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Is there a single example of an outsider considered a "crank" publishing a ground-breaking result that was found to be correct (in the last 30 years)?
I'm interested mainly in mathematical and related fields, in which several important and famous open questions exist (e.g., Riemann Hypothesis).
Almost every day a new "amateur" scholar (meaning, someone with no formal affiliation to a reputable research institute, or someone who does not have any track record of peer-reviewed publications
in reputable journals or conferences in the area) publishes into cyber-space a new manuscript alleged to solve a major open problem in mathematics or related fields. Some established researchers then consider this a work of "cranckery" (i.e., an amateur attempt that is not only false, but is mostly meaningless and hence impossible to verify since the argument is so confused and unstructured that it is hard to identify any meaningful statement to verify).
On the other hand, the amateur would usually claim that his/her proof is correct, and would feel frustrated that the established scholars ignore his/her breakthrough, perhaps because they are "outsiders", or that it is harmful for the "establishment" to acknowledge the breakthrough.
This leads to a simple question: is there a single example in the last 30 years in which such an amateur whose work was considered a crank when published, was in retrospect vindicated and proved correct?
Clarifications: examples of somewhat less known, but still established academics with a track record and an affiliation, who solved a moderately big open question do exist. I'm asking about a clear person identified as a "crank" whose work was then proved to be correct.

EDIT: I decided to accept Dan Romik's answer as the closest to a complete answer to my question. There were many good and surprising answers that I didn't know about. But my criteria were somewhat strict, so none of those fall within the desired quest: an (1) amateur, i.e., someone with NO research affiliation (2) whose work of a mathematical nature was (3) considered a "work of crank" (even when extending the time limit to ~80 years back, to make sure "affiliation" and "crank" have the same meaning as today).
The closest example is indeed Dan Shechtman's work that was dismissed as pseudoscience. But Shechtman was a researcher with a clear and respected  affiliation. And as Dan Romik's comments, theories that are considered "crankery" at first can be vindicated in retrospect in the natural sciences, but much less so in mathematics. So Shechtman falls in both math and no affiliation criteria.
Another great example is that of 1952, Kurt Heegner, which I didn't know about. I would have accepted this I believe, had I not read in comments that Heegner was in fact considered a serious mathematician and not an amateur or an outsider.
Yitang Zhang's example is also close, but although he wasn't considered an established researcher, his work when published was never considered "crankery" as far as I know, but quite immediately identified as an important contribution.

Maybe "last 30 years" is a bit too restrictive? Mind you, that means post 1992. Sticking with modern examples seems important though. Maybe 50 years (or even 70, to make Heegner fit) would be better?

@Arno, yes, maybe 50 years is more relevant. The point is that I'm interested in academia as it is today. While in the past things may have been less formal and less specialized. So the term crank would not be relevant.

Different questions in HSM SE that may still be of interest to readers of this question: Did amateurs ever produce important proofs or similar? and What are some of the earliest mentions of scientific "cranks"?

Mod's note: if you have an example or an argument that there are no examples, please use the answer box. If you have an anecdote, or a possible answer you're not sure about, or any other commentary, please put it in the chat. This question already has 17 (!!) real answers, so anything even slightly resembling an answer in the comments will be removed without warning.

The correct answer is most likely “no”, but as with Russell’s teapot, it would be next to impossible to prove that an example of the scenario you’re describing does not exist.
By way of an argument to support my answer, that isn’t quite a proof of non-existence, I can suggest the following: for mathematicians it is usually very easy to recognize who is a crank and who isn’t. And a defining chracteristic of cranks is that when someone is a crank, they are a crank all the way; they can’t be a crank up to the time they suddenly start doing genuine (let alone groundbreaking) work. So the hypothetical situation described in the question is (essentially) impossible, almost by definition.
Edit: as @MaximalIdeal points out, there do seem to be genuine counterexamples to what I wrote above (at least one, dating from 1952). I stand by my reasoning above as being the justification for my belief, but acknowledge that what I wrote isn’t universally true and in rare situations someone can be regarded as a crank but still end up surprising everyone with legitimately good mathematical work.

I think I gave a counterexample to your post. Nonetheless I agree with your sentiment.

It just isn't true that cranks are cranks all the way.  Look at de Branges, Mochizuki, Lang (though his crankery was always non-mathematical).

@NoahSnyder these are serious mathematicians who started believing they had proved something they didn’t. I wouldn’t consider them cranks, although I agree de Branges’ case is a borderline case. To me, they represent a phenomenon that, while interesting, isn’t quite the same as the phenomenon of cranks.

There are quite a few cranks that study torsion fields or decipher bible codes alongside doing actual research in mathematics.

@Džuris all of us are probably regarded as delusional by someone, somewhere for some belief that we hold that is unrelated to mathematics. If you stretch the definition of a crank to encompass this type of thing, the whole concept of a crank becomes pretty useless IMO. My answer is limited to mathematical cranks, which I think is closer to OP’s intent than what you’re suggesting.

@NoahSnyder The existence of serious mathematicians who subsequently became cranks is quite a different proposition from the existence of cranks who subsequently became serious mathematicians.

This answer takes the following liberties:
(1) The field is experimental, not theoretical.
(2) The person had legitimate affiliation and wasn't amateur, but was publicly decried as being a crank by noted scholars.
Nevertheless, I'm adding it because it seems to be aligned with the spirit of the question.
Dan Shechtman is a metallurgist who reported for the first time the existence of 'quasi-crystals', an atomic arrangement which appeared to violate fundamental laws of crystallography. He was famously called a 'quasi-scientist' by the celebrated chemist & Nobel laureate Linus Pauling. His own team told him to read the textbook and not make ridiculous claims. These jibes are tantamount to accusations of crankery. Anyhow, the results were published and independently verified over decades, ultimately leading to Shechtman being awarded the Nobel Prize in 2011.

Interesting, but also not within the last 30 years as OP asks. I hate to make people feel old, but the last 30 years start with 1992. :)

@FedericoPoloni- It was found to be true within the last 30 years, which is how I interpreted the question. Hence the 2011 Nobel. The work was certainly done earlier.

@FedericoPoloni in fairness, there’s nothing about this story that suggests it couldn’t have transpired in exactly the same way if this discovery had been made 10 or 20 years ago (or even today for that matter). It seems to me that in the physical sciences, more than in pure mathematics, there is still a fair bit of room even today for “maverick” discoveries to be made that would be doubted or even denounced as impossible by the scientific establishment of the day.

@DanRomik- That's an interesting point. There is always a finite possibility of discovering some new phenomenon, material or resource that changes an existing reality in the physical sciences.

I think the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture might fit under the relaxed proven within the last 30 years rule

Of course Pauling had some "interesting" ideas of his own in later life

@ChrisH: Yes, Linus Pauling was the real crank, promoting Vitamin C as a cure for all illnesses including cancer. Fortunately, Vitamin C is cheap, so he is hardly as bad as those quacks who promote their own hundred-thousand-dollar cancer treatment.

@user21820 on top of that, it's cheap and not massively harmful even in the doses he advocated

Yes, that's a great example; though the guy was not an outsider at all.

Your link shows Shechtman was not an amateur.

@AnonymousPhysicist - Indeed, which is why I mentioned that right on top.

@Dilworth When he kept insisting that quasicrystals do exist he was called  a crank and was basically fired from the lab where he was working.

@NickS That's simply not true. Shechtman continued to work with NBS/NIST for decades after the discovery. Four out of five of the seminal quasicrystal papers listed on his Wikipedia page have NBS/NIST co-authors.

@jeguyer Working for at the same institute and working for the same person are NOT the same thing. My comment is based on a talk by Shechtman I attended. Anyhow, check this interview with him: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jan/06/dan-shechtman-nobel-prize-chemistry-interview

"The bad reaction was the head of my laboratory, who came to my office one day and, smiling sheepishly, put a book on x-ray diffraction on my desk and said, 'Danny, please read this book and you will understand that what you are saying cannot be.' And I told him, you know, I don't need to read this book, I teach at the Technion, and I know this book, and I'm telling you my material is not in the book."He came back a couple of days later and said to me, 'Danny, you are a disgrace to my group. I cannot be with you in the same group.' So I left the group and found another group....

I'm aware of what story he's decided to tell. I'm also aware of how many people he's hurt in the process. He was not fired, "basically" or otherwise.

Note: As Federico Poloni pointed out, the OP requested an example from the last 30, and my example below is from ~70 years ago. This was careless on my part so I apologize. Nonetheless, I think my post is informative so I will keep it up. I guess it goes to show you how rare these examples really are.
Yes, a very concrete and relevant example exists. In 1952, Kurt Heegner published a proof resolving a very significant part of the class number problem. Some sources say he was an engineer while others say he was a high school teacher, but all accounts say he was someone interested in higher level math without being a mathematician by profession. Unfortunately, his proof was dismissed because it contained a few errors, and it was more or less agreed that his paper was not valuable. He died in 1965 before his proof was recognized as salvageable by Harold Stark in the late 1960s. The result is now called the Stark–Heegner theorem.

