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Should the progress of Phd Students be transparent among group members?
I am using a weekly report system that every student in my group submit a weekly progress report.
I wonder should this be opened to all group members, or it should be just available between me and the individual PhD student?
What would be the pros and cons?
To clarify, this is not the format report that I will submit to university. Instead this is a way for me to keep track on the progress of different students' project. It includes things like what is done this week, what will be done next week, any difficulty, and if meeting is required, etc.
I am asking because I do see colleagues from no group meetings at all, to group meeting every week that every student report. It is from two extremes -- no communications to everything is open
I am in Asia, if region may make different answers.
P.S. I must clarify that I am not saying students reporting that they have pressure. Instead, my colleagues suggested me it should be open to my whole group to enhance communications. And in general, would that create pressure to students?

In the US it might be illegal to open it. What country are you proposing this in?

What actually goes into those reports? I am used to both daily and weekly meetings in which everyone updates everyone else. It’s kind of the point of working as a group, TBH.

@MisterMiyagi I am not sure from students' perspective I am trying to make them feel pressured by opening everyone's weekly progress report.

Now it sounds evil.

Well, I presumed it is between me and Individual PhD student, but some of my colleagues say it can be opened to enhance communications among group members, like the another comment above.

@Buffy: I guess there's a typo in Mahali Sindy's first comment. I believe what they intended to say is the following: "I am not sure whether, from the students' perspective, it might look like I am trying to make them feel pressured by opening everyone's weekly progress report."

@JochenGlueck, maybe the OP should clarify whether they intend this to increase pressure. Or if not, to explain, better, the reasoning.

‘And in general, would that create pressure to students?’ I imagine you already know the answer to that. You were in their shoes at one point.

I’m having a hard time finding anything but a list of "it depends" as potential answers. Should it be open? Depends. Is extra pressure bad? Depends. Are the extremes good? It depends. Can you aim for a middle ground? It depends. You probably could ask a more detailed question – e.g. what progress is worth sharing in a group, not just if progress is worth sharing – to make it objectively answerable.

To answer this, for me it would be interesting to know what the characteristic time-scales in your field are. Is what a student does in week k so much different than from week k+1? Specifically from the view of the other students (i.e. not just minor details about the implementation of the research)? I think for most fields this is a clear no.

I may have to amend this but if the students interpret this as increasing pressure, then it probably is, in fact, increasing pressure and that seems to be to exactly nobody's benefit. Artificially increasing pressure is a good way to get hated by one's students.
Students have a right, ethical if not always legal, to some privacy about their progress and standing. Some places it is a legal right.
If all you mean is handing out tasks and getting reports back later in front of the group, then it seems benign. Even allowing other students to comment/contribute to a report should be ok. But formal evaluation of those reports should be a private matter between you and the individual. And your headline question here is about their "progress", not just interim reporting.
Students also deal with a lot of pressure, just in learning, beyond contributing to a group/lab. That learning, from their standpoint, should be the primary goal, though yours may be otherwise.
A student under a lot of pressure who is struggling for any reason is more likely to fail (in some way) if pressure is increased, even if without specific intention. Their failure can contribute to the group's failure if their contributions are poorly done or not done at all.
I suggest, pretty strongly, that you avoid such things. And, not just for fairness to the students, but to the efficiency and success of the group.
Lots of questions here from students call advisors to account for belittling them in public.
Avoid a lose-lose possible outcome.

My supervisor used to do group meetings where we would all give a brief update on what we'd been working on. This was once a month rather than once a week though. I found it helpful to hear about what his other PhD students had been up to. I think the important part is that our group in general had a positive atmosphere and it was okay that sometimes the update was "I haven't made much progress this month." I think it was good for us all to hear that other people also had periods where they didn't make much progress! It was also good practice communicating about our research in front of a small group, and we took it in turns to give more in depth presentations about our work.
I think a more informal update during a meeting will create less pressure than having to submit a written report. I also can't imagine really being interested in reading written progress reports from other PhD students.


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Is it rude to ask my PhD student to give a daily report?
I normally have weekly meetings with my PhD students. However, when I saw one student, I noticed that she simply did a few easy things before to the appointment. During the conversation, I felt her work was even worse quality than my two summer interns.
I'm thinking of requiring her to give me daily updates, regardless of what she did.
I have five PhD students; if I just ask her to do this, would it appear like I am targeting her? Is there a better way to handle this? Any comments or suggestions?
P.S. I don't exactly record their working hours; nevertheless, in most of the weekly meetings with other students, I believe the quality and quantity of work, as well as the questions and difficulties expressed, are fair.
P.P.S.

If she has not improved her development, she may not be able to graduate.
I'm not certain of the specific explanation behind this. If I ordered her this week to complete job A with three subtasks A1, A2, and A3 (which, in my opinion, is a realistic weekly task), she may report that she has completed A1 at the next week's meeting.
When I asked about A2-3, she just said that she is learning. But as I further ask what she is learning she merely told me she was learning. But when I ask her about what she's learning, what gets her stuck, and so on. She just cannot explain.

However, when the assignments were urgent, I would ask her to finish A1 on Monday, A2 on Wednesday, and A3 on Friday, and by checking in on her work on a daily basis, she was able to complete them. That is why I am thinking I should start setting deadlines for each work and asking for progress on a daily basis.
To be honest, I prefer not to do it. As for the other pupils, either I tell him/her about A1, A2, and A3, or they will submit the findings next week. OR I'll simply say A, and they'll figure out A1-A3 and proceed. Some may offer B and C.
P.P.P.S.
Thank you all of the comments and suggestions. I think I will start from telling her she may not be able to graduate given the current performance, and asking progress/update more frequently, such as everyday/every two days. I am not good at micromanaging, but some students may need. In this case, the tasks/goals maybe more structured.

Do you think that she needs more meetings or more structured goals? I would keep the same meeting frequency, but define with her achievable goals/tasks to be completed from one week to another. Hopefully, she will learn how to organise herself and seek her own research directions after a while. On top you can give her the option to seek your advise before the weekly meeting, if she feels stuck.

Many people (not just students) need to learn how to be productive. It isn’t an intrinsic skill. I suspect that there are resources at your institution to help.

"However for one student I can clear tell that she basically only do some simple things before the meeting, when I met her." Have you communicated this to her? If not, that should probably be your first step.

Are you serious about this question? Are you just complaining about your student here?

@TheDoctor At least just setting goals is not useful. but breaking the task to subtasks and ask frequently seems work.

@AdamPřenosil I did not say too explicitly, but I think need to be explicit.

@scientist No. I don't think she can graduate, based on the first year performance, if nothing change. For 1-2 times there were urgent tasks and I asked progress update daily for a week, she seems perform similarly to my other students.

@Trunk it is statistics, data analysis and modeling. I set weekly meeting doesn't mean they can only talk to me in that meeting. Some of them may have more questions and like more communications, some have less and prefer learn themselves and only told me the difficulty in weekly meeting. For the other 4 I think their progress are reasonable and they can graduate. So I did not change anything and also they did not complain.

it is individual. I never interrupt and let her finish, but she speak very few. I usually need to ask questions. I set the meeting 30 mins. Usually we finished in 10-15 mins.

There are some people who do need micromanagement at the beginning. However, this should go down over time at the level of a PhD. If the micromanagement helps the student, it is acceptable to start with it and ease it off. If it keeps going, however, the question is whether the student is PhD material. This would be a matter for how this is regarded in your department. Some places have intermediate steps to monitor PhD progress, this is the moment where you can make decisions without the sunk cost of a PhD (for both, student and supervisor). If you do not have that, it is more difficult.

On you comment " if I just ask her to do this, would it appear like I am targeting her" - well you are just targeting her - if I were one of your other students I would find it quite annoying - and if I knew the reason it would be particularly problematic as you're creating work for everyone because one person isn't performing.

No matter what you do , if there is nothing to praise, just don't \try to\ humiliate her in from of others

In your example above, if you give her task A and she only achieved task A1 next meeting, is she still able to come up with tasks A2 and A3 on her own?

Aside from what people have mentioned, I would also consider the impact of daily meetings on your time and mental resources. While it might be perceived that you're targeting a student, it could also go the other way- that the lab feels you have a favourite who gets all the resources and a "gift" PhD without putting in the effort to become an independent researcher.

What I've learned in 19 years being a professor is that every one of my students is/was different and that the same approach does not work for everyone. So you find ways to individualize what you do with them. This may include having meetings more/less often than for others.
That said, before you make decisions, have a conversation with the student. Tell her what you observe, what your thought process is, and how you think you want to tailor your approach to her. Come to a solution together with her, instead of making one for her. Ask her whether her work is done just before the meeting and whether she thinks that she would do better work if she met with you daily.

