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Are Assistant professorships with no starting packages/benefits and high teaching load considered normal?
I am asking this question because I simply do not know.
The story is that some department (northern continental Europe for what is worth) is (unofficially for the moment) negotiating an Assistant Professor position. The offered teaching/research load is 50-50 which sounds OK in theory.
In reality though, this translates to a minimum of 3 and an average of 4 full courses per year (38+ class hours on classes of about 100-120 students) plus supervision of bachelor's and master's candidates as well as administrative tasks. I can't possibly imagine how this is 50%.
On the other side of the spectrum, they do not offer any starting package whatsoever: no PhD students, not even basic equipment like laptop or traveling allowance, only a relatively good (for EU standards) salary with no additional benefits (married/child, whatever). They said that I should (imperative hint) apply for external funding (i.e., more work).
Thus my questions:

Is this considered a true 50-50 research/teaching? I do not see how is this possible. It seems that for research would be only a modest 30% of the time and mostly during summer which is absurd for younger people (more ideas for new research). Even taking out research, this proposal is at least 60% teaching to me.
Is this considered a normal offer? I would like to see other people's opinions/experiences.

The argument for the offer is basically: take any position that comes in the way, given that the academic job market can be brutal. But I am really afraid this would mean the end of my research at least in its current form, given also that I won't be able to even have any PhD student at least in the next 3 or so years at least, if I ever have them.

In my country, Italy, there's no starting package, whatever the position. You have to "bootstrap" yourself.

@MassimoOrtolano and how do you get PhD/PostDocs? Through individual grants? The said department has no internal money to support PhD stiudents...

In Italy, PhD students are funded by the university (with money which arrives mostly from the government). Each PhD school has a number of positions available (for instance, we have 8 new positions each year): a professor who needs a PhD student writes a research proposal and if an admitted student likes it, they can accept it. However, if a professor is new to the department, it might take a few years before they can get one. And one usually doesn't get more than one PhD student per year.

Sounds like a good system to me. In my case there is 0 internal money so the only hope it to write any proposal I can for external funding (which can be bruttal) which means more dedicated time with quetsionable payoff on top of administrative, teaching and mentoring duties. Thus my question.

How about a hint of what field we are talking about?  Perhaps no startup package for Assistant Professor in Philosophy is normal, but in Engineering is not normal?

@GEdgar cs/applied maths

What country are we talking about? I'm curious partly for personal reasons...

Also, how do you translate "50-50" into a number of pure teaching hours? I generally don't understand these percentages, because research hours are a really vague concept that I can't believe anyone seriously counts...

@darijgrinberg In many countries there is a nominal amount of yearly working hours which is used for all administrative purposes, usually around 1700 hours/year. I expect this nominal quantity to be used as reference for those fractions.

@MassimoOrtolano and what is counted as 50% teaching? For each class hour you need 1 or 2 hours of preparations, and I do not include how much time u need for notes, assignments etc etc. This will go very high especially if u cannot recycle material from previous years

I'm not familiar with this kind of percentage breakdown, but I think it depends on the institution: you should certainly ask them this question. Fun fact, again from my country: by law, I should have no more than 350 hours of teaching duties each year, considering lectures, office hours, PhD students tutoring, but not preparation of lectures, assignements etc. Considering that I have roughly 120 hours of lectures and that I usually dedicate 2-3 hours/day to my PhD students, you can understand that I exceed by far the 350 hours limit (as anyone else, probably).

By CS/applied maths we are including combinatorics, according to your previous discussionm right? and not numerical solution of inverse problems in PDE, or MCMC particle filtering?

@YemonChoi I do not understand your question and how is it relevant with the question asked. BTW it's neither combinatorics, nor PDE etc.

wow, I thought my university/faculty is the only one. Here we are even expected to become 'event planners' on top of all other jobs you've mentioned, without budget to hire manpower to help us.

I am a fairly fresh tenure-track Assistant Professor in Sweden. Before that I have worked in Switzerland and Austria, and I also know the state of affairs in Germany fairly well.

The official teaching/research load is 50-50 which sounds OK. This translates to 3 courses (minimum) per year + bachelor + master student supervision + some administrative tasks.

In my current university, 50-50 is indeed normal, but only for tenured faculty. For tenure-trackers, a reduced teaching load of 20% or 25% seems more normal, but it depends on the position and, presumably, on the negotiation skill of the candidate. Note that 50-50 should indeed be understood as 50% teaching, 50% everything else.
Note that it is likely possible to buy out of teaching with grants - that is, if you bring in sufficient grants, it can be possible to fund yourself to a certain degree and consequently reduce your teaching percentage. You can ask about this during negotiations, but keep in mind that it is a risky business, as there is no guarantee of winning certain grants at the right time.

On the other side of the spectrum, they do not offer any starting package: no PhD students, not even equipment, only a relatively good (for EU standards) salary with no additional benefits (married/child, whatever).

This is again the standard also in my university - ok, you get some equipment and an informal travel allowance, but no PhD students and no real start-up package. In some cases you may be able to negotiate, but how successful this can be is limited.

Is this considered a normal offer?

Assuming we are talking about a junior professorship, and not a chaired W2/W3 professorship in Germany, then yes, this sounds fairly normal. Not great, mind you, but also not exceptionally bad. The only thing that sounds fairly high to me is the 50% teaching load.
That said, in my experience your fear of this being the end of your research career may be unwarranted. In my institution, people still regularly build up good research careers, by winning one or two grants and working intensely with a small but strong group of PhD students.
One good way to estimate this is by looking at senior assistant professors and freshly-tenured associate professors. How many students do they have? What have the published recently? If none publishes actively or was able to win significant grants, assume that they get side-tracked too much to get strong research done. If they do, assume that you will also be able to make it work.
Edit:
I will add some more information on what a X% teaching load actually means, at least in my department.
Basically, there is a standard number of yearly work hours that is assumed for a full-time employee. If you take your X% from this total work hours, you end up with the number of hours that you are assumed to spend on bachelor- and master-level teaching. Every supervised bachelor or master's thesis, every capstone project, etc., is valued at a fixed, in our case fairly generous, supervision rate of "work hours".
For courses, one person in the department is managing the distribution, and this person basically attempts to calculate "real", or at least realistic, effort hours per course, which also includes prep time. For already established courses this coordinator will basically talk to the teachers and ask them how much time they really spent in the past, and what they spent it on (we are a fairly tight-knit division, so people tend to not lie too outrageously here, although most people probably "overestimate" a little bit). For new courses, an estimation will be made, also taking into account how much material can be reused and what really needs to be done from scratch.
All of this data goes into a big Excel sheet, with the goal that over multiple years each person should end up somewhere close to their expected number of teaching hours, including course teaching and supervision.
I said above that in practice a 50-50 teaching load means 50% teaching, 50% everything else - this is simply because the teaching hours are realistically the only thing we even attempt to track. Service and research are not really tracked in any meaningful way (large department service roles get a reduced teaching load, though). This also means that, obviously, if you work until deep into the night on your research, you are not suddenly expected to teach more because your total work hours are higher.

+1 for the suggestion to look at senior assistant professors and freshly-tenured faculty in the department. You may also be able to get a sense of how much they are teaching if they include courses on their CVs or webpages.

Thanks for the answer! To add some relevant info: they said 50 teaching and 50 research but my interpretation is same as yours (the research has to be reduced to 30%, that's why I said the end of my research in its current form). 2nd, I talk about junior position but they hint that it might be possible a very fast tenure. 3rd, it seems that there are not many PhD students, and the few there are (about 5-7 in a 25 faculty member department) come from people who have grants. The quality is definitely average+ from what I have seen, but nothing exceptional.

Which brings me to my final point: I am in a point of my career that I have a lot of energy and ideas to built up.Thus I do not want to be buried under a load of teaching/mentoring/administrative activities, at least not before I give a shot in securing some good funding (which can take something like 3 years). How negotiable is it? On the other hand, given the scarcity of position, I feel like I shouldn't complain but I am sure people here get my point :)

@PsySp Nobody can tell from the outside how negotiatable your teaching load is. It depends a lot on the needs of the department - if they opened the position largely because they have an acute teaching need, no negotiation skill or candidate CV will convince them to hire somebody who primarily wants to do research. At the end of the day, you need to decide if you are willing to walk away if they remain steady at a 50-50 split. If yes you can play hardball and hope for the best. If not, you need to gauge if and when it is time to give in, hopefully meeting them at least somewhere in the middle.

If they remain steady for 50-50 in their own interpretation which will leave me with 30% research, probably I won't accept. Although teaching is fun, I do not want to dedicate my "best" years just teaching and there is absolutely no guarantee that  i could even teach topics that i like (I am afraid they will say: take this semantic web or whatever and teach it)

Thanks for the update! To your experience, to how many courses does 50 teaching load correspond to? I strongly think that even with 3 full courses, this will go beyond the 50% of time, especially if these courses are new (taight for first or first few times)

@PsySp Really depends on the course - different courses are valued quite differently here. But yeah, 50% will come to either teaching two large courses alone or more when the courses are smaller and/or you have co-teachers.

@PsySp "I am in a point of my career that I have a lot of energy and ideas to built up.Thus I do not want to be buried under a load of teaching/mentoring/administrative activities" -- join the club. You are not the first to have these wishes, you won't be the last, and part of being a professional academic is to work out for yourself how happy or unhappy you will be to make these kinds of compromise. Obviously you should explore how to negotiate the best kind of outcome with your manager or chair of department or similar. Good luck!

@YemonChoi That's exactly the essence of my question because I am afraid I would be buried under a load of teaching and the rest of time write research proposals to fund my PhD students. I am asking if this is common and if there is any strategy to get something good out of it! So, if you have any suggestions, let me know!

Continental Europe is big and diverse. I now work in Germany and teach 12 courses a year, so 3 a year sounds pretty good...
In the Netherlands, where the division of task is measured in percentages, these percentages were not expected to be strictly true. A given amount of courses had to be delivered by the department, and this work was divided over the members. The "percentage" was only used to determine whether you got a larger or smaller part of the work.
In the long run the percentages did play a role: If all members had to teach a lot more than their percentage for a number of years, then this could be used as an argument to try to increase the size of the department, which depending on the financial situation of the university, could be more or less successful.
A division in teaching/research is not that useful, as administrative tasks take a lot of time. My suspicion is that it is a division between teaching/non-teaching.
The need to get external funding is normal. You are right in your assessment that this costs time you cannot spent on research, but I don't think you can get a better deal in this respect anywhere else.
The need for starting packages and their size differs a lot by discipline. In mine I am not surprised that an assistant professor gets no starting package. However, this could differ a lot by country and discipline.

12 courses per year? That sounds unbelievable to me. I currently teach 2 courses per year and I must say that already around half of my time is devoted to these educational activities (not counting thesis supervision/administrative tasks). So, 3 courses, especially since I have to set them up from scratch, sounds more than 50%. Regarding funding: I am not familiar with Germany/Netherlands etc but, for example, in UK I think it is somewhat normal to get saome starting package (but maybe I am misinformed). Discipline = CS.

@PsySp "since I have to set them up from scratch" Is this really a nonnegotiable requirement? I would surely try to convince them that it's a win-win situation if you are allowed to reuse some existing courses (freeing up time for your research and administrative duties).

@lighthousekeeper It might be possible in general but, from what I have seen, I'd rather set up everything from scratch for the most probable courses that I would (like to) teach. Of course if they give me e.g. Calculus then no reason to set up everything, but for the courses near to my expertise I would like to change the entire curriculum to reflect more modern topics than the ones being taught atm.

@PsySp Sounds fair, but especially when you have 3 courses to give, I'm sure there is wider scope of options than (a) create all 3 courses from scratch, or (b) use the outdated stuff. For example, you can (c) ask external colleagues for reusing their recent course material (possibly while offering your own material in exchange), or (d) use course material that is provided with up-to-date books (authors sometimes use this as a tool to advertise their books, which is fair).

@PsySp I even forgot (e) co-create the course material with external colleagues who are also interested in your topics.

@lighthousekeeper Of course! There might be many options that could reduce the load and your suggestions are all good. But still I have a feeling that it would be a big teaching load, and I am afraid that this would compromise somewhat my research, especially given that I should invest a large chunk of time on writing proposals. If there was a chance to have "for free" a PhD student, then this would be a good deal. But the offered one troubles me a little bit, but apparently seems quite normal one.

@PsySp Indeed, I would say it's not the most attractive offer, but also not an abysmal one. Whether to accept it or not may heavily depend on your alternative choices.

@lighthousekeeper Trying to balance teaching/research is a delicate task and I got the feeling that they are not aware of the great risks that this offer might carry. They are negotiating with me because they like my research portfolio, not for my teaching capabilities. And yet, they want to put much stronger emphasis on teaching. I might try to convince them that 2 "heavy" classes are fine, but anything more than that would compromise either my research (which they love) or teaching, or even worst both of them. I will update you regarding the outcome :)

@PsySp Sure, keep me posted! They also might not be aware of the assumption that you plan to create all/most of the teaching materials from scratch. In the institutions I've been, this would go way above what's normally expected. So you might win a teaching award with that strategy, but I'm not sure if that's what you want.

In the UK, in a top-50 university, I had no starting package (as a Lecturer), and the promises of even competing for a PhD student were not fulfilled (they were assigned to more senior faculty). However I was able to compete for some internal funding and fought tooth and nail to continue publishing. Teaching load started at 8 hours per week and increased towards 12.
These reasons (and Brexit) prompted me to move. I managed to land as a tenure-track Assistant in a top-15 EU university (!). I was offered a starting package that should enable me to "buy" 2 PhDs. It's too early to tell how heavy the teaching load will be. Given the research intensive focus this university is supposed to have, I hope it won't be too bad.

8-12 hours per week seems very high to me: for each contact hour you need at least one hour (and possibly two) of preparation, not including notes/assignments/solutions, office hours, exam preparation and correction. This goes to 60-70% teaching load, but maybe that's normal for Lecturer?

The more research intensive universities in the UK, the "Russel Group" ones, are in the top-20, the one I was at is in the "post-1992" group and had a more vocational focus. That load was "normal" for lecturers who weren't interested in doing any research. But contractually there was no difference. It was only thanks to some internal funding that I was able to continue to research. Otherwise the only relatively free period was the summer, since lectures ended at the end of March.

From what I understand, you talk about a teaching position. Are these positions the norm in UK universities (even outside the Russel group)? Moreover, besides the 2 PhDs, did they give you any other package (eg equipment etc)? I find it peculiar that they did not offer any kind of this, not even a discount, and I would like to know if that's the norm elsewhere.

No at the UK university it was a "proper" lectureship. It wasn't a teaching fellowship. There wasn't a contractual split between teaching and research. In the minds of the admins we were perfectly capable of doing research in a hour here, a couple hours there and so on. Bit the other lecturers were perfectly content of teaching only and going home at 15 or 16. Although they were supposed of doing some research too. The new EU uni where I am now offered €100k. I chose to buy two PhDs because I didn't have any before but I could have used in other ways. Whatever is left after the scholarship wil

Sounds like a great deal you have there! I am glad! The uni I am talking about is not among the 15 best, although a very decent one that "tries to keep balance between high quality teaching and research", but not a single EU besides my -decent- salary (not even child/married benefits!!!)

Thanks! It was difficult to refuse. Although it still is a tenure track position, which, they say, "almost always" results in a promotion to Associate Professor in 5 years. There's also a requirement to learn the local language. Therefore, if 5 years from now I don't update it, I'll be probably living under a bridge.


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Is there a research honeymoon phase?
I am an undergraduate in the U.S. and have worked part time (~15-20 hrs/week) for a research group at my institution for about 5 months now. Since beginning the research I have enjoyed every aspect of it. I have gotten to read literature, submit an abstract to a conference and even work on an open source software project. I love what we have been doing so far,  and can not imagine not doing research in my future. Therefore, I am considering applying for a Phd in the next application cycle.
However, it worries me that I am in a honeymoon phase of research, using the definition from here:

The short amount of time at the beginning of a new relationship, activity, or pursuit when everything goes well and seems to be free of problems.

I am a very passionate person and, as a computer scientist, know all too well the love of starting a new project only to become deflated and uninterested after the preliminary work.
There are numerous posts on this site similar to "Is a Phd/research right for me?" ([1], [2]) and "How to deal with burnout/loss of interest in research?" ([3], [4]). The existence of the latter questions seems to suggest that a honeymoon phase exists in research.
So my questions are:
Is this sort of phase common in research? Should I be worried about it?
How can I assure myself that this is not a fleeting pursuit? That I will still enjoy research in 5 years?
I understand the latter question might be difficult to answer, but are there any objective tasks I can carry to further explore if research is right for me (i.e. more breadth in research-based tasks)? Also personal anecdotes of how you decided your love of research was permanent would help.

From my perspective (what some people would call "pure" mathematics, though that militantly regards applicability, and also betrays a certain severely limited worldview, etc)... this issue really is comparable to personal relationships: yes, things change, people/perceptions evolve, ...

Is this sort of phase common in research? Should I be worried about
  it?