This is a good example, but it's worth noting that Heegner's paper was published in Mathematische Zeitschrift, and so apparently made it past some level of peer review. So he arguably wasn't regarded as a crank so much as an amateur who made a good effort but didn't quite pull it off. Still, very much in the ballpark of what was being asked for. Interesting story!

This is a non-example. Heegner did not have a professor position, apparently he never sought one, but he was by no means an outsider or a crank. According to German Wikipedia, he had several math papers published in Crelle and Math. Zeit. prior to his famous one. He had a habilitation (!) in mathematics, and was in contact with a few established mathematicians, including E. Schmidt, Weber and Hasse.

Submitting this as a comment since it's another "timed out" case, I think that the Alvarez hypothesis regarding dinosaur extinction should be considered since Luis Alvarez was an outsider in the field of paleontology and his contribution was derided as a "crank theory" for a decade or more. I think that there are probably other examples of Manhattan Project physicists switching to other fields and- initially at least- being considered maverick outsiders.

It would be interesting to know what exactly Heegner's academic status was. His English Wikipedia page calls him a "private scholar", which I suspect might be a mistranslation of Privatdozent. If so, that would place him at the very upper border of the difference between "amateur" and "professional".

I’d heard this story many times and had no idea Heegner had a habilitation!  This does not seem to be widely known among mathematicians.  The German Wikipedia page has a lot more info than the English one and it would be a great service for someone bilingual to update the English page to include more of the info on the German page.

@FedericoPoloni: However, the German Wikipedia page does not call him Privatdozent but Privatgelehrter and says that apparently a) he never tried to get a permanent position at at a university and b) he seems to have done the habilitation for the purpose of being recognized in the field of mathematics [for this question: did quite something to not be considered a crank]. (Privatdozent would IMHO be very clearly inside the professional league)

Research into mRNA-based therapy, including mRNA-based vaccines, was for a long time not considered positively by much of the scientific establishment.  The word crank goes too far, but it appears the scientific consensus at the time was that this research was not promising.  This continued well into the last 30 years.
For example, Katalin Karikó was demoted by the University of Pennsylvania in 1995 after several grant applications for mRNA-based therapy were rejected as her peers in the scientific community thought these to be not promising.  She persisted, but her key finding of a chemical modification of mRNA to render it non-immunogenic was rejected by the journals Nature and Science, but eventually accepted by the niche publication "Immunity" in 2005 (quote from Wikipedia).  Today, she works for BioNTech and, since 2020, has received numerous awards for her ground-breaking work preparing for mRNA-based therapy, including COVID-19 vaccines.
Further reading: Christina Frangou, Researchers looking for mRNA were ridiculed by colleagues. Luckily, that didn’t stop them..  In: MacLeans.  Available online.

Wow! She should be on the cover pages given how many lives have her mRNA-based vaccines saved in this year alone.

@Gerrit - Kariko is featured in an article in Time magazine's Person of the Year issue (27 December 2021), along with Drew Weissman, Kizzemekia Corbett, and Barney Graham, all for their work on mRNA vaccine development.

@FailedScientist Along with other key contributors, she should be.

OP asked for outsiders/amateurs, and she definitely was not one.

@CJR I have edited the word "ridicule" out of my answer.

@FedericoPoloni She was not outside of academia, but failing grant applications and rejected papers suggest that her work was not taken as seriously as it perhaps should have been.  Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but that applies to any scientific contribution that is only recognised (much) later.

Yes, the nominal establishment of science has changed. Back then they believed, that good results advertise themselves.

@CJR That + demotion.  The remarkable point is not grand and paper rejections as such, but grand and paper rejections for work that is later having a huge impact and winning many awards.

@SamGinrich unfortunately in too many instances bad results still positively advertise themselves…

I'm adding another answer since it's fundamentally different from the other one I've written, being arguably not by an outsider, but it was groundbreaking and happened within the last 30 years.
Li Wenliang was one of the first to identify that 2019-nCoV was a new virus, but his hospital and immediate supervisors warned him about "publishing untrue statements". As I write this, we are still dealing with the fallout of that discovery.

Wasn't me more of a whistleblower silenced for political reasons than someone accused of being a crank, though?

@gerrit his colleagues apparently decided he was wrong and pushing an untrue position, however, which is similar to being a crank. It's still not an ideal example though, I agree.

@Allure There is enough mix of politics to say that it is not clear whether the dismissal was due to scientific, academic, or political reasons.

I can think of some examples of people who were thought of as cranks and then had a great result, but they're mostly not "outsiders" and mostly not within 30 years.  For example, my understanding (from stories told at a conference I attended) is that Apéry was widely thought of as a crank at the time he proved his remarkable theorem.  But he had a math Ph.D. and was a professor at a university.

Why is this downvoted?

@MaximalIdeal Because it does not fit the requirements of the question, like many other answers here.

Unfortunately right now I can't think of an example from the past 30 years. These go back 150 years.

Gregor Mendel was a priest when he wrote the defining papers of genetic inheritance. At the time his papers were largely ignored, but today Mendelian inheritance is widely taught in high school biology classes.
Alfred Wegener espoused the theory of continental drift and was met with ridicule, although it is widely accepted today. In his lifetime he was best-known as a meteorologist and polar explorer, not geologist; hence he was an outsider to the field.
Nicholas Christofilos developed strong focusing in accelerator physics that went unnoticed for several years until rediscovered independently by professionals.

Mendel and Christofilos seem different: the wider scientific establishment didn’t regard their work as wrong, they simply didn’t regard them. Wegener was certainly the example I thought of on seeing the question title, though.

Mendel's story always hurts me.

Wegener is an interesting example, because it really did get a lot of ridicule. The others not so much, the normal state of research is for it to be mostly ignored.

If you insist on going back more than a century, the best choice for someone who was widely considered a crank is probably Semmelweis.  Mind you, I wouldn't really call him an outsider.  @FailedScientist: If Mendel's story hurts you, I can't imagine what you'd think of Semmelweis.

"Semmelweis's views were much more favorably received in the United Kingdom than on the continent, but he was more often cited than understood." Reminds me of Orwell's iconic line from 1984. How dearly I wish I could go back in time and support him..

It's not in maths, and it's just on the cusp of whether you'd consider it in the last 30 years, but...
Demonstrating that gastric ulcers are caused by bacteria
The key research for this was done in the 1980s, and all these researchers were written off as cranks.  It isn't too strong to say that the medical profession were close to unanimous in this, despite the evidence.
Whether this counts depends on where you draw your 30-year line.  Whilst major evidence was presented in the 1980s, in 1992 (30 years ago) the medical profession was still very largely opposed to this and to a large degree still considered them to be cranks.  It took until the mid-late 1990s before it became more widely accepted, and the two key researchers were awarded the Nobel in 2005.

This is a very interesting case (in fact, one of the Nobel prize winners gave themselves an ulcer and then cured it). But OP defines "crank" as an amateur with no affiliation to a research institute -- in this case, both Marshall and Warren were were medical doctors, they applied for and received funding for this experiment, and they used their hospital's resources to help with the lab tests.

The case is very interesting; yet the author were not actually cranks -- they were thought as cranks. In other words, the authors are not real cranks, the real cranks in 1980s were other researchers in the same topic.

John Lykoudis treated patients with antibiotics. He was fined by Greek authorities,and he could not publish his findings 1. And as far as I remember he was not affiliated with a research institution, being a local MD. The "Helicobacter pioneers" book has a chapter on him "John Lykoudis: The general practitioner in Greece who in 1958 discovered the etiology and a treatment of peptic ulcer disease."

@HighGPA: there's a risk of self-fulfilling prophecy here: can someone who's shown to be correct in their solution of a sufficiently important problem later on actually be a real crank?

@HighGPA The OP worded the question fairly carefully to avoid that point: "...whose work was considered a crank when published ..." (emphasis mine).

@Graham I agree with you. Your example is clearly correct.

An anonymous 4chan poster proved a lower bound on superpermutations in 2011, and an upper bound was then proved by SF writer Greg Egan in 2018. These have since been folded into a 2020 paper by Engen and Vatter, and validated by other mathematicians in the academy.
A small but important difference from your question is the requirement that they publish "into cyber-space a new manuscript alleged to solve a major open problem in mathematics". The "manuscript" here was a 4chan post on an anime board, and it didn't claim to solve the superpermutation problem in general, just the specific problem of how to watch all of the episodes of a particular show in every possible order.
Greg Egan, though mainly a science fiction writer, is the sort of hard SF writer who is very technical, who has many scientists as fans, and has even collaborated on a few scholarly publications in quantum computing. He posted it not as a LaTeX manuscript but as a HTML page, on his personal website, in full late nineties web brutalist style.

I'm a little confused by the "late nineties" qualifier on web brutalist style, when the Egan page is from 2018, and the style guide is from 2021?

Well, it's kind of a rhetorical aside, but I would argue web brutalist style was almost the only way to publish on the web in the late nineties. The brutalist manifesto is an attempt to describe and valorize that as an explicit style choice. Egan's personal website has been online since 2008 at that address, and previously at an ISP-specific address since 1999. He's stuck with relatively unadorned web pages throughout due to inertia or utility, and thus with the web brutalist style.

Galois is still  the only example of an amateurish mathematician without even a high school diploma who solved a famous problem. He was getting no credit for this because famous mathematicians (Cauchy and others) considered him crank.

