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As a new PhD supervisor, how should I deal with taking a student to a wrong direction?
I am a postdoc who was supposed to co-supervise a PhD student along with another academic who invited me for that. However, I ended up fully supervising the student after the supervisor became too busy to attend meetings. Eventually, I also ended up defining a problem for the student, which, after 2 months of work, we discovered it is invalid. How should I deal with this situation? I feel that it's my fault and feel bad for the student. The student is in his first year, and this is his first research problem.
Any ideas on this from experienced supervisors over here? Thank you.
Edit: Thank you, everyone, for contributing your answers and comments. For those of you talking about failure/recovery/publishing what's in hand, I would clarify that the discovered issue is in the problem formulation, where the solution would involve inverting a rank-deficient matrix and differentiating a non-differentiable function. Thus, a mathematical solution is not defined. Therefore, the formulation is invalid. This wasn't foreseeable at the beginning, and only when the student made some deviations, it was possible to reach this conclusion. Now, in terms of publication and thesis content, the efforts exerted thus far don't mean anything.

Tell the student it is 'normal' part of research. As for recovery, I would consult an experienced researcher in the area to see whether he/she can 'rescue' your problem or the work done so far.  In my experience, there are usually many branches one can take.  So you may backtrack a bit and follow another line of research.

Failures can be discussed in a thesis just as much as successes - keep that in mind. A failure won't necessarily produce a paper, but still provides "thesis material".

What exactly do you mean by "invalid"?

Regardless of how you deal with it with the student, you definitely need to clarify your formal position with the university. Postdocs aren't usually supposed to be acting as students' primary supervisors. Even if you're satisfied that the arrangement is "legal", you should make sure you're very familiar with your university's formal policies for PhD supervisors, since you are effectively in that role.

Tangential, possibly helpful: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30995/what-to-do-when-you-spend-several-months-working-on-an-idea-that-fails-in-a-mast/31082#31082

@DetlevCM Really? I have always thought we have drawn the line for PhD thesis at "questionable successes" but it seems that you want to move it much further.

@fedja In the UK, a PhD (thesis) is described as a systematic investigation. - Even with the best scientifically justified decisions, you are not guaranteed to be successful in the work.

@DetlevCM Funny. In the US (forget about Russia) including a detailed report on your failures into a PhD thesis would look ultimately strange (of course, you are always welcome to include a section with unsolved problems, conjectures, etc., but that's where it stops). Well, I guess it is country-dependent :-)

2 months is fine unless it prevented them from making a deadline (like choosing an official adviser)... first-years can easily "waste" more time than this (e.g. a semester) while they try to figure out what they want to work on.

Why are people talking about failures? There is no such thing as a failure in terms of an experiment. A test either supports the hypothesis or does not.  The phrasing on this post makes it appear that the topic or research was not in the parameters of the program.  If that’s the case, speak with the Dean and express this situation and see if it is close enough to let the student maintain course, otherwise tell the student what you’ve learned and that you’re lucky you discovered this early (it could have been much longer) and salvage what you can. — There is lead-way, but more details needed

On the grand scheme of things, what you just described is not the worst I've heard of. There are cases where a student spends years of their Ph. D. on a problem with nothing to show for in the end, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes even experienced advisors will, intentionally or unintentionally, end up letting their students work on ideas that are terrible in hindsight. A couple of months wasted in the first year really is not a big deal (and there are certainly worse ways to waste one's time as a grad student). Besides just learning the lesson and moving on, here are a couple perspectives that I find helpful:

Defining the research question is not the sole responsibility of the advisor. It is true that the advisor sometimes has to act as a quality check for the students' work, but the point of PhD is to take responsibility for your own work. So the fact that the student just accepted the research question without asking whether it's valid or not (I assume) is partly the student's fault as well.
Try to salvage the effort spent as much as possible. Oftentimes it is possible to recast what you've done in light of a different research question, and you should consider whether that's possible in your case. I'd go so far as to say that one should always work on things that will be publishable even if your original hypothesis turns out to be wrong.

It might be worth checking the policies of your university in relation to supervision requirements.  At my university a junior academic (e.g., post-doc) cannot be the primary supervisor of a student, and needs to take a secondary position under the primary supervision of a more experienced academic.  From your description it sounds like you have been a victim of the bait-and-switch, being appointed as co-supervisor but then effectively doing the job of a primary supervisor.  If you are uncomfortable with this, you could raise it with your Head of Department, and you'd get a sympathetic hearing.
As to the present issue with your student, two months working on a badly formulated problem does not seem to me to be that bad.  It is possible that the student would have learned something from the experience anyway, and you should try to help the student draw useful lessons from the failed attempt.  If this is impossible, and you think it really was a total waste, you should just apologise to the student for the wild-goose-chase and move on.  Plenty of students have had a lot more time than that wasted by bad supervision, and two months is very little in the scope of their candidature.

It's also the case in the UK (at least in all the universities I've worked in) that a postdoc can't be a supervisor (or co-supervisor).  We can't even be a formal second supervisor. That of course doesn't mean we can't do a lot of looking after , but that the overall direction of the research, and responsibility for the student's progress, are in the hands of the permanent academic.

A few short thoughts:

I eventually also ended up defining a problem for the student,

That's a tad over-controlling. Defining the problem should be at most a joint endeavor of the PhD candidate and the supervisor.

which after 2 months of work, we discovered it is invalid.

Invalid, or too hard to tackle? Or perhaps not as interesting as you had believed?

The student is in his first year, and this is his first research problem.

Yeah, I really dislike this custom of a direct PhD track as the default. It's better IMHO to have a smaller-scope M.Sc. as the default target for graduates interested in trying research, while a direct PhD should be reserved for people who have a good idea of what research they want to do exactly. Your situation is part of the unfortunate but foreseeable consequences. Of course, it's not relevant to suggest to the student to switch...
For more concrete advice I would need more context, such as what has motivated the Ph.D. candidate to go into doing research, what motivated you to choose/define the problem you did, whether this is part of a larger, multi-person single effort or not, etc.

I agree with this answer, it brings to attention hard truth that no one wants to admit. The high percent of students are not ready for direct PhD

@V2Blast: Well, you're right, but I already had enough for an answer.

Before you abandon it, dig deeper into the problem to find the nugget of gold.
"Success is failure turned inside out" [Whittier]
"In response to a question about his missteps, Edison once said, “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”

You should give him a substitute problem.  and you should know better.  Heck, I knew enough as a grad STUDENT to make sure "you can publish even if it doesn't work".  Leave the climbing mount Everest to people with risk tolerance.  This is an area where professors over the years have burned students.
Plus, you should understand apprenticeship and progressive learning.  Don't give too hard problems to start.  Figure out something doable.  There is time to move to harder stuff after mastering the easier.


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Do universities typically provide every PhD student with a computer?
I worked in some universities in Europe and currently work in Australia. All the universities I have been into supply their PhD students with a PC or a laptop. However, I recently started working with a collaborator in Canada and came to know that his university asks the PhD students to bring their own computers/laptops.
Are there many universities that do not allocate computers to PhD students? If so, why? and how does it work?

In my experience students provide their own machines and basic software. Specialized lab stuff is provided.

Of the programs I'm applying to, only 1/8 has made a point of advertising that they give their enrollees a laptop.

@Buffy: Even PhD's? That's interesting...

@MassimoOrtolano: The question states PhD students... I have added this detail again in the body to make you happier :) Thanks for the comment.

@AzorAhai: is the point of advertising laptops is they are better than desktop so students can take them home? Or is it "You don't need to pay for it, we supply your computer" regardless laptop or desktop?

@anucex They don't go into that much detail, but I interpreted it as the latter. Most of my work would be done by remote sessions with a more capable server anyway.

Stack Exchange generally opposes "polling" questions like this.  They tend to result in dozens of answers just saying "mine does" or "mine doesn't" and at the end, you're no closer to knowing if you have a representative sample.  Can you reframe the question in a way that can be answered more objectively?

@NateEldredge: Thanks. I'm not after a definitive answer. But, it's good to hear experience from people. Already amazed by what I got so far. Do you suggest any rewording to improve the legitimacy?

If the dozen or so US PhD programs I viewed in some depth, none explicitly made a point of saying they provided a computer, laptop or otherwise, and all programs were in the computer/tech-focused realm. A few stated they gave a startup research fund (a few thousand USD) the student could opt to spend on a computer if they wanted, and most/all offered a student office space that would be assumed to include some form of computer in it as standard issue. All made mention of well equipped open-access computer labs, and any computationally-focused would have extra resources available as well.

If you change the title, remove "according to your experience" from the last part, and maybe add more specifically a country / region you are interested in, I think the question will become valid and not have a polling character anymore.

Maybe you want to limit your question: country and subject matters very much.

