text:
Why does the status of my manuscript keep changing?
I submitted an article to a philosophy journal published by Springer. It has been 6 months since I submitted but the status keeps changing. It went under review for 2 days (after going through a normal sequel), then an editor was assigned, then reviewers were assigned, then it was under review for 2 months, then reviewers again assigned, and now an editor has been assigned. I can't figure out what is happening in this whole process.
Can someone out here help me to get a clarification of what is going on here?

The editor can surely help you understand what's going on, have you contacted them?

6 months?  For a philosophy paper, that is lightning fast!

You don't need to keep checking the status every day. Stop and do something else productive instead.

About all one can say with confidence is that they've encountered some trouble in the peer review process. That doesn't mean it's your fault or anything to do with your paper, it just means they encountered something that, ideally, would not happen.
Example: they invited 3 reviewers to start, one of whom accepted (under review) -> one day later the reviewer comes back and say they don't think they should review the paper, while the other two declined (no reviewers left, status switches back to editor assigned) -> editor then invites another three reviewers (reviewers assigned) -> one of whom accepted (under review).
This is obviously not ideal - the ideal is all three of the initial reviewers agreeing and writing a constructive review - but it's very common. There's nothing to do except wait.

Thank you very much

In some rare cases, it might also happen that the three reviewers couldn't come to a conclusive decision about the paper. Therefore, a fresh reviewer needs to be assigned again, which requires the intervention of the editor again.

Thank you very much


text:
Thanking the editor of one journal for their comments — on a paper that is being resubmitted to a different journal
I submitted a paper to a top economics journal and got desk-rejected.
The editor was nice enough to provide a personalized rejection letter with constructive comments which really help.
As I revise the paper and submit to somewhere else, should I include this editor's name in the acknowledgement?

It is not expected that you do so. I would personally be weary of acknowledging the editor because it implies that there was some formal/informal collaboration/discussion of results. Some may see this as you claiming some type of relationship with that editor. When in reality your interaction was purely within the context of that editor's job. If you are really intent on acknowledging that editor, I would email them and ask their permission to do so, at the very least that would imply some extra interaction beyond your desk reject email.

There's no downside, so you might as well do it. "We thank so-and-so for helpful comments" ought to be OK.

Indeed. No need at all to mention that they made their comments in their capacity for a different journal. It is enough that the person was helpful.

That would seem to depend on the nature of the advice. If it is advice on the content of the paper, then it might be important to do so. Even necessary.
But if it was advice on writing style or alternate journals and such, unrelate to the ideas in the paper, then it isn't likely to be as important.  But it wouldn't be inappropriate in any case.

There is no requirement to do so, but it is certainly something you can do.
It's fundamentally no different to thanking a "reviewer of an earlier version of this manuscript", or a co-worker who gave helpful comments. It's polite, and might be appreciated. But if you want to be especially careful, you could contact them to check if they were OK with it.

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text:
Can a data science postdoc improve their chances in industry as a pure science graduate?
Long story short, I defended my PhD in pure mathematics in a top-tier university in Europe but decided I'm saturated with the toxic mentality of the group so I wanted to look for a position in the industry. Although my thesis was on pure probability, I taught classes in machine learning and have some knowledge of the domain so I thought that I might be a good fit for a junior position in data science.
I interviewed at a FAANG company, but then the hiring freeze happened. As my home country is known for its high-tech industry (but not the quality of universities) I tried to search there. 6 months later and after sending my CV over 350 times through LinkedIn I am totally anxious, exhausted and feel either the market is hard or I'm not a completely competent candidate.
A few days ago I saw an announcement on LinkedIn for a postdoc and I was so tired that I clicked the button. Seemingly the guy is from the computational neuroscience group of a university here and he asked if I am interested collaborating (probably for a postdoc) for a data science job.
On the one hand it's a job, probably at minimum wage. On the other hand I am too traumatized by academia even now, I don't want to get close to it ever again and have strong doubts that a data-scientific postdoc counts towards experience I need.
Can you share from your experience if a postdoc in data science helps people to find a job in industry afterwards?

@RodrigodeAzevedo I know Python

There are jobs on fraud-detection using "data science" (whatever that means). I know people who might be hiring

Have you thought about the opposite problem? You might be overqualified? You hold a PhD in mathematics and you apply for junior positions. At the moment companies struggle to find people with data science and AI background. At our university students don't even finish the bachelor because they get too good offers from industry while still being students.
Another explanation: your CV sounds too academic and HR departments don't even understand your qualifications. Remove academic details that don't matter outside of academia and write a simple-to-understand CV (max 1 page).

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


text:
If you're already out of your school, what's the best way to validate that you are a good student, it's just that circumstances hindered you?
We all have certain phases in life where we fail to give our 100% for some reason. Some get it earlier in life, while some get it later. For me that phase was university. I could not get good grades in my computer engineering. To be honest, I got 71% which is first division (80% above is counted as a distinction) so I won't call it a bad grade, but it's not the level I would have achieved if I had given it  100%. (That's what I believe and although I might be wrong, that's why I am seeking for a way to validate my knowledge again).
I want some form of scholarship (a 50% scholarship, for example, would be great help) for a Master of Science in the United States. The subjects that I intend to study are "computer networks" "distributed systems" "Linux systems", and so on. ... Something related to the computer science of system and network administration.
How can I demonstrate my knowledge?
We have a few interesting tests in Nepal:

Engineering License Exam.

Public Service Commission Exam.

In the engineering license exam, they don't show your grades, but you pass if you get 50% or above. It's an objective based entrance exam.
In the Public Service Commission Exam (used for admission to the Public Service/Civil Service), you are asked both subjective and objective questions and I genuinely think it can be a good way to validate my knowledge . The Public Service Commission Exams are probably the toughest thing here. But I don't think any universities in USA will take it seriously.
I don't think I've resources for writing a research paper. (I assume by research paper you've to find something totally new that's why I find it complicated).
I am working as a System Administrator and doing well there, but I don't think that's relevant at all.
I've a working repo of Computer Science Topics that I immerse myself into in github that I learn regularly, but neither do I think it carries even 2 cents of weight.
A Masters degree in Nepal could be an option, but I don't really want to waste years studying in Nepal. The learning environment is not great here. It is impossible to even find books (physical books I mean) and, especially for a Masters degree, the resources are negligible.
From what I see, IELTS and GRE are my only option. But I don't think even a good GRE result can compete with a half decent grades.
Am I overthinking? Any solutions?

You haven't described why circumstances hindered you

Perhaps you are capable of being a good student, but your record shows you did not perform as one. The question is why not?

MS scholarships are extremely rare in the US. You are expected to pay for it with your increased future earnings. I would set that plan aside.

I'd like to see some source to back up your claims @BryanKrause, How much scholarship is scholarship according to you? And more sources to back up your claims.

@barnyard9 Individual programs will have information on their funding opportunities - that's where you should look. The "percentage scholarship" is not a very useful measurement because some US schools (private schools in particular) have far higher tuition rates that few students actually pay; it doesn't really matter if you have a 50% scholarship if tuition is 3-4X an equivalent public university.

@barnyard9 You mentioned partial scholarships which are common at private schools where no one except wealthy international students actually pays full tuition, which is why I mentioned that. I'm not going to collect information from hundreds of universities for you. The people up voting my comment are likely doing so because they are also aware this is how it works in the US. Go to the specific programs you want to apply to and see what they say about scholarships for master's students.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/38712/63475 is another post with a question about masters funding in the US.

I just contacted my Nepali relative in the US studying at Arkansas Tech University MSc IT. Yearly fee is 10-12K USD and living expenses early is 7-8K USD. @BryanKrause.

@barnyard9 Two things. It's widely known master's scholarships are rare. Master's programs are how departments make money. That's just how it works. That's OK you didn't know that, but that is the sort of thing people come here to learn. Second, feedback as a second-language speaker of English, your comments are coming off really rudely.

There're a few ways:

You can explain the hindering circumstances in the statement of purpose.
You can get your recommenders to explain it.
You can cite kickass work experience.

IELTS is nothing, it just demonstrates English competency. GRE is something, especially if your field has a subject GRE, but not much.
Just be warned that the hindering circumstances need to be temporary & something most people will sympathize with, you need to show that they're really behind you, and perhaps most importantly, there are few MS scholarships in the US. PhD scholarships are common, but not MS ones.


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How would one go about detecting citation fraud circles?
By citation fraud, I am referring to a certain number of academics colluding to write bogus papers and reference each other.
I personally suspect the department chair at my alma mater of engaging in this behavior, which I also think is already prevalent in China as a result of government rewards, etc.
The advent of text generators probably makes it of a even more universal concern.
Are there any tools in common use detecting extensive mutual citation? I am thinking there should be some tool like MOSS or Turnitin but for network analysis of citations. If such a tool does not exist, what would an appropriate algorithm for this look like?