It is common. Whether you should be worried about it depends on you. For example, can you imagine enjoying this even if you aren't "in love" with this. Getting a PhD, even in something you love, will be hard. There will be petty, stupid things that still require time (formatting one's thesis...). Does that strike you as a cost you're willing to bear, or do you only really see enjoying things if they're going well, there's a clear trajectory, etc.

How can I assure myself that this is not a fleeting pursuit? That I
  will still enjoy research in 5 years?

There's no real way to be sure this is true if for no other reason than people change in 5 years. But one way I dealt with it was to switch labs for a semester, to disambiguate if I liked all research or just the particular research I was doing. In my case, I discovered that no, I really enjoyed this thing and was not actually just enamored with the idea of research.

Thank you! The advice to try a different lab is great. I'll try to diversify my research experience.

For what I have read you are the initial states of making research because you mention that you have done

I have gotten to read literature, submit an abstract to a conference and even work on an open source software project.

That is a very good start, but here it could happen some issues that could bring the first disputes in your newly weeding with research; these are:

It could happen that your abstract can be rejected or even if it passes nobody assures you that your final paper would be accepted. You should get used to that, and consider that are a lot of external factors that should not discourage you; for example: personal thoughts or bias of a reviewer, low-acceptance rate of some conferences, and even maybe your work is great, but you failed to express it adequately in a research paper.
It could happen also that you find yourself in a labyrinth without a way out when you are doing your PhD, that could bring discouragement, but also you should not let this to put you down and continue until you see a light at the end of the tunnel. In this last part your adviser has a huge role, if your communication with him or her is poor, then you can end up in a no way-out street.

Regarding your questions, even though I have pointed some important facts above that you should think about them:

Is this sort of phase common in research? Should I be worried about it?

Yes, it is common. At the beginning, you start thinking that with your research tasks your will be earning a Nobel Prize (it can be the case), but when you continue you find some obstacles that deviate you from the path you initially marked. You should not be worried about it, just enjoy the tasks that you are currently doing.

How can I assure myself that this is not a fleeting pursuit? That I will still enjoy research in 5 years?

This is a difficult one, it can happen that you will enjoy making research all your life or just it could happen that you could suffer from a burn-out and say "(f) word research" and pursue other activities. For example, I knew a very smart guy that was doing his PhD research (fully research oriented European style not the American course oriented) in a very breakthrough topic about evolution. It reached a point that his advisers and him did not manage to agree in how to end up the research; so he just drop it, published some papers as an independent researcher and not he has a business company related to construction.
Bottom line, just enjoy the research tasks in which you are now immerse, and try not to worry too much about what will happen in the future. Who knows? Maybe we have a new Turing award winner in sight!
Cheers

Just to add to this: PhDs have a very high dropout rate. But "dropping out" does not have to be a bad thing. If you go into it in good faith, but then find after a couple of years that it is not for you, there should be no shame attached to taking a different path.

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I did master (M.Sc) in Germany with Mathematical Modelling of Complex System, can I call myself Diplom-Mathematiker?
Is Diplom-Mathematiker equivalent to M.Sc?

In my case (Dipl.-Chem.), my Diplom is equivalent to a M.Sc. in chemistry: I got a so-called supplement which is a certificate stating this equivalence. I haven't seen any such certificates the other way round - it also makes less sense because one of the points in the BSc/MSc system is the equivalence of the degrees across large parts of Europe, so "comparability" of MSc is greater.

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX Still, I assume this does not mean you can call yourself an MSc (as asked in the question title).

@user151413: No, I say "my Diplom is like a M.Sc". The comment was only about the equivalence (as opposed to equality) part of the question (in the body).

To be clear, the question title and body are two different questions that each lead to a different answer. The equivalence of two degrees does not imply that one can use them interchangeably. Related question: Can my UK PhD permit me to use the title “Dr.-Ing.” in Germany?

(Note: The answer is primarily referring to the question in the title, which is not quite the same as the one in the text.)
No. Why would you think so?
Diplom-XXX is a title which is, mostly, not awarded any more.  The "Diplom" system has been replaced with the BSc/MSc-system. But this does not mean they are equivalent (it is a rather different system), and you certainly cannot call yourself Dipl.-Math..
From a more pragmatic point of view, I would consider it a more or less equivalent degree. But again, this does not mean you can call yourself "Diplom-Mathematiker" if you got an MSc in Maths.

Concerning the question if the Diplom is equivalent to M.Sc.: it mostly is, but in some instances, a Diplom is actually considered inferior to a Masters.
Why?
Follwing the Bachelor - Master route compared to the diploma means you have actually completed two separate courses of studies and have written two theses. Master graduates are thus considered (slightly) more proficient in "academic skills" than diploma holders.
As far as I know, this only makes a difference when it comes to becoming a supervisor for students on their bachelor or masters thesis, though. In general, the rule  is that you need to have at least the same degree that you want to supervise, e.g. a person with a bachelor can only supervise other bachelors theses. At my university of applied sciences, a person with a diploma cannot supervise a student for their masters thesis, only a person with a masters degree themselves can.
It might be that this is not the same allover Germany, but I know of some other universities with the same practice.

That's the first time I ever hear this stance, and I have quite some experience in the German system (albeit more in a university than university-of-applied-sciences context). The fact that a M.Sc. holder has completed two theses is an argument, but then, a B.Sc. thesis is typically less research-focused than a diploma or M.Sc. thesis, which are generally on the same level.

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PhD students reviewing papers
I am a PhD student in the field of education at the final year and I received a request from a well known journal (impact factor 1.6). I have published only conference papers. Is it normal to receive such a request? Or am I lucky?

It would be good to know in which field you are working. Depending on that, the answer could be that it's quite common and normal or that it is exceptional.

in field of education

There are several possibilities. One is that you are lucky. One is that they are desperate (no, not really). But, I think that the most likely answer is that you have been "seen" by an editor via your conference papers and seem to be a good candidate to review a particular work. I would guess that the editor sees a match of interest and topic that points to you.
If you have the time for it, it would probably be a good idea to accept, just for the experience.
But, no, I don't think it is especially "normal" in most fields. When your advisor is an editor or a close associate of an editor, it might be more common, of course. Perhaps someone like that suggested you.

In my field (biology) it's slightly unusual but quite common to have senior PhD students do peer reviews. Typically they would have published in the field, but it wouldn't be too surprising for an editor to request a review from a student who they knew of from conferences. Good peer reviewers are hard to come by, and a PhD student who is knowledgeable in the field can give a useful review.

"Slightly unusual / quite common" - which?

... both? I don't see a contradiction.

Well, consider that one definition of unusual is "not habitually or commonly occurring or done", which implies that the two phrases are somewhat opposite. Personally, I am confused by this answer as to whether it is slightly unusual (which I read as "slightly uncommon") or quite common (which I read as "not at all unusual"). The rest of the answer would tend to suggest it leans more towards the "unusual" than the "common" end of the spectrum.

Let's say 95% of review requests go to PIs, but almost every PhD student gets a review request at some point. It's slightly unusual for a grad student to get a request, but it's quite common. I'm not trying to be a jerk, this seems really straightforward to me.

I think what you might be trying to say is It's slightly unusual, but not unheard of?

I'm pretty sure I'm trying to say that it's slightly unusual, but quite common. I'm aware that the internet is filled with people who think it's clever to say yes I COULD pass the salt, but I'm not interested in changing a simple and obvious statement into five paragraphs of legalese.

It's moderately unusual but not unheard of. It's basically a positive.  You are seen as a functioning professional scientist.  So, just do a decent review and send it in.
Before you know it, you'll have a union card, get promoted, be a PI, etc.  But if you are a good graduate student, you should already be becoming a scientific contributor well before you leave the nest.  So it's all good.  Take it in stride and rock out the review.  Onwards.

For a long time after graduating as a PhD, I thought that every PhD students would have done some reviews, and that it would be fairly common to have reviewed journal papers. Then we hired in my team a young postdoc who had graduated a few month before and soon after I offered him an opportunity to review a paper in his area of expertise. I was shocked to know that it was his very first invitation to review a paper (even for conferences or workshops)! I realised after that that it is not too uncommon to find PhD students that never have the opportunity to review a paper before graduating.
I think that it depends mostly on whom you work with (your supervisor and the people you meet / interact with). As a Phd student, I was involved in a European project that allowed me to meet some of the top researchers in my community of research. I also had a supervisor who is among the well known researchers of that community. He gave me a lot of things to review, as well as to his other PhD students. I also got things from other colaborators. After that, I worked in a team where the boss had his share of reviews to do, and he delegated some of them to his students and postdocs.
So, all the way untill I got a permanent position, I was under the asumption that every mildly successful PhD students would have made reviews. I always try to offer my students a chance to review, unless I see they are struggling with their own work.
Anyway, is it really important to know if it's common or not? If the journal is reputable and you have the time to do it, then do it, and do it seriously.

