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Citing Closed Webpage That is Not Archived - The Only Source of Information?
I always save PDF copies of webpages I uses for references.
Since writing an article I see that a cited webpage is no longer available and it has not been archived.
The page in question was part of RootsWeb, which was a large mid 1990s to 2021 collection of genealogical related emails. RootWeb was purchased by Ancestry in 2000 and shut down in 2023.
If you go to RootWeb it says their third party archive has moved; however, when you search this site the page I cite is not there, and likely many others are also not archived there.
If you check the Internet Archive it says its available online, which it is not.
I can't post a copy of page that I saved as its owned by Ancestry, who likely removed the original content to monetize it behind their paid membership, although I don't know if that is true.
There are no other sources for the information.
I've seen other citing guides state that it should be removed; however, that would suggest that I just somehow made the information up.
Would it not be best to cite the dead webpage and add a note that its closed in case the url might be archived some day.
What would be the best format for this?

Do you have a date on which you last accessed the material?

"Too late for this one, but: when you see a webpage you think you're likely to cite in the future, make sure to save it in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. – Daniel Hatton"
The Internet Archive states:
"Only available for sites that allow crawlers."
That would be up to the site owners, which is Ancestry.

"Is it possible your university library or a local public library has an institutional subscription to ancestry.com that would enable you to confirm your suspicion that the content still exists, but behind the paywall? – Daniel Hatton"
That might be possible or I could confirm with a temporary trial account. I would then have cite a webpage that is behind a paywall

"Do you have a date on which you last accessed the material? – Buffy"
Yes.
Also other details such as the title, subject, creation date, main subject, url and so forth.

Whether or not a referenced website is currently accessible is usually not an issue, in part because it is generally accepted that the information on (many) websites is not as trustworthy or authoritative as something published in a peer-reviewed journal. Moreover, a great many existing publications reference sites that no longer exist and some, no doubt, reference websites that disappeared between the time they were accessed and the time they were referenced in a publication.
For your purposes, the information you probably need to comply with the citation/referencing requirements of a journal are: the name of the website from which you saved the PDF page, and the date on which you accessed the site.


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Protocol of review process of article submission
I am totally new to submitting articles to journals and I have only one (probably naive) question. I submitted a preprint (quite) some time ago and this is the protocol of the process:
Process
Apart from not fully knowing how a review process at a journal works, I recently got the update "decision letter being prepared" after just one day the "associate editor decision started". Does one day mean that the preprint has been rejected? I submitted it to a mathematical physics journal. The preprint contains quite a large amount of equivariant homotopy theory that is applied to the theory of so-called frustrated spin systems.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55665/what-does-the-typical-workflow-of-a-journal-look-like-how-should-i-interpret-a, https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/153925/can-i-predict-the-fate-of-my-manuscript-from-information-other-than-a-decision

These are nice resources!

It just means the editor took one day between pushing buttons. Whether during that time they were stunned by the gravitas of your paper, were in a crisis of faith from all the bad papers they see, or just hoped no one figures out they forgot pushing the first button for two weeks - no one but the editor knows.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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I want to change my PhD supervisor after two years, I have a DAAD scholarship. how can I write email to ask PhD position from other groups?
I am considering changing my PhD supervisor after two years into the program and currently hold a DAAD scholarship. How should I approach writing an email to inquire about PhD positions in other groups, and is it advisable to mention my existing scholarship? I terminated DAAD scholarship.

This is confusing. What is DAAD. Do you hold or did you terminate the scholarship? Please refine with an edit.

DAAD seems to be German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) (from GOOGLE)

Which country are you in/applying to ? Which subject ? DAAD (assuming you are talking about the German institution here) scholarships are reasonably hard to get. Did you really terminate it, or did you have  2 year scholarship that has now finished ?

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


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Can you share you got a Major Revision on LinkedIn?
I recently got my first Major Revision and I would like to share the good news, but I'm not sure if there is a non spoken rule that you shouldn't be publicly sharing that info during the review process due to anonymity concerns.
For context, I'm a Business PhD Candidate going to the Job Market this year. At least in Business, getting a MR at a top journal is very useful when going to the job market. I have heard people comment in getting a MR starting their talks or in informal conversations, on their website, but not on LinkedIn...that I remember. Is it because it is not big enough news, that academics are not that into LinkedIn, that  it is frowned upon, I just haven't seen it? And more concretely, is there a rule that would discourage sharing this information?

Can you explain what you meant by "got a Major Revision"? To me, it sounds like you submitted a paper and the reviewers said it needs major revisions, which is not anything to celebrate. "Accepted with minor revisions" or simply "Accepted" would be more worthy of celebration.

Depends on the field I suppose, but in most cases a major revision on your first submission is a good sign - especially if the journal is respected.

As @Taw mentioned, in top journals in business it is deemed as a good sign to get a Major Revision. It practically doesn't happen getting an Accepted with minor or Accepted on a 1st Round Revision.

@shoover the situation is similar in Statistics, where the overwhelming majority of submissions to top journals (annals, jasa, biometrika and jrss, for instance) do not even make it past the editor, such that a Major Revision decision is seen as a very promising development.

This falls into the category of end zone celebrations following touchdowns in US football.  Act like you've been in the end zone before, and that you expect to be there a whole lot more times before you retire.
The common way of indicating the status your manuscript is in right now is "in review".  Use that term in your CV and on LinkedIn.  This is a signal to people that see it that it means more than a cheesy "in preparation" paper (which means next to nothing), but that there's still some daylight between the paper and publication.  If you hadn't yet received any outcome of the review process, the status would be "submitted".
If the message you got from the editor were a tad bit stronger, something along the lines of "I'll accept your paper without further review if you address the referees' concerns", you might choose to list the paper as "accepted pending revision" or some such.  When you hear notification that the paper is accepted, then (unless the paper is made rapidly available online), the status is "accepted".
Anonymity concerns don't really apply here.  The bigger concern is that the representation of the paper sort of highlights naivete.

I like the approach of "in review" signaling a further stage than just submitted, while not naively making a big deal out of it because it might still not get accepted. Do you think "accepted pending revision" is upon the interpretation of the authors? I would only assume that for a Minor Revision stage paper, at least in my field.

@ImplingDig1 --  Yes, there could certainly be an author's interpretation in there, but not necessarily in my recommended use case.   I, personally, would reserve that description for cases where any hangup is largely administrative.  I wouldn't recommend using "accepted pending ..." (where the ellipsis could be anything) unless there were language in a communication from the deciding editor saying "accepted".  I would never use the term if it were clear the ms would go back to a referee following revision. There are limited fair scenarios for it's use, an was included for completeness.

@ImplingDig1 Some editors/journals do give a notification like "accepted pending revision" so you should not assert that unless the editor/journal explicitly tells you so.  Many papers with positive reports get resubmit requests but then end up being rejected in the end.

Articles with major revisions can still be rejected. Wouldn't it be a bit embarrassing to make a big deal then have to admit it was rejected? I would just say "under review" which implies it was at least not desk rejected by the editor and leave it at that.


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How to handle copyright on figures?
I'm working on a non-academic book that cites from many academic resources. I make heavy use of figures in my book and many of them are copyrighted, either by the authors or the journals. My experience thus far has been that I'm unable to secure permissions from the journals without paying a prohibitive cost. For more complex and creative figures, I've chosen to just not include them.
However, for very simple figures, which are essentially just scatterplots with regression lines - I want to know what really is copyrighted? And if my figures do infringe upon copyright, how else I could possibly present the data in a graphical form? I obviously wouldn't copy-paste the figure directly, but I want to understand if the below example would infringe upon copyright.
(Note that I've seen similar questions on here, but none that include a direct example)
Theirs:

Mine:

This seems like a duplicate, since even though the author created them the rights to publish are owned by someone else: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/4881/63475

Another: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/182071/63475

Another: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/19041/63475

There seems to be a lot of questions already that cover this. I don't think adding an example changes the question.

Given the context of a non-academic book, and the fact that you have not stated the jurisdiction(s), you may find it useful or at least educational to consult a copyright lawyer.


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Is the “purpose” of a Ph.D. merely to gain general entry into the world of professional research, or is the research topic critically specific?
I myself may some day wish to do a Ph.D. I have sometimes thought about if I would want to choose a theorist or academician whose work and whose personality I gravitate towards, even if I am not certain if I would stay exactly in their subfield my whole life. I think there are some good examples of theorists who do a Ph.D. under a particular scholar, yet then gravitate into a related but different field, or even pioneer a new topic on their own.
So, is it more important to do a dissertation on a topic you are extremely keen on, and worry less about who you are doing it under, or is it quite an advisable path to do a Ph.D. under someone you connect with or think highly of, even if the topic matter is either less hyper-specifically that professor’s expertise, or if you do not actually plan or care to stick to that niche topic for very long? Because I believe just working under a seasoned mind can rub off on you, so it’s natural to want to study under a mind you hold in high regard.
Or are both valid?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/203847/extending-the-phd-project-into-post-doc/203858#203858

Closely related canonical question: (How) Can I switch from field X to field Y after getting my PhD?

