letter for job applicant for a position in that dept
The applicant has asked me for a reference letter for a position in my department. (I can give a positive recommendation.) The applicant is not related to me. Would it be appropriate for me to do so? If another applicant were to ask me for such for the same position after I've sent one for the first applicant, should I decline the 2nd person's request? (That would otherwise be a positive recommendation as well.)

I see no ethical or practical problem as long as you are not otherwise involved in the hiring decision. For your own future, I'd also advise agains any lobbying on the applicant's behalf other than the letter itself. If the applicant is rejected you don't want it to reflect back on you.
Just be honest, and otherwise keep your distance, just as if you were located in another institution.
Likewise, giving an honest appraisal of another (or again, another) applicant should be no problem as long as you have some idea of the individual capabilities of each.
And if you are later asked by your colleagues to rank the various people  you have recommended, avoid it, mentioning that it would be improper and is the job of the committee.
If I were a member of the hiring committee, I'd have to consider refusing to provide a recommendation, though there might be other solutions, such as recusal.

Thanks so much for that very helpful response.

The first sentence is correct, but I am very skeptical of the rest.  Why should it matter which department the job opening is in?  What is the point of a reference if it is not lobbying already?


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Should I contact the journal because I am not receiving a response after a year?
I have submitted a paper to a Springer mathematical journal. The reviewers asked for a revision, and after revising the paper, the editor's decision, alongside with the reviewers' one (of course), was to accept the paper. In the email that I have received it was stated: "You will receive an e-mail in due course regarding the production process". But after that, a whole year has passed and nothing happened. No info after that email. After logging into my author's account, on the main menu in section Completed I can only see:
 - Submissions with a decision: 1
 - Submissions with a production completed: 1.

Generally, what does production completed means? I read about MyPublication service on the Springer website but I never had a chance to see the questionnaire. Just to mention, I did not get any info, nor doi number, nor anything similar. Only that the paper is accepted, a year ago.
Should I write to the journal? To the Editor, the Editor-in-Chief, or some service to inquire about my paper?

There is a similar question (Springer special issue status) but it regards the special issue status. In my case it is a regular one. Also, the comments and answers on that thread were not helpful in my case.

Yes, after a year you should definitely write to the editor and ask for an update.
Production completed likely means that the paper is actually ready for immediate publication either in print or online. But check, nevertheless. Print, especially, takes a while to get out the door. But even online publication takes a while to move from staging to final servers.
But, yes, ask.

Yes, you should definitely ask. Something similar to this happened to me in the past. My paper was just stuck in some administrative function. Sometimes a simple e-mail can speed it up.

Firstly, one year is too long to wait for this --- for a production email you should have written back to them after a month or two.  In any case, since it has been a year, before contacting the journal, you should do a quick literature search to see if the paper has already been published.  (Because that is also a possible meaning of "production completed".)  If the paper has already been published then you are probably too late to worry about it.  If it is still in production, you might still have time to look at the proofs before publication.

Production should not take a year. In fact in my experience any paper that takes more than ~3 months to get from acceptance to publication online is seriously out of the norm.
I recommend writing to the journal asking about what's going on. Something almost certainly broke - "production completed" makes it sound like they've finished what they're doing and are waiting for a response from you (did you miss their email?). I would contact the journal, not the editorial board, since the board are not usually involved in the production process. If you can't find the journal's contact email, try replying to the acceptance letter (the one that said "You will receive an e-mail in due course regarding the production process").


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A life of randomly doing fully funded Masters programs?
I have an idea, although it's probably a bad one. I want to study many different topics because I'm a nerd, so I'll do several different masters degrees. A few on my list are Math, Physics, CS, Economics. There are several challenges: I am not able to pay out of pocket, so I'll need to find programs that are fully funded with RA/TA positions, and I have no undergraduate background in any of those fields (except CS).
My question is: how feasible is this plan, do you know of anyone else who has done this, and how will this look to future employers/academics?
(I also want to do a Ph.D. but want to first study some other things)

Related, not a duplicate https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17232/is-doing-two-phds-a-good-path

It's not a good way go earn money.  You could earn more getting a PhD (but still not much).

Why not self-study?

You could study econophysics, which uses all those disciplines.

@AnonymousPhysicist self-studying is hard, Ph.D. won't give me the freedom to study topics like analysis, quantum mechanics, since I plan to do it in CS. I don't need a lot of money. Just stuff to live off of

Generally committees that deal with admissions and distributing funding like to see evidence that you are on an upwards trajectory in terms of career growth, and that you've thought about how their course fits into that. You can probably spin a convincing case for doing a second Masters (realigned goals, interdisciplinary, etc), but after that it gets increasingly tenuous. If I have to choose between supporting you to do your fourth masters, or someone else to do their first, I'm afraid I'm going to pick them.

I think the key here is that you want to consume a departments' limited funding resources - if you were in a position to pay your own way, I think people would shrug and let you get on with it.

@avid reasonable


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Re-applying to a Ph.D. program after acceptance?
What would happen if I were accepted into a Ph.D. program but declined it later in order to work in industry. Would this have any beneficial or negative impact on a future application to this same university and Ph.D. program?
My field is computer science.

Its hard to make generalizations due to the varying selectivity of programs. That said, there are a finite number of first-round offers any graduate program can make. In our department, if we ‘spent’ one on a candidate who then decided not to take it, we would probably hesitate to accept them the next time.
That said, a few years later the people reviewing applications may have changed, and university IT systems vary, so in a large graduate program they may not even know that you had applied in the past.

Are you able to "defer" the acceptance of the PhD role?

@user760900 Deferrals are relatively rare in science PhDs, AFAIK, and usually are restricted to extreme need (illness, family issues). This may change in COVID, but per the OP's Q, deferring to work in industry is generally not something that happens. Deferrals are usually only a year anyway. Although, I don't work in a field that has a large industry presence, so maybe it's different.

Agreed - deferrals are relatively rare in my experience. It basically requires that we find somebody else for this year, and reduce our spots for next year. As @AzorAhai--hehim notes, of course, if there's documented need we'd been generous.

I suppose this answer is culture-dependent. In my country (France) PhD selection is like a job interview: the advisor defines the (general path of the) research program first, gets a budget for it, and hires whoever they can find for that position. With that framework, there is no issue of losing a spot before the contract is signed; if my top-choice candidate refuses a PhD offer to do something else, I will hire the next in line, and I would have no issue with them reapplying to a new position a year later.

Interesting context, @UJM - thanks!


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Would it be unwise to ask about the prospects of a publication for an undergraduate research position?
If I am interviewed for a summer research program, would it be a bad idea for me to bring up the topic of publications? I've noticed recently that professors usually aren't comfortable talking about this, so would asking about this make me look bad?
I'm an undergraduate looking to pursue a Ph.D., so I'd like to make myself more competitive for graduate admissions.

