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Question about unpaid presentations to organizations
I recently published a policy-based article in an academic journal that initially received some good attention from both practitioners and researchers.  Buoyed by the praise, I shared the publication with the Executive Directors of several nonprofit organizations that I admired in hopes that these organizations might find the arguments useful in their work (I am a both researcher and practitioner myself).
Much to my pleasant surprise, a few organizations wrote back and asked if I would have a Skype conversation with them (as well as forums of researchers with whom they have worked) to brief them on the publication and my findings.
Should I include these presentations on my CV to demonstrate my expertise on this particular policy issue?   If yes, how would I write this up and list this, especially since this is not a formal conference and the 'consult' with them is unpaid.
Thanks for the guidance in advance.

If it's a conversation, I agree with Najib -- no, don't include.  If it's more like a seminar, then you could include it.  But there's another approach possible.  You might want to join a Board of Directors or Advisory Board of a relevant nonprofit.  Either as a regular member, or as a technical advisor.  That would definitely be appropriate to put in a CV.


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Reviewer rejects a paper and then publishes the same results as their own?
In short, I'm wondering how likely is the following sequence of events. The context is research in pure mathematics.

A researcher submits a paper containing new results for review in a journal in hopes of publication.
The reviewer acknowledges that the new results are both correct and indeed would constitute a novel and a nontrivial addition to existing results in the area.  However, they reject the paper since the proof is lengthy, computational and difficult to follow.
Immediately or after some time, the reviewer comes up with their own proofs for the same results, shorter and more presentable than the one from the original paper. The reviewer then submits their own work to some other journal and it gets published.

(The presentability of results is of course subjective to the reviewer's affinities and background, but for the sake of this question assume that the reviewers assessments regarding presentability in 2. and 3. are reasonable and difficult to be argued against.)
I see no reason why this would not be possible as the reviewer is not technically plagiarising anything. Firstly because there is no published work to plagiarise (because the original paper was rejected), and secondly because their paper would just contain the same theorems but with entirely unrecognizable proofs (and superior ones, at that). Their paper could even acknowledge that the original researcher made them aware of the result.
If all of this is possible, how should the original researcher go about defending against it? An obvious safeguard is publishing a manuscript of the original paper to arXiv or a freely accessible personal web page, and to try and publish the paper in some other journal before the reviewer manages to publish theirs. Would this suffice?
My concern is that the main contribution of the original paper is the novelty of the results themselves. Once the reviewer (or any other experienced researcher in the field, for that matter) was made aware of them and studied them carefully, it is indeed likely that they could come up with a superior proof, or even with an improvement on the theorems themselves. I would assume that this would render the original work unpublishable and superfluous.

"the reviewer is not technically plagiarising anything. Firstly because there is no published work to plagiarise (because the original paper was rejected)" There is no requirement that plagiarism only counts as plagiarism if the original work is published. You can plagiarize from preprints, research notes, talks, conversations, etc. Plagiarism (excluding self-plagiarism for simplicity) just means you are taking someone else's work (note that "work" does not mean "published paper") and presenting it as yours.

Question.  In paper 3, does the reviewer refer to 1 ?

@AdamPřenosil Thank you, I was genuinely not aware of this.

@GEdgar Both options are possible. Since not referring to 1 would constitute plagiarism hence making 3 very unlikely, for the sake of this question feel free to assume that the paper from 3 indeed acknowledges the existence of 1.

@DavidWhite has correctly answered this hypothetical question, essentially explaining why it is unlikely in reality. If you are thinly disguising something that actually happened to you (or someone you know) the answer would be different.

@EthanBolker I was asking a question as a hypothetical and I have therefore accepted the answer by David White. The question is indeed inspired by something that happened in reality, but the question is meant to be entirely general.

I believe this happened once.  There was a trail of emails and documents proving that the reviewer has pillaged the work from someone else and the paper was withdrawn.

One problem with pre-publishing things to arXiv is that it makes a double blind review impossible

@AgnishomChattopadhyay I disagree in the following way: "double-blind" means "identities are not disclosed as part of the reviewing process", but it never means "it's impossible to determine the author's identity if we try to". A referee who wants to find out who the author is will almost surely be able to even without an arXiv preprint. (They shouldn't try to either way, of course.)

@AgnishomChattopadhyay That is a problem with the concept of double blind reviews, not with pre-publishing on arXiv.

@nanoman Thank you for this link, it is certainly relevant. However, my question was mainly about the likelihood of the occurrence of this kind of thing and how to prevent it, while the linked question inquires about the steps one needs to take after the thing had already occurred.

Closing this question as a duplicate was unfair. None of the answers in the linked question answer my question.

Pure mathematician here. The sequence of events described is very unlikely to happen, because of cultural forces in pure math designed to prevent it.
If the situation the OP described did happen, it would be bad for everyone involved:

The authors would rightly feel like they were scooped, since they proved these results first, and then the referee (who had non-public access to their work) proved the same results. If they had not been the referee, they would not even have been aware that the results were true.

The editor would rightly feel betrayed. This kind of behavior is a major breach of ethics on the part of the referee. The editor would talk, and the referee would get a reputation as someone who cannot be trusted.

The referee would suffer terrible reputational harm, when the story came out.

Now on to some more specific points:

I see no reason why this would not be possible as the reviewer is not technically plagiarising anything. Firstly because there is no published work to plagiarise (because the original paper was rejected), and secondly because their paper would just contain the same theorems but with entirely unrecognizable proofs (and superior ones, at that).

The referee's behavior is a clear breach of ethics. It does not matter at all whether the paper where the referee got the ideas was published, or even whether it was a public preprint or not. The Oxford dictionary defines plagiarism as "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." Clearly, the referee learned of the statements of the theorems from the preprint, took those ideas, and passed them off as their own, even if they wrote different proofs for the theorems.
In math, sometimes the main contribution of a paper is to prove a known conjecture using new techniques or cleverness. Other times, the main contribution is to ask an interesting question, even if the techniques to answer it are standard. Sometimes, an unethical person could scoop a work in progress just by getting the statement of the theorem the authors were proving.

Their paper could even acknowledge that the original researcher made them aware of the result.

This is a step in the right direction but is not sufficient. The ethical thing is for the referee to write to the authors and suggest a joint paper where the contribution of the original authors was figuring out the theorem that is true, and the contribution of the referee is a streamlined proof. If the referee had figured out the streamlined proof while refereeing the paper, they could have also given the proof to the authors as part of their referee report. Things like that do happen in math, and it's a nice, encouraging thing to do for junior authors when you find yourself refereeing their work.

If all of this is possible, how should the original researcher go about defending against it? An obvious safeguard is publishing a manuscript of the original paper to arXiv or a freely accessible personal web page, and to try and publish the paper in some other journal before the reviewer manages to publish theirs. Would this suffice?

Yes, a good first step is to put the paper on arXiv. In math, we have strong cultural barriers that prevent other researchers from scooping results that are on arXiv (though, of course, sometimes two teams will legitimately prove the same result at the same time). It is better to put the paper on arXiv than on a personal web page, because the arXiv timestamp is widely respected in the field. The authors should also reach out to the referee to make sure they know about their previous work (because we're a single-blind field, the authors would not know that the referee had been the referee for their paper), and to coordinate how the papers cite each other. It would be fair if the referee's paper explicitly says the results were first proven by the authors (and cites their preprint on arXiv) and if the authors point out that subsequently to their work, shorter proofs were found. The authors' paper should still be published, but indeed it's good not to delay submitting it to another journal.

My concern is that the main contribution of the original paper is the novelty of the results themselves. Once the reviewer (or any other experienced researcher in the field, for that matter) was made aware of them and studied them carefully, it is indeed likely that they could come up with a superior proof, or even with an improvement on the theorems themselves. I would assume that this would render the original work unpublishable and superfluous.