Partly that's a choice we cannot shield you from: It depends why you pursue and what you want to do with your PhD. (That you ask this question makes me think that you are not burning for some specific research question though!)

What do you mean by "choose a theorist or academician"? As your supervisor?

You will have at this point a hard time predicting where your PhD project will go, and what subfield you want to work in when it's finished. You are certainly not bound to the subfield in which you did your PhD. But then if you know somebody's work and like it, this doesn't automatically mean the person is also good for you as a supervisor. Furthermore there is also strong variability regarding how close a topic somebody supervises is to their current (visible) research. So much depends on factors that can't be assessed at this point. Contact potential supervisors and talk with them!

I'd like to reach "behind the curtain" and pull out an aspect of the PhD which often confuses potential applicants. A PhD can look like anything else "students" do at a university: you sign up to X years of pain study where domain experts throw knowledge at you, walk you through practice, and send you off with a shiny piece of paper saying Now You Know Stuff.
This illusion can be costly. A PhD looks like a degree just as a snake looks like a legless lizard. But here's the fangs: a PhD is also your first academic job, and thinking about it like a job instead of a degree can make decisions significantly clearer. Critically, while it takes lots of hassle and paperwork* to change the course of a degree, changing course during your PhD (or your postdoc!) is much more like changing jobs, or perhaps taking an internal transfer.
Take for example "should I follow the topic or the supervisor?" Well, think about applying for jobs: would you rather do work which fits your interests exactly under a boss you don't quite like, or do work you might struggle with under a great boss? There's no one answer, but that's the point: it's really a decision about choosing your workplace, and you should think about your worker-personality to answer it.
Or "what if I need to change my PhD topic halfway through?" Well, again, imagine that you're working as an accountant, but halfway through you discover a hidden passion for ... underwater basket weaving. Or something. How would you go about exploring your new field and changing careers? Some people would drop everything and leap. Others would slowly make time to explore new options, dipping one toe into the water at a time. Again, there's no one answer: the point is to reframe the question.
Hope this helps. All the best!

*mostly unnecessary, to me, but that's a different story ...

Absolutely correct. For most people, a PhD is not only their first academic/research job, but the only research job they will ever have: most professor jobs are teaching jobs.

I guess it depends on the field, @Cheery, but in mine and related ones, it is a minority of Ph.Ds who go on to be professors, and virtually all of those do at least one postdoc first (so at least one other research job).  Even considering that some leave the field altogether, I'm pretty sure that a majority spend their careers holding bona fide research jobs, some in academia and some in industry.

+1 for a PhD is also your first academic job. When I was PhD, the successful students in our program treated it like a job (some went as far as only "working" from 8-5 and also had work life balance). Also, I would say that could be broader and that "it is a job."

@Cheery and John -- I'm sure it's very field-dependent. Certainly we would serve PhD students better by not just saying it's a job, but by opening their eyes to all the other jobs they could do out there after their PhDs!

There is no single golden path to follow here.
If you stay in academia (and that is a big "if"), you will need to demonstrate your independence from your advisor or mentor at some point in time. It's fine to do your postdoc in a related field to your Ph.D. thesis, but at some point in time you do need to branch out and pursue new avenues, because academia is evolving, and is not interested in people rehashing their subject over and over again over their entire careers.
On the other hand, if you switch subfields or fields immediately after your Ph.D., then you are gratuitously giving up much of what you built up over your Ph.D. time - all the specific knowledge, all the network, all the contacts your advisor could leverage to help you. (Make no mistake: contacts are hugely important in academia.)
It makes absolute sense to do a Ph.D. in a field you do not plan on staying in for the long haul. Ideally, you would keep this thought in the back of your head during your Ph.D. Try to keep a finger in the pie that does interest you. Read the "other" field's publications. If possible, make contacts there. Perhaps do a side gig or a collaboration. Bonus points if you find a way to combine your current and your target field in some way.
Also, think about when you want to have a conversation with your advisor about this long-term plan. This is probably not something you want to bring up when you interview for the Ph.D. position. But once you have established yourself and still plan on switching fields at some point (you might change your mind halfway through the Ph.D., after all), and have a good rapport with your advisor, it might be useful to talk to them. Some advisors might feel a little miffed if you left the field all of a sudden, but might have been helpful if you had told them earlier. After all, the advisor themselves switched fields at some point in their career (see above) and might have some advice or (again) contacts that might help your next steps.
My wife did her Ph.D. in a subfield and using methods (EEG and fMRT in specific phobia) that she hasn't touched since (her postdoc was about genetics, now she is doing immunology and cell energetics in PTSD and related disorders). I did my Ph.D. in discrete optimization and am now academia-adjacent in forecasting.

not interested in people rehashing their subject over and over - Freeman Dyson apparently said that "if you want to win a Nobel Prize, you should have a long attention span, get hold of some deep and important problem and stay with it for ten years". Did academia change in the intervening time between then and now?

@Allure: (1) 10 years is not your entire career. (2) Beware of selection bias: let's not look at what Nobel Prize winners say they did, but at what happens to "normal" academics who followed this track. Yes, I do believe that if you apply to a professorship, and your research output is all about the one topic you did your Ph.D. on, then you will at least need to explain why you never did anything different. Of course you might just have found that one deep problem that is worth spending your entire career on. But you will need to convince the committee of that.

@Allure I think few would consider making Nobel-worthy progress on a deep problem over an extended period of time as simply rehashing a subject over and over. Unproductively sticking with the same topic for another 10 years after one's major contribution is a different matter, of course. See also this question for some takes on the value of not getting stuck and comfortable in a single area of research.

@Allure: Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system

There are three main purposes to the PhD candidature:

Gain broad knowledge of your field at a PhD level;
Gain expertise in a specific topic in your field (the topic of your dissertation) at a PhD level;
Develop research skills sufficient to allow you to create and publish academic papers and related outputs.

Only the second of these is significantly affected by your choice of dissertation topic, so even if you do your dissertation in an area that you later don't practice in, you should still have developed good broad knowledge of your field and research skills for practice.
For purposes of generating a career in research, it is useful ---but not crucial--- to have selected a good topic for your dissertation.  Selection panels for positions mostly look at your research record overall, and also whether your research interests will fit well within their institution/department.  There are some academics and researchers who do their dissertation in a topic that they later don't practice in.  (In some cases, the PhD degree is sufficiently traumatic that the person is sick of their topic and does not wish to return to it later.)

Very important: learn to think (and address problems) at PhD level. (the reason it is called a philosophical doctorate).

This is a US perspective and it may not be quite the same elsewhere.
The purpose of a PhD is to gain broad knowledge of the general field and deep knowledge of a particular aspect while producing one or more publishable works. This implies learning the research and publishing process in the field. Often in many fields it is a first work. In some fields publishing is required. But that is the general idea.
There is no expectation that a graduate has to stay in the same subfield throughout their career, but most people do for a few years at least. If one can obtain a tenured position then changing sub fields and perhaps even fields is more tenable.
I changed major fields once (math -> CS) and minor fields many times through my long career.
But it is good to work with someone you can learn from. Nice if they are prominent. Even nicer if you actually have common interests. Still nicer if you have some insight into the key features of the subfield. You want to learn the craft and you want to get a boost in your early career. After that the world opens up.
Note that if everyone "stuck" to their doctoral topics forever, there would be very little academic/scientific progress.
Prepare a base. Work from that base.

In some parts of Europe and maybe elsewhere, it is assumed that a candidate already has the "broad" part covered, likely in a masters program. And even the US view isn't uniform as most places set their own policies and standards. But at the end of it, breadth, depth, and publishable research are pretty standard.

Moreover, in some parts of Europe and maybe elsewhere, a Ph.D is considered a desirable qualification for a career in engineering or business.

@MichaelKay Desirable, perhaps, but hardly a requirement. But do you really think most professional software engineers have a Ph.D?

@Barmar Of course they don't. But those that do tend to stand out above their peers, in my experience.

Aspect 1:
PhD's are hard work. So
if you, as a person, have a "hard-work ethic" regardless of the work, then being "keen on the topic" may not matter much for the chances to complete the work. But if you are the kind of person that needs to get enthusiastic about something in order to work hard on it, then "being extremely keen on the topic" could become critical.
Aspect 2:
Why are you doing the PhD? For the love of research? For the love of being able to teach at the higher level? As a professional avenue towards academia/industry/government, where income and/or prestige considerations play an important role for you? If some subset of these together, each to what degree?
If professional considerations loom larger, then strategic thinking is called for: you may want to take up topics that appear to be in fashion, with a supervisor that appears well-established (and has a reputation for seeing their supervised PhDs to completion), in an institution that has some respectability.
If love of science and/or teaching is your thing, you may want to find "a mind that you hold in high regard" to study with, as a priority consideration.
To state the apparent contradiction, Science is an Art - and as there are Artists, there are also professional Artists. It would be useful to clarify to yourself into which category you mostly see yourself belonging, even if as a current assessment, that may change in the future.

Although a topic that is clearly in fashion now is unlikely to be in fashion 6 years from now.

@JonCuster True, and not true. In 6 years it will likely return to fashion. :)

Also not all great academics are great supervisors

@PauldeVrieze Certainly. As with the distinction/gap between being a good researcher and being a good teacher.

I am currently in the process of doing a PhD, so my answer may change in the future.

You must work with someone you like.

In a world where you do industrial job instead of academics job, this may not happen frequently, and is not THAT needed. But in academics, since things are much harder, and your advisor is pretty much your "second family", you must work with a guy you are comfortable with.
You should appreciate him, think highly of him, and you can get constantly inspired by him. If you find such a professor and he likes to work with you, you should go for it.
I know that you can always learn from people, but different professors have different styles. I mean, they are all smart and hardworking, but they are different in nature. Some professors just don't want to do things deeply, as long as it can be published in a journal he thinks is enough, it is enough. Some professors are full of ideas but need YOU to figure out the details, and they don't like working on the details, so if you want to show them your detail, they may be disinterested.
You need to find a same type of person, or a person you want to become. So, if you find the person, you should go for it. This is really important. Imagine if you working with someone, when you ask a technical question, they can't answer or don't care to answer, but you are really into techinical details? You guys will torture each other for the next five years.

About what if you are not that interested in that subject.

I think that whatever the subject it is, once dig deep enough, it is always interesting. The common feeling we have "oh that's not that interesting" is because we are in the phase where we already dug a little, so we already know a little, but we deeply know that once digging deeper it would not be this easy anymore. So, we always have this
"interesting" ---> "nah" ---> "oh this is actually quite deep, i love it".
Yeah, there will be some subjects you just genuinely not interest in. In such a case, you can never be interested in it. Then, I really doubt that you will also like that professor. If you indeed do, that will be a tough decision. I don't know what to suggest.

For me, I am really technical and like focusing on details. I also tend to dig really deeply at a point on the knowledge surface (which is not, in general, a good habit). I also need constant feedback, and really frequent communication, yeah, you can call me insecure. So, I need an advisor who also like thinking deeply, doing technical stuff, and like talking to me, like doing Q&A often, etc.
I am really happy that I found my "perfect match" in this PhD program. Also, I really respect him and I think that he is the best professor in terms of teaching and research I have ever met. Every time I talk to him I am so excited. He also appreciates me, thinks highly of me, which really boosts my confidence to challenge myself more. I start to expect more from myself, so I work more and harder. You see, then you enter into a positive cycle. In particular, luckily for me, he is also working in the frontier of the field, so I don't need to worry about if I am working on something that no one cares.

To add another perspective - it also depends on the region/country where one is getting a PhD, as well as on the University policy and the supervisor's views. A few examples:

In eastern Europe PhD is formally defined as being able to conduct independent research. This made it notoriously hard to pass the PhD defense and produced quite a few people who formally finished their post-graduate studies, but defended their PhD thesis many years later (if ever.) This is also often a source of conflicts between eastern European postdocs and their western supervisors - about who determines the direction of research.
In the US PhD students are often expected to prove themselves by working independently on a research project, agreed upon with their supervisor, who may provide more or less help. I have not heard about many people failing to pass a PhD defense, but for some it takes more years to get to this point, and  there is a significant proportion of dropouts.
In Western Europe a PhD student is often expected to follow the supervisors' instructions, sometimes on a day-to-day basis. In turn, the supervisors take to it as teaching a course, where they have to cover a variety of topics: calculations methods, research subjects, literature review, etc. This results in graduates who are (IMHO) less prepared to carrying out independent research, but who have a very wide range of skills, which make them well-prepared for finding a job in industry (a difficult step for PhD graduates in the US.)

As I said, these are not an absolute rule - I have seen different approaches practiced by professors working in the same university department - some throwing a talented student in water, and seeing whether it can solve a challenging research problem, the others patiently guiding their students from A to Z.

My Western European experience is quite different from this. I expect more independence even from my MSc/BSc project students and supervise accordingly, let alone a PhD. I have also seen this elsewhere. It may strongly depend on the subject matter (I know about Stats&Math.)

@ChristianHenning I have seen some students (in France) being literally told what to do today, what to do tomorrow etc. This was not a general rule, but rather common. My observations in Germany were indeed different - but that was in a Max Planck establishment, I don't know how it is in universities. Yet, as I said, tight supervision has its positive sides - students left to themselves may muster to perfection a specific subject or set of techniques, which may be good for carrier in academia, but not for transitioning to industry.

There is quite some space between telling people what to do from day to day and "leaving them to themselves".

@ChristianHennig sure, these are two extremes. Still, there is an obvious trade-off between the levels of supervision and independence.

There are too many country differences, but a 3 vs 4 year PhD is quite a difference and entry points are not quite comparable.

@PauldeVrieze in US phd may last much longer, although sometimes without financial support. I've know people who spent 5-6 years, and this is not the limit apparently.

First, it's definitely possible to change your topic/field. But be aware that this likely needs to happen during, not between jobs. (As @Shern Ren Tee points out, academic positions are just like other jobs.)
Consider applying for a new (academic or industry) position doing Y, while having worked on X...Your chances of getting the position will probably be low. Not because you could not show your competency with your previous job, but because it takes years to get deep into topics, but you are expected to produce results (e.g. papers) right away.
In other words, be sure to get a position in which you have the freedom to explore into different areas.
Second, having a great Ph.D. advisor is important. But if you reach into topics outside their area of expertise, you will not benefit from their domain knowledge. On your own, it can takes years to get a grasp of the state of the art in a field, so your Ph.D. might take longer than if you stay in your advisor's field.

It is really a balance of both, although others have said treat it like a workplace, also treat it as your education. You are training for a specific job, what skills do you need to do that job? Will your PI have the resources to help you get those skills, will they be supportive and focus on your education and not just turning out more papers? I switched labs because I had an unhelpful PI that wasn't an expert in my research focus, it was painful to get through the learning curve, but not as painful as her giving me inconsistent expectations, berating me, and still NOT being helpful toward my education. I enjoyed the research, but she definitely killed all joy I had for any science related topics. Switched labs and I have more resources and opportunities to learn, a PI that is knowledgeable and helpful without being a dick, and other students that will help me out when I have questions (in the other lab I was siloed as the only person in that specific field not necessarily bad labmates, we're all still friends, they just didn't have that background). Never regret my decision to leave, I'm much happier, have even have more opportunities and better career outlook because I'm not afraid my PI is going to be a dick and try to fuck me over.

Unless you're financially free, the ultimate purpose of a PhD is to get a job.
I don't know how familiar you are with job searches, but it's broadly true that transferable skills matter more than direct expertise. The latter does matter if the job is exactly on that topic, but the chances are pretty good you'll be working on something different than your thesis topic. Here're some examples:

You really love the topic now, and it turns out you still really love the topic after you've started working on it. That passion is a deciding factor in you generating high-quality results, and it leads to you graduating with a sterling PhD. Afterwards it turns out that funding agencies like your particular topic, so they fund research (i.e. issue grants) in it, making you a highly valuable commodity.
You really love the topic now, and it turns out you still really love the topic after you've started working on it. That passion is a deciding factor in you generating high-quality results, and it leads to you graduating with a sterling PhD. Afterwards it turns out that there's a major discovery in an adjacent field, such that funding for your topic dries up and much of the new funding goes there (recent example: gravitational waves).
You really love the topic now, and it turns out you still really love the topic after you've started working on it. That passion is a deciding factor in you generating high-quality results, and it leads to you graduating with a sterling PhD. But during your PhD you also fall in love, and you don't want to subject your partner to the nomadic lifestyle that comes with being a postdoc. The only academic jobs in your local area are not related to your topic.
You really love the topic now, but after you've started working on it, you realize it's not a bed of roses. You generate high-quality results anyway and graduate with a sterling PhD, but afterwards when you're looking for a job, you look for something else.
You really love the topic now, but it after you've started working on it, you realize that academia is not a bed of roses. You find you hate writing funding proposals, most of which are unsuccessful (but very time-consuming); or perhaps you hate the publish-or-perish culture. You decide you'd rather take up a non-academic job.