It depends on the framing of the question.
Asking "Will I get a publication out of this?" would make me uncomfortable. I don't know you. I don't actually know your work. I don't know if you can write well. I've had promising undergraduate researchers who elected to spend the summer playing XBox and phoning it in. Or just getting tangled up in some sufficiently oddball idea that I can't get them out of in time for them to have done anything productive. I'm not going to promise those people there's a paper waiting for them at the end.
On the other hand, I actively encourage students to think about the potential for publication. Is that something they're interested in? Could this be turned into an undergraduate thesis project? etc.
Part of this is understanding where your project fits in the greater context of the lab's work - it might be a relatively small part of a larger project, at which point it's probably not going to get a paper all of its own. But there are also other avenues - for example, my current institution has undergraduate research showcases that include a poster competition.
So I wouldn't head straight for asking about publications in and of themselves, but rather consider framing it as how your research fits into labs work, what can be done with the output, etc.

It may be unhelpful.  It is very difficult for a faculty member to predict if an undergraduate student's work will be suitable for publication in advance.  You may want to ask questions like "Can undergraduates publish in your field of research?" to evaluate the attitude of the faculty member and the difficulty of the subject.  You might also ask "Have undergraduates who worked with you in the past published their results?"  But keep in mind past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

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A question about paying tribute to someone I don't personally know in a paper
Let say person A passed away recently, and I want to pay tribute to A by writing something in the acknowledgement of a paper I am writing. I don't know A personally (having an email conversation doesn't count), but I used to work with the tools A invented for almost all of my papers, and my work is heavily influenced and inspired by the work of A.
My question is: is it strange to write something to pay tribute in the acknowledgement? On one hand, I am not considering writing something like "Dedicated to A" below the title of my paper; what I would write is simply a paragraph saying my work is heavily influenced by the work of A, etc. On the other hand, I don't want to leave an impression to people in my field that the reason of me paying tribute to person A is to have a higher chance for the acceptance of the paper or gain publicity, or anything like these. It is not a must for me to pay tribute to him, but this is something I want to do.
Please let me know what you think. Thank you.

I think it would be fine to include an acknowledgement describing A's importance for your work, as you described it in the question here.

I agree. And you can usually insert or change the acknowledgement section after the peer review. So people won't think you are trying to increase the chance of acceptance.

I’d say acknowledging the influence of someone you admire, or you personally have found influential, can be appropriate and polite.

What you suggest is in essence what we did here: https://www.math.colostate.edu/~bangerth/publications/2022-massive-hp.pdf (see the Acknowledgments, p. 23). I had met Bill Mitchell once or twice, when I was early in my career, but I don't think we conversed more than 30 seconds and I can't say that I "knew" him personally. But I knew of his work and appreciated it.
I tend to think that these kinds of references to the people who do science are actually quite nice. Go with it!


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About putting affiliation on a paper or not
I see that there are many questions on whether putting/putting how many affiliation(s) on a paper. My situation does not quite fit into all the existing questions, so I am posting my question here.
First of all I am currently working as a part-time lecturer at two different colleges in the same city. I am writing my paper on my own, and neither of them has support for my research (besides having access to some database of my field and access to journal papers). I am not sure if I should put any of the colleges I am currently working at as affiliations. The reasons of my concern are

The number of courses I teach at these two colleges vary from semester to semester. I expect in some semester I would not have any course to teach at one or even both of the colleges. This means in some coming semesters I may not affiliate with these colleges (for example the summer semester).

I would prefer to put the university I obtained my PhD degree as the affiliation, and write something like "Alumni of XXX University". But I have not seen this before in any paper, and I am not sure if this is the norm.

I do not object writing myself as independent scholar, but I probably will use the email of the university I obtained my PhD degree in this case. But then I would think why don't I do 2. in above.

Sometimes I think submitting a paper to a journal by a university email address is better than personal email address in the sense that the editor will take it slightly more seriously.

Are either of your positions permanent - or at least with more than a 1-year contract?

@NathanS. Neither my current positions are permanent. Their contracts are semester-based. So if they offer me a course to teach then I am hired. On the other hand, my previous full time position is contract-based, but I had 4 consecutive one-year contracts. Yep, the universities in the city I am currently living in are....

Are you sure either or both of the colleges approve or at least so not care about you publishing under their affiliation? The university where I made my PhD had a pre-submission approval process (mostly a formality to keep track of who published where and enforcing a unified affiliation formatting but I imagine they would have blocked me from submitting an apology for mass murder).

@UJM To be honest I am not sure about their policy on publications. What I can say is I saw a paper published under one of the affiliations I am currently working in. In that paper there are two authors, one of them is a full-time staff while the other one seems to be a part-time staff at that time (and that part-time staff works full-time right now at the same college), The two authors wrote down the same college for affiliation. This is all I know...

You might want to ask one of those authors to check.

Affiliations are about finding and positively identifying you, as well as also understanding your approach to the problem.
For example (and this is a real case), I would put much less stock in linguistics papers authored by people in the economics department than linguistics.
In the US and Canada, institutions derive so little value from having their name as your affiliation, I don't personally see much of a point in not putting the institutions you're currently at to "stick it to them." In any case, having a real affiliation looks much better than "Independent Scholar" (perhaps unfortunately).
Commenters indicate this is different in other systems, which I'm not qualified to address. Nonetheless, I would err on the side of including them; not only because of your quote below, but for the benefit of the community and improving your own credibility.

besides having access to some database of my field and access to journal papers

This is not nothing. I would recommend putting the colleges you currently teach at. If they no longer employ you at the final check, take them off.

"A college derives so little value from having their name as your affiliation" -- while I do not disagree with your answer as a whole, this is not necessarily true. In some countries, the university will get quite a significant amount of money when the paper would be published in a good journal/conference.

@user2316602 Where does that happen? And who does the money come from?

In the Czech Republic at least. The money comes from the government. I believe that the money is tied to the affiliation on the paper, though I am not certain.

In France, hospital research centres are partially funded via "SIGAPS points" directly linked to publications (between ~1k€ and ~18k€ per article depending on journal impact factor and rank in author list). Those are also used for administrators to give out promotions. And yes, it leads to author order manipulation. (Source, in French)

@UJM, user Thanks for the comments. I was not aware.

Good answer +1. Understanding the department where the author works, gives an idea about their general field of expertise (sure, it may be misleading, but normally, it gives some picture).

@AzorAhai--hehim It happens also in Italy, and the money comes from the government. More generally, in various countries around Europe where universities are funded by the government.

@MassimoOrtolano Interesting, thanks! I made sure my answer was applicable to the cultures I was familiar with, it would be great to read an answer from the European perspective, then. Not sure I'd want universities holding me in crappy part time positions to get money when I published something completed on my own time either!

"I would put much less stock in linguistics papers authored by people in the economics department than linguistics."  That is an inappropriate bias.  Papers should be judged on their content, not their authorship.

Being a graduate of some institution is not an "affiliation" in the normal sense of the term since the association has ended. You can say that somewhere, of course, say in an author footnote, but Independent Scholar or Independent Researcher is a more accurate description of your case.
But, if you have to give an email address in the header, make sure that it is one that will endure. Actually, everyone should try to do that, though it isn't always possible. It is more important for independent's however, since it is harder to track you down in years to come of you don't have a current affiliation when you write a paper.
But you are correct, IMO, not to list your part time institutions under affiliation since they have had no part in supporting your research.

The email address may be a permanent one, but they could use a temporary affiliation. The institutions have a (minor) part in supporting OP's research (access to resources). Unless they are disreputable, they could be added (perhaps check with the department). +1 for the first paragraph, though.

Merriam-Webster defines "affiliation" as

the state or relation of being closely associated or affiliated with a
particular person, group, party, company, etc.