Bogus papers and circular citations aren't the same thing. Salami slicing results and circular citations might go together, though. But the quality of the resulting publication(s) should override other considerations.

The department chair I mentioned has a bogus paper referencing other similar bogus papers with suspiciously re-occurring authors. I am just hoping it's my own ignorance about some niche field although I highly doubt it, since the guy only has an h-index=6. So I am trying to figure out how to follow my gut feeling

Bogus papers seems to imply a bogus journal. Those are moderately well tracked.

Not necessarily. One can publish to IEEE journals with legitimate seeming language and made-up data for example

That would be a much (much) more serious infraction than citation circles or even salami slicing.

Right, but besides going after it at a content level, how would one demonstrate dishonesty in terms of collusion with authors doing the same thing? Is there even a name for it?

This question is asking about a lot of things. "Citation fraud circles" is not the same as "bogus papers" nor your comment about China and text generators. VTC as needs focus.

This is a bit of an X/Y problem. What you should focus on instead is evaluating researchers in a different way that is less susceptible to being gamed by citation cartels.

With regard to the part of your question about "tools", the following, highly readable, paper describes one such tool.

Ioannidis JPA, Baas J, Klavans R, Boyack KW (2019) A standardized citation metrics author database annotated for scientific field. PLoS Biol 17(8): e3000384. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000384

It also discusses citation problems that are more general than the issue of unethical self-citation.


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IEEE Copyright and replacing previous ArXiv/TechRxiv versions
I know that similar questions have been posted before but i cannot find a specific and complete answer.
Suppose that i post a preprint article on ArXiv/TechRxiv. Then, i submit the paper to an IEEE Transaction journal. After revisions it is accepted. In IEEE author's FAQ i can read the following:

Can an author post his manuscript on a preprint server such as TechRxiv or ArXiv?
Yes. The IEEE recognizes that many authors share their unpublished manuscripts on public sites. Once manuscripts have been accepted for publication by IEEE, an author is required to post an IEEE copyright notice on his preprint. Upon publication, the author must replace the preprint with either 1) the full citation to the IEEE work with Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) or a link to the paper’s abstract in IEEE Xplore, or 2) the accepted version only (not the IEEEpublished version), including the IEEE copyright notice and full citation, with a link to the final, published paper in IEEE Xplore.

So, here is the question: how can i do that if ArXiv/TechRxiv does not permit to replace/edit previous version of a preprint? I am allowed just to update the preprint, hence create a new version of it. However, previous versions remain accessible.

When referring to a preprint being replaced, it is understood that a new version will be generated. Most/all preprint servers do not generally permit editing existing versions in order to maintain a clear timeline.
Even though older versions remain accessible, readers would view the latest version as the most up-to-date version to refer to for future use, so this is unlikely to be an issue.
This interpretation also agrees with the terminology used by arXiv.

I have just gone through this process with the an IEEE publication and TechRxiv.  Having 2 revisions before my paper was accepted, these two prints are archived as 2 different versions of the same record, having the same DOI with a versioned suffix.  TechRxiv always shows the newest record first.
Once your article is published on IEEE Xplore, you can download your author accepted manuscript from the Author Gateway.  This will be the same PDF as your final submission, but with the IEEE copyright and Published DOI put on the document for you.
You can then click My Submissions in TechRxiv, and edit your existing record to now include the provided AAM.
Anyone accessing TechRxiv will see your latest version by default.  This is completely acceptable with respect to IEEE policy, as can be seen from the instructions you get during the publication process, or the IEEE website.
These are the notices on the IEEE provided AAM:

This article has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on
Electron Devices. This is the author's version which has not been
fully edited and content may change prior to final publication.
Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TED.2021.1234567
© 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but
republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more
information.

Please see these for more information:
https://www.ieee.org/content/dam/ieee-org/ieee/web/org/pubs/author_version_faq.pdf
https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/become-an-ieee-journal-author/publishing-ethics/guidelines-and-policies/post-publication-policies/
This link states that TechRxiv and ArXiv are acceptable places to store a copy of the AAM:
http://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/IEEE-Article-Sharing-and-Posting-Policies.pdf


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How can I deal with high-expectations of supervisors?
I would like to ask how to deal with pressure and high expectations from supervisors.
I am beginning my 3rd year of a PhD programme and I am very close to having a mental breakdown. I have two supervisors who are extremely tough on me. They expect very good results every week. I am working so much, but I don't have a lot of satisfying results. A lot of things are just not working and supervisors blame me for this, even though I have nothing to do with it. They have a vision of how my research should go and what the results should be, and for everything that is not going in the expected direction, they blame me.
They tell me that I am not-effective and that they are not satisfied with my work. They have never worked in a lab (they are doctors) and have no idea how it works in practice. I don't have anyone to help—any technician to do small things—so of course all of this is on my shoulders.
How can I explain to my supervisors in a good way that it's not my fault if they don't have the effects which they are expecting?

maybe you can clarify your field of study.  It seems strange to have supervisors with no experience in a lab if your project is lab-based.

So a piece of this is related to professional boundaries and communications. I would suggest taking a look at the suggestions on workplace stack exchange regarding setting reasonable time frames for project completion …

If what you write is true, your work relationship is abusive, and it's not worth continuing with them. People get burnout and depression in graduate school because of the pressure often, especially in highly competitive places. One reason is that they place too high expectations on themselves.
Another reason is that they are simply not ready for graduate school. Typically, people who are not ready do poorly in classes and have to leave because of low GPAs.
Sometimes, and I assume this is your case, advisors place high expectations on their students and bury them in work. Those expectations are justified in their minds by some benchmarks, which could be themselves, or other excellent students they had before. But if your supervisors have never worked in the lab, their benchmarks could be well based on what Batman would do if he was their graduate student.
Keeping these in mind, it is a good idea to start thinking of what could be the worse case scenario if you leave them for other supervisor. You already have research experience, and you won't be starting from the scratch with everything. My advise is to start searching for someone better, even at a different graduate school, as soon as possible.
You also have to deal with the mental health issues. Bad relationships, if they last long enough, may cause you serious mental problems which could leave you unable to work for years. You need time out of the lab, vacation, and you should spend your free time outdoors with people who care about you even if you don't bring them research results. You should also talk to a mental health professional to help you eliminate as much as you can of the stress in your life, before it's too late and you are forced to get on medication. Psychiatric drugs are the least fun I know.

"Those expectations are justified in their minds by some benchmarks, which could be themselves, or other excellent students they had before." What also happens is that some expect to have a certain result because it's good for them professionally (e.g., they want to show that the drug they developed works well), and they will not accept that this result is not forthcoming, the reason sometimes being that it's simply not true. Sometimes such an "expected result" may be true and easy to have, so they may have "good" experiences with past students, who may not really have been better.

It seems like a leap to jump to this being "abusive".  All we have here is the student's own judgment that expectations are too high, plus some adverse performance feedback.  All of this comes from the perspective of the student, with no objective information on specifics.

Seek support for improving your lab work (maybe an additional supervisor)
One of the difficulties you are going to encounter here is that supervisors generally have a better idea than students as to the appropriate pace and expected quality of research work, and the university will generally defer to the expertise of their academics in judging these things.  However, in the present case you note that your supervisors do not have lab experience and much of the work you do is lab work.  This may mean that your supervisors are not in a good position to judge the amount of time it should take to progress through lab tasks, and there is scope here to talk to them about this and see if you can come to an agreement on expected research pace.  It would also be worth seeking an additional supervisor who specialises in lab work, both to assist you in this aspect of your work, and to provide perspective on expected progress in this aspect of your work.
My recommendation would be to get some input from an academic at your university with a lot of lab experience, both to get an idea of reasonable timeframes for your work, and to get advice on improving your own lab work.  Once you have done this, sit down with your supervisors and have a general discussion about the expected pace of progress and the support you would need to improve progress in the lab.  One piece of useful support might be an additional supervisor with lab experience.  (If you have received an opinion on timeframes from another academic with lots of lab experience then you could add this to the discussion as an outside perspective.)  Your agreed timeframes for your research should take account of the time it will take you to deal with lab problems that will naturally arise from time-to-time.  If it is taking you too long to do things then seek support for improving this.  Don't get into the weeds on whether these problems were your fault or not --- ultimately, whether or not problems in the lab are your fault, it is probably your responsibility to deal with them and overcome them to progress your research.
As to the feedback you are receiving from your supervisors, take it seriously (even if it seems like they have expectations that are too high) and talk with them to identify specific problems and get advice on how to develop further and improve the quality of your work.  As a student, you are not in a very good position to judge whether their expectations are too high, but you can certainly raise this issue for discussion.  If your supervisors say that you are not effective in your work, and that they are not satisfied with the quality or progress of your work, drill down further to see what are the biggest problems they are identifying (if they haven't already told you), and then spend time working on improving the most pressing issues.  Since you received entry to the PhD program, trust that you are capable of learning and improving with practice.  In the immortal words of Kipling, "trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too".


