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(Why) Is post publication peer review (not) taking off?
I know, this is a bit of a broad question. But looking at the developments and having experienced a reasonable amount of pain with established publishers and their either complex, slow, or restrictive processes/production stages, I'm tempted to ask it here and look what others think or know about that.
Post-publication peer review has been discussed quite a while ago here and here, it's been promoted and practised on platforms such as Publons and PubPeer.
But is this idea, launched many years ago to complement "classical" peer review, really successful? Are established processes/practises being replaced/improved?
Note for clarification:
I envisage something like a combination of classical pre- and an optional post-publication peer review strongly based on open self-archival platforms such as arXiv. Nothing on the academic side would change, editors and reviewers would move over to such platforms to continue their work just like before, largely unpaid. Even cult-like reputation-building, gate-keeping, etc. is still possible even if not desirable. But in domains such as CS, physics, or math, where production is largely done by authors anyway, costly, error-prone, after-acceptance production stages would be replaced by just self-archival and EiC-driven quality labelling systems as they have been used for years at top-tier conferences to certify such things as reproducibility. I think, it's time for a change. (I wonder whether this question is more something for meta.)
Further note: After the many useful comments and answers, I'm extending or rephrasing my question to: Why isn't full-fledged self-archival with classical peer review and curation, post-publication commenting, and avoidance of old-school production procedures finally taking off?

Editors and reviewers are unpaid, but the editor's secretary, who keeps track of who all the reviewers are and whether they need a reminder or not and tracks down the reviewer who changed jobs but forgot to tell the editor their new e-mail address (software can help with this but can't do all of it) has to be paid.

One needs a mechanism to encourage such reviews to be collected. For example, all referees/reviewers for awards and promotions could be requested to review at least one paper in order for their letter to carry additional weight.

We need a robust reddit-style comment system on the Arxiv so that people can discuss papers easily and openly. The comments will be very enlightening. The comment system should support upvoting and downvoting comments and should support mathjax. This needs to exist.

@littleO aren't conferences and coffee breaks existing to do that? plus, having a written trace or a permanent record actually prevents open and easy discussion. Academia is power unbalance, retaliation fear is too high, try to naively hit a weak point of one of the best recognized professor in your field as a PhD and you will see how long it will take you to recover if he/she is a bad-temper person...

Most papers that are published are uninteresting.
The median paper has less than one reader not counting the authors and the reviewers.
The current reviewing system relies on a network of responsibilities that are independent of the author.  The editors have a responsibility to the community as a whole to get papers reviewed properly, and the community gives them esteem for performing this duty.  The reviewers have a responsibility to the editor to actually do reviews, and the editor is usually some influential person (and in any case will probably at some point be the editor for one of the reviewer's papers).
Suppose I have written one of my usual mediocre papers that is among the 70% (my estimate) of papers that are never read.  How would post-publication peer review be organized for it?  If I have to find reviewers myself, then everyone is going to say 'No' or do a bad job, because no one feels any need to impress me and it's not a very interesting paper to read.  Moreover, the best reviewers for my paper are people with a little higher status than me, and they would definitely say 'No' to me, but they might say 'Yes' to an editor.  (Keep in mind that, as the system is set up, some top people in a field do far more reviewing than they write papers, while many people write one write-only paper every several years (or grad students who stop doing research write one paper from their dissertation) and never review.)

Yup!  Papers are awful and refereeing is the worst.  There is one other motivating factor here that you don’t mention, I referee young mathematicians work (even if I don’t feel obligated to the editor) because I want them to get jobs.  But that mostly applies just to postdocs.

Note that post-publication (or non-publication) peer review happens pretty well for interesting papers that people want to read.  Perelman’s work went through a very extensive process to verify the work and expand on the details despite never being published.  Conversely, everyone knows where the hole is in Mochizuki’s work from outside readers, even though it’s published and the referees didn’t do their job.

Actually, it isn't that most papers are uninteresting. It is that the audience for extremely specialized work is limited in many fields.

True,  and it's often impossible to read/follow all relevant work even in a very special field.

In practice there is no accountability for those "responsibilities."

Do you have a source for The median paper has less than one reader not counting the authors and the reviewers? I can ask a separate question on this if you consider it off-topic for this one.

@Allure I don't have a source but it seems completely reasonable to me for papers in pure maths. It might also depend on what you mean by 'read'. I published half a dozen papers. For everyone of them I would say 5 to 10 people read the abstract and downloaded the pdf, maybe skimmed it for 5 minutes or so. Two of them where cited, in one and two other papers, all my other papers are uncited. I would only count the latter as 'reading' which gives the claim in the answer.

@Allure - No I don't think anyone has done a study on this, in part because 'read' is hard to define.  If, by 'read', you mean 'read in as much detail as I would if I were a reviewer', then I more or less only read the papers I agree to review (or the ones I write) and certainly read fewer papers (not counting reviewing) than I write.  (And, by this definition of read, I do not come close to reading everything I cite.)

Why is it necessary or desirable to peer review all papers? Let us not waste precious time with bad papers.

@SylvainRibault: Because research is not the only purpose of research.  I know someone with a PhD who got their bachelor's degree from Alma College.  There, the professors teach 360 classroom hours or more a year, leaving little time for research.  Alma College and the mathematical community would like to know that the professors there have a good sense of what mathematical research is so that we can trust the recommendation letters they write (and for other purposes).  So we want to review their occasional papers even though they don't seriously advance mathematics.

In a sense, it has taken off; you just need to change your definitions: in mathematics, most papers get peer reviewed after they have appeared on the Arxiv and are available to the public.
Results then appear in prestigious journals, so they are ultimately trusted and used to evaluate researchers and compare academic egos, only after they have been carefully been reviewed; but that seems working as intended and I wouