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Phd in Computer Science Enrollment after M.tech in Electronics and Communications
I'm looking for some experience who completed or pursuing  PhD  Computer Science Enrollment and experience after M.tech in  Electronics and Communications.
Myself: I completed M.Tech in ECE (digital signal processing with work published springer paper) in 2014 and 7.5 years of IT fulltime experience (including 3 years engineering research and software development including AI development, cloud engineering, DevOps and python development). I have couple of IT certifications and 1 year professional course work of software development engineering (data structures, LLD, HLD) at scale.  Linkedin
Situations:
Research work predefined: I have gotten clearance form research head/management of my employer about my next research assignment can be published to university as PhD research topic/problem.
University enrollment and guide: My task to manage enrollment in the university and guide who can supervise and recognize my work.
Query: whether it is possible to enroll in Phd in Computer Science after M.tech in Electronics and Communications
Please suggest me best way  or some experience to move ahead to pick university and enrolment process.
I heard from someone that  Master degree must in  in CS to enroll in PhD CS

For your last sentence, it depends on where you want to study. For the rest it depends on whether you have quite a lot of undergrad cs courses behind you. But, in the US, things are a bit more permissive.

You will probably want to mention the country in which you wish to pursue a PhD degree. It seems like you are asking for an industry sponsored university; many universities are quite keen to have industry sponsored research.  As an aside, the main challenge, however, is that many companies want engineering outputs, as opposed to research outputs.  For example, many companies want outputs equivalent to an undergraduate project as opposed to papers.

you are right  @VitaminE, I'm currently working on assignments which PostDoc students completed basic feasibility, improving/building industry use cases into products. Mostly I'm looking fully funded PhD in USA.


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Should I ask to meet graduate students during a TT job interview?
I'm about to start interviewing for tenure-track computer science positions in the US. I've read various bits of advice online [1,2,3] about meeting with graduate students in the department I am visiting.
I can see the value in getting the student perspective on the department. (Although it's also a bit scary. I'm not much older than the students and sometimes the students can be overzealous and ask tougher questions than the faculty.)
I'm told that most places will organize such a meeting automatically. However, should I ask for a student meeting anyway when setting up the job interview?
I worry that, if this is not standard, then it might be an awkward request for them. One school of thought is that this is a bad sign I should be aware of, but I don't think I should read too much into it.

You can! Usually, your host will allocate 20-30 min meeting with few grad/undergrad students.

I have been a grad student in such a meeting with a TT candidate. During most of the meeting, it was the grad students asking the candidate questions (things like mentoring style, what they want to accomplish, etc). The candidate had also graduated from our university a few years back, so perhaps he already felt like he knew things from the student perspective. I came because I had wanted to discuss the candidate's research more in depth, but not everyone there had the interest/background, so that didn't happen much.

I would think that you have close to no say in the way the job interview is conducted. I don't think asking requests will be well-perceived: politely ask for the program if they didn't already send it to you, and prepare for it, but do not try to alter it. That being said, asking about grad students during the interview, and showing that you genuinely care for their input, will probably be well-perceived.

Oh god yes.  In fact, you should take it as a bad sign if they don't offer you a meeting with the students.

There is two different styles of "prospective faculty meets grad students" meetings:

The interview (the grad students are in some form on the selection panel or their input is otherwise valued by the panel)
The applicant gathering data (the grad students are not involved in the decision, but the applicant is interested in getting a different - probably more accurate - perspective on how the department really operates)

These are fairly different meetings. The former is basically the same as all the interviews with faculty, only that it's now a grad student on the other side. The latter should be much more driven by the candidate, and it's the candidate who will ask most of the questions.
For the former, the department will tell you whether you should meet students, and which. If they do not have it planned and you don't care about the second angle, there really is no point in meeting with students.
However, I have found the second angle to be extremely valuable if you have any doubts at all about the institution. Grad students tend to be more honest about administrative procedures, quality of life, work culture, etc. However, you need to enter this with the right mind set - this is not part of the interview, but people external to the entire process doing you, the candidate, a favor. It pays to be friendly and open here, and putting down the interview guard just a little may be necessary to get an open conversation going. I have found a good pattern to be to take out 2 or 3 grad student volunteers to an informal lunch (if schedule permits), or at least to a longer coffee break - and the candidate should invite them (or, in some cases, the department offered to pay, which is also fine as long as the students are invited).