Talking with her is definitely the way to go. A compromise somewhere between daily meetings/reports and only meeting once a week could be asking her to keep a note of what she worked on each day so she can talk you through what she did that week in each meeting. The first few months of my PhD I wrote down what I did in my diary each day for my own benefit because otherwise I got to the end of the week and felt like I hadn't done anything.

In some of my classes, I ask students to keep a diary in the same way as experimental scientists often keep lab books. This, too, is a great strategy to ensure continuous progress. In these classes, students share the diary (=a google doc) with me, and I can give feedback on a daily basis, or whenever I have time to look at them.

Have your student drive her own research progress
It is sensible to adjust supervision arrangements to individual students, but at tertiary level it is also best if the student drives their own progress rather than being encumbered by busywork to allow the supervisor to police their progress.  There are several problems with asking for daily reports of progress, including the fact that they: (1) detract from time available for substantive research progress; (2) discourage modes of research progress that involve general reflection, etc., where substantive progress is not evident on a daily basis; and (3) put the supervisor in the role of "policeman" for research progress.  It is generally much better for a supervisor to focus on research outcomes in terms of milestones, etc., than to try to track progress each day.
An alternative method that might be useful here is to assist your student to set her own research schedule and give her accountability to drive progress.  If you have not already done so, you should have your student create a Gantt chart setting out her research and publication plan, and ensure that this plan is sufficient to advance her research to completion within the program time, with proper milestones, etc.  Instill her with the knowledge that she will be accountable for driving her own research progress (but can ask for your support when needed) and that if she does not make sufficient progress then she will be in danger of missing milestones and ultimately failing to complete her program.  Use the "empower and trust" model where you give the student a realistic understanding of her options and their consequences, and then let her choose her own pathway and consequent outcome.  Keep her informed if you perceive a lack of progress and offer support where needed, but don't take on the role of policeman.
Your existing weekly meetings should include discussion to keep track of progress over the periods between these milestones to see how work is progressing, but the student should be responsible for driving progress.  Have a realistic discussion with your student about progress towards research milestones and point out where she appears to be falling behind.

I think a Gantt chart is going to be an annoying waste of time at this stage.

even if the progress may make the student not getting PhD, or need 1-2 more years?

A brief remark on the somewhat condescendingly toned comments of @Trunk and Tom. I am using a Gantt chart for my Ph.D. work. It's an amazing tool: it helps me to, first, understand how exactly I spend my time, second, analyze the way I work and adjust it to increase efficiency, third, stay on the path towards major deadlines. I would recommend it to any Ph.D. student at any stage of the Ph.D. work.

+1 on Gantt chart. I find this to be the best way to encourage discipline and effectiveness.

Contrary to the sceptical comments here, a Gantt chart is a great research tool for a PhD candidature, even for such basic things as progression to fixed program milestones.  A typical PhD program has candidature milestones that a student needs to progress and prepare for, and a Gantt chart can incorporate these and the backward preparatory tasks for them.  Scheduling research is harder, but it can still be useful to set expectations like how long in the candidature it will take to set the research question, do the literature review, etc.  Falling behind is then more evident.

Trunk, so then we provide freedom and possibly then they fail their research program but remain undemeaned. Doesn't some creativity, direction of attack and any preliminary stage results positive or negative steering the direction need to appear.

The thing is, a PhD candidature is something with a limited known duration (subject to some possible extension periods), so whether or not it is ideal to the creative process to work under such a time restriction, that is what the university requires of the student.  Because the candidature is for a limited duration, with known milestones, there are known durations to get to points in the research process.

Accountability can be achieved by setting up a task tracker. It allows setting up the tasks, deadlines, ETAs, communicates the progress, while also relieving one from writing a formal report. Then the student and the advisor can agree that a lack of progress marked in the task tracker in, say, three days, automatically leads to a conversation about the difficulties. This seems like a reasonable midpoint.

Gantt charts are useful for getting students to think about what needs to be done, breaking it up into steps, thinking about deliverables and deadline.  The mistake is thinking you will stick to them, or trying to do so, especially for a research project.  They are also useful for recording how you used your time after the project.

Let's state the obvious: for some researchers, Gantt charts work amazingly. For others, however, especially those who work in bursts or topics with unclear strategy, it is a perfect way of killing creativity, fostering guilt, and learning how to self-decept into confounding planning with execution. I do not think that's OP's student case here, but I do not feel that a Gantt chart will help here, either.

Given the discussion around Gantt charts, an alternative is an appropriately adapted Scrum implementation with a prioritized backlog. Additionally, a visible Scrum board (physical or digital) lets the advisor know exactly how the work is going; they just have to see the Scrum board. The Scrum board can entirely replace a daily report. Please note Scrum is not only used in corporations or software; researchers also use it.

In general when a subordinate fails to meet expectations you are in conflict. This is OK in the sense that it happens. This type of conflict resolution is quite simple to solve by following these steps:

Meet with your subordinate/student/intern/etc. in a relaxed environment, potentially over coffee. Start with all the goods she has (smart, diligent, whatever you can find) this whole process creates empathy and reduces the feeling of being attacked.
In casual talk, ask how things are going at home, how she generally feels, etc. Maybe she is troubled or depressed. Students can easily get overwhelmed due to immigration, inability to handle time, family issues, etc.
If something is wrong with her, evaluate wether you are able to do something about it and offer your help. If not, ignore this step.
Then, clearly and shortly express that you "believe" that she is falling short of your expectations. Immediately admit that "believing" something does not make it true, so to be fair, tell her that you are going to evaluate her performance closely in the following days.
To this end you will negotiate (not impose) a reasonable work plan with her, including expected milestones and goals, and will follow her in the following (15 days to 3 months), taking into consideration the potential personal complications learned in step 3 (a feasible, tractable and reasonable plan is very important because is the difference between leadership and harassment). Daily progress checks maybe in order if the problem is that the student gets overwhelmed by self-management for example.
Evaluate her performance improvement taking into consideration her personal circumstances.
If she improves, then stop.
If she does not improve express the potential complications that can arise from her failing to improve (not graduating/not being recommended for further research/not being recommended for graduation, etc.) and put her in a final performance evaluation plan.
If she still does not improve, consider terminating her.

Remarks:

This process is best done by an informal committee of your peers. While you will lead the process, it is always good to have a second opinion to your own to keep the process objective, especially during steps 3 and 6.
In general when a subordinate fails to meet expectations you are in conflict. This is OK in the sense that it happens. As a Ph.D. professor, you are in a leadership position, and the nature of the leader can be a nature of conflict. People come to work bounded by mission, not friendship. Your student mission is to graduate, and your mission is to steer your students on the right path, not be their BFF. Not everybody has to like you.
Cultural differences can create communication barriers. When I was a Ph.D. student I was unable to understand orders from my professor because he came from a high-context culture (such as France, Japan, Korea) and I came from a low-context culture (such as USA, Latin America, Germany).

A PhD student is not a "subordinate" in many places. That's the problem.

Thanks. useful concept about high.low context culture.

@Dilworth A PhD student is a subordinate, as they are dependent on their advisors judgement and steering. Without the consent of the advisor they cannot finish their dissertation. They might be independent in the form of not receiving direct orders.

@usr1234567 I must add not just advisor but also committee, and department/university standard.

@usr1234567 The US is not the entire world, right?

@usr1234567, hence I said explicitly "in many places". I repeat: a PhD student is not a subordinate of their advisor in many places, they can finish without their advisor's consent, and they are formally independent of their advisor's judgment.

I think an issue here is that your expectations of her are not getting conveyed - if you do not convey to her that she is not performing up to the expectations set by her PhD program, she doesn't have sufficient opportunity to correct it. Have a monthly (non-technical) feedback meeting with her (and all your other students as well, individually), where both you and your students can tell each other what the goals and expectations are, and what is and isn't working.
Some students need more micromanaging and/or hand-holding, while for some others, their performance would decrease in the long term if micromanaged. By the end of the third year, the student should not need micromanaging, but in the first couple of years, they may. Such expectations should be conveyed - that you're asking for daily updates now, but would like to ween her off of it eventually.
As an alternative, having a clearly outlined project and its milestones can be used. Progress need not be evaluated on a daily or a weekly basis, but whether the milestones of the project are being met in a reasonably timely manner or not. This would require you to work in a goal-oriented manner, rather than a task-oriented manner. As a rule of thumb, a goal would be any target you're looking to achieve in 3-9 month, anything longer would start looking more like a vision. The milestones of the goal can be reasonably clearly defined, either by you, or by your student. A milestone would still need to be broken down into tasks, but it is better that that is driven by your student and not by you, so that she has a sense of ownership about the work and feels sufficiently motivated to do it. In a purely task-oriented environment, a student will find it hard to get a sense of what's going on and may lose interest after a few months.
Also, one has to be mindful that work does not happen at a steady rate. Sometimes, the student might be spending her time learning some tools necessary to do the work, or just thinking, planning, and reading literature. Such activities cannot be done in an environment where daily update on progress is expected.