In my experience, if you have received a request to review for a journal then it could be because of the following:

The scope of the paper being reviewed has less number of
reviewers    available and it is a common practise to reach out to
authors who have    published work in that area.
The journal
    needed an external    reviewer to provide an objective view on the
    work in focus.
Being recommened by someone to the journal
    for you to be a reviewer    for the work in focus.

It is not really luck that you got contacted to be a reviewer but I would say it is more becasue of your expertise and/or network.

Some fields have a very small number of people at that level, so yes it is "normal", while other fields have so many people some good ones never get asked...

I think it is more a matter of practice and a little bit of luck. However, reviewing has become a part and parcel of my life as a PhD student with a lot of Conference reviews. Journals send me reviews only once in a while and it usually correlates with (maybe falsely, likely causally) with a submission I have sent which was not accepted eventually.
Also, I get conference review tasks regularly and I am yet to get accepted in a peer reviewed publication. It does go to the fact that the area thinks they might use my expertise ( I have significant industry experience and a notable grasp of research concepts , esp. upcoming and complex econometrics and methodologies) I think it helps to subscribe to Industry organisations (not just ones with listserv subscriptions) especially the top 3-4 in your area so that you are visible as a serious member.
Once you start as reviewer, I think more work depends on the quality and timeliness of your reviews. Also a lot of selection in this area is based on trust, so the 'evil' tenets of posing beyond your qualification and acting up are a big no if you want to be on the eternal gratitude of editors and conveners looking for erudite reviewers. Also you have to start publishing eventually as your review records get weighed against your choices to publish and your docus/praxis of published work in the relevant areas.
If you got to review because your guide/area was processing the conference/journal, then this may turn out to be a one off for you and not get counted by the journal for future reviews. Lastly, most of my colleagues past, pre


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How to cope with regret and shame about not fully utilizing opportunities during PhD?
I am currently writing my PhD thesis and I was feeling guilty about the things and skills I could have attained during this period but I didn't. I have worked hard towards my research and have simultaneously worked on my hobby of painting and drumming during my PhD. Not that I joined a club or a band, I just studied art books, YouTube videos and practiced in solitude.
A bit information about me. I am not a brilliant student. Being average, I have struggled a lot during my PhD research as compared to my colleagues. This has led to spending a longer time on my research than my colleagues. It will take me a little over 5 years to defend. My colleagues and friends have taken somewhere between 4-5 years for their PhD.
At the moment, my only skillsets are doing research (owing to my PhD), make somewhat okayish paintings,  drum somewhat, still love my hobbies and am a bit confident about presenting and public speaking owing to the conferences I have been to.
But, looking back, I feel like I should have invested my free time in meeting new people, learning more about public speaking, should have taken leadership positions and should have invested my time in doing things that would have improved my CV. In short, doing things outside my comfort zone.
How can I cope up with the regret about my failure of doing things that would have helped me academically and in industry? I am 30 years of age (fyi).

Half a year longer than the average is meaningless.

If you can get through this life without regret then you haven't learned a thing.

If you had spent your time meeting people &c, you would now be regretting not spending more time on painting & drumming.

Could have written this post myself. Swap painting with taking photos, started drumming two years ago, 31 yo, took 4 years to finish while my colleagues took 3 something.

Many brilliant minds had hobbies on the side. Take Richard Feynman, for instance.

Sounds like you've made some good choices. This Ted Talk is encouraging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJGupYFaCGs . It's about how difficult Harvard life/study balance is, but could apply equally to any advanced field of study.

as compared to my colleagues Looks like impostor syndrome

Sound a bit like fear of missing out. (And you will always miss out on something)

"Being average" PhD's are not average.

I have struggled a lot during my PhD research as compared to my colleagues - that's how it's supposed to be! "Every colleague can do anything better and faster, always. And what you did took so much time for so little and trivial conclusions. Oddly enough they are sometimes even "impressed" by your work, say things like "interesting what you've found". But if they knew how much you worked for it, they would differently" - any half-way serious PhD student anywhere

"I wish I had done more X and less Y" - sound pretty normal. Except then you'd wish you'd done more Y and less X. Despite zillions of self-help books assuring you otherwise, you really can't have it all. You can have some. Sometimes you can have a bunch of one thing but less of others. You can eff up pretty badly and end up with dang-near nothing. And even if you win the lottery and get a zillion freaking dollars from dumb luck you'll probably make an ass of yourself and become the butt of many jokes. What does all this mean? I dunno. Maybe that you should just play the drums and be happy.

Oh, and another thing. Did you know that the world-renowned physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson messed around so much during his first PhD that he bombed it? Screwed off so much that the committee for his PhD was dissolved. So, try not to sweat too much. Life is like an endless play. When the curtain is rung down on Act XVIII (Ye Break-up Scene, or D'Vorce Of Ye Star-Crossed Lovers), behind the curtain the crew is already wheeling the scenery for Act XIX (Comic Banquet Scene with Danse Buffo) into place. Or something like that. So, chill. And pull down your pants and slide on the ice. :-)

There will always be someone better than you, and you really shouldn't compare yourself against others.  That being said, one way to think about your achievement is the completion rate for PhDs is about 56%.  So, just finishing puts you in the upper half of your peers.  And who's to say that if you'd gone full into study mode without having side interests that you would have finished and not burned out?  Also, having side interests makes you a much more interesting person.

"I'm 30 years old and regret the missed opportunities during my Phd" ... No offense, but humble brag much?  I was 29 when I finally started my BSc, having wasted my 20s mostly drinking, playing video games, and doing drugs.  I am 37 now, and only 2 classes in to a part-time Master's program that will take me 4 more years to complete while working full-time.  I don't do drugs or play much video games any more, and my only regret is that I had started painting miniatures sooner and played more face-to-face tabletop games in my 20s... perspective my friend, find it. Most Phds are 40+

While sometimes it seems that spending more time working is equivalent to accomplishing more (especially in academia, where there's always that one colleague), this is not true in general. In particular for demanding intellectual work (as required in an academic environment) it is important to take breaks, vacations, and spend time doing other things to refresh ones creativity (see, e.g. Clark & Sousa, How to be a happy academic, or any of the numerous articles online).
I personally like to look at CVs / personal websites of successful academics, and it is quite common that they have some hobby which has nothing to do with their work which they spend much time on, like sports, chess, music, etc. So you don't need to feel guilty at all. It's very common that people struggle during their PhD studies, everyone has to figure out for themselves how to "make it work". If for you that meant spending time in solitude, that's fine.

This has led to spending a longer time on my research than my
  colleagues. It will take me a little over 5 years to defend. My
  colleagues and friends have taken somewhere between 4-5 years for
  their PhD.

So it seems you didn't actually take that much longer. Another reason not to feel guilty.

I should have invested my free time (...) doing things outside my comfort zone.
(...) I am 30 years of age (fyi).

Why not start now? At 30, most of your life still lies ahead of you.

It also sounds like you have a surprisingly well-rounded life despite working on a PhD--don't feel guilty for that!  You've actually done something impressive: maintaining some semblance of work-life balance while finishing your PhD in a normal amount of time.  If anything that says something positive about you, not negative.

This feels like Imposter Syndrome, of course. And I'll guess that you share these feelings with quite a large proportion of other recent graduates and finishing doctoral students.
There are two things going on here. One is that you know more than when you started and, if you have advanced at all, your standards are much higher. Looking back, you doubt that you met your current higher standards. But you were learning all along the way.
But the second point is also important. Perhaps your drumming and painting is what kept you sane enough through your studies to do a good job. Perhaps that is what gave you the mental breaks to let your mind work more efficiently along the way. Don't think of it as wasted time. Think of it as necessary relaxation that lets the brain recover.
I know one eminent computer scientist who has been a rock & roll guitarist since approximately forever. It is a necessary thing, not a waste of time and effort.

I read the question more as being about finding ways to cope with a sense of a failure to do other things than about struggling with a sense of being exposed as a failure or fraud in doing something. So, is this really a classic case of imposter syndrome?

Maybe I was a bit strong. I'm not qualified to make a diagnosis. But the regret part is a feature of it I think.

My PhD studies were fantastic times. Great people to be around, great parties, met girlfriends, met my wife, saw a lot of movies, did I mention parties?, and did all sorts of crazy things.
And also did some research.
Many years later I fondly remember this time, my PhD in hand (not really useful in industry, beside having a cool CV). Some of the best years of my life.
I will never get the Nobel Prize. I will never be chief advisor to the president when it comes to matters of national science. I will never be on TV as the go-to guy when it comes to explaining science. And I will never have groundbreaking discoveries which will have my name on them.
But, man, how I loved these years. Now that I think it off, I should have learned playing drums (seriously). In a band.
Please seize the day and stop worrying about insignificant things. In 20 years (not on your deathbed, just in 20 years) you will be telling your kids what a cool time it was. Also, make sure to be able to say then: "did I mention that I was on a rock band?"