Great example, but I don't think he's the only such example, at a minimum there's also Ramanujan.

Ramanujan had many great results but did not a solve a famous unsolved problem.

@NoahSnyder I doubt Ramanujan was considered a crank. Just obscure in Britain.

OP asks "in the last 30 years" though.

Ramanujan did not have formal University education. But of course he had he had more formal education than Galois.

My answer implies that in the last 30 (or even 100) years there were  no examples. Moreover there were no examples in the last 500 years except Galois.

Ramanujan was not a crank. To the contrary, he was easily recognized by serious mathematicians as a mathematical talent of the first order. See here for example.

@DanRomik: Ramanujan had to write to multiple professors before Hardy recognized him as a genius.  One professor wrote back and basically called him a crank because of his result that 1+2+3+... = -1/12

@BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft that result has been known since Euler, so all this illustrates is that that professor was an incompetent mathematician himself, and unqualified to judge other people’s mathematical abilities. Again, Ramanujan was not a crank by any conventionally accepted definition of that term.

I think this answer is incorrect. It is not true at all that Galois was considered to be a crank at the time. Cauchy rejected his first submissions, but it is a myth that he did not appreciate Galois' work. In fact, it is probably more accurate to say that Cauchy was one of the people who encouraged Galois. See for example: "Rothman, T. (1982). Genius and Biographers: The Fictionalization of Evariste Galois. The American Mathematical Monthly, 89(2), 84-106"

@spin: What you wrote is wrong. Cauchy knew that Galois had no formal education, no affiliation with anything and the text submitted by Galois was incomprehensible while claiming to solve a famous open problem which Cauchy himself was working for long time. What else could Cauchy think? The rejection letter was standard: you should submit your paper elsewhere. Poisson was more direct in his rejection letter of the same paper: he just declared the paper incomprehensible.  Rothman's text in the Monthly is a known opinion, but not the mainstream one.

@markvs: In their report Poisson and Lacroix criticized the paper of Galois for two things: 1) it is unclear 2) assuming it is correct, the condition that Galois gives for solvability by radicals is impractical. There is commentary and a translation of the report in Peter Neumann's book on Galois. Poisson and Lacroix rejected the paper by Galois - and rightly so since the paper was badly written. But reading their report I don't think they considered him to be a crank or a circle-squarer.

@spin: You are entitled to your opinions.

@markvs: So are you, but mainstream references would disagree with your answer. I recommend the book by Peter Neumann and references therein as a starting point for learning more.

@spin: I have read the book, and I know Peter Neumann.

@markvs From $\Pi$MN's book, Lacroix-Poisson's report: "Be that as it may, we have made every effort to understand Mr Galois’ proof. His reasoning is neither clear enough nor well enough developed for us to have been able to judge its correctness, and we are in no position to give an idea of it in this report [...] One may therefore wait until the author will have published his work in its
entirely before forming a final opinion; but given the present state of the part
that he has submitted to theAcademy, we cannot propose to you that you give
it your approval." Sounds like spin is right.

@DavidA.Craven: It seems that you have not seen referee reports on crank papers.  Poisson report is of that kind, their opinion about the paper is absolutely clear. It was not written for you, and  Galois understood it, precisely.

@markvs Well, I disagree. I have been an editor and received crank papers. They are instant desk rejections. Lacroix and Poisson would not have wasted their time with a crank. They have clearly read the paper, and have considered the mathematics. But maybe we have different definitions of a crank, of course.

@DavidA.Craven: "They have clearly read the paper" is not true It is clear that  they did not read it. They might try to read it but obviously were unable to read the text.

Definitely not a "crank," as he was a PhD-holding lecturer at a small university (just didn't have the most prestigious publication record or anything), but Yitang Zhang may be the closest modern example of what you're looking for.
His work is related to the (still open) twin prime conjecture which states that there are infinitely many pairs of primes with difference 2 (like 3 and 5 or 11 and 13). His theorem showed that there are infinitely many pairs of primes with difference at most c where c is an explicit constant given in his paper. This result was published in the Annals of Maths, often considered to be the most prestigious math journal.

Right, there's outsiders who weren't cranks and cranks who weren't outsiders, but not people who were both cranks and outsiders.

@NoahSnyder and there are people who are neither cranks nor (properly speaking) outsiders, such as Yitang Zhang.

Yes, I'm aware of him. But he was a reputable established mathematical, just not in a top-top US school. He was never considered a crank.

@Dilworth : I don't think Yitang Zhang was "a reputable established mathematician", he had very few publications, and his work on the Jacobian conjecture was wrong, as far as I know.

@akhmeteli, well, he was reputable at least and has an affiliation. He wasn't considered top indeed.

He was not in a research position.  He was a professional college math teacher, not an established researcher

@NoahSnyder, correct. I didn't know that, and indeed I see now that he was only a lecturer at NH. That said, his work was never considered a crank-work, only surprised people because he was unknown and had no research-affliation.

@akhmeteli Could you please offer some references on Yitang's paper on Jacobian conjecture that is wrong or cranky?

@HighGPA : Now that you asked... I begin to have doubts. My memory was that he wrote a wrong preprint in arxiv on the Jacobian conjecture, but I failed to find his preprint on this topic. Looks like his PhD thesis was about the J. conjecture, but I failed to find his publications on this topic. I found something about his arxiv article on a different topic being wrong: (cntd)

@HighGPA : In 2007, Zhang had published a preprint paper claiming that he had proved that...(https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/yitang-zhang-landau-siegel-zeroes-riemann-hypothesis/#:~:text=In%202007%2C%20Zhang%20had%20published,ideas%20developed%20in%20that%20paper.) I cannot vouch for the source though.

Everyone ...
You might be shocked by this answer. It goes against the grain of the conventional wisdom. This answer is clearly the opposite of the accepted answer and OP's personal preference. But, do hear me out.
The OP defines an "amateur" as:

"someone with no formal affiliation to a reputable research institute,
or someone who does not have any track record of peer-reviewed publications in reputable journals or conferences in the area"

The rest of my answer focuses on amateurs who fall under the second category. The word "or" means that fulfilling only one of the two conditions is enough to identify an amateur and gives a precise answer.
To give a precise answer and avoid controversy, I will further narrow down to the subset of true amateurs who has not only no reputable journal ppaers, but also has published some mistaken works. "Publish" here means making things public. It includes papers, preprints, presentation slides, conference papers, and webposts.
I admit that I have been a true amateur. I have published some flawed works. I've made a lot of mistakes. I've made mistakes in an undergraduate paper that was later published in a college journal accessible to the public. I've made mistakes in the talks in my school (and those talks are open to the public). I've made mistakes in preprints. I've made countless mistakes in webposts. I am not a genius and it takes me a long time to understand a simple concept. I was and I am still a strict amateur. Yet, after nine years, I finally published in a reputable journal.
Am I alone? Of course not, almost all of my friends were similar. We were all once cranky, freshy, and amateury. We were all once naive, inexperienced, and unskilled. We were all once unprofessional, clumsy, and sloppy. We all made some blunders. Some blunders were silly, some were serious. Maybe Sally made fewer blunders because she was talented. Maybe Joe made more blunders because he took too many naps. But eventually, most of us managed to publish at least one paper. While I won't say one reputable publication is something ground-breaking, it is certainly an achievement and break-through in our narrow fields.
Before that paper, we had zero reputable publication. Our preprints got rejected everywhere, sometimes even without a line of comment.
Yes, we were cranks. Yes, we made mistakes. Yes, doing research is extremely difficult. Yes, it is even harder to get established researchers to recognize our works. Yes, there are many dark sides and unpleasant realities every day everywhere. But, a true hero will never forget their dream. A true hero will never give up. A true hero will stand against many challenges. A true hero will see the light through the dark clouds. A true hero will fight for the truth. A true hero will inspire others with their passion. A true hero will rise above their doubts and fears.
So let's finish my first sentence in the beginning of this answer.
... Everyone, in my small circle, was once an amateur, once a crank, once a misfit, stupid yet young, mediocre yet confident. But, you only fail  when you lose hope.
Everyone has been there.

Update: yesterday the OP updated their meaning of "affiliation to reputable research institute" to "tenure-track faculty, permanent scientists, and similar roles". This means that, according to the OP's definition, all students, visitors, research assistants and all other affiliates without a publication in reputable journal are amateurs.
So my answer strongly hold. Any students who made mistakes and later published a reputable journal fulfills all criteria. My answer applies to all students in fields that advisors are usually not heavily involved in student's research (for example, my small field), and applies to undergraduate students who does not have a very dedicated advisor. This answer does not apply to some scientific fields that advisors must be heavily involved and coauthor with students, and does not apply to extremely talented students who got their first paper quickly accepted in the first venue.

This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post. - From Review

@Buzz What I am describing are amateurs with no publication record. They have papers that were rejected everywhere, even without a serious comment. Of course, the editor consider the work as crankery or non-serious. But finally they convince the editor and referee that their work is correct. This applies to all researchers when they were young, before they had a PhD, before they were recognized as an "insider".

I imagine it's quite rare for most researchers to receive a "crankery or non-serious" decision for their papers, even their first ones. Anecdotally, the first paper I wrote was accepted at the first venue I submitted it to, as well.