When I was just starting out in math research, I often felt that way about my preprints. Here are some things to keep in mind:
A. It often seems clear to you after you've figured it out but might still not be that obvious to others. We often underestimate the novelty of our own papers because we understand them well, whereas we often struggle to understand the papers of others.
B. Experienced researchers are incredibly busy with their own research and unlikely to go around writing down shorter proofs of other peoples' results. And, the cultural factors I wrote about above tend to prevent unethical behavior, so even if someone did quickly write a shorter proof of your result, they would acknowledge you and would not prevent your work from being published.
C. When you do a bit of math, you should want others to come along and build on it, finding a shorter proof, generalizing the result, working to strengthen the conclusion, etc. That is the nature of research, at least if the research you did was interesting.
D. Even if someone did build on your paper, that would not make your paper unpublishable. It has happened to me many times that I proved something basically at the same time someone else did, with similar proofs. In all cases, my work cited the other work and theirs cited mine, and both works were published. Editors and referees understand that publications are important for your career, and that research consists of incremental contributions. Furthermore, the fact that someone else was interested enough in your work to quickly build on it looks good for your work, and suggests to the editor that it's important and likely to be highly cited.
In conclusion, try not to get anxious about potential worst-case scenarios. Try to do interesting work, and try to come up with good, clear proofs that are not "lengthy, computational and difficult to follow." When you finish a paper, submit it to arXiv and send it to a journal a week or two later (giving time for comments you might receive as people read the arXiv version). Then, while the paper is under review, go write a different paper. Soon enough, you will be well-established and won't have to worry about others scooping you.

This is the correct answer, and good advice. In pure math, I believe in general people are pretty careful about attributing results, at least recent ones. You can find many papers with notes such as "Theorem 1.1 was also obtained independently by X and Y in ..." when two groups prove similar results around the same time.

I think most of this answer talks about a scenario that is quite different from what OP asks about. OP wrote: "Their paper could even acknowledge that the original researcher made them aware of the result", indicating that they are not thinking of a situation in which the reviewer makes active efforts to pass off the theorems in the paper as their own; rather, the reviewer cites the earlier work and publishes a paper claiming only the novel element of "shorter, more presentable proofs". That situation is the one I address in my answer.

... As for the situation of a reviewer committing plagiarism, that would indeed be very unethical. However, to the extent that this is something OP needs to worry about, I don't see why they need to be more worried about the reviewer committing this plagiarism than about anyone else committing it. As I said in my answer, once the paper is on arXiv literally anyone can try to improve on it (and literally anyone can plagiarize it if they wish to behave unethically). The reviewer has no special advantage, and no more incentive than anyone else does to behave unethically.

@DanRomik I addressed that part of the question ("Their paper could even acknowledge...") in the middle of my answer. But, because the OP was asking whether uploading to arXiv could protect against the scenario, in the beginning of my answer I was assuming the paper had not been uploaded to arXiv and was not publicly available. From the mid-point of the answer on, I address how putting the paper on arXiv changes things. I think most of what's in your answer is already in mine, but, hey, it doesn't hurt for the OP to hear it twice.

@DanRomik "...why they need to be more worried about the reviewer committing this plagiarism than about anyone else committing it." The paper is indeed already on arXiv but  I have several quite specific reasons to be worried about the reviewer in particular, rather than anyone else:

The result is quite obscure and unlikely to attract the attention of the right people who would be even interested in shortening the proof.
The paper is indeed quite long, technical and contains lengthy computations which are themselves very elementary but extremely tedious and difficult to follow.

... This alone makes it exceedingly unlikely that a casual reader on arXiv would even skim through the paper, let alone make a serious effort to understand the proof.
3. Contrary to the previous two points, the reviewer had to go through the paper in great detail to verify the proof's correctness. As stated before, this would not be possible without a serious effort of going through many lengthy computations.
4. Most importantly (and perhaps surprisingly), the reviewer explicitly stated that after some thinking they arrived at a simpler proof using different methods.

... To further drive the point, they used this fact to justify rejecting the paper by making the following argument: "The proof of the paper is unnecessarily complicated. I know because I came up with a much simpler one."
5. Beyond its existence, the reviewer did not disclose anything else about this simpler proof. Neither the idea nor which supposedly new methods they were able to apply. This makes it unlikely that they would be interested in salvaging the paper in the present form. Rather, they made it obvious that the paper should be restructured entirely.

@DavidWhite Thank you for your detailed answer. You have put my mind somewhat at ease. Still, only time will tell that will the outcome be.

When you upload your paper to arXiv you make it so not just the reviewer of your paper, but anyone in the world, is completely free to try to improve on your work (whether by strengthening or generalizing the results, finding different/better proofs, or in any other way). This is not at all a Bad Thing or something that should particularly concern you; it is for the most part a Good Thing. Your paper is public and timestamped and therefore you have established priority over your ideas. If someone else comes up with an improvement, they will get credit for the improvement, but they are required to credit your earlier work by citing it (the preprint version if your paper is not yet accepted anywhere) and giving a clear explanation of which ideas in their paper are novel. If they do not give such credit, they are committing plagiarism. All of this is true regardless of whether the author of the paper with the improvements is/was the reviewer of your paper or anyone else.
You raise the practical concern that once a paper with improvements of your proofs is published, "this would render the original work unpublishable and superfluous." This is simply not true. You are still free to submit your paper to journals, and any fair-minded person assessing your contribution will still be able to see that your paper with the supposedly inferior proofs pre-dated the other person's paper with the slicker proofs. They will understand that your paper brings forward original ideas that were then built on and improved by others. Thus the work is entirely publishable. Moreover, the fact that other people are finding your work relevant enough to keep building on it can well be seen as making the work more appealing and more publishable, not less. (And conversely, the other person's follow-up paper may end up being perceived as less publishable than yours, not more, because it only proposes new proofs of already known theorems.) Moreover, it is rarely the case that a "shorter or more presentable" proof of a theorem makes the original proof appear completely uninteresting; usually even a longer proof can still have an interesting idea or insight that is not made superfluous by a shorter, slicker proof.
Another hypothetical concern from this scenario is that because the reviewer is free to improve on your work as I described above, they might be tempted to reject your paper so that they can reap a benefit for themselves by scooping you with their own paper. This is also not a realistic concern: while it would indeed be unethical for the reviewer to reject your paper out of an ulterior motive, they have no incentive to do so, since as I explained above, your arXiv preprint gives you priority for coming up with the theorems in your paper and being the first to prove them. The reviewer's follow-up paper gains no advantage or extra credit from your own paper having been rejected. If anything, the incentives are pointing in the reverse direction: if your paper is accepted, particularly to a prestigious journal, then the reviewer's follow-up work will get an extra boost in credibility and prestige as it can now claim to be improving on work from a top journal.
To summarize: upload all your preprints to arXiv and you will be protected. If you think your proofs are ugly and may be superseded by slicker proofs other people might come up with later, that may be a valid concern, and it makes sense to spend some time trying to make your proofs as presentable as possible prior to going public. But this is a pretty microscopic concern and is not usually worth worrying much about, since experienced researchers know that it is in the nature of things (and usually a Good Thing) that their work will be built and improved upon by others. Finally, it does not make sense to worry specifically about the reviewer of your paper coming up with improvements to your results and trying to sabotage you in some way.

Thank you for taking the time to explain incentives behind the reviewer's possible actions. I address one of your points in the comments to  David White's question.

@mechanodroid it sounds like the reviewer rejected your paper because your proof is too complicated, and said they found a much simpler proof. While that may be disappointing to you, I don't see this as evidence that the reviewer is doing anything wrong or unethical, or that their decision to recommend rejection was not made in good faith. And since your paper is uploaded to arXiv, you don't need to worry about getting scooped. The thing to do in this situation would be to resubmit to another journal, possibly after first using the feedback you got to improve your paper. Good luck!

Indeed, in this particular case the reviewer has not done anything wrong. My original question asked about the probability of them doing something wrong afterwards. You have adequately answered my question, thank you.