This would be one of the two colleges or maybe even both. It doesn't matter, whether you did your research with their help or not. The affiliation gives you credibility and the affiliation can show what great staff they employ.
If you are employed by a company and your publication is unrelated to your day job, as it was done in your spare time, my answer would differ. Many companies don't want to have their names used without some grand-grand-boss confirming that it is ok and does the brand no harm.

I know I am late here, but I would add to the other answers that it depends on where you did this work. You mention that you are writing this paper on your own, but in my field there is a lot of work that goes into a paper before you start writing it.
I typically see folks list the affiliation that they completed most of the work with as their affiliation, and then often list other affiliations that they are currently at as "current address" or "current affiliation." If you conceived of this work, or collected data (or ideas) during your time at your PhD institution, I think it is completely valid to use them as an affiliation (assuming they are okay with it) since you did complete parts of the work under that affiliation.
But I also agree with others that there is no harm in including your current affiliations (either or both). It is totally normal (again, at least in my field) to list 3 affiliations on a paper.


text:
Should I leave academia or not?
This is a question about whether I should leave academia. I understand it's very hard to answer the question, I would nevertheless like to know every opinion.
Some background: Got a PhD in pure math at 2012 in the US. Due to family reason only looked for jobs in my hometown right after graduate. Worked as a lecturer (teaching staff) in the department of mathematics for 8 years but never did a postdoc. I like doing research and teaching. Teach 6 courses per academic year. Have 9 papers, 7 of them are single-authored (I would like to say in my hometown no one is in my research field, so it's very hard to find coauthors). Due to workplace politics my contract as a lecturer does not get renewed. I hate corruption in academia very much.
I still have the heart and energy to learn (especially new things, like Physics), do research and publish papers. If you are talking about research resources, there is no problem for this because all my publications are not research-funded. Perhaps what I think I don't have is the heart and energy to work in academia and deal with all the non research things, like meeting people, writing research grant proposal (yes, perhaps my definition of research is very narrow).
My PhD advisor (who is a really nice guy, by the way) encourages me to look for academic jobs in some other countries. But after working for 8 years at university I have seen enough corruption in academia and ugliness of the people who are fighting for their tenure positions. I am very sick of it. Sometimes I do think of applying academic jobs in some other countries but I am afraid of falling into something I know I hate. Of course, I understand there is no free lunch.
If I leave academia, I could just find some part-time teaching jobs or private tutoring to make a living. Sometimes I do think of taking a master course in Physics or even doing a PhD (if I am able to do so). Leaving the possibility of having such an offer, if I do so it seems I am pushing myself back to academia.
Any opinion and suggestion is welcome. I can also provide more information (as long as it would not reveal my identity) if you need.
Thank you.

which country? and context

Are you sure this question is good for the site, ie have you done the research for that? For me it looks a little bit like personal advice.

@SSimon Hong Kong. By context you mean?

I'm in Macao, my friend in Taiwan. @GRR the academy in Asia is really toxic. But industry is even more

Start a YouTube channel and generate ad revenue. Go look at 3blue1brown to see what high quality content looks like and you’ll be off to the races.

Due to family reason only looked for jobs in my hometown right after graduate. --- For some context about other locations, I think the only people who had ANY degree in mathematics in my hometown (when I was growing up) were our two high school math teachers who had undergraduate math degrees (actually, one was in mathematics education I think).

There is a certain unhelpful stigma of leaving academia, among the academics itself. From what I know people who do leave academia with a PhD are often quite successful in `real jobs' due to their strong problem-solving skills and work ethics. You tried one thing, and you could just as well try something else. Definitely non-academic jobs have their own pressures, but some of the things that make you feel sick in academia will not be there. Furthermore, in the current climate Universities may have big problems, but things like Data Science will just keep growing.

I don't know how we can help here -- in the end, it's about what you want, not what you should do, and I'm not clear from reading what it is that you want.


text:
How to contact a potential supervisor when I don't know if I am a good enough candidate?
I have been following certain mailing lists for PhD opportunities. About a week ago, I found a really interesting position. Unfortunately (?), it is in a top school, so I don't know if my qualifications are enough.
I will finish my master's early next year with decent grades (average is near 4.5 of 5.0). However, my grades in the bachelor's degree are not that good (around 3.0 of 5.0). Anyway, I have several publications, teaching and research experience, and a notable research award. I do not meet desired level of proficiency in one of the sub-components of their preferred english language test (though my average score is higher than what they want).
How would I go about asking more information about the position? I would like to send a brief email but mentioning all of the relevant "positive data" is rather difficult. Should I just ask some specifics, and give a URL to my CV?
What to do here?
(I am aware of the other question asking about how to get bad grades past admission committees. My question here is not the same one. Instead, I would like to know how to make the first contact)

I'm currently looking for a PI to take me as a student ina PhD program. So, I've contacted the student's affair office and they told me to introduce myself to the PI like this:
Hi Professor ABC,
My name is X and I am currently doing BLA BLA BLA at the Z Institute. I am interested in applying for a PhD at BLANK in the area of BLANK and was wondering if you were interested in taking on more students/have room in your lab for me.

Simple as that, he will probably ask you for a more detailed profile of yours with your cv.
Good luck!

You don't need to provide much information about yourself when asking for more information. I would say something like this:
Subject: Expression of interest in PhD position
Dear Professor X,
My name is X and I am currently doing Y at Z. I am contacting you as I am interested in X and have a few questions in relation to this position that I would appreciate your help with. First, I noticed that you want X skills, is having X-1 acceptable for this?
...
Thank for taking the time to read this.
Kindest Regards,
Y
I would make sure that you only ask the Professor questions you really need to know, and that he alone can answer. Some of the questions you have might be best suited for the admissions office or some other university body. Also keep the email as short as possible, as academics are very busy so they are less likely to answer long emails. Make sure that it is well written and has no typos.

Whenever you send someone your CV (or a link to it), a cover letter should accompany it.  Your cover letter should be one to three paragraphs, and should be tailored to the specifics of the position.  You'll need to read up on that department (and the relevant professors), so you can say something relevant to their work.  You don't need to pretend you know a lot about their field; but you should say something personal to help the reader understand why you are interested in working there.

In a similar position, I contacted the program coordinator who had put out the call. I told them I was interested and described my preparation in a bare-bones way, they got back to me a couple days later and asked for specifics to discuss with faculty in the program, I responded, and eventually I got a very polite note that I wouldn't be ready to do well in the program at this time but please keep our institution in mind for the future.
So to echo previous comments, keep it simple. I think it's good to consider it as a conversation at this stage, and you wouldn't try to open a conversation with everything at once.

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text:
How do you find the "rank" of a school or program?
I am preparing to pursue higher education and I was reading articles about schools. In one of the articles it was mentioned that the author attended a "high teens" ranked school. There was no mention of who ranked this school, how it was ranked, or why. I assume the idea was that I should be impressed by the implication that his school was ranked between 19-16 (my scale for "high" teens).
Who is ranking these schools and what does this number mean? How do I find out my schools ranking?

