text:
Access to journals for individuals outside of an institution?
For all that is said about the wealth of information that is freely available on the internet, the fact is that most of it is incomplete, dumbed down, lacking in context or downright wrong.
Individuals spend the best part of 20 years completely oblivious to the existence of journals and the process of peer review and even then we'd be lucky if 10% of those with access to journals (usually through an institution) actually bother to invest in them.
Granted that some journals will be totally inaccessible to those without a solid background in some particular field but by and large exposure is a good thing and there are many areas of research where individuals will benefit directly from having read these.
Where does this come from?
I decided I wanted to read Popular Politics in the Late Medieval City: York and Bruge in The English Historical Review today, mainly because it looks interesting and I'm hoping to invest more time into learning about British and European History. Incidentally I also wouldn't mind tucking into Super Stable Clocks, Nature 500, 505 (29 August 2013) and a number of data analysis and big data journals in order to advance my career.
Now, not being affiliated with an institution that subscribes to these journals means that I would typically have to pay between £5 ($10) and £15 ($25) per article that I read... I could probably spend £100 just to pass an hour by.
Question

What's being done to address the lockdown on 'higher' education material? I've noticed that the Directory of Open Access Journals publishes open articles and other firms are doing similar, mainly with journals in new fields?
How could I, as an individual outside of an institution, gain journal access without it costing so much money?

I should add that I was not aware of the UK government's plans to force publications into Open journals until now. This goes some way to answering my first question except that it seems the burden of costs have now been placed on the institutions publishing the work so whether or not it's a good thing overall I'm not sure.

most of it is incomplete, dumbed down, lacking in context or downright wrong — Sadly, this is also true of most information that must be paid for.

I am sure I can get most articles I want to read simply by google scholar-ing it. There is usually some cached pdf somewhere on the interwebz. :)

@damian86 — I don't understand the "burden of costs" part.

Even if you are a member of some academic institution, it is likely that there are many journals for which your institution does not have a subscription. Here is a question about such situation: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7797/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-yourselves-with-an-unreadable-inaccessible-paper I guess that at least some of the advice given there will apply to people outside academia, too.

As a preamble: maintaining a publishing system has a cost. You may shift it to the authors, or to the reader, or have it financed directly by governments or supranational organizations, but there will always be a cost. It's true that in the current system, with a mixture of private publishers and non-profit ones (academies, learned societies, some well-administered professional societies), some players may be making a bit more money than we wish. Academic publishing has not yet fully adapted to the digital age, and it will get leaner by doing so. However, we have to recognize that this will always have a cost.
Now, answering your first question: there is a growing trend to go towards open access journals (and open access options in many other journals), which shift the cost onto the authors. Moreover, some funding agencies (for example NIH) have a public access policy, meaning that they ensure that publications stemming from research they fund are publicly accessible in some form (in the case of NIH, the final version of the preprint must be made available on PubMed). Now, different fields of research are moving toward this new paradigm at various speed (biology is faster, chemistry is not moving at all). In the current state of things, it must be noted that apart from a few renowned exceptions (PLOS One, for example), most open access journals are far from prestigious.
In some fields, the publication system has hoped earlier on the digital bandwagon, and it is routine for authors to publish only preprints of their work (and publishers have copyright transfer terms allowing it). For example, in mathematics and physics, arXiv.org is a very popular source of preprints. In some other fields, most journals don't allow preprints to be posted at all…

Regarding your second question, there are a few options for you to gain access to some paywalled journals:

Public library: if you live in a big city, the local public library likely subscribes to a few major scientific journals: Nature, Science, things like that.
Get a guest reader status at the closest university: some institutions allow access to outsiders in their library, either by not actually checking who gets in (as long as you behave), or in some cases by actually having an official “guest reader” status (which may require some paperwork or approval).
Membership in a professional society: individual membership in the American Chemical Society gives you access to their journals at a rather decent price.
Writing to the authors: if you see a paper you don't have access to, just write to the authors asking for a PDF.
Reddit Scholar :)

The American Chemical Society has put into place a modified open-access policy: after 12 months, authors can provide a link to their work that permits free downloads. Beyond that, upcoming changes in NSF funding policies will require some sort of movement.

I'm confused by apart from a few notorious exceptions most open access journals are far from prestigious.  Is PLOS One considered bad (notorious meaning Widely known, especially for something bad; infamous.)?

@gerrit sorry, I didn't realize notorious had a negative connotation… I've edited to use renowed instead. Thanks!

Thank you for the Reddit Scholar idea, it seems awesome! One question I have, how legal is it?

Let me add a few point to @F'x's excellent answer.
I'm going to give country-specific points for Germany. However, you may find similar structures/possibilities in your country.

What's being done to address the lockdown on 'higher' education material? I've noticed that the Directory of Open Access Journals publishes open articles and other firms are doing similar, mainly with journals in new fields?

One thing that changes right now is that authors will retain a right for secondary publication after an embargo period of 1 year for work that was paid for mainly by public funding.
This will give additional freedom on the site of the authors to make their manuscripts available.
The DFG has a program where they provide Germany-wide access to a number of journals. This is available also for private persons (you need to be in Germany though).

How could I, as an individual outside of an institution, gain journal access without it costing so much money?

Sign up for the DFG Nationallizenzen
As universities here are usually owned by the state, their libraries are usually public. Terms for getting a library card vary (from everyone to you need to be either associated with the university or have your main residence in the respective Land).
I found that libraries of research institutes often allow you to go there as guest reader.
(Side note, the electronic journal database allows you to check which libraries have the journal (year) in question. The data base covers also major research institutions like the Max-Planck/Fraunhofer/Leibniz institutes)

Update

Typically, the publicly accessibe information about a paywalled paper includes contact information to the corresponding author. You can email them and nicely ask for the manuscript. In many legislations getting a copy for private use is covered by fair use (e.g. in Germany §53 UrhG says that you are allowed to copy or obtain a copy of journal articles for private use).
Your local library may be able to obtain a copy for you through inter-library loan and/or document delivery services like subito. You'll have to pay for this, but the fees are often substantially lower than the direct subscription fees you cite.

Free access to costly journals and their articles are championed by dedicated hacktivists like Aaron Swartz and Alexandra Elbakyan.
As an individual outside an institution you can usually gain journal access through Alexandra's service.

Alexandra Elbakyan's services is Sci-Hub.

Note that the hostname of Sci-hub changes regularly whenever a legal complaint manage to take it down.

yes, you're right. Links from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub are probably more reliable.

Depending on the field, their may be a pre-print server available where authors upload their papers before submission. Authors will usually upload a copy either before the refereeing process starts or a final copy, with the changes made during the referee process but without the journal's final formatting. So they can be as good as the final version from a journal, but with the caveat that they may not have been fully peer reviewed yet (or at all).


text:
Is it common that the last author gets all the credits when the work becomes hugely successful?
Whenever I read news about some scientific breakthrough, names that come up are mostly of the group leaders, a.k.a. last authors. I believe in most cases, it is rightfully for the last author to get the credit. The first authors are usually inexperienced Ph.D. students who work under the guidance of their supervisor. Ideas from their first author papers mostly come from the last author, and they often only implement the ideas.
However, there are certainly cases where the first author is also the idea provider. Who will then get the credit when the work later becomes a huge success? How can the public then determine the contribution? What if the paper one day is considered for a Nobel prize? I am thinking about the CRISPR-Cas9 papers. It is speculated that the two last authors will be awarded the Nobel prizes. How about the first authors of that papers?
Note:  A Nobel prize here is just an extreme example that popped out of my mind during writing. I want to talk about more common situations where the group leaders go around the world and give talks about an innovative work, whose idea might actually came from a student. He might give the student full credit but in the eyes of the community he is still “the one” simply because the student is just a nobody.

The reality is that each case will be considered separately - those in the field will know what the situation is/was and who should be given credit. Particularly for a Nobel prize.

Totally agree, a Nobel prize might be an extreme example here, in which case many factors will be considered. I will edit the question so that we do not focus on the Nobel prize example.

That professors get all the credit for student's work is common and human nature. In an ideal world, the profs would then tell the world that credit is due to their students.