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How to address colleague taking analysis pipeline and ideas and not come across as aggressive?
I was recently been asked by a colleague to help acquire some data with a specific method that only I know about. Beyond that, I have an analysis pipeline that is very specific to this project. Originally, my colleague said that I could look at all of the datasets but suggested that it would be good to look at one subject first, to try to examine the results of that one subject, and then go from there.
I agreed. I did the analysis for this one subject with this very specific analysis pipeline, and then showed my colleague the very promising results, thinking I would continue the analyses and be a part of the journal publication. The colleague then asked me to send her the whole pipeline and asked me questions about the analysis. She also asked me to form hypotheses about what might be going on, which I did. The colleague then said that they would be taking over the rest of the analysis and I wouldn't be able to look at the data.
This feels quite sneaky and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I definitely wouldn't mind being a co-author and I don't have to be first author, however, I am not completely sure what the next steps are. Should I bring this up to my senior PI? I don't want to come across as aggressive, but I am definitely very annoyed. Does anyone have any advice on how manage this?

Thanks so much -- I will bring this up to my PI and go from there.

Aggressive is fine. It's only "offensive" you want to avoid. Firm. Nice if you like and avoid swearing and insults and such. Don't let them get you angry. Angry causes mistakes. Angry gives them ammunition.  Calm. But firm.

For future reference, the time to agree on co-authors and first-name-on-paper and who owns data and such issues is before any work is done, before any data is handed over.

Do you think its fair to ask for first author in this case?

I actually don't think it is greedy -- if it my ideas, my analysis, then I actually think it is a fine thing to ask for. Thanks for your input though.

Is there any legal or ethical reason that the information (data) has to be kept confidential?

I have made minor edits to your question (e.g., removing commas before coordinating and subordinating conjunctions) but I suggest that you make a couple more changes. Your remark "I definitely wouldn't mind being a co-author" (which implies that you would have no objection to being a co-author if invited), does not fit with your remarks about the colleague being sneaky. It sounds as if you really mean that you think you are entitled to be, or deserve to be a coauthor. If that is what you mean, I suggest that you make it clear.

What does OP mean by pipeline?

Firstly, always establish authorship before working with someone. It seems awkward, but it is best to get things clear before work progresses. As long as you're not rude,  no one should be offended.
Lesson learnt.
As for current situation. You've not given enough detail but as you have said you could speak to your PI I'm presuming you're a  post-doc? Is the other person in the same lab?  If so - speak to your PI ASAP and they should mediate. If they are not in your lab,  still get advice from your PI.
Authorship inclusion is usually decided by the first author, which they will and should be if it's their data and they are writing it. Personally I have put people on a paper if they have contributed to analysis in the way that you say - because I couldn't have got the paper together without them and their input (or maybe I could,  but it would have been a lot harder). This is your argument for inclusion. Depends on the field,  but generally speaking an extra author does not detract from the first authors work and many journals list contributions.
Finally, if you do have the same PI, it's worth bringing this up as they might not know that your are helping them. Avoid a situation where someone if claiming your work is theirs (in this case the analysis pipeline).

Communicate early about mutual responsibilities.
To be on the safe side, do so in writing - e-mailing key points after important meetings is an option for recording oral agreements. Especially if you end up re-negotiating something, like you have.
Now, I have done what you did on several occasions, and was not met with malicious intent, so - anecdotally - do not start with assuming something bad (but do not write it off, either!). The major concern here comes from

The colleague then said they would be taking over the rest of the analysis and I wouldn't be able to look at the data.

There is a big difference between the hostile "I would not give you access to this data" and "I want to handle it myself and do not need your involvement any more". I would certainly pry. Better late than never - you have already done some work, and have not reached any agreements about publications yet: time to arrange that. Ideally, this should have been done at least prior to handing the pipeline over.
First authorship dispute is more delicate. In my field, for the first author claim one typically has to play a key role in the experiment design or take more responsibilities regarding data analysis and writing than you have described so far. It is possible to take a potential paper over like that (and I have done so very recently, actually, but certainly not by scheming about "how do I get a first authorship paper"), however, this is certainly not something to be coming at on full blast.
A common parlance in academia is that the ideas are cheap. This is not entirely true - once some preliminary work is done, it is clear that some ideas are more equal than the others. People get understandably defensive when others try to ride 10% of their ideas that were promising to success, and the perspective of "but I did all the work here" too often neglects the amount of work poured in pursuing the other 90% of ideas which ended up in the trash bin. I agree with Roland here: as the situation is presented, you do not have a strong claim on the first authorship, but you could push for the further collaboration explaining how your expertise with the method would be valuable, and propose leading the next paper with significantly more in-depth analysis. Overall contribution evaluation would still depend on the method and experiment complexity and a lot of other factors, so just talk it through.
To sum it up, first steps would be:

Get a clear picture of your agreements with said colleague. If they do not exist in writing, make sure they do.
Discuss the current authorship situation ASAP.
If needed, get the more senior PI involved.
If you get an authorship out of the current paper, but it is unsatisfactory for you (and, crucially, you are not required to do any more work on it beyond revising), pitch a new one where your part is the centerpiece.

Your negotiating power is tied directly with the work you perform. Use it well.

Take this as an opportunity to learn how to collaborate appropriately. Before collaborating, you should set your terms up front (and not after). It is absolutely fair to ask the PI to intervene and decide who gets what. Chances are if both of you are equally qualified as first authors, then maybe you all are. I have seen papers with more than two first authors and it is not entirely uncommon these days. In your case, it is easier to settle earlier than later.

The ... 'I have seen papers with more than two first authors' ... could do well with more clarity/context.

A bit of how might do well for the ... it is easier to settle earlier than later. As it stands, I struggled to fit it in within OP question.


text:
How should I interpret a desk rejection whose reason seems paradoxical in view of the journal's publication history?
I am trying to be a researcher in a field of economics but with emphasis on philosophy. The field of philosophical (argumentative) economics is, in my opinion, not in the limelight these days; however, a few reputable journals still exist.
I wrote a manuscript and submitted it to one of these journals which then resulted in desk rejection. This is not the problem at all but in his response the editor has written that the paper provides no results... Which, though, true, is the thing many other papers published in this specific journal do not provide. In philosophical economics, we mostly see a section for implications instead of section for results... To me, the editorial rejection r seems to be too weird, especially because papers without results are relatively common in the whole field.
What should I make of such an answer?

The editor rejected the paper based on my background (low rep institution)?
The paper was written so poorly that the editor did not want to lose time with it?
Something has changed over years and this journal tries to attract only classical empirical IMRAD (Introduction-Methodology-Results-Discussion)?

Without reading the paper there’s no way anyone can answer this question. But see the relayed questions on what to do when you get a desk rejection.

You might consider temporarily deleting this for about 24 hours (thereby avoiding further down voting) and thinking of a way to rewrite it so that it can be answered. As currently asked, "What to make of X" is anyone's guess.

I would send an answer to the editor with a list of, say, 5 papers that were published in the journal and don't have results, and ask them why your paper has been desk-rejected due to lack of results, when other papers without results have been published in it.

For an author a desk rejection doesn't make sense  almost invariably, for otherwise the author wouldn't have submitted the manuscript in the first place, but one has to recognise their own bias in this. The editor rejected the paper because your manuscript provided no results, and you agree with this but you disagree that this is sufficient reason for rejection. Thus, you disagree with the rejection.

@MassimoOrtolano Ye, this sounds fair... But it would not reflect what I wanted to ask about. The thing is that there is an obvious contradiction in what the journal does and what the editor requires. I would like to accentuate that the specificity of the editor's answer is the weird thing. Why would he say exactly this concrete objection if it contradicts the history of the journal? That is why I used the abusive language, because, to me, this sounds as a plain lie (of course, there might be other explanations), overall the paradox is the thing that interests me the most.

@Athaeneus If you got no answer back from the editor, you can also seek clarification from the editor-in-chief. It's not unheard of that they will override the editor's decision.

Of course the problem is that the answer by the editor is not very informative, so that neither you nor we can know what exactly went on. Some possibilities are that:

The editor read the paper and came to the conclusion that it isn't good enough or doesn't fit the journal for a number of reasons taken together, but writing them down precisely would have taken too much time, so they wrote something very short. (As editor I don't always take the time to write down my reasons in full detail if it takes too much time, even though I try in principle to make it transparent for the author why the paper was rejected. Note in particular that desk rejection reasons don't need to be as detailed as requests for revision, as the editor doesn't want to see an improved version.)

"Which is, though, true, but the thing is that many other papers published in this specific journal do not provide results as well." Chances are that every paper is different from any other paper in some respect, and that the editor could defend why certain papers that you think have the same problem are actually better than yours. However, the editor may not want to enter into this kind of detailed discussion.