Lots of places do rankings.  See e.g. http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1178/19607

This question excellently summarizes how rankings work: The reader of a mentioned ranking is unsure about the source of a ranking and about the concrete meaning of the score, but they are left with a vague feeling that they should probably be impressed by the ranking nonetheless ;)

As a tangential comment, I am not sure whether  I would interpret "high teens" to mean "11-15" in this context or "16-19"; both seem equally likely (and equally ambiguous).

Anyone can rank schools.
Some rankings are more popular than others (e.g., US News) and some may do so based on particular metrics but there is no de facto ranking system in the world.
What they actually mean is up for interpretation, and unless they provide the complete methodology then it is rather difficult to find meaning in them at all.

That answers that. I assumed there was a central ranking authority or government authority who provides a blessing of sort for programs. Thanks a bunch!

@ILikeTurtles I don't doubt that governments and communities have their own accepted ranking systems, but nothing is globally accepted and they would still have the same faults.

Relevant xkcd


text:
Should workshop papers be cited (computer science)
In my subfield of computer science I observe that workshop papers often are not thoroughly reviewed. It even appears (attention, possibly controversial assumption incoming) that workshop-paper acceptances are used to increase the number of participants at the conference, because authors of accepted workshop papers are required to register for the conference. Moreover, workshop organizers are often desparate to get enough submissions in order not to be forced to cancel the workshop. Hence, they are happy to accept submissions even if they do not completely fulfil certain quality standards.
Speaking about the quality of the papers, they often do not contain rigorous evaluations, hence, the presented results possibly are not really reliable (please note, that, of course, there are many terrific workshop papers out there!). I have a feeling that these papers would not get accepted at a (good) conference due to lack of maturity etc. I am aware that (especially in computer science) the publication path is often like this: early/initial work in progress is submitted to a workshop → if the work gets more mature it is sent to conferences → after some more work it is probably sent to a journal.
My question is: Given the above circumstances, should workshop papers be cited?
Since the quality (hence, the results) of such papers is often lacking, I ask myself whether it's a good idea to make a reference to it. One further thought is that references are often used to show that something has already been done or addressed. Therefore, the reference is used to argue that the problem addressed by the workshop paper should not be addressed anymore which is probably a wrong assumption if we assume that the work done in the workshop paper is sub-par.

dan1111's answer is good advice, and I thought I'd add a complementary perspective.
First, as a CS researcher, at least in systems or architecture, conferences are basically the top of the food chain. Journals are rarely more novel than the conference version. Usually a journal version has a specific reason: too much data to fit in the conference version and it's actually interesting, proofs/implementation that don't fit but are interesting, or (you'll like this one) a small piece of work that gets tacked on instead of being submitted to a workshop. I think your perspective on workshops is basically correct, except that---speaking as a previous workshop organizer---I don't care how many people attend the main conference at all. Organizers, at least in my experience, are usually just researchers who are trying to promote more discussion and interest on a specific topic they care about (and yes, we sometimes scramble for submissions so we don't have to cancel, but usually because we just want people interested and talking). But I'd like to add that there's also a number of decent workshop papers that exist because they're just not quite big enough to be competitive in a tier-1 conference. So instead of writing a rather dull, stretched 12-page paper, you write a neat, self-contained 6-page paper. Some of these can go on to get a decent number of citations, and deservedly so. So workshops can be more than preliminary work. You're probably well aware of this, but I thought I'd point it out.
Second, I think there's a somewhat more productive way of looking at related work: they're not your competition, they're your context. Let's say you've written X. It's great. It has novel contributions A, B, and C. Two years ago, someone published Y in a workshop. It's written kind of poorly, and it proposes a weaker version of A and B, but not C. Do you cite it? I think there are two strong reasons in favor: (1) they thought it was a good idea, too, so leverage them as motivation. Their paper exists as evidence that someone else thought the idea was interesting, too. If you've solved the problem in a better or more clever way, that is a great contribution which is not diminished by other people working on it, just like your work won't be diminished if someone builds a Z that extends your ideas later. (2) I feel it's far more common to get a negative review because you didn't cite a paper ("the authors fail to cite author et al., 2004. This is clearly the same idea") than becuase you did ("they mentioned author et al., but is this really different?"). If anything, citing a paper is a chance for you to choose the terms on which the paper will be discussed. I.E.- if you don't cite it, then a reader might think that your paper is different is some small way over in one area, but overlook bigger differences in another. If you do cite it, you can highlight exactly the differences you want. You can drive the discussion.
So I wouldn't worry about people thinking less of your work because you cite a weak paper. Obviously, don't spam citations into your paper, but take the opportunity to discuss, on your terms, why your work is so awesome.

Be open to cite any paper or source you consider to have had constructive value to your work. Sometimes reviewers aren't as good as the impact factor or acceptance rate might imply. (Acceptance rates are an artificial metric anyways, considering those conferences that extend the deadline until they have the critical amount of papers to pose with a low acceptance rate - only a side note).


text:
Including articles in submission in "refereed publications" section of CV?
I have a section for "refereed publications" and one for "other publications".
Where should I put publications that are presently in submission?
Is it OK to put them in "refereed publications"?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/124562/68109

If you submit them to a journal that will referee them then put them in the refereed publications and mark them "submitted - under consideration" or similar. Just make it clear.
And update the CV as needed if you get accepted or rejected.
An alternative, if permitted, is a third section for submitted work under consideration or even work in progress with submitted works tagged as submitted. My preference (for myself) would be "Work in Progress". Sending that signal can help you.


text:
Is it ethical to contribute to a workshop one is organizing?
In computer science, workshops are often co-located with conferences. The workshop committee consists of roughly 3-5 chairs, who are organizing and chairing the workshop. Then there is a certain number (10+) of programm committee members. These are people who are responsible for reviewing submissions and spreading the word.
My question is: Is it okay if one of the chairs also submits a contribution to his/her own workshop or does this look weird?
I know, that for conferences this should be even stricter, but I am not sure if there is an established etiquette for this.

I've helped organize several minisymposia (MS) at conferences that are built entirely out of them, and it's basically expected that we submit to our own MS. Out of three MS organizers and 8-10 expected speaking slots, 2-3 will be from the organizers. A few workshops I've attended at more prestigious conferences have been similar. The conference wants its events to be full, and if the subevents are peer reviewed, especially double-blind, then there's no possible conflict of interest in my view. Even for single-blind review or no review (abstract-only submission) as long as you don't review your own work, there's no problem and self-submission is practically expected in the fields I publish in.

which fields do you publish in?

Super/high performance computing and computational science, though less so of the latter these days (CFD was what my dissertation was about).

what would be your take on this, if the reviews are only single blind?

@beta, it's still fine. The organizers are still expected to attend and help the workshop by presenting at it. They don't get a pass or a leg up because the workshop review is single-blind and the reviewers know who they are. At best, they should get a full, thorough review since everyone knows they don't deserve a favorable bias.


text:
I'm very frustrated about what "research collaboration" is
I cannot blame anyone but myself for this because i created an illusion of what "research" would be. In my case, i am a Computer Science Masters' student of a quite large university. I have met some people and started to visit the CS lab often.
In my thoughts, i was hoping to find groups or students interested in collaboration. Instead, i found individuals working on their solo projects without a break. I can't stand a chance to explain my difficulties and share experiences. My advisor told me that his best works came from when he spent his time in lab as a student with other students.
I know that is none's purpose to be there helping others out or work in my projects, but what is the meaning of the lab existence if not providing an environment to share experiences and helping others?
So, for my point of view, i feel a little disappointed about that. I don't know if either i am quite anti-social or my lab isn't good. I'd like to hear some advices about start engaging with other researchers.