I worry that, if this is not standard, then it might be an awkward request for them. One school of thought is that this is a bad sign I should be aware of, but I don't think I should read too much into it.

It may be a little non-standard, but not standard is good! Your goal isn't to appear exactly like the other four candidates. If your request makes you seem more interested, more thorough, or just plain nicer than the others, this is a good thing. I am not sure what "school of thought" you are talking about, but trying to be as uniform in your requests to any other candidate seems horrendously bad advice to me. That is not to say that every department will say yes. Sometimes they really don't bother setting it up, sometimes they simply did not find students that were interested in meeting prospective faculty, both of which may be a small red flags on their own.

These are fairly different meetings. — Perhaps they serve different purposes, but in practice these are usually the same meeting.  Every interview meeting is a two-way interview; in particular, candidates meeting with faculty are interviewing the faculty, not just being interviewed by them.

the department will tell you whether you should meet students — And if they don't offer, you should insist.  If they still refuse, you don't want to work there; cancel the interview.

@JeffE Sounds sensible. I also outright cancelled an interview  once because I had gotten convinced, from email exchanges before and the way how the search was conducted, that the department is not in the hand of rational and fair people who will value me as colleague.

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Why do some professors have a company name in front of their title, e.g. Samsung Professor?
For example, Professor Stephen Boyd - Samsung Professor, Professor Paul Newman - BP Professor
Does it mean said company pays that professor's salary?  Does that professor have any obligations towards said company?  Who decides which professor gets which company?

Samsung gave the money to endow the chair. The university picks the professor to occupy the chair.

There are university chairs named for non-companies as well. For example, Isaac Newton was the Lucasian professor at Cambridge. That professorship was begun when Lucas left 4,000 volumes to the university, together with land yielding an income of £100 per year. Of course endowing a chair nowadays is more expensive than that.

Very similar question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12607/what-is-an-endowed-chair-exactly-how-does-it-compare-to-a-normal-position?noredirect=1&lq=1

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/28524/corporate-branding-of-chair-professorship

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15956/endowed-assistant-professor-vs-assistant-professor

Also similar question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8088/746

Such things are honorific and based on grants from companies that "endow (fund) a chair". That is academic-speak for a fairly large grant that normally is enough to fund a person and probably their research over several years. The funds will be administered by the university and the company may have some (perhaps a lot) of say into who holds the chair, given that they meet other university criteria. Some of the "endowments" are large enough to be perpetual, with only interest accumulation and such being used for disbursement.
Sometimes such things are used as an inducement to try to attract someone with either a lot of promise or a solid research record.
In the better arrangements, the company will have very limited say, but perhaps a veto.
It is a form of advertising and virtue-signaling by companies.

I used to work on these gift agreements… I never saw one where the company had any sway beyond designating the criteria.

@Dawn, things have gotten weird and politicized. Some companies have ulterior motives. I vaguely remember a scandal or two.

Nikole Hannah-Jones and the UNC, for example.

A scandal is a scandal because It is unusual and unethical. I think you have the emphasis wrong in this answer.

That is not the case of a company having too much sway over an endowed chair position. That was a fight about tenure and the Board.

This situation is called a "named professorship."  They are not specific to companies.
A named professorship usually is created because a wealthy individual, or occasionally a company, decides that they want the professorship to have that name.  It is similar to buying the naming rights to a stadium or a building.  Legally, it's typically a donation.  Universities also name professorships occasionally just because they think it sounds good.
Being a named professor is an honor.

Does it mean said company pays that professor's salary?

No.  In some cases, money received from the sponsoring individual or company is invested and used to pay some or all the salary at a later date.  This is called an endowment.

Does that professor have any obligations towards said company?