There is no absolute way of assigning credit for a really groundbreaking project.  Depending on what is known of the laboratory dynamics where a discovery occurred and the roles of the specific individuals involved, sometimes graduate student contributors get a large part of the credit, sometimes not.  Here are a few examples of how things can play out, drawn from the list of Nobel Prizes for Physics:

The 1996 prize went to David Lee, Robert Richardson, and Douglas Osheroff for their discovery of superfluidity in He-3.  Osheroff was the graduate student who was doing most of the experimental work.  The original goal of the experiment was different, and Osheroff was the person who realized that they were seeing something very interesting and unexpected.  Because he was felt to have made a key intellectual contribution to the laboratory work, he shared in the Nobel Prize and other accolades.
The 1993 prize recognized the discovery of the Hulse–Taylor binary pulsar, which could be used to measure orbital energy losses due to gravitational waves.  Russell Hulse shared the prize with Joseph Taylor, his dissertation advisor.
In contrast, when prizes are given to the work of very large collaborations, such as in the 2017 prize for LIGO's observation of gravitational waves, it is only possible to recognize the top individuals in the research collaboration—those who are felt to have made the key strategic decisions that led to the discovery.  Most of the junior contributors in such a large collaboration are doing work that, while it may be quite important, is only a relatively small and technical part of the project.  So the 2017 prize went to the three top (surviving) LIGO managers:  Rainier Weiss, Barry Barish, and Kip Thorne.
Other times, even when the groups are smaller, sometimes it is felt that the driving force behind an important experimental accomplishment was the head of the laboratory.  This was the case for the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2001, given for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation, in two labs, one led by Wolfgang Ketterle, and the other by Carl Weiman and Eric Cornell.  Both groups had numerous graduate students, but the faculty leaders were felt to be predominantly responsible for the key design of the experiments, and so it was Ketterle, Weiman, and Cornell who got the Nobel Prize.

Moreover, the graduate students working on these projects, even when they are deemed by the scientific community to have been relatively minor contributors to the most groundbreaking results, can typically count on successful careers ahead of them.  Working a Nobel-Prize-winning (or otherwise widely recognized) project is a real advantage for one's academic reputation.  I personally knew most of the people in Wolfgang Ketterle's lab when he won the Nobel Prize, and they generally enjoyed very successful careers in either academia or industry.
Sometimes, however, there are still some recriminations afterward, in situations where graduate students may feel that their contributions have not been adequately recognized, and this can still be a real problem.  I think that for a long time, there has been a growing understanding of the importance of the contributions of the people actually performing the benchtop lab work that may lead to a discovery, but the situation is still by no means perfect.

For example, Cecil Powell was awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize for Physics on his own, for the discovery of pi mesons.  At the time, prior to 1960, the award was not given except to the heads of laboratories, meaning that the post-doc Cesar Lattes, who designed the photographic emulsion that observed the first pions, was left out of the prize.  He did, however, have a very distinguished subsequent career, and was one of the foremost members of the scientific community in his home country of Brazil.
Even more egregiously, Anthony Hewish claimed credit for the discovery of the first radio pulsar, even though he had initially dismissed the discovery by his student Jocelyn Bell Burnell.  Hewish got half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974, but Bell Burnell was shut out.  However, her contribution (and Hewish's unethical behavior) did eventually come to be understood in the scientific community, and she has enjoyed a career as one of the most prominent astrophysicists in the world.

Thanks a lot for this excellent answer with the numerous examples!

I think Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner may be another interesting example. Another one is Alpher/Bethe/Gamow. Alpher did the discovery, but the other two were far more famous and got the credit. Bethe was only added to the author list for the value of the pun.

@CaptainEmacs Hahn and Meitner were the same age, and I think her not winning the Nobel Prize was more a matter of sexism (there have only been, I think, three female physics winners) and, secondarily, antisemitism, although other factors could certainly have been in play.  Alpher is a good example of somebody who got unfairly little credit for what was predominantly his work at the time, but who did go on to have a highly successful career nonetheless.

@Buzz Meitner is probably far more likely to be sexism than antisemitism, given the distribution of the prizes. But her general downplay is the issue here.

While this answer can't compete with that of Buzz for completeness, let me describe a scenario in which the PI, usually the last author in these fields, is, in fact, due the majority of the accolades for such breakthroughs. Not every situation is like this, of course.
If a PI has funded, through grants, a lab for many years and produced many positive outcomes, including degrees for many students, then it is also likely that they are responsible for (a) many of the ideas in the lab and (b) creating an environment in which powerful ideas can flourish. They also, of course, provide the money that makes everyone's work possible, but it is often (not always) their vision that drives things.
But the more important idea here, is that in the absence of such an environment, the person that finally has the key insight that leads to a major discovery, wouldn't have had a way to even get started. Ideas build on ideas and big ideas normally have a lot of precursors in lab sciences.
But, of course, it would be just as much of a mistake to assume that all ideas in such a lab flow from the PI. There is a swirl of intellectual activity and many people contribute to the ideas of one another. Synergy. Without that synergy such breakthroughs would be equally impossible.
Theoretical work (Newton, Einstein, ...) might be different, in which a brilliant individual can make significant discoveries but it is just impossible when labs cost millions (billions) to operate and tens to hundreds of contributors all working toward some common goal.
To say that the "first" author didn't need everyone else would be fairly ridiculous and that is recognized.
With respect to the Nobel prize specifically, however, there is a different dynamic. Nobel originally intended the prize to go to young researchers to fund their future research. But that never happened, since there was a backlog of older researchers to whom it was decided needed to be given the award before they died. It is normally given only to living people. That established a trend that was, sadly, not broken. There are other awards, such as the MacArthur Genius Awards that are given to young people that show promise.

I am well aware of the point you want to make and it is totally valid. However, I want to focus on the scientific recognition. In my own experience, there are other kinds of accolade for PI who successfully manages a lab like extra funding. My former PIs became the scientific director of 50+ labs because the scientific output of the lab was outstanding. I personally have not seen in the contribution section of Nature for the last author any thing along the line “provided financial support for the research”.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Should someone excited about research but who really wants to earn lots of money do a PhD?
I'm asking on behalf of a friend.
He currently holds a temporary position at one of the top research institutes in the country. I know that he is excited about his work because he talks enthusiastically about it all the time. He'd ramble on happily for hours about the developments in his field and how the work done at his institute has a very real effect on society.
However, he has recently been offered a place to study for a PhD at the same institute. Though a great opportunity he is rather worried about the financial cut he would have to suffer if he takes up the offer.
Given all the stuff that's around on the net about how you should not do a PhD if money is really important to you, I'm wondering what a person in his position should do (i.e. loves research, but really wants to earn money) and what I should say to help him make a decision.
For what it's worth I'm a PhD student too (studying a different field at a different university)

You can always earn money after PhD. Plus a lot of R&D positions require advanced degrees (and the pay is quite substantial).

While there's some good insight below, a hefty dose of skepticism should always be applied to the answers of questions which take the form "will career choice x make me lots of money?"  The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind...

If he wants to earn a lot of money he should not allow others to ask for him without paying them or expect to get FREE advice from the internet. Want a lot of money and require people to answer my questions for free are two contradictory terms

@Alexandros He doesn't know that I asked it here yet. I just figured it would be easier for me to ask the question myself rather than convince a confused and stressed out guy that writing a question here for strangers on the Internet to answer is a worthwhile use of their time.

You shouldn't do a Ph.D. if you don't love research.  You also shouldn't do a Ph.D. if you want to get rich now, since it will require a number of years living on a graduate student stipend.
However, most STEM field Ph.D. graduates have ample opportunities to make lots of money, including:

Founding a startup based on technology developed during their Ph.D., or joining somebody else's startup
Selling out, particularly if they have a solid mathematical background: there are any number of hedge funds and such that are desperately hunting for magic dust to give them an edge.
Just about any industry job will pay a well-suited Ph.D. well - not enough to make you rich, but enough to live a very comfortable life-style.

Of course, there is the danger that by the time one finishes a Ph.D., they may have become twisted such that they are no longer quite so interested in money per se, as happens to many of us.

How much money do you want to make, exactly?
This is actually the most important aspect of the question, because "how much is enough" is a very hard question to answer, and violates many assumptions we have about wealth, our own happiness, life direction, and how the world works. And yet it can also dictate how we direct our efforts, so it's important to answer this question personally - there is no one-size-fits-all answer.
In the US, consider the following educational-income statistics:

Or, even better, this one from Wikipedia made from Census data:

So if you just want to be above-average in personal income, it really doesn't matter what path you pick - a 2-year degree will likely put you there, depending on field.
Note that a doctorate here is shown to gain higher income than a Master's, but note you could likely make more money skipping both and focusing on the professional degree instead (medicine, law, engineering, etc). You'd likely make more than a PhD with possibly less time spent.
But I Want To Be Rich!
How rich, exactly? If you just want a low-six-figure yearly income, you can do that with a Master's, PhD, professional degree, or even a Bachelor's in a high-paying field (like computing, for instance). So it doesn't matter.
But do you want to be, like, 1% rich? You're going to need a bigger boat.

*Note: This is income per family, not personal income as previous notes.
Even when accounting for the household-vs-personal income, no one is going to give you a $500,000 yearly income simply because you have a degree - no matter what it is or what school you got it from.
So how did those people get there?

The best bet is in executive management, so probably an MBA - the previously discussed professional degree. Having a Master's or PhD is not a disqualification, but it isn't a requirement either.
The truth is, though, being this rich isn't a question of being a wage-earner - you need to be an owner too:

So save a lot, preferably marry rich if possible, and buy wealthy stuff too:

In the end, PhD and Master's pay more than most educational attainment levels and, on average, pay pretty similarly - though some jobs are not available without a PhD, some jobs give preference away from PhDs, etc.
Ultimately, whether or not to do a PhD is not a question of wealth maximization - because if you want to max wealth you should probably do something else. If you are just ok with an above-average income, though, you are ok either way! So enjoy your education and decide based on other factors - or drop out and get a professional degree :)

If you want to earn a lot of money, a Ph.D. is a horrible, horrible idea.  It is very expensive in terms of time, and there are certainly research jobs out there in the private sector.  Also, your advisors won't know anything but how to place you in an academic job, and real academic jobs are slowly becoming harder and harder to get.
Get a masters in the field you're interested in, do research while in your masters, and go out and find something in the private sector.

He does have a Masters in the field. It's just that there aren't too many research jobs in the country in his particular field so it might take quite a while to get a different job

I think you may be a little biased.  Compared to the vast majority of careers, someone with a Ph.D. makes significantly more money (assuming STEM).

@James: almost every study shows that the opportunity cost of getting a Ph.D. makes the degree have a negative ROI.  You're almost universally better off getting five years of job market experience.  See, for instance: http://www.brighthub.com/education/postgraduate/articles/78167.aspx
Your salary is more coupled to your existing salary than to your education, and someone in a STEM field with five years experience will make more than a fresh-out Ph.D.

@JerrySchirmer: True story about those studies. It has generally been shown to be true that 5 years of industry experience leads to higher total income accumulated (usually by some middle age) than a PhD does. But what those studies leave out is the research component. In order to break into a research position, particularly one with a nice salary, you need a PhD. The OP wants to do research and make money. Those jobs do exists, but you need a PhD or need to be a hyper-exceptional Masters degree holder...or know a guy

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


text:
In general, how does one cite publications written by poorly known authors with three names? Is the name in the middle a first or last name?
Sometimes I want to cite a PhD thesis of someone who has a name in three parts. The latest example I came across was "Richard Shope Davis". Shope sounds like a last name, but is there a way to know for sure? His name does not appear on Google and this kind of ambiguity seems to happen all the time for me (my work involves looking at a large number of PhD theses).
This is even harder with non-English names, for me at least. In those cases, it is often impossible to even guess whether the name in the middle is the second of two first names or the first of two last names. How does one do this?

A middle name is a thing also.

Are you asking about English names or generally?

@Azor Ahai -him- I am asking generally

To clarify, are you wondering whether you should cite this person as "Davis, RS" or as "Shope Davis, R" without having other examples of this person being cited (or even citing themselves)?

For what it's worth, I searched the name you mentioned using Google and immediately found a thesis in Proquest with DAVIS clearly marked as the last name, so in this particular case, if we're looking at the same thesis, the way forward seems obvious.

@BryanKrause Yes that's exactly what I'm asking ("Davis, RS" or "Shope Davis, R" with no other information available). It's nice that you were able to find the correct name in this case, but I'm looking for a solution in general.

With no other information available, can't you just look up the naming conventions for that language?  If it's a Spanish name like Gabriel García Márquez, the last two are surnames with one coming from the mother and one from the father, so I would cite as García Márquez, G.  If it's a Chinese name like Shing-Tung Yau I would cite as Yau, S.-T.

@Tom Cultural naming conventions can get filtered through other cultures.

Obligatory link at this point: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names.

Every library is going to have indexed citation information for documents in their possession. Unless you have some rare document that's never been indexed anywhere, they'll have labeled meta data to go with the document.
Many theses are in ProQuest even if they aren't published anywhere else, and you'll find the name used in the way you should reference it. For example,

DAVIS, Richard Shope, 1944-
THE LATE PALEOLITHIC OF NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN.
Columbia University, Ph.D., 1974
Anthropology

clearly identifies "DAVIS" as the last name.
Ask a librarian at your institution for help if you can't find a document anywhere else.
There is no way to just "tell" from a name; you need to find how it's used to refer to the specific document you're looking at. Two people can have exactly the same set of names and partition them differently. It's somewhat common for kids to be named with a combination of their parents' names, such as taking one of their surnames (or former surnames) as a middle name, or keeping both names as a combined surname. Often in the latter case people will identify this with a hyphen, but not necessarily.

Exactly what I needed, many thanks.

How did you find the thesis on Proquest by the way? I downloaded a large number of theses from Proquest, and I'm having trouble finding them back with just the title and the author either through google or through Proquest's search engine. EDIT: I think you might have done it with Google Scholar, I can find back the theses easily with that

@Pertinax Yeah, I used Google Scholar. Also tested using https://www.proquest.com/advanced putting in the full name without any additional markup and selecting the "AUTHOR" field; for this particular author that only returned 2 results so it was pretty easy to find. I can imagine in some cases that would not be sufficient, but I'd think if you have a title and author together that should be enough.

Generally, style issues are going to be controversial. Different places, different offices, different schools, different editors at journals, will have different policies. You should try to find out what the place you want to publish will prefer. Look for a style guide. Check how other authors have done things and gotten published.
Generally though, a good rule to default to, is to try to cite any article with as close to the original as you can reasonably achieve. If the original has a name in a particular form, order, format, etc., try to follow that as closely as you can. The same is true for things such as the title, sub-title, even down to what appears to be spelling or grammar errors in the cited title.
The reason to do this is because you want to make it as clear as possible what you are citing. Any change from the original will be a potential source of confusion.

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


text:
A professor may have stolen an idea I discussed with him: how to proceed?
I'm really not sure how to proceed from here.
I'm an undergraduate Computer Science student, planning to earn my MSc in the next couple of years.
A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with a professor (I'll call him A) on an informal setting, and, since he was my teacher on an area relevant to the subject, I discussed with him an idea I had, and about how I was trying to make it my own thesis project.
I have also previously "pitched" this idea to another professor (B). He liked it, and we agreed that once I graduated, he was willing to be my advisor, and I could work on it.
However, I was recently shown the list of thesis proposals for current students, and my idea was among them - being supervised by prof. A, and an unrelated professor, C.
The details are so close to what we have discussed that this is almost surely no coincidence.
Now, I can't say I'm 100% sure he stole my idea, but he didn't mention any of this when we talked, and this thesis list was made after our conversation.
Anything could have happened: either I'm right, or prof. C actually came up with the same idea, or prof. A had a similar idea in the past but didn't tell me about it.
I don't know how to proceed. I am already skeptical of academia - seeing my peers work on projects and write papers that didn't interest them, for the sole purpose of earning an MSc, means I'm not interested on working for it unless it's a subject I really care about. That is - I either find anything I want to work on, or I don't care about earning an MSc at all. This was the case. I found a project I wanted to work on.
My question is on the ethics of what may have happened. I have zero experience on academia or research environments, but I have always considered ideas as important as research. That is, copying an idea is as serious to me as copying research. This would fall into plagiarism.

Is this perspective shared among actual academics? Am I naive in thinking like this?
Am I right in wanting to "keep" an idea to myself, in order to work on it later?
Should I just stay quiet the next time? Shouldn't I be able to discuss these kind of things with people I consider to be honest or "bona fide", without having to be afraid of being copied?

I see multiple possible courses of action, but in the end, I don't know what I want to achieve. The thesis is already assigned, so I probably won't be able to take it away from the student who got it. I also don't know whether this is an ethics violation from prof. A or not, since this is "just an idea" that I voluntarily shared with him.
I can confront prof. A about this, either sending him an e-mail or speaking with him in person, to get his side of the story.
Or I can go to prof. B and tell him about this situation, to see what are his thoughts on it. He looked interested on working with me on this, so maybe he'll know better how to proceed.
What is the best (or "a good") course of action now? I don't feel I should forget this whole story and move on to a different subject, but I don't see what can be done now.