First thought is that is seems overambitious. Consider how much time is spent on producing the report versus how much time is spent on research. I am not sure what a daily report would reveal. It is clearly a case where the student feels forced to produce unimportant steps to report rather than anything of real importance.
Since the progression of a student depends on the students personality and also the character of the research being conducted, the optimal reporting interval must take external conditions into account. If the progress depends on laboratory experiments, daily reports may be reasonable but in the end the anticipated progress must be considered. In my opinion, I would expect slower progress early in the progress, speeding up as the thesis project progresses through time. That said, the progression will highly depend on the project and the personality pf the student. Hence, the expectation on progression reports should be adapted to reasonable  time frames depending on the character of the project and the personal characteristics of the student.
The progress of a PhD project may not be easily forecast since it depends on many individual factors as well as field dependent, as well as local, expectations.

Thanks. So I think instead of report, I think will start to add deadline and more checking on progress

A 10 min email every day before leaving the lab? Sounds ok to me.

I think (partly @usr1234567) the noun "report" isn't a helpful way to think of it.  "A daily update" might be better.  A "report"  carries connotations of a more formal piece of work

Actually, I believe that this is a red flag for a PhD, and given the other information about the student, I think it would be better to have a serious talk about leaving academia.
I saw people trying to get a PhD for five, even seven years, and then leaving university without it. And even if you barely pass your PhD, you need to leave academia anyway.
On the other hand, from my professional experience outside university, I know quite some people who do a decent job if you give them short, concrete tasks, but failing at anything like "solve this problem and come back with the solution in a month". There are enough jobs for those people, but working in academia is usually not the right thing for them.

Trying to get a PhD does not express the wish staying in academia. At least in STEM, more then 50% are going to industry or non-academic research.

@usr1234567 Probably depends on the subject. From my experience: In maths, nearly everyone I know wanted to stay in academia when they started the PhD, but at the end, it was different. In engineering many people started a PhD without the intention to go to academia. But leaving the intentions aside, I also think that often a PhD is not really that useful for work outside academia (leaving special areas like chemistry aside).

I'm sure many of us had times during our PhDs when we needed more structured encouragement.  Hopefully this is a short phase of being stuck and she'll come through it with your help.
Some brief daily communication may be a good idea, and in some situations could be delegated to a postdoc; their role may be perceived as more of a supportive one, avoiding adding to the anxiety the student is probably feeling.
Something else I've seen work successfully, is for the student to be expected to make daily progress notes, to be available at the weekly meeting.
While not a perfect tool for this situation, an approach informed by SOFT (successes, opportunities, failures, & threats) reports is simple and could be helpful: What progress have I made? What are the next steps I should be looking into? What has gone wrong? What issues do I think will cause problems?  One line on each of those would be a sensible scale for any daily update, with the expectation of being ready to provide more detail.

Absolutely. Taking time off the student who is overwhelmed and giving them another task to prepare for every day is clearly going to help.....
I would suggest the fact you even asked this question indicates the student may not be the whole problem.

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I'm Portuguese and I understood your satiric comment.  And you are correct overloading a student is not the way to go. You still need to clarify that in your answer!

As always it depends on how one asks a student for a daily report. Asking for a report and not anyone else knowing about it, yes it is more than rude, actually, it is unsafe for a professor and for the student.
I could go on here on why it is unsafe, however, I'll skip it and go to the important part, and keep in mind we're now mid-2024!
What is important for a student is that he or she finishes his/her studies successfully. For a professor or scientific research supervisor, the same. So how can a prof. / sc. res. supervisor manages a work culture and environment for that to be possible, for a student to be able to deliver daily and even intraday reports of ongoing works?
It can do it online. In a "neutral", secure, and safe platform, for instance, Github, a dataverse, zenodo. Personally, I give preference to GitHub as it has many functionalities that allow the delivery of written content using markdown language. Nowadays it also supports MathJax for writing mathematical formulae and equations. Finally, GitHub has a built-in document revision that keeps track of any changes made to a document.
There's also the option to use Twitter and LinkedIn, asking a student to publish once a day about work activities. For instance a publication about new content on a page on GitHub. With new photos and videos, etc ...
In the end, when work is done and the course/program/scholarship is completed the student has available to advertise professionally a data repository full of work that can be used to showcase his\her professional skills online to HR recruiters. When using Twitter or Linkedin as a history of records with a timeline, it allows easier navigation by someone interested in learning more about work and skills.
The professor/sci. res. supervisor is able to copy the data repository, on Github is as simple as making a "fork" of it. to use it for his \ her professional needs.

To make it easier to understand what I commented above, I'm sharing here an ongoing open scientific research project that is using Github repositories to deliver near real-time updates of work activities:
https://github.com/aeonSolutions/openScience-Smart-DAQ-to-Upload-Live-Experimental-Data-to-a-Data-Repository/wiki/Validation-of-Experimental-Data-Origins:-A-Swarm-of-DAQ-devices-able-to-Deliver-Unique-Experimental-Data-using-Blockchain‐like-Fingerprint-ID-to-a-Data-Repository

Actually it is less rude to have it in private, given the reasons as described in the question. Having the report in public sounds more like blaming her.

for sure it is private.

I disagree with both and it is simple to understand. The student must come first,, in particular when thinking about his or her professional future.

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My wife's contributions are not acknowledged in our group's paper that has me as coauthor. Should I speak up for her?
The background is that my wife and I are in the same lab.
Recently our group did a paper together, and I am an author. However, my wife had contributed to draw a figure to a publication level. Although I am not sure if this contribution is enough to be included as an author, she is not even acknowledged, which I think is not fair.
My wife is not brave enough to speak up and also I have a better relationship with the group leader. Should I speak up for her, by saying something like "she contributed to draw a figure, and should at least be acknowledged"? What will be the best approach and wording? In person or message/email?
I am asking this question as I am not sure if this type of thing is appropriate. For example, I may not really know someone else that draw some figures but not being acknowledged. I happen to know just because she is my wife.

Update: I just talked. It turns out my group leader just forgot to acknowledge her.

I removed a few attempts at answering in comments which essentially said the same thing of the accepted answer. Given that the issue is now resolved, please refrain from posting other answers in comments.

I think you should talk to the group leader about the appropriateness of an acknowledgment  for the drawing (not coauthorship).
This is the right course of action for any contributor. The fact that she's your wife is not relevant, and should not be a part of this professional conversation.
How to approach the group leader depends on how you usually interact. I think a short conversation is probably appropriate. You could follow up with an email for the record if that seems appropriate.
Of course the group leader probably knows about your relationship, but that should not affect the decision.

You could also consider making it explicitly clear that these is a "sticking up for a colleague" thing, not a "sticking up for your wife" thing, and that you'd do the same for anyone in your group whose contributions had been overlooked.

Phrasing worth considering for @nick012000's idea is "we should acknowledge Julia for the drawing" rather than "we should acknowledge my wife for the drawing" as that subtle difference plays down the fact that you could be biased by her being your wife (not that you must be, but that's ammo that could be used against your position).

The fact that she’s OP’s wife isn’t relevant to the abstract question “do her contributions merit acknowledgement?”, but is relevant to the professional discussion of this issue, since it gives OP a conflict of interest.  As with any conflict of interest, OP needs to acknowledge it at least to themself, and bear it in mind so it doesn’t affect their judgement, and (possibly) should acknowledge it explicitly in the conversation as well.

If you want to take a further step back, you can acknowledge the conflict of interest up front, and simply raise the issue as worthy of consideration.  "I recognize that I have bias in this thing, and thus that it shouldn't be my judgement, but Julia did this thing with that figure for us, and I would like you to consider whether that would merit an acknowledgement."

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Is it appropriate to assign two PhD students to do the same research topic?
I have asked one student A to do a research topic A. He used 2 years to learn a skill. I ask him to apply this skill to a new data and research topic B recently, however the progress is still bad even if 2 years experience on learning this skill.
Is it appropriate that I ask another student B to learn the skill to look into the research topic B?
My feeling is that student A do not really try hard, e.g. absence without reason. So I suspect that the skill is not that difficult but instead student A is under-performing.
P.S. the reason why I have such feeling that the skill is not that difficult is that long time ago I ask student A to try something, and after 3 weeks he was still not able to debug. Then I asked another RA to have a try and she basically finished the framework in 3 weeks.

‘Same research topic’ could be pretty broad.

A related question from the student perspective: Supervisor getting another PhD student with the same project?