There is a similar case, well-known in mathematics.
G. D. Birkhoff, a distinguished mathematician, was a mathematics editor for the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)).  A young unknown mathematician (John von Neumann, later he became very well known) submitted a paper to the PNAS.  The result there is nowadays called the "mean ergodic theorem".  The paper was assigned to Birkhoff to review.  In fact, Birkhoff accepted the paper for the journal.  But Birkhoff was inspired by it, worked very hard for a few months, and came up with a stronger theorem, nowadays called the "pointwise ergodic theorem".  He wrote that as a paper of his own.  The two papers were published in the same issue of the PNAS.  But Birkhoff's paper did not mention von Neumann's paper.  Only many years later did Birkhoff admit in print that he had been inspired by the von Neumann paper.

Very interesting. Do you have a reference where this story is told, or where Birkhoff made the admission you mention?

@DanRomik From the abstract, this paper might answer your question (I am to tired to read it right now): Joseph D. Zund, Historia Mathematica 29 (2002), 138–156, doi:10.1006/hmat.2001.2338 (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82378876.pdf)

@GEdgar The source from my last comment does not support your statement that Birkhoff was the reviewer. He got to know von Neumann's result and surpassed him by publishing a paper. It does not work as an example for OP's fear.

For context, in some circles, G.D. Birkhoff has reputation for being ... "ingenerous". Oh, ok, yeah, also vocally anti-semitic (von Neumann was ethnically jewish...) I do think that this taints some of these situations...

Birkhoff's theorem is several orders more complicated than vin Neumann's mean ergodic theorem . Birkhoff's proof was so complicated that over the years several illustrious mathematicians provided gradually simpler proofs.

It’s a great answer and story, upvoted. And thanks for the cool reference @usr1234567, I agree with you that the  relevance to OP’s actual question is  limited, both because it appears Birkhoff was not the reviewer for von Neumann’s paper, and (perhaps more importantly) because von Neumann did not upload his paper to arXiv.

@usr1234567 George Birkhoff acknoledges the work of von Neumann on the first page of of his paper on ergodic theory. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.17.2.656

Thanks for the link. Indeed, than the fuss is more about publishing first. Intersting!

In the '80s and '90s, some high-temperature superconductivity researchers would modify initial their submissions to journals and make significant last-minute corrections to avoid such problems.
These physicists would grow new materials and test their properties to search for signs of superconductivity; there was (and still is, see Ranga Dias) enormous competition to grow materials that show superconductivity at high temperatures. Some authors noticed that immediately after they submitted papers for review, other groups (likely reviewers) would suddenly report having grown the same material and try to scoop the results, so they altered element names in their reported material's chemical formula while submitting for review, and fixing this issue only once the paper was ready to be published.
Funnily enough, it turned out that the fake material whose name they made up also turned out to be a high-temperature superconductor when other groups tried to scoop the paper that was in review by growing it, but the original result was still significantly more impressive because it superconducted at higher temperatures than the "fake" material.

It sounds like bad things along the lines of what OP is worried about were indeed occasionally happening in the era before arXiv. Can you comment about whether this is likely to happen today with a paper that has been uploaded to arXiv? (My own answer dismisses OP's concern as unrealistic because of arXiv, but I'm curious if in a context outside of pure math such as experimental physics there are still incentives in play that can cause a reviewer to behave unethically.)

@DanRomik My impression is that when the paper is on the arXiv, it is "out," in some sense. It isn't given the same authority as a peer-reviewed article, but the authors are still expected to defend claims made therein if other researchers fail to reproduce the results. On the other hand, the reviewers' job isn't to reproduce a paper (so if they can't reproduce the results, it isn't inherently a problem), and a paper that is in review but not on arXiv is not a "public" assertion by the authors.

Thus, reproducing a paper from the arXiv and submitting it to a journal would not, in my opinion, be "scooping" today. And submitting a deliberately incorrect result to arXiv to protect an in-review work today would be significantly more unethical than the scenario described in my post (though it's debatable whether misleading reviewers in that manner is ethical).

As it is written above, stealing somebody's ideas is plagiarism, too, and there is no excuse.
I would do the following.

Write to the editorial board, show them your case and ask them to withdraw the paper by the plagiariser.
If this fails, write to the publisher stating that the editorial board of their journal ignored you about the plagiarism case.
If this does not work, go to court against the publisher. Try to highlight your case in press and social networks as widely as possible.

I strongly believe that this should be well enough, no serious publisher would like to have reputation spots like this.
I should add that people behave like this in science mainly in societies where such behaviour - to steal something from somebody who is weaker than you - is generally common (like in Russia).
Particularly, I had my own case like you described, but was lucky - the paper written after reading my manuscript by a reviewer came, vice versa, to me for revision. So I wrote to the editor about the situation providing proofs. The plagiariser is now likely in the black list of several large international publishers, as they published 0 papers in international journals after this. But I also saw examples when older academics ruined the careers of younger colleagues by stealing their results. You should never go to peace agreements with such people; they must meet the resistance and must be punished for what they do.
Their normal business is either to steal as much as the victim allows by its own silence or to persuade the victim to pass his results by own will.
Make your voice loud and do not feel ashamed about making problems for the careers of plagiarisers / do not be afraid to conflict with them! People behaving like this do not understand good will, but they respect only strength.

I frequently read in the acknowledge section that anonymous referees helped to improve papers. Immediate ideas to improve a paper are usually shared with the author and not kept to the referees to exploit as easy papers.

I would believe that the original author, at this point, has enough documentation to "prove" that the published material was lifted from the rejected (original) submission. In such an instance, the publication can be retracted in consultation with the journal editor(s). This is obviously an awful situation for anyone to have to go through.

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My potential supervisor redirected me to Program Director but I don't know what for
I've received this email after contacting a potential PhD supervisor:

"Thank you for your email and interest in our research. Your
experiences are certainly well-aligned with the work we do. We are not
specifically seeking students at this time, but your background is
perfectly aligned, so we should discuss options!
The very first step for connecting with the department is to discuss
with Professor XXX and then we should set up a zoom."

But I don't know what do I have to discuss with this professor (he is the director of the program), I've contacted other potential advisors before and no one told me to contact the program director before, so I don't know what do I have to tell him. I am not from the US and I am not familiar with most of these procedures, so I don't know if you have any idea what they expect me to say to him in that email.

I am not sure if the supervisor is expecting you to contact the Program Director, or is going to talk to them. Does anyone else have a view on that?

@The_Tams I was wondering the same thing. From the phrasing of the email, it could also mean that they internally have to discuss it with the professor and only then will bring OP in.

I think since it isn't entirely clear, I would forward the email exchange to the Program Director, introduce yourself, and give a summary of your conversation (which they can see in full in the email).
It sort of seems like since the potential PhD supervisor doesn't have the resources for a student at the moment, you have to go through the "official channel" (i.e. email the head of the program) so that maybe they could make some sort of arrangement if you were to apply and be accepted.

This sounds like good advice. The OP should note that every university in the US and maybe every research group will have its own procedures. We don't have standardization on such things. The "top person" is probably the one with control of resources. Also note that graduate admissions is normally handled by a committee, not by individual supervisors (some exceptions, though).

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How frequently do pre-tenured assistant professors switch institutions?
It's interview season. I've noticed that many of the applicants in this round are already assistant professors at other institutions.
Is there any known number or record on how frequently (let's say, across North America) assistant professors who don't have tenure yet switch institutions?
The market is already incredibly competitive. The academic institution has spent thousands of dollars on hiring a candidate and wants to retain them. If an assistant professor goes to another school and gets hired, then what you might end up with is this cycle of highly-ranking candidates swirling around and leaving empty positions in their wake. Alternatively, one might presume that the hiring system must be inefficient if, in a competitive environment, a university is unable to retain its hires.
This article (and associated comments) for example, illustrates how many faculty have changed institutions for various reasons; I also know personally at least two assistant professors who left their original institution to move to a new one within the first few years of them being hired.
Depending on the answer to this question, I would have a number of follow-ups (Do schools hate it if you apply elsewhere, and would they fire you? How does a department react when a recent hire leaves? Why do people switch? Are applicants often successful? Do people switch more than once?) but I'll start with this first.