Based on my work experience and from talking to people, I support Bryan's answer. Universities in Europe (not including the UK) virtually universally provide personal IT equipment (typically at least a laptop and a desktop display, plus some peripherals) to every student, while universities outside of Europe, at least often, do not. I do not really know about the UK, but my suspicion is that they may not.
To add to Bryan's answer, I will speculate a bit on the why part of your question.
I think there are is one fundamental underlying reason.
PhD students in Europe are salaried employees of the university first and foremost. This is well documented in many questions here, for example this answer. Every reputable company will provide their employees work equipment rather than expecting employees to bring their own, so it is not surprising that universities do the same for their research assistants / PhD students. Contrary, master's students (who are usually not employees in Europe) basically never get a laptop to work on their master's theses, and are instead asked to use their private equipment or the public computer rooms of the university.
Along with this long-standing tradition to see PhD students as employees also comes a different mindset. Universities in Europe typically assume that all resources required to conduct the PhD project should be provided by the university. After all, we don't expect students to pay for trips to conferences, open access charges, or time on expensive experimental hardware out of their own pocket, so why would we assume that they pay for their basic work equipment?
Finally, it's also a question of basic economy. In Sweden where I currently teach, a PhD student costs me more than 350k USD over 5 years (the normal PhD duration in my department) in salary, social security, benefits, and overheads. Spending another 3k to provide the student with good hardware to work with really does not make a whole lot of difference in the overall project budget, while contributing quite positively to the overall PhD experience and likelihood of success for the project (or at least we think it does).

Although your question references Europe, Australia, and Canada, I will answer from a U.S. perspective.
In the U.S., universities providing students with laptop computers, particularly for their sole use is unusual. Some may do it, but those would be special cases.
For research that depends on computer resources beyond basic word processing/spreadsheet/statistics programs, especially in the sciences and engineering, individual labs typically have their own computing resources for student use, and there may also be university-wide computing resources (clusters, supercomputers, etc). In computation intensive labs, there may be a computer (probably a desktop) available for every person, in others they may be shared resources, but it would be unusual to expect a student to bring their own hardware.
In areas with less research funding, like the social sciences or humanities, departments may have neither office space nor computers for students.
Even when equipment is provided, however, many graduate students (and undergraduates) in the U.S. do have their own computers, whether desktops or laptops, and some may do the bulk of their research work on those resources even if others are available.

My experience in computer science and engineering is the opposite. This kind of work benefits from having a good computer, more than a typical grad student can afford. Moreover, having a university-owned laptop typically gives you access to university site-licensed software that can't be installed on personal computers. So either you're stuck to a desktop which isn't as good for being productive, or you're paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for software packages, or you're buying the student a laptop.

What kind of work requires a good computer? (Computers are now exceptionally fast. An old computer can surely do everything a grad student needs, excluding some advanced computations, but they can't be done on new computers either, dedicated systems are needed or the cloud is used.)

@user2768 In computational biology we spend most of our time doing work that requires the sort of hardware you'd find on any good quality workstation, but is not generally found on a standard desktop or laptop, the most obvious thing being at least 32GB of RAM. Other things our students greatly benefit from is access to 2 screens of at least 24" and better than usual network interfaces.

@IanSudbery Shouldn't that sort of work be run on dedicated hardware? Dell don't seem to even offer any machines with 32GB RAM, except in their servers which I'd classify as dedicated hardware. (A dual screen setup is inexpensive and old hardware can be used, perhaps with the exception of intensive graphical work. I don't understand the better than usual network interface, since the network is likely to be the bottleneck, not the interface.)

Depends what you mean by "that sort of work". Uur high throughput processing work is done on an HPC cluster, but workstations are needed for interactive data exploration, interpretation and visualization. Plus its often better to get something done on your workstation than wait in the queue for a slot on the HPC if the job is small. Such workstations are available from dell (e.g. the precision range), but even something like an Optiplex 3060 will take 32GB.  "Inexpensive" is a matter of opinion. A £1500 rig is a lot of money for someone taking home £1000 a month.

@user2768 There is a lot of things that could be done between "requires a dedicated system or the cloud" and "can be done on any PC anywhere" ....

Interesting stuff! @AzorAhai if there's a gap, then one side is seemingly not achieving its job. Perhaps we'll see advancements? Or perhaps there should be a gap.

@user The gap is filled by good computers. You're the one that claimed they're unnecessary

@AzorAhai I didn't claim they're unnecessary, I claimed there's a niche

@user I no longer follow your point

@AzorAhai No one seems to be filling the need for this particular type of computing resource. Power can be pushed to the desktop, but that wastes resources. The trend has been to push this kind of work to dedicated systems, servers, clouds, etc., but if that isn't working, then there's a niche.

@user I disagree, but really any further discussion about this point will just be slinging anecdotes.

@user2768 I have to agree with AzorAhai here, what you are describing as a niche no one is filling is exactly the type of machine I have always used for research work.

@BryanKrause If you're using a high-spec machine as a desktop, then it is surely being underutilised, since you aren't using it 24/7 (even if you do some times). If you pushed your machine into a shared position (and used a regular desktop), perhaps even upgrading it, then utilisation of that resource would be increased. Of course, your machine may also be used in this way, e.g., your infrastructure may load share across all desktops (I'd consider that filling the niche, at least in part).

@user2768 My job isn't to optimize computing utilization, my job is to produce research. I have access to high throughput resources but for anything shorter to execute than some threshold, it's more efficient to spend more time executing and less time programming a distributed script. A lot of runs take less than 1-10 minutes, for those it's worth having a fast machine so I can get results and get back to work rather than having to wait 2-20 mins instead. And RAM means writing lazy scripts that I don't have to spend a bunch of time swapping to disk and managing memory.

@BryanKrause I think you've just justified my claim that there's a niche and you've explained how to fill it (reduce those 2-20 mins tasks to under 10 minutes tasks). I certainly agree that optimizing resources isn't your job, it is your administrations' (and the market's)

@user2768 No, it's the administration's job, if they are doing it correctly, to stay out of the way of what makes their researchers productive. Your claim that an old computer can do anything a grad student needs is completely unsupported and what you are calling a niche is relevant to everyone in my very broad research area.

@BryanKrause Clearly the administration should not stay out of the way of what makes their researchers productive (we need offices, equipment, maintenance, coffee, ...). I didn't claim an old computer can do anything a grad student needs (I made that statement having mentioned dedicated hardware) and I suggested a niche exists (which you've seemingly given credit too). Anyhow, this is just going round in circles and OT, so I'm out.

I am a PhD student at a Canadian university and I had several options to get computing equipment I need for my research. In my case, my supervisor provided the
workstation for me, and, upon my request, my department (Computer Science) provided the laptop. I requested it because I need a laptop when I'm teaching and also when I'm traveling for research. As a side note, many graduate students at my university are not aware that they can get the equipment from the department. My research is computationally intense and it makes sense for everyone involved (aka me, my supervisor and my department) to provide me with good equipment so I can invest more time into research. However, I don't think this is necessarily a standard practice as it might depend on things such as the supervisor's attitude toward grad students (I know of cases where supervisors could not or simply did not want to this), or their/department's funding situation.

This is a function of the country, university and the lab you work in. Here in Israel- atleast in my university, all graduate students (Masters & PhD) usually get provisioned with a decent desktop- atleast in the hard sciences. Laptops are usually not given out although if your work requires remote computing power, a laptop can be purchased as well.
Also, if the work requires intense computing (CFD simulations for example), workstation computers are purchased (provided the professor has money in his grant for that).
A lot depends on your advisor as well: some advisors don't have ample funding or have short-term post-doc students for whom they don't wish to purchase computers. I know one whose advisor asked him to work out of his own laptop.
As for other countries, in the US, it varies from lab to lab. Laptops are almost never given out. Some students have their own desktops while others share a common desktop, but in most cases, when high-intensity computing is required, a beefy workstation is usually provided.
In any case, if you are part of a well-funded lab, expect to be provisioned with a decent desktop. Most cost $1.5-2K which is paltry compared to most decent research grants and the increase in student productivity more than justifies the price.

Are there many universities that do not allocate computers to PhD
  students? If so, why? and how does it work?

Usually this depends more on the PhD funding scheme rather than the university. There is a wide variety of PhD funding types with different modalities regarding the legal framework (e.g. employee contract or grant), the amount, the duration, rights and duties, etc. Nowadays most PhD schemes would cover costs for hardware and traveling to conferences (another important cost btw), but this is something to check with the institution providing the funding.
Some universities have a policy in place to cover these costs in case the PhD funding doesn't, but it's rarely automatic: students have to apply for it and their request might be rejected.
Why? Well it's quite simply a matter of where the money comes from. If neither the university nor the PhD scheme have a budget for it, then people have to use their own device or collect an old one from a sympathetic colleague.

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Prof at small university or postdoc at big university
Recently I've been faced with the dilemma of being an assistant professor in a small rural University near my home city or being a postdoc at the top University in my field in the world.....
What are the advantages or disadvantages of either choice?