Usually no.  There could be exceptions.  Typically the professor is someone with a track record in an area of interest to the funder.

Who decides which professor gets which company?

Not normally.  Most Western universities consider it improper for any professorship to be assigned through any process which is not controlled by faculty.  That includes named professorships.  However, other countries things may be more flexible, and some Western universities there has been a trend towards allowing sponsors to influence hiring.

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How necessary it is to have PhD students?
If a person has a tenure/ tenure track position on a math department, how obligatory it is to have PhD students? While some people like to have students, there are people who do not like that.
I am particularly interested about the situation in American universities.

In short, it depends on university and field. Of course, in experimental science with labs it is impossible to do without grad students. In math, it also depends on the size of the program: in my view, if there are X professors and about 1.5X or less grad students, then not everyone should be expected to have one

Cynicism Alert: You need people to all the research tasks (your ideas, right?). PhD students have the best (lowest) wage:skill ratio.

@Crowley In many places, the cost of Ph.D. students is not just wages but also tuition waivers. As a result postdocs and Ph.D. students may have surprisingly similar costs.

It certainly depends on the department you're in. Some departments have small PhD programs and largely focused on undergraduate and master's programs. In that case, you may get away with just not having PhD students. On the other hand, at most Research-1 universities, math departments have 1.5-2 PhD students per tenure-track faculty. Of course, faculty do not evenly assume mentorship roles for them, but there is an expectation that one does, in fact, supervise some. It is not uncommon to have an expectation that, for example, one has to have graduated one PhD student before promotion to full professor.
In general, the way to see this most productively is probably to remember that a university is an institution of higher education. If a department has a PhD program as an important component, then it is a reasonably expectation that every tenure-track faculty participates in it by (i) teaching graduate courses, and (ii) advising PhD students. If you actively try to get out of one or both of these parts of your job, you're not doing your job. The situation is no different than teaching and service: it's part of your job, and whether you do or do not like this part makes no difference in the expectations that are put on you.

"If you actively try to get out of one or both of these parts of your job, you're not doing your job" I would strongly disagree with that. Everyone has his/her strengths and weaknesses and, if the department is reasonably balanced as a whole, I see no reason to demand that everyone participate in everything. You cannot get away with doing nothing, but if you do your fair share time and effort-wise, there is nothing shameful or immoral about opting out of some activities that others can do better than you or that you just dislike as long as there is no shortage of hands for them.

@fedja No one expects people to do everything.  But teaching plus research plus service is not everything.  Every department I know of requires teaching plus research for promotions--and says so when they solicit evaluations for promotion cases.  And they want candidates to do well at each.

@ColinMcLarty "Teaching" doesn't even necessarily mean "graduate teaching", much less "supervising a PhD student", right? Also, one of the most common schemes is 2-2-1 weighted average and having 10-10-0 score is often not any worse than 8-8-8, say. What is true is that the promotion rules vary a lot with the department, so you, indeed, should consult the faculty handbooks for the minima. However, even those are not a dogma and exceptions can be made.

For instance, one of our faculty members spent several years on setting and running a teacher education program (and brought a few millions in grants in the process) but that came at a cost of her research. Should she be promoted to the full professor rank? The handbook says "No, the number of publications for the last 5 years is short of the required minimum" while the common sense says "Yes, she has made way more useful work for the department than an average guy who gets a promotion and she couldn't possibly do it without sacrificing some other stuff". What to do?

@fedja, the point I'm making is that you can't just "opt out". A tenure-track faculty's job is understood to include PhD student supervision if your department has a significant PhD program. You can't unilaterally decide that you're not interested in this, and at a later point expect that your colleagues will simply "understand". If you don't want to supervise graduate students in general, you need to talk to your head of department and have your job description changed. That may include getting other duties. This reassignment is recorded, and will be part of promotion proceedings.