It does happen. But it's not that common. I've been on faculty search committees for a number of years now, and out of the hundreds of applications I've seen, it's very rare to see pre-tenure faculty from other institutions apply. If and when they do, it's because

they're worried about their tenure case
there's a two-body problem (this is in fact the most "reasonable" reason to move)
they have other reasons for wanting to move (location, opportunity)

But it's not a frequent thing. Because it's hard to do: clocks have to be negotiated, research programs have to be uprooted, students have to be moved (and let me not even start on the logistics of moving a family that might just be getting settled in the first place)

What's a two-body problem in this context?

@299792458 "The two-body problem" is a colloquial term for the problem of an academic couple. If one gets a new job in a far-away place, the other might try to move to be close to them.

Well, first of all, I'm living proof that it does happen (twice!) from time to time.  My sense (which is purely personal, and thus can only speak to the situation in mathematics) is that applying for other jobs before tenure is very common, and even people who aren't especially serious about moving will do it "just to test the waters" or "because it's the thing to do" especially right as they are coming up to tenure.  Having been in a position to read files for job searches over the past couple of years, a lot come from people who already have tenure track positions.  It's considerably less common for offers to actually get made (in part because of a vague sense that people may not be especially serious about moving or that they may just want it as a bargaining chip), and less common still for people to move, though I'm far from the last person I know who's done so, and I know of several other instances of people having outside job offers that they ended up turning down.
I think Suresh has the reasons down; for me, the issue has been the two-body problem.  I think generally people are quite understanding about the issue, and I haven't (directly at least) encountered hostility from my former colleagues about moving (and indeed I've cowritten papers with 3 people at institutions I've left since leaving), though I have gotten occasional jokes.
My experience is that the general reaction of schools is to negotiate to convince you to stay (or come back after you've left); I've never heard of anyone being fired because of applications elsewhere.

My several-decades' observation suggests that this does not happen often at all, in all sorts of economic climates. Only the rare person whose work is both "hot" and who wants to play job-change games will do this.
Yes, applying for other jobs does tend to alienate many (not all) faculty at one's current institution. But if one can "get away with it", then it may be profitable, even while people resent it.
I have been acquainted with situation in which there was anticipated to be some prejudicial nonsense at the tenure-decision time, so that people took a year's leave and found other (potentially permanent, but supposedly temporary) jobs as back-up. This is only sensible. Yes, people at the "home" institution used this as leverage to disparage the candidate... but one imagines that these people were wanting to disparage the candidate anyway, so the fact that a person acted reasonably and in self-defense was irrelevant.
Indeed, I think the most common, and most sensible, case of such job applications is exactly when there's some anticipation that the tenure case will not go well. In some very rare cases a person has out-of-the-blue done something surprisingly good, and can launch themselves into a higher stratum of academe. :)
In most cases, such job apps would be a pointlessly antagonistic thing to do...

While I can't say that it's common, among two institutions I know at least two professors who switched Universities when they were assistant professors, and at least one more who looked but didn't end up moving. So this appears to happen, sometimes, long before tenure is even up for discussion.

I don't understand how and why the home institute is going to find out about the person applying elsewhere? Care to explain (after 7 years :)

@Dilworth, while we can argue that job applications should be privileged information, the way that mathjobs.org works does not hide the fact that a person has applied for jobs through that system. Also, ... gossip. Also, letter-of-recommendation writers will know, etc. The info will leak out.

Maybe, but I think applications are indeed confidential. So I don't see why people would breach confidentiality.

At the R1 where I got my social science PhD, I'd estimate that 75% of senior faculty in my department switched jobs at least once before gaining tenure. Usually these moves were from one R1 to another, although usually from institutions considered less prestigious than this one. A few moved from R2/R3 or SLACs to this R1. That being said, maybe my field and department are different from the norm:

This field has a "pretty good" job market; there are more new jobs than PhDs each year (caveat: we do hire from outside the field and some professional practitioners). Still, a healthy job market probably facilitates mobility.
My department is by some metrics the most research productive in the field, so the dynamics that lead one to land there may be exceptional.

Also, my field does not generally do post-docs so a large proportion of those who get a T-T position had a T-T position of some sort as their first job post-PhD. Maybe fields with an expectation of post-doctoral work have more efficient markets that place you into a better fit once you go on the T-T market. We also aren't really a lab-based field so there are fewer "anchors" so to speak that would hold us in one place since we don't have big infrastructure needs.
The advice I received before going on the job market was that your first T-T position was unlikely to be your last. Again, this coming from people whose experience was advising graduates of this department and institution. The logic is that it's not that likely that the market the year you were on the market had the right spot for you and even if it did, you needed some good fortune to be the one chosen.
This answer is of course referring to the pre-pandemic world.

This is becoming more common. Younger workers are savvy about good opportunities and moving is not that big a deal to us. I think the baby boomers look at relocating as a far more disruptive thing than we do. I changed jobs and moved this last year and it was no big deal. I'm single and don't own a home so I can take advantage of good opportunities. Plus, if you want an actual pay increase, you have to move. That's the reality of it.

As a social science PhD I was on the tenure track 4 times. I moved from a community college in the northeast to a comprehensive school in the south to one R1 in the west and then to a private liberal arts college which paid more in the northeast again,  but this was just before the meltdown of 2008/2009 and I don’t think I’d be able to pull it off again in today’s job market which has gotten way more competitive. Having served on search committees now for about a decade after getting tenure, we do get some tenured folks who apply but they rarely are interviewed. TT applications are more common and they often get shortlisted as are post docs and ABDs but the former have to come up with a pretty good reason and explanation about why they want to move where they are and why they want to join our institution. The onus is on them to prove there are as much pull as push factors…

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How/when to retract a project from a student?
Take, for example, that a student is nearing the end of their thesis project.
The supervisor has an idea for a new method that can help to verify the results of part of the project. He does not think much of the significance of the idea at the time, [writes up a document outlining the procedure] and passes it to the student to implement.
A week later, a problem arises. The supervisor questions whether the idea was in fact more significant than he originally thought - i.e. could form a paper on its own, and has realised that answering the students questions on the specifics of how to implement the said method would take up more time/effort then just doing it themselves.
So, how would the supervisor go about retracting the new project from the student? From the student's point of view, they would have a strong motivation to try and implement the idea that has been brought to their attention since it is directly relevant to their thesis work. Yet the supervisor does not want to be hassled by the student on learning the specifics (that would form the content of the paper), and does not want the student to claim partial ownership of the idea. The student has not yet produced any results using the method that has been passed to them.
The issues that I see are as follows:

If the supervisor tells the student to relax and think about something else instead, they probably would not listen
If the supervisor works independently from the student to produce the paper (figures, text, observing trends), then the student could still claim that they were involved (?) since they would have probably started working on it too

and does not want the student to claim partial ownership of the idea.  This to me sounds extremely unethical.

@AndrejaKo I agree. Especially with how the OP frames it: a race to produce the result ... could still claim they were involved

The only "issue" here (as everyone is pointing out) is the unethical alleged behavior of the supervisor.

Thanks for the responses, but I'm not completely convinced... Surely if, say, the prof formed a publication with the student as a collaborator, then either i) the student performs no work towards the paper and is merely 'in on the idea'; or  ii) the publication was needlessly delayed such that the student could use it as a learning exercise and write the paper themselves (manual labor in creating figures/text) which I am not sure about either.  My interpretation was that the student should have some original contribution rather than simply writing up their prof's idea to deserve authorship

I think that I may have given the wrong impression in the wording of the question - i.e. by "have some results first" I mean just taking the procedure into computer code and creating figures/observing features rather than an original contribution

If "writing procedure into computer code and creating figures/observing features" was not an original contribution, all of us would be out of work.