I recently came in as new editor of a journal, and I do occasionally reject papers for reasons where one could point at earlier papers published in the same journal that could be criticised in the same way. This may be because (1) my standards are different from those of the previous editor, but also (2) because something that was fine at a certain point in time (for example because it contributed to a discussion that was "hot" at that time, or it was so good/original in some other respects that a certain weakness could have been tolerated) is no longer fine now in my view. The latter can happen even without a change of editor.

The editor rejected the paper based on my background (low rep institution)?

Not impossible, but not likely given that there are many explanations that wouldn't show the editor in such bad light.

The paper was written so poorly that the editor did not want to lose time with it?

Possible, though as editor I would say this explicitly (in a hopefully somewhat more polite way).

Something has changed over years and this journal tries to attract only classical empirical IMRAD?

I have no idea what IMRAD is but see my item 3.

Thank you! I see the following paradox within the journal's answer: 1) Journal frequently accepts papers without results (nowadays less than before, but still). 2) The critique that the paper does not provide results is so oddly specific it is weird given the journal's history... Right? The specificity of the answer is something that weirds me out the most. If my paper was written poorly, why stating exactly this paradoxical nonsense? Your third item, in this context, seems to fit perfectly as no-results papers are on the decline and usually were written by big names.

@Athaeneus Chances are nobody here can comment on the specific case without knowing the journal, your submission, and the papers you are referring to.

@Athaeneus Also take into account the possibility that the editor had good but complex reasons and didn't take the time to explain them comprehensively.

IMRaD stands for the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion paper structure.

@ChristianHennig So I have the concluding information as the editor has just given an interesting and quite informative answer to this conundrum. The no-results papers I cited as a proof of this paradox are so-called perspective papers, which are typically invited directly by editors. Providing an overview and speculation about previous problematic concepts was just not enough in my case as the unsolicited paper's contribution to the literature (i.e., Results with capital R) should be more clear.

I generally caution my students against the (tempting) argument "there are superficially similar (or weaker) papers in this journal, hence my paper should get accepted". There is tremendous confirmation bias in this, since you do not know how many submissions "without results" get rejected. Peer review is a noisy process, if the journal gets lots of submissions of papers of a certain type some of them are bound to be accepted, even if most of the editorial board disagrees with this. Your statement that no-results papers "are on the decline" indicates to me that most of the editorial board nowadays wants to see them gone, and they only make exceptions for special cases (of which your paper was presumably not one).
Honestly, academia in general starts making much more sense once one internalises that all of our decisions are made subjectively by humans with non-identical preferences and experiences.


text:
Why do journals set deadlines?
I submitted my revision two months ago and emailed to inquire about the status of my manuscript, but I have still had no response. The editor had set a deadline for the revision to be submitted. I was given a little shorter than two months so I prioritized revising the original manuscript to turn it in on time. But for two months I had no information at all.
So, I just got to be curious about the process and the deadline's raison d'etre.
If the journal editors are not doing something regarding those revised manuscript soon after the submissions, why are there deadlines? Or would it be not possible at all to inform those who submit manuscript of roughly how long it will be taking to have the review done?
I am just curious...

Does this answer your question? How strict are paper revision deadlines?

Not duplicate - this question asks why there are deadlines, the other question asks whether those deadlines can be extended on request.

It isn't true that the journal isn't doing anything with your paper. It is, presumably, on the desk of the reviewers.

Mainly to keep the authors thinking about their manuscript and the journal orderly. Some number of authors will not respond forever - effectively withdrawing their manuscript by never submitting a revision. In these scenarios the journal can see that the manuscript is several weeks/months after the revision due date, assume it will not be revised, and remove the submission from the system (more precisely, archive it or mark it as withdrawn).
If you find the deadline is too short you can always ask for an extension, and expect that the extension will be granted.

I doubt that a paper would be "removed from the system" without a rejection. How would they, then, know when something submitted late is a resubmission rather than a new one? And with computer systems there is no need to "remove" it. Reprioritize, perhaps, but not remove.

The editorial management system marks resubmitted manuscript (usually - see https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101864/can-you-share-some-screenshots-of-editors-control-panels/101865#101865). But good point, the manuscripts aren't removed from the system after the peer review process has started. I edited the answer.

Different journals have different processes, of course, but one reason for a (soft) deadline is as a courtesy to reviewers that they might want to return a new version to for another look. If there is too much time between reviews, the reviewer has a harder time, needing to bring themselves up to date on the paper as a whole.
Editors also like to keep the pipeline filled, giving themselves maximum flexibility for putting an issue together. This might be especially true for "hot" topics of the day.
But, likely, it is a variety of factors including the prod to authors as mentioned by Allure.
Special issues are a different matter of course, since they may have a fairly firm schedule for publication. Likewise conference submissions.


text:
How to use APA format when referencing a title that starts with 4-digit year
I'm trying to create references in a dissertation, but one of my source titles starts with the year "2023".  How do I reference this properly in APA 7?
Immuta. (2023). 2023 state of data engineering survey. In 2023 state of data engineering survey.  https://www.immuta.com/resources/2023-state-of-data-engineering-survey/

Why is that a problem? In APA and all other styles, the title of the work appears in a specific place. What the title is (i.e., whether it contains numbers or not) should not matter.

because the first word of the title is a number, does the second word become capitalized? or is it ok as it is?

The first word happens to be 2023. The second word is not the first word of the sentence, and so it is not capitalized.

The standard way in American Psychological Association (APA) format would simply be:

Immuta. (2023). 2023 State of Data Engineering Survey. Retrieved from https://www.immuta.com/resources/2023-state-of-data-engineering-survey/

In-text citation:

(Immuta, 2023)

Obviously, if the report has individual authors or editors, they would be referred to in the usual APA style ... but the fact that the title of the collection happens to begin with a year does not lead to any change, of itself, in the formatting of the reference.
Added: The actual report, available in PDF form here, lists no individual authors or editors.


text:
Should there be consequences or penalty when such mistakes published?
These days many people use GPT, but to what extent should it be used, and how come journals and many authors do not check the papers they publish?
I am having a really hard time publishing my papers with many reviewers asking me to keep modifying and updating my paper.In contrast, I saw a video of Professor Dr. Eyad Qunaibi showing some mistakes published in a well-known credible journal.
Here are 2 examples.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2468023024002402

and
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1930043324001298

I wonder how such mistakes pass multiple reviewers and authors and whether there are consequences for the journal rating for such things

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/s/EkcpvIiPSX

"I am having a really hard time publishing my papers with many reviewers asking me to keep modifying and updating my paper." That shows that you have chosen a reputable journal and that the process is working. This is good to hear. Keep aiming high, and take advantage of the valuable feedback you are getting.

I'm a little surprised that such obvious ChatGPT plagiarism got through the review process.

@EJoshuaS-StandwithUkraine Don't be surprised. There are many similar cases, all published in paid journals belonging to exploratory groups like MDPI or Elsevier. It just shows how blatantly irrelevant most papers are, and how ridiculous is the current status of academic publishing.

but to what extent it should be used

A pretty good chunk of reputable journals at this point have guidelines on how (if at all) generative AI may be used in paper submissions.

how come journals and many authors do not check the papers they publish

Various combinations of:

Authors are lazy/in a rush/under a lot of pressure and don't properly proofread
Peer reviewers are lazy/in a rush/under a lot of pressure and miss the obvious ChatGPT-like statements, particularly if they skip reading the introduction
The journal is not a reputable one, and isn't getting reputable peer reviewers
The journal is a reputable one, and didn't get good peer reviewers for that particular paper
Hundreds of thousands of papers are published every year, and sometimes things fall through the cracks

and if there are consequences on the journal rating for such things

Since journals are mostly just rated by impact factor, the impact on the journal will likely be negligible if it's just one or two articles like this. It would need to be a common enough occurrence, and a big enough issue that people would need to stop submitting to their journal, or stop citing the journal, in order for them to feel an impact.

Your question about whether there should be "a penalty when such mistakes are published" seems to me to be slightly naive. It seems to imply that there is a central authority responsible for ensuring that a particular quality of academic publishing be maintained and who can mete out penalties to journal publishers that don't make the grade Unfortunately, the vast proliferation of predatory garbage journals (and I am not suggesting for a moment that either of the journals you have mentioned fall in that category) is proof that no such control exists.
At best (or worst depending on your viewpoint), the "penalty" that a publisher suffers is to have authors desist from publishing with them anymore. Again, the proliferation of low-quality journals shows that no matter how bad the publication, you can always find someone who will send their material there.
On the other hand, you as an individual, can choose not to send your work to a publisher who persistently falls below a standard that you believe is reasonable ... and indeed, that is what most academics do choose.


text:
Ways to successful PHD: basically just math or statistics?
Is it true that the way to successfully achieving a PhD goes through illustrating that you can do relatively hardcore math (or statistics as a subset of math)? Mostly in the field of economics but also political science, biology, evolution theory, etc.
There were claims (and I do not remember by whom), saying that young researchers have to prove themselves by showing they can do standard things by standard means, meaning they are required to publish a few math-intensive papers (either pure theory, or empirical with novel methodology) without much philosophical significance. But as researchers age, they can start with all these big philosophical questions explaining all those important abstract nuances of our common lives?
Myself, I have met these kinds of standards when trying to publish my own novel conceptualizations of relatively common phenomena, receiving statements which can be generalized as: "this topic is not up to you to answer".
So is this true, that PhD is mostly about proving you can do math?