In most of these cases, "I know what gravitational waves are, how they are generated, how to detect them ..." is nearly irrelevant, but "I know how to program in Python" is a big deal because it's transferable.
In other words, your thesis topic is significantly less important than what transferable skills you learn during your PhD. You're better off prioritizing other things (prestige of university/supervisor, location, proximity to friends/family, etc) than the topic, especially since there's a real chance you'll change your mind on the topic once you learn more about it.


text:
At what point does a field become a field?
Perhaps I can contextualize the question better, but I’m curious if there’s a kind of incubation trajectory by which new academic fields emerge.
In contemporary scholastic publishing, is there some graded sequence of steps, like, first, a paper is published in some existing, established field’s journal; next, if more papers are published citing that paper, a conference may be organized, recognizing the topic in its own right; and then? Do professors decide to found a journal, perhaps? And then, somewhere, someone designs the first textbook, and/or degree, in the topic?
At each of these stages, what kind of academic regulation is there, or structure, to determine if something is robust enough to attain that standing?
Thank you.

Long ago I read an analysis of cross-reference patterns in research papers.  (I think it was by Web of Science.) That concluded that when the number of (independent) authors publishing on a subject exceeds roughly 100, then that subject starts behaving like a separate field.

When there are cows out standing in it?

When every element other than the additive identity has a multiplicative inverse?

@XanderHenderson What's the multiplicative inverse of a cow?

@avid $(cow)^{-1} = w^{-1}o^{-1}c^{-1}$

The typical trajectory of a field is that first people publish their work at the fringes of existing journals, then hold workshops with like-minded people, then perhaps found a journal or two that are dedicated to publishing articles in this area, and finally there are full-fledged conferences.
In my own particle field, Computational Science and Engineering (CS&E), people originally published in journals such as the SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis, originally founded in 1964, and in particular in engineering-oriented journals. Sometime in the 1980 people started to think of CS&E as a separate direction, there were workshops, and journals such as the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (originally founded in 1980) started to gain traction even though they were relatively small until around 2000. The first SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering I went to was in 2003, when it had ~300 people. (I believe the first one in the series was held in 2001.) The last one I went to, in 2023, had about 2000 people.
I think that this kind of trajectory is pretty typical for fields.

A field can obviously be pretty large, or not. It's essentially when a class of people within one field (usually) start working on a topic and it spreads elsewhere. For example, i work in econometrics. One of my main areas of interest is machine learning and synthetic control designs for causal inference. Putting applied pieces aside, the machine learning developments to SC are at this point their own field. You originally had economists like Susan Athey and her husband, Guido Imbens, discuss it as the (now often quoted) "most important method in the last 15 [now 20] years".
Now, people from Columbia, to MIT, to places in China, Stanford, and elsewhere, they're all clamoring to make developments on the method. To be a little less specific, it becomes a proper field, to me, when you could legitimately write a book or 2 on the subject. After articles stop doing a topic justice, after it goes beyond one or three papers, then you can call it a field that people do real work in. But this is just my view, there's no hard and fast standard that I know of.

Here is another criterion.
When a topic stops depending on individual people or tight-knit clusters working on it to make progress, I would call it a field. In other words, if you can take main player/clusters out and there are still people working on it, it becomes a field.
I have seen an exotic research question ramp up into a community research question in the matter of very few years. It's a field now. It's not a huge community, but it does not depend on specific clusters of people anymore to survive.


text:
What is academic protocol for citing a Tweet?
Are there international standards for how a cited source should strive to be persistently discoverable?
A Tweet can be deleted.
Is using WaybackMachine / Web Archive better practice?

Same as citing any other online source?

Ref: Mendeley Web Citation Guide


text:
Is there a decentralized database for collecting primary historical records?
Is there a decentralized storage protocol for housing a database of primary records that would be used in historical research, for example, events to have occurred in a certain year, and primary records we have from the time, like newspaper articles?
By decentralized, I mean that choices governing the properties of the database are not easily affected by individual human choice.
For example, in a company, a CEO may be able to change the system they are running quickly.
In some systems based on voting and consensus, it is possible that the properties of the system are easy to change by the exertion of human will. If someone rallies public support for something, it is possible to accomplish a change that was desired by that group of people.
In a decentralized system, all of the actors or participants have roughly equal participation. Although what kind of participation is open to definition, I would say that a winner-takes-all type system lacks decentralization regarding the effect sizes of individual choices.
In some ways, my idea of decentralization (coming from blockchain) can be named “inflexibility”. Like Bitcoin, I am not sure anyone can successfully stop it or shut it down (but I don’t know). I do not think anyone is really “running” it. It appears to be an emergent phenomenon (even if not invulnerable).
Is there such a database?

Are you talking about digital historical records?

It's unclear to me what type of historical records you're interested in. Are you interested in digitized documents, audio files, and other media formats? Are you purely interested in the records? How would your database be any different from the Internet, a library, or any number of databases a uni subscribes to?


text:
What are the terms imposed when someone subscribes to an academic database?
When an institution subscribes to an academic database, what are the specific terms of the agreement about what they can and cannot do with it? For example, what if they allowed anyone to use the database in the library but without a login? Or what if they provided remote access, even to community members who joined a university library rather than being at the university? Or in the extreme case, what if they made it available online without a login? I assume that’s not allowed, but what document states exactly what stuff like that is and is not allowed? Are these terms implicit as a term of purchase or does the library sign a contract?

There could be terms and restrictions. There is no general answer.

The institution would typically agree to a license with the provider/publisher. The license will include terms and conditions that set some usage restrictions, disclaimers and more. (Compare with the situation when you as a consumer sign up for a service like Netflix.) There is of course no general answer as to what those restrictions are, and the extent to which they are customized or negotiated, but sometimes journals/publishers provide public-facing information portals for librarians. (Often links to information for librarians are somewhat hidden out of sight, for example towards the bottom of the journal's/publisher's website.) For example, APS's Librarian Portal is here, and they provide a link to their standard Institutional Single Site License, which spells out restrictions on authorized users etc.
Below are some excerpts from this license that would seem to rule out a library providing access to the licensed material without any login, and would allow the publisher to cease providing access should the library proceed anyway.

2. Authorized User. An Authorized User is any individual who is an employee, faculty, staff, or student officially affiliated
with the Licensee and persons with legal access to the Licensee's collections and facilities on-site. Authorized Users may
be persons remote from the Licensee’s physical location whose access is administered from the Licensee’s Authorized
Site. This License extends only to the Licensee and such Authorized Users and may not be transferred or extended.
5. Permitted Use. A. The Authorized Users are permitted online access to the subscribed Licensed Materials and may download, save, or
print text, search results, or other information from the subscribed Licensed Materials solely for their private use or
research and may only use this online access in a way that conforms with all applicable laws and regulations.
6. Prohibitions on Certain Use.
A. The Licensee shall not knowingly permit anyone other than Authorized Users to use the Licensed Materials.
D. In the event that abusive usage of the online access threatens the integrity and effectiveness of the Publisher’s online
distribution system, the Publisher has the right to discontinue access immediately and will inform the subscriber of
the abuse within one business day. Online access will be restored as soon as practical after the abuse is corrected.
8. Licensee Warrants.
A. The Licensee shall:
ii. use reasonable efforts to monitor compliance and immediately upon becoming aware of any unauthorized use
or other breach, inform the Publisher and take all reasonable and appropriate steps, both to ensure that such
activity ceases and to prevent any recurrence.

I think in this case the "persons with legal access... on-site" clause is explicitly permitting "walk-in" users/visitors who may not have individual logins etc. This is pretty common I think - I would guess the majority of resources do permit it.


text:
Are you legally allowed to draw ideas from a book without permission?
My plan is to make a YouTube channel with a curriculum based on a pretty well-known textbook.
I want to reformulate and re-present the ideas in my own way. I will not take any direct quotes from the book. I will try to make money off of the videos.
The way the theory of the videos lines up completely with the theory of the book, it is unquestionably derivative of that book. I remember hearing about lawsuits where a musician sued another, even because they thought a chord progression, and maybe melody, sounded too similar to their own.
Is the nature of copyright that you own the ideas in your book, not just the words?
For example, I am pretty sure you cannot sell a book with characters resembling those of Harry Potter, even if fan fiction, a new story. Perhaps that’s trademark infringement?
Assuming I make it publicly known where I drew the information from, can the publisher claim infringement/intellectual property theft for reselling a theory?
In the modern world, what is the precise limit of what part of a book you can no longer own?

This appears to be a legal question to me, where the fact that the endeavor is academic is also of relevance, but perhaps secondary. My suggestion is to ask the question also at law.stackexchange.com (?) and add your country - legal questions depend heavily on the country. There are certainly some rules of thumb that are valid enough in many countries, but especially since you are asking for a precise limit, the country appears to be of relevance.