@Aruralreader the aim is the same, based on the same dataset, but the data analysis and modelling methods will be their choice, as long as it is reasonable and valid to support the conclusion.

Does the success of one ruin the other's work? If they can both succeed and publish separately then that is perfectly fine. But if the success of one precludes the other, then that is a competition and might be problematic

Have you clearly communicated to A that you believe they are underperforming, that you believe they are "not really trying hard" (best use a different phrasing though), and that the project needs an outcome soon? If you have not, you really have no business assigning their work to someone else imo. I understand that you need a finished project to present to your funding agency, but your goal as an advisor cannot simply be (as you put it) "as long as the project is done, I am happy", it also needs to involve your students.

Note also that "we really need to have an outcome from this project soon, so I am assigning another student to work on it too" is a very different message compared to "I don't think you are trying hard, so I am assigning another student to work on the same project".

I'm reminded of Brooks's Law

But A is a student, and B an RA, who might be expected to be more experienced overall - or are they a student after all? This is an abbreviation that may need spelling out, as the distinction between associate and assistant might be important.  But I suspect that what really matters is experience in the relevant skill set.  A student who has completed a solo project in this language and with similar tools will be far ahead of one who hasn't, even if they've taken similarly-named courses

There seems to be a clear conflict of interest in the set-up: "They are my PhD student" but "I need this result". Bad planning on your part if your own success is pinned on someone whose success is not a given, and a red flag if you are now scheming to pull the rug from under their feet because of your bad planning.

"I suspect that the skill is not that difficult" Do you own that skill yourself? Some skills are much harder to get than they look, or they are much harder to learn when you don't have the right background. You need a discussion with your student about their working methods.

I don’t think you respect your students as equal human beings. If I were you, I would talk with the first student candidly about what is going on, and if there is a need ask if he/she is comfortable with another student joining the project. I think you treat your students as cheap laborers or slaves instead of young professionals who need nurturing and growth.

It is appropriate to ask a student to learn a skill. It is not, however, appropriate to put doctoral students in competition with one another. I'd term it unethical in an advisor, actually. Make sure that you aren't getting in the way of success of the first student.
You should, of course, speak in person with person A to see what the blockage is and if their "absence without reason" has an appropriate explanation.

it is kind of difficult to determine what is competition? For me, as long as the project is done, I am happy. I plan to have them as an author, who can achieve the task will be the first.

Did OP hint at setting up a competition? No, but I agree that that would be unseemly if he or she was contemplating such.

competition clearly is not my purpose, but project needs to be finished as they are funded by grants, and need outcome, so I am not sure should I ask another student to try.

If you provide a path to graduation for each of them then all is fine.

@MahaliSindy "I plan to have them as an author, who can achieve the task will be the first." does make it sound like you intend for some degree of competition.

@Anyon From the point of view that who contributes most should be the first author, I don't see any issue. That's why I still don't know I should ask another student to try project B. P.S. project A that student A is doing won't have change since it is not time sensitive.

@Buffy let say they have their own analysis (will be different), and having reasonable result, these will be in their thesis.

The moment you set both students to aim for the same goal (being first author) you are creating competition. I agree with other answers that say this is unethical. The whole " For me, as long as the project is done, I am happy." mentality is part of why some labs in academia are such a toxic environment: people and their well-being are above grant money. Have you considered getting more involved personally to make the project move forward?

@user347489, still, the important thing is that both have a path to their degree and don't impede one another. .

@Buffy agreed, but that doesn't seem to be a concern to the OP, which is worrisome. If the bounty is big enough for everyone, there is no problem whatsoever (assuming they navigate the situation correctly).

Don't engineer a situation where your PhD student is likely to be "gazumped"
Even the best PhD students are quite slow researchers compared to experienced academics, and as such, they always face the hazard of being "gazumped" by another researcher taking on the same topic and doing it faster and better than they can.  This is an omnipresent hazard in research but it can be mitigated by choice of an appropriate topic and avoidance of obvious clashes.  For a struggling PhD student, the last thing they need is for their supervisor to be engineering a situation where there is a high likelihood of this occurring from a competitor who is a superior researcher to them.^
One of the responsibilities of a supervisor towards a PhD student is to help them identify a viable research topic where they can carve out an area for themselves that is likely to yield publishable work.  This typically involves helping the student to find a topic where they can work for a long period of time (because they are novices who are slow) with low likelihood of being "gazumped" by superior researchers.  Of course, we can never guarantee that there isn't some academic out there that we don't know about researching the same topic, but we can at least avoid engineering a situation where this adverse outcome is likely to arise.
If your struggling student is at a point where they are incapable of completing the work themselves, and it is at a dead end, then a possible second-best option would be for them to take on a co-author to help.  In such a case, it is as least possible that there could be value in a collaboration between students, so long as they both contribute and both get something out of it that progresses their candidature (e.g., a joint publication).  Even in this case, you would need to be very careful to manage the collaboration to ensure that both students are learning appropriately, making genuine contributions to the work, and both are progressing their candidature with the work (rather than one undermining the candidature of the other).

^ It might help to think about this another way.  Every PhD student I've ever supervised has been a worse researcher than me at that time (which is why I'm teaching them and not the other way around).  In each case, I could easily take their topic and do it myself much faster and better than they can, and publish the results on my own before they have made enough progress to do anything.  Would that be fair?  Would that be reasonable supervisory practice, or might it be considered to undermine their candidature?

Thank you for your suggestions and comments. Did you only assign time insensitivity project to your student so that they don't have time limit? if no, how will you deal with this? e.g. you have a grant project that is 2 year, but after 2 year he/she still cannot give your reasonable result? If you say ask a Postdoc or other PhD student to help, how do you handle the things like authorship issue?

For collaborations I always recommend discussing authorship in advance.

In addition to what the respondents have written, consider the long-term impact on your research group. Even if it's not your intention to foster competition, your plan amounts to pitting your PhD students against each-other for first authorship. Aside from being unethical, that disincentivizes your more experienced students helping out new or struggling ones. It also erodes trust with your current students- regardless of what student A is actually doing, the message is that if you fall behind, watch your back. This does not sound like the path to a better-functioning research team.

You are forgetting one crucial thing: they are your PhD students and, therefore, they have to produce a thesis by the end of their 3–5 years of work. The most important thing you need to worry about is if giving the two students the same project will result in one student not being able to include the work they did as part of their thesis.
For instance, I was friends with the students in a research group who all worked simultaneously using the same machine, running all the experiments together. They were, however, very clear on whose project each experiment was for, and who was to be the lead for each series of experiments. All of them were authors on the papers, but only one of them would be the primary researcher, if that makes sense. Consequently, even though everyone contributed to each experiment, only one person could include the particular series of experiments in their thesis. This was only possible because their experiments only lasted a few hours each day, and they could record all experiments for each individual system (project) in less than 4 weeks. That does not seem to be the case here.
It sounds like you are suggesting that both students work on the same project where no one student is the lead. What this might mean is that Person A, who has spent 2+ years working towards Project 1, may face the threat of having Person B swoop in and take this project away from them because, if Person B were to complete Project 1, it would only be right for them to include it in their thesis (meaning Person A couldn't).
You could, on the other hand, put Person B onto a Project 2, which is closely related to Project 1 and could, eventually, feed into it, but it would have to be such that they were sufficiently distinct enough for each to be able to be included in separate theses. That way, Persons A and B would eventually be able to help each other out and have someone to bounce ideas off (which might increase the productivity of Person A). It would only be ethical to put another person on Project 1 once Person A has already finished up their thesis.
If you're worried about Person A not getting anywhere in their project, I would suggest that you talk through the problem with them and point them in the direction of the answer. If they're not stuck, and they're just lazy, give them deadlines (better yet, have them come up with their own fortnightly goals) and let them know they need to do more. If this has not already come up during their performance reviews, then I'd question what it is you think being a supervisor actually entails.

The other answers deal with the "overlapping topic" problem as you asked. I give you another answer which you may not like to hear, and which you did not ask for:
If you arrive in this situation something has gone wrong in the communication between you an student A. If you have the feeling that the progress is so slow that it does not make sense to pursue it in that context, you need to communicate that to student A. Do not try to avoid this unpleasant conversation, which may go up to the point of you stopping the project with the student by pitting the students implicitly or explicitly against each other, I have seen labs poisoned by something like this.
It could be that you find a split topic-wise, and that student A actually profits from a collaboration where they do a smaller part, and the whole project is done together, but communicate this openly.