Do you mean specifically in economics?

Not specifically but with higher emphasis, since I study economics. However, I see the similar trend in other disciplines as political science, biology, evolution theory, etc.

In my humble opinion, using math to study politics is like using politics to study math. Please don't laugh at this. People in Taiwan are using math to nominate the next KMT party presidential candidate as of now.

This question isn't specific enough. There are many disciplines where math and statistics are rarely used, but not never, eg, literature, history, cultural or language studies.

Definitely not true in biology in terms of maths. Theoretical papers are notoriously difficult to publish (much to my disapproval), and many PhD these won't contain stats any more complex than a t-test (again,  even where this is totally inappropriate).
What is true, however, is the philosophising on the big questions is something that people get to do later in their career. Most PhD theses will involve applying standard techniques to new systems,  or developing new experimental approaches and demonstrating them in well understood systems.
The reason for this is that a PhD student has limited time and limited resources and has to produce something with that. Going off on a tangent about some big philosophical question risks (with high probability) getting to the end of your funding with nothing to show having wasted your time and your supervisors resources.
A PhD is training.  The idea is to learn the basics of your field's craft.

Many non-math fields produce research that is valuable, but with no real impact on math itself. This seems to suggest your guess/hypothesis is false. Some use math, but more use statistics. Some use neither.
A typical thesis in many fields is novel for the questions it asks, though the way of gathering evidence and the statistical evaluation of that question can be quite standard. Such theses don't advance statistics either, though they may (occasionally) use it in creative ways. But their importance lies in asking and giving evidence for important questions in the field.
But there are fields that use very little math. Some theses in philosophy, for example, don't use math at all. History might be similar.
But Economics is pretty mathematical in some of the things it does. But since it often gets things quite wrong, while using "accepted" methods, it isn't really fundamentally like math. You need a lot of math to study it, perhaps, but that doesn't make it math - certainly not pure math, though it is an application (many cases).
I'd guess that you probably do need to prove that you know some math in order to undertake a dissertation in some fields and likewise statistics in others. In particular, in some places there are comprehensive exams that require some math and/or statistics background.
But, it isn't a universal. It is field dependent and even likely dependent on some specifics within fields.
In the US, most undergraduates going on to graduate study will have some math required in their program. Political Science students, perhaps, not so much, though some questions there require statistics for adequate answers. English Literature maybe not needed at all even if it is studied.

Note that in most fields, questions don't have binary, yes/no, answers. So statistics is often necessary to get the measure of "how true" some hypothesis is. And, since it is difficult to study complete populations for many things (as some are large are others constantly changing) it is necessary to rely on (imperfect) sampling. But it is the questions, themselves, that drive the research.

I see, but this is not exactly focused on the thing I try to ask. What I really meant is that I see many math (or statistics - which is just nothing else than math) intensive papers of PhD students being published, thus helping them with their PhD, even though they do not provide much of a substance. It seems more as an exercise in math (or statistics), applied to relatively normal topic, nothing exceptional. Meanwhile, I do not see many philosophical papers focused on big questions from PhD students (in these fields), usually I see them mostly from established profesors.

A doctoral dissertation is intended to be a first (or early) work. Not the candidates best work. A doctorate is intended to teach you how to do research in a field. One can be expected to improve with practice. There is nothing unusual about that. Truly breathtaking work in dissertations is pretty rare.

Whilst there are many interesting areas of academic analysis that can be aided by mathematical models and analysis, there is still broad opportunity for research in academic subjects that does not involve mathematics.  Similarly, while there are many academic papers that involve data analysis, and therefore invoke statistical analysis, there is still broad opportunity for research that does not use empirical data and corresponding statistical analysis.
Within your field of economics, it is certainly true that mainstream neoclassical methods make heavy use of mathematical models and analysis, and there is a general expectation that economic analysis will usually include an attempt to specify things mathematically if this is feasible.  There are also a reasonable number of data-driven papers that focus on statistical modelling of econometric data.  Nevertheless, there are research areas and research papers that put forward non-mathematical contributions to the field, including philosophical observations, general methodological discussions, historical analysis of the field and its contributors, and even papers giving critiques of excessive use of mathematics in the field (see esp. the Austrian school for the last of these).  The main thing you need to do to publish research and get your PhD is to analyse an economic issue using whatever methods are most appropriate and add value to the field.
One of the nice things about academia is that most academic journals use blinded review, which means that ---in principle--- the system should not differentiate between young/inexperienced and old/experienced academics except via the quality of their work.  Thus, if you want to write papers on philosophical aspects of economics, or some other non-mathematical aspect of the field, you should feel free to do so and submit these to peer review to see how you go.  Seek advice from your supervisor on the quality of your ideas, analysis and draft papers, but other than that, carpe diem.

Math is a great tool to explain the world around us.
Scientific progress started to be free from the abstractions and the thinking allowed by language (~= philosophy) when language was surclassed by mathematics.
It is much easier to explain the celestial body movement with mathematics, rather than with the Aristotelean philosophy.
It is in the human nature to take the least resistance path, therefore exploring the world (in all its facets) with "maths" comes only natural, once you realized how powerful is "maths".
You can still try to extrapolate from your "math" results on a certain field, but sooner or later "maths" will get there. Religion? Just wait for "maths" to solve the mistery of Big Bang :D.
By the way, technology is a side product of mathematics as much as religion is a side product of philosophy.

I have a big issue with "differential" knowledge of maths. For example, take economics: the economic models are based on crappy algebra from 100 years ago. Even when physicist applied math models to it, they used crappy assumptions (see the Black-Scholes model, which is a simply 1D diffusion model ... what a great idea to use it as a financial tool ... https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/feb/12/black-scholes-equation-credit-crunch (yes, the usage of the model was wrong, the model itself was just a model)


text:
Refereeing an arXiv preprint
I accepted a request to referee a mathematics paper (available as an arXiv preprint long before it was submitted), but haven't started to write a report yet. Before receiving the referee request I'd already worked on the preprint a little bit and been able to improve the main result somewhat which I thought wasn't good enough to be published anywhere or to tell anyone. When I accepted the referee request I had no intention of continuing to work on it and since then have spent time on other projects.
The issue is, after solving a problem unrelated to the paper in question, I suddenly realised that the method I used to solve the unrelated problem could be adapted to significantly advance the  main result of the paper I'm reviewing, and would lead to publishable work.
Should I wait for the paper I'm reviewing to be published (I plan to recommend to accept it anyway) before making my improvements available?

What would be your reason for waiting?

@MoisheKohan I'm afraid it'd be unethical to publicising my improvements before the paper is accepted and published, even if it has an arXiv version. This situation never occurred to me before although I've refereed at least ten papers.

I do not see anything unethical here. You just state clearly that your paper was motivated by theirs.

Thanks for your suggestions!

I think this is a situation where you should let the editor know.  I don't see a problem, but transparency is a good thing.

Does this answer your question? Research motivated by referee assignment

@Anyon my situation is different somewhat because of the substantial improvement I've got from an outside project.

Journals and editors often have clear expectations on reviewer duties. One of the most important ones is that of confidentiality. Because the paper was published on ArXiv, you are not taking advantage of your role as a reviewer, (which would be considered unethical).
However, an outside observer could come to the wrong conclusion that you did profit from interacting with the paper as a reviewer. The solution is to put your question to the editor of the journal, while or after submitting your recommendation on the paper.
Another possible conflict that an outside observer could see is that you now have a positive interest in the paper getting published and are no longer an unbiased reviewer. I don't think that this is important, but again, that is what editors are for.


text:
My abstract was accepted at a conference but my supervisor is the first author without my consent
What is the best approach for resolving this issue with the help of the supervisory committee, when my main supervisor decided to be the first author on an accepted abstract without my consent?

By 'without consent', do you mean submitted without consent of other authors, or wants to become first author without consent of other authors.

Are there other authors besides you and your main supervisor?

Not so sure if this might assist. It's for CS: computer science ... https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/89070/162770

@semmyk-research He submitted the abstract on my behalf and he is the corresponding author again. When I shared the abstract with him I sent it myself being the first author. Well, the main supervisor was the second followed by other co-authors.

@Nobody Yes the are other co-authors and one of my co-author presented at the conference on my behalf which we agreed about. My concern is about the authorship arrangement for my MSc research work.

What's the field?