That is too personal for a proper answer here. It depends entirely on your long term goals. What is better is what is better for yourself.

What do you mean ..Also, I like some personal perspectives:)

My choice would probably be entirely invalid for you. Why would you even want to consider it. The same is true for anyone else here. We all have goals, as you do. Consider what you want then chase it.

Which is better, hamburgers or grilled chicken? Answer this, and you will know the answer.

There is a question that can be answered here without appealing to individual factors - just reword the question as "what are the advantages and disadvantages of ...". Voting to reopen.

I agree with @Allure.

Easy: Big fish small pond or Small fish big pond, up to you and no-one else...

@Vladhagen chicken burger

I really liked your answer @Solar Mike

As others remarked, this is highly individual. To make the answer easier, i'm going to assume that you don't have a strong personal preference and there are no factors that would 'make the decision for you', such as your partner working near one of those places.
Being a prof at a local university would likely mean a safe, stable position, so that you can focus on living your life. It might also be fun, if you can find motivated students or the curriculum offers something unique. On the downside, funding options might be very limited in such universities. You could end up in the vicious cycle where grant applications fail because you don't have enough research output, but you don't have research output because you have no money to fund a proper group. This of course depends if the position is a teaching or a research prof.
Smaller universities also sometimes attract people who, pardon my French, 'didn't make it'. If you're unlucky, being surrounded by such individuals can bring you down with them. You can imagine where that would go.
To be honest, i am facing a similar decision now, and am opting for the postdoc option. The reason is simple: freedom. Especially in a good university, you'll meet plenty of people that can steer you to a more advantageous situation, and the extra experience will only help. It also gives you the time to build a wider portfolio, and hence apply for better prof jobs. You will likely be less pressured to look for funding and have less administrative work, giving you the time to focus on your ideas, supervise students, build your own course and so on.
Two-three years from now, when you'll be finishing the postdoc, the local uni will perhaps still be available as an option. If you go for the prof position, switching jobs will be much more difficult. You do the math.

I won't contradict you, but I'll also note that small universities also attract people who really want to teach and are really, really, good at it. I've seen both extremes, but in the main, the small college faculty that I interacted with in CS were excellent.

Without a doubt. Didn't try to create a false dichotomy, just subjectively talking about general likelihoods.

You might also consider that trends in higher education do not look good for smaller colleges and it is likely that many such institution will close or merge with other institutions in the coming decades.

No problem - this are tough decisions, hope it works out for you!

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What is the career roadmap for a physicist?
How does one find money for living expenses during studies?

Country? At what point are you in your studies?

Nowadays, there's no guide for academia, other than being born in the right family which prepares you in advance for the curriculum to follow. In recent times I noticed that it is common for accomplished physicists or mathematicians to have completed several bachelors and masters in a single year. It is obvious they knew the material beforehand, as it is impossible time-wise to attend all the classes, let alone learn everything in so short a time, even with hard work+smarts. I would say that those who eventually become physicists usually do so early rather than late.(at 26-30 rather than 35+).

@mkennedy just going to join a UG phy. program , India

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/56449/what-are-paths-that-physics-majors-phds-can-follow

I was trained as a physicist, and slightly changed direction towards theoretical physical chemistry during my PhD.
Money depends on where you are in the world. Some places have scholarships or state funded loans. In addition to that, I have taught physics and math at almost all imaginable levels, everything from high schoolers cramming for exams, to TA'ing at my university. Money becomes a bit easier when you get to the PhD, as most places will give you a salary or a grant you can live off of.
I married at 22 and had my first kid at 24. Way before any of my classmates and later colleagues. At the time people asked how I would manage my career having kids so early. I thought it was nice to be able to have the flexibility of a student when she was a baby. Now the same people are struggling with post docs and a lot of travel, with infants at home.
I got my Ma at 27 and PhD at 31, making me slightly older than average. This does not bother me too much. I have seen people graduate with PhDs being 10 years older than me and do fine. Although they have to face some negative bias going through the hiring process for junior positions.
I still learn new things all the time, and even though I have the relevant degrees, I don't consider my training as a physicist done. It probably never will be.
What to take from all this?
There is no perfect time to graduate. If you want to study, study, no matter your age.
There is no perfect time to marry or have children. But wait for too long, and it might be biologically challenging.


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What programming language should a physics major know?
Know how of what programming language will come in handy during a physics major's research ?

Some physicists I know make a lot of use of Scilab.

To make this on topic, change "academics" to "research" and "major" to "research student"

I think everyone should know python,  but that doesn't really answer your question. What do you do in physics?

Would highschool level python do any good ? @Fábio Dias

@theenigma017 any good physics undergraduate degree will teach you the Python you need to know.

To make this question on-topic, ask which programming languages are most frequently used in physics research, and specifically if there exist any polls or surveys on the topic.

These on topic off topic claims ruin user experience at stack exchange , This wasnt' some innapropriate/irrelevent question you know , not far off either and  you guys are way too strict , stack exchange is turning into a war for reputation and authority ! @henning

Ability to write computer programs is very important for a physicist because it helps you be more productive.  However, knowledge of a particular language is not very useful.  The reason is that different situations call for different languages.  Usually, the most important thing about the situation is the preferences of the people you are working with.
What you need to know are

Basic computer science concepts, such as data structures and
algorithms
How to write maintainable code
How to read documentation, which is extremely important, since you will constantly be learning to deal with specialized interfaces.

Learning any major multi-paradigm programming language will achieve this goal.  For example, C++, Java, R, Python, Perl, Mathematica, or Matlab.  Just expect to switch later.  Keep in mind languages are interoperable these days.
My final advice would be:

Avoid learning the way people did it decades ago, as a lot has changed.
Your fellow physicists may be good at physics, but they are often bad programmers.  Try to be at least mediocre.
If you are an academic you will mostly write LaTeX, which will be easy once you know how to program.

To what extent must C++ be known to be of use in physics ?

@theenigma017 Enough to be able to read the documentation on a C++ library, so you can use the library with the language of your choice.  Definitely enough to understand the data structures.  It may vary by situation.

Don't forget Fortran!

@astronat I did not forget; FORTRAN, while widely used, is about 30 years older and not so suitable for pedagogy.  Yes, I am aware it has been updated.

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Should I separate research into professional and "citizen science" or amateur?
This question was prompted by the sign-up of researchgate, which has three sections for new users; Academia, Corporate/Government/NGO, and Citizen Science.
If I am being paid to do research, regardless of my skill level, then I feel this makes me a "professional" in my field. After all, it's my primary source of income and my "profession". I would count myself as an "amateur mathematician", however the term "amateur" implies I'm not being paid for my work. This work is my livelihood, even my skills are far below that of a genuine mathematician.
However I am also investigating a wider range of topics than my training, and it involves fields where I am unable to make any contributions however I am studying those fields and even writing small literature reviews for in-house/corporate use.
While I feel it is fair to claim I am a "blockchain researcher", when I am investigating fields for my company which may have applications but I am currently unqualified in, should I count this investigation as a part of my profession or closer to recreational activity?
While I am being paid for this rather than it being purely recreational, it is still a field which I am not at the frontier of nor deeply knowledgeable of.

Your broader question seems to be whether you are "truly" a professional researcher given that you are paid to do research but consider your research skills to be far below some of your peers. I suspect this is entirely opinion-based: there is no hard-and-fast definition for the term "professional researcher."
The specific question seems to be whether you should identify yourself as academia, corporate/government/NGO, or citizen science. Given that you are requesting access to this website as part of your official corporate portfolio, I would say that corporate/government/NGO seems like the best choice.

I am definitely in a bit of an odd position. In my given industry (blockchain) those who can make a contribution come from a wide range of skills and an even wider range of skill levels. Many of the innovations happens outside of academia and are applied straight away... though aside from twitter and github there aren't really any places for "formal-seeming" content to be reviewed or disputed.

As I come from a math/physics background but left for industry before getting a PhD, I do also wonder about who the math community considers to be a "mathematician".
As far as I know a software engineer is designated to be junior, middle or senior. This might be mostly related to time in the workforce rather than competancy, but I have no qualm to call myself an aspiring C-rate mathematician on the journey to become B-rate.

Perhaps edit your question to mention you don't have a PhD.


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Will submitting to viXra before being accepted by arXiv cause me to be blacklisted by arXiv?
I'm in a position where I will have fairly inconsequential work to publish soon. I'm working in the blockchain space, where it is common for whitepapers to be posted on individual websites or github.
I'm personally very bothered by arXiv's practices of blacklisting people, and the field I'm involved in claims to be all about openness and transparency.
I'm not bothered by my work being dismissed because it was uploaded onto viXra, but I am bothered by the possibility of arXiv banning me from future contributions.
I will be able to have review/support from those who have published in reputable math journals and are affiliated with universities. However this will occur later than is practical, since I am involved in the launching of a product based off my work.
I am also planning on putting up my low-quality or prototypical on viXra in the future, because I would like my arXiv to be higher quality.
ViXra doesn't track citations easily, and I do not feel it is unethical to submit work to both platforms.

arXiv only blacklists people because they’re a small team trying to stay afloat in an endless ocean of crackpot submissions. In other words, they do it because they don’t have time — and they certainly don’t have enough time to track everything in viXra.