Not every amateur will be called a crank. This is because we are  in a 21 century civilized world, where professionalism, respect and politeness is appreciated. No one called me a crank. But I know I am one. Calling someone "crank" in referee report is non-professional: nobody will use the word.

@Allure How about your first "publication" according to the definition above? Is your first webpost, first presentation, or first preprint free of mistakes?

@HighGPA Are you thinking of school assignments? In that case, I wouldn't say those were free of mistakes, but I generally passed.

@Allure I'd say you are extremely talented to have your first paper quickly published. Congrats! I know some associate professors in top 30 US school. They told me that in average each of their papers needs to be submitted for seven times before finally published.

Reply to comments that I did not answer OP's question: Note that, speaking in formal logics, by "raising the bar", I am putting more constraints on my answer, and I am answering a generalized version of OP's question, which include OP's question as a special case. So my answer directly applies to OP's question.

I'll go one better, and suggest an entire field that was regarded as crankery, but now is viewed as a legitimate field of inquiry: ufology. Prior to the American government releasing declassified video evidence of UFO encounters and then issuing official statements that they're real and of unknown origin, it was widely regarded as the work of cranks.
Now, the head of Astronomy at Harvard is launching the Galileo Project to try to record hard evidence of them, without requiring the use of military equipment.

I really wish that people who downvoted answers were courteous enough to at least leave a comment explaining why, and how the answer could be improved. I've added some links to relevant sources, if that helps any.

@apkg Well, the US government apparently has, according to their public statements to Congress, but almost all of the recordings are classified because they're reveal technical details about the capabilities of US military radar systems and the like. That's a fair point to make, though.

A field studying unidentified objects in the sky should not be conflated with the religion of assuming such objects are alien-operated spacecraft.

Actually, this is a good example I've learned only lately, from Harvard.

I am one of the downvoters. The reason for my downvote is that, regardless of whether you think that ufology is now “a legitimate field of inquiry” (whatever that means), this actually has nothing to do with the actual question. OP asked about work that was considered crankery but was then validated and proved correct. Ufology has not been “validated and proved correct” in any meaningful sense.

@DanRomik, it wasn't proved correct, but it now became a legitimate area of study it seems. So the problem with this answer is that it is not mathematical, like all other non-mathematical answers here. Basically, I believe the only "formally correct" answers is yours.

@Dilworth I upvoted several of the other answers that are non-mathematical and/or not “formally correct” in the sense you’re describing. The problem with this answer has nothing to do with those qualities.

I think this is a good example. Although no evidence of UFO is validated, there are some theorems related to alien civilization that is proven to be correct mathematically.


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Finding an editor for my book
I am going to publish my second book (a technical book on Einstein's relativity), probably with a UK publisher. I am trying to find an editor for it, and I would be very pleased if someone guides me through this.
It is not necessary for the editor to go through the entire text and calculations but rather it suffices to copyedit the first 20 pages (Preface & Introduction) of the book plus (if possible) those words/sentences of the remaining of the book that are marked in color by me.
I have a problem in this regard:
Unfortunately, the US sanctions against my country (Iran) caused our monetary unit to dramatically lose its value against the US dollar. Indeed, one US dollar is now nearly "seven" times more expensive compared to four years ago, and thus I cannot afford the editing fees.
However, I can mention the editor's name in the publisher Agreement and want them to send their editing fees subtracting from my royalties in some future time. Moreover, I would acknowledge them in the book as the editor.
Is it possible for me to find an editor accepting these conditions?

Normally, if you publish with an established, reputable, publishing house, they will assign you an editor (i.e. a copy editor) and, in my experience, they don't charge you for it. The figure the cost of such things as normal business practice, which is one of the reasons that royalties are low.
I suggest that you contact a "suitable" publisher with a proposal and indicate that you have a solid draft of the work already complete. If they are interested, then they will probably take it from there. They normally employ copy editors who are generally knowledgeable about the field, though not actual experts. They can improve writing and presentation, but not the actual ideas.
They will want to go over the entire work, however, so that it meets their own standards. I found the experience on several books to be quite pleasant. That is distinct from reviewers, who can have their own ideas, quite different from yours. But the editor needs to be satisfied on all counts to publish your work.
But be aware that there are "publishers" who will publish anything as long as you pay the bill. Predatory publishers.

@Roland Some sort of peer-reviewing is also common for academic books, at least in my field.

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How to deal with bossy/micromanaging colleague (postdoc)
I joined my current research group as a postdoc about one year ago. That project I was assigned to work on wrapped up, and I was assigned to work on a different project for this second year. This second project has been ongoing for a year (now it is in its second year out of three). A Ph.D. student and a postdoc have been working on this project. The postdoc in question is, in fact, a Ph.D. graduate from the same group and has been working on this topic for the past 5-6 years (5 years Ph.D. + 1-year postdoc). We essentially became postdocs at the same time.
This second project is on a short deadline requiring an experiment I am responsible for (my part) to be done by certain times within 3-4 months. The other student and postdoc have their parts to work on. I am working towards finishing my part within the deadline of the project.
It became apparent that the other postdoc sees himself as my manager in this project (despite us being on the same level). Essentially, he is trying to set weekly deadlines for my tasks and checks on my progress almost twice weekly through emails and messages. When I say I do not know how long a certain step will take (because this is research), he becomes pushy and tries to have me say some deadline or assumes a deadline himself. Example: I was thinking about learning some simulation tool that could help with the experiment, and he asked how long will it take me to learn. I said I do not know as I still had to read about it. He said to email some students who used it before and tell him how long. I refused because this is not how I operate, and I do not see the point of asking others how long it takes them to learn something. He proceeded to assume that ten days should be enough.
This has negatively affected me and reduced my productivity. I have my rhythm and work in a way incompatible with his.
Question: How do I deal with this? I want to draw boundaries. While I appreciate feedback on my work, I do not appreciate being micromanaged like this by an equal peer.
Last piece of info: Our PI is very much absent. When he does meet with us, he yells about how everything is late and that we should be faster. I am sure he would NOT be happy to be involved in this interpersonal discussion.

Have you tried explaining this situation to the colleague in question?

Not yet. I plan to talk to him next time he does this.

I hesitate to give the "Dilbert" answer. You probably don't want an enemy.

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How to compare the quality of research group?
There are metrics on the quality of universities (e.g., rankings) and individual researchers (e.g., Google Scholar), but I found it harder to judge the performance and impact of individual research groups. The ranking of the university, departments and the profiles of the leading researchers are usually clear indicators for the entire group.
Are there any other good metrics, indicators or properties that indicate the impact and performance of a research group?

How are you defining quality? The quality of a university is often operationalised quite differently from the quality of an individual researcher (e.g. research impact, staff levels, student experience, employment prospects for graduates vs. bibliometrics)

I'm not sure, I guess that is part of the questions.

You may want to edit the question to include that, although "what makes a research group high quality" seems like it could run foul of the SE rule about avoiding largely opinion based questions.

What about a meta-H-index: the largest number k so that there are at least k researchers with H-index at least k in the group. As the poet said, "I heard you like H-indices, so I used your H-indices to make a new H-index".

I think this is a very relevant question and I do not know why it did not received more attention

Have you tried looking at the rate of citations for the individual researchers' publications? Go onto Google Scholar and see how many people cite the papers that are published by individuals from the group. You could also contact people within that field to ask them about the reputation of the group.

There are certainly many factors involved, and sticking to any one of them could be a wrong choice. I would suggest taking into account all the following while also being cautious about the side of that metric.
Google Scholar tells you all you need, but its details must be examined.
Citations A large number of citations shows that the research work is well-recognized in the field. But also, ask if citations across the paper are uniform.

Many times, the citation is high due to one or two papers (often old).
There is also the possibility that the research group is working in a very narrow field (or perhaps the field is not well developed) in which not many people are working, which could also lead to low citations.
Some research leaders collaborate a lot, so it's important to consider papers from their group specifically.

h-index A good h-index shows that the works are well cited(as its definition suggests). However, there are people who have a lot of self-citation, which could also lead to a high h-index. The other limitation of citations also goes into the h-index, which is derived from citations.
Additionally, check which journal papers are published. This is particularly important for the work that is not well recognized.

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Are they asking for 3 reference letters or a list of reference contacts?
I want to apply for an open position as a postdoctoral fellow at NYU. The following sentence appears in the instructions:

Application Instructions: Please be sure to include at least 3
academic references in your application / on your C.V.

Are they asking for 3 reference letters or a list containing at least 3 mail to contact somebody who can recommend me? I am not an English native speaker and it doesn't sound clear to me. I further understand that letters of recommendation must include an explicit mention of the position for which I want to apply. The probability of rejection is really high for these positions, does that mean I need a separate reference letter for each position I apply for?

Actually, I am a native English speaker and I find it ambiguous also.

Why have you tagged it [master-post-phd] when your body says you are applying to a postdoc position?

It sounds like they are asking for contact details for three people who would provide academic references.
The other option doesn't make sense, since you couldn't personally include the reference letters (since you don't have access to them). There are generally only two possibilities:

Give us contact details for your references and we will ask them for letters.
Ask your references to send letters to [some email address] before the closing date.