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Is it feasible to do a PhD in astrophysics after an MBA degree?
I finished my master's in 2023 with a specialization in Physics. As part of my degree, I worked on a thesis in the field of Astrophysics, and initally had plans to pursue a PhD in the same. However, my family forced me to do an MBA due to financial constraints.
Currently, I am planning on working for a few years to save up and then make a switch back into academia, namely by applying for a PhD in astrophysics. I have two main questions:
1.) Given this plan, what are my prospects going to look like? Will my master's degree and thesis be sufficient to land me a decent PhD in the future, or will my time as a business manager be viewed as a bad thing and ruin my chances of a PhD?
2.) Another alternative is to apply for a fresh Master's degree in astrophysics, and then go for a PhD. Will this help increase my prospects of landing a good PhD program?
I'm mainly focusing on PhD and masters degrees in the Europe, but I would also appreciate your thoughts about PhD/masters prospects in other countries!

Welcome to academia.se. This is a decent question, but it's very much about your own circumstances. Questions whose answers only apply to one individual are discouraged here. You might consider revising it to be more general, and applicable to others.
With that said, I hope you get useful answers.

Do you think your master's thesis was impactful and grades were good enough for a good PhD program otherwise? I suppose that with the MBA you could also bring valuable real-world experience into your later research.  Who knows, maybe with a PhD and and MBA, you'll be at a good place later to lead an astrophysics startup... good luck!

Was the masters with a specialization in Physics a separate masters from the MBA, or did you just do a lot of physics electives as part of the MBA?

Yes, it is possible to switch back to academia and astrophysics, but this path is far from ideal. During the time spent and the effort required in management, you are likely to forget a lot of things. The field will move forward from where you are now. "Feasible" is actually a judgement call, but it is "possible".
More important, in some places where letters of recommendation are important, you are likely to lose contact with your academic mentors who would write the best letters. And they will start to forget you if you lose contact.
Additionally, your life style will likely change, perhaps dramatically, with additional needs financially that wouldn't be feasible to interrupt.
And, in some places like the US, "saving up" for doctoral study isn't necessary as most students serve as TAs which provide for nearly all fees plus a modest living stipend.
An MBA would be irrelevant, I think, to any decisions about admissions. It certainly wouldn't be a positive. And the time spent in business might cause some people to question your commitment. This latter can be overcome, I'd guess, but you will still be competing with people who have taken a more direct route to doctoral admissions.
But, you do what you need to do. If the pressure from your family is that they need your financial support then that may be unavoidable. But not ideal for achieving your goals.

"An MBA would be irrelevant, I think, to any decisions about admissions. It certainly wouldn't be a positive." Is this specifically for the American system when you go straight into a 5-yeae PhD from a Bachelor's, or would it also apply to the European system where you do a 2-year Master's before you apply for a 3-year PhD? An MBA is a Master's degree, after all.

@nick012000, an MBA is a professional, not an academic, masters. That is the difference. I doubt that even in Europe, any masters, no matter what field, qualifies you for doctoral admission. It might even be stricter in places like Germany.

The MBA demonstrates that a student can start something semi ambitious and see it through.  It may mean more than that, but an applicant would need to explain how and why in the application package.

Maybe, if you do well and can tie your MBA to your proposed research project.
Taking a look at the requirements for a PhD at the University of Queensland in Australia, which follows the 3-year PhD following a separate Master's Degree model, it states:

An approved degree needs to be:

in an area relevant to your proposed PhD project and
completed no more than 10 years ago.

You need one of the following approved degrees to apply for a PhD:
...

Coursework master’s degree with an overall grade point average of 5.65 on the 7-point UQ scale which includes relevant research experience, approved by the dean; or

Presumably, an MBA would qualify as a "course-work master's degree".
It then goes on to state:

You'll meet the requirements for admission into a PhD in terms of 'research preparedness' if you can provide evidence that you've planned and executed project work and/or a body of research with some independence.
To demonstrate this, we'll ask you to provide one of the following:
...
Demonstrable industry or work experience where you can demonstrate that you have planned and executed a project, working with a high level of independence.