What is your question? (This site is for q&a, not discussion)

Talk to your advisor about your problems.  Consider if a different group would be better for you.

Groups have different culture. For some people, working on their own mostly is preferable, for others, keeping talking with others. If you force yourself on your colleagues, you are not creating collaboration, but will be considered a communicative burden. Importantly, check out groups for their dynamics before you join.

Collaboration is not something that can be forced. It is built on top of personal relationships, and requires some element of trust to have been established. The best collaborations emerge organically over time: really, the best strategy is just to spend as much time as you can working in the lab, talk to people, show interest in what they are doing, and allow relationships to develop.
Also, bear in mind that collaboration is a two-way street: both parties have to expect to benefit in the long run. You say that you are a masters student in a large university. From the perspective of a more senior researcher, this means you probably don't yet have enough experience or expertise to be particularly useful - or at least, you have not yet had the opportunity to demonstrate this. Again, the only real solution is to be visible, proactive, and give people an opportunity to see how you stand out from the crowd.


text:
Citing old or new papers of same work?
Often researchers publish their work incrementally. Abstractly speaking, let's say, in 2010 the researcher publishes version 1.0 of his algorithm/system/framework. Two years later, he publishes an improved version 2.0 of the same algorithm/system/framework.
If I want to cite his work, should I
a) cite his oldest work (advantage: typically, older works have more citations),
b) cite his newest work (advantage: my readers will be directed to the most uptodate version of the author's work), or
c) cite both?

In (a), "advantage" to whom? You? the author? the reader? What does the old work having more citations have to do with anything?

a paper with many citations can be seen like a hub in a network. if I cite the paper with many citations, all other papers which also cite this paper, will be linked to mine (via this hub). so, discoverability of my paper will be improved.

More specifically, citing the seminal paper makes you discoverable to people looking for papers that cite it, which is a distinct advantage to you. In general, though, you cite the older work when you want to give proper credit to the people responsible for the idea.

Cite the paper that is most easy for your reader to understand and access.   E.g. check with google if one of the papers is easy to read for free on the web, if so cite it unless the other one is better in every way.

You might cite both by saying "Idea X, originally developed in [1] and extended in [2], shows that ..."

Very practical advice.

Also this shows that you properly conducted your bibliograph study and did not omit any work that is relevant.

If you know why do you need a citation, it is usually easy to determine which papers to cite.

If you want to give credit for a contribution, you cite the original paper.
In computer science, journal papers usually supersede earlier conference versions of the same paper. If a journal version of the paper exists, you cite it instead of the conference version, because it is now the original paper.
Subsequent papers by the same authors often contain new contributions to the topic. If the contributions are relevant to your paper, you cite those papers for the contributions.
If you want to tell the reader what the state of the art is, you cite the most comprehensive papers on the topic. This may include survey articles or papers describing version 2.0 of the result, even if the specific contributions in 2.0 are not relevant to your paper.
There are obviously other reasons for citing a paper. For example, you may want to cite historically important papers in a literature survey, even if the results are no longer relevant.

So, in general, you cite (the journal version of) the original paper for the contribution, and give the reader some relevant pointers to the state of the art. If the topic is central to your paper, you may also want to cite the intermediate papers for their specific contributions.

The notion of "superseding" earlier papers is a little bit dangerous, I think, as it may confuse chronology, as well as possibly inadvertently replacing more accessible, primary (and possibly more correct) sources with less-accessible, in-effect-secondary sources.

"If you want to note that some technique was already known for a long time, cite older works."

"In computer science, journal papers usually supersede earlier conference versions of the same paper. " Unfortunately, the originality of journal papers has declined CS quite a bit. Many journal papers are just more wordy versions of the original conference contribution with very little extra value. Especially for highly-ranked conferences, people almost never read the "extended journal version". They are write-only papers.

"Write only" is the most depressing form of communication, if you want to call it that. I've written countless pages of documentation, research, summaries and data that no one will ever read but we were told 'we need to have it'. Why? Oh you know, reasons...


text:
Is it appropriate for peer-reviewer to look for possible plagiarism?
I'm in the second year of a post-doc, and currently participating in my first experience as a peer-reviewer (my lab PI recommended me to the editor because he's too busy to do it right now). I noticed a section of the Methods that seems to be completely out of place. It describes statistical analysis of data that were neither generated nor reported in the manuscript, and is generally a source of confusion for me as a reviewer. So I did what I would have done grading papers in grad school, and pasted that section into a free online plagiarism detector. It came back with a 100% match for the full paragraph from an article published earlier this year. My suspicion is that this wasn't any sort of intentional plagiarism or research misconduct, but rather a case of someone using another text as a guide for how to structure that section of the text and simply forgetting to make the necessary changes, or possibly even submitting the wrong version.
I should mention, for context, that it's not uncommon to follow the methods of another paper exactly in experimental biology, but that's clearly not what happened in this case. My primary concern is that I can't properly review the reported results and conclusions without information that should be provided in this section of manuscript, which I've already discussed in my review comments. I'm just wondering if I would also be expected to point out the possibility of unintentional plagiarism, or if that's considered outside the scope of my responsibilities as a peer reviewer.

Is the matched article by the same authors?

Let me note that if the copied section is entirely standard methodology then it isn't actually plagiarism, since the "ideas" aren't being appropriated. That doesn't make it right, of course, just not plagiarism. Copyright infringement, perhaps. It would only be plagiarism if the copied section was itself novel in some way. But, "We collected a buncha' data and ranna' buncha' statistics on it..." is about the only "intellectual content" of many methodology sections.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/47550/should-a-paper-be-reviewed-in-entirety-if-the-introduction-contains-plagiarized

Does this answer your question? What's involved in reviewing an article?

Plagiarism is surely a thing that a referee could spot and report. For "is this plagiarism?" see Azor's comment. In my opinion is just a brutal copy & paste (personally I do try to avoid it for whatever part of a paper incl. Experimental one, but its my taste). Point to the only relevant part, ie you need info that should be in that section but it is not....

Can you define "look for" beyond that one example? Surely if the reviewer had any suspicion of plagiarism, that should be pursued…

Are you sure the authors of the two papers are different?

I would immediately communicate your findings to the editor and do no further reviewing until you hear back from them.
In the best case, like you say, they forgot to edit it, and can resubmit. Communicating to the editor will let them stop the other reviewers so they don't waste their time either.
In the worst case, it's poorly executed plagiarism and you would have to contact the editor anyway.
To answer the title question, of course there's no issue looking for plagiarism, and you seem familiar enough with the field to understand the implications of your results.

Actually, I'd suggest a slight modification. Notify the editor immediately and pause your review waiting for advice from them. In the best case it will save time and in the worst case it will wind up in the same place.

@Buffy That's what I meant to imply, thanks for the comment. Edited.

I'd probably contact the editor and point out the paper version submitted isn't ready to review without a relevant methods section, and hopefully they will reach out to the authors to remedy.  Your call on whether to mention plagiarism - but if the section is truly irrelevant and from another paper and was a placeholder, it could be a mistake.