So any time a student contributes to research efforts, "the publication [is] needlessly delayed such that the student [can] use it as a learning exercise and write the paper themselves (manual labor in creating figures/text)"?? Why on earth do you assume that students must necessarily be incapable of making a genuine contribution to a research effort? You realize that students are your future peers, right?

@KyleStrand: It's not my place to assume anything like that. It would be the supervisor's judgment as to whether or not they believe that the specific student in question is able to make any genuine contribution to the specific problem in question, and therefore should also be their choice as to whether or not they decide to take the student along for the ride...? Besides, in this example, the scope of the paper is already closed and all that needs to be done is the write up. The student is free to make their own research effort in their own original follow up paper if they feel so inclined.

"It's not my place to assume anything like that." True. This is exactly my point; you are (unfairly) assuming that. Why?

@James, this (currently) very low-rated question with so many very highly-rated answers is a symbol of what's wrong here. The answers are all telling you that this question simply should not be answered because it would be wrong to use that advice. Your follow-ups are only making the situation seem even worse.

Alright. I did not know that trying to explain the kind of hypothetical situation that I was thinking of would offend so many people. My apologies.

I think the down-votes are misplaced.  Down-voting is supposed to indicate that the question is useless, not that the assumptions behind the question are reprehensible.  This is an INCREDIBLY useful question, even though (or perhaps because) the answer is unequivocally HELL, NO!

@JeffE that's the fault of this stupid "points" system: people (rightly) don't want to give an award to someone who aimed to do something they consider bad.

@JeffE They also indicate "this question does not show any research effort", which I think might apply here, given how little thought has been given to the ethics behind the question...

With the way this question is framed, "retracting" the idea sounds both difficult and unethical. Based on the information given here, my advice, and the only ethical path, is for the supervisor to collaborate closely with the student on the work. If the idea is good, the pair should work toward a co-authored publication. This question states that, "since [the student] has more free time on their hands [they] could potentially have some results first." In this case, it sounds like collaboration with the student is very likely to help.
Working with students means teaching and mentorship. It means that supervisors are, "hassled by the student on learning the specifics" and it often means, "answering the students questions on the specifics of how to implement the said method [in ways that] take up more time/effort then just doing it themselves." This is part of the job of an academic supervisor.
Moreover, I completely fail to see why co-authorship and shared ownership of an idea between a supervisor and student is a problem.
That said, one of the most important jobs a supervisor has is trying to decide when and what to delegate. It was the supervisors job to be more thoughtful and they need to deal with the consequences — whatever they are.

Does a high number of authors not impact the rating of the academic for promotion purposes? I assumed this since I had read papers where there was only one author (the professor), and the graduate students were mentioned only in the acknowledgements section

It doesn't matter. Ends don't justify the means; especially not in this case.

@James Two is "a high number"?

In the vast majority of fields, co-authorship is the norm. You might have a hard time getting promoted if you are only ever author 15 on papers with 18 authors. Being first author on a co-authored paper with a student is just not going to hurt almost anywhere. If you are supervising students, you should know this. That said, even if it did hurt, it still doesn't matter in terms of what is ethical and appropriate.

Since the question is formed in a hypothetical question, an answer should probably contain advice towards the student, too: run, was fast and as far as you can, and get a supervisor that won't skrew you over.

The stated scenario sounds awful, and the clarification makes it sound even worse. When you start a collaboration with a student you're advising (I'm using "you" colloquially), you don't get to "keep the good bits". That's grossly unfair to the student who is after all attempting to learn from you.
Yes, research is uncertain, and you can't always predict what ideas will become interesting.
Which is why rules for collaboration are set up first, and are not contingent on the quality of the (potential) results.
I understand that in this case, there's a worry about the student "slowing things down". But that's about convenience, not about doing the right thing.
And I should say that because this is a student and not a collaborator, all rules should be adjusted to give the student the benefit.

It is hard not to sense some kind of "foul play" by the phrase He does not want the student to claim partial ownership of the idea and the phrase "just doing it themselves". Who are they? The senior professor, the PostDoc or a graduate student? If the idea was not good, the poor student should bang his head to make it worthwhile. If the idea is good then you somehow want the student out of it.
The main question is why? If you write a seminal paper based on the idea, one more co-author would not hurt you. Why don't you want the student involved? He will provide help and you can explain to him that he is not going to be the first author and immediately all your problems are solved.
Once the idea gets out of your head and into somebody's mind (and possibly his PC) it cannot be contained anymore. What will stop the student to implement it on his own? If he is fast enough, he may even do it faster than the busiest, more senior team members.
I know I do not answer the actual OP's question but this is deliberate. I consider highly unethical the fact OP thinks he can freely change your mind, make people work on his ideas and when those ideas seem promising (which is partially due to the student's work - although he clearly denies this fact) he claims full ownership and decides who else should work on his idea. The only reason I see legit for this kind of behaviour is if there is a highly ranked conference approaching and the OP (by doing the work himself) might make it on time, something that will be impossible for the student to do. If it is so, then the OP may explain it to the student and implement the idea himself. All other possible reasons are either questionable or possibly unethical.
If you treasure raw research ideas that much (and most of us do), I would suggest next time be careful who you share it with. When most people get an excellent research idea they only share it with the ones who will work on it. Once they share it, they should stick with these people, unless something unpredictable (work-related arguments, work relocation) happens. But even then, plan changes should be fully explained. And since from your previous questions I believe that you are possibly a graduate student, please do not start your academic career by questionable practises.

The only time I can imagine retracting a project from a student, is if continuing with it would be detrimental to them or to the university.
Retracting in other circumstances is unethical. It's a breach of trust. And it's a fundamental failure at the task in hand, of being a supervisor of research students.
It is my job, as a supervisor of research students, to enable them to become better researchers than me.
++
The first time I was told that, by a very wise colleague, I was shocked. I felt threatened. My students would go on to take my research, my grants, my future jobs away from me.
Then I took a deep breath, had a think about what my role was, and realised he was completely right. And I accepted it, and now I revel in it.
If it ever got to the point where I didn't want to do what I practicably can to make them better researchers than me, then it would be time for me to step down from that role.
++(yes yes, I know, it's my job to enable them to be the best researchers they can be, insofar as it does not ask for impracticable demands from me. The phrasing above isn't perfectly accurate. But it does have impact, and it does punch home an important message)

Personally, my experience is that somehow there is no scarcity in problems that wait to be solved. The bottlenecks are rather finding good students and thein their time as well as my time... I'd think it would help tremendously if by some magic I could make them good and experienced researchers immediately ;-)

Too late, you should have thought that more carefully beforehand. You cannot undo.
Like it or not, this student is now your collaborator for this idea, so I'd suggest to get the best out of the collaboration that you can get. This means no races, etc. Try to give him chunks of work that won't require too many questions and interaction (if that's a problem) and try to publish asap, because you are collaborating with this person, but probably you are "competing" with other people in other places, who may be able to produce results faster than you.
Next time, think about it twice before you share your next idea, specially if you are going to be so possessive about them. Now it's shared.
If the problem is being hassled, you can postpone investing time specifically on that until the deadline for publication is met. Priorities are priorities. The student may not care after that or may have no questions. By your wording the problem doesn't seem to be that, though.
We can only hope there are micro-contributions in the future so that we can trace exactly how much did each person contribute to something and have the provenance of everything with a personal granularity. Either good or bad, it's not happening anytime soon. I'd think this would be good, specially if it helps to collaborate smoothly, there are many open problems that need to be solved, the more we can collaborate (if done correctly), the more problems we will be able to solve in less time, in theory.
“We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.” ― Winston Churchill.

'think about it twice before you share your next idea' I disagree. Share your ideas with your students, the chances that they'll 'steal' them from you are practically nonexistent while they might be able to help you test them.

I agree with Jigg. Although you're completely right that's it's too late at this point, the fact that someone might think there is a competition or race between you and your own student is a sign of deep dysfunction.

@Jigg 1) you are taking the sentence out of context, please don't do that. 2) that's a very naïve POV, you overlook that people may be a burden. Sharing ideas is always good in theory but it may not be so good in practice. It's well known in software projects that more people involved means more communication channels between those people (they increase in a factorial fashion), more people may imply a delay in delivering the software. Sharing an idea and answering an indeterminate and potentially infinite number of questions about it may take longer than simply implementing and publishing it.

@BenjaminMakoHill same answer as for Jigg.

I agree with "think twice about sharing an idea". In the circumstance of the question asked because if/as the supervisor is extremely possessive, (s)he should at least take care that this is not lived on the back of the students. But more fundamentally also: if the supervisor does not think enough about the idea to recognize a good idea (which IMHO should be the case with an idea given to a student for a thesis), I doubt that students could rely on the supervisor not handing out bad ideas.

@cbeleites you raise an interesting issue, which is a supervisor having ideas and only sharing the "bad ones", keeping the "good ones" for him. In industry and regular work there are roles, "programmer", "designer", "audio engineer", whatever... Maybe a list of authors for a paper is not well-suited for the modern world. This is something to consider.

@Trylks: well, there are roles in academia as well (supervisor, professor, PhD student, master student, etc.) IMHO the role of supervisor implies the duty to hand out good (thoroughly thought-out) ideas to the student. Some papers even give these roles ("A. Uthor, IEEE student member") The list of authors can nowadays usually be complemented by a "contributions" paragraph. The only type of thesis where I think that it is OK to hand out ideas that are possibly/probably not elaborate enough to yield a paper on their own would be a bachelor thesis (which in my field/country is to short for that).

... IMHO a master thesis project should be an idea that is good enough to yield a paper, a PhD project needs to yield several papers. Considering an idea too good by a criterion (publishable) that in my field would indicate "suitable" kind of raises red flags about the supervision in general with me.

@cbeleites yes, I know and I agree, but there are several things to consider. One of them is the possibility of students having ideas and how to give the proper credit for those ideas. There seems to be an "obsession" for metrics nowadays, but the metrics don't seem to be granular enough IMHO.

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How do you deal with extremely timid/shy students in small classes?
Note: I'm not an academic, but I had a student like this as a colleague while in high school (12-18 in a school for students with Asperger's)* myself and I think that this is a worthwhile subject to discuss.
Sometimes you have one or two REALLY shy students in a class with a small headcount. Students that never raise their hands in class, never ask questions, never notify that they have a problem,... The really severe cases will internally panic when you ask them a question and just shut down completely, not even making a sound or a response.
They aren't bad students, far from it. They make their assignments, score well on tests and succeed in the exercises. They just are REALLY passive in the classroom, to the point of almost starting to cry when the teacher asks them something. They also only have that problem in class: when they're among friends during non-class time, like lunch or break, they're quite open and talk rather freely.
As an example, the student from above was so shy that he couldn't introduce himself during the very first week. In the first 2 years, he couldn't give any public speeches, even after much encouragement from the teacher. You couldn't get any more than 2 consecutive words out of him. When the teacher addressed him because they wanted to involve him, he did the above mentioned shutdown, even after repeated encouragement. He loosened up somewhat over the years, but it was still such a surprise when he first willingly raised his hand (sometime in the 4th year), that he got a positive note in his weekly report just for that.
The problem is that it's not always immediately obvious if the student struggles with something. Sometimes, a student like this hopelessly fails an entire class because he didn't understand something from the first year and was too shy to ask for help.
What methods can a teacher use for students like this?

*While I mention a student from SEN education, this question also can apply to non-SEN students. And while this question mentions a high-school student (which I understand is not entirely on-topic in here), it also applies to higher education with smaller groups.

Perhaps such a student would be more comfortable asking questions online where it is not face-to-face and in front of an audience?

The easiest way to prevent singling out a person would be asking all the students to write a question down that they want addressed for next class (or if the questions are short enough, the current class) on a piece of paper. Putting students on the spot is counter-productive. When enough feedback has been given to give the question-asker confidence that his questions aren't "dumb" then you can pull back on the papers and then the student should be more willing to approach the issue verbally.

Regarding "Putting students on the spot is counter-productive," I meant shy students. They're more comfortable talking (or not) on their terms, and forcing them may invoke the negative response you don't want.

I was one of these students, so thank you for asking this question. Whenever a professor made an effort to reach out to students like me and involve us in the class, I always felt like I got a lot more out of it, but I had a hard time overcoming my internal hangups if the environment wasn't just right.

I am not sure if there is s good way (I myself struggle a lot with this problem), but i started to give out easy problems before lecture and give people 5-10 min to think about them. Then i solve them during lecture. Even if people not react,it gives them more time to think through the problems, and less pressure than a quiz. That made many students talk about it at least between each other, and I received much more clear reactions if they understand things or not.

Grade them on their work.

I think stating very clearly that you are available to answer questions (and not just while in class) like office hours or before/after class is important. Some students are more comfortable with email, make sure they know they have your email and that it's ok to use it. Give some positive reinforcement when students ask questions.
I teach graphic design so I don't have a lot of students (20 at most usually) and a lot of classroom time is dedicated to problem-based learning and most of my teaching is coaching. I go see every student to check how they're doing and ask if they have any questions. It's difficult for them to get their work criticized in front of everyone at first so I'll do small group meetings instead of whole class presentations.
I think most shy people can open up when they're around people they trust so I think establishing trust with the student as a teacher is crucial. You can make them work in small teams so they get to know each other better and build up slowly from there.
I don't think it's something you can fix in a single course so there is only so much you can do without affecting the whole classroom.

I am a college student very similar to this. I absolutely love Piazza,
a web tool that allows professors to create very functional online forums for classes- like Moodle forums, except they actually work. I've used this both in entirely online classes and in large lecture sections, and I find it tremendously valuable.
My favorite thing about it is that it gives the professor the option to allow students to ask/ answer questions anonymously. This is wonderful for asking questions that you think are stupid, which are usually the ones that need to be asked the most. Conversations I've had with other students (or with profs or TA's) on Piazza have saved my grades on many assignments.
Whether someone chooses to use Piazza or something else entirely, I heartily recommend enabling some kind of supervised online communication with (and among) your students. Not all of them will use it, but the ones that need it will be grateful.
EDIT: This isn't an advertisement. I don't know how to prove that, but can you recommend stylistic changes I could make to my response that would sound less like an ad?

Thanks for introducing that website. It is interesting indeed.

This answer sounds like an advert.

When you pose a question, have students discuss their answer in pairs or small groups  for a few minutes before you call on someone. Thus, students present the group's answer, not their own, so they feel less on the spot. Plus, answers tend to be better, and students have learned from the discussion.
This is sometimes called Peer Instruction.
There are other proven techniques for having students work in small groups, too - see Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL), Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL), etc.
Note that "shyness" can also be a cultural issue, not just an individual issue.

I hand out poker chips. When the student has spoken they turn it in. Each student needs to contribute to the discussion as we are doing critiques of work. This helps me easily keep track of who hasn't spoken. The objective and expectation is clear to the student what is being demanded. I've been surprised by how well this works with very shy students. Holding the chip in your hand, helps with the anxiety, and you see you aren't the only one. These are post college students, mostly from foreign countries. More and more I see the tricks from elementary school work really well with adults.

One method that may work when nothing else does is to give the student a question you are going to ask in class, along with the answer, in advance.  This can help the student focus on solving their participation problem because any subject matter difficulties are removed.