This shouldn't be difficult for anyone getting an MBA to do. You are a manager at the company you work for, right? There's generally not much point getting one if you're not, after all.
So, to qualify for a PhD in Astrophysics, you'll need to be able to justify why your Astrophysics research topic is related to the topics you studied in your MBA, but maybe you could justify it by connecting economic and statistical modelling to the mathematical modelling of galaxies or something.


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How to self-fund a PhD in STEM in europe?
I am an EU citizen graduated of two masters, interested in pursuing a biology/environmental conservation PhD in either a UK university or a European one. Last year I applied to several PhD offers and got interviewed for three different projects, two of them being in some well-established research group in my field, but I have not been selected.
This year I am planning to apply to advertised projects again, but I am also contacting researchers directly to try to set up a project in collaboration with them. I quickly got positive replies, and I started to search some funding.
I have ruled out being funded by a company, as my subjects of interest are unlikely to match their interests (research question example: what's the connectivity between these two populations of this ecologically important but economically unexploitable specie?)
I would not bet on the competitive grants offered in some UK universities, as I have no peer-reviewed paper published at the moment (I know it's not mandatory but having discussed this option before with a potential supervisor it makes the project more appealing).
From country to country, I can find some research grants, but so far I haven't found any that doesn't require the application to be submitted by at least a post-doc.
To your knowledge, are there research grants that are open to non-PhD holders to fund a PhD project?
More broadly, are there ways to "self fund" a PhD project (i.e. get funding from an institution to pay your salary and eventually field/lab work during the course of a PhD project) in Europe?
I understand that there are probably as many situations as there are countries in Europe, so providing national level experience is also welcome

I believe you're just looking for funding. "Self-funding" is usually used to describe using ones personal funds.

This needs an edit to clarify the actual need. Some statements are inconsistent and seem to imply misunderstanding of how the system works. What are you really seeking, as it doesn't seem to involve self-funding as generally understood?

@patou I'm voting to close this question because it needs clarifying. "Self-funding" usually implies paying for it yourself. What I think you are actually asking is "How can I find funding myself for a PhD", but I wouldn't want to make such a big change as an edit. Do a careful check for duplicates and if you think this hasn't been answered then please edit the question to clarify, and I will be happy to support re-opening.

@Flyto Considering the answer and others comments I agree with you that this question should be closed. My first aim was to create a question that would offer a guide to students willing to undertake a PhD that in a European context:

have identified a relevant subject
have identified a potential supervisor and got it motivated to supervise such project  - Can't start the project because there is no money available but are willing to search for some.

@Buffy You mentioned possible misunderstanding of how the system works, could you bring some precisions. It may help in the search process/editing of this question, proposed by Flyto

It sounds like you're looking for sources of funding, as opposed to self-funding.
Check out the UKRI guidance on finding funding for doctoral research. You may find the funding finder particularly useful for filtering for funding types and areas that fit your needs.
If you can fit your research question into the purview of a Center for Doctoral Training (CDT) then they'll handle arranging the funding for you. Try this list of the currently available CDTs offered by NERC (the research council most likely related to your study area).


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Why are review articles cited more frequently than original research articles?
Review articles generally receive more citations compared to original research articles.
In my mind, it should be the other way around, as journal guidelines generally solicit researchers to cite original research articles rather than review articles. So reviews should only be cited after their original content, which tends to be a small fraction of their total content, while the largest part of it consists of paraphrasing and citing research articles.
Therefore, I would venture to believe that reviews receive more citations because the rule I mentioned previously is generally not followed; and that authors usually cite reviews to avoid taking time to search for original articles (which I have to admit can be exhausting, and extremely time-consuming).
Can someone corroborate if this is the case, or am I missing something? Thanks!

That's not always true, but your conclusion is probably right.

At least in my field, review articles are much more readable than research articles! (And I mean "readable" in all possible senses, including as a euphemism for "correct".)

You neglect that review articles cover a larger field. When discussing something, I might cite the original articles and a review that puts them in context. Others will do the same, but as they are interested in different things in the same subfield, they will cite different original articles, yet they will cite the same review to put them into context. This will naturally put the review ahead in number of citations.