PhD students are not just labor for their supervisor.  Actually, as their supervisor, part of your duty is to ensure that they’re happy with their subject and working conditions, and to help guide them towards topics that can appeal them.  It will be difficult to get successful students otherwise.
Therefore, in the light of your question, you should ask student A if they’re willing to pursue project B, or if they would prefer to focus on another topic and have someone else working on project B (it is not clear from your post whether project A is finished or not, maybe they’d just rather continue to investigate this topic ?).
Do not place PhD students in a situation of competition, nobody will gain from that.  Place them in a situation of cooperation.  If student A is not interested in project B, they may be happy to have another student as a colleague, and they will be very helpful in onboarding the new student anyway — especially if their work serves as background for project B.

I agree with the other answers that this is generally a very bad idea. One possible solution would be to hire another PhD/postdoc with a similar but nonoverlapping topic. Having this extra expertise in your group might help your "slow" PhD progress faster. One possible downside: by the time this other person will be up to speed, student A will be quite far along their track and there may not be enough overlap.

One can approach any research topic from numerous angles. Two students working on the same topic will almost always produce different results IF AND ONLY IF they are working independently.
The main question here is if this is a time sensitive issue. Meaning, your lab or group must produce something by a specific date because your research grant sponsor is asking for results to justify further funding.


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Is my student applying to too many PhD programs in the US? (statistics / biostatistics)
I am in Asia, and one of my master student wants very much to go to the US to study for his PhD. He applied 25 PhD programs and has asked for a reference letter. I think 8-10 programs is quite enough.
Will it really help for him to apply to 25 or even 30+ PhD program?
P.S. those programs are distributed to different rankings.
I feel that if a student's profile is not good, then it won't help to apply to even 1 school. If a student's profile is good, then they would likely get into a good proportion of schools. But does it really make a difference to be accepted to 5 of 10 schools vs. 15 of 30?
P.S. I do want to know, if the profile is really marginal or even not good, would it happen that he will have 0/10 if he applied 10 programs, but 1/30 if he applied 30 programs by chance alone?

You're not going to get in to the schools that you don't apply to.

After my masters I sent 100 applications to PhD offers. Only about 10 of them replied in a reasonable time-frame; most of them replied more than six months later (and I told them nope, too late). PhD advisors are humans and there is a lot of randomness in the process. Why would you shoot yourself in the foot by sending fewer applications than you can?

did you manage to get a professor to send 100 letters for you? or you asked different professors to send the reference letters? To be honest, it makes me feel the student thinks applying PhD is just buying lottery instead of he is seriously thinking to do research. I started to feel reluctant to write a good reference letter for him.

My professors ended up giving me the template of the recommendation letter so I could fill in the institution/programme details. because I was applying to many. Yes, its completely reasonable to assume that someone has e.g. 1/30 chances to getting a PhD position, considering how much it also relies on luck.

Oftentimes, the issue for international students is funding. I'm not sure how (bio)statistics is funded but our genomics/bioinformatics program was limited in the number of international students it could take by the amount of NIH funding (limited to citizens/green card holders) for first years who were doing rotations and thus didn't have the support of labs (who are also mostly NIH-funding based). If your student can TA the whole time, fine. But if they want funding that doesn't require citizenship, then applying to an excessive number may actually be reasonable.

For PhD programs (not undergraduate or masters), the advice I've always heard is: Don't focus on the ranking of the school or even the department. Instead, your application should describe your specific research interests, and you should apply to departments with specific faculty members who are experts in those topics:
"Since I am keenly interested in topic XYZ, I would love to work with your Professor ABC and their colleagues in the DEF lab, whose active research on DEF is pushing forward our understanding of XYZ."
By contrast, if your interests are so broad/generic that you can imagine applying to 25 different PhD programs, then I suspect you may not have a well-refined set of research interests, or you haven't thought carefully about which faculty members you'd be eager to work with. If so, your applications will look generic, not tailored to the program:
"I like statistics, and your department has 'Statistics' in the name."
Of course your interests and advisor can change during the PhD! But by writing a specific application, it shows you've already thought deeply about the field and your specific place in it, which makes you a safer bet for the PhD admissions committee.
If you do have well-thought-out research interests, there probably don't exist 25 different programs that could match them well. So in this sense, 25 sounds like "too many" to me.

There's a lot of randomness in graduate admissions, so I understand students who apply to a lot of programs to increase their odds. It's less about getting into a single program, and more about having a choice or getting accepted to one the programs you really want.
I'd recommend to your student that they apply broadly, that is, not only to the "top 1-25" programs, but also not only to the "top 175-200 programs" or any other range: apply to a broad range of schools by selectivity within the range of interest, including some that the student is really excited to go to and some others that they'd be willing to go to if only accepted there.
I would caution them that programs do expect a bit of customization of applications and evidence in an application that the student has considered that program specifically. If every application feels generic, the probability of acceptance for each will decrease, and if you apply to so many schools that they're all too generic the odds might drop to near zero. In particular, I would suggest still spending close attention on applications to less selective programs: research universities in the US are all quite limited in how many applicants they accept. For undergraduate admissions in the US people often talk about the concept of a "safety school"; that might apply a bit to graduate programs, too, but there aren't any PhD programs that will just accept everyone who applies and meets some bare minimum criteria.
Ultimately, though, if you provide this sort of advice and they still want to apply to 25 schools, I don't think it's really your decision to tell them otherwise. For your own sanity, you can ask them to prioritize the letters you write, and use a more generic letter for ones lower on the priority list (let the student know that this is your plan and what you can offer ahead of time, of course).

Let me add my emphasis on broadly. Similar institutions may have similar criteria. If you are rejected by one it is more likely that you are rejected by other similar ones. Cast a wide net.

An element that it seems like all answers are missing is maybe obvious to those of us in the US but still worth thinking about discussing with a student looking for advice: Most US Math grad programs have application fees. There may be diminishing returns on additional applications after a point, while there are linear-scale losses with more applications.

The advice for applicants is generally to apply to about 9 schools at a proportion of 3 reach schools, 3 slight reach, and 3 easy acceptance (is there really such a thing for graduate schools?). In reality, I think it is very worth it to apply to more in the reach and slight reach category.
The PhD application acceptance has both a non-random component (objective applicant quality measures) and a random component (maybe someone on the committee really likes your writing sample, had a great experience meeting your letter writer at a conference, or was really impressed with the last person they met from your undergrad program).
In my mind, there are at least three reasons for an applicant to apply to more than the conventional 9 schools. First, if you think the random component is large, then, given the returns from getting into a higher ranked school, it is quite advantageous for the applicant with a marginal application to try quite a few reach schools to see if they have good draw at one of them. Another rationale for applying to more schools is if an applicant doesn't understand clearly where they sit on the distribution of applicants. It might not be clear what schools are reach and which are ridiculous reaches. Finally, if the applicant doesn't have a good outside option, there will be a big cost to "learn" about their chances with the process via this year's application. While some would be happy to take a second try at it the next year, for others there would be a big cost to taking the risk of getting too many negative draws.
Even with these reasons, 25 applications sounds like a lot. But I would work through it by helping the applicant understand their chances and think through costs and benefits, rather than focusing on a specific number.
Possibly related story: My husband applied to 9 schools and got into the best and worst of the 9. The fact that the best school accepted him was the result of a good draw and has had many benefits. If he hadn't had that good draw, I would have encouraged him to apply to more than 9 the next time.

If they can really write 25 good applications then it might be OK. But a grad school application needs to focus on quality first. It needs to show that your desired research matches that of some faculty in the department (mention them by name and show how it matches). Best is to talk to those faculty first, but that can be difficult.
The most effective way to do that is to approach people at conferences, but that assumes you have the resources to attend conferences and the personal ability to walk up to people and interject yourself.
You can email them, but I agree that that's also difficult and has a low likelihood of success, as we all get much more email than we can deal with. If you have a publication, attaching a copy would be a way to break the ice there and show you are serious.
The other really good way to get introduced is to have the advisor contact the relevant potential faculty that they know personally.


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Acknowledgment section in job talk presentation for a tenure-track position
For a normal research talk, people may only acknowledge collaborators in those presented projects.
Is it the same in a job talk for applicants for tenure-track positions?
Two considerations:

I acknowledge (almost) everyone that I have worked before:
Will it look weird?

only acknowledge collaborators in those presented projects:
Would it be viewed as a lack of independence with not much collaboration other than working with mentors?

P.S. Thank you for suggestions. How about my group members? should I also follow the rule that only acknowledge those related in presentation? e.g. I have 3 group members, one RA helped me many things on daily rounte so that I can have more time on research, one student do contribute something that I presented, but one did not.

you should refine the question. Not clear.