I think your case really depends on two factors: 1. How did you discuss the idea with prof A? Verbal or written e-mail? If it was all in verval communication, you probably don't have a case. 2. Did you discuss the idea with prof A in details and in depth? For example, anyone can have a research idea on why people like to get on social media so much? Unless you already have a specfic method to tackle it, you can hardly say anyone stole it because anyone could easily come up with this idea.

I believe one recommended procedure when having an idea is to write up a preliminary draft of it, and put it somewhere public where it will be time stamped. That way you can assert prior art. You could also, or additionally, circulate the draft publicly. And make sure anyone you are discussing the matter knows about this. I'm not offering this as an answer, because it doesn't really answer your question. And I'm not sure such a procedure is complete protection, but it is a lot better than nothing, and might make something considering an unethical procedure think twice.

FWIW an office mate of mine once described a similar experience (described an idea to a professor, and later discovered he had published a paper on it), and you can find others described on this site, so such things certainly happen.

My father, who was a professor for many years, once told me that profs do this all the time.  He told the story of a professor who was furious when a student took out a copyright on one of his papers.

I think it's very clear that you should talk with (B). You had previously discussed this idea with (B) so s/he knows that it was something that you had been considering. Furthermore, (B) also presumably knows the situation within the department better than you. Maybe (A) is known for doing things like this. Maybe the overlap isn't as serious as you think and (B) can reassure you that you can still do your thesis as you wanted to. No one here can decide whether either one of these is the case.
One word of advice: in talking with (B), present this situation as something that you are concerned about, but stay unemotional and stick to the facts: (B) knows that you were interested in this similar project, you discussed it with (A), and now another student is doing this project with (A). You do not need to connect the dots and accuse (A) directly of plagiarism or dishonest conduct in an initial conversation with (B). If this is a misunderstanding or miscommunication then doing so makes you seem aggressive and prone to jumping to conclusions. If (A) did something that is as blatantly dishonest as you have suggested, then that will be obvious to (B) as well.

Thanks! I, too, think that talking to B is the best thing to do for now. While I have a strong suspicion on what happened, I'm aware I may not have all the facts, and I don't want to make any unfounded accusations. This is probably what I'll do - although I'm not sure I would have thought about being unemotional about it. This is really getting to me.

Another word of advice: if you present this to prof B as "we talked about this thesis, and prof A has it in a list, and now I'm concerned that I'll have to find something else; is there a way I can still work on it?" then that might be a good way to get the "It's mine and he stole it" baggage off to the side.

I agree that you should talk to B about it.
In the meanwhile, let me offer another perspective. Given that you are an undergrad, it is possible that you are not experienced enough to judge:
1) what the research frontiers are in the field
2) how "close" two ideas are
For example, it may be the case that your idea was something general like "I would like to use technique X on problem Y". But the novelty may come from the fact that technique X needs to be modified drastically on problem Y (e.g. if Y is a super large dataset). In this case, ostensibly the ideas are similar, but in fact the core of the idea, at least from a "contribution to science" perspective, is different.

I agree I don't know how much of a "contribution to science" this is. My idea is mostly about applying things already being done in one context (information security and privacy) in a different context where it seems to be lacking (cloud computing). I think it is interesting, useful, and given the current US affairs (NSA, Snowden leaks, etc), this should be a great time to think about it. Maybe that's the reason why it was rushed into becoming someone else's thesis at all.

I think you will find a lot of people working on that.  Anytime a technology rushes ahead of associated ancilliary technologies, everyone around notices that at about the same time.

I suspect it will still be possible to ask the student (call him (D)) to change projects. Changing research areas happens all the time, and while it won't be ideal for (D), surely (A) or (C) will be able to find another project for him, or (D) can change projects. It's more unfair to you to have your idea stolen than it is to (D) to change topics.
I would probably have a word with your department's (or your smallest organisational unit's) head of postgraduate research about this. They can probably have a word with (A) and ask them to change (D)'s topic, hopefully without disciplinary action. This will be much easier if you have a written record of having discussed the idea with (B), as well as any detailed, date-stamped notes you took on it. As everyone else has said, I would talk to (B) before this to get his perspective, and ask (B) if he has any written records of discussing your idea. But I would have a plan before you talk to (B), in case (B) doesn't want to push your case himself to protect his relationship with (A).

"I suspect it will still be possible to ask the student..." Not likely; this question is over 4 years old

This is something everyone in academia is concerned about. I agree that you should discuss it with professor B as suggested in the positively-voted answers above. In addition, you can after that do a series of quick research pertaining to your algorithm and produce something publishable, possibly collaborating with professor B. A conference paper is a good target.

Anybody can steal an idea. Theres not much worth of an idea in itself. The main thing is the execution. That nobody can steal. IF you believe so much in your idea. Why don't you make it a reality.
Before Google there were 100s of search engines. So idea in itself is worth a dime. It's the real tangible form of it which matters. If you like it so much , go for it before anyone else.

"Anybody can steal an idea." OK. Also anyone can steal a car.  "Theres not much worth of an idea in itself." That statement runs directly counter to core ideas about academic integrity.  "The main thing is the execution. That nobody can steal." That is manifestly false: unfortunately, intellectual property of all forms is stolen fairly regularly. "So idea in itself is worth a dime." This is also false: manifestly, some pure ideas are worth a lot of money.  It is also irrelevant: stealing ideas without clear financial worth is just as unethical.

That kind of opinion is what I'm looking for. Unlike the other answers I've had, you seem to consider ideas to be worthless by themselves, and only when implemented are they valuable at all? Is this the line of thinking you see in an academic context?

There is a lot of truth in this answer, even if it is not particularly helpful to the asker.

No I am talking more in context of industry so may not be very suited to academia. But Yes of course implementation is the key in industry. And in academia also, once you get an idea if you don't do experiments to show that your idea really works, then whats the point ? I advise you to work on your idea independently to make it a reality. Good ideas are stolen always so that at least proves that your idea is worth pursuing. Good luck.

You can't patent or copyright an idea, but that hardly means that it's "not much worth" in it. Any inventor's ideas were at one time just an idea, and many of those ideas made people millionaires.
There's also often great value in being first-to-market, so to have someone working on your idea before you do can make a huge difference in the future.

+1. For recognizing that ideas are not properties, that can be stolen. Although I don't agree that they are worthless, they are just not something you can steal. They are there for being implemented.

@PeteL.Clark Question, what if someone just rambles off a bunch of ideas and never acts on it? AKA, if OP just went up to a professor with his idea, never acted on the idea, is that professor really obligated to never act on the idea, even if it's a really amazing idea? What would be enough? Just notifying him?

@PeteLClark I agree that this answer is phrased suboptimally. But I've read "Ideas are a dime a dozen." frequently on this site and these comment or answers have not experienced such criticism.

An idea is an important part of research, but copying an (unpublished) idea is not entirely plagiarism, I fear. Academia is dealing with a two-bladed sword here.
On the one hand, it is about plagiarism and authorship and credit; on the other hand, really good ideas have to be preserved, even in case you lose interest in the matters (or drop out or sth like that).
I guess Professor A assumed that, since you are years away from your degree, and since master thesises, unlike PhDs, are not strictly required to dig into a completely new topic, academia can cope with multiple master thesises on your topic, and decided that he cannot wait to push such an interesting topic until after you publish your initial work, should that ever be the case. I don't know about your university, but at mine, a third-semester C.S. bachelor has a less than 50% chance of actually getting a master's degree. Most dropouts here are "caused" by mathematics and/or engineering basic courses, not by CS classes, and they also befall CS students who score above average in the CS classes.
Now, if you really want to pursue that issue, there are three leverages you have. Let's call them A, B and C:

Depending on your current situation, you can state to A that the "idea" of that master thesis is what you start working on very soon, and ask him to take the topic off his list for a certain amount of time. I personally do not believe that he will take it off his list for as long as three or four years; this is a really long time in CS.
You may also talk to your to-be-supervisor B, state to him the fact that you presented your ideas to A on that matter on , and that this very idea was published on the site only afterwards. If both professors are of the same institute, he should be able to sort it out (but I don't know if he will do it, for the aforementioned reason).
And you can send an eMail to C, informing him about the very same fact, and ask him whether he can definitely say that the idea of A is older, and if not, whether he is comfortable with being part of a situation of stolen ideas. This may only have the effect that C does not do co-supervision.