This is probably the best answer in all of Stack Exchange!! So true. Life is not about working and getting into the best schools!!!!

I am not a brilliant student. Being average, I have struggled

Being self-critical is not uncommon. Balance critical self judgements against a comparable list of accomplishments however small.

But, looking back, I feel like I should have ...

Feelings of remorse or regret are not uncommon, especially standing on the threshold of a milestone in life. Anyone with a realization of their own frailty will have them. Allow yourself the dignity to accept your choices as uniquely your own.

How can I cope up with the regret about my failure of doing things that would have helped me academically and in industry?

This has two sides. First, the personal. Here, my immediate advice is to seek professional guidance. I imagine by now that you realize that you would never have gotten through your academic career without the professional advice that you had from your advisor to help you solve some of your more challenging problems. Correspondingly, you might then accept that sometimes you will also need to seek professional advise to solve your personal problems. We can spend forever in a forum discussing counseling methods, but in the end, you have to take this step on your own.
The second side is the professional. Here, my immediate advice is to talk with your advisor and with others that same level who you look up on as leaders. Ask for insights about how you can become better at networking. Ask whether any opportunities are still open to take the steps now that you regret that you did not take sooner (attending conferences with a presentation or becoming active in leadership in a professional organization).
Finally, you should not see this point in time as a door that is closing on a world that you could have had. You should instead learn to see this as a door that is opening on a world that you can make as your own.

You shouldn't regret decisions devoting time to yourself instead of work. What you should regret is making foolish decisions to do something you hate when you could be doing something you enjoy. Time spent doing what you love is never wasted.
You say that you have spent some of your time on various art hobbies. However, it doesn't sound like you regret the art - even in the context of how you could have done better in your PhD, you don't really say you wish you hadn't done the art stuff. You just regret not having spent more time on work, as opposed to not having spent less time on art. Based on this, I would assume that you made your decision to spend time on art rationally. You surely understood at the time that doing it would in some way occupy time you could have spent on work - but you did anyway because the art seemed like a more valuable and meaningful thing to do. There's nothing wrong here - you should always do whatever is most worth doing; life is too short to waste time on things not worth doing.
Now if you had some sort of compulsive habit where you constantly played drums to the detriment of your work, and even though you realized and understood that the drums were a bad idea, and regretted doing it even as you did it, but still couldn't quit - that would be something to regret, because you'd be making a decision that you know is not in your interests. But that is not your situation.
You might say that at the time it seemed like a good idea to develop these hobbies, but in retrospect it no longer appears so. This, still, is not a cause for regretting the hobby: At best you might conclude that you have developed better judgement and wisdom as to what matters in life. But that comes with experience; it stands to reason that past you lacked the experience, and couldn't be faulted for not making wiser decision, even if the decision were unwise (which I contend they were not, in your case).
Also, it's not a given that you "could have" spent more time on work. People like to ignore morale and pretend you can simply will yourself to do anything at any time. But this is not true - from areas such as management or military organization we know that morale can have tremendous inertia, and can even act as a force in its own right. So if you could not muster the morale to do more work, and instead spent your time on a hobby, there's realistically nothing being lost. Following this logic, to say that "I could have accomplished more if I worked more" is a bit like saying "I could have flown away if I had wings" - it's counterfactual thinking. If anything, the hobby might have helped you do what work you did accomplish, and hence went beyond not detracting from your productivity but contributed to it.
Consider another ridiculous hypothetical: You spend 8 hours every day lying in bed doing nothing. What if you just stopped sleeping - you would have 50% more time every day in which you could be productive! But the problem is clear: If you could even endure sleep deprivation for any amount of time, your productivity would quickly drop to a tenth or less. So your net output would become not 150%, but 15% of what it was before. It is a very similar situation with hobbies: Although unlike sleep, being deprived of hobbies doesn't kill you, the mind needs rest. Most people cannot simply work without any respite for months on end. Forcefully preventing them from hobbies usually results in productivity tanking.
But also, I think it's worth recognizing that regret or no, you don't have a time machine. You cannot go back to that time and play drums less and research more. You won't be doing another PhD. You might give advice to other young PhD students - but their personality will be different from yours, and it will come down to the basic principle of making rational decisions in line with your goals for your future. So I would look more towards how I can do my best today and tomorrow, rather than how I could have done better yesterday.

I don't agree that learning to do stuff which you hate is wasted. It is a very valuable skill that very few people are able to do without giving up. Practicing this can increase your learning speed and resilience a lot.

@mathreadler I explained my reasoning in the answer, and I invite all readers to decide for themselves whether they would rather do things they hate or do things they love.

This is a classic issue experienced by many. As an enrolled student (whether undergraduate or postgraduate) at any half-decent institution, there are so many opportunities open to you, and nobody could possibly do everything that might be locupletative. Then, you graduate and those opportunities are much harder to find (and cost a lot more money!). In various student-feedback surveys, I have commented that it would be good if more of the opportunities offered by Higher Education institutions could be made available not just to current students, but also to recent alumni, since it is the years just after graduating when you might have the time and motivation to really get a lot out of the opportunities you did not have time to do as a student (obviously, a lot depends on the nature and extent of any professional and personal commitments).
As for a solution, all I can say is, "learning is for life, so be creative in making opportunities for yourself". It is usually possible to achieve something worthwhile even if you do not have much time and/or money, provided that you are patient and open-minded.

When people tell me I shouldn't regret something, it never made sense; how could I decide not to regret?
What I've found useful to to classify events as 'over' and 'next'. When I feel myself struggling with a problem, I ask myself: is this event in the past? What's done is done. It's a reminder to fight battles in the present, rather than repeatedly revisiting battles over things that already occurred. We can accept them without approving of them.

But, looking back, I feel like I should have invested my free time in meeting new people, learning more about public speaking, should have taken leadership positions...

First - maybe that's true. I mean, I kind of feel the same way about my own PhD. Not about public speaking maybe, but I certainly could have done a whole lot more to make connections and make a path for myself into the field I was in. I kind of regret not having done that. I'm not going to tell you that you made the exactly correct choices and had the perfect priorities in hindsight; maybe you could have arranged your life better, maybe not. At any rate, it's not clear from your description that you should have sacrificed your passions during those years to better "get ahead".
Second - the environment is sometimes also to "blame". Did your department help create opportunities for PhD candidates to meet and interact with academics from elsewhere? Did your adviser introduce you to people and groups, and encouraged you to foster such relations? Did the department/your advisor present opportunities for you to speak in public, or made it easier for you to gain confidence in doing so? Does your department make an effort to place young researchers, especially Ph.D. candidates, in leadership positions (if only of limited scope or with supervision)? I would guess the answer is "not so much" or "not really". So it may not be their fault, but it's partially their responsibility.

and should have invested my time in doing things that would have improved my CV. In short, doing things outside my comfort zone.

It's not the CV that matters, it's how you will live your life. This is easier said than done, but - we need to strike a balance between doing things we like and are passionate about and doing things we need, or have to, or can't avoid. Ideally these overlap so much that we don't feel we're making any significant sacrifice - but for most people, that's not the case.

How can I cope up with the regret about my failure of doing things that would have helped me academically and in industry?

Don't try to psychologically deny or repudiate your past self and past choices.
Going into the future, try consciously planning how to divide your time between different activities so that you can "psychologically defend" your decision to your future self; and so that you don't deny yourself your desires and wishes on one hand, and don't ignore what "needs to be done" on the other hand.
Be around people who will support items (1.) and (2.) and who can make you feel better about yourself, or inspire you to do things which make you feel better. Those could be friends, family members, colleagues and/or a psycho-therapist.
Engage in some ongoing physical activity, i.e. don't be stuck in your room/house/office all day. That helps both your physical and mental well-being.

Frankly, as a line manager in a large IT company, I meet many freshly finished students applying for job positions. I don't even look for what they can or cannot do. I fully expect them not to have any particular knowledge that would directly help them in the job (except for a general inclination towards IT, which is broad enough that even that is not a given). The degree tells me that they had the grit to get through, and the individual marks give me a somewhat more detailled picture (and maybe highlights points which I should dig at in an interview).
There are exceptions, of course, but without fail they are an exception not because they paid more attention at the uni, but because they were "geeks" even before joining the formal education system - i.e., they hacked at computers from young ages and are mostly self-taught; uni simply gave them a bit more theoretical background on top of that. I myself was in that category, and absolutely everything I brought to my job was my own, nothing from the uni (except the degree).
I heard the same from, for example, engineering people - if a brand new engineer gets his first job, nobody expects him to engineer some critical part, building or bridge without intense coaching and review from experienced people. The real learning starts when they leave uni, not when they begin it.
This is not to say that university level education is superfluous, far from it. I absolutely had many cases where some task was quite easy for me (compared to colleagues without an IT education) because of the broad background knowledge I received at my university. But the assumption that just because you have your degree makes people expect you to be "complete" would be far-fetched at least in my particular area. Which may or may not be true for all other fieleds.
So: enjoy the end of your PhD, and then just move on. Regret never helps anybody. I'd say many if not most people feel like you do. Also, expect this to continue forever... it is more a part of your character than "reality". The sooner you recognize and reconcile with that, the better.