@Nobody Field is Animal Science

Do we assume this is for a program in the US, and do presume it's Masters or is it doctorate. If masters, is is completed (or at tail end of wrapping up). If PhD, what year is it.  ... There're lots of dynamics at play and can be at play

Did they announce they want to be "first author"? In math it is common to have the authors in alphabetical order even when the primary author is not the first one. In cs it is less common, but maybe depending on the journal it may be the case. It would be good if you add to the question is it looks hostile to you or may be a misunderstanding or mistake, maybe even by the journal editor and not your supervisor.

From your comment

When I shared the abstract with him I sent it myself being the first author

In my view, ethically, your main supervisor should have at least discuss with you or feedback to you why he sent the abstract with him as first author.
NB: I use the and not your abstract.

he is the corresponding author again

I see nothing wrong with him being the corresponding author. He might be best placed to handle the 'intricacies' of review process.
Nonetheless, he should have engaged or if it's the rule of the lab, made all aware
@first authorship
You'll need to have a non-confrontational session with him. I'll be able to comment further on this when I understand the dynamics further.
What you can do, is possibly initiate a post abstract session.

with the abstract accepted and presented, how can we take this further
how do we move to developing to a journal article

If he or they are receptive to the idea, the issue of authorship can sneak in as an important topic.
PS: I understand your question's tag is ethics

So a few things:

The supervisor being the corresponding author is not as big of a problem. The corresponding author doesn't have to be the first author.
Changing the order of authors before sending an abstract without talking it over with the other author(s) beforehand is very problematic. Generally, sending anything anywhere without checking with all authors is unethical.
Did they actually mean that they would be first author or is it a shared first author type thing? This might be if the prof. feels that you might not have enough experience to do all the required work by yourself and they envision themselves being as involved as you in the process.
The point above you absolutely must discuss with your supervisor. And do so in a factual, calm, matter-of-fact manner. It's sleazy if they sent it off without checking and changed the order, yes. But you still should come off as calm and like you're just discussing a normal matter of authorship. Authorship is something that must always be discussed and your supervisor should see it as completely normal and mature that you are doing so. If they say that they want to be the sole first author, you need to immediately establish what they will do and what your role will be. There are guidelines for that but the minutiae need to be debated in each individual case, since no paper or author constellation is exactly the same. As an example: I co-authored a paper with a student who intended to leave after getting her MA. She explicitly stated that she would not be first author because she just wants to hand me the experiment data she ran and then she's done, she will not embed it into a larger frame, nor will she write up anything. She's there to answer any clarification questions but that's it. So she did the majority of work for the actual experiment, while I just supervised the coding. Yet, she chose to step back from first authorship. That's a decision and that decision absolutely must be stated clearly.


text:
APA reference for a search page, a query, or the underlying database: which one and how
A student wants to properly reference a source that is not a typical one as far as I know (and to do it using APA 7 style). She is finding a lot of useful information by means of a query in the search engine of a particular site. A number of alternatives come to my mind in order to declare its source:

Reference to the search page.

Reference to the query.

Reference to the underlying database.

I know neither which one is the best option nor how to apply APA 7 in case 2 or case 3. Do you?
Thanks in advance!
Note: We don't want to separately reference each hit of the query.

It would be helpful if you were to say exactly what item you wish to reference.

I preferred not to, because the context was not a real academic work, but a kind of exercise. However, I see your point in the sense of centering the question, so let's suppose she wanted to discuss Spanish terror films and series in the last two years and found a lot of useful info in the website https://www.filmaffinity.com. She used the search form in https://www.filmaffinity.com/es/advsearch.php and her query was https://www.filmaffinity.com/es/advsearch.php?country=ES&genre=TE&fromyear=2022&toyear=2023.

The correct way to approach the problem is to distinguish the sources that are found from the process that lead to the sources.
In your comment (which I repeat here only to incorporate it more directly into the question), you suggest that a researcher searches the website of Film Affinity for information about  Spanish terror films and series in the preceding two years and finds a lot of useful information. In your example, the information that is found represents the source(s) for the purpose of citation, and they should be cited using whatever citation/referencing system is most appropriate. In contrast, the process of searching would normally be considered to be part of the methodology of the research, and it is in the methodology section of an academic paper that the search process would typically be described.
The duality that you describe (method of finding sources vs. sources actually found) arises frequently in review papers, particularly in the medical sciences where systematic reviews of treatment outcomes are wanted. For a systematic review to be considered useful, there needs to be, as you'd expect, some rational and ideally comprehensive system for locating relevant sources. Without it, there can be no confidence that the sources that have been located are in any way representative of the information available about a treatment approach. One method of conducting and (more particularly) documenting a systematic review is described in great detail on the website of the Cochrane Library, specifically on this page. This paper gives a specific example including descriptions of the method.

The link with anchor this page is broken. It lacks www.cochranelibrary.com/ before the first  about.

Thanks, @CrimsonDark, for putting my problem into the source/process frame, but I am still unsure about how to make it fit that frame. Are you suggesting that each film page (eg https://www.filmaffinity.com/es/film744153.html) should be separately cited, instead of the query page https://www.filmaffinity.com/es/advsearch.php?country=ES&genre=TE&fromyear=2022&toyear=2023 where all of them appear?

@FedericoPrat Thank you. I have fixed it.


text:
I suspect that my PhD supervisor is trying to push me out of the lab and not give me credit for my work
I just started the third year of my PhD and my contract expires in December.
My project comes under a broader much bigger project involving 5 teams. I was the first one to be recruited on this project and so I have worked very hard over the past 2 years to set up the system in place. During the last 2 years I have received almost no help and guidance from my supervisor. It's been a fellow friend and post-Doc in the lab who left by the end of my first year who helped me to learn and implement everything. At the end of my second year, my boss moved his lab and this move was very badly managed. I did not see him for up to 4 months. During that time, he started to sit in the new lab without having any conversations with me about how to manage my  project. It was a very difficult time for me. I realized that under the university rules I had the opportunity to add another supervisor   so I went ahead and added another supervisor. The additional  supervisor is also a part of the multi disciplinary project I  mentioned.
For my second year, one of the main components of the system I am supposed to be working with did was defective and my supervisor wanted me to fix it for the bigger project without worrying if I spend time fixing it that would not lead to a publication. I did that. In parallel, I also worked on my own research project so as to have a publication. My supervisor has now hired a post-doc and another junior researcher (his friend in fact) . Consequently I am handing over all the work I have done to them and they are telling me that I don't belong to this project any more. This for me is heartbreaking because I worked really hard on setting up the system and now I will be just be an insignificant author on someone else's paper using my work.
My second supervisor doesn't know any of this as he has said he is not a specialist in the field. Also, he is very early in his career and possibly wants to  maintain a good working relationship with my 1st supervisor rather than stand up for a PhD student.
I don't know what to do, nor how to claim credit for what I deserve.

Could you specify your regional location (eg. US/Europe/South Asia/East Asia etc.)?

I am in Europe, more specifically france

I'm sorry to hear that. Stories like this one are very common in the PhD world: lack of supervision, projects transferred from one person to another, supervisor moving to a different institution. The truth is that a supervisor typically cares much more about the overall project rather than the students the project was assigned to. It may sound unfair, and it is, but your relationship with your supervisor is not the ultimate goal of a PhD. The goal of the PhD is to learn the job and become an expert in the techniques and methodologies you have applied throughout your training. With your next position you will be expected to develop your project independently, and your supervisor won't even know the details of your research until you deliver a manuscript. If you are able to do that, your PhD was a success. I understand your concerns about the authorship of your project. This is another common controversy between students and supervisors. If I were you, I would bring this up to your supervisors and tell them that even if the project will be continued by a different person, you provided a significant contribution and therefore you need to be co-first author in the paper. Of course the final decision will be made when the paper is ready for submission, but I think you have the right to ask.


text:
I looked at my phone’s clock several times to pace myself. TA saw it and sent an email asking about it afterwards
As the title says, I took an exam in a small room with one other student. One of the TAs proctored the exam. We were in a separate room because the student and I had accommodations (I have severe exam anxiety).
In the room, there were no physical clocks. The TA had to showcase the exam questions on a screen using a projector and he also included a timer. The timer was supposed to time each section of the exam (3 parts) and I realized that after the first section ended, the timer did not reset.
This is where I know I should’ve asked the TA to reset the timer but I was too anxious to bother the other person and figured since she didn’t ask it, I shouldn’t bother her and make a fuss.
This is where I made a big mistake. I took out my phone started checking the time. I did it several times and I thought the TA would not notice since I put it between my thighs.
However, after the exam ended, I received an email from the TA asking if I used my phone because he saw me “scrolling” on it.
I did not in fact cheat or anything because I was too traumatized from the first time I got caught cheating (at the start of the pandemic). Since I experienced what the academic integrity violation process is like, I made sure to not cheat again. For reference, the incident is in my record and I not only got a 0 in the test but I also had a letter grade reduction.
I got very anxious when I read the email and I admitted that I had my phone but that I only used it to keep track of time. I offered to show my Screentime (on iPhone) which shows that I didn’t use any application throughout the exam and that the data is uneditable.
The TA told me he’ll get back to me after contacting the professor. I’m overly anxious about what will happen. Is there anything I should do?
Should I send an email to both the TA and prof about my previous disciplinary action and that my academic scholarship from my home country’s government is on the line?
Should I go to my professor’s office tomorrow morning?