I wonder, how it is different from citing a research paper in our own work (which is perfectly fine, if done properly)? Sometimes, our research paper has a dedicated section explaining the previous work because our works extends it. We don't claim the work as ours. We fully acknowledge it and our effort is in explanation. Similarly, professors/teachers refer books to students and explain concepts from them (even solve some exercises) in the lecture. Isn't it fine? However, professor never claims the work and his salary is the result of his effort in explanation.

Also, I would suggest another approach that I found in an online udemy course. The course was about discrete mathematics. The instructor designed his curriculum on an 'Open Source' book related to that subject, instead of a popular copyrighted book.

There is the concept of "fair use" which is often quite difficult to define and produces a law suit now and then. There is also the notion that getting legal advice from the internet is, um, well, troublesome.

Please post to law stackexchange. This is an interesting legal question and you will get much better answers there!

While the answer of gnasher729 has most of the main ideas, note that one of the things that copyright law generally protects is the ability to make "derived works". These rights are reserved to the copyright holder. (Caveat: copyright law varies.)
So, while the ideas are free to use and you can't use the specific expression, you also need to avoid making a derived work without permission. The way you describe your work is probably not allowed, though it is up to the copyright holder to complain.
One important consideration in copyright law is whether some use reduces the economic value of the original. If your videos make the book unnecessary then it is almost certainly infringing.
But the solution is to ask the copyright holder for permission, fairly describing your work to them. It isn't outside the realm of possibility that they will consider it an enhancement of the value of the book (or neutral) and give you explicit permission. They might even advertise your work for you.

Note that "ideas" per se are not copyrightable, nor owned by anyone. IP law is concerned with creative expression of ideas (or "devices" in the case of patents), not the ideas themselves.
Also note that copyright is intended to eventually expire, though that has been called into doubt recently. But old things can be reused/repurposed. You still need to avoid plagiarism by citing originals, however.
Finally (I hope), if you couldn't draw ideas from the works of others, science and scholarship in generally would halt. We build on the ideas of others.

Thank you! If I prefer autonomy, I will need to adapt my project to be confidently within the bounds of “fair use”. Perhaps this is a precise guide? https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/

Ideas are not protected by copyright whatsoever, it is the expression in fixed form (usually written, sometimes audio or video recording) that is protected. So you can take ideas.
Be very careful not to copy anything from the actual book. That is difficult for some people and may require a lot of discipline. It is hard (for some people) to read something in a book and then to express it in your words without using anything from the book.
Your "Harry Potter" example is based on trademarks. You can't write a book that draws on people recognising the similarity between your book and the "Harry Potter" books. It must stand on its own. So if what you create refers to the other book, you are on dangerous ground.

Actually, it is a bit more complex than this implies.

the organization of the book, for example, may be under copyright though. So if you make videos in the order of the chapters of the book, that can be infringement.

@Esther, yes, a Table of Contents might be considered "creative", hence subject to copyright. Likewise all images in the book.

See wikipedia for more on fan fiction and its legality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction


text:
Does diversity theory ever consider personality or other social groupings?
Has anyone critiqued modern diversity theory in that it arbitrarily selects some categories over others? For example, why shouldn’t a diversity ranking take personality into account?

This site is for questions about the mechanics of academia, from student to retirement. It's not about discussion of topics of research in academia, which would make the site far too broad for common interest.


text:
Are you required to have a Ph.D. to conduct a medical study of some kind?
I am pretty sure anyone can publish an article in a mathematics journal as long as the editors accept it.
In order to publish research or a study that is somehow related to medicine, what do the journal editors require of the persons submitting or credited as authors of the paper?
Or are the requirements more related to there having been regulatory oversight from some accredited body?
But does that mean there is a legal definition of what is and is not “medical research”? For example, if you study the effects of a drug, is it specifically illegal to give someone a substance and then have them fill out a questionnaire? Or is the legality of the study only dependent on the legality of the actions undertaken; for example, is it illegal to perform a surgery on somebody even if they give consent, but you can do research on a legal herbal supplement with no restrictions, for example?
Thanks very much

Laws vary of course. It's a big world.

And the requirements of journals are more about ethics than laws.  A very general rule as far as research ethics is that any study involving human or vertebrate animal subjects needs to be overseen by an IRB or similar body.  That would include in particular any study in which any substance whatever is administered to humans.

One of the things an IRB should evaluate in approving a study is whether the researcher designing and supervising the study is competent to do so.  Their educational credentials could be part of that evaluation, but only a part.

@NateEldredge that is an answer I think

Please ask one question per post.

I suspect this what you are actually looking for: https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/

Simply performing surgery on someone with their consent is not a "study" or "research."  As far as I know, body modification business are legal in jurisdictions I am familiar with, so long as they do not claim to provide medical care.

In the USA the regulations are at https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/regulations/45-cfr-46/index.html

So the question can be broken down into: what is legal on its own that’s related to “medicine” (taking a drug, body modification), and can that legality ever change if the process was considered “research” in some way (even if it was never given a grant by any organization, it could have been independent research).

In other words, I guess I’ll exclude questions of what prestigious medical institutions require ethically and start by focusing just on what’s not forbidden by law.

You do not need a specific degree. However, you do need oversight by an IRB. As noted in the comments, the IRB might not approve the study if the only investigator lacks credentials. Some institutions may require a “medically accountable investigator.”

Also, you cannot do anything you are not otherwise allowed to do just by calling it research. So you cannot perform surgery or give medication without a medical license. You might be able to ask people questions about things that are otherwise taking through an acceptable mechanism- for example an over the counter medication they were going to take anyway. If they already took it, you might get an exemption for market research. I.e “Take this and then answer my questions” is a no, “In the past 2 weeks did you take Tyleaspivil for a headache? yes? Would you answer some questions about your experience?” might get an exemption.

The guidelines for what will get published in a reputable biomedical journal are in part set by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. On human subject protections, it says in part

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000

There will also be local and national laws in your jurisdiction. In the USA, human subjects research is governed by 45 CFR Subtitle A Subchapter A Part 46.

Thanks. So is 45 CFR the law that specifically discusses how the legality of something changes when it is for “medical research” (like asking someone questions about consuming a drug) and defines what “medical research” is? Or could you link to the law specifying this? Thanks very much

@PeterElbert it gives definitions but that probably will not be much help. It would come down to are you practicing medicine without a license. State laws.

You certainly don't need a PhD specifically; most medical researchers would be MDs rather than PhDs.  As to the more general question, academic journals do not impose degree requirements or other accreditation requirements on authors, but depending on what you have in mind as "medical study" you might need some kind of accreditation or position to actually perform the substance of the research.
Institutions that have access to medical data and patients (e.g., hospitals, govt health departments, etc.) usually only give access to these things if they are satisfied that a researcher is appropriately qualified to use them.  Similarly, most legal jurisdictions have laws against "practicing medicine" without a license, and this could potentially impact on giving someone drugs or performing surgery on them.  Again, most of the people who are allowed to do these things are MDs, not PhDs.

In order to publish research or a study that is somehow related to medicine, what do the journal editors require of the persons submitting or credited as authors of the paper?

No reputable journal will reject a manuscript because of the identity of the authors.  In my opinion, that would be unethical discrimination.  Editorial decisions are based on the content of the manuscript.  The only exception might be if the author has a record of retraction for serious misconduct like fraud.

Or are the requirements more related to there having been regulatory oversight from some accredited body?

Regulatory oversight usually applies to institutions, not individuals.  The only exception I have heard of is that individuals may be temporarily banned from getting government funding if they committed grant fraud in the past.

I am not attempting to answer all the questions asked.


text:
Is there any single search portal over all open access scholarly materials?
I would like to find a search engine over open access materials of all kinds, but specifically from scholarly publishers.
So to be clear, it could be a specialised encyclopedia or encyclopedia article, or a journal article, or a book or book chapter, but it would essentially be a search over everything that a serious academic publisher has declared “open access”.
How could I do this?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5145/17254

Seems pretty unlikely, other than Google.

@Buffy, recently, Google Scholar seems to try to figure out if a paper is open access or not, at least in my profile a separate tab has appeared telling visitors how many of my papers are freely accessible. However, the data is so grossly incorrect/incomplete that it cannot be relied upon at the moment. So, at least for academic publications, Google apparently does not help much.

@Snijderfrey, I'm not surprised, but my intent was different. Google itself tries to index everything visible. Other things have a more restricted charter.  There are a lot of academic fields.

Have you talked with your local, friendly, research librarian?

everything that a serious academic publisher has declared “open access”. -> even if there was such a single search portal, this condition would be extremely hard to satisfy: who would decide whether a publisher is serious or not?. Additionally this would exclude all the open-access repositories like arxiv.