I personally would recommend against any of these actions, they burn bridges without promising any positive effect. But you should consider it a valuable lesson learned for your PhD:
Mouth shut, ears open!

"Mouth shut, ears open" is poor advice for a young scientist. Not only does science slam to a halt if people follow that advice, but also it hurts the individual in question. Even if an idea is borrowed here or there, the only way to build one's reputation is to share one's ideas. Waiting for an article to go through the publication system only delays the entire process.

@corvus saw a friend drop out of PhD because after three years of research, he lost "his" topic to a "friend" who borrowed the idea and went fast-track, so don't tell me what is good advice on that matter and what isn't.

@Alexander if we never took risks and always took the safest route, the progress of research would be painstakingly slow. We must intelligently choose which risks are worth the reward, and which are not. However, talking about your research is simply necessary both to improve communication skills, and get further ideas on what to do. Your friend's experience is unfortunate, but you should not let such an uncommon incident dictate such strong advice to everyone else.

@Moriarty So you say I should take an uncalculable risk, so that academia gets the reward? The very same academia that made talking a risk in the first place? Haha!

@Alexander yes, I do say that. Of course, it's not only academia as a whole that gets rewarded – a PhD student who never talks about his work is unlikely to be very successful in getting postdoc positions or to develop fruitful collaborations. You should use caution and scruples, sure – but don't let unjustified mistrust hamper your work. Trust people on the strength of their reputation and how well you know them, rather than mistrusting them based on how well you don't.

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


text:
What to do if one reviewer asks to delete and another asks to add more details to a proof?
I received a referee report for my single authored paper recently in Mathematics. Both the referees have asked for a revision.
I am having a problem with a proof of a theorem in the paper.
Reviewer A asks to add more details to the proof of the theorem. He/She says it is not possible for him/her to understand one step in the proof.
Reviewer B says delete the proof of the theorem as it is not necessary. It is easy for him/her to follow it without any details.
The editor has asked me to revise the paper taking into account both the reviewers. I am confused now what to do to the proof of the theorem. Shall I keep it and add more details or shall I delete the theorem? If I delete it, then Reviewer A will get offended and if I add more details, then Reviewer B may reject the paper.
What should I do?

Does this answer your question? How to effectively address conflicting suggestions from reviewers

I like Wrzlprmft♦'s "have your cake and eat it too" answer. I will add, if you are forced to choose one way to go, I would generally choose to add more detail. In my experience, it's more likely that a suggestion to remove detail is a poor suggestion (coming from an old-school macho mindset that authors prove their worth by making readers struggle) than it is that a suggestion to add detail is a poor suggestion.

In this particular case (and if the journal allows for it), moving the respective part to an appendix (and expanding it) seems to be a solution that should satisfy both reviewers. Those readers who are like Reviewer B and do not require the proof can ignore it and those who are like Reviewer A can read the proof in its full glory.
Moreover, Reviewer A’s request itself gives you an excellent argument against the complete removal requested by Reviewer B:
You can argue that you want to keep that part because you consider it relevant for some readers, as evidenced by Reviewer A’s request.

In math, I would consider this solution weird (also I don't know why the journal wouldn't allow it).  You don't normally read math papers linearly and whoever wants to skip a proof will.  There are some cases where this is done, but normally it's due to special circumstances (e.g., proving a known/folklore result, proving a result tangential to the main result of the paper, appendix written by someone else, ...) and I don't see anything in the question indicating this.

@Kimball: In math, I would consider this solution weird – … but then, so is a reviewer asking to delete a proof (as also hinted at in other comments). I concur that in a lemma–theorem–proof paper, such appendices seem unnecessary, but my guess is that this is not such a paper. On the other hand, as somebody writing papers with proofs for other fields, I am quite used to putting them in the appendix. Either way, this is for the asker to decide.

@Kimball in the US alone, each year 2'000 PhDs in "math" are awarded (all branches, including statistics, see here: https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/202201/rnoti-p96.pdf ) per year.
In the US alone, there are 53'000 PhDs awarded in subject other than "math". Unless differently stated, we can statistically ignore the math issues and conventions.

@EarlGrey But how many of those 53,000 PhDs are in subjects where the papers contain "proofs" of anything? Surely one will find proofs in theoretical CS papers, but Kimball's comment applies equally well to theoretical CS.

@kaya3 even economics have theorems.

@EarlGrey If a paper has a theorem and a proof of it, then to borrow a phrase, we can statistically ignore the possibility that it isn't mathematics.

Of course without knowing the paper and detailed reviews it's impossible to tell, but I want to provide a slightly different view than Wrzlprmft.
In my opinion, this is most likely not even a real case of conflicting reviews. The key information I tend to take away from requests such as "delete X" or "greatly expand X" is that the reviewer did not like the current version of X. Notably, I read statements such as "proof XYZ is too high-level and needs to be expanded considerably" not as an endorsement that the proof is useful in general, but as a statement that the current version is not.
If viewed through that lense, both reviewers have actually identified the same problem, they just propose different approaches to fix it. In that sense I doubt that either reviewer will be greatly upset if you take the other reviewer's suggestion - and in the response letter you can always point to the other reviewer to explain why you have chosen a different approach to fix the problematic proof than the one that was suggested.

Initially I was thinking along the same lines but note that this concerns a proof of theorem (in a math paper I assume). Omitting the proof is generally not an acceptable solution, reviewer B seems to say that the proof is so easy that a reader can understand it even from a much reduced version that what OP has written. Reviewer A disagrees and for the proof of a math paper I don't think they would accept no proof as an alternative to a proof that they consider incomplete/ lacking detail.

@quarague Maybe, but then why would a reviewer even suggest removing it? Proofs don't only appear in math papers - many applied-ish discipline papers also contain proofs, but often more as sort of auxiliary material (to name an example I know, many programming languages papers contain proofs that are, sometimes, not at all central to the idea that is being presented).

@quarague That said, I do agree that "expand the proof" has a lower overall chance of offending any of the two reviewers.

When an editor asks you to revise a paper taking reviewers’ comments into account, they mean just that — they do not mean “follow all the reviewers’ suggestions precisely”.  In my experience as an author, on any issues bigger than typos, it’s fairly usual that I (and/or co-authors) don’t quite agree with a referee’s suggested edits, but their comment helps me understand what was sub-optimal about my/our original version, and so find an alternative way to improve that shortcoming.  And when I’m a referee, reading revisions, I never expect authors to have followed my suggestions to the letter — just to have considered my concerns and addressed them in some reasonable way.
So in cases like yours, the kind of things which might help allay both referees’ concerns are:

Start the proof by explicitly signposting/acknowledging what is easy about it.  “This proof will be routine for experts, as a fairly standard application of pseudolinear estimation techniques.” This allays two possible sources of Referee B’s unhappiness: it lets them know that they can safely skip the proof, and it makes clear that you’re not overstating the novelty of this theorem.

Within the proof, be conscious which details are more difficult (bearing in mind Referee A’s comments), and explain those clearly; but also, to help highlighting them, don’t belabour the parts that really are routine.  A step-by-step argument like

A = B (by the second unitary condition) ≤ C (by convexity) = D (by Kane’s lemma, part (iii)) < E (by Chen’s inequality).

can often be clearer as

It follows directly by unitarity, convexity of f, and Kane’s lemma that A ≤ D; then D < F by Chen’s inequality (with ε = 1/7, and the stochasticity hypothesis ensured by Lemma 3.2).

I don’t mean to suggest that those are necessarily applicable in your case — but rather to illustrate how even when the referees’ specific suggestions are incompatible, the concerns behind them may both be reasonable, and it can be possible to find a revision addressing them both at once.

The editor also likely has pre-written responses, depending on the level of revisions needed, so the response was no different than if both referee's had given the same report.


text:
Why do students go for a PhD even when chances of getting academic jobs on its completion are slim?
This is in reference to my question: How to do a PhD to equip myself for a job as assistant professor.
I was told in the answer of the above linked question that chances of landing a job as an assistant professor in Mathematics are quite slim. Very few people will actually get a permanent position in academia.
An article of 2014 shows only 0.5-3% of PhD graduates will actually get a job as an Assistant Professor.
But I have two questions:

Why do so many people still apply for a PhD in some reputed institutes in India even knowing the harsh reality? I found there are 1500 applications for four PhD scholarship positions.

One answer says that people move to industry, but I still don’t understand how after doing a PhD in suppose differential geometry or algebraic geometry one can do a job in industry if he/she gets no position as an assistant professor.
Will one be satisfied to do some managerial work in some Consultancy firm after doing a PhD in Mathematics?

Are people jobless after a PhD?
  Completion of a PhD requires so much effort. So why is there no value after doing it?

NOTE:
In the most up-voted answer below it has been said that many who enroll for  a PhD don't even wish to pursue an academic career.
I have been asking my seniors who are currently pursuing a PhD or are in the verge of completing their degree or who have completed it.
They said that they all want to be Professors in some Universities and want to be involved in research because that is the dream job for them.
I am obviously talking about PhD in Mathematics

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Related questions: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17431/what-ratio-of-phd-graduates-in-stem-fields-ultimately-end-up-as-tenured-profes and https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/103809/what-fraction-of-stem-phd-graduates-end-up-in-jobs-that-require-a-phd

IMO, it is a good idea for academic advisors/professors in undergraduate/master's programs to forward this thread to any student who is interested in pursuing a PhD.

Some of my observations:

They don't know what they're going into. Most PhD students have some idea of how hard it is to get a job afterwards, but don't actually know. It's similar to how one can imagine what skydiving is like, but don't actually know until after trying it.
They're confident they can succeed. PhD students are some of the smartest of their generation. They were top of their high school class, top of their undergraduate class, they've never met an obstacle they can't overcome. Why can't they also top their graduate class, top the postdoc chain, and top the applicants for tenured positions?
The process worked for their supervisors, which makes them think it'll also work for the students. The supervisors are probably the people most influential in convincing undergraduates to do graduate studies. These are the people who've already did all of the things in #2. If they can do it, so can their students, and hence they encourage their students to try.
They don't know what they want to do. They haven't really thought about future careers and only have a vague idea of how their studies enable them to find a job if the academic path fails. The hidden reason they did undergraduate studies is because that's what everyone who did well in high school went on to do, and the same applied for graduate studies. "The best undergraduates do PhD studies, so I'll do it too".
They have romantic ideas about what people with PhDs do. When scientists talk about what they do, they don't usually say "I write funding proposals". The not-exactly-accurate answers propagate and influence the next generation of students to try to become scientists themselves.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

The issue is that the frame of your question is wrong. You’re assuming that the purpose of a PhD is to get an academic job, when that is not the case: Many people who get PhD’s have no desire for an academic job, even from the time they apply!
The number of academic positions is indeed insufficient to absorb all the PhD’s. But there are lots of other “landing spots”:

Industrial research and development
Start-ups
Non-university government research institutes (like the US NIH or DOE lab system, or the Max-Planck-Instituts in Germany)
Finance and consulting
Administrative and Supervisory positions in other disciplines.

Overall, PhD’s have a lower unemployment rate than non-PhD’s. It’s all a question of where they want to go.
As for doing a PhD, the basic skill it teaches you—the one that makes you valuable to lots of people—is the ability to learn new fields quickly and become an expert in those fields. You don’t always need specialized knowledge in your PhD topic to get into an area.
But ultimately the reason for doing a PhD is the love of research and discovery. People pursue research careers because that’s what they want to do.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Exactly. Doing the PhD itself is ("should be"?) fun!!!

I want to add that for the start ups part, its far easier to raise funding with a PhD

Because it's fun!
No, really.  I went to do a PhD because I thought it was fun.  It allowed me to live in an awesome location, travel around the world to conferences and summer schools, to spend years doing exciting research with nice colleagues, and even getting paid for all of it (and in Sweden, the pay is not bad at slightly above the national median salary, plenty for a sufficiently large apartment (compared to an undergraduate dormitory) where I did my PhD).
I postponed growing up and thinking about the future for after the PhD, which means now, 4½ years into a couple of postdocs.

It really is fun! After 8 years in industry, i went to do a PhD. And I can tell you, I haven't had as much fun working ever in industry!

@Attila Kinal: Same here, except about 3X as long in industry.

I understand that it is really fun but you need to do a job at some point for yourself to survive

@New_User I don't have any numbers on the proportion of PhD holders among rough sleepers and street beggars, but I don't personally know any.  As far as I know, a PhD does not reduce the likelihood of getting a job.  But see also this question.

@New_User And, although for some career paths the total career earnings may be higher if one skips the PhD entirely, those differences are hardly the ones where survival is at stake.

Most people don’t stay in one career much less one job their whole life.  You should do a PhD if it’s a job you think you’d like for the next five years.  If you don’t like it you should quit and find a job that’s a better fit.  As you get close to finishing your PhD you will better know what your job prospects are and you can search for your next job accordingly.

A personal anecdote. Your mileage may vary.
For me, entering the PhD program meant:

Stay in the same city as my girlfriend
Continue the sport I loved, with my team
Sufficient funding to become financially independent of my parents (just...)
Automatic deferment from military service (draft)
Work with smart people, a camera that could shoot 10M frames per second, and an interesting / challenging project

In contrast, "trying to get a job" would mean:

End of studies --> return to home country for military service
Girlfriend now "far away", in the days when international phone calls were expensive (and letters took a long time, and email had not been invented)
18 months later, see if I could pick up life where I had left off

The PhD was fun, led to a postdoc, then to a role in industry. 27 years later I am still with that company, leveraging the systematic and critical thinking skills that research taught me. My sports team did well at the national level. I married my girlfriend, and we have raised four children.
An academic career was never the goal. There would have been no money in it. I'm still dreaming of winning the lottery; then I might "endow a chair and sit on it". My PhD training tells me that it's statistically unlikely.

This is a great gem answer. Thanks for sharing.

I did a PhD and was hired for my master's degree, not for my PhD. Financially it did not (yet) pan out, but personally it did.
Why I still think it was a great time: I spend five more years on campus, had great colleagues, contributed to the community (published articles, gave talks, wrote some open source software), taught several courses, traveled to conferences, could deeply study a couple of topics, and was afterwards still hired for a ok-payed industry job.

Same; I really enjoy being a PhD student, but I don't think I would enjoy being a professor. I'm sure I could've made more money becoming a software engineer seven years ago, but I don't think maximizing my bank account leads to happiness...

I discovered that in Fine Art a lot of people do a PhD later in life, aged 40 plus or even 60 plus. These people have mostly been artists for a long time, and have returned to study to deepen their understanding of art and to rethink their practice. The ones I met mostly supported themselves by teaching something related to art, in trade or technical institutions, not universities. For one or two, the PhD might lead to a job in a university or a public institution, but the main motivation was simply to help their personal development as artists.
As far as I know, doing a PhD later in life is rare in the science and technology fields. It is true that PhDs in Fine Art are fairly recent (at least in my country), and so these older artists didn't have the opportunity to do a PhD when they were younger.

I know some engineers who do a PhD after their retirement. Either for their personal joy or that they have a topic in life for decades and want to give it a try finally.

I'm surprised what I see as the most important reason for doing a PhD isn't mentioned.
I did PhD because I love the subject. I'll work on a subject that no one has ever done. I'll increase the knowledge base of humanity. If I'm lucky (and work really hard), there might be a theory named after me. Even if I didn't, I'll probably provide a shoulder for the next Newton to stand on.

This might be seen as assuming that a PhD is both sufficient and necessary to advance the subject you love. Some think that it takes more time (i.e. a career within the subject), which is probably why the question is about building a career.

It is a definite problem with no easy answers. A partial solution is that a STEM PhD can provide a gateway to related fields. Going from a Math PhD to a job in computing or data science is a well-worn path. If you have the skill-set to get a PhD in differential geometry then you have the skill-set to e.g. rebrand yourself as a data scientist (if need be). Since a fundamental problem in data science is trying to find solutions to the curse of dimensionality, having a deep understanding of geometry is actually relevant. A graduate-level knowledge of mathematics linked with an ability (but not necessarily expertise) in programming can go far in industry.

Great advice. Also going the other direction MSc engineering -> applied math phd can also be quite fruitful. Lots of linear algebra and some probability and calculus and you can suddenly design your own algorithms with rune-like equations which seems like wild magic to most BSc and MSc. :) But really the feeling of suddenly actually being able to build your own versions of the stuff all on your own that the cool professors inspired you with some 5 years ago. I would say working hard to get that feeling is worth a Lot of money. Money can't quite buy that feeling.