The problem isn't with the citation counts, but with the fact that credit is given based on citation counts, which are a terrible statistic, among other things due to the reason you've brought up.

Related: Point 6 in my answer on citation counts; "Citations can be transitive".

Review articles generally receive more citations compared to original research articles. - In what sense?  On average?  In total?  Just looking at most cited works?  I never got this impression in pure math.  I did notice that the most cited books tend to be cited more than the most cited papers, but that's natural because of their broader appeal.

Btw if you didn't know, it's harder to publish a review paper because it needs to come across that you are an expert, whereas to publish an original research result you just need to come up with something new (without necessarily being an expert).

Where do you get the idea that a review article is necessarily not a research article? Often a good review, especially a systematic review, gives a much better idea of what’s “true” than a standalone single study. (Good) review articles are also much more useable and informative for people who have to make real world decisions based on scientific evidence. My view is reviews should be cited and used more than primary research - especially as an idea gets closer to real world implementation.

Thanks for your response Kimball. Answering your question: "Reviews are cited, on average, 3 times more than original research articles", according to https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1751157718300555 published in the Journal of Infometrics. Let me know if you need more sources.

Thanks for your response rhialto. I was not implying that a review article is not necessarily a research article. This is where I obtained the terms I used in my question: https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/authorandreviewertutorials/writing-a-journal-manuscript/types-of-journal-articles/10285504.

One thing not mentioned in the answers is that citing a good review article is often just a nice thing to do, for the reader: you're telling them where they can get a well-written overview of a topic, which can help them put your work into context. That shouldn't be overlooked as a reason for doing it!

It should be noted also that writing a review article is a really quite significant amount of work, certainly a lot more than preparing the manuscript for a typical research paper. The original content of a review article is a comprehensive survey of a research field, and often also a substantial amount of synthesis and pedagogy. These things are not by any means trivial.

Why buy flour when you can buy wheat and grind it yourself?

@mellamoleon your source describes why you describe as a “research articles” using the much more salient term “original research. I see you’ve now edited the question to reflect that.

I don't recall ever being told, by journal guidelines or by an editor, that I should always cite the original paper instead of a review. The review would usually contain citations of the original publications.
A review can be cited as a single source for lots of facts,  especially in the "introduction" or "background" sections of a paper. So it's likely to be more useful for the reader. A good review is also likely to be easier for many readers to understand than the original paper. And the review might be where I originally learned the information I need.  Finally, a review is likely to use uniform notation that I can adopt, whereas the original papers are more likely to have diverging notation, which may make it difficult for readers to compare them with my paper and with each other.
I've often written things like "see [review] and the references there"; no one has yet complained.

Thanks for your comment Andreas. What is your field of research?

@mellamoleon mathematics

Thanks, Andreas. It's probably the case that journals have different guidelines for citing reviews vs. original research depending on the field of work. From my experience in biomedical research, journals usually ask for original articles to be cited, rather than review articles.

You read a nice review article then you understand an abstract of the entire literature.

@mellamoleon "journals usually ask for original articles to be cited, rather than review articles" <-- Can you link to such a guideline from a prominent journal in your field? You keep claiming this, but have not yet shown any evidence. I am curious to see such a guideline, as in my field it would seem very strange to require this.

Thanks for your response Szabolcs. As an example would be the guidelines of the EMBO journal, which are the first ones that appeared in my google search results: "Comprehensive and accurate citation of the relevant literature is essential. We require citation of the primary literature wherever appropriate". https://www.embopress.org/page/journal/14602075/authorguide#citationpolicy. Let me know if you need more examples.

Also, see the following article "On Citing Well" published in Nature Magazine: "Finally, more prominent citation of review articles, instead of original research papers, can obscure or bias the connectivity of the scientific literature (Nat. Cell Biol. 11, 1, 2009). Though review articles are appropriately used as overview citations for broad scientific topics or ideas, most citations, especially those focusing on previously published concepts or results, should be of original research papers". https://www.nature.com/articles/nchembio.310.