Many people you see on viXra will be blacklisted on arXiv, but consider that the causation may go the opposite way you think.

@knzhou I agree with you there. I was under the impression that whatever automation they have is what causes people to be repeated flagged and wrongly blacklisted; dodgy automation used because it's the best they've got and they need to use it to reach the low cost of $8 per paper.

@knzhou however I am still concerned that if humans see my work and see where it was originally (pre)published, then they might use as the "viXra for crackpots" heuristic. I'd doubt their automated system would check viXra.

Blacklisting is extremely rare in the computer science branch of arXiv.  I don't want to say impossible, but despite ten years of experience as an arXiv moderator, I'm not aware of a single example.

There is no reason to use viXra.

No.  As a general rule, arXiv moderators neither know nor care what's posted on viXra; it's just not important enough to spend time on.
(I was an arXiv moderator for over a decade.)

I just happened to come across this page (https://physicsworld.com/a/what-is-arxiv-backwards/) where Hamish claims that a certain researcher might be on ArXiv's blacklist. So perhaps it's not the usual moderators who know about it. It may be some super-moderator who does it. Or maybe it's just a false assumption of people. But seriously, ArXiv has no need to reject papers. It's a pre-print repository. People deposit their papers with the faith that they'd get a timestamp. Not honoring that, goes against the whole principle of a pre-print repository.

@Julia I think you're reversing cause and effect.  Authors who are blacklisted on arXiv are more likely to post to viXra because they're blacklisted on arXiv.  They're not blacklisted on arXiv because they post on viXra.

ArXiv has no need to reject papers — Some categories get a lot of garbage.  For good or ill, researchers use arXiv to keep up with the state of the art in their area.  Accepting all that garbage would make arXiv much less useful for that purpose.  Most rejected submissions in CS either don't match the subject area at all (for example, papers about politics or theology or algebraic K-theory), or don't even look like research articles (for example: no abstract, no references, no punctuation, LOTS of CapITaL LeTTerS!!!).

Garbage papers get rejected even in ViXra. The point is about the restrictions of needing endorsement etc. On the plus side, ArXiv's restrictions at least distributes the load to other pre-prints like TechRxiv, ViXra and EngRxiv. Also remember that frivolous papers are the result of the exploitative "publish or perish". Imagine what would happen if researchers went on strike, refusing to submit to "publish or perish", low salaries and having their reputations dragged through the mud for tiny errors, while corrupt politicians, fake godmen, astrologers, faith healers etc. make tons of money.

Also remember that frivolous papers are the result of the exploitative "publish or perish" — Really?  Are there universities where frivolous papers actually carry (positive) weight in hiring and tenure decisions?? — having their reputations dragged through the mud for tiny errors — You and I clearly live in very different worlds.


text:
Writing dual degrees (and GPAs) on resume for grad schools
I'm an undergraduate student in the U.S. writing my resume for grad school applications. I'm pursuing double degrees (will have two diplomas) in physics and mathematics (both in Bachelor of Science), with a minor in philosophy. I'm really confused about how I can show the education on my resume? Should I list my GPA for each major in the degrees, or just show the overall cumulative GPA? Here's what I'm planning to do:

[University Name],[College of Natural Science][Education date]
B.S. in Physics [Physics GPA] + B.S. in Mathematics [Math GPA][University location]
Minor in Philosophy
Overall GPA:[overall GPA][Honors:...]

Does that look professional? (Philosophy is not in the college of natural science) Any suggestions about how I can improve this section? I don't know if it's okay to list 3 GPAs at the same time. Thanks for the help :)

If you truly have double degrees, then probably the minor is attached to one of the degrees?

Of course academia varies, but at least at my alma mater, two BSes are double majors, not double degrees.

@Azor Ahai -him- Thanks for the comment! I have double degrees, so I'm kinda confused how can I distinguish double degrees and double majors on resume:)

Does your school give you a GPA for each degree and an overall GPA?

@Azor Ahai -him- The school gives me an overall GPA with all courses I've taken. I could include my major GPAs in math and physics, but I don't feel like it is the GPA for each degree

I wouldn't calculate extra GPAs unless there's something totally unrelated dragging down your overall GPA

@Azor Ahai -him- Thank you!

My suggestion is that if the university awards two separate degrees (something like two diplomas), then list them separately. Otherwise just say you have a double major. But make sure you are correct in your interpretation.
If your university gives you a separate GPA for each degree, then you can list them as stated on transcripts, but otherwise, avoid interpretations on your own and list a single GPA if that is what they do.
The places you apply to (and committee members individually) have access to your transcript and can make their own interpretations. For a lot of purposes this is better in any case, since grades in some courses are more important than in others, especially in US where there are lots of courses outside the major(s) than are included.
In general, don't try to make interpretations of official documents lest someone disagrees with how you state it. Let the official record stand for itself.
If the minor in Philosophy is associated with only one of the degrees, make that association clear, otherwise just do what the university does. And note that a philosophy minor (I have one also) is not that important for doctoral study in either math or physics unless you intend to specialize in the philosophy of one of those fields. (Good for writing answers here, I've found.)

Thanks so much, that really helps! However, I wonder how can I include my minor on the resume? (It's not associated with either degree) Also, I only have access to my overall GPA, maybe I could add that to the end of my education section?

You don't really need the GPA at all if transcripts are sent. Just list the minor separately as in your post. If you list GPA at all, just say Overall GPA x.y, or whatever. But assure that it matches the transcript at the time you send it. (Sometimes the GPA doesn't include the last semester(s) depending on when application is made. The records office can supply you with an official number if necessary. Maybe even "Overall GPA (7 semesters) ..." to be as clear as possible. But the transcript will speak for itself.

I think you are overthinking this. There is no one 'professional' style that is the right way. The way you suggest it seems fine, but you can take a look at other resumes as well, a lot of researchers have them on their personal web page.
I'd suggest something like this:

Bachelor of Physics - University of SomewhereLandCity - 1/1/2021
GPA: X.Y
Bachelor of Mathematics - University of SomewhereLandCity - 1/1/2021
GPA X.Y2
Double bachelor with minor in Philosophy.

I wouldn't list the combined GPA, you have separate GPA's for both degrees. An average of those wouldn't seem very beneficial to me.

Actually, in the US, one has only a single GPA for all courses taken, in majors and otherwise. The transcript of courses will show individual grades and one can informally extract a "GPA" for major courses only. But even that is a bit nebulous since, to get a BS/BA in math you are probably required to take some science courses - usually physics. So some courses are counted toward both majors. At my undergrad university, even philosophy was required of a math major. And, you don't get two degrees. You get one degree with a dual major. I'd be interested to learn of any exceptions in US.

Ah I didn't know. In Europe you actually get two degrees as far as I know. I think I missed the part in the question where OP mentioned the US.

Normally the institution you apply to will extract all such needed information from the transcript anyway, so it is actually a bit moot.

@Buffy My alma mater awards double majors and double degrees, although the latter is pretty rare. At that school at least, you could not double major in degrees that were different (e.g. two BSes become a double major, but a BS and a BEng would be a double degree).

I don't know if the GPAs are separate though.

@AzorAhai-him-, that might be generally possible if the degrees were from different divisions of the university, sometimes called schools. Maybe you should write an answer making that sort of distinction clear. But I'd guess it is moot since transcripts will be required.

@Buffy OP confirmed they are double degrees in the comments, so I won't question that premise, since I don't know where they go to school. And I wouldn't say it's entirely moot, for example, in my fields it's common to send potential supervisors CVs before applying (idk about math).

Thank you, that helps!


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How are UK undergraduate Master's degrees (MMath/MPhys/MEng) perceived in the US for graduate school admissions?
In the UK, it is possible to do either a 3 years long BSc degree or a 4 years long MMath/MPhys/MEng degree. Both types of degrees are considered to be undergraduate degrees and it is likely that the thesis requirement for MMath/MPhys/MEng is closer to the requirements for a BS thesis (than MS thesis) in the US.
The standard credit requirement for the completion of the BSc is 360 CATS (this should be roughly equivalent to 90 US credit hours according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_Accumulation_and_Transfer_Scheme). The MMath/MPhys/MEng degrees have a 480 CATS requirement that should be approximately equivalent to 120 US credit hours. It seems like in the US the requirement for the completion of a Bachelor's degree is 120+ credit hours.
I know that there are differences in terms of how the graduate programs in the US are structured depending on whether one enters with a Bachelor's degree or a Master's degree (for example, the comprehensive examinations need to be passed earlier by those entering with a Master's degree and the credit requirement is different). My primary question is whether the UK undergraduate MMath/MPhys/MEng degrees would be considered equivalent to the US BS degree or MS degree during graduate school admission.