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Resubmission of a manuscript to another journal which has been already published in Arxiv
Suppose Dr. X has submitted his manuscript to a journal A and published a pre-print in Arxiv before receiving the review results. Unfortunately, journal A rejected it and he decides to submit it to a different journal B with only minor modifications.
The problem now is that the major of Dr. X's paper with the results and figures are left unmodified and will be reused in journal B as it is in the Arxiv version.
Will this be considered plagiarism?

I don't understand the difference between this situation and the usual one where the author posts a preprint on arXiv before submitting for publication.

@TobiasKildetoft: Well, the format for the paper in arXiv would've been in accordance to journal A. So, if the reviewers of journal B were to use any plagiarism checker could there be a chance they might mistake it to be a double publication? This is only a conjecture I'd like to clarify.

Presumably journal B is also fine with arXiv preprints since it was selected by the author. I have never heard of reviewers using plagiarism detection tools, but even if they did, one should assume they know what arXiv is.

Also, nitpicking a bit: this can never be plagiarism since it's your own work. This would at most be self-plagiarism, which is quite a different thing.

@JaapEldering: You are correct; it didn't cross my mind before. Just made the edit with the tag.

No, it won't.
Two points:
1) The papers on the arXiv are preprints (in former times this meant "before printed publication"…) and as such, it is normal that they will be eventually published in a journal. Hence, many journals do not have a problem when the receive submission of paper that are already on the arXiv. So, uploading to the arXiv prior to submission to a journal is not plagiarism - it's just the same paper.
2) The first submission of the paper to journal A is not public. Submitted information is confidential for most journals (there are newer concepts of open review processes, but I assume that this was not the case here) and also journal A decided not to publish the paper. Hence, you are free to submit the paper to another journal and again, this is the same paper and no plagiarism.
Both points together imply that your in situation there is no plagiarism. You have one paper, available as a preprint, once rejected, once resubmitted. Totally normal… (I had the same paper available on two different preprint repositories and submitted two times to different journals.)

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Is it true that M.Eng. is considered an undergraduate degree in the UK? If so, why?
It is surprising to see from these sources (Wikipedia and University of Edinburgh) that the Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) degree is actually an undergraduate degree in the UK. It is recalled as an 'undergraduate masters degree'. While only PhD MSc and MPhil are considered to be postgraduate degrees.
How far is this true? Why is it so?

Potentially a duplicate of: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10136/what-are-the-differences-between-m-sc-m-tech-and-m-eng/10141#10141 and http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55736/uk-msc-vs-meng-when-applying-for-phd-and-chartered-engineer/55747#55747

@mg4w This seems to be a distinct question from the first, since it is asking specifically about the UK. The second question is a bit unfocussed, so I would suggest this isn't a duplicate of that one either.

It is considered an undergraduate degree because no degree is required in order to start the degree. Undergraduate masters degrees are increasingly common in the UK, due to the funding system. Postgraduate taught degrees are not currently eligible for government funding, so an integrated masters degree is often the cheapest route to a masters degree.
The integrated MEng degree developed early, since an accredited masters is a requirement to become a chartered engineer in the UK. Such courses, at least in theory, include the content of a bachelors degree, plus the content of a standalone postgraduate masters degree, often with an option to abandon early and receive a bachelor's degree. PhDs, MScs and MPhils almost invariably require a degree as an entry requirement, hence they are postgraduate degrees.

A key point is that an M-something is a taught masters program, rather than a research one. It is refered to as an integrated masters, and the total work required is lower than doing two separate qualifications.
The funding is probably the primary distinction though. An M-something is funded through the government student loan system, whereas currently there is no central funding for stand-alone masters programs (this is supposed to be changing soon).

Just to add to this, in the UK an MEng degree in an engineering discipline accredited by the relevant professional organisation meets the academic requirements for chartered engineer (C.Eng) status. An accredited BEng degree meets IEng requirements and a student who took that route would have to also obtain an accredited MSc award to meet the academic requirements for chartered engineer status.

@JessicaB Good points, but I think in theory the work load should be equivalent? I don't know that I've read any university that advertises it is less work even if it may in fact be the case.

Standalone masters are normally 12 month courses (with no summer break) whereas integrated courses normally follow the normal 9 month academic year (Sept - June) so standalone courses can have slightly more content. Although this is a very minor difference and at least in the UK no one seems to care. Also from 2016 it should be possible to get funding fr a standalone masters http://www.findamasters.com/funding/guides/new-uk-postgraduate-loans-scheme.aspx

Fewer credits are required for the final year of the combined course than for a stand-alone masters, at least at my institution. But you only end up with one degree, rather than two.

Do MEng's still use the undergraduate degree classification system (first, upper and lower second etc.)? Is that another distinction (no pun intended) between that and a postgraduate Master's?

In the department i'm in they do use the undergraduate classificatoin system but the minium classification is (iirc) a 2-2. If you get less than that you fail the Meng year and get graded for a Beng based on your first three years. I don't know how standardised that is.

@JessicaB - not all M- courses are taught, for example the MPhil or the MRes

@JessicaB Do I understand correctly from your comment that even a stand-alone Master of Engineer (or Master of Science) degree in the U.K. is not research-based?

@NickAyres Sorry, I was forgetting that I know a distinction that others don't. There are some degrees that are postgraduate masters degrees (MSc, MPhil). MPhil is I believe always research. MSc can be by research alone, taught alone or mixed, and often this is made clear in brackets.
Separately there're the taught undergraduate masters. MEng is a bit different because of the professional side, but there's MMath, MPhys, MChem, MCompSci... ie basically the name of the subject with an M in front. These will usually involve a dissertation-like project, but discovering something new's not a must.

It mostly boils down to how the University organises its degree program, you are correct on the definitions of the degrees. The undergraduate programs are for undergraduates, and will take typically 4 years to complete (equivalent of 3 years of normal undergraduate program, and 1 year for the masters component).
There is usually a mechanism for just doing a postgraduate masters similar to the masters part of the undergraduate program, where the title would be different as it was officially a different degree (postgraduate instead of undergraduate).
Having undergraduate masters programs help in the UK with applying for student finance, as "student loans" are readily accessible for undergraduates, but not for postgraduates. So it makes sense to do it all in one and get the undergraduate loans for the full masters program.
Some people suggest that a "proper" postgraduate masters is better than a program with an integrated masters for undergraduates, but in reality I haven't found anywhere that would discriminate between the two.

authors: Дольрлб Пирепоп


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Withdrawing an article out for review when another journal posts a call for papers for a special issue that is right on topic?
I've recently sent out an article for review. I've been in email contact with the editor from journal #1 from the start, and was quite up-front that I wasn't sure whether or not my article would be a good match for their journal (in methodology, yes; in century and author focus, not so much). Today, I found a special issues CFP in journal#2 where my article would be extremely relevant. Their deadline is end of January.
I'm considering contacting journal #1 to see if they've started the review process, explain that I've found what may be a much better match for my article, and ask about withdrawing my submission if the review process has not begun.
Is this frowned upon?
Of course, I feel like I'm playing with fire here. What if I withdraw, resubmit to journal #2, article does not get accepted, then... go back to journal #1 with tail between legs.
Any advice?

This is called withdrawing the submission, not retracting it. (Retraction generally means after publication.)

Why offer an explanation? You could simply withdraw the submission, without stating a reason, and apologise for the inconvenience.

Thank you both. Edited my question to reflect the first comment. In answer to the second: I can't help but think "what if it doesn't get accepted in j#2" so offering some sort of explanation might be nice, down the line?

I sure as heck wouldn't plan on going back to Journal #1 if it's rejected at #2! If I were the editor at Journal #1 and you came back, it'd be a desk reject for certain. How do you know you won't pull the same stunt again?

This is my main concern. So how would you go about this? Stay at journal#1?

You'd have to go somewhere else. By the way, I appreciate (+1) that you are going to first inquire whether the review process has already started before requesting to withdraw the paper. This shows the appropriate respect for editor's and referees' time.

I would suggest the following steps:

Ask journal #1 if the review process has started.
If it has not yet started, ask if it can be kept on hold for a few days.
Meanwhile send a pre-submission inquiry to journal #2.
If journal #2 seems positive about your paper, send a request to withdraw the paper from journal #1.
Be honest about your reason for withdrawal, and add a word of appreciation for the editor's cooperation and understanding.
Submit to journal #2 once the withdrawal is confirmed.

If the review process has started, it would be advisable to let things be and not withdraw from journal #1. If your paper is rejected from journal #2, you could consider submitting it to another journal rather than going back to journal #1.

Special issues are a bit outside of the standard journal review system. Typically, they will have guest editors who are in charge of recruiting and managing the submissions and getting them through the review process as efficiently as possible so that the entire issue can be published according to schedule. They are also typically responsible for having a certain number of articles in the submission, so the stringency of acceptance criteria may be somewhat relaxed for a special issue.
That said, given that the focus of journal #2 is so much closer to your field, I would lean towards withdrawing the submission from journal #1 and submitting to journal #2. If, for some reason, the article were rejected from that journal, I would use the editorial feedback to revise and improve the manuscript, and submit a different version of it to journal #1.
If the journal is pretty far through the review process, though, then I would not tinker with things, as that would represent a much bigger inconvenience for all involved.