" I thought the TA would not notice since I put it between my thighs." Unfortunatelly, because of this, it will be very hard in my oppinion to convince they that you did not cheat... Especially since you could had simply ask the TA if it is OK to check that time.

"Should I send an email to both the TA and prof about my previous disciplinary action and that my academic scholarship from my home country’s government is on the line?" No. In hindsight, it's obvious that you shouldn't take out your phone unless you had permission. The right thing to do would have been to raise your hand and ask the TA how much time you had left. But you should just wait and see. I think it's unlikely that you will get a 0 because they don't have much evidence that you cheated. They will probably look at your test and think about whether anything is suspicious.

I'm guessing the rule for your exam was "no use of your phone", not "only use your phones for things you have a good excuse for". Which was it?

I think you used both male and female pronouns for the TA, which did you mean?

@AzorAhai-him- I think "she/her" refers to the other student (the situation is OP and one other student in the testing room with the TA).

I took out my phone started checking the time. I did it several times and I thought the TA would not notice since I put it between my thighs...I did not in fact cheat

You may not have cheated, but you did disobey the testing instructions (whether expressly stated or just implied). And you tried to conceal doing so, which only makes you look guiltier. And you have a record of academic misconduct. Given this, it is highly likely that you will be found guilty of cheating if this case comes to a judicial process. As I wrote in this answer, the "burden of proof" in these cases is relatively low. Further, accessing unapproved electronics during an exam (which you have already admitted to) may itself be an infraction, regardless of whether any improper advantage was achieved.

I offered to show my Screentime (on iPhone) which shows that I didn’t use any application throughout the exam and that the data is uneditable.

You should definitely take a screenshot of this and put it somewhere safe; this will be valuable evidence if this does come before a judicial process. It's hard to say how much this evidence will help you (i.e., whether the jury will believe that such evidence could not have been manipulated), but something is better than nothing. If your instructor wants to meet with you, I would certainly provide this evidence to him as well; it is a good way to verify your story.

I’m overly anxious about what will happen. Is there anything I should do? Should I go to my professor’s office tomorrow morning?

It is hard to advise you, because this really comes down to the personalities involved. It could be that your professor has "assumed the worst" and will be mollified by your explanation; in this case, being proactive could help you. Or it could be that your professor is lazy and is uninclined to pursue this further; in this case, being proactive could hurt you. But to give one data point: if this had happened when I was teaching, I would have met with you and then (since it is not your first offense) referred the case to the appropriate committee. It wouldn't have made much difference whether you were proactive or not. Hopefully your professor is nicer than I would have been!

Should I send an email to both the TA and prof about my previous disciplinary action and that my academic scholarship from my home country’s government is on the line?

I advise against it.

Mentioning a previous disciplinary action makes you look significantly guiltier. Granted, your professor will probably find out anyway. But I don't see how volunteering this fact could possibly help you.
Personally, I really hate the excuse "if you give me punishment X, it will cause a third party to add punishment Y." My view is that this request is improper: you are asking me to give you special treatment in your cheating case so that you can obtain an unfair advantage in your arrangement with this third party. But I am rather hard-hearted; it's totally possible that your professor will have a different perspective on this.


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Quitting a PhD program and reapplying to a different (though somewhat related) field?
Back in my original cycle, I applied right out of undergrad for a couple of programs that I initially thought could fit my interests well. All of them ended up falling into two fields, Engineering or Earth/Climate Science, and I got into some good programs for earth science (e.g. Stanford and Berkeley). I ended up deciding to go to UPenn for Engineering since I thought I might enjoy the work there better but as I'm going through the motions, I feel like I'm not as into the specific research area my advisor is dealing with as I thought I'd be. I'm beginning to think I'd have enjoyed going into climate science instead a lot more, which is probably not the best conclusion to come to at this point...
My current department doesn't have a whole lot of faculty working in this specific area anyways - even the climate science department doesn't seem like it has a ton of projects I'd be interested in. I'm thinking of Master-ing out and potentially reapplying to some climate science programs instead. I haven't consulted my advisor on this yet. Additionally, I'm keeping up on my current research project/classes, and I intend to continue to do so until I officially leave, so it's not like I'm underperforming/slacking.
I'm wondering how exactly one would fare in this whole reapplication process. I presume my undergrad application was strong enough that I got into a couple of good programs so I would think a Master's plus additional research would surely add to that. I am worried on two accounts, however:

How exactly would my current advisor take the news that I'd like to explore a different field altogether? Let's assume I continue to do well, make good progress in terms of research, and get good grades, blah blah: would they be pissed? Should they be pissed? How should I break the news to them while ensuring the letter isn't tainted by some sort of vendetta?

How should I mention this on my application? And how should I approach the application process in general? A simple Google search tells me that most new programs I'd apply to would eye my application rather suspiciously if I do not have a "good reason" for leaving and that advisors might be wary of taking me on if I Master'd out since "what's stopping me from doing the same when I get to their program". Is it really that big of a hurdle? I'd like to think that changing interests, especially to a field that is not too far off from my current one, is a decent reason but I'd be curious to hear opinions.

Getting the Master’s is already a great start and something I regret not doing when I switched PhD programs. If your undergrad application was good that might already put you in a good position when reapplying. Additionally, you can indicate in your cover letter that you pursued a Master’s in that field but also kept yourself updated on the field you want to switch to and you gradually realized that your current institution and/or program do not offer you the direction you want to pursue and that is the reason for the switch.
If they interview you, you can be honest. There’s nothing to be ashamed about. Better to switch when you have the chance and do something you truly care about and where you can live up to your full potential than to do something that might bore you down the line.
That combined with a good record and maybe even some pubs indicating that you’re applying yourself, a hard worker and good at team work etc might make you an attractive candidate.
Especially in fields that are less well-defined, switching is not uncommon. And the people hiring you might understand more than you know.
Many fields are now populated with people whose provenance is not as straightforward.

Thanks for your response! I wonder if you had any comment on how I should navigate breaking the news to my current advisor when the time comes? What nuances should I be wary about? I would assume their recommendation would also play a large part whenever I apply again no?

From what I heard, switching topics are okay in research. My supervisor told me that you should not feel stuck with one topic your supervisor got you into. So, I suppose they should take it philosophically. Perhaps it isn't even the first such situation they encounter.
Generally, it is s good thing to have a story in your application or even CV. If you can frame it as a story, even failures might feature you in a good light. Try to tell about the switch in terms of revelation, of finally finding your passion. Tell them how your whole life pushed you to this particular point in time and this decision. You will be quite convincing like this.


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What academic search engines support searching in full text?
I am a researcher in the energy field. I am trying to search for academic publications without the keyword optim* (where * represents a wildcard) not only in the abstract and title, but also in full text. The goal is to filter out any study that uses optimization.
I have tried Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science, but it looks like none of them supports full text search. Is there any search engine that supports that?

Apparently PubMed Central does but it likely doesn't have the coverage you want. Seems worth asking your local research librarian for advice. Especially since this looks like a non-trivial thing to filter out. At the very least, you'd have to do additional filtering to remove papers using other terminology, including maximizing/minimizing as well as the names of various optimization methods.

One problem with filtering out words related to optimization is that you'll filter out papers that mention optimization in the introductory literature summary or in a footnote (e.g. the author states that ideas studied in an earlier paper using optimization methods will be studied in the present paper without making use of optimization methods), and even papers that simply say that optimization methods will not be used in the paper.

Related question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/204945/searching-for-articles-containing-a-phrase-in-the-full-text-body-but-are-absent/204946#204946

"We think these methods are optimal for this problem." "We are optimistic that this method will be useful in future."

"We do not use any form of optimization in this work."