You might be overthinking this. Just avoid something embarrassing.
Naming everyone you worked with will be a little bit like an acceptance speech by a beauty queen who thanks everyone and be embarrassing, especially if they did not have anything to do with the presented topics. I would not recommend this.
People will appreciate a naming of your advisor. Also, you should attribute (maybe in the talk) contributions of other people.
At a job talk, people are evaluating you on whether they want you in their department. What exactly they are looking for is not known to you, and so you should not play mental games with yourself trying to guess it. They want you to be able to teach, so your talk better be understandable and you come across as a person who can hold students interest. They want you to be able to do research, usually independently, but sometimes with people who are looking for someone "to play with". You need to convey that you can do research on your own, but also that you have a research support network and are not a lonely wolf. But they are also realistic and will not expect you to satisfy them on all questions. This is why there is a round of interviews and this is why there is a dinner with the candidate.
Here is what I would do:
Just make sure that you mention your advisor(s) if you present work in which your advisor(s) gave advice. Make sure that you indicate where you had collaborators. For example, list all of the authors of a paper in a footnote (together with the title of the paper) in the slides is a simple way to convey this message. Avoid using a long list of thanks at the end.

A less embarrassing way to acknowledge everyone is to have a slide with everyone's names and faces, and say a few words like "I often perform my research in collaborations. These are the collaborators that I had the pleasure to work with in my previous research. Particularly important was my advisor..." and so on.

You absolutely cannot fail to acknowledge people that contributed to the work you're presenting; you don't get to decide whether to do so or not based on how it makes you look.
I probably wouldn't go beyond acknowledging the people you worked with in the specific work presented. Acknowledging people when giving a talk should be about giving those people credit, not about name-dropping anyone you've met. That said, I know some people keep a slide of their major collaborators and students and then highlight specific people who worked on that specific project. That hasn't ever seemed strange to me, but I'd check your motivation: if your motivation is about appearances/looking a certain way, that's probably not a valid reasoning.


text:
Should I write a "proof" to a professor I don't know?
TL;DR
I solved two integrals left unsolved in a paper I'm reading. Should I notify the author?

I am studying in a finance master and we have been assigned a project for one of our class. This project consisted in some literature review and then a small implementation.
Reading one of the papers, in which the author propose a new density p  to model a random variable, there is written that

They can't find analytically the constant c that makes p a density (basically could not compute the integral of p)
They write that numerical simulations show that E[X]= theta but an analytical proof was still missing

I have calculated in closed form both integrals, and numerical simulations suggest that my results are correct; I will probably add this to the project I'm writing.
Now the question is: should I send an email to the author about this? If so, how to phrase such an interaction? I guess that I'm looking for something along the lines of "thank you, well done" with maybe a short mention if they get around to modify the original paper.
On the other hand, the paper is old (2007) so I don't even know if the author is still interested in that.
Also, the proof was nothing too complicated. I mean I spent a lot of time on it (mainly because of my inexperience) but it certainly doesn't feel like anything too difficult. Probably I just "saw" the right path to do it and once you see that, it's pretty easy.
Is this something common to do? Are professors pleased to receive such an email or just annoyed?

On top of what has been said, even if the paper is 8 years old, the professors are quite possibly still working on related questions, using similar methods. I could easily imagine cases where this would be great news to the authors as it helps making current research a bit more complete, or at least easier. As mentioned elsewhere, you might be acknowledged for your help then. In any case, I see no harm in contacting them.

The significance of your additional work is unclear. Have you talked about this with the professor that teaches your class? (s)he – or another prof in the department – should be involved if you want to take this further.
If the additional work is significant enough, you'll be perfectly within your rights to write and publish your own paper that presents the results. Trivial results usually aren't publishable on their own, but if it's a novel approach then it's certainly doable. The original work is old enough that you need not worry about "scooping" the original authors' results. Just make sure to check that a solution to the problem hasn't already been published elsewhere.
In any other case, there shouldn't be any harm in sending an email to the authors (whether or not they will respond is another matter). Don't send the solution in your first email! Just inform the authors that you think that you've solved the problem, and only send them your solution if they agree to let you co-author any publications that incorporate your results. Intellectual property rights are a tricky business, and you should always ask for the help of a professor when doing things like this. The paper's authors will also be much more likely to take notice if the first email is from a well known professor, rather than an unknown grad student.

first of all, thank you very much for the answer. I certainly don't think that it's publishable on his own, and I don't even think it is worth of co-autorship with the original paper. I have never published anything but it would be cool to have an acknowledgement , like "we thank Ant for showing that " or something like that ?

This is generally good advice, but I think it is definitely important to determine the significance.  If the work is pretty trivial, even though it may be interesting to the other authors, it will sound silly if you go into this discussion of co-authorship.  And insisting on co-authorship on any publication that incorporates the result is extreme: the result itself may not be enough of a contribution to warrant authorship, and it's not clear whether the OP would be qualified to contribute in other ways.  In many cases a simple acknowledgement would be fine.

@Ant  In principle, even if it's only worth an acknowledgement (as opposed to co-authorship of a larger work), there's no harm in trying. Again, you should check with the professor as to how significant (s)he thinks it is. Maybe the solution was out of the original author's field of expertise, and it's actually well known or trivial.

@NateEldredge thinking the same thing at the same time! The OP really should discuss this with a professor. Which actions are appropriate really depends upon how significant the solutions are.

@NateEldredge Thank you both. So I really need to check with the professor; I'll ask him. In any case I think it's (probably) trivial for professor or real mathematicians, that is why it struck me weird at first that the author did not find it (elsewhere on the article there are very complex derivations of other stuff which I wouldn't be able to prove, for example). On the other hand I am quite certain that my proof is correct.. Oh well. I'll just ask the professor :-)

@AlexandersWilliam Absolutely! I'll ping you guys ;-)

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text:
In what engineering field can i study renewable energies in the USA?
I am applying for a scholarship at the USA in order to  study  renewable energies.
For that I have to ask if it is considered as a subfield of electrical engineering or not in the US, because I can't find a major in energy engineering in the application form and the closest in my mind to renewable energy engineering is electrical engineering.

Unfortunately, there is no black-and-white answer: at some institutions, renewable energy is an electrical engineering focus area, at others, it is not.

It seems like different aspects of "renewable energy" could fall under different departments, even within a single institution. For instance, the production of alternative fuels could be in chemical engineering, while the building of hydroelectric and solar generation facilities could be civil engineering. So maybe you should narrow down what you want to study.

I've also seen it taught under construction engineering, electronics and communications engineering, and a dedicated renewable energies department.  Note: @ a mixture of universities; american universities abroad and others.

Renewable energy is an application of engineering, and requires expertise from various disciplines. For example, wind energy requires civil, mechanical and electrical engineering.
I don't know how things work in the US, but in the UK my advice would be to identify which discipline interests you the most and pursue that in a department that includes renewables on the syllabus. Then either look for a job in renewables, or do a masters to learn more about that industry. However, I don't know how applicable that advice is to your situation.

Based on recent IEEE taxonomy, the renewable energy domain belongs to the Environmental Management discipline (or area of study and practice). Please refer to the 2014 IEEE Taxonomy document (v. 1.0, p. 33), available here. However, note that the above-mentioned attribution may vary from institution to institution, as @MadJack and @NateEldredge indicated in the comments.

You are interested in a fairly young field that is quite interdisciplinary.  There are two ways to start figuring this out.

Look around in google scholar for papers that appeal to you.
Not just any old papers that happen to mention renewable energy --
papers that make you itch to read more by that author.
Now look up the authors to see what type of departments they are
employed in.
Next, look up those departments to see what sort of programs of
study they guide students towards, when a student is interested in
renewable energy.
Alternatively, google renewable energy phd along with the name of a particular university.  I did that just now with Cornell University and found instructions for that institution: http://earthenergyigert.cornell.edu/apply/

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text:
Computer science central source for CFPs
In the field of computer science, is there somewhere out there a central database containing a complete list (or at least most of the important one) of conferences and Call For Papers (CFP) to browse and subscribe to?
I found the following pages (source):

Allconferences.com (conferences, trade shows and conventions)
Confabb.com (mostly trade fairs, but some academic conferences)
Conference Alerts.com (academic conferences worldwide)
conference-service.com (mathematics, physics, nuclear applications, chemistry, earth sciences, computer science)
Eventseer.net (computer science and linguistics)
PapersInvited.com (academic conferences worldwide)*
WikiCFP (A wiki site to organize and share CFP)
Academic Conferences Publishing House (CFP of Worldwide Academic Conference, meetings, symposia, workshops, Special Issues of
International Journal)

Are there better ones?