I agree. But this is already a form of reviewing.

Maybe it's what you meant, but whether or not the word "plagiarism" is mentioned, the fact that the section is a verbatim match of a section from another work should be mentioned. There's no use in letting the editor guess what exactly you mean by "not ready to review".

To answer your question: yes, it is completely appropriate to check for plagiarism or any other type of scientific misconduct when reviewing an article. This is what the peer review process is for.
If you would not check for it, chances are nobody will, and a flawed paper would be published.
Once detected, it should be communicated in a fitting way to both the editor and the authors.

It may be that the authors of the published paper are the same of the current under review. I would say no to plagiarism, yes to "reusing the same <.doc or .tex template> because who has time to go through setting up all that editorial formats crap even if we pay the journal something in the range 500-5000usd/eur/gbp/chf/cad/aud?"

This question is popular and I feel it deserves a better answer than the "guilty, death penalty for plagiarism" given by the others.

OP mentions "a 100% match for the full paragraph", so it's definitely not just a question of copying a Latex preamble. This is a matter of content, not style.

@FedericoPoloni Have you never reused the same .tex or the same .doc file?

Define "reuse". Are you asking about the preamble, or text inside the document? I find this an unusual question, anyhow, and I do not see where you are going. You may be missing my point (or I am missing yours).

Papers describing similar research, with similar apparatus in laboratory experiment, may be similar one to the other and are usually submitted to the same journal => recycling the file of the last submitted paper is not that uncommon.
Or, one may submit a different paper to the same journal he/she/they usually submit to, again reusing the last used "file".
Unless the OP is absolutely sure the authors of the reviewed paper are not the same authors of the assumed to be plagiarized paper, we are just seeing the usual, eternal fight between good and bad that academia people feel entitled to.


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How important is it to cite the earliest report of something?
As a general rule I try to put in some due diligence to cite the authors who first provided strong evidence of something that I'm referencing, even if I wasn't aware of their work before I started writing. However, with the biblical flood of COVID-19 literature in the past 9 months, it's a hard to pinpoint some of the firsts. You can sort by date on a lot of databases, but a journal's publication date often doesn't reflect when a report was first made available to the public, especially in the era of pre-prints. I've got citations that I know I read in March or April showing up with publication dates of July or August.
Anyways, I'm referencing evidence of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 virus) shedding in stool. At this point there are dozens, if not hundreds of case reports, cohort studies, meta-analyses, and reviews covering this. Does it really matter if I find the first reported case?
TBH, I might be a little bummed if some random review paper were cited for a thing I first proved, but it's also not like this took years (or even weeks) of work to confirm.

Given the high activity and (so far) short duration, go with what you've got. Likely a lot of parallel paths being chased by multiple groups. If a reviewer points to some other source, thank them and go with it.

For your readers, not important. Very often, later reports or review articles are better than the first report in terms of clarity and completeness. If you did not even need to read that first report when doing your research, then probably your readers do not need it either.
For the academic career game, mildly important. Depending on the field of research, citations may play a role in careers, and citing that first report may provide a (small) boost to its authors.
A pragmatic approach is to not waste too much time chasing citations, and wait for others to recommend citations that you may have omitted. Not everyone has to know the whole literature. And many people are not shy about asking colleagues to cite them (or others). To some extent, you can count on the readers of your article in draft/preprint/submitted form for pointing omissions.


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Is there any appropriate way to offer cash to a lecturer or TA for private tutoring?
Due to financial issues, I've had to work in order to support myself alongside my degree, and unfortunately due to work obligations I've had to miss some lectures and classes.  Due to not spending much time at the university, I also don't have many friends who would be willing to help me catch up.
Would it be appropriate in any way to ask the lecturer or the class TA to help me on a 1-on-1 basis?  I think I've managed to fall behind sufficiently far that I would need several hours of help to catch up -- could I possibly suggest to the professor that I can offer you £50/hour for your time?  I don't want it to be construed as bribery or anything inappropriate -- I just want to pay the person fairly for his/her time.
Is there an appropriate way to do this?  I know that in my high school some students paid teachers for 1-on-1 tutoring, but I'm not sure how it works in university?
For context, I'm in the United Kingdom, I'm doing a master's degree, and the end-of-term examinations are administered anonymously (i.e. the person grading does not know whose paper he/she is grading).

Don't do it. This would create a blatant conflict of interest for the TA/lecturer. It is fine to pay for tutoring, but find someone else to tutor you, not the course lecturer or TA.

@DanRomik Why is it a conflict of interest?

It gives them a financial incentive to not teach well so that students don't understand the material well and then have to pay them for extra help.

It also makes them beholden to a student who now becomes also a paying client, which would create a temptation to give the client a grade they don't deserve or some other preferential treatment. (I assume this is why you took care to emphasize you don't want the offer to be construed as a bribe; well, it would be quite natural to interpret such an offer as precisely that, no matter how much you deny it.)

@DanRomik As I mentioned, the grade for the course is not determined by the lecturer or TA.  We have a central examination that is graded anonymously.

You did not mention the grade is not determined by the lecturer/TA, only that grading is anonymous. That can mean lots of different things. In any case, preferential treatment can take many forms other than an undeserved grade. As I said, it is a pretty obvious conflict of interest. That is my opinion as an experienced university teacher (U.S.-based), take it or leave it.

That's rude, Mr.Academic. But moving beyond that - have you asked your department if tutors are available? I know that at my university in the U.S., the department facilitates such tutoring (you pay the tutor, but the school sanctions the relationship). Is there an equivalent opportunity at your university?

@tonysdg It wasn't rude, I was just giving him feedback on his "holier-than-thou" behaviour.  I can find out about tutors, thanks for the suggestion.

@Mr.Academic just trying to help. Sorry if my answer rubbed you the wrong way. Hard to avoid that on the internet sometimes.

@DanRomik Ok buddy, sorry, I have a bad temper sometimes.  Thanks for trying to help.

No worries. The world has bigger problems these days...

At my university in the USA, it would likely be illegal for the instructor or the TAs of the particular class to participate in this. There is just too much of a (perceived) conflict of interest since they are evaluating you for a grade for the class.
However, there would not be anything barring you from approaching a graduate student who was a former TA for the class; nor would there be a problem in approaching an instructor at another institution or someone who is at your institution who is not teaching your section of your class that term. You could even ask an upperclass student who took the class last year to tutor you.
Your department secretary may be able to connect you with a grad student who needs a few extra dollars and isn't in the conflict-of-interest position to tutor you directly. Or post something in your local craiglist or student bulletin board system.

When this came up at my institution I was told, as a lecturer, that I shouldn't even tutor students in other classes; potentially knowledge of the exam structure could be released, etc. It does seem like a bit of a gray zone to me, but the advice was to avoid even that and I'm following it to be squeaky clean.

The appropriate way to do it is explain what you want, and why you are willing to pay for it. You have to be careful to not say something like "I want to pass this course, and I'm willing to pay you to make that happen", since that would look like an offer of a bribe which would be illegal. It is not illegal to pay a person for personal tutoring. That is the point at which your concern should end. It is possible that university regulations forbid an employee from accepting such an offer, but it is the employee's responsibility to make that determination, not yours. If it is forbidden, or if the employee would simply feel uncomfortable with the appearance of conflict of interest, s/he can tell you so and may be able to point you to an alternative tutor.