I will definitely ask if the review process has started. Since previously I communicated quite a bit with the editor of journal#1 on article suitability, it seems a brief explanation on the reason of my withdrawal wouldn't hurt, right?

That would certainly be advisable.


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How to gain research experience at undergraduate level?
I will join a college by the end of Sept/Oct. I will pursue Physics (Hons), and my target is to get prestigious research internships at places like LEAP (Leidan observatory in Netherlands) or CERN, so what small steps should I take in the first and second year to achieve my ultimate objective?

What country or region will you be studying in? Europe? Do you have a particular university? (You don't need to name it)

I am indian citizen. So I will study from either state university of mine(if I able to crack entrance) otherwise any private University in my locality.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/150279/how-to-gain-research-experience-after-undergrad related

I have no experience with LEAP or CERN , but here’re some general advice :
Since you seek research internships , it’d be great if you could get some research experiences . I recommend against doing research without prior consultation with relevant professors because

Doing research in fall or spring semester may heavily harm your GPA due to poor time management .

literature selection . With relatively little prerequisite knowledge and mathematical maturity , you may be wasting you time reading some very advanced papers .

High risk of having little demonstrable research progress . Related to previous point . This’s especially important in your case .

That’s why I recommend consult relevant professors first and

Check out undergraduate research opportunities program (UROP) or something similar at your university . An advisor may be assigned to you , which may write you a reference letter and help you . There may also be courses to teach you research skills . Those’re usually offered in summer term .

Boost you prerequisite knowledge , mainly for reading papers and you also have more tools to implement your ideas . Many papers assume you know advanced calculus & linear algebra and statistics , of course depending on your field .

Improve presentation skills with PowerPoint . Explain technical concepts succinctly . This may also help you in interviews .

Explore your interest by investigating different topics at high level . Also pay attention to lectures , sometimes professors may briefly mention a few ‘keywords’ , if they interest you then do further investigation . Recruiters may value your ambition & interest .

A final note to university freshman is that your "ultimate objective" may change , don’t tie yourself up to any certain identity without good reason .

I'll note that you have set a very narrow target, so you need a clear path if you are to be considered at all. I'll assume that the number of slots in such internships is small with a lot of competition. For CERN, at least, that competition is worldwide.
To be considered you need an application that is supported by letters of recommendation by people who can be trusted to know the requirements but also trusted to give you a very positive letter of recommendation. People who don't know you and your work well aren't in a position to do that. People who don't know what goes on at, for example, CERN may not be the best, though I don't actually know.
If your institution is such that there are people who know these research institutes, perhaps by having worked there, then you want to find a way to interact with them. You are a first year and they are probably senior professors so that won't be trivial.
The first task is to do well in your beginning courses and impress your professors with your potential. Spend time, as much as possible, getting close to them in office hours, seminars, and whatever else is available. If you can impress them, they see if they can introduce you to others, perhaps someone in their circle who does have experience with Leiden or CERN.
If they have research opportunities available, follow up. Not every institution will offer research openings to beginning students, so you will have to search for it. The experience will be valuable, even if it makes you realize that you'd rather be doing something else. Speaking to a faculty member whom you've already impressed might open a door.
But personal/professional relationships can make the difference in shooting for such a small target. It is the same situation as if you were trying to get accepted to one of the top universities in the world. You need more than grades, since a lot of people have good grades.

3 years ago, i had a friend who go accepted to a internship of 2 months to do some research in CERN. it was not an easy proccess of selection, people from all the country where involved. The internship was to help postdoc student (from México, my country) with some results and to open the oportunity to this person to the research field. Of course, one of the most importants things that they asked you to go to this internship, was to:
(i) have at least 2 recommendation letters from profesional researchers (professors at your university may help you if you don´t have any contact),
(ii) write a prupose essay of why you wanted to do the internship,
(iii) a power point presentation where you present all your background and why you´re a good candidate to the internship, and
(iv) an interview with the postdocs students.
Of course that great grades are a must have, but the point before may help you trouhg the process of getting an intership or something similar.
Maybe not CERN, but any other research opportunity during college may help you to get future opportunities. Good luck, my friend


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Is it a good idea to write a paper on new algorithms based on an existing algorithm?
I am an undergraduate student interested in doing research.
There is a paper I have recently read. In the paper, a new (general) algorithm is proposed (in a bottom-Q1 journal). It is not a groundbreaking discovery. However, because the algorithm is very general, there are many possibilities to develop new algorithms based on that algorithm and to improve the efficiency of the algorithm.
Is it a good idea to write a paper on new algorithms based on that algorithm? It is because I have some ideas in my mind now. Can I submit the paper to a journal? (probably with low enough IF)

It depends a lot on where you are and what your career demands.  As a tenured associate professor I find that writing not very interesting papers not really worth my time, but a graduate student or an untenured professor (particularly in a less research-intensive position) may find this is the best paper they are capable of writing at the time and having a paper, even a less interesting one, might be important to their career.

This is a field-specific question and should be closed, but I suspect it won't be because of who usually visits Academia.SE (i.e. a lot of mathematicians and computer scientists).

Only a small fraction of published algorithms are groundbreaking. That doesn't mean the other ones don't deserve attention too.

@AzorAhai-him- Sorry, what?  There are lots of field-specific questions on here, as many things vary by field.  I've never heard that this is a reason to close a question.  (Also, it's not that specific.)

@Kimball "This question is about the content of research." It's under the "community-specific reasons" close reasons.

Yes, maybe "field-specific" was a little imprecise, but that is what I meant.

It is possible that this is a novel application of the general algorithm. Ultimately, you can submit it to a conference/journal anyway, and let the reviewers determine if this paper was worth writing

I don't know that it's particularly field-specific. Most work builds on previous work, in ways that might not be obvious to an undergrad.

@Matt "However, because the algorithm is very general, there are many possibilities to develop new algorithms based on that algorithm and to improve the efficiency of the algorithm. Is it a good idea to write a paper on new algorithms based on that algorithm?" This is a question about doing research.

@AzorAhai-him- I'd distinguish between questions about the specific content of research ("How do I prove this alg runs in polynomial time?"), which should be asked elsewhere, and questions about if, when, how, and with whom one writes up the results of research generally, which are squarely on-topic here. In my view, this is the latter.

@Matt The project isn't done, making it not a question on how to "write up the results." It is asking for feedback on what research project to do next.

@AzorAhai-him-, Sure but the general process of choosing a department, advisor, or project is also on-topic here. What we're not meant to do is offer suggestions on specific choices: OP should try to extend Foo et al. (2019) using Bar (2022)'s trick, not Baz and Quux (2021)'s idea. Obviously, vote your conscience, but that's how I see it.

@Matt I'm not sure what the relevance of your first sentence is. Nevertheless, if I asked a question about how to adapt stimuli (say), it would get slapped closed immediately. I don't see how this is different.

If you wanted (say) code for doing so, definitely. If you wanted advice about whether doing so required permission, coauthorship, a citation, or nothing at all, I'd leave that open too.

For your own personal development, yes, it is worth writing the paper. Ask a local professor to evaluate it and give you feedback on it. It might take a few rewrites before if feels "satisfactory". This is typical for academic writing.
It can be submitted to a journal, but would only be accepted if it is sufficiently "novel" to appeal to other mathematicians or mathematically inclined computer scientists. It is a fairly steep hurdle, but an experienced local professor can advise you there.
Note, however, that there are some journals dedicated to publishing student work. The need for a "wow" factor is a bit less there so it has a better chance of publication.
But writing the paper will help you firm and clarify the ideas. Learning, through practice, to be a clear writer in your field is a necessary step and the experience gives you some skill that will be important later. Have fun. Good luck.

Note also that almost all work in mathematics and CS is based on earlier work. The exceptions are rare.

I just noticed you changed your user avatar.  I hope the transition does't mean your dog died; condolences if that is the case.

@Ben, just a Halloween costume. Boo.

Yes, that is a good idea
Extending existing research in a new direction, or in a way that adds some novel improvement, is a large part of what academic research does.  What you are proposing is consistent with the types of research projects academics undertake that lead to publications.  If these algorithm extensions are something you are interested in then it sounds like an enjoyable project that could potentially lead to publication.
If you pursue this project, make sure your paper gives the appropriate background to your problem and cites this other paper.  You could consider targeting the same journal where this other paper was published in the first instance.  Since you are only an undergraduate student, you might have some difficulty writing to the standard of work expected in academic journals, so you might also consider getting some preliminary feedback from an experienced academic in your field prior to submission.

Of course! Building on prior work is the way people do research.
If you look at the literature on (say) matrix or graph operations, you'll find plenty of work where people refine a general-purpose algorithm to exploit some special feature of the problem, like sparsity or symmetry. There's also a great deal of interest in adapting algorithms to fit different types of computation: parallel/distributed processing, resource-constrained environments, or branchless/cache-oblivious versions of an algorithm.
Without knowing the specific details of your problem and proposed solution, and field, it is hard to say what would be expected for a publication. This will also vary a great deal from venue to venue. In general, I think it is often easier to publish algorithmic advances that improve the asymptotic runtime (e.g., O(N²) to O(N log N)) or performance on a benchmark. Optimizations of a specific implementation via clever coding may be harder to publish as a CS paper, but might find a home in the "applied" literature if you really polish the implementation and build it into a library/toolkit.
There are plenty of exceptions—and pitfalls—so a conversation with an experienced researcher in your field would be a great next step. You may also want to consider whether this could be the basis for an Honors Thesis or Independent Study course, which would provide a more formal structure for advising.