Think also how you react to questions or answers from the bolder students. Even the stupid questions. While I was not "shutdown"-type of shy when I was younger, much of my participation depended on how the general atmosphere was.
If I had to fear that my question or answer would get negative reaction, I would not ask or answer voluntarily. Don't trust that students will know what is stupid question and what is not. Shy person might quite likely fear that his/her question is stupid or answer is wrong, even if it would not be. So if they have seen you react negatively to "legitimately" stupid question (and by reacting negatively I mean things like sighing or comments such as "I just explained this..." or similar type) they probably won't ask their question.


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Will I be penalised if my economics job market paper is coauthored with my supervisor?
I read once before that the job market paper should not be coauthored with my supervisor because other universities will assume that my supervisor did all the work.
I will apply for an academic role after my PhD, is it true I will be penalised for this?
If my other two papers are relatively strong will that eliminate the risk?
But what if my supervisor coauthors on more than one paper?

Did you have a first author papers among these three?

I am not sure yet. Only 1 I think will be me as the sole author.

Which Field? In CS, I would expect the advisor to be the last author of all papers from his PhD candidates.. (Assuming that I correctly understood the question. It is quite confusing for me)

@FábioDias You should probably note that you mean applied CS (as it would be a very odd thing in theoretical CS where the authors are listed alphabetically).

@FábioDias That is wrong in general. There exist areas in CS, and advisors in CS who are not author (or last author) on all their students' papers.

@choener In my understanding, that would mean that the advisors didn't review the papers (or even guided the development), which is weird. Or is just common to disregard a contributing author?

@FábioDias Reviewing a paper is nowhere near enough to be included as an author. Nor is guiding the development of the paper in many cases.

In my case, my supervisor provided some of the data and guided the development. I guess that's why I include him, But I did all of the actual work. I think maybe it's just how it works.

What is a "job market paper"?

I write 3 papers, and I will decide which one is my job market paper. This paper is deemed the best of all 3 papers, and showcases the skills and ability of the student, as well as contributing to the field, and in most cases, will be the paper you submit for publishing. So when I apply for academic positions after my PhD, I will be judged primarily on my job market paper.

Economics is not my field, so my answer is based on what I've heard from other people. Generally, it is preferable if the job market paper has a sole authorship or at least if it is co-authored by other graduate students. However, I have heard of people getting jobs even with a job market paper coauthored with their advisor. Since you have two other papers, and one with sole authorship, that will to some extent work towards eliminating any negative impression that the job market paper may create. However, ultimately it will depend on your potential employers and the practices that they follow. Keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best.


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What are the master's degrees in engineering a bachelor in computer engineering can be admitted in?
What are the masteral degrees or courses a bachelor's degree in computer engineering usually leads to? Other than computer engineering itself, that is.


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Can this be one of my acceptable answers for "why do you want to study a PhD"?
Obviously, I will mostly speak about my experience performing research at an undergraduate level and in internships and how I wish to undertake a PhD to improve my lab technical skills and contribute to known scientific research.
However, is it appropriate to briefly mention my reason for choosing the University in particular, not merely the research group? For instance, my pet hobby is the piano and I have found a couple Universities, that produce world leading research in my field, that have various performance opportunities for pianists.

I don't understand what you mean by "performance opportunities for pianists that produce world leading research"? Do you mean opportunities for great researchers who also play piano or opportunities for pianists who do research into pianology? (lol)

Hi @AzorAhai. Thanks for your reply. I apologize for the ambiguity in my original long-winded question and have edited it appropriately in order to clarify my query.
I meant neither option. I merely wanted to enquire whether it would make sense to say that not only do I want to do research within life science in A topic with B group for C and D reasons and am suitable for E, F, G reasons but that I am attracted to the University because of H, I and J reasons including the fact that it affords me the opportunity to play, as a pianist, a habit I find to be a good stress reliever.

"I am curious" seems a better answer than your suggestion. Sorry.

When I ask the question "why do you want to study towards a PhD?", the very last thing I want to hear is something entirely unrelated to studying towards a PhD. Not because I fear that you get sidetracked (I don't necessarily worry much about that), and certainly not because I have some inherent bias against piano players, but because I worry that you actually don't know why you want to do a PhD. This is true for a surprisingly large percentage of applicants, and typically a fairly bad sign.
Consequently, if you get this question, I suggest that you explain why you want to do a PhD, and nothing else. If the question is why you want to do a PhD at exactly this university, this can be part of your answer, but it should not be the only, or even the main, answer to that question either. Quite frankly I would imagine this to be largely ignored - playing piano is not memorable enough to make you stick out from the applicant pool, and unrelated enough to virtually all fields of research that I won't count particularly positively either.

It is very unlikely that mentioning possible performance opportunities is a good answer.
(a) The question is why you want to do a PhD, not why you want to join that particular research group/university. This part would not change even if the reason was aligned to academics - answering 'why do you want to do a PhD?' with 'because this university routinely produces Nobel laureates' is still incorrect, because there is a missing link, i.e. your motivation to do research. That is in fact the crux of the question.
(b) Coming to the piano bit, that may itself detract. It could indicate that you will spend significant time honing your piano skills and not have enough time/energy for your research projects. It's a no-brainer that hobbies are not a bad thing; but interviewers have very little information to base their choice upon, so they would typically play it safe and not give you the benefit of doubt, especially if it's a very competitive programme.

Thanks for your answer @user153812
I find the (a) part interesting, as I thought it would make sense to speak about the impact of the group.
I provisionally planned to perhaps state that as a personal ambition is to produce high quality research, I'm attracted as I've seen the records of past students and it's something that I want to replicate.
As for (b), I see your point. And I suppose I won't mention it. Thank you.
Admissions are competitive enough and I would not want to jeopardize a potential offer. I had naively thought it'd make me seem mo

For future readers you might want to change your first sentence a bit. It isn't clear what "this" refers to. I was initially wondering if it meant your answer here or the OP's proposed answer. A clarification might help. It is clear with a full reading, of course, but some people react before they've read it all.

@Buffy - Thank you, I missed that. Quite hilarious actually.:)

To be honest, I've found myself doing the same thing and have to edit. Who knew that "this" and "that" could be such loaded words? Now that we have had a good laugh, deposit 3 bitcoin in .... no, actually not.

Mm hilarious is the word :)

It seems like a red-herring. That is, unnecessary and possibly misleading. Whether it helps you or not depends too much on personalities. If the faculty happens to include pianists (fairly common in Mathematics, actually) it might speak to your well roundedness. But most of the decisions made will be focused on narrow evaluations of your likelihood of success in the program.
I would focus more on what you want to do in the major field, and what future you see for yourself as a researcher.
Mentioning that you find piano as an excellent stress reducer (it can be) won't hurt you. But if they get the idea that you are more interested in performance of music than the "science-bit" then it would.
Sail carefully in these waters. Here there be dragons.
I'll note, for the record, that it is possible to get a doctorate, even a PhD, in music, focused, perhaps, on history or theory. A friend holds one from a top university. Her interest was history, but she is also an excellent harpsichordist. That would put you closer to the performance aspect and give you an "in" with performers and teachers around the world. Decide on what you really want to do before you jump.

It is certainly sensible to talk about why you want to do your PhD at the particular university, but that should focus on issues that are relevant for your PhD. For example, you may be excited by ideas of a particular research group, or you think that the university is particularly strong on some topic, or that it has excellent collaboration between group A and group B and you want the opportunity to gain that broader perspective, or ...


text:
How long does it typically take to edit and finalize a research paper?
I have submitted a draft paper (word count is about 11000 words) to my supervisor in Late July 2021. My supervisor has started editing the paper in late September but hasn't finished it yet. Editing about 30% of the paper is still remaining. Is it normal to take this long? I must mention that the field I work on is not the field of expertise of my supervisor.
Edit 1: added word counts in response to answers.

Are you saying that your supervisor is editing the paper even though you haven't heard back from the journal where you submitted the paper to? Or are you saying that you submitted your draft to your supervisor?