EDIT:
Thanks for your answers. Here is the extended list based on your answers:

DBWorld
SEWorld (Software Enineering Mailing List)
IEEE Conferences & Events

Here are some other sites for multi-disciplinary CfP's

PaperCrowd*
Research Bible
H-Net
Conferize
Conference Submit
OurGlocal
BrownWalker
All Conference Alert
List of conference.org
All Conference Alerts
Conferensum

*Disclosure: I'm a co-founder at Ex Ordo and we built PaperCrowd as our contribution to the research community. It's restriced to academic research conferences and is free.


text:
How to reference your own dataset in a figure or table caption?
I made several plots and figures. About 20% of data I used to make a plot came from papers of other people, which I'm surely going to cite in a common manner. But the other 80% percent of data I collected on my own during the research, so I'd like to point it out in the figure's caption (otherwise a person who reads my article would have gone to the cited paper and found there only 20% of data).
What is the proper way of doing this? Should it look like that (example picture is taken from here):

Fig. 1. Dependence of Y on X within different groups [123, own dataset].

where:

[123] is the ordered number of an external dataset reference in the reference list;
[own dataset] - an attempt to reference my own data.

Is your own data part of all three groups, or is it separated (group-wise) from the data you got from other sources?

I assume you describe the dataset elsewhere in the paper (including data collection methods, or, if you're using and analyzing a data set published elsewhere, at minimum the data analysis methods) like Massimo Ortolano suggests. If feasible, I would suggest clearly labeling the legend entries to make the data sources clear, e.g. instead of "Group 1", "Group 2", and "Group 3" you might have "Isaev (2003)", "Someone else (2012)", and something like "This work" (or "this study"). This way the fact that the data comes from different sources gets communicated clearly even if the figure is displayed without the caption, which might well happen in talks etc.
Often more informative labels are useful, e.g. if there are datasets collected using different techniques or multiple datasets from the same source. I would slightly caution against legend entries using numerical references such as "Isaev [3]", where [3] is some entry in the list of references. I've done so in the past, and unless you automatically generate the figure the numbers can easily end up pointing to the wrong references as as citations are changed in the main paper. It is better to include such direct citations in the caption, just as you suggest. However, there is little reason to put something like "[own dataset]" in the caption, especially if you have "This work" in the legend. You may well want to devote some space in the caption contrasting your and others' results, for which phrases such as "our results" may be useful, but generally what isn't explicitly referenced is assumed to be your original work. At least, that's the case if it is a reasonable assumption in light of the rest of the work.

I suggest you to have a section at the beginning in which you describe the datasets used in the work, referencing other work's datasets and presenting your own datasets with the methodology used to collect them.
Label or number each dataset, so that you can then later refer to the datasets in figures and tables. For instance, your caption could become

Datasets D2 and D5.

or

Datasets D2 [123] and D5.

Unless there is a strong reason for doing otherwise, I would suggest that you make your data available on a public (open) data repository such as figshare. The dataset can then be referenced with an appropriate URL or DOI, in addition to describing your own data exactly as the other answers suggest.
I mention figshare here only as an example. There are many other excellent open data repositories that you could consider.


text:
changing lab during PhD
I have started my PhD recently (4 months back). I did not enroll at university yet due to technical reasons. From the start I was having second thoughts about the institute and place and it feels like I should have gone to a better group or better institute. It is a new lab, with a new PI so I cannot comment on the lab culture or working environment yet.
I just want to know from other experienced people why you should not switch labs during PhD or what should not be the factor affecting your decision to switch lab during PhD?

How can you have started a PhD, yet not enrolled anywhere?


text:
How to tell the supervisor that I am not interested in his project?
I am applying for a PhD program at the University in the US. I was contacted by one supervisor who after reviewing my PhD application material, thought that I am suitable to join his research team and he would like to discuss it more with me through a zoom meeting. However, I am not interested in his research and am considering rejecting his invitation.
My question is that: if I said that I reject his invitation, will this be a signal that I will be rejected by the Uni?

Well, if they are on the admissions committee you may not get much support from them...

"if I said that I reject his invitation, will this be a signal that I will be rejected by the Uni?" - think about this a different way. If this is the only person interested in working with you at this institution, and you're not interested in working with them, does it matter?

A further comment - how do you know you are not interested in the project? Frankly, in some 40 years in science I have been offered very few projects that were not interesting to some degree.

It would depend a bit on the field, but for most US applications to doctoral programs it is a committee that decides and a candidate only chooses an advisor after admission.
The exceptions are some lab sciences where admission to a lab might be necessary to be admitted, but those are rare. You seem to be in mathematics in any case, where it is unlikely that you need an advisor to be admitted.
It is possible that you were contacted by a junior faculty member, looking to boost their own local position by taking on students. There is nothing wrong with saying that you want to keep your options open at the moment.
Your first task in a US program will likely be to pass qualifying examinations in any case, not begin dissertation research in the first days.
See: How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in Country X?

I think I am the case that I was contacted by a junior faculty member.


text:
It there a non-academic job that reviews conference or journal submissions?
I am a research student at the moment, but it has occurred to me that it could potentially be profitable to be a "pre-reviewer". I will explain what I mean.
A pre-reviewer is not an academic or someone who works at a university, but does independent review of papers that are to be submitted to conferences or journals, thereby maximizing its acceptability.
I believe this could be a profitable career path that also allows me to do research on the side, but is this feasible? Does such a career exist?
I am also not sure about the ethics of such thing. But this seems on par as using another peer to read your paper (at no cost, of course).

What would you be checking, the language or the technical content?

Ideally both. Just what a normal reviewer what do, but you do it before the submission and might even provide a probability of acceptance. Of course this is conditioned on that the paper you are reviewing is within your expertise.

Are you asking about a coaching-type job? I know that there are companies out there that provide university admissions consulting, helping prospective students hit all the necessary targets (how to write a targeted goals essay, how to assemble a portfolio, admissions test prep, etc.) before sending in their application. Are you asking about a similar role but with helping people prepare their papers for journal submission?

@RobertColumbia See my definition of "pre-reviewer"

What makes you think that a single person (in particular, you yourself) could be qualified to review papers in areas as disparate as geology, historical linguistics, differential geometry, and neurology, much less to "provide a probability of acceptance", much much less while "doing research on the side"? It seems that you could, at best, hope to provide an editing service and help with typesetting and typographic issues, but I would imagine most people may understandably be reluctant to have someone who does not understand their area edit their paper.

The answer is yes, and here's an example from Enago.

Why wait for months to get feedback on your manuscript? Get a professional peer review in just 7 days! Our experts will thoroughly review your paper to identify areas for improvement and provide technical suggestions on possible pitfalls that speeds up your submission process.

I note Enago also has a webpage where you can register as a reviewer.
Two caveats: first, it's freelance work, which makes sense because the amount of papers in one's field that one can review ebbs and flows. Second, the best papers are probably not sent for this kind of review, simply because they don't need it.

Seems like a bit of a scam, actually.

Even the 'not best' papers are not sent there. I would be very leery of using such a service. And it seems unlikely that there would be a full-time (or even half-time) 'profession' working for them.

I've never used the service, so I cannot comment.


text:
How to tell my PhD supervisors I want to publish without them?
I have had poor supervision from both my supervisors, but one in particular. Overall, neither provided me much intellectual support while I was doing my thesis in psychology. Early on, they were a little helpful when I was recruiting for participants - they attended my ethics panel meeting and made edits to my ethics application. I hardly ever saw them or met with them to discuss ideas (like once a year). The analysis of my thesis was a sole endeavour. I received minor feedback with respect to paragraph structuring, spelling errors and grammar in the write up of my thesis. No substantial feedback that helped me with my analysis, theoretical arguments or conclusions.
Additionally, I have felt unsupported from a morale point of point. My main supervisor's communication towards me has been disrespectful and belittling. For example, she has embarrassed me in front of colleagues by implying that I overestimate my capacities on more than one occasion.
Now that I have finished my thesis and have passed examination, both my supervisors are keen for me to publish and have asked to catch up to discuss manuscripts.
I'm at two minds now. I don't want to give them intellectual credit for the work I did on my own. Yet, I also don't want to break down the decent relationship I have with my secondary supervisor. I have relied on this secondary supervisor to provide me with a good reference that ultimately won me  prestigious position at a university. So I feel a sense of obligation towards her. The two supervisors work closely together so I couldn't possibly imagine having one included as a co-author and not the other - it would be extremely awkward and not really accepted.
The other thing that's playing on my mind is my inexperience with publishing. I haven't published a paper in years and feel trepidation about venturing out on my own. The reports I received from examiners were very positive and both said that my thesis was well written and publishable. But I still feel unsure about how to proceed and would benefit from practical guidance.
Any advice on how I should proceed would be greatly appreciated.
Edit: To clarify, the supervisors have requested we work together on translating thesis chapters into publications. Not new research.

Are you asking about what to do with publications resulting from your dissertation (it's very likely that your supervisors contributed sufficiently to this work to merit coauthorship) or about other research projects that are independent of your thesis?

Talking about publications resulting from my thesis.