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How do I get better feedback from my PhD advisor and when I do move on if I can not?
I am a PhD student and the next milestone in my program is my thesis proposal. I need to present what I plan to do for my thesis including specific aims, major contributions, timeline, etc... to my thesis committee approval. Over the course of a year I have presented three different potential proposal topics to my PhD advisor with specific aims and major contributions. All three times I have been told the ideas offered no major contribution and to abandon them. In each case my advisor said that my ideas utilized existing techniques therefore they can not be a major contribution.
I am frustrated by this because as I understand this argument I have not read a paper or thesis that has a major contribution as they all utilize and build on prior work. I am additionally frustrated because I have been told to simply start over again from ground zero three times based solely on this argument without any indication of how to improve on it, despite me attempting to probe further to find out how to accomplish this. This is becoming problematic because I feel like I have been playing a year-long guessing game with my advisor as to what work they want me to pursue, but never provided any indication as to how I can improve on my prior attempts. I feel like I am stuck in a perpetual cycle which is blocking my ability to progress my research, publications, and graduation.
Has anyone had any similar experiences? Does anyone have suggestions about how I can better work with my advisor or when I may need to seek an advisor with research more in line with my ideas? Thank you!

Have you tried to have a deeper conversation with your supervisor, telling them that you don't feel sure about what is a worthwhile project and why? What if you ask them directly for help with this? They could for example give you examples for better project topics and explain to you what makes these worthwhile.

BTW what subject area is this?

What domain is this? Using "existing techniques" is practically a requirement in some domains and practically a disqualification on others. Are you expected to develop techniques or just apply them?

I am in the information science department. So my understanding is that I live in a grey area. There is room to go the applied route where existing techniques are used on novel data, or the theoretical route where benchmark datasets are used to evaluate new algorithms.

Maybe look at previous theses in your department, especially written under the supervision of your advisor, and if they appear to you to utilize existing techniques (i.e. looking at them doesn't take care of your concerns), then ask your advisor why these theses were deemed acceptable. It may simply be a matter of degree, and having specific examples of what is sufficient might clarify why your proposals are not sufficient.

@b19wh33l5 Your description of two project types indeed makes them sound very generic and uninteresting. I'd think that for a PhD project "use on novel data" will require some novelty regarding methodology or modelling adapted to specific nonstandard issues with the data, the aim of analysis, and background knowledge about the data. New algorithms are more convincingly investigated using proper mathematical theory and/or systematic simulation studies on top of benchmark datasets. (I am a statistician, so my take on these things may be slightly different, but still...)

Also you can distinguish between developing your own new algorithm, and an in-depth analysis of an existing one.

@DaveLRenfro That is a good idea, and one that I have tried. My advisor's reply to date has been he does not compare work between advisees. So attempts to use prior successful theses as templates have failed because his automatic reply has been that he does not compare.

@ChristianHennig Agreed. "on novel data" would refer to adapting a method to a new domain which often requires some (usually novel) methodological change and in-depth analysis to verify its performance. My attempts to take this approach have been met with criticisms that if I am just changing an existing algorithm then the contribution is not sufficiently significant.  I also love the idea of vetting new algorithms on simulated data. Unfortunately my advisor promptly dismisses the idea whenever I mention it, stating it is not a good method of evaluation.

@ChristianHennig My understanding of an in-depth analysis would be one that thoroughly identifies the bounds and limitations of an existing algorithm. I feel like lines blur between this and developing a new algorithm, especially since my field is so driven by neural networks now.

@ChristianHennig For example, something I am looking at is modeling representations of images produced by neural nets for identifying anomalous content. Right now everyone is using multivariate Gaussian distributions or k nearest neighbors and the methods are generally memory inefficient. I would love to see how other parametric and non-parametric methods change performance, how different distributions of images may change how representations are best modeled, and how to scale methods when all the samples will not fit into memory simultaneously.

I think your advisor is giving good advice and you need to look deeper for a problem. Note that building on previous work and making a significant contribution are not the same thing. The former, as you note is almost always (actually, always?) true, but the latter takes more. All mathematics advances, for example build on previous work back as far as Euclid. Even Euclid based his work on ideas from elsewhere, synthesizing it in a well structured way.
If your advisor can see the crux of a solution to a problem with a few minutes (hours) of thought, then the problem isn't worthy of a dissertation.
OTOH, you are right to be frustrated. That is common enough in research.
One of the easiest ways to get out of your dilemma is to ask your advisor to suggest a problem. They probably have more experience at this than you do and are more likely to know what might be possible to do without it being blindingly obvious that it is do-able. I think that is the current situation. Your suggested problems are too easy to solve and have more or less obvious solutions from the literature.
Find a problem with no obvious solution. Others can help you do this until you have more (and deeper) experience. Of course you can also pick a problem that is too hard. It is a classic Three Bears Issue. Some problems are too easy. Some are too hard. Some are just right. But it takes some work to find the balance. The first kind aren't worth the time. The second can result in too much wasted effort. The third can earn you a degree.

Personal note: In my dissertation studies (math) I worked on three problems, all suggested by my advisor. The first was too easy and I proved "new" theorems every day. Fun, but not significant. The second was too hard and I wasted some weeks pounding my head against an impenetrable wall.  The third was "just right" and resulted in a major piece of work and a lot of insight into a major class of problems. Not easy, not impossible. Just Right.
And, yes, it built on a lot of previous work, much of it over the previous half century.

Long term note: Once you have a problem then, along the way to solving it, you may stumble across other, related, problems. Keep a notebook of such things so that you have something to return to later. Don't spend too much time on them now, keeping on your main path, but you build up a backlog of possible future research. You also build up a set of problems that you can give to your own students later when they are in the same position you are now.

"I think your advisor is giving good advice" - this is impossible to tell from the given information. It may well be, but it may also be that this supervisor has much narrower ideas about what could be a good topic than necessary. Also if the supervisor wants to be helpful, they probably should explain themselves better so that the student can better understand what the issue is (although obviously we can't know what exactly the supervisor has said and whether this is more of a communication problem on one side or the other).

@ChristianHennig, even if the advisor is being overly "strict" the result is the same if they have to approve your dissertation by signing it, as is often the case. One can go to a new advisor, perhaps, but with no guaranteed result. But, yes, I can't read the advisor's mind.


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Is there any difference between last author and corresponding author?
My field is life science/biology.
I am wondering if there is any difference between last author and corresponding author. For example, if one is the second last author and corresponding author, and another one is the last author but not corresponding author, who is actually leading the work?
And also would be viewed differently among university? Particularly for tenure applications?

There is some country dependence, see In Chinese academia, what is the significance of the corresponding author, beyond 'public relation'? vs. Does "corresponding author" carry an implied meaning?

As BioBrains says, it is usually assumed that the last author is the author who has overall responsibility for the publication, usually the head of the research group, grant holder, or line manager. The research would usually have been their idea in the first place. They are the person with whom the buck stops if there is something wrong with the paper. (If my student or postdoc publishes fraudulent data, both they and I get in trouble, if the fraud is on my part, then only I get in trouble). This is sometimes known as the "senior author".
In theory, the corresponding author is the person who is mostly likely to be in a position to answer , or find the answer to any (and I mean any) question about the research. Even if its 10 years later.
Some people will use corresponding to try to indicate that either more than one person should be regarded as the senior author, or that the person last on the list is not the senior author (if, for example the first author should be regarded as both the first and senior author). We often use it very much like "* these authors contributed equally", but for joint last authorship, rather than joint first, particularly where multiple fields are involved, and there is unlikely to be one person who knows about everything, or has overall responsiblity. The extent to which people recognise/acknowledge/account for this is variable.

Good question.
Typically, in life sciences/biology, the person who is last author (or senior author) is seen as leading the work. They may or may not be corresponding author.
To my opinion, it's a good decision to also make them corresponding author, as they are likely the ones with a permanent position, and therefore able to answer questions from readers for years to come (which is the point of being the corresponding author on a paper).
I know some people who would make their PhD students corresponding author and while it's both easy and potentially a nice gesture, if the PhD student leaves (the lab or academia) they will be less available in the future to answer questions.
Note that this corresponding authorship has nothing to do with the person who actually uploaded all the files to the journal in the submission stage. I typically did that as a PhD student in the place of my advisor, but they were still the official corresponding author.
Now this may be different if the first author is a postdoc who is on the tenure track job market and willing to set up their own lab while continuing with this line of research - in that case both the first and senior/last author might agreee to be listed as corresponding author.
In either case, the corresponding authorship as far as I am aware plays no role/is not a factor in judging contributions to a study. Also, most tenure applications would care about how and what you contributed specifically, rather than a corresponding author asterisk next to your name.