Google Scholar will search over all the things mentioned in the question.  @PeterElbert, do you mean that you want to exclude from your search anything that is not open access?  If that is not required, then Google Scholar is the answer.  If that is required, then I think this question is, for all intents and purposes, a duplicate of https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5145/how-to-get-academic-search-engines-only-search-in-open-access-journals.

Maybe. This is more what I had in mind, but it's just for articles: https://doaj.org/. Can Google Scholar do advanced search for encyclopedia articles? It seems like you can just keyword search it and it links to PDFs found but it's possible there is more open access material that it just didn't find the link to. So it's just not very thorough overall

There's this tool called "Reference Universe" which is an attempt at a one-stop shop for searching across all possible reference materials available on a topic, but it's for research libraries to search over their holdings. I'd like Reference Universe across open access materials. It sounds very technologically feasible.

@Erwan I actually don't think so, sorry. I'm pretty sure a line can be drawn between university presses and non-academic publishers. De Gruyter, Oxford, Cambridge, University of Hawaii, etc. It's ok if Arxiv is excluded. It's just academic publishers + open access.

@PeterElbert you're thinking only about the most famous universities which have massive publishing activities. There are thousands of smaller universities which don't have the same volume (and possibly standards). There are also a few big and a lot of small commercial editors, as well as a many independent scientific associations which publish their own proceedings and journals in their specific domain.


text:
Do any fields have a recognized text type analogous to a “plan”?
I’m interested in if there’s any general answer to the question, “what is worthy of publishing in an academic journal”? Because I once read an interesting post by Terence Tao (“Does one need to be a genius to do mathematics”) with an insightful catalogue of ways that a person can contribute to a field. For example, they can prove a theorem, but also organize pre-existing results, communicate findings to a lay audience, or even structure future research in the form of a research program, such as the Minimalist Program or Hilbert’s Program.
In general, it’s often said that to publish academic work, even a dissertation, you have to “create knowledge”, although I wonder if there’s some debate as to what that qualifies as, and still if there are various subtle sub-types.
Anyway, the real question is, if someone has analyzed what qualifies as “academic research worthy of publishing”, I’m really curious if in any field there’s a known article or document type that sometimes recurs which is like an attempted plan for solving a problem.
For example, any political issue such as climate change. I once saw a research review article which only briefly mentioned at the end in a few sentences some suggested topics or questions that the author recommended guide research in the near future. Much research is retrospective, and descriptive, in a way. You are only collecting or documenting, and analyzing, something you did. (This is already getting at the list I would like of various knowledge-creating “actions” which apparently make the grade for publication: description - analysis - explanation - prediction - discovery - etc.) But I’ve never seen an academic journal say, “according to this scrupulous analysis by this expert, here is a highly elaborate analysis of the factors behind why we cannot reduce carbon emissions. These political aspects, these technological aspects, etc are what is currently obstructing this goal.” And then outlining an actual plan, from an expert, about how they think a goal could be achieved.
In other words, I don’t see why a plan would be any less a legitimate academic document type than other common ones.
So which field sometimes publishes texts that are something like “plans”?
Thanks very much

I think plans are published by the US National Academies.

Could you shorten the question?

Clinical trials registration is a type of published plan.  https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/
In areas of physics where the experiments are very expensive, sometimes detailed plans for data collection, with predictions, are published.

Clinical trials (and other clinical research) protocols?
There’s a selection at https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/covidtrials related to COVID. There’s plenty more in the literature.

Policy-making or even policy-influencing is not the job of academia.
The academia strives to answer "what happens if ...?", not "what should we do?" - unless it applies to the process of research itself. We have other structures for that in our society. For "real-life applications", the typical thing to do is to create a committee or a panel of experts to influence policy-making. Individual expert opinions do appear in the media, and they are prominent in the academic format of (invited) reviews/surveys. The latter could get fairly close to what you are proposing, and in your example, it is largely a value judgement and a moral judgement separating the two.


text:
Is it possible to become a good physicist through self study
Is it possible to do self research in physics, in a sense that one can come on par with knowledge/understanding of doctrate and post doctrate students in the subject so that he could be capable of publishing his own findings and theories, while doing a 9 to 6 job? This may sound very weird but when a person, who loves exploring nature through physics, had to take a job due to his family/economic reasons sees his dream breaking apart he can't help but think about giving a last try. As this matter is very important and may influence a life changing decision,only fact based answers may be appropriate. Motivation quotes and examples of ultra rare people who may have managed to accomplice this feat may be misguiding. Take into account that i have a bachelor degree in physics and maths and a very average brain that unreasonably loves physic Thanks

Gaining the "knowledge/understanding of doctrate and post doctrate students" is literally a 9 to 5 job at least and often more. Are you willing to have a second 9 to 5 job next to the one you already have?

Please note that you should try to avoid paying for your own PhD. That said, most PhD positions are paid positions, they just tend to pay less, often much less, than entry level industry positions. So while saving sounds like a good step, saying that you should aim to save enough to support yourself for 5 years without working is a bit extreme. PhD bursaries usually support "student style" living -- so you might want to save to make up the difference and keep your living standard, or even just reduce your outgoings by as much as you can; but probably not to cover everything

In short: no. On average and on median, it is non-sense to study physics as a side-thing.
Said this, if you really have to fullfill your deeper ego in discussing physics at the highest possible level, you need some rigid effort.
You just need to save money to support yourself for living 5 years without working. So you would better spend your current free time using your average knowledge of statistics to get relatively rich at playing poker, to collect a little sum for your own use.
When you collcted this little sum worth 5 years of life without working, you can enroll in a MSc in physics and afterwards try to get a paid PhD position. If you do not manage to get a PhD position, you can always use your own funds and pursue a self-funded PhD.
Please note: it is not possible to get to that point not only in physics, but in many if not all branches of knowledge ...

While a blunt answer to your question is simply no, there are non-traditional models of pursuing a doctoral degree (part time and partially funded) that can be combined with a part-time job or other obligations.
I can't speak for other regions, but in mainland Europe, many Master's degree programs can be studied part-time (and are free or cheap, tuition-wise). If you don't intend to pursue a full-time research career, doing a career-accompanying Masters degree might give you insight into research physics while still having some income.

As someone who studies mathematics as a hobby in their free time and just published their first paper last year I would like to offer my perspective.  I do not know much about physics, but if you are interested in theoretical physics then I would assume the situation is somewhat similar to mathematics.
It is unlikely that you will be able to contribute to physics to the same degree as a practicing physicist.  That being said, I think it is still possible to contribute in a meaningful and fulfilling way.
In mathematics, there are opportunities for contributing to the field outside of publishing a cutting-edge result.  For instance, this could mean publishing an interesting, but relatively minor result, or a new proof of a known result.  In addition, there are a number of journals with problem sections that one can submit their own problems to or solutions to other people's problems.
I do not know if similar opportunities exist in physics but I wanted to point out that, if you love physics there may be ways to contribute in your free time while working your 9 to 6 job.


text:
Is it possible to complete a Phd on your own?
Suppose you can't ask for anyone's help with anything at all in your research, but you'll be able to get any online/offline book/material and funds you want to study.You have been given a topic to research, is it possible to complete your research producing some acknowledgable result?
The gist of the question is "Is Phd something managable by individual efforts?"

The answer to the first paragraph is YES, it is possible.  But that first paragraph is not a Ph.D.

What, exactly, do you mean by "on your own"?

Why would anyone do this?

@Anonymous It is of great importance to know this. Hypothetical situations forms basis for real events...

@AmitRai In general, I think purely hypothetical questions are discouraged, partly because concreteness matters, and partly for focus of the site.  From this help page: You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.

@Kimball It doesn't look all too remote from reality to me. I know of several PhDs where supervisors were not available and/or not helpful for most or even all of the time, and the university did nothing to arrange for any useful replacement. One friend of mine did his PhD basically on his own after his supervisor fell out with the university and disappeared very early on. Another friend of mine is a historian and said that in history there is a  good number of people who try to achieve a PhD with a personal interest project basically without supervision.

See https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/209724/ - PhD degree itself usually implies being a PhD student at some point in time, but there may be exceptions and there are other kind of degrees.

@ChristianHennig I certainly agree some people get PhDs with very little guidance, but the OP commented it is a hypothetical question and it seems a bit unclear to me what the precise situation they have in mind is (have no advisor at all?  ask them for a problem and never interact with them till the defense?)

@Kimball Hypothetical situation for one guy could be totally real event for another. Since i didn't have too much knowledge about process of Phd, i assumed it to be a hypothetical situation, which turns out many people do face. For the context, i am planning to enroll in a Phd at an institute but i have heard some students say that some professors there are mostly busy with other work and neglecting research. Preparing for the worst situation, i had to know little about what could go wrong. That formed the question asked here.