If I were hiring an entry-level data scientist, I'd hire someone who had studied data science, not someone who had studied differential geometry.

In my opinion, there are people that opted for PhD for their own personal achievement. There are people who take the title that comes with PhD very proudly. And there are also people who want to prove themselves that they can achieve that. It is the experience that counts, not much about the career.
EDIT : It is from my personal experience. I had few bad grades in my undergraduate study, but I managed to finish it and I am one of the few people around me that went for Master and completed it.
Pursuing PhD had never been something I want to do but I do to prove to myself that bad grades and CGPA won't hold you back. I never thought about pursuing career in academic.

Could you back your answer up with statistics, facts, personal experience?

@JulienLopez - see my answer for "personal experience" not unlike that described in this answer.

Because it is a way out of poverty!
While many people will do a PhD because they love research and discovery and also the intellectual challenge, there are other important factors too.
Getting a PhD is a way out of poverty for some people. If someone is poor and they live in a country with declining living standards, getting a PhD from another country can help them in two ways:
1- They will be paid for their PhD research. In some countries if you are lucky you do not pay university for your PhD, otherwise you pay to get a PhD while you are enrolled full-time! Doing PhD and having a job (if you could find it and if it would pay enough) is not easy for everybody.
2- If someone wants to immigrate to another country with better living standards, the easiest way is to be educated and to be highly skilled. Getting a PhD from another country makes it possible either to settle in that country or immigrate to another one easier.
Many people live in less developed countries and finding an academic job after their PhD or their job satisfaction is their least concern!

Can you explain why this speciafically refers to a phd and not Bachelor or Master?

As far as I know, bachelor or master students are not paid. I many countries PhD actually counts as a job. Even if bachelor or master are paid it is not enough to sustain you as an immigrant in another country.
Moreover, if you are immigrant you have pay tuition fee for a bachelor or master degree which often is way more expensive than the tuition fee for native people.

There is a big difference between getting education for Vocational reasons and Academic reasons.
Vocational training is training that you can apply immediately to a job; it tends to be somewhat practical. For example, plumber, electrician, MBA, accounting, automechanic, physician, nurse, computer programmer.  For Vocational training, you go to school to learn how to do something in particular, so that once the training is done, you are qualified to go and do it.  I think most people view undergraduate degrees as something vocational.
Academic education, in contrast, is learning for the sake of learning; perhaps "advancing human knowledge" is the best way to say it. For someone who views life with a utilitarian philosophy, most PhD's, like poetry and video games,  are not at all useful.
So in summary, your questions:

Why do so many people apply for a PhD even when chances of getting academic jobs are slim?

Answer: Because a PhD is not a vocational degree; it is an academic degree

Why do so many people still apply for a PhD in some reputed institutes in India even knowing the harsh reality?

Answer: If someone is unhappy with reality, perhaps advancing human knowledge is a means to fix the dismal reality many people face. And particular institutes, IIT for example, are reputed because they have contributed much to the improve human condition. There are people who work not for material reasons but instead to improve society as a whole.

Are people jobless after a PhD?

Just like people everywhere, joblessness can indeed effect PhDs. There certainly isn't a 100% employment rate in any group of people, is there?
Likewise, most people who have a PhD are able to find a job. However, I am willing to wager that on the whole, people who get vocational degrees earn more money. For example, MBAs, Physicians, and CS people will earn more than most PhDs.  In the end, many PhDs get a job in a field that can use their skills vocationally; for example, many physics PhDs go into computer science when school is done.

Completion of a PhD requires so much effort. So why is there no value after doing it?

There are many things in this world that require a ton of effort for which very little remuneration is received. For example, child rearing. Raising kids is a task that most people do anyway. If society paid more money for what it values, shouldn't being a mother pay the most of any profession? In truth most mothers raise kids for a variety of reasons; sense of fulfillment, love, etc.
Likewise with PhDs, people pursue these degrees for reasons not related to remuneration. Perhaps we should re-organize society so that those we value the most receive the most money? Moms will get the most money, followed by poets, and everyone will pity the impoverished health insurance company executive?

Just for the sake of the argument: In the group of employed people, there is an 100% employment rate. And in the set containing nobody, too.

@usr1234567 Ha! You are 100% right

Raising kids is thankless?? I strongly disagree.

@user111955 Agreed. I meant it to be an adjective, but the literal meaning is not correct. I've edited that out.

One might as well ask why artists paint, why poets or writers write, why people pursue professional sports. In each case, the chance of "success" is quite small. People who do these things have passion for what they do, they don't mind making great sacrifice, and they all hope that one day all the hard work will pay off.
I was lucky to get out of grad school when it was still possible to get a job. Nonetheless, each time I looked for a new position, there was a certain amount of fear that I might not get one.
At the end of the last class I taught before I retired, I played the song "What I did for Love" from "A Chorus Line." It summed up my feelings for my career, and probably would for many others who "dreamed the impossible dream."

It's cool :-) I would get a Ph.D. just for fun if I had time and money. It's fun (for many people including me nothing is more fun than getting to understand new things), it feeds you dopamine (some people use gambling for this, some do sports, some prefer to explore), and makes it much easier to get people respect you which is extremely ego-pleasing :-) And there is nothing wrong in pleasing your ego as long as you do this consciously and don't let it cloud your reason.

You might also want to try the Marathon des Sables race.

This is what everyone thinks before they start doing a PhD ;)


text:
What was graduate admissions like before the electronic age?
On the applicant side, did admissions require the same documents as today? Also, since gathering the required documents presumably took longer (especially for an applicant who had already graduated), how soon did the applicant have to apply before intake? For example today's graduate programs commonly have a January application deadline for August intake - what was it like in the past? Since today's students regularly email prospective supervisors before applying, did students in the past also regularly visit campuses before applying? Finally, how much were application fees then compared to now?
On the admissions committee side, did committees rely less on personal contacts and more on the submitted documents? E.g. suppose an applicant submitted a recommendation letter by Einstein, who a member of the committee knew firsthand. Today, I presume the committee would email Einstein to discuss the applicant. Would committees of the past do the same (but with telephone / post)? If not, was there a greater risk of forgery?

Education in the pre-internet age was very expensive. The only possibility was to see it as Capital goods, that means as a long-term investment over the lifespan of an individual. This results into a maximum in bureaucracy and careful selection of which person is able to become a phd. If the costs are lower (for example in an online-course over the internet), education can be seen as a final good and the participants see the admission process as shopping.

"Education in the pre-internet age was very expensive."  That's a funny statement.  In the US, higher education in the Internet age is considerably more expensive than in the period preceding.  See for instance https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76

What do you mean by "before the electronic age"?  Before online applications?  Before email?  Before computers?  Before electricity?

@Kimball before computers, although I'm also interested in even-earlier periods.

Since just before the transition to the use of the Internet for admissions—in the 1980's and 1990's—the kinds of documents submitted haven't fundamentally changed. What was more difficult back then is that everything had to be printed out and mailed, and application forms had to be individually written or typed out. Deadlines were basically the same as they are now, if not a little later—all of my deadlines were in January or February, whereas now they may be in December. It's not easy, as one might imagine, to visit lots of schools in the US, and in engineering, students normally visited after being admitted, not before. As far as fees go, they haven't changed that much, I don't think—I remember the fees when I applied being about $50 to $75 per school.
As you can imagine, credential fraud was much easier to commit because there was no easy way to teleconference via means like Skype or Google Hangouts, so you couldn't really tell who you were speaking to on the phone. This was most obviously a problem in terms of evaluating the English skills of foreign applicants. I know of at least one department that completely blacklisted all applicants from China for a number of years because multiple applicants would have a colleague with stronger English skills "stand in" for them in the telephone interview, and then the accepted candidate showed up with far worse English skills than the person interviewed. Nowadays, with the possibility of teleconferencing, and with ID's included in the test documents for TOEFL and IELTS, it's much easier to know who you are interviewing, making such fraud much more difficult to achieve.
With respect to contacts, that of course applies—if you know someone who's written a letter of recommendation, and there's any questions, of course you'd want to contact the person by phone or email.