Came here to say the same thing as @DanielHatton. I wrote a dissertation in both the third and fourth year of my MPhys.

@DanielHatton I edited the question.


text:
Publishing someone else's thesis work without their consent
Finished my MRes recently. My supervisor has told me that their ex-PhD student (graduated a year and a half ago) had some results in their thesis that they hadn't published. He asked me to complete some additional lab work and tweak a draft paper the student had put together, then I could be looking at getting a lead author position.
It sounded great initially, but I was a bit curious about the situation with the old PhD student and asked one of the post-docs (who is connected to this work). They explained the ex-PhD student was working on the paper after they graduated, but after some personal situation (unsure what but sounded serious) they basically vanished and were uncontactable.
I was a bit uneasy about this. I asked my supervisor and whilst they said the PhD didn't confirm they were happy to have someone else write their paper they didn't respond to emails saying that the supervisor was planning this. So from my supervisor's perspective this is all above board.
For extra info I looked up the university's policy and it says that the copyright for the thesis, and all of the data described, is owned by the PhD student.
Could writing this paper potentially get me in major trouble? Wanting a career in research and a paper would be good but this feels like this could easily go bad given the universities position on IP ownership and it using the work carried out by the PhD student.

Not responding to an email should never be construed as positive consent.

So can I check, what if the student is completely not responding? Does the data just not get to be published because nobody can confirm they are happy for it to be published?

Sadly yes, it might mean that. If you publish it without them it is plagiarism and a reputable publisher won't touch it without positive consent from all authors. If they are actively working on it, however, and publish it themself, then you can publish an extension as usual.

Sorry never published before so inexperienced on this front. Do journals usually ask for all authors to confirm that they agreed with the submission? Could the fact that the student wrote a draft for the paper and was planning to submit previously be used as consent?

Yes, active, positive consent is required. It is not a situation in which you can make assumptions of any kind. Even if an author dies before publishing, the positive consent of their estate/heirs will be needed.

Assuming your university does not prohibit this (seems unlikely; you could ask), you should try to locate the student.  It's hard to really dissapear today.  There are all sorts of databases available to find people, including their address. If you need to, go visit them in person. It might turn out to be interesting.

Doesn't anybody else find the supervisor a bit dodgy? Seems sneaky to put a student in this position.

Let summarize formally. Publishing requires the positive active consent of all authors. Publishing something done by another without having them as author is plagiarism. So you are a bit stuck. But you have some options - I hope they don't put you at odds with your advisor, but some things are more important.
First, you can contact the original student/author and ask them what they intend to do and whether they would be open to having a co-author. They might not reply, in which case you are stuck. They might reply that they are completing it themself, and a non reply might actually imply something like this.
If they do publish it alone then you are free to publish extensions, citing their work as usual. You could even offer to help them get it done without co-authorship, but just an acknowledgement to hurry it along and open the work for extension.
No reputable publisher will publish under conditions lacking consent. Self publishing without consent (arXiv...) would put you in an untenable position, just as it would put a formal publisher.

@DanielHatton, It is hard to give advice with incomplete information. But  it is difficult to resist an unethical person (we don't know that they are) who has power/authority over you. In that case, speaking privately with a department head or dean might be good (or might be very bad).

I think in this case, the easiest solution would be to publish your paper with a reference to that other student's thesis (or unpublished work).

I think the problem I'm having with it is the paper we're putting together would contain data and figures produced by the PhD student. Would that not be us taking and using their IP without their consent?

While it is possible to extend unpublished work, it seems very disrespectful to do it under these conditions. Yes, you can cite the thesis. But you can't "responsibly" tweak the draft of another. They have a valid claim of authorship.

@Drafahr It would if you used the exact same data and figures. To do it properly,  you'd need to reproduce all the data yourself, using the methodology developed in \cite[the other student's work]

@Buffy -- agree!

So to make this above the board and ethical we'd need to repeat all the experiments and generate our own data? Thanks, just wanting to make sure I don't end up doing anything that would cause an issue.

@Drafahr Strictly speaking, yes: if you can't get consent to publish results of other person's labor, you have to reproduce these results yourself, however tedious/annoying that may be.
There is another important moment: suppose these results are wrong, and that other person knew that they were wrong, and that's why they never published them. Then you'd be claiming on behalf of that person that their results were correct -- nothing good can come out of this

This could be research misconduct to include that person I think. Typically all journals require consent from all authors – some by signature. If you can not obtain consent, that individual cannot be put on the paper.
If I was your advisor, I would tell you to repeat the work, expand on the work, and advance knowledge base on the topic. The topic does not belong to the PhD student, and even the data belongs to the university, not the student. You should rewrite the paper as well. Then you are first author – and the missing ex-student is put in the acknowledgement.

If you just reproduce some work that you know and don’t do it completely differently, it’s likely still plagiarism. The creative work has already been done and you are just repeating the legwork. This becomes most evident in theoretical fields, where figuring out how to do things is the entire work. The missing PhD has probably solved a lot of problems that the asker does not need to solve again.

Assuming that the original PhD student is kept as an author, and the paper states clearly who did what, I'd say you are in the clear.

No NO  NOOOO, you are not in the clear unless they consent. Yes, they need to be co-author, but positive consent is essential.

And given their position, they may need to participate. The OP might not actually wind up as first author unless it is a valid extension.

Consent is necessary.

Forced/non-negotiated authorship is an entire new set of problems. Not recommended.


text:
How long does Springer give reviewers to peer-review an original book?
It can take months for articles in journals. But a proportional amount of time would make it years for a book, so that cannot be it. Does anyone have a ballpark recent figure for a 90,000 word original-material manuscript?

In what field?  Many academic books are not peer reviewed at all, or if so, are only reviewed for "will it sell" instead of "is it correct, novel and significant".  Also, reviewers of books often get paid.

And, it also depends on whether it is a textbook (known material) or something more advanced.

@NateEldredge Philosophy. My question assumes peer-review is taking place. Oh, the payment could be the key to the increased speed.

@Buffy Original material.

The duration of peer review in journals is because the peer reviewers have dozens of other things to prioritize and reviewing, while important, is not something they are paid or recognized for. It doesn't mean it actually takes that long for someone to review it. They said, even for books that claim to be peer reviewed, I'm quite skeptical the level of review is ever anything like an individual article. The exception maybe would be books that are effectively compilations of a few articles.

This blog comment isn't very recent, but does state three months.

@Anyon Thanks a lot, but that is over a decade old…

Do you have an example of the full text of a book being peer reviewed?  I have not heard of this,

@TerryLoring Yes, of course. For example, this series is peer-reviewed: https://www.springer.com/series/6607

I think the "Lecture Notes in X" series by Springer are usually peer-reviewed, with multiple reviewers. For example in math: https://www.springer.com/series/304

@TerryLoring Check the front matter of the book for a listing of the editorial board, editor in chief, and often the specific editor of the work. If it has these, then it's peer reviewed.


text:
What to do if a book is in peer review for 9 months without a decision?
If a book (full-text research monograph) has been under peer review for 9 months and there is still no decision, what should I do? Would it be counterproductive to press the editor to make a decision?

Did you submit the book proposal just to one publisher?

@MoisheKohan Yes.

Unless you already signed a contract, my suggestion is to send the book to at least one more publisher and inquire from thr current one about the status of the submission and when to expect a decision.

Yes, as Moishe says, book proposals are typically sent to several publishers at once. My understanding is that you then sort of play them off each other to speed up the process.

How much communication have you had with the publisher over those 9 months? Have you been asked for revisions, etc?

@MoisheKohan I’ve already signed the contract.

@Buffy No revision ask yet.

@Dawn I don't think that applies when the manuscript is sent out for peer review.

First of all, I am a mathematician and I will answer from the math perspective, more precisely, publishing research monographs (rather than textbooks). Here are my thoughts after your comments (you already signed a contract and, thus, referees are looking at the entire book) brought some clarity:
The time-length of peer-review depends on many parameters, such as the length of the book, the degree of difficulty of the text and, most importantly, how seriously referees approach their job. Some referees do very superficial reading, limiting themselves to reading the introduction and browsing through the rest of the book. Their reports usually do not take much time to write. In contrast, other referees read carefully, find mistakes, make useful suggestions on organizing the material, etc.
I published two (math) research monographs and  have one more under revision (after referee reports). For all three books I had both types of referees (one wrote nearly 100 pages worth of very useful and critical comments on a 600 page long manuscript). Accordingly, one year lag is not unreasonable. Still, I would be asking the publisher after 9 months about the status of reports. You cannot really "press" them though. But if, for instance, they say that one of the referees simply stopped responding, you can suggest looking for an alternative referee.  You can also ask to see the reports submitted so far (so that you can start making at least some revisions).