The answer to the title is "yes, but ...." And all the devil is in the details. There's a difference between having a supervisor who is just rather busy and has minimal input (which seems to be what you are thinking), and literally just doing all the work for a PhD completely on your own. And also, one person's "I get not much help from my supervisor" is "my supervisor trusts me to do what I need to do and is there when it's absolutely crucial".

I mean in Germany at least (especially in less funded discipline like the humanities) is is not that uncommon that people do a PhD almost on their own. But at least on paper, they need a supervisor.

Can you tell us more about what it is that you are trying to achieve?

@AmitRai then please explain that in the question. As it stands, it reads like you are wondering if someone can get a degree without having a university involved and the answer, of course, is no.

Someone else has to give the PhD. If you could give it to yourself, it would not be worth much. This is organized such that university award PhDs. So without a university you cannot get a PhD. This typically involves getting an advisor from that university.
This makes sense: the process of doing your dissertation research and writing it down with the help of your advisor is the learning experience. We don't expect a student to know everything before they start and all we need to do is test that student. It would be an extremely inefficient test if it takes 3, 4, or more years. Instead we expect them to need to learn a lot.
So in short, no this cannot be done alone. At the very least you need an advisor.

+1 for mentioning that it has to be officially granted by an entity which is widely recognized. This means that even if you were a supergenius of comic-book mad-scientist-level proportions and knew more than all professors combined, you'd still need an advisor and apply to a program at a university, to make it official.

You can off course apply after you have done all the work, for example in many European universities that are publicly funded there would be no reason to not take such a person in as it would mean a instant payday for the university. You would have to do a bit work but essentially no reason not to award a PhD if it makes sense otherwise

@joojaa in principle true, but in practice not a viable nor desirable strategy for most. The process of getting a PhD is more than just a test, it is supposed to be a learning experience guided by an advisor. Anyhow the fact that such people exist is a dangerous argument: beware of survivorship bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

@joojaa At American universities with which I’m familiar, there’s a minimum residency requirement for anything other than honorary degrees. You can’t just come in for a few days, fork over some money, and walk out with a PhD that reflects academic recognition.

To be clear: at least in modern mathematics, whether or not such a thing is "possible", it's not advisable. It wouldn't set you up for anything good subsequently, unless you are ... ahem ... "the chosen one". Etc. That is, even very clever young people can benefit (woof, to say the least...) from guidance...
Anti-ironically, if you think you cannot benefit from any inputs from more senior mathematicians... ah, well, "there's your problem".

unless you are ... ahem ... "the chosen one" --- Over the years (decades, actually) when I've seen internet posts by people who want to know if it's possible to do X in math (Ph.D., publish in top journals, solve a famous open problem, etc.) without Y (usually some minimal attainment, such as attending college or having to learn calculus or something), my mental response is that if the person were capable then the person would surely already be famous for doing Z (something sufficiently significant for their age/background to be internationally newsworthy).

@DaveLRenfro, ah, yes, indeed. Still, perhaps-crazily, I've come to wonder whether I really should attempt to squelch peoples' misguided-but-happy impulses. If they're not actually directly dangerous to anyone?

@paulgarrett Unfortunately they are often if not dangerous then at least damaging to themselves.

While at the gym just now I thought of an analogy for my previous comment. The desire to do X in math without Y is somewhat like someone who has never played high school or college basketball and wants to know how get chosen in the NBA/WNBA draft -- if someone was that good in basketball then he/she would not need to ask this question, as his/her basketball exploits would already be so well known in basketball circles that those involved in the draft selection would already know about him/her.

@Marianne013, yes, indeed, "damaging to themselves" is a very likely appraisal... but, in my anecdotal observations, it's not been clear whether the parties involved really had much better psychological/life options than to live with a (harmless?) delusion. That is, sadly-often, the main strength was (misguided...) self-confidence, rather than skill or potential or accumulated practice. And some of the "the so-called experts said it couldn't be done".

There is such a thing as a PhD by publication. This means that instead of the traditional model where a PhD candidate works with an advisor from the beginning of their PhD project, the candidate instead applies to a university to be examined on the basis of research they have already published. In principle, the already-published research could have been done "on your own" without an advisor; whether that is "manageable by individual efforts" depends on how literally you take that, since it would at least be very unlikely to complete enough research without ever writing an "Acknowledgements" section.
For example, at the University of Portsmouth you can apply for a PhD by publication by submitting "peer reviewed academic papers, complete books, chapters in anthologies, or equivalent materials accepted for publication, exhibited or performed" plus a 5,000 to 10,000-word commentary tying it all together. You still have to pass a viva voce examination, and I would guess (or hope) that the university assigns a supervisor who can help you with the commentary and to prepare for the viva. Nonetheless, the actual research of the PhD project would have been done "on your own".
One of my former colleagues took this route as an already established academic, earning his PhD on the basis of 10 years of research which he had completed while employed as a senior lecturer. As far as I know, he did not have a PhD supervisor while conducting that research, though I'm sure he benefited from working in an environment where he could learn from other researchers.

There is also such a thing as an honourary PhD, but this isn't a thing you can plan to earn.

Yes, there's a great difference between fields where you need a PhD to even just start doing actual academic work in any serious capacity (or at the very least could have gotten one without difficulty, but there are special circumstances), and fields where people have a stable academic job teaching and doing research (or perhaps are in industry doing work in the area), and then get their PhD based on that work (either as a standalone thesis or by publication).

+1 This is the correct answer

In addition to Maarten's answer: Whether you would be able to produce quality research worthy of PhD entirely on your own depends heavily on your research area. For instance, it is possible in math, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science, philosophy. (By the time I got to graduate school, I was working on research entirely on my own, without any input from my PhD advisor. But I needed help and direction when I was an undergraduate student. I know many professional mathematicians who had similar experience.) It is impossible in lab sciences, for instance, in experimental physics, chemistry, biology, medical sciences.
Edit: One of the most remarkable modern examples of working in isolation that I know is somebody writing a PhD thesis in Complex Analysis while serving 2 years in the military after graduating from college. (The person was lucky to work in the logistics branch of the army.) The person defended his thesis, of course, only after finishing his army service.

My sympathies for not having a PhD advisor who was more expert than you, etc. I realize that it does make "the PhD student" more self-sustaining... but, wow, it's like leaving babies on a cold mountain-side, in my opinion. Sigh.

@paulgarrett: I heard many stories from former grad students in Berkeley, from 1970s and 1980s, where it was very common.

Argh. Sigh. ... I'm still not convinced that the Spartan model is optimal... >:-(

And, yes, I've had a "colleague" here tell me that "it's unethical to help a student with their PhD thesis". At the time, I couldn't process that remark. Really, wouldn't it be unethical to not help your students? ... My candid appraisal is that many of these people simply cannot help their students (due to technical under-powerdness, for example), and want to rationalize that failing to be a virtue. (So that anyone who does not have the same failing is "bad"!?!)

@paulgarrett: I also do not find the "Berkeley model" optimal and I do not treat my own students this way. But the stories were from students of S.S.Chern, W.Thurston and others whom I will not name; they, of course, were totally capable of real advising...

Sigh.......... I think "mathematic/mathematicians" can do better than this kind of thing. Forgiving peoples' gross rudeness, etc, because "they are smart", is a bad trope, I think.

@MoisheKohan But did you not have at least colleagues (other PhD students), seminars, other academics you could bounce ideas off ? Useless supervisors are one thing, producing a PhD in isolation is another.

@Marianne013: I did, but it did not directly affect my work. When I had questions, nobody could answer, I had to figure out answers myself. Problems I solved in my thesis came from reading papers, not from talking to people.

@Marianne013: producing a PhD in isolation is another --- For what it's worth, this mathematician told me a number of years ago that his Ph.D. was done essentially in isolation due to political issues at the time. Also, while the research was completed around 1972, the degree wasn't awarded until 1978.

My brother-in-law did that. He worked for years as an independent engineer/consultant in industry and ultimately created theoretical models, calculations and did measurements which were published, and then combined into a PhD.
This is very dependent on the area your PhD is in. You cannot do experimental high-energy physics on your own but anything industry-related or theoretical is conceivable.
Obviously, someone needs to be your thesis director (the "sponsor" of your PhD at an institution) and the institution must be willing to accept your PhD project and manage its lifecycle (submission, defense, ...)

And in engineering there would be little incentive not to accept the PhD, it brings in money and recognition at very little cost to the university.