There might also be legal obligations to keep in mind here, e.g. if you got funded during your PhD somehow, you might need to mention that in the paper. That's another reason to not do it alone.

Possible duplicate or at least relevant : https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/129988/72855

"No substantial feedback that helped me with my analysis, theoretical arguments or conclusions." - What about the design or motivation for the experiments in the first place?

Based on your account, I am surmising that you have already completed your PhD thesis, and obtained an academic position independent of your former supervisors (well done!). That being the case, you are under no obligation (whether legal, pragmatic, or ethical) whatsoever to involve your former supervisors in publication plans for work to which they did not make an author-level contribution. If you feel that (and, now that you are a Doctor of Philosophy, you should have some confidence in your academic judgement) you will advance scholarship more effectively by publishing alone or with different collaborators, you should have no qualms about doing so.
By the way, in my humanities field (in which sole-authored publications are the norm), it is perfectly acceptable, even encouraged, to publish without your PhD supervisor while still a student. I have two excellent supervisors, but it has never occurred to any of us to pursue a joint publication. In fact, funnily enough, I have recently completed a sole-authored book-chapter for a collected volume in which my principal supervisor just happens to also be writing his own sole-authored book-chapter (on a different topic, although relevant enough that I actually cite a few ideas from his chapter in mine).

The second paragraph also describes common practice in mathematics and some branches (like mine) of computer science. (I actually require my PhD students to publish without me at least once before they graduate.)

To give better advice, you should provide more information regarding your Ph.D. journey. For example, who defined your dissertation topic and whether you're supported financially during your studies? I try my best to cover all cases as best as I could.

First, if you've previously (i.e., before your final defense) talked to your advisors about publishing parts of your dissertation, one might consider it bad faith if you do otherwise. One of the professors in my department still complains about a student who didn't deliver on the promise of writing the final paper of her dissertation after about 5 years.
If you want/need to maintain a good relationship with your advisors (i.e, work on joint projects, co-supervise students, etc.), what you intend to do is usually a deal-breaker.
I suggest that you check with your alma mater for their intellectual property regulations. Some institutions prohibit you from publishing work done with their money and equipment under another institution affiliation (as you're a professor someplace other than your alma mater, you might intend to put your new affiliation on the paper).
Some institutions do not include papers directly based on your Ph.D. dissertation in your tenure request evaluation. If that's the case in your current institution, what you intend to do would benefit you only in terms of reputation in your field.
If you're not experienced enough to publish your paper in a good-enough journal, your advisors might be able to help you with that. Their help might come in handy as one usually doesn't have any other person to read the paper critically and help with the revisions. Also, if prominent scholars, their name might be able to help you as well.
A simple compromise would be to write not all the papers with your advisors. If your experience with the first paper was positive, you might re-evaluate the whole situation differently.

If you're leaning towards writing alone, I think honesty is the policy. Talking to people about their mistakes, in general, would help them refrain from making them again. If you're unsure about how to talk to them, you might consult some senior faculty. Personally, I would talk to the second advisor first. Talk openly and discuss the situation and express that you're unsure whether their contributions are enough to secure them a place on the author list. Hear their voice and reasoning and then make your final decision. Good luck.


text:
How do academics make money from applying their research?
There are a lot of very smart people in academia. They are at the front of human knowledge and push it further. Obviously, the research that comes out of academia is very new. My question is who applies this research? In other words, why don't these smart professors start a company and sell their new findings by applying it to a problem and sell a service or product?
I mean if I was a very smart researcher, and discovered something that no-one has known before, then first thing for me would be to create a company and sell it. Yet what I see is that all these researchers remain relatively poor compared to business people, and they publish some papers and then someone else applies their findings and makes a lot of money, while they do not get anything.
I might be wrong though. I don't really know how it goes.

You're asking three separate questions here: (title) How do academics make money from applying their research? (1) Who applies this research? (2) Why don't professors start a company? The answers are different to all of these. I suggest you slim down your post to a single question and ask the remaining (interesting!) questions in a different post.

I mean if I was a very smart researcher, and discovered something that no-one has known before, then first thing for me would be to create a company and sell it. — Hi, would you like to buy my Ω(n^2) lower bound for 3SUM?  No?  Then what makes you think your first original idea will be marketable?

Write books.  So far I've made $333 off mine (I'm joking, but the figure is real).

I mean if I was a very smart researcher, and discovered something that no-one has known before, then first thing for me would be to create a company and sell it.
Come on, do you even think it is so easy for someone to start a company and start making money? The skills needed to make a product (corporate world) are different from those necessary to create an idea (academia). A simple well-thought out, well-exposited algorithm may bring plaudits in academia, but in the industry you need to implement the algorithm as a small part of a large system, subject it to rigorous testing, find people to market the product and suitable customers to buy, etc. And then there is the whole HR team which has to do its thing...
Patents are the way to go if you have to make money from a smart idea in the academia. (EDIT: Generally, both the University and the inventor share equitably the royalties and other income arising out of inventions developed under University auspices.)
Professors do engage themselves in collaborative work with the industry; at times, they are funded by the university for setting up small companies (see this question.). The lifestyles of people in the academia and the industry are vastly different; for one, professors have much more freedom with respect to timings than in the industry and afford greater time for their family - not a bad thing in exchange for money, after all.
Successful researchers in academia are unlikely to quibble about low income compared to people in the industry. Happiness versus money is a concave function - beyond a point, more money is unlikely to make one happier.

Business people make money because they take the risk to bring a product to fruition: it's their entrepreneurial skills that get rewarded, not their ideas. Not everyone has entrepreneurial skill (or want) to start a company and hope to make bigger money.

This answer is partly incorrect, because in many cases, while it is true that the researcher's name is on the patent, the actual intellectual property (IP) rights belong to the university.

@eykanal: Yes, in many cases (eg., http://www.nyu.edu/about/policies-guidelines-compliance/policies-and-guidelines/patents-policy-statement.html). Editing the answer accordingly.

Nice, good link. I still do think that this answer is voted up too high, as the vast majority of researchers—particularly those outside of the engineering disciplines—never file for a patent in their entire career.

@eykanal In computer science, researchers usually don't file for a patent either.

How do people find out whether a research has been patented?

From my experience, most researchers who choose to make money do so in one of two ways:

Entrepreneurship. Take whatever you've found with your research and start a business somehow marketing it. This is a common path, as you are the expert in your field, and you can bring it to market in ways that no one else can.
Many researchers do not follow this path, though, because the skills and interests required to run a successful business are oftentimes very different from the skills required to become a successful researcher. Anecdotally, the majority of researchers I've met were not interested in bringing their findings to market in any way; they just wanted to perform research and not have the headaches of running a business. Note also that you will have to inform the university about your business, and you will have to deal with the conflict of interest problems that arise because your research affects your business.

Consulting. This is a much easier path, and is performed by many researchers in a variety of fields. It is unlikely you will strike it rich doing consulting, but it can bring in a significant amount of extra cash.
A subcategory of this is legal consulting. I put this separately simply because it's consulting of a completely different nature that most business consulting. Depending on your field, you may be able to be called in as an expert witness in a legal case, which can also bring in extra cash. This is less common, simply because of fewer opportunities.

Does the university partake a share of what is earned through entrepreneurship and consulting? From hearsay, I think this happens in India.

@Bravo - Regarding entrepreneurship, it can get complicated, but from my experience, in most cases it's completely separate from the university. Consulting is slightly different, depending on whether you consult as a Professor from University X or as a freelance domain-area expert.

There is a lot of reasons leading to the fact that academics don't necessarily start a business each time they have an idea that seems to work:

There is a very long and difficult (technical) path from an idea that works to a product. Finding the good persons for following that path is generally painful, and an error-prone process.
There is a very long and difficult (marketing) path from product to money. Marketing and sales are two difficult jobs, where academics are not (most of the time) very gifted. Moreover, it may be hard to convince good marketers or salespeople to go with you in your adventure.
Not all academics want more money. If my purpose was to earn more money, I would have originally chosen an other job. As a friend of mine say, if you want to be rich with high probability, start a pizzeria, then another one, then another one, ...

Consulting is a common way to make more money. Universities in the Us have some kind of policy saying that you can consult for x days a month (x being less than 5, or 2-3). If you find a consulting gig, you can then charge them whatever hourly rate the market can bear, and augment your income that way.

Many Academicians are working in other parts of the globe but selling their research paper by writing their affiliation of Middle east countries or Turkey. This way they get opportunity to get money each paper from affiliated (virtual) institutions and also opportunity to visit being so called visiting faculty. Please see King Saud University, Abdul Aziz University, Çankaya University, Atilim University, Ankara and many more!

Sad but true

@jakebeal That is an awesome blog post. Thanks.