Regardless, it seems to me like you have major communication issues with your adviser. If you wonder when he will finally be done, or if this is the time frame that things usually take, then these are questions you should be talking about with your adviser!

@WolfgangBangerth I have submitted it to my supervisor. Thanks for pointing out that it is not clear.

@Roland Thanks for giving the estimate. He takes similar time (1-2 months) for other students as well. I guess he has difficulty finding time or motivation.

"About 30% of the paper is still remaining" - how do you know this? Did you see the edits? If so, the draft must've been in a really rough shape...

Rather than edit you are speaking about co-writing a paper. It can takes few days or months. At least it looks like given the long interval. Otherwise the supervisor did nothing or very little. This is not a real question.

Expected time depends on the subject as well as what the purpose of the "editing and finalizing" is. For example, if this is a maths paper with 20 pages of proofs which you want your supervisor to check line-by-line, then it could take months (especially if they haven't seen these proofs before).

@user1729 right, and I would not call it editing

@Alchimista I agree, but it can be part of finalizing. However, I put "editing and finalizing" in quotes because, with 30% of the paper unfinished, we are not talking about either "editing" or "finalizing"!

@Lodinn I think there is some confusion due to the wording used in the question. By 30% remaining, I meant editing 30% is remaining. I have submitted the full paper.

@Alchimista 30% of the paper is not unfinished, 30% editing is unfinished. I submitted a fully complete paper. Sorry about the confusion.

@user1729 The editing process requires changing the English and asking me to change some figures. No proofs.

No, I get you submitted the full text, was just wondering how do you even estimate these 30%. Your answer to Buffy clarifies that a bit: you're watching updates on the cloud (still, what do these 30% mean? 2 sections finished, 1 untouched?). By the sound of it, this is a rather major edit so spending a few weeks on it if they haven't seen the material before would probably be expected.

@Lodinn 30% is a rough estimate based on the word counts. Thanks for the alternative perspective. It is possible that I have unrealistic expectations.

The time seems long, but probably not unprecedented. There isn't enough information here to make a judgement about the reasons, but if this is normal behavior for them, then it is possible that they are just in over their head - too many students, too varied the topics. The fact that it is outside their normal field of interest is probably responsible for a lot of it. They need to do their own research, perhaps, just to keep up with you.
You don't list a reason for the July - September delay. Vacations? Travel? Other deadlines? Laziness? Incompetence? But you suggest that they have only been working on it for a bit over a month. That is more normal. And you deserve updates during that month.
You don't give the length or difficulty of the paper. If it is just a "draft" then it may be harder for them to manage. If it is in a difficult subject or is pretty rough, then a longer turn-around can be explained.
You don't say how critical the time is. If it is a serious issue then you should expect more from them, otherwise, maybe not.
But, you need to make progress and your supervisor has a responsibility to help. You need to communicate with them, preferably in person, to work out a solution. Bugging them or accusing them is unlikely to get a better result. But you need to talk to them and work out a plan.
One option to suggest is that they give you back the part they have finished so that you can make any necessary updates. You can ask them to send along updates as they have them. You can tell them that you are a bit blocked until you get their feedback.
But, one meeting probably isn't enough. Suggest that you meet every couple of weeks for half an hour to get advice and feedback. They owe you that much. Getting partial updates may be enough to let you keep your momentum.

Although it is not his area of expertise, he knows exactly what I have done (we met every week to discuss the project while it was going on). Reason for the Jul-Sep delay is other deadlines. The paper is shared on the cloud, so I can see live updates on what he has done and I immediately work on the updates. Length of the paper is ~11000 words (not sure how to quantify difficulty, he knows what has been done). I am completing 7 years, and I can't start postdoc applications unless the papers are at least put up on arxiv. He is well aware of the position I'm in, but doesn't seem to care.

You can have a section on the CV: Work in Progress. List the project(s) there with titles as available. They don't really need to be public to start the postdoc process. Don't assume more obstacles than you actually have.

I don't have much else to show for my PhD (apart from the product that I have developed during my PhD). This is the major paper that took about 5 years of work (development of the product + clinical trial). There is another minor paper which he is yet to start editing. Apart from these, I have one paper as a second author in SciRep. Am I correct in assuming that these arxiv papers will significantly increase my chances of getting an interview?

Perhaps they will, but it probably isn't worth assuming it if the alternative is lost time. Especially a lost year. Write a good CV. The people you want to apply to probably understand the difficulty of research and results in your field.

I won't be able to write a good CV with what I have (mediocre at best compared with other candidates I have seen.) Can a good research statement add some value to my application?

Yes, of course, and don't underestimate the impact of a solid "Work in Progress" section. Those who have something going on seem more impressive (to me) than those who are just waiting.

Thank you for the helpful suggestions.

Is it normal to take this long?

Yes. This is field dependent I suppose, but in general, editing a paper for publication (again, depending on the area) is a very hard work, and your supervisor have only taken about one or two months for editing at this point, which is not only normal, but quite a short period (assuming he/she is doing a serious job of reviwing and rewriting).

Okay, thanks for the alternative perspective.

Could you please tell me the word count of your paper?
I used to edit academic papers and our expected turnaround time depends on the word count. If your word count is around 4,000 words, I'd expect it to be edited and returned within about one week. If your word count is 50,000 words, then it will take a fair bit longer.
For a short paper, I'd expect it back within two weeks. After two weeks, you have a right to politely ask the supervisor for some feedback or an update. Please be polite about it though, because your supervisor might be under a lot of stress. A quick coffee catch-up is a good idea.

Hi, the word count is about 11000 words.

Is it normal to take this long?

No, this is unusual, and highly problematic. This behavior from your advisor severely cripples your ability to make progress as you are getting blocked on something in your research which should have taken a week or two. If you haven't, you need to be sending reminders to your advisor, at least weekly, e.g.:

Hey X, Following up on this -- can you give me an expected timeline on when you would be able to edit and finalize our draft manuscript?

In my impression, your supervisor is not doing a good job of supervising you. If they are not malicious, then reminders and direct communication like the above might help. It is likely they are just extremely busy, but that does not excuse ignoring and completely neglecting a PhD student.

I think that sending reminders weekly, especially in the tone you suggest, is counterproductive. Both in terms of extending the time and in the possible attitude of the supervisor towards the OP.

Thanks for your suggestions. I do not think there is malicious intent. I think it is more of an indifference. I have tried nudging, but it doesn't work.

The fact that this type of neglectful behavior is the status quo and people are completely OK with it is a huge cultural problem in academia. I get that people are busy, and it's common, but it shouldn't be a hard ask to get a specific timeline on feedback or edits to a paper.

It actually helps no one to delay on the edits. It does not help the supervisor, as they have to do the work eventually anyway, instead it just creates a snowball effect for them where they in turn delay other responsibilities. It obviously does not help the student. Lose-lose

@ArkaGhosh FWIW I am not saying your supervisor is malicious, I'm saying this behavior is all-too-common and really should not be tolerated in our culture (unfortunately it is). I don't really have a concrete suggestion if the supervisor refuses to provide a timeline. Perhaps taking matters into your own hands and offering to do the edits yourself

Also, I fully agree with what @Buffy's answer says.

@6005 I believe the only way out is "set deadlines and agree on the course of action if they're not met". I know I would easily not even touch some parts of the backlog for months given there are other parts, with deadlines set. I don't know if some supervisors actually refuse to provide them altogether: they surely should realize the student is in the right to demand their interests being considered...

@6005 Thanks for your comments. I agree with your comment on the neglectful attitude being tolerated. I think the reason is the power asymmetry in the supervisor-student relationship. A supervisor can seriously hurt a student's career choices while a student can do very little. So, the student pretty much has nothing to do other than tolerate.

@6005 I have done what I could have done by myself. I need his expertise in improving the manuscript. I guess I have nothing to do other than keep nudging and hoping that he finishes it soon.