It is not illegal to pay a person for personal tutoring. — [citation needed] My university forbids graduate students to work more than 20 hours per week.  If a graduate student already holds a 50% teaching assistantship, they are forbidden to accept any other employment.

@JeffE, which is pretty much what I said. It is not illegal to to pay, it may be forbidden to receive. The restrictions are on the instructor, not the student.

@JeffE Who imposes this 20-hour limitation?  If it's by the university, it may not technically be illegal (per se) to break the university's rules.


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Will my paper get an ISBN/ISSN number if I upload to arXiv.org?
I want to upload my paper to arxiv.org.
I also want to submit the same paper to a conference (computer science/multimedia related). The PC chair informed me that if the paper already has an ISBN/ISSN number, then it cannot be submitted to the conference.
Does arxiv, add an ISBN/ISSN number to all uploaded papers by default ? (assuming I choose the minimal, 'perpetual, non-exclusive' license option on arxiv)
Thank you

No. ISBNs are assigned to published books (print or electronic), and ISSNs are assigned to published journals (or other serials, such as conference proceedings).
arXiv is not publishing either of these and so will not issue such identifiers.
This is effectively saying "if it's been published, it's not allowed, but informal circulation online or as a working paper is fine". Having an ISBN or ISSN is a simple (though of course not perfect) test to see if something counts as "properly" published. (It's worth noting that papers as such never get an ISSN - the serials they are published in have ISSNs but this will be common to all papers in that serial.)

No, arXiv does not issue papers ISBN or ISSN numbers.  This is in keeping with the original and continuing function of the site as a preprint repository.  Much of the content that is initially posted on the arXiv goes on to be published elsewhere, and the initial arXiv posting is not considered publication in the usual sense.
At this point, any conference or journal ought to have a standard policy on arXiv submissions.  Many (essentially all, in the fields I am familiar with) venues explicitly allow authors to post preprints on the arXiv before (or after) they are published.  If you are not sure about the policy of the conference you are submitting to, just ask the organizer for clarification.

First of all, let us clarify that ISSN is a number associated to periodic journals (academic or not), magazines and etc. They can be distributed in printed versions or online, or both. No ISSN is given to an article.
With that said, arXiv does have an ISSN indeed, namely 2331-8422. The fact that it is an online repository to publish preprints does not disqualify it to have an ISSN. ISSN does not bring any kind of "quality control" for journals and magazines, it simply keeps registry of such periodicals. A  paper on arXiv is not considered "published" because arXiv is not a peer reviewed journal, and this indeed does not give much scientific value to it. But, in the strict sense of the word, all papers on arXiv can be said to have been published.
Papers individually can also have a digital identification through the DOI (digital object identification). In fact, any online publication of a platform that have ISSN may have a DOI. For instance, a blog can have a ISSN, and each one of its publications can have a DOI associated to it. The arXiv also attributes DOI numbers to every paper it publishes.
To finish, ISBN is an registry associated to book publications. Each country has a specific institute responsible to emit ISBN. You also don't need a publisher to give a ISBN to a book. I mean, if someone write a book it can individually ask for a ISBN (of course there are cost and some requirements to satisfy). Like ISSN, the ISBN is an international identification of books. Note that online books can also have a DOI number together with a ISBN.


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'Reviews completed' what does this status mean in springer
I have submitted revision of my paper at the end of last month and status changed from Reviewers assigned to under review and now since 6 days it is showing reviews completed. Anybody has experience with this kind?

Now the editor or associate editor has to take a decision on your paper based on the received reviews.


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Does PhD GPA matter after grad school regarding academic funding?
There are many similar questions regarding whether PhD GPA matters after grad school, but this question is specific to obtaining academic funding as a professor. When applying for funding, do funding agencies look at the professors previous GPA and take that into consideration?

The concept of a PhD GPA doesn't even exist in most countries.

It is extremely unlikely that anyone would care, especially a source of funds. They are interested in you research potential and your productivity. There might be various aspects to that for specialized awards, but no one will ask you for your doctoral level transcripts. They are largely meaningless in any case.
If you passed comprehensive exams then you learned enough to go forward and that is assumed if you completed a doctorate.

Unless your transcript is part of your application package, a review panel for funding would have no access to such information.  The only way they could find out would be if a member of the review panel taught you, and if that occurred, that member would probably have to declare themselves in conflict.  In the US, that means they wouldn't even be able to be in the room while your application is discussed.


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Awaiting Reviewer Selection AFTER Awaiting Reviewer Scores?
I submitted a manuscript to BMJ Open about a month ago and have checked status every day. The status changed from "Awaiting Reviewer Reply" to "Awaiting Reviewer Scores", then stayed like that for a couple of weeks and now today the status is "Awaiting Reviewer Selection". Is this not backwards?
Thank you, Sara

Ask the editor.

Welcome to Academia SE. Please have a look at What does the typical workflow of a journal look like?, which should answer your question. If it doesn’t, please [edit] it to clarify.

@astronat I think it doesn't. This question is about a deviation from the typical workflow.

As per Solar Mike, email the editorial team in the first instance to ask for an update. Most journals will email back and tell you what stage it's at and answer any specific questions.

Tangential comment about "have checked status every day": Relax. This is not good for your blood pressure.

Yes, it's backwards.
Most likely the assigned reviewer agreed to review but then didn't provide a review, declined to review, or provided a review that made the editor think another review is required. Therefore, new reviewers are being invited.


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What's involved in reviewing an article?
I've just been invited, for the first time, to review an article. The request was somewhat of a surprise to me, as I'm still a PhD student and I'd always thought that reviewers were generally PhD graduates. Judging by the article's abstract, I am moderately familiar with the subject area, as my master's thesis was on a similar topic. The article would appear in an online journal and would be relatively short (6-8 pages). I assume that my review would be anonymous.
I'm unsure whether to accept the invitation as I'm quite busy with my research.
If I agree to review the paper, what will be expected of me? How much time can I expect this to take?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/71305/13240

For a scientific, experimental paper, a peer reviewer should consider these issues:

Are the topic and results appropriate for the journal?  If not, there is little point in reviewing other aspects of the paper as it is sure to be rejected.
Is there a hypothesis?
Are the methods complete?
Were appropriate control experiments performed?
Are there conclusions?
Are the conclusions motivated appropriately?
Do the methods support the conclusions?
Are the graphs/illustrations readable and do they convey useful information?
Is the data that should be presented as graphs actually in the graphs?
Is the research ethical?
Is the research placed in context with the literature?
Is information taken from  references accurate, or at least plausible?
Are the results likely to be reproducible?
Is the writing intelligible?
Do the title, abstract, and introduction describe the paper effectively?

The answers should all be yes.
In my experience many reviewers also identify typos in the paper.  I only do that if the typos are in technical information or make the paper incomprehensible.  Most journals pay a copyeditor whose job it is to correct ordinary spelling and grammar errors.
The reviewer needs to write a report.  The report includes numerical ratings on scales provided by the journal.  The report should:

Summarize the paper in a few sentences, clearly identifying that the reviewer read the correct paper.
Identify the main strengths of the paper.  Sadly this can, at times, be hard.
Identify the main weaknesses of the paper.  If the paper needs revision, then all weaknesses which need correction should be listed.
Each weakness should be numbered and its location in the paper should be specified.  This is to assist the editor and future reviewers in checking to see if the revisions were made.
Recommend an action the editor can take.