"the corresponding authorship as far as I am aware plays no role/is not a factor in judging contributions to a study": I wish it was like you say. By contrast, I witnessed several hard arguments about who will be the corresponding author(s) of a paper, and it was all about that asterisk.


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How to best navigate a bad grade in senior year?
I’m in my undergraduate senior year and by the looks of it I’ll be getting a failing grade in an elective math course. For reference I want to apply to a theoretical physics Masters degree, but in a field that is fairly unrelated to this course (think, say, group theory and  astrophysics). My other grades in all of my semesters are mostly “excellent" with the occasional “good”, and I have significant research experience, come September I can realistically even have 1-2 publication preprints. Presumably I will  also have a strong letter of recommendation.
My question Is, how can I minimise the damage by this failing grade?
Do I hand in my application while this semester is technically on-going, thereby hiding this grade? The usual deadlines are around March - April next year.
Do I try to give a brief explanation in my statement-of-purpose, even if I don’t have any particularly good reason for the failure ?

Is this for US grad study?

No, it’s for a European Masters degree.

It should not be a problem as you will do the master program in Europe. Unless you are going apply to the best institutions (eg ETHZ) it should be fine. The problem you should worry about is whether or not you are eligible for that master program.

ETHZ isn't my first choice, but I actually wanted to apply for the hell of it. Also, what do you mean about me being eligable or not?

Because some universities (and countries) will require your master program to be in the same field as the bachelor degree. I am not sure if it is possible to switch to physics.

My Bsc is in physics

Since you are applying for theoretical physics, a failed Math may raise some concerns in Admission's Committees or potential Supervisors.  If you have "Excellent" in other Math courses at the same level, you should be fine, but if those are the courses where you only have "Good", it is more of an issue. You say that "you don't have any particularly good reason", but if it was simply that you didn't find the course interesting but didn't drop it in time, that could be worth saying.

What do you think about submitting my application before this semester is over, while my transcript doesn’t contain this grade?
What do you think about lying to admission by making up a reason for this, like saying the reason I failed is because I forgot/had to miss an exam? I think that paints a better picture and is not even that untrue.

Do not lie on the application!!!


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Does it make sense to contact potential PhD supervisors after having submitted the application?
I already submitted my application and they are about to start interviews, however learning more about the faculty I found a potential supervisor and I would like to know whether there are chances they are interested in having me doing that kind of research (understanding whether he will accept supervisees or other colleagues that have same interests will).

What country is this? I think the answer depends on the place.

@Buffy It is Italy

Thanks. We have a few Italian academia here who can probably provide the most specific advice. Not me, alas.

I wouldn't recommend it. Standards vary but from my experience, it can be seen as trying to influence your chance of admission.
Generally speaking, if you want to contact faculty before getting accepted, the appropriate time to contact them is before submitting your application (and even then, it's not uncommon to be turned down).
Again, standards vary and I'm sure some faculty are fine with it, but the general impression I've gotten (at least in US universities) is that it's often considered inappropriate during the admissions process and you should wait until a decision is made.

You're making the assumption that the potential supervisor even responds to emails from prospective students.


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Asking the faculty for PhD research proposal tips
I am going to apply to Italian universities for PhD vacancies in Statistics, which is not exactly the field that I studied during my BSc and MSc. I count to acquire the instruments for doing actual research during the first years of the program but I am asked to submit a short research proposal during the application process.
I already have in mind some topics to research but I am not really deep into them so that it would be very time consuming even to arrange summaries and provide short bibliographies about the matters. I could probably end up spending (let's say) one month reading about one of the topics I have in mind only to understand I should actually apply with another one as research proposal because of my understanding of the subject (which would probably be tested during interviews).
Would it be appropriate to approach the faculty before the application and ask which topic it would be better to present as research proposal? Also in light of having better chances to be accepted.
I want to add that right now I am employed, otherwise of course I would enjoy reading everything I could.

Why ask? You can infer this yourself by simply looking into their prior research. Researchers don't change trajectories if they want to become experts in their domains.


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How bad would it be to graduate with a thesis not able to show positive results?
I'm almost at the end of my research dissertation for my MSc program and my results could not prove any improvement in the techniques already well established. I relied too much on a paper talking about some interesting application and results but when I went deeper to apply the technique in a more careful and thorough way, it appeared to be flawed. I still think I did a great deal of work to reach these results and I learnt a lot during my path. Should I try to fix it or just show what I got?

You should definitely talk to your advisor.

The question is unclear without information about your long term goals.  If you want to be an academic, your publications matter more than your thesis.

While your advisor can probably help, don't misunderstand the purpose and process of research. It isn't making some unsupported claim at the beginning and then "proving" (dammit) that your claim was accurate. Research is a reach into the unknown. The answers you get depend on what is, not on what you want them to be.
You are actually seeking knowledge (truth), not verification. If the results of your research disprove your original hypothesis that is still a valid result.
If your "new" technique isn't actually better than the old, then it is useful (maybe vital) to know that.
In an ideal world you should be able to write that up. We hypothesized X. We used process Y to explore it. We found no evidence that X is true. That is still knowledge.
Hopefully, however, your advisor has such a view. And hopefully your process Y was sufficiently sophisticated that you haven't fallen in to easy errors.
If every hypothesis came up with positive (supporting) results, we wouldn't be working very hard and only making trivial initial hypotheses.
But, start out with "what is true here" rather than "this is true and I'll beat it until it yields". That leads to propaganda and isn't research. It is often the basis of misconduct. Tobacco and pesticide "research" too often fall into such errors.
So, it isn't "bad" at all if you reach truth.

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

I would also expand on this for OP by suggesting that, at least if the MSc is your first dive into research, half of the battle is learning what research really is and how you navigate yourself conducting research. Now, when you approach your PhD, you'll be significantly more equipped with better habits, efficiencies, and skills that you can now use. I have found (me being no exception) that the grand focus on results is something hammered into us as undergrads and there is much more to an MSc thesis than getting '"good" results. Do not lose sight of how your struggles have made you better.

It's not bad at all
That sounds like a nice piece of research to me.  You tried a new method to do something, and found out it doesn't work as well as the existing methods.  Useful stuff.  Write up your results and be honest about the outcome; see if you can explain/hypothesise why your new method didn't work as well as you were hoping.  That research will be really helpful for anyone else who comes along and wants to develop this new method along similar or different lines to you.

Perhaps a useful answer for future readers but a year and a half late for the OP.

Late answers are totally OK -- as you say, they may be useful for future readers (and in theory, we only take questions that may be of interest to future readers). For the curious: our late answer queue exists because a large fraction of late answers are also bad answers, not because late answers are intrinsically bad.


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Chances of getting admitted while applying to a German PhD program without a master's degree from Germany?
I am a molecular biology graduate with an expected master's degree in biology. Both of these degrees are from prestigious universities in my home country, however none of which are in EU. Considering I had relevant job and research experiences here and also some internships in Germany, what are the chances that I get admitted to a PhD program in Germany (considering that I have good proposal and a command on German language)?

Two downvotes without any comments or suggestions what about the question should be improved?

@OP: There are typically (with few exceptions, though) no "PhD programs" in Germany. Applications to PhDs usually to go directly to potential advisors (there are a number of questions and answers about this topic on this site; it might be helpful if you search for them).

Oh, one more thing (though this does not directly answer the question): For foreign students who would like to do their PhD in Germany, scholarships by the DAAD (= "Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst", in English "German Academic Exchange Service") can sometimes be a good source of funding.

Thank you Jochen! Yes I know that they are different than that in English-speaking countries and mostly individual, I just wanted my question to be a little more understandable, I thought people would get what I mean. My question is actually if the approval by the potential is enough (considering that I already hold an MSc).

Thank you also for the DAAD suggestion. And yes, I also don't the reason for downvotes, if it is duplicate or anything I would prefer a comment and a redirection to a similar question.

What does expected Master's degree mean? You don't have it yet but will when starting as PhD student? In that case: there would be nothing very special in that respect wrt what is usual in Gemany.

@cbeleites Yes, I am currently enrolled and hopefully finish it succesfully. My problem is that I have doubts that I would have a harder admission since my master's isn't from Germany.

Note that the terms "PhD program" and "admission" are actually incorrect/misleading when talking about a PhD in Germany - being understandable is good, but one should not sacrifice correctness for that.

I understand, I'll keep that in mind, thank you. What terms one should use instead?

You best source of information will be the professor in whose group you plan to apply. Since I'd anyways recommend to get in contact with them beforehand since that's the usual way this isn't something out of the ordinary.
I don't expect a Master's that is not completely recognized will hamper your application much: you'd be one among many including also PhD students with Bachelor's from Bachelor -> PhD countries and PhD students with Master's from Fachhochschule or from other fields.
My experience is that in these cases the university may ask you to take some exams that are in close relation to the PhD project to show your proficiency with the field of your thesis.

Thank you for this answer. My mind has been busy with this for quite a while.

Actually it is H+ on Anabin, and is a relatively well known state university. Legally, there shouldn't be a problem. My doubts arise from the fact that it's not from an EU country, if that will give the supervisors a doubt about its educational quality.

@Roland: I don't know. What But even if it isn't, I don't think that will hamper the application since there are established procedures to deal with this. I'll clarify the answer.