Proving you can do research autonomously is only one part of a PhD, i.e. theses are submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a degree.  In addition, many PhD candidates are ipso facto working on their own, rarely seeing their advisor/thesis director.
An academic degree is a form of recognition granted by an institution, and I know of none where you can get a degree without being first registered in a program.  In the case of a PhD, the program requirements, in addition to the thesis, will often include courses and seminars so the candidate is exposed to the current trends and ideas in the field, either as background material or as state-of-the art concepts.  Part of the requirements is that a candidate should have a sufficiently broad knowledge and demonstrated sufficient mastery of their research area so the contents of the thesis are relevant to others and actually advance knowledge in the field.  After all, if you don’t know the field how can you move it forward?
I feel what you are asking is a bit like: can I become a commercial pilot on my own?  You can learn to fly on your own, but no serious airline will certify you as a company pilot unless you learn a lot more than just operate the aircraft.


text:
I am a bit confused about the thesis i am working on. I just started my research and realized that i have no idea how to publish it
I am a student who's highest academic achievement so far is high school degree. Infact I am not even a university student yet (I will be in few months though). I am working on a thesis that is related to biology. I was a biology student in high school. But my college major is mostly going to be computing. So I have some doubts regarding the publishing part. First doubt is, can I actually publish the thesis? And will I be able to publish by myself without a professor since I worked on it all by myself? If not, can I possibly use the help of a professor from computing department?

In the kindest possible way it seems unlikely you will produce a sufficiently novel and advanced thesis solo out of high school to be publishable.

A thesis is normally something that you do in order to earn a certain degree (e.g. a Bachelor's, Master's, or a Ph.D. thesis). What you are describing would probably be called a (working) paper or a manuscript.
Yes, you can submit your paper, once it is finished, to a journal in your area. Whether you are enrolled in a biology programme or a computing programme or in no programme at all has no bearing on this. There is also no formal requirement that you need anyone else (such as a professor) to be a co-author. Indeed, someone who did put in the work to earn this should not be a co-author of your paper.
If you paper is in biology, it seems unlikely that a professor at the computing (computer science?) department would be able to help with the substance of the paper, unless it also touches on their area of expertise. However, you could certainly reach out to a professor you have a good relationship with and ask them questions about how the mechanics of publication works. The disadvantage of asking a computer scientist would be that they are probably not familiar with how publishing works in biology, but they could perhaps give you some general advice. An advantage would be that it is unlikely that they would try to convince you to add them as a co-author.
However, while there is nothing preventing you from trying to publish your work on your own, beware that publishing your first paper without any outside advice is a very difficult task. In particular, you may not be fully aware of what the expectations are as regards the structure a paper, methodology, relation to the existing literature and so on. I would considering reaching out to an expert in the area at your university and discuss the matter with them. The danger that they will steal your work is, I believe, minimal. (At least according to my experience with Western academia, I don't know how things work elsewhere.) On the other hand, they might wish to be a co-author on your paper in exchange for their assistance. Whether or not this would be a good deal for you is difficult to tell, since it is difficult to estimate (if you have no experience with academic publishing) how far you paper in its current form is from being publishable. It may be that your paper is publishable as is, but it may also be that the paper requires substantial further work before it conforms to the expectations that people in your target field have of publishable papers, in which case I would think having someone knowledgeable help you with this would probably be a good deal.
Another possible scenario is that they will tell you that you work is not publishable for some reason, perhaps due to a lack of novelty or due to some methodological flaws. If this happens, do not take this too badly: already doing non-trivial scientific work on your own as a high school graduate is something that most people never take the initiative to do, regardless of whether or not you succeed publishing it in a journal (a non-trivial task even for people several rungs higher than yourself on the educational ladder!).

A "not" is missing in "someone who did put in the work ... should not be a coauthor ...."

There are places to publish articles by and for high school students.  For example, The National High School Journal of Science, https://nhsjs.com/?mainpage.  From their about:

The National High School Journal of Science is a free, online,
student-run and peer-reviewed research journal that is targeted
towards high school students. Striving to bring science to a wider
audience and engaging students in learning beyond the classroom walls,
our journal hopes to expose young people to new ideas and topics. This
high school student-run science journal always welcomes aspiring
scientists to submit articles and to get involved with our publishing
process.

There's also https://jhss.scholasticahq.com/, and many more, I'm sure.  In addition, there are a variety of similar publications targeted for college undergrads, and you might want to reach for those.
You may also consider publishing down, instead of up or even -- i.e., look for publications or magazines that present science to grade schoolers.  This can be pretty rewarding as well.  Or, you can choose both!!  Writing the same article for completely different audiences is a great exercise (just be careful about copyright issues when you do stuff like that).
You can also contribute to relevant Wikipedia entries, and such.
I'd encourage all of the above, but first try reading similar stuff from whatever path you'd like to take, to get a good feel for whether they're at the right level (don't skip this very important step!!).  For example, if your paper is largely a review paper, but the medium you're considering only publishes novel research efforts, you might (or should) reconsider, and move on to the next option.
Any of the above options would be wonderful contributions to your portfolio, and help your application packages to your further academic endeavors you may apply to look more attractive.
I wouldn't necessarily consider submitting to higher-level academic journals without working closely with an advisor.  Try not to take that personally, but at your level, it's unlikely that you'd find the resulting interactions very satisfactory, and you're not necessarily trained to a level where you can fairly judge the quality of your own work at the same standard as experienced practitioners in your field -- and that's the group that would be reviewing and refereeing your efforts.  It's frustrating enough for the experienced.

With all due respect, you are outside your depth in this situation. Your post shows you are not prepared to publish in any field because you do not have adequate mentorship or experience. Frankly, you wouldn't survive peer review. The best advice I can offer is to enroll in a program, join a lab and get experience and guidance in whatever field interests you. Publishing should be your last concern at this point. Once you are in a program and can tap into a network of knowledgeable researchers then and only then should you preoccupy yourself with publishing. Even then your goal should be to be a helpful co-author not first author.

I downvoted. Why not making the dissemination of OP's work in an appropriate venue their early learning opportunity?

@kamilazybal Because publishing a manuscript requires subject matter expertise, experience, mentorship, guidance and collaboration. All of which the OP does not have or is not doing. Genuine researchers with PhDs struggle to get published all of the time so why would I suggest a HS graduate can do it solo? That would only cause them frustration and waste their time. If the OP really hopes to be a successful researcher their time would be better spent applying to college and finding a productive lab to be a part of. Everything else is a distraction.


text:
How do you cite in MLA? (I've forgotten)
Am I supposed to cite with quotations around the author's name, or quotations then the author's name. (I felt like this was obvious but I've seen multiple people site differently, and one of them has to be incorrect, I also have cited MLA in a long time)
Ex. "quote (authors name)" or "quote" (authors name)
And when I say according to this website, does anything change about the citation or am I just supposed to cite the author's name like usual.
Also when I don't say which website I'm citing from, can I just say the author's name or do I have to change my citing to the websites name...
Ex. (authors name) or (websites name)
Also would I cite a statement like recently Katy Perry has been on tour, and during her tour ...

Why don't you Google this? Takes less time than writing this question... https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_formatting_and_style_guide.html

Use Mendeley or Zotero or endnote. If you can learn to use latex.

These are the 3 citations I saw on Purdue. So its "quote" (authors name) and website after you mention author already
Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (263).
Romantic poetry is characterized by the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth 263).
Wordsworth extensively explored the role of emotion in the creative process (263).


text:
Apply for NSF postdoc in mathematics: question about SAM
I am applying for the mathematics NSF postdoc, and when I click check, I get the warning:
Organization-DUNS Conflict - The identified organization cannot be found in the System for Award Management (SAM) as the organization is either: (1) not registered in SAM or (2) the record in FastLane Research Administration (including the DUNS number and address) does not match the data in SAM. Proposers are required to register in SAM prior to proposal submission. Failure to complete the SAM registration process prior to proposal submission may impact the processing of the proposal.
However, it will still let me submit.  Do I need to register in SAM?  I am not really sure how to do that.
Thank you for your help.

Have you contacted the sponsored research office at the organization you have identified? Universities employ people specifically to make sure this kind of thing is in order. If you don't know whom to contact, you could first ask your sponsoring scientist -- h/she will know who the right people to ask are.

It sounds as though the problem is that the university you've identified has not gotten their information into the "System for Award Management" (or some of the SAM data is incorrect) and thus it won't accept your application.  If that's the case, only the sponsored research office at the university can fix it.

It says it will accept the submission though.  It just warns me there might be a delay.  You are supposed to put yourself as the organization.  But for DUNS number you are supposed to enter a generic number with all 1's.  So I am unsure if I should ignore the message or not.  I would think anyone applying for NSF postdocs would be receiving the same message.  I only get the message if I click on ``check.''

"I am unsure..." Please ask the university's sponsored research office, and/or technical staff at the NSF, as they're the only ones who will know for sure. This is a great question, but an internet forum is not the best place to ask it.

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