The reviewer is not responsible for telling the authors how to improve their paper.
There is no way to predict how long a review will take until you have read the paper.  It varies widely.
If the reviewer has a conflict of interest, this must be disclosed to the editor.  Example conflicts of interest are:

Reviewer works for the same organization as an author.
Reviewer might make or loose money if the article is published.
Reviewer is friends with an author.
Reviewer has published work or applied for funding with an author.
Reviewer considers an author to be a family member.
An author has offered the reviewer a bribe.
Reviewer intends to publish a paper addressing the same hypothesis.

Thank you for this thorough answer!  I've chosen to review the paper and I'll be using this as a guide :)

"The reviewer is not responsible for telling the authors how to improve their paper." By identifying the main weaknesses of the paper that needs revision, aren't you telling the authors how to improve their paper?

Reviewing peer articles is part of a researcher's job, it's good you get to review an article, the fact you built your master's thesis on it probably means you can have a relevant opinion.
A review typically takes half a day in my experience, could be more depending on how familiar you are with the material, and you were probably given this review by a senior colleague that is part of the PC and will read your review before it goes to the actual journal.
Just read it slowly, note your "small comments" on the fly (typos, language etc separately) and then try to give an overall view of whether you liked the paper (e.g. an easy way is to make a small 2/3 line summary of each section as you understood it) and the gist of it as you see it. A review isn't much more than that. Being constructive in criticisms is a good practice
So, imho this is part of the job, and you should take the time to do it. It is experience building to review other people's papers.

A caveat: one should check if the journal is reputable, it's also possible to get spam review requests from unknown/predatory venues.

Definitely agree with this @GoodDeeds comment, if you just got this review out of nowhere from a predator type journal just go ahead and refuse it. I was assuming you were asked/recommended to do this review by a senior colleague.

It's not scammy/predatory journal; definitely reputable. I received the invitation from an "Associate Editor" at the journal, who I do not know.

it's probable he first contacted someone senior you do know in your entourage who slipped your name knowing you have worked on similar subjects then, so I stand by my advice to just do the review as best you can.


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Putting off PhD for a (potentially) better experience
I'm a software engineer for a CS lab for a top-20 school. I have a masters in CS (no thesis) from a top-tier university, a few secondary authorships and fairly decent experience working on research projects. I'm in a position where I either enroll in a PhD program at the school I currently work at or waiting a few years until my next chance to try to find a lab that is a better fit.
My wife is a medical student and in 3 years, she will be assigned a residency somewhere. While we are able to narrow down our choices to a handful of cities, there is no guarantee which one we will end up at. The PI for the lab I work in is aware of this, but has offered to let me do a PhD with him anyways.
Pros:

He is fairly confident I will be able to finish in a few years and is comfortable with me doing my last year remotely (allowing me to move with my wife when she begins her residency).
I like my PI and he treats the lab well
I would have a significant background in the research field having worked in the lab for a couple years by the time I start my PhD.

Cons

I feel my academic interests have little overlap with many others in the lab. I like looking for, analyzing, and writing code for novel algorithms as well as really thinking about how to go about creating software, I love to code and to explore the languages I use. Most of the lab's interest is more geared towards using, combining and writing scripts for data analysis tools, interpretation, pipelining etc. I could certainly stand to learn a lot from them, but I am just not as interested in that as I am in theory and software.
The lab is very young (not sure if pro or con). In the start of Fall 2020, the oldest lab members will be the 2 students in their third year.
I fear that a rushed and partially-remote PhD will be a lower quality PhD.

I look at other labs, primarily those that are in the top of their field, and can't help but to be jealous of them. Just by looking at the publications, code and CVs of the grad students, my interests and abilities seem to fit in much better. I want to be in a lab where I can bounce software and algorithmic ideas off of the majority of the lab and get feedback and help on both research and software questions.
The question boils down to whether or not I should stay at my current university and do a relatively fast PhD with more perks/freedom or wait a few years and do a PhD in a lab that better fits my interests (and is potentially higher-tier as well). Obviously, there are risks associated with waiting. I may not get rehired at my current job and be forced to work in the industry for a couple years (I'm on a yearly grant, and I know money will be tight next year) or I may not be accepted to a school where my wife is matched for residency.
I have debated reaching out to labs I'm interested in and asking them this question directly, however I worry it may seem like I'm going behind my PIs back or using him as a backup option. Would this be an inappropriate thing to do?
While I know this is a very opinionated question, I would like input on potential pros/cons that I am missing, other options, or perhaps even weighing in on what you think the right decision would be. If this post doesn't belong here, please forward me to a forum/site that is more appropriate.

You said all this but never said what your goal is post-PhD. What range of outcomes are you interested in?

@CJR great comment and actually it's an important point. PhD students bring a lot to a PI and there is an incentive for PIs to say things in a certain way to get the PhD student on board. Once you start you're on the ship and it's not easy to get off. Most PhD students are so happy to get a PhD offer that they don't think about how much the supervisors benefit from having them. They also have no concept that there may be better offers out there. I know this was the case for me. One big consideration is the topic, is it perfect for you or are you compromising.

It seems like you've laid out the pros and cons pretty well; only you can weigh them. But here is my analysis:

I feel my academic interests have little overlap with many others in the lab.

In my mind, this is the only valid con. It is difficult to do good work if you are not really interested in the project and don't share your advisor's goals.

The lab is very young (not sure if pro or con). In the start of Fall 2020, the oldest lab members will be the 2 students in their third year.

I see no real problem with this, given your positive comments about the PI.

I fear that a rushed and partially-remote PhD will be a lower quality PhD.

By the last year(s) of your PhD, working remotely should not be a problem. 3-4 years in CS does not seem rushed if you already have a master's.

I would like input on potential pros/cons that I am missing, other options, or perhaps even weighing in on what you think the right decision would be.

I think a missing pro is that you start right away. First, you don't know what the future holds; as they say, "A done PhD is better than a perfect PhD." And second, even if you had a guaranteed perfect PhD starting in three years, this means that you are delaying your professional life by three years. That's a long time -- only you can decide if it's worth it.

I agree but the family sphere should always come first so that should be the top priority. There are plenty of PhDs to be done in future when the timing is right. Also when user1234 says "many others in the lab" that may just mean it's a great project/advisor but with everyone else in that lab or research group working on something else which then wouldn't matter. Remember that young supervisors/teams bring something very different to the table than old ones! You should try to have both.

RE second sentence -- not sure I agree. It's difficult to accept a grad student's stipend and working hours when you have a family. Further, motivation to go back is typically low after starting a "real career" (which may not be a bad thing - not every interesting job requires a PhD). OP didn't say whether children are in the plans, but if so, the timing won't be perfect in three years either (and postponing children for 7+ years brings its own challenges). Clearly there are tons of factors that only OP can consider, but personally, I hate to see them pass up a "bird in the hand."

This is a big subject on it's own but from my anecdotal personal experience a PhD is about the perfect "job" when you have kids because you can work from home and work whenever you want. Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush is of course valid but so is there are plenty of fish in the sea!