Despite working in the biomedical field, I was also surprised to hear that journals might advise against citing reviews. Even looking at the Nat Chem Biol and Nat Cell Biol guidelines for authors, I do not see any suggestions similar to their 2009 paper. I believe this "rule" is much more rare than @mellamoleon suggests, although I see that it is stated in some places.

@mellamoleon "wherever appropriate" is the key wording in that guideline (I mention such a situation in my answer: when referring to a specific work, refer to it rather than someone else's review of it).

Many papers have background that touches on enough different areas that citing all the original research in those areas would quickly balloon a paper to thousands of references. Therefore, it's common practice to cite authoritative reviews, plus specific individual papers of the highest relevance.
The direction to:

cite original research articles rather than review articles

...only applies when you are discussing specific findings. If you are referring to Alice's paper, you should cite Alice, not Bob's review of several papers including Alice's. If you are referring to a whole area of research that has been nicely summarized by Bob and includes papers by Alice, Jane, Jesse and Richard, you can (and should!) cite Bob.
If anything, it's a form of plagiarism of Bob if you were to read Bob's review, find that Bob has collected papers from Alice, Jane, Jesse, and Richard, and cite those papers rather than Bob (it would be okay to cite Bob plus the others if they are sufficiently important; if I do this I make clear that the citations were found via Bob, even if I'm familiar with the other papers individually as well). Collecting papers in a review is an intellectual endeavor that deserves citation.
I think the general claim that review articles are cited more frequently than original research is false, but I don't have great data to support that besides my own papers: reviews make up a minority of citations in a single paper.
However, my impression is that there are a handful of very highly cited reviews, often by respected researchers in particular fields, and also lots of reviews that are hardly cited at all. Those highly respected reviews collect citations from a very broad area of research and their citation counts balloon well over that of any individual paper in the same broad area.

Thanks for your response Bryan. What is your field of research?

@mellamoleon Primarily neuroscience, I also publish in public health and anesthesiology.

Thanks Bryan, can you please share an excerpt of an article that you have written in which you have used the example which you shared in your answer "if I do this I make clear that the citations were found via Bob, even if I'm familiar with the other papers individually as well)". It would be very helpful for me. Thanks in advance!

@mellamoleon Something like a parenthetical (reviewed in Bob et al, 2020).

"…it's a form of plagiarism…". I disagree with that. Perhaps you use the word "plagiarism" too loosely. I consider plagiarism to be a very serious charge (it is a type of lie) and do not think that what you described merits that serious label. Just because the review authors would like to be cited does not make it plagiarism to bypass them and cite the original source that the review authors got their material from. On the contrary, as OP said, some people consider it inappropriate or even unethical to cite the review author rather than the original source. (I disagree with that, too, though.)

@Tripartio For one source, no. But if a review says "watermelons are pink inside" and cites several sources investigating watermelon color, and you cite those same sources for the same purpose because you found them in the review, it's not okay to fail to cite the review. They did the work to compile the sources. Copying that work is plagiarism. It's not because the review authors "like to be cited" it's because it's the ethically honest thing to do.

@MishaLavrov, the example you gave would certainly be plagiarism. It is not an extreme example; it is a different case. The information reproduced in your example is not primarily the source data, but the organization of it, which clearly comes from the review article. So, I do not consider that the same thing.

@BryanKrause, I agree that what you describe is best practice, but I disagree with labelling not doing it with the strong word "plagiarism". For example, here is a question and answer that addresses this very issue and gives similar advice to yours without resorting to the word "plagiarism" to describe disagreeing with the advice: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/47492/referencing-the-reference.

@Tripartio I see no reason to water down the importance of citation by intentionally avoiding the word plagiarism. Plagiarism comes in many forms, some more serious than others. Just because people were able to answer that question without using that word doesn't mean that they aren't talking about a form of plagiarism.