As they say, no one ever says "I wish I'd spent more time in the office" on their deathbed. Instead, they say "I wish I'd spent more time with my family/hobbies/traveling/etc." Do these people also wish they'd earned more and learned more? Quite possibly, but does that really matter? IDK.
My answer really starts here, though:

But, looking back, I feel like I should have invested my free time in meeting new people, learning more about public speaking, should have taken leadership positions and should have invested my time in doing things that would have improved my CV. In short, doing things outside my comfort zone.

What's preventing you from continuing to learn on your own? There are plenty of places to learn things online or IRL. There are even places online as resources for IRL learning.  One of them is MeetUp.com, where you can get together with people with your own interests and do that interest. This includes computer sciences, talking over coffee, book clubs, electronics, aviation, public speaking, dog walking, whatever.  Your local public library might have information on local clubs, too. Some of them might even meet at the library.
You specifically mention public speaking, so find a local Toast Masters club. Maybe find a club that's into your hobbies and make presentations to the club about the hobby. Use the skills you currently have to build up or reinforce the skills you don't have.
Better yet, find a local non-profit and become a Board member. This will help with all kinds of things on your regret list: public speaking, leadership activities, meeting people, improving your CV, and much more. From grant writing to budgeting, running committees to debate, conflict resolution to managing project, being a Board member will teach likely you how to do a little bit of everything and tax what you think you're already learned.
Your real question was "How can I cope up with the regret about my failure of doing things that would have helped me academically and in industry?" Well, do the things now that you didn't do before. Then your regret will be severely undermined due to you actively doing what you regret not doing.  It's hard to regret doing something 10 years ago when you did it 2 years ago.  It might not fix your feelings immediately, but it will help in the future.
As another Answer mentioned, the hobbies you do during your PhD probably kept you from burnout and likely allowed you to stay sane to complete your degree.  This is very good and not to be regretted. If you had "done all the things" while in your degree plan without time to relax and enjoy yourself, you might very well have quit and then you'd have a major regret.  I'm not saying this hypothetical situation reduces your current regret, but take some solace in the fact that you don't regret not having finished the degree.  Sometimes seeing a worse side of things can make your current burden feel a little lighter.
"But did you die? No? Well there's that."  That might be a little harsh, but sometimes you have to be happy you're still "on the right side of the grass."  :-)
Good luck, happy trails, and hopefully you found something useful in all the myriad of answers here!

Your PhD studies (at least, in physics) are used to train you as a person capable of doing independent research.
If your PhD work is deemed good enough to get the degree, that also means that you acquired the skills needed to complete it. More than the skills that you learned from it, it is more important that you learn the attitude of a PhD, i.e., figure out how to make things work, don't wait for people to give you the info you need but get it yourself, take informed decisions, accept your limitations and seek out help when needed. Oh, and learn to say "I don't know" instead of inventing a stupid answer (I learned this skill during my bachelor studies and served me well during my doctoral defense.  I was told later that this impressed one of the members of the committee more than any other answer).
So, ask yourself the question: would you be able to make a study similar to your PhD thesis, without a supervisor? If the answer is yes, you are ready to have Dr. in front of your name and shouldn't have regrets.  That being said, by now you should have realized that having a PhD doesn't make you a superhuman or super smart. It just made you more capable than when you started :-)

Keep it simple
Regret and shame are strong words. These feelings should be reserved for grave circumstances. For instance, betraying a loyal friend. (This is not a criticism of the way you feel—it is just a perspective that I believe is wise to adopt. So try to assume this perspective and you may find that the feelings evaporate.)
We make mistakes all the time. Repeating a mistake that you aren't aware of is nothing to be ashamed of, nor regret. Becoming aware is fantastic; you have an opportunity to learn and change. But you don't need to "fix" everything about yourself. If you know anyone who is perfect, you don't know them very well. But I'm sure you know some people who are wonderful, without being anywhere near perfect. So just because there's something about you that could be improved, it doesn't necessarily mean that changing it should be your priority.
Moreover (as many have already said) the way you have spent the last few years may not be a mistake at all. In any case, embrace it, and embrace the future. Make the best choices you can, but don't expect unreasonable things of yourself.

There is no shame in pursuing your own dreams instead of being an obedient lapdog.
It is more like you should feel like a useful tool / lapdog for someone else if you don't dare to follow your own instincts, visions and dreams and just take all the opportunities which show up in front of your nose.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


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Should I contact the editor-in-chief about a senior editor's lack of communication?
I submitted a paper to the top journal in my field. The journal's home page sets 120 days for a decision as a goal. Recent stats suggest 60 days to initial decision is more typical.
It has now been seven months, with no word. (The paper sat in the queue marked "Awaiting AE assignment" for two months, and has since been marked "Under review".)
Colleagues have varied in their recommendations about approaching the SE [Senior Editor] with a polite query as to when the review might be complete. Some advised strongly against it, due to some bad experiences with quick rejections following such a query. Others, typically more senior (and tenured) people, advocate a "wait and see" approach. Recently, I was able to speak with the former EIC [Editor-in-Chief] of a peer journal (a different journal, also at the top of my field), who very candidly advised me to contact the SE immediately about a decision. On his advice, I did so.
It has been two weeks without any sort of response with the SE.
I have chatted with other editors at this journal (AEs [Associate Editors] and SEs), and concluded this is likely a continuing issue with this particular SE. He is purportedly exceptional in his reviews, advice, and decisions, but not so much with timeliness.
As a very junior person, the status of this paper is very important for job prospects. My mentor (and co-author) takes something of a "throw me into the deep end" approach, and invites me to solve the issue without his intervention.
So, my questions are these: How long should I wait before contacting the SE again? Is there a point that I should contact the EIC or managing editor? (For context, as I understand it, the managing editor is a very junior person, effectively an administrative assistant to the EIC.)

May be similar to Is it wise to contact the editor of a journals with my concerns regarding the length of the acceptance process?, and perhaps How to let a journal know that its submission process is very painful?, as well as some others, but different in seeking advice for escalation beyond SE.

Edited to clarify EIC [Editor-in-Chief], SE [Senior Editor], AE [Associate Editor]. As I understand, SE is assigned by managing editor, based on content and submission letter. SE assigns a blind [?] AE. AE assigns/recruits blind reviewers.

The reviews are already 3 months overdue past the deadline. You have every right to ask for a progress update, if only to remind the editor in charge of your paper that you're still waiting.
I would write to that editor again, and if you don't get anything back write to him again with a CC: to the Editor-in-Chief.

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


text:
Can secretary of a faculty upload letter of recommendation on behalf of the letter author?
I am applying for Ph.D. positions in the USA and for that I have asked the department head of my past institute to write a LOR for me. He agreed to write one for me but the problem is I am applying to multiple universities (6-8). The professor is very busy which seems too much to ask for uploading LORs for multiple schools.
I want to know if it's ok if his secretary can upload the LOR on his behalf?

It's part of a faculty job to handle letters of recommendation. Do not worry about being a bother -- they are used to handling these requests. If this person has previously told you to contact their secretary, then contact the secretary. If not, then send your request to him, and let him decide how to handle it. He may decide the way to handle it is to ask you to forward subsequent requests to the secretary -- that is normal and fine.
Having said that, there are ways to be helpful -- create an organized spreadsheet or table with all of the links for places to upload the letters. If you find new positions to apply for after you first send the table, batch updates together so you send one updated link to the spreadsheet with a new set (instead of lots of "one-off" emails).


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What does the status "editor discussion period" in editorial manager mean?
I have this on editorial manager, but I can't find any information about what it is/means anywhere!
It's been this way for 15 odd days, and before that, it was "under review" (I may have missed some steps in the middle because I didn't check for 3 weeks).

No it doesn't really, because I've never heard about an "editor discussion period" and I was wondering whether someone else had.

And that response doesn't say anything about an "editor discussion period"

They've probably received the reviews and are discussing those reviews. Perhaps it's a new editor who want some guidance. Perhaps one of the reviewers did a bad job and the editor needs to decide whether to find another reviewer. Perhaps the reviews are so inconsistent with each other that the handling editor wants to talk it through with someone else to work out what to ask you to do. This is all speculation based on the plain english reading of the phrased used.