Yeah, it’s a research monograph.


text:
Can I just phone an editor if he never answered back via email?
Last year, I submitted a book manuscript to Springer. The academic editor told me that it looked great and that he would send it for peer review and would contact me in due course. Both the publisher editor and a production person were also involved. I even sent the index for the book. But I haven’t heard of the project for 10 months now. Not a pip. I don’t even know if it’s under peer review, since it’s not an article and therefore I don’t have the journal’s progress bar to check on. I sent emails to both the academic and the publisher editors on the 7-month mark and one per month since then asking about status. I have never received an answer from anyone since March of 2023. I found phone numbers for the academic editor at his university. Is it OK if I phone him out of the blue? I have never before phoned a person I don't personally know to inquire on academic matters, but I'd really like an answer. What do you all advice? Since I signed a contract, should I just assume that they didn't like the manuscript and tell them that if they won't answer in a reasonable period I will explore other publishers? Thanks!

Try phoning the person who works at Springer first. They will not mind being phoned. If there is no phone number on their emails, phone the office and ask for them. If the receptionist tells you to send an email, tell them you have already done that several times.
If that doesn't work, phone the academic editor.
When you phone, be very gentle and polite and say you would just like to know the status of the publication.
Note that peer review can sometimes take a long time and a book takes longer to review than an article. But I think it was reasonable to contact them after 7 months.

Why the Springer editor first? Last time I heard the ball was with the academic editor instead…

The Springer editor works in a business and is less likely to be irritated by a phone call out of the blue, which is what you seem to be concerned about. (Of course it is not actually out of the blue as you have emailed them several times. )

I will, thanks. The problem is that if a book takes a year to be reviewed, then by the time they finish reviewing it the author could already need to update the book! Which is my case. And it could lead to an infinite loop!!

Yes, academic publishing can be very slow. If you are able to talk to the Springer person, you could gently ask them about this too - will it be possible to make some updates, or is it too late for that? They might say that for minor things that is fine but for major things it is too late. It won't lead to an infinite loop.


text:
How long to wait (already over 14 months of waiting) before being firm
I submitted a book manuscript to Springer. They accepted the project, I signed the contract and they told me over 14 MONTHS ago that they'd send it for peer review and be in contact with me in due time. 3 months ago they told me that there was a review done, since then they promised to send it over to me three times already and -apparently because miscommunication between the Springer editor and the academic editor-, I still haven't seen the review. In my experience with publishing journal articles, this is not even the middle of the journey to publication. I have been nothing but polite so far, but it's getting hard. How long should I wait before sending a firm email telling them that it's been over 14 months and that I would expect the process to move along or be aborted?

When you communicate are you cc’ing the academic and springer editors? Do you know others who have worked with those editors? What was their experience?

This question was mentioned on meta: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5438/what-to-do-when-the-question-is-unbelievable

@Allure Really? Unbelievable? Can I show this to the editors so they’ll know that they are taking an unbelievable amount of time?  If my question is unbelievable, consider that the contract (I haven’t read it in 15 months) obviously most probably says that they can reject it if the reviewer rejects it.

@Dawn Yes, I am. No I don’t.

You need to be having conversations with folks who write books. I don't think many on this site are in "book fields" ... can you just get on a call with the academic editor and figure out what is up?

@Dawn Good ideas! I thought some of you weren't book writers, since some of you think Springer won't provide a contract before spending 10 months reviewing a book. Thanks!

This is just to mention that Allure took my question to meta saying it was unbelievable because he (Allure) couldn’t read a simple infographic correctly and confused a proposal review with a full draft review.

More heads up: as a mod deleted my explanations, what stands in that meta post is false information.

Complaining "firmly" isn't going to speed the process. You can ask them for an update and whether there is anything you can do to speed the process. If you have a need for speed, say why.
Yes, things take time and your book may be a lower priority for them than for you. But I suggest you be polite.
The editor's boss can be "firm" with effect, but you have no such power. Read your contract and see what options you have. If you can withdraw, consider that option, but it won't speed things.
Note that books usually have copy editors assigned to them to improve readability. They may have someone looking at it. They may have a backlog. You can ask, about status but I suggest not so frequently as to be a bother. That won't speed it up.

The need for speed is that life passes by and changes over a period of years. I would have never thought that over 14 months was any speed. You told me before that at 7 months I should have been able to ask for explanations. This is 14. So there's never an end to politeness and you simply depend on people never doing it? I'm starting to think that I should dedicate myself to something that depends only on me. People can't wait years for an academic book... No copyeditor, it's at the review stage and in any case I've changed the manuscript in 14 months, so would have to reject much copyediting.

Yes, you can self publish but it is only really effective if everyone who would find the work valuable know already how to find you. Otherwise it disappears into the void. I have experience both with successful and unsuccessful self publishing. I gave up on textbook publishers for other reasons; they only really support a textbook for a couple of years unless it is wildly successful and then they want updates every year or two. Note also that their reputation is on the line as well as yours.

What do you mean by "support"? Publicity? See? The review takes longer than the support. I meant leaving academia or growing vegetables, haha, not self-publishing, haha.

Some academics also grow vegetables. There are few professions that don't depend on others, actually. And there are many paths to success for academics, not only book publishing.

Many other paths such as?

Teaching, collaboration in the field, journal and conference publishing, public scholar are some. Not every academic publishes books.

+1 "not so frequently as to be a bother"

I'm downvoting this answer because this is a book manuscript, for which processes are different. Most notably, copyeditors only get assigned after the manuscript passes review, not before.

@Allure Now you’re right.


text:
Interested in development sector but unsure about Ph.D
I have just completed an M.Sc. in Economics with a specialisation in Development Studies from a reputed university in India.

I am interested in eventually working in the development sector.
I have a reasonable level of interest in doing research in areas related to development economics.
I have an intermediate level of proficiency in mathematics and statistics.

However, I am unsure about doing a Ph.D in Economics.
What are some things I must consider and know before deciding to do a Ph.D in economics?

Welcome to Academia SE ! Your question will be answered soon.

I don’t think “what factors should be considered” questions are based on individual factors. They are very generalizable.

This has appeared in the reopen queue because it has been edited since it was closed. However, the edit was only to formatting.

I would consider the following:
1) Do the jobs you want require a PhD? You may be able to have a satisfying career and a choice of many interesting and well-paid jobs (you define both of those terms for yourself) with a M.Sc. and on-the-ground experience.
2) Are you likely to succeed in a PhD? There is little point to pursuing a PhD if you fail out of the program. So, you need to assess your preparation and whether you are likely to be able to complete the PhD. If you are not sure, talk to some of your mentors who have PhDs.
3) Are you competitive for fully-funded PhD positions at respected universities? To make the time, effort, and opportunity costs involved in pursuing a PhD worthwhile, you should pursue programs that are fully-funded and that maximize the value of your degree post-gradation. These types of programs are more competitive, so you should assess (with mentor's help, if needed) your academic record and other factors to determine if you are a good candidate for such programs.

Dawn suggests great questions! You may want to pursue working in some aspect of development for a few years (especially if you could work as some sort of research assistant for government economists or economic researchers); this would give you grounds to know whether you need a Ph.D. to do what you want to.
Further, working with a reputable organization in the field may put you in a position to have great data for your Ph.D. research, perhaps including designing, running, and analyzing an experiment or carefully controlled intervention under their auspices.
You are probably well aware of the authors in Banerjee and Duflo's (pre-print version) Handbook of Field Experiments, but I want to particularly draw your attention to Glennerster's chapter on building partnerships for field experiments. You may be well-positioned with your M.Sc. to help make such research partnerships a success, while learning more about the field and whether you want to pursue a Ph.D.
Also, I've heard that a good applied microeconomics paper has (at least) two of the three things: good identification, good data, clearly important question. You don't need to be the best mathematician in your class to excel at those, as long as you have enough skills to complete the required classes.


text:
Has the proportions of articles to citations changed?
In 2014 Nature looked at the top 10 and top 100 papers with most citations.
Has similar research been done more recently?
I am particularly interested in whether the relative numbers have changed: In the image above 1000 citations would put a paper in the top 14499 of 57798126 papers = 0.025%. Since 2014 a lot of papers have been published (thus growing the pile), but more papers have also been cited (thus growing the part with 1000 citations). Do they grow equally? In other words: Would 1000 citations today still mean it is cited more than 99.975% of other papers? And if not: What are the numbers today?
Ideally the answer would include a percentile function that given a year and a percentage returns the number of citations to be in that percentile that year: percentile(year,pct) = number of citations.