This is probably not what you want to do. We are in an age where AI is becoming much more intelligent in helping us find what we want when we search, but classic keyword searches do not use AI and they do not work the way you seem to think. My comments that follow apply to classic keyword searching, not to rapidly evolving AI-based searching (for which I have no general comments, other than that its potential is very exciting).
It is a common misunderstanding that with a keyword search, we tell the computer what we want it to find for us. No, a keyword search tells the computer what we do NOT want to see. This makes more sense if you think of something like this: suppose we have 1000 articles in our database. A keyword search of "apple* OR banana*" does not tell the computer to give us all articles about apples or bananas. Rather, it tells the computer to show us everything it has except for articles that do not mention apples or bananas. Suppose the computer comes up with 500 articles that mention apples or bananas. But 400 of these talk about pears. I'm not interested in pears, only apples or bananas. If I then search for "apple* OR banana* NOT pear*", I probably would not get what I want. I might end up with 25 articles that indeed talk about apples and bananas with no mention of pears, but I would exclude 375 articles that mention all three. Most likely some of those excluded articles would be very interesting to me, especially those that talk about "why apples and bananas are great but pears are not".
Please excuse my simplistic example, but I hope it makes it clear that by searching for "NOT optim*" (or something like that), you would exclude articles that cover "the energy topic you really want, but not focusing on optimization".
Keyword searches are best used as an initial broad net that should catch many articles. The NOT keyword should be used very sparingly. The appropriate approach would be to search for the keywords that you want and then read the titles and abstracts of all the articles you identify and then manually exclude the ones that are overly focused on optimization. I hope that makes sense.

Ok - your main point seems to be just that you shouldn't search for NOT optim* because then you might exclude lots of papers that actually are relevant - in other words, the same point made by two people in the comments under the original question.

"It is a common misunderstanding that with a keyword search, we tell the computer what we want it to find for us. No, a keyword search tells the computer what we do NOT want to see."  I don't think there is any common misunderstanding. Everyone knows that if you search for apple OR banana you will find all articles that contain one of those words.


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Question about making footnotes for material taken from a class handout that has original sources
This is my first time writing a paper that requires footnotes, and in the instructions the professor has stated he wants the exact reference when we use materials from one of his class handouts. An example of information I want to take from a class handout would be:
Justinian, Digest 2.13.12: [Callistratus]: Women seem to be removed from
the job of a banker, since that is man’s work. (Where Justinian's Digest would be the original source) What is the correct way to reference this information in a footnote?

I think you need to include more information in your question. When you say "Justinian, Digest", what exactly are you referring to: what edition, published where, by whom, and in translation or not. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digest_(Roman_law) )

Unless you improve your question by adding the kind of material I have suggested, it will not be possible for anyone to answer it, and your question will be closed.


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Would getting two master's degree in the same field (immunology) be a red flag in a PhD application?
I'm from Brazil and I really, really want to be able to pursue my Ph.D. in Immunology at Yale University.
I have a Bachelor's degree in Medicine here in Brazil, and I'm currently taking my Master's degree in the field of Mucosal Immunology.
However, whereas I do think my Curriculum is competitive, I am not sure if it would be enough to get me into Yale, to be honest. Besides, there's this Japanese Government program where Brazilian students are offered opportunities to do a Master's degree in Japan. It's a really great opportunity and I think I can easily be accepted into this program.
So, as Japan is a developed country with a lot more resources for scientific research, I was thinking that maybe taking another master's degree through this program could actually help me strengthen my curriculum to my Ph.D. application at Yale. Another Master's could help me to get more publications and learn more techniques.
However, at the same time, I'm really worried that this could be a red flag during my Ph.D. application because it's really weird to see someone with two Masters in the exact same field. So, would another master's degree in the same field in this particular case of mine be considered a red flag?

I suspect this will be closed as too specific to your personal situation. But why would the Japan Masters have to be in the same field? Wouldn't you do something that was useful instead to learn about something related?

Why Yale specifically? There are hundreds of other universities out there. Anyway, a general rule of thumb is to apply anyway, even if you don't think you're a competitive applicant (you have three or four papers so personally I don't think you have anything to worry about).

If you want to get a doctorate (especially in the US) then apply to doctoral programs. Apply to several, not just a few, and make sure that they aren't so similar that being rejected by one is highly correlated with being rejected by all. Cast a wide net.
If you are "well enough" prepared to enter a program then you are fine. You will have an opportunity to fill in a few things you might have missed.
But getting another non-doctoral degree is probably a waste of your time and effort.
I suspect that your chances of getting in to Yale, specifically, are near zero. Not because of you or your background, but because the competition is extreme for a relatively small number of available positions. Perhaps lightning will strike, but a wider net gives you more options. And the "name" of your university is less important to your career overall than what you do yourself. And, believe it or not, there are excellent professors at places other than Yale.

Maybe, if one is practical and the other is research-based.
So, my understanding is that in medicine and law, the postgraduate degrees that lead into the practice of the field (e.g. Medical Doctorate) are roughly equivalent to an academic Master's Degree that focuses more on research than on the practical application. As a result, getting an M.D. and a Master's Degree may not be completely redundant, and if your first degree was the M.D., then getting the more research-focused Master's Degree might make you more suitable for a PhD.
Of course, I don't work for Yale, and I don't have any insight into their admissions process in particular- if you want an answer about that, you'd need to ask them.


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Citing the present study to validate information
In geology, it is common to describe structures observed on land. Very often, these structures are described in detail and then an interpretation is provided to explain how the structures have contributed to the formation of mountains. If a researcher (let's call him John) has worked on these structures in area A, and you study similar structures in area B (that is similar to area A), then it is possibly worthwhile to cite John's work to support your observations/interpretations (depending on the context).
Let's imagine now that instead of providing a narrative description of the structures in area B, you describe them statistically. If you want to interpret the statistical results, you would need (qualitative) descriptions of these structures, e.g. from those provided by John. However, you haven't described the area B and no former research paper did it either, so even if your structures in B tend to be similar to those of A, you would need those descriptions to explain your statistics.
To solve this, would it be correct to cite the current study like ... descriptive-text...(this study) if observations about the structures have been made in B but not formerly established in another research paper?

What you describe as citing would normally be talked of a cross referencing; and yes, it is quite normal to refer in one part of a work to another relevant part of the work by means of a cross reference. So, for example, one might say in section A of a paper,

For a statistical analysis of the features described
here, see section B.

and in section B to say,

For a qualitative description of the features that are analyzed here,
see section A


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Supervision without being a member of the research group
Recently, I was talking with a professor in my department about potential supervision of my Master's thesis.
The problem is, he holds regular meetings with his research group, but he intends to supervise me separately, so I will be isolated and not have access to group meetings or anything revolving there. Is this a common approach? I did not want to ask this to the professor since he might get offended. Did he politely reject me, but then why did not he give a direct "no" as an answer?
Should I give it a go?

Is the intended topic of your Master's thesis in line with the group research interests?

As far as I can tell, this is probably fine - it is definitely not a "polite rejection" unless you missed a lot of signs that the professor is too busy to work with you.
svavil's question is very relevant: if you are working on a broadly different topic than the rest of the research group, you wouldn't gain as much, and the research group wouldn't gain as much from you being there.
Even if you are close to the research group's topics, some professors will start beginning students off without the rest of the group. This way, early students can benefit from more focused attention, and the group meetings don't have to catch up the new students.  I think this approach is more often taken in theoretical/computational science groups.  As students move along, they are brought more into contact with the group.  [*caveat = this last is based on my experience in groups that are mostly PhD students, so not sure if Masters research is similar.]
There are two possible ways I could see this being bad (both of which happen, but are not the majority of cases):
1) The professor doesn't actually have time to work with you, and you will have trouble scheduling meetings with him, and making progress.
2) The professor is isolating you because he plans on harassing you, e.g. as mentioned re "independent studies":  http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2016/04/ban_the_independent_study.html

This sort of event happened to a colleague of mine before. Initially he did feel discomforted, but later realized the practical implications. The intent was not malevolent in any way.
Some professors (especially senior grades) do not encourage outsiders to reside at their team meetings. It's just a protective tradition they follow. According to his conduct, the fact that your are not a recognized member of his research group means that you just can't take part in the  research meetings.

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


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Is it plagiarism to copy-paste part of a figure from a cited work?
I'm in the process of reviewing a journal submission and noticed that one of the figures is composed of a cropped out piece of a figure from another work. The authors don't cite the figure as coming from this work but do cite the other work elsewhere in the manuscript. Would this constitute as plagiarism?

Yes, so what do you do now?

@SolarMike Good question! I'm going to speak to the editor.

For illustrations, you might wanna request copyrights too

I disagree with others, since permission for reproduction can be obtained after manuscript accepted.

Yes, copying an image from another work without crediting that work is plagiarism. You may want to contact the editor and ask him how to proceed.

It is potentially plagiarism, but if the authors have already cited the source, it may just be a mistake to realise that the image requires its separate citation.

@JeremyC Could be a mistake indeed, but this is not a mutually exclusive category from plagiarism.

Yes. But it means don't go overboard with consulting the editor etc. Just go back to the authors and say: we assume you overlooked the need to cite the reference for the figure. It's too early to call in the cops.

@JeremyC Consulting the editor is not going overboard - that is precisely what OP is supposed to do in the process of reviewing if something is not right.

Yes, presenting someone else's work as your own without citing the source is plagiarism.  And unless the material is in the public domain, it's also a likely copyright infringement.  To use someone else's figure, you need permission and you need to cite your source.  The usual solution if you can't get permission is to create your own original artwork presenting the information in your own way but citing where you got the data.

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