My initial guess would be this is something like "Decision Pending," but I don't know why it would be like this for 15 days since usually the decision should be 1-2 days max. It also could be that it's being sent out for a 3rd or 4th reviewer, but then it should return to "Peer Review" or "Under Review" or something like that.  This seems unusual enough that perhaps it's worth a note to the editor to ask about the status? In any case, if no one chimes in with a proper answer it would be great for you to return to answer your own question once you find out what actually DID happen to the paper.

Fair enough, that's what I thought as well, but I was curious to know to know if anyone had encountered the same status before. I'll definitely post the answer here if I ever find out what happened!

If as you say this "editor discussion period" occurred after the manuscript was reviewed, but before you received a formal decision, then this probably corresponds to the "Editorial decision" section of this answer. The editor(s) are making a decision based on the reviews. It should not take very long unless many people are involved in the decision.


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How appropriate or common is it to recommend referees for your paper?
I sometimes receive review requests that says the authors have recommended me, and I know them in person but I have no COI, so I do my best to objectively evaluate their paper. Also, I do suspect some labs might be recommending me as I always end up reviewing their papers (or maybe the editor thinks I am a good fit, I don't know).
When I submit however, I feel this is not very appropriate. I don't mind reviewing for others who recommended me but I don't recommend anyone because I don't think it is ethical, but I have been having problems with the reviewers simply not having adequate expertise on the field, though they are quite arrogant so in the end I receive reviews that are low-quality (and I mean this, they are not just mean reviews or anything, I mean reviews that are technically dead wrong that they don't get the scope, methodology not even what problem is being solved) How common is it to recommend referees for your paper? Am I missing something?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12981/when-suggesting-referee-names-where-do-you-draw-the-line-for-conflict-of-intere

You also may want to have a look at this, this, and this. In particular note that there are many journals who require you to suggest reviewers. Taking this into account, I recommend that you [edit] your question to narrow it a bit down, e.g., to make it only about the case, when the journal doesn’t explicitly require you to suggest reviewers.

I think journals should end this practice because it wastes authors' time.

@AnonymousPhysicist Agreed, besides it is very political.

I think this depends on the discipline.  I don't even think there's an (explicit) option for it for most mathematics journals---at most you're asked to suggest an editor.

Besides the core of your question, treated below by others, when one of us does recommend referees, s/he shouldn't list more than three. In most cases only one will be picked up by the editor, excluding the others that we would like (either because friendly or competent, hopefully both).

A significant number of physics journals require authors to recommend referees.  So it is common to recommend referees.
I do not believe that recommending referees is unethical.  It is the editor that picks the referees, not the recommending author.  If the editor picks the author's recommendations without considering the quality of those referees, the editor is behaving unethically.
Some editors will exclude referees suggested by the authors.

I always leave this field blank. Once I received an email from a person I don't know, who said he recommended me because I am from the same country and I am a former student of his adviser (for Bachelors), and he NEEDED this publication to graduate blah blah. I had long ago changed my field of study, completely, I was still a PhD student, I am not sure why the editors still sent it out. I refused to review.

Also in my PhD lab, this wasn't a practice, we wouldn't recommend anyone at all, isn't it the editor's job?

Some editors want to add to their "stable" of referees and so are just "mining" for names. Sorry about the mixed metaphors.

Do you have an example of a journal where you are required to recommend referees?

-1 for suggesting the editor is behaving unethically if the editor picks the author's recommendations without considering their quality. Firstly one cannot predict how good the reviewer report will be before seeing it, and secondly even if one could, it would be lazy, not unethical.

@Allure The editor can meet their ethical obligation to evaluate the quality of the referee after reading the report.  Nothing I said implied otherwise.  Editors can and do disregard reports.  If the topic of the journal is a life-or-death matter (medicine, nuclear chain reactions, etc.) then lazy editing is unethical editing.  Furthermore, if the journal claims to be peer reviewed, but the editor conducts the peer review in a lazy way, that would also be unethically dishonest.

It's fairly common for journals to ask for reviewer recommendations. This is to help them get reviewers. Suggested reviewers make the editor's job easier, since they no longer need to work that hard to find people who can review the paper.
The downside isn't that it's unethical - I don't see why it would be - but rather that the authors are going to suggest their friends or even commit peer review fraud by nominating themselves. But that's something for the editor to worry about, not you.
Finally it's worth noting that not all reviewers you recommend will be invited to review your article - it's fairly common for journals to have a "one recommended, one self-invited" policy for example. In fact, it's possible none of the reviewers you recommend are invited.

Well I think it is not ethical because it is easily made political, isn't it? If it would be a matter of a good fit, I think the reviewers can access this information easily, otherwise a lot of authors will recommend people they are in good terms with, then it becomes a matter of politics easily. I already feel at a loss as at least having one referee who has common sense could change the fate of my papers :D

I don't see why it would be easily made political. Can you explain in detail? Authors are already going to recommend their friends, but again it's something for editors to figure out.

If the editors are doing poorly when matching reviewers with keywords, how are they going to figure out the friends and on what grounds they will refuse to do so?

@dusa I don't understand what you mean by "if the editors are doing poorly when matching reviewers with keywords". That's a very crude way to find reviewers and many (most?) editors do better than that, e.g. by skimming the article first to get a sense of its approach and results. As for figuring out who's a friend of the author, I suspect most editors would at most only check if they have collaborated before, and if they have worked at the same institution.

I would like to think so, and perhaps I didn't even think I needed to recommended  referees because I thought the editors handled this, but I have recently had two bad experiences in a row, and if you think I am exaggerating, please take a look here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/152353/what-to-do-when-the-reviewer-is-wrong-about-your-papers-scope-technically-inac?noredirect=1#comment407186_152353

@dusa I don't see how that is related. Any individual reviewer can turn in a bad review, whether it's suggested by the authors or editor-invited.

Well, you said that the editors handle selecting referees that are a good match, but in my case they didn't. The reviewers shouldn't have accepted but let's say they did, and they are terrible at it. These comments, particularly the off-tangent ones do pass the editor's desk. The editor is responsible guaranteeing quality reviews. With the ones I have received, they should have considered changing reviewers, reaching out to another reviewer but they didn't. I can at least guarantee a good match of topics, that's the difference

@dusa how do you know the selected referees weren't a good match? I've seen full professors at major North American universities write reviews that basically say nothing except request citations to their own papers. The claim that editors are responsible for guaranteeing quality reviews is disputable as well. If the editor gets a bad review (and they can tell it's a bad review), they might still make a decision because the alternative is to get another review, which adds a few months to turnaround time.

Please refer to the link I sent, basically: technically wrong statements, doesn't understand the problem solved, is unfamiliar with the journal's mandated format and thinks it is extremely odd even when I point them to author's guidelines, and they insist on this, which makes me think they didnt even read the rebuttal..if at all the paper

@dusa please read my comment. I've seen full professors at major North American universities write reviews that basically say nothing except request citations to their own papers. The professor was definitely in the same field as well (has to be, or his papers won't be relevant). I'm not joking, I was the editor.

Allure, a review lacking technical points doesn't prove that the reviewer is incompetent, but their misconceptions about fundamental technical points, clear misunderstanding of the scope and even the journal format would.

A small addendum to @Allure's and @AnonymousPhysicist's answer. The "one recommended, one self-invited" policy is based on two ideas:

the authors have a good idea of the experts in the field, and can do a good job identifying people who will give a knowledgeable review;
... but reviewers recommended by the authors may be biased toward them.

So making sure that the reviewers are a mix of recommended and non-recommended is wise editorial policy. However, this means that recommending a long list of everyone who you can think of is a bad idea, as it means that at most one of those people will be invited to review.
But yes, if you are asked to recommend reviewers, doing so is (1) ethical, (2) in your interest, and (3) doing the editors a favour (because they don't have to work as hard to identify suitable reviewers). (You can say, "I shouldn't have to do this, it's their job", but why shouldn't they benefit from your knowledge of the field? How hard is it for you to list a couple of researchers in your field who you think are well-informed on the subject?)
Also worth noting that reviewers are usually required to certify that they don't have a conflict of interest (COI: typically includes blood relatives; current or former academic supervisors; and people who have co-authored or worked together on a grant within some time window). This automatically rules out some of the most positively biased reviewers (and don't bother recommending reviewers in these categories, it will just waste everyone's time).

don't bother recommending reviewers in these categories, it will just waste everyone's time – … and some journals strictly instruct you not to.