For what it's worth, I suspect there is a huge difference from mid 1990s to mid 2000s to mid 2010s for percentages at the non-stellar level, simply because of being able to search online for relevant papers. But at the stratospheric levels you're talking about, my guess is that this is a lot less pronounced.

@DaveLRenfro I have the same feeling, but I would like to know if the feeling is supported by actual measurable data.

That might not be the best methodology. Papers that have been out for a long time (decades, centuries) can accrue citations over long periods of time. you ight want to look at citations within the first year, within the first five years and within the first ten years after publication, as well as citations overall, to see if citation behavior changes. Otherwise, older papers will always bee cited more often, just because they had a longer time to accrue citations.

"Has similar research been done more recently?" https://recognition.webofscience.com/awards/highly-cited/2020/methodology/

That's a really fascinating question. I looked at the original Nature article (https://www.nature.com/news/the-top-100-papers-1.16224) - my initial intuition would be that the proportion shouldn't differ to significantly from the earlier one (it will most likely differ to some extent as there is no reason to expect the proportional growth of citations and the growth of papers to correlate), but we would of course need to calculate it.
Wouldn't the best course of action be to use a research database where you can filter by number of accrued citations, set that to display papers with > 1000 citations and then divide the retrieved number with the total number of papers in that database? If you you wish to be consistent with the Nature article, I believe they did their analysis solely on Web of Science. Having that said, I'm not sure they provide these figures out of the box, it looks like Nature got special access to these figures for their article.


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What is the geographical location of Python (and other open-source software projects)?
In an academic paper, a colleague and I wrote that we "used Python (v3.8.8)" to perform a certain calculation.
The copy editor has asked us to provide the company name and location to complete the citation as "used Python (v3.8.8, __, __)."
We got a similar request for the Python scikit-learn package and the open-source audio editor Audacity.
As far as I can tell, the journal has its own citation style, but it somewhat resembles APA.
(I was able to find an address for the Python Software Foundation, but it seems that this entity exists to promote Python, not develop it.)

Some answers-in-comments and other discussion has been moved to chat.

"used Python (v3.8.8, Internet, volume 17, page 23)."

If you use commas to separate the Python version (e.g. "Python, v3.8.8, more text"), rather than parentheses, it probably won't be confused with the citation style you're using, which has usurped parentheses to indicate a citation.

The copy editor might just never have heard of Python/has no idea what it is and therefore asked for the details with a sort of standard request. You can react as @MassimoOrtolano suggests in his comment:

You don't have to comply with all copy editor's requests. When something does not apply, reply to the query by explaining that it doesn't and why.

I would also advise to look into the documentation of the packages you used how they would like to be cited. For example, scikit-learn asks for:

If you use scikit-learn in a scientific publication, we would appreciate citations to the following paper:
Scikit-learn: Machine Learning in Python, Pedregosa et al., JMLR 12, pp. 2825-2830, 2011.

Together with the version number, citing as requested should give enough context so that it is absolutely clear what it is that you are using, and the copy editor should be happy.

There is a relevant old question here already: How do I reference the Python programming language in a thesis or a paper?. The answer by @Dexter links to here:
https://docs.python.org/3/faq/general.html#are-there-any-published-articles-about-python-that-i-can-reference
There you find some info from the Python Software Foundation on how to cite. On the same page, you also find:

Where in the world is www.python.org located?
The Python project’s infrastructure is located all over the world and is managed by the Python Infrastructure Team.

Thank you. I ended up writing a brief note suggesting the simple inline citation Python (v3.8.8, python.org). In general, I try to cite software and coding languages in the bibliography only when they are integral to the research. For example, if there were a special feature of Python that made it the best choice for this research, or if I were doing a comparative study of which programming languages were best for a certain task. In this case I will usually try to find a paper that the developers wrote introducing the language.

However, in this case, we could have done our calculations in any language; the choice of Python was purely incidental. Citing Python would feel (IMO) a bit like citing Microsoft Word because we used it to type and spellcheck our manuscript.

@Max, I think you made the right choice here. In fact, your Microsoft Word example is not so far-fetched. I was indeed asked in one instance to explain which program I used to make some simple plots. I have no problem to give credit to matplotlib, so I did. I would not be surprised to be asked to give credit to my word processor at some point.

@Snijderfrey Pencil (Dixon Ticonderoga, Lake Mary, FL, USA) and Paper (Georgia-Pacific, Atlanta, Georgia, USA).

I understand your hesitance to use the Python Foundation, but as they also handle distribution, in addition to promotion (https://www.python.org/downloads/) and the official documentation repository(https://docs.python.org/3/), I'd say it's the correct reference.
According to the legal documents on the python site (https://www.python.org/about/legal/)

Except where otherwise specified, the contents of this website are
copyright © 1990-2014, Python Software Foundation, 9450 SW Gemini Dr.,
ECM# 90772, Beaverton, OR 97008, USA. All rights reserved.

That would certainly be a defendable, if not correct, location to use.

It is not clear (but I haven't researched it) whether the distributed version of the Python language is "contents of this website". I suspect is is more of "where otherwise specified", which in turn would be some license agreement somewhere.

@manassehkatz-Moving2Codidact  -- I wasn't using the "contents of this website" part as a justification that it is the correct citation, so much as an address the Foundation uses in legal docs.

-1 I would argue that this essentially assigns credit to the foundation, which actually steals credit from many of the people responsible for the actual thing used for the paper, who aren't associated with the foundation — sort of like assigning all affiliations on that LHC paper to the University of Adelaide just because you can't be bothered to do any better.  It also kicks the can down the road for other OSS packages.  The copy-editor made a nonsensical request, and it should be treated as such.

The best way to reference a software is to reference its manual (which hopefully exists). This can of course be problematic if the "manual" is some lose collection of web pages or the like. It is quite simple if the manual is compiled into a pdf. In the case of Python there are suggested references given by this python citation suggestion. Please note that your can enter the reference yourself into the format that you see fit. In the case of additions to python it will be a question of sourcing similar references to manuals or find some established source URL.

As a general rule, if you use the code, you should cite the code.  Citing papers about the code, or random instruction manuals, or even the official documentation doesn't help people reproduce your results, and can actually steal credit from the people who wrote the code, because the papers/manuals/documentation may be written by a very different set of people.
For OSS packages like you're talking about, location doesn't make any sense, and the journal is probably quite capable of dealing with this fact.  Rather, citing OSS packages generally involves citing the full name of the code and specific version you used, and where the code came from.  Increasingly, OSS authors are coming to realize that it is helpful if they use things like CITATION.cff files, and mint DOIs along with their versions.  If they don't, you can usually request such a thing, and often get it.  (My guess is that cpython hasn't done this because they don't know how to handle the author list.)  But even when this isn't possible, you can usually find a permanent link on sites like github and pypi, and just cite it like any other URL.  These are usually short citations; even the date is optional once the version is supplied.
If the authors specify (like scikit-learn) that they want you to cite something else, you should also cite that.  This can also be important, because a lot of academic work may have gone into developing the techniques used by the code, which also deserves to be cited.  But if there's any divergence between the code described in that reference and the actual version of code that you used, you need to supply more information in the form of a separate, specific reference.

While the consensus seems to favor citing manuals or papers rather than the code itself, I agree with you that this is a citational practice we ought to try to change. However, I also think your answer should also allow some flexibility for light, inline citations of code that was used as a "tool" but didn't play an integral part in the research (see my comments on the accepted answer above)—for the same reason that we don't need to create a separate bib entry to say "On March 26, Jeff Bezos tweeted that..."

@Max I would say the library name and version are a good middle ground. My time is scarce and software tends to be flimsy; I, as a reader, am interested in what was shown to work to an extent displayed in the paper. Even if it is an especially nice-looking plot (although I do not expect authors to include this information as being waaaay outside the domain). A repo would help me the most, but imposes a large additional burden on the authors, while saying "we did it with a 50 year old algorithm you could implement in any language" is more of "okay then, keep your secrets".


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Is there a way to know what the eventual URL of an arXiv paper will be before it is submitted?
Is there a way to know what the eventual URL of an arXiv paper will be before it is submitted?
That is, the article exists as a draft in my arXiv.org account and has a 7-digit identifier of the form submit/1234567, but I have not yet pressed the submit button, so it doesn't yet have a permanent identifier in the form 1234.56789.

Why do I want to do this? I am going to give a poster presentation about the same research at a conference in a few months. The conference has requested a digital copy of my poster by the end of the week. I would like to put a reference to the arXiv paper in my slides. However, I am waiting for a collaborator to sign off on the final draft of the paper before submitting to arXiv. Even if my collaborator signs off and I submit the paper to arXiv today, it may take until next week for the paper to make it through the arXiv referee process.

Sounds like an XY problem. The solution to your actual problem is to send them the slides without the arXiv reference, and when your paper gets posted to send an updated version and the organizers to replace the original, explaining that the only change is an added reference to the arXiv preprint. It’s very likely they’ll accommodate your request.