You should ask yourself, what is the purpose of a citation?
I read your perspective as: the purpose is to award credit (like "points") to research that originated an idea.
That is one of the purposes, but there are others. An important purpose is giving the reader a reference for a claim or statement, so they can go learn more about it. Review articles are generally better for this.
Another purpose is to establish credibility for a claim or statement. If I write "researchers generally consider approach A more promising", then a review article demonstrating this has more credibility than an opinion expressed in one research paper.

Yes, I think many journals (at least in my field of research) prefer original articles to be cited for two additional reasons: 1) because it is common for review articles to misinterpret original data and 2) to make it easier for readers to identify the original article (if one review cites another review, and so on, it becomes very difficult to find the original article). But like you said, it appears as if an important reason behind this is to give "credit points" to the original research authors.

In my opinion, it would be best, to give credit to both the review authors (in which the original research was cited, summarized or discussed), as well as to the original research authors, as they both deserve credit.

I agree with the previous posts, but would add that there are a few additional aspects of reviews that merit high citation counts:

Most researchers start by reading a review when getting into a new topic. Since reviews are "introductory material", naturally, many people have read them and therefore many people are likely to cite them.
A review has a broader audience than a research article since it may cover e.g. five subfields instead of a specific question in one subfield. Therefore many different types of people can use them, relative to an article which has a narrower focus.
Reviews bring value in and of themselves. For example, they might outline the history of a research area; they might compare and contrast different articles' view points; or they might point to key areas for future work. These are independent contributions in and of themselves and should be cited as such.

As you note, it is easier to cite a review than read sub-articles, but I don't think that's the primary reason. If I am just using content from a single article, then I would cite the original article and not the review.

Review articles are generally quite broad, thus a review article intersects more than once with your own work. However, I personally try to cite primary sources as well as reviews. Thus, if I discuss aspects of say Method X, then a review article on Method X is handy to cite from. If I discuss Aspect Y of Method X, then I might cite the review article on Method X as well as the original paper on Aspect Y.

So reviews should only be cited after their original content, which tends to be a small fraction of their total content, while the largest part of it consists of paraphrasing and citing research articles.

The original and defining content of a review is the review work itself, that is the comparison of the knowledge record about a topic. It is a lot of scientific work. A review article is like the embryonic form of a book.
Conversely, too many "original" research articles fail to link their content to the state of the art. I am not surprised any longer of finding that the literature review in the introductions is just name dropping: I often go and browse the cited papers only not to find any supporting information to the citing paper.
And, incidentally, when I review papers in the sense of peer reviewing, I always look through at least some of the articles the authors have cited.
Disappointing incidents happened to me even for work published by associate editors.
Anyhow, the attribution original for any standard publication is possibly a name of convenience and creates a false dichotomy: you could call it incremental research for example. (I have seen now that Elsevier calls them "regular articles").
The point I cherish is that one should only cite what one has read, preferably perused, preferably not just glanced at. As a reader I want to know what you considered to build your arguments. If you read a review article and are happy about the comparison and conclusions drawn there, cite it. If you went further and looked into some other publication, whether or not cited in the review, cite that.
About reading papers and the fact that it

can be exhausting, and extremely time-consuming

I do concur. This is particularly true of badly written papers, that is for which authors have not taken sufficient time for writing well, beside that for reading well, but that's another story.

I've mostly heard the term "incremenatal research" used with a negative connotation: to mean the novelty is too small, or is it just a work applying A to B, and generally to signify a paper of low originality."Step change"  on the other hand is supposed to be a major change

@penelope Thanks for this remark: I will avoid using it in grant proposals :-) Of course it does not escape us that there is nothing semantically wrong with incremental research: standing on the shoulders of giants is incremental height. I am hopeful of a revival of the appreciation of incremental research: there is no breakthrough, there is no new ordering of ideas, rather establishing whether certain consequences can be sustained based on what we already knew. I guess that a great deal of the so-called study cases, widely published, belong to this progressive accrual of confidence.

I am actually also quite fond of finding clever ways of putting things together. I find that there's far too little integration between theory and application, and many different related fields. But everybody is making a point not to make your research sound incremental in grant proposals

@penelope I would then call it integrative research. Good contribution, thanks