Same deal, probably.  Just call or write school and ask them to mail you the application.  Like mail, mail.  Type it up. I think they had mailers for the recommendation letters to go directly to them.  Yeah, most deadlines were end of DEC or end of JAN.  Replies by mid-March.  Fat letter good...slim letter bad.  Is that still a thing?  (I'm actually not that familiar with current system.)
I do remember in early 90s getting the grad applications mailed to me.  And then by end of the 90s, dept said they were all emailed to the kids.  Change-over was fast...couple years.  And lots of college undergrads were already hooked into computer systems, so they could deal with websites and email.
But I imagine the transition for undergrad applications may have been more gradual. HS students having less computer access.  Donno...did undergrad in 80s and when I say "type", I mean typewriter for that time...not even a Brother word processor.  There may have been some handwriting, too...and I had to concentrate as my penmanship was normally bad.  Pre-wrote the stuff for practice and then transcribed...to avoid too many line-outs or white-out.
I showed up in grad school in 95 and had never used email.  Prof insisted on it for something and I told him "I'm receive only" mode. He said there was no such system. I told him someone had explained to me how to get on shared comp and read my email but not how to send it.  (More of an operator issue.)

I applied before the electronic age. There were paper formulars, these were to filled out, and attached by a list of documents. These went to the University administration, either by post, or personally. The system was partially organized by the high schools (most people continued directly his/her studies on a University, if he could pass the entry exam).


text:
Informing your advisor that you are changing disciplines
As a sort of follow up to a previous question, what is advice you would give for telling my MSci advisor I am switching disciplines (pure maths to statistics) for doctoral work? I will presumably ask him for a letter of recommendation. I do not want to come across as ungrateful for his work with me, but the direction of my current research with him has come to bore me. How do I tell him that is a major reason I am switching disciplines? Do I even need to disclose such? I am closing in on completing my work with him, so anything dealing with changing advisors right now is not an option.

Directly.
"I've decided to pursue a PhD in statistics."
Then after the inevitable discussion:
"Can you write me a strong letter of recommendation?"

Since you are a professor I will take this to heart.

In many countries in Europe (France for example), statistics is a part of the Maths department. Theoritical statistics uses a lot of sophisticated mathematics, like measure theory, or functional analysis. A PhD in applied statistics would probably require a serious theoritical research, together with modelisation and programming.
So you should not be ashamed to switch to statistics. Tell your advisor this is not because of him, but due to your personal interest. Excellent scientist are driven by passion!
You may start the conversation by telling your advisor you're switching to physics. If he survives the shock, tell him you were joking and you are "just" going to statistics ;)


text:
Making a joke in an email asking for a PhD vacancy?
In How to contact professors for PhD vacancies?, Suresh suggests (and I believe most of you agree with this):

Think about their work. Find something intelligent to say (even a question).

I have read a couple of the recent, most cited papers of the professor. It is considered to be a breakthrough in the field, and of course very interesting. I have some questions, but I'm afraid that they are just trivial, that the answers are lying apparently in the papers (in the professor's perspective) that I can't see.
But I decide to write an email to them anyway. When I'm about to describe what I've read, I come up with a joke about that breakthrough method. That joke is only one sentence long, and for me obviously it's funny. However, I'm afraid there are some backfires if I decide to joke about it. Maybe the professor will see that the joke has no relevant to the method (explaining kills the joke), or it will be too informal in the first contact.
So is it safe to put the joke into the email?
TL;DR: Women rates funny guys as more intelligent. Are professors the same?

It's not a good idea. The professor should be impressed by your preparation and your skills, not your ability to make jokes. You can make the joke later during the interview or when you got to know the person better.

If you have already met this professor before, I think it is OK to make some little jokes but it will not give a good impression if you don't know him. The better is to be serious at the beginning. Also it does not worth to get some risks. What could happen if professor does not like the joke or if it reminds him something that he does not like ? So, it is better to not make jokes.

Don't do it. It is difficult to gauge the sensibilities of someone unfamiliar, and, therefore, all too easy to make clumsy gaffes.

You could put it in the P.S. like "P.S. I don't know if it is appropriate, but I really want to tell you a joke: ...", or something on the lines. This will be seen as additional, off-topic information. It won't kill the seriousness of a paragraph in which you talk about science.

You could even point out, that you want feedback on the joke. As he is the best in the field and you couldn't tell it anyone else. The joke would also symbolize that you are a nerd guy for this thing, as you make insider jokes. It could tell the potential advisor something about your devotion and personality. Huge extrapolations, I know :-D.

Women rates funny guys as more intelligent. Are professors the same? Some professors are women (and others are men, who are pretty similar to women) so this is a bizarre question. It's disturbing how many questions on Academia.SE assume the premise that professors are some special, all-powerful class of people that one needs to please, entertain, suck up to, and never ever dare offend. Professors are people. They are just like everybody else. If you want to impress one, just be impressive. Be smart, say smart things that are relevant to the topic being discussed. That's all.

Concerning communication in printed/electronic form you always need to keep in mind that the reader doesn't necessarily reads the text in the same tone as you write it. So a joke may come across as derogatory or in any other way negatively. It's way better to be professional in written communication and only do jokes if you meet in person and feel that the situation allows for jokes.

Personally I think if someone would write me an e-mail like that with a joke it would come off as desperate.

what's the joke?

If you want a feel for whether he or she will get the joke or not, try looking online for video lectures at conferences or otherwise. That can give you a better idea of what they're like as a person and what sort of sense of humour they have. Not a silver bullet by any means, but worth a try anyways.

@DanRomik: Many professors are women, but their reactions to potential students are not likely to be the same as their reactions to potential dates. (In general, taking dating research and applying its insights to one's professional interactions sounds . . . risky.)

If you come up with a witty joke on the method they have been working on for years, they have probably already heard it. If it's really cheesy, chances are that they have already heard it so many times that they hate it. So don't.

@FedericoPoloni I would argue that I come up this joke myself. But yeah, you have a good point. I can't know that this joke is a dupe or not.

TL;DR: Women rates funny guys as more intelligent. Are professors the same?

No, not really.  In ordinary conversation, nobody is expected to say anything deep or knowledgeable.  Making a joke at least shows more cleverness than many of the alternatives (such as chatting about the weather).  On the other hand, in a context where you might be expected to say something with real academic content, just making a joke instead suggests that you don't have anything else to contribute.  I think it would be better to try to engage with the subject matter, even if you are clearly not an expert yet, than to look like you are deflecting the issue with a joke.
The worst case scenario is making a terrible joke and seeming overly proud of yourself for making it.  Don't write to someone doing gene editing and say "Your recent papers are really impressive and have been getting crisper and crisper (get it? LOL!). I guess mi Cas es su Cas, am I right?"

LOL, I will never joke like that. Anyway, I think you are right about the importance of the context

Though the the psychological aspect might be true, it wouldn't be advisable to use it under this context. Even if it is amusing, your research proposal itself might be mistaken to be just a joke.
Your sense of humour should be something to be witnessed in person. Bear in mind that sense of humour is only a supportive quality; it is your primary skills set and research passion is what would make the initial impact.

why will my proposal be taken as a joke? Ultimately, the joke only long for one sentence, while I have shown how I have done my homework?

That one line could make all the difference, @Ooker.

If you do not know the professor, joking on the first mail can be interpreted as bad form in some countries. Stick to formal until you have reasons not to (informal context, previous contact, explicit consent, etc). Keep it formal and respectful and save the jokes to when you go get beers with the lab :)

I'd approach this based on a risk vs. payoff question.
The risk of the joke is that you're off-putting, offensive, or otherwise do some damage to your application, up to and including losing it.
The payoff is that the joke inspires some sort of "I like the cut of your jib" feeling in the professor, and marginally increases your chance of success.
The problem, as I see it, is that the worst case torpedoes your chances, while the best case only matters if you were already pretty borderline. It strikes me as not worth it, at least until you get an idea of the professor's sense of humor.

You're over-thinking this.
You're not completely sure if you should include the joke but leaving it out doesn't hurt you at all. So just leave it out. You're wasting your time turning this triviality into a detailed question and waiting for responses.

Short emails are better
Don't out everything into one big email. It will only end up in the todo pile, or be scanned for "what does this guy want from me?"
Consider asking to-the-point questions on his research.
Fact is that research has shown you are more likely to get an answer if your email is really short.
So use this strategy to start a discussion. Chances are that he'll invite you to come to his office (use a university email, so he knows this is an option!)
Once you've sent a few messages back and forth, you'll be able to tell wheter or not to make that joke. Your chances of getting an offer are also much higher if he perceives you as "persistent and curious" about his research.

I got that I shouldn't telling the joke in the email, but I don't know if I should form it as a proposal, and proving that I suit for them with new direction to expand the work, or just start a discussion about their researches only?

Start a discussion first. You can still propose a research direction in the second or third email.