That would be my preference too, but unfortunately, these conference organizers are notoriously averse to such requests. The argument is that they need the final version ahead of the conference in order to compile the proceedings.

Hmm, I’d still make the request - it never hurts to ask. Point out the exact change you made, including line number in the source document, and the exact line substitution (to help the organizers swap in the change in case they already imported your submission into a larger proceedings doc file). E.g.: “In line 753, replace ‘Smith (2022)’ with ‘Smith (2022), see: arXiv:1224.5678’.” It may not work, but who knows, you might get lucky.

You may also add the preprint to ResearchGate and make the file private. RG will assign a permanent link to your entry and you may switch between public and private at any time.

ArXiv doesn’t have a referee process. Your paper will appear the next business day after you upload it.

Yeah, echoing what @Prahar said. arXiv does have a moderation process, but that involves only the most basic checks to ensure that the paper isn't complete nonsense or otherwise wildly inappropriate, and it happens very quickly, within one business day. It's very different from the referee process (a.k.a. peer review) that a paper goes through when it's submitted to a journal.

@Prahar Papers do get kept for a few days on occasion ...

Ah, everything was better in the past - there was a time when the arxiv identifier was assigned right away when you started the submission process. (It should be noted that there were reasons they abandoned this.)

@user151413 when does that happen? I've uploaded several papers on arXiv and it has never happened to me so I'm curious under what circumstances do they hold papers.

@Prahar Not public, for obvious reasons. But you can see it from the fact that the submission time does not increase monotonically with the submission number, sometimes. (Then again, you shouldn't worry: Having a paper held is no reason to be proud of. Then again, there were even public fights about held papers ... )

@Prahar https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.029540/full/   There was quite some discussion at that time.

@user151413 Interesting!

@Prahar Also see https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/14511/17254

In case anyone is curious, I went ahead and submitted to arXiv and it looks like it will be announced in time for me to add its URL to my conference submission. I've only submitted to arXiv once, and it took 4 or 5 days to be announced, but that was probably because it was my first submission. My backup plan was to cite the URL for our public Github repo, which we use to post rolling updates to our paper and various conference slides. This aligns with what many suggested in the comments and answers.

@Max The schedule for when the next posting is is public (see https://arxiv.org/localtime),  and can be 3 days over the weekend, and more if e.g. Monday is a holiday.

Since 2015, the identifier is of the form arXiv:YYMM.NNNNN. The YYMM part is simply the year and month, so it's easy to predict. The NNNNN part is a five digit sequence number within the month, which you won't know ahead of time. This is why arXiv state

The final arXiv identifier cannot be assigned until the paper is announced, so please do not ask for it ahead of announcement. It is not possible to make exceptions, nor accelerate the announcement schedule regardless of your circumstance.

If you get the sign-off and submit today, there's a  reasonable chance it'll be posted in time. If that doesn't pan out, Dan Romik's advice is good.

I am accepting this answer because it answers the question posed in the OP. I appreciate others' suggestions for my XY problem, but my question was truly about the mechanics of the arXiv service and not what alternatives are available to me in this situation.

If you have a personal web site or domain, then instead of a link to the paper’s arXiv page, you can put in your slides a link to your publications page, or to a URL you can set up that either will serve up the paper’s file (once your coauthor approves the final version), or will serve up a basic HTML file with a redirect tag to another URL you can later customize to the posted preprint’s arXiv page.
(And if you don’t have a personal website, this situation is a good illustration of just one among many benefits of having one.)

If OP does not have a site, they may use a good URL shortener (URL shorteners are a terrible, terrible invention but I digress). Make sure you can edit the URL it points to afterward.

To answer the actual question:
No, there is no way to know the arxiv identifier before the submission is posted publicly on the arxiv.
That is, under normal circumstances, you will know your arxiv identifier at the next posting after your submission, i.e. earliest 6 hours after you submit.
(If the paper gets held back for any reason, the number will also only be assigned once the paper appears.)

Another option for @dan-romik's URL redirection answer is to use smarturl.it. You provide the smartURL, and then can later change the redirection destination when the preprint goes up on arXiv.
This approach is also useful for double-blind conference submissions that require anonymous links to code/software at time of submission. You might create a Github repo that's tied to your personal identity, and linked from your website / social media. But you would create a pseudonymous Github account, a new repo (not a fork) that contains a copy of the same code, and then smartURL to this copy. Once your paper is accepted, you change the smartURL to your original Github repo.


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Why don't we mention the names of reviewers?
When a paper appears in a science journal, why do not mention the names of the reviewers so that we, as readers can get an idea about the seriousness of the paper?

@corey979 : It can be a personal thing, have read a lot of good papers that have been reviewed by a person X, will be a good sign if X i mentioned as a reviewer of an other paper

@corey979 If it were like that the author is responsible for the quality of a paper, the journal's impact factor will not matter, for example

I mean if the The author is responsible for the quality of a paper (only), we will not need a journal's IF.

if the author is responsible for the quality of a paper (only), we will not need a journal's IF. — That's exactly correct.  We don't need the journal's IF.

@Motaka as Buffy's answer says : "the paper should speak for itself" - having a noted academic review a paper doe snot make it good, the paper can still be a load of c**p, just has the name of a reviewer.... Am about to vote up that answer...

Many (most?) publications list the editor’s name, which has the desired effect.

I don’t see why this question is getting downvotes. It is a clear question about the publishing process. Perhaps the answer is obvious to most people here, but the question deserves an answer (and answers have been provided).

If I, as a reviewer, recommend rejection of a paper but the editor decides to publish it anyway (which he has the right to do), I'd be unhappy if the publication says "reviewed by Andreas Blass" and people think I approved of the paper. I'd also be unhappy if the publication says "reviewed by Andreas Blass but published against his recommendation"; now people won't think I approved but the author will be angry with me.

@AndreasBlass That should be a response.

There are at least two reasons that reviewing is anonymous.
The first, probably less important, reason is that we want reviews to be honest and immune from any pressure. Some junior academics in fact wind up reviewing papers by senior members of the profession. We don't want pressure applied before the review is complete, nor retaliation afterwards.
But, in my view, the more important reason is that a paper should speak for itself. It either says something significant or it does not. The opinions of others should weigh less than the statements in the paper itself in the final analysis. If a well respected academic wrongly promotes a paper, harm can be done. Mistakes can be made. Let the paper itself stand or fall on its own.

I think that the "more important reason" hardly applies to the real world. As it is, the papers do not stand on their own --- they are bolstered by the names of the author and the journal. In fact almost the entire point of modern publishing is to get journals' endorsement.

I had never heard this "more important reason" before. And it makes little sense: disclosing reviewers' names would not make the text of the paper weigh much less. Is this a new argument of yours or do you have some reference on that?

@BorisBukh, that seems an odd comment from a mathematician.

@SylvainRibault, I worry more that people will think it is more important than it really is, based on comments. As I said, it is a personal view.

@Buffy As a mathematician I would be extremely happy if papers could indeed just stand on their own. I was commenting on my perception of modern academia, and not on my ideal vision for it. (Sorry, if I misunderstood your comment.)

@BorisBukh, I think we agree, actually.

Some journals do, such as the Frontiers journals; here's an article I wrote that names the reviewers at the bottom. But the reason most journals don't is that this compromises the anonymity of reviewers, which is widely considered necessary to protect reviewers from reprisal from bad reviews. Personally, I think the benefits of transparency outweigh these dangers and hence reviews should be non-anonymous (I sign all my reviews, so long as journal policy permits me to), but I'm in the minority here.

Right. And you can have the best of both worlds by having reviewers' namers public by default, allowing them to be anonymous if they so choose. You are the minority only because most people are conservative, i.e. biased in favour of the existing system. I am not so sure you are in the minority among people who actually thought about the issue.

It's been tried. There's no gain in the quality of the review, the speed of the review, or change in the recommendation, but there is a disadvantage of lots more people declining to review.
Given that then, plus the fact that knowing the name of the reviewer can lead to a potential backlash down the road (can you remain impartial if the same reviewer is consistently recommending rejection for your work?), this is not necessarily a good change to make.

The general idea behind anonymity of a review is that the reviewer can write his/her opinion without being concerned that that the author is offended (and will potentially revenge in some way).
Having said that there are some journals that do publish reviewers names, for example Frontiers: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2018.00102/full (see top left corner).
There are also journals that publish reviews and the rebuttal of the author, for example eLife: https://elifesciences.org/articles/39865 (see decision letter and author response sections). But this is usually done without reviewers' names.

Journals may run a list at the end of the year thanking by name all the reviewers.
But the main answer to your question: reviewers for a particular paper are anonymous.  [It is a separate question why reviewers are anonymous.]

Why not mention the reviewer's names?  Because then they would no longer be anonymous.  So I guess you want to re-ask the question of why the reviewers are anonymous?