Thank you for the answer, one thing is clear though, even though there is no conflict of interest there will be a lot of bias, so if I am recommending someone who is in good terms with me, like you said "it will be in my favor", but this means it might not be in others' favor who don't have a network.

"recommending a long list of everyone who you can think of is a bad idea" -- I have actually somewhere heard the opposite argument, i.e. it was advised recommend a lot (10 or more) of reviewers, the argument being that this increases the chance of the editors picking all reviewers from your list. (Note: I have never tried this.)

@cheersmate, your mileage may certainly vary. The journal I edit for does have a policy of picking two reviewers, one of whom is not author-recommended ...


text:
I am close to admission to a PhD program. How should I get a co-supervisor from another school?
I am close to be admitted to a PhD program. How can I get a co-supervisor from another school ? U21 is not the only alternative, but I did explore it. My potential school participates in U21. However, the other school did not respond to U21 emails.

Can I get a casual co-supervisor from another school?
Will the other school be mentioned on the degree as well?

Can you explain what U21 is?

http://www.universitas21.com/article/research/details/109/joint-phds

You're getting ahead of yourself. Get admitted first, find a primary adviser, and talk to her to find out how this usually works.

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


text:
Supervisor offered work in lab, I accepted. What are the next steps?
I am looking to join a research MSc this fall and one particular supervisor asked me if I would like to join his lab and I said yes.  I though forgot to ask him what to do next. Do I contact the program and tell them that this supervisor has asked me if I would like to join his lab or wait for him to contact the program,  do the needful and then contact me if accepted? Would it be alright if I send him a mail asking him if I should contact the program informing them that he had asked me if I could join his lab? Please advise.

If you forgot to ask him, ask him then.

If somebody has invited you to join their lab but the next steps for doing that are not clear, it is absolutely appropriate to email them to ask them what the next steps are and what you can do to help the process.

I'll do that.. Thx


text:
Is there a "best format" for CVs?
There are so many ways to compose CVs now. I try to keep my CV updated in LaTeX, Markdown/HTML, ASCII, and Word just in case someone needs a specific file format.
If an application doesn't specify a specific CV format (and they tend not to), what is the best format, in terms of style vs. portability vs. consistency, etc., to use for a CV?

The “best” is the one common in your field, that may well be different in other fields of course....

I would never give my CV out in any form other than PDF (or paper), but YMMV

There is also Europass.

To the extent that they specify a file format, calls for application most often require all documents, including the CV, in pdf format. MS Word docx is less frequent, but possible. I've never seen a call asking for LaTeX, markdown, or html (source) files.

I am not aware of any de-facto standards and I would assume this can vary depending on country as well as which field one is applying within. The most common I have seen when applying is pdf and would be my choice if given the option. Pdf is made to always look the same and would thus seem the best in regards to style (a pdf-file opened on iphone or pc will still look the same so you know what they will see), portability (can be saved with a low filesize and is one, if not the most, common file-type) and consistency (again, will always look the same).
Many will be able to open word-files but there can be inconsistencies with graphical objects when opening in different software (open-, libre- or microsoft office for instance) so pictures could end up moving around etc. Again it would probably be safe to send a word-file if applying for Microsoft but maybe less suitable for an Open-source project, so the fields matter.
For editing I guess it's a matter of more personal choice and the best software is the one you are skilled in using.


text:
Large, non-random proportion of students not invited for evaluation of a course
In the (not so distant) past I have received the student evaluations for my course. The evaluation was mediocre, something that surprised me since I thought I had good connection with the students coming to the class (about a third of the total number of enrolled students). These evaluations raised some eyebrows among the relevant committee members.
By accident, chatting recently with a student that really liked and performed very well on the course, I realized that the student did not receive invitation to evaluate the course. I thought it might be an isolated "bug" of the system but I casually mentioned it to a member of the relevant committee. He dug out the system and actually sent me a list of all students that had been invited.
To my shock, 38% of the enrolled students were not invited! What is even more weird is that this missing part is highly non-random and included many of the best students (that got 7+) and only one of the students that got 9+ was invited. The "informal" explanation was that because of some mistake (I do not know if it was the system's or some person's) the students who follow a research track (naturally, the good students) were left out and nobody was actually aware of that. They didn't seem to care even after I pointed it out.
To make it more concrete, out of the 75 or so students, the evaluations included the answer of 26 (non-randomly selected) students.

How can I deal (internally) with this situation appropriately? I have in my record a very mediocre evaluation but it turns out the system made a big mistake leaving out many (good) students.  How can I explain this to possible applications where they ask about teaching statement and evaluations?

The main problem is that my department takes evaluations extremely seriously, and my mediocre evaluations had some (admittedly mild, but still...) impact on my development and assessment in the past and might have in the future as well (to some extent, my tenure-track offer depends on that).

Can the department use these evaluations to decide if they will offer me assistant professorship based on the situation explained above? If they indeed use them, is there anything I can do?

Added: The protocol is to invite every student in the evaluation. Moreover, the evaluations should be collected before the grades of the exam are communicated to the students. In the case described above, besides the fact that a particular student group did not receive invitations, these were sent after the students have received their grades. I do not claim that this was done on purpose. But, besides being extremely unprofessional, it seems that no one cares about these facts and they still want to use the mentioned, obviously bugged in my opinion, evaluations.

@StephanBranczyk They did not. But even if they did, how can these evaluations be used? How can anyone make any meaningful conclusion based on a small and non-random sample?

@StephanBranczyk Northern Europe. No third party websites. Only internally circulated evaluations.

@StephanBranczyk I am not aware of anything like that. I am not sure I understand how this could help me even if such site existed..

@StephanBranczyk Yeah but the point is: can (should?) they use these obviously glitched evaluations to decide if i'm suitable enough for them?

No, they shouldn't. But you've already made that argument and for whatever reason, they didn't accept it. Either there is a conspiracy afoot, or they're just apathetic and don't want to make extra work for themselves. Either way, you need to make your argument another way, because it's not going well for you. If nothing else works, at least send them a registered mail telling them of your findings and asking them to include your findings in your personnel file to ensure that your side of the story becomes part of your official HR record.

@StephanBranczyk No, it doesn't work well for me and I do not understand the reason. Anyway, I will try to make it more official as you suggest because it seems they base their decision on a sample of 26 answers out of 74 (50% of the students they asked actually replied)

If you can prove that 38% of the students where not even invited, you should go to the relevant committee and challenge the evaluation. Demand that they either invite the rest of the students as well (if it is still possible to reach them and the evaluation is not too long ago) or that they declare the evaluation null and void because it was not done properly.

I think it is normal to ask only bad grade students for evaluation

@SSimon I never heard of such a practise. All my evaluations where done by all students (or at least all students that were not sick that day).

@SSimon how can you ask only bad grade students when the invitation is sent before they receive the grades?

I thought the comment by @SSimon was intended to be humorous.

Thanks. How do I explain to other potential applications for academic positions that demand to see proofs of teaching achievements, including evaluations?

@PsySp If you can succeed in getting the evaluation voided, you can honestly reply in those requests that due to a technical error no evaluation results are available. Of course you can provide them with alternate proofs of achievements (and if they really hammer on it you can allow them to check this with the uni, but this may be tricky if someone misunderstands the situation).

In arguing to invalidate the results, it is important that the omitted students were not a random sample but had academic characteristics in common. For a reasonably large population, a 62% random sample would give usable results.

@PatriciaShanahan Not only a particular student population was left out, but the invitations were sent after they got their grades in the exam (something that should not happen for obvious reasons)

@PsySp: instructor could make an informed guess based on their homework, class participation, questions asked, quizzes and/or midterms. Or even guess based on other track record

@smci But is not the instructor that invites students for evaluations! It is some other person, unrelated to the class/courses.

@PsySp: whoever is doing the inviting could guess, even if only based on historical GPA

@SSimon It is not normal at all. What is normal here that the students' overall grades are recorded with their evaluation (everything is done electronically) so that you know if good students happen to criticize a teacher for his teaching. (Because obviously, you don't care that much about overly bad students.)

@J.FabianMeier IDK, we have online student system that doesnt need ivitation. But by invitation only are invited bad students

@PsySp by invitation.

@PsySp sorry I just some one more comment that you replied to ptriciasjanahan, actually it is normal to invite bad grade students, I think you committee is suspicious of your teaching, why is this done? it is so rare to meet this cases, but I think something is going on on your institution

@SSimon I don't understand your speculations. Maybe your university classifies students for the evaluations, but I am sure that most universities just invite every student for the evaluations.

@J.FabianMeier You are completely right. I never heard that only a subset of students should be invited. I updated my question to highlight the simple protocol in my university.

@J.FabianMeier no mine dont invite, everyone can access evaluation system it is a system of SIS, but they invite people who failed or score bad to ask them what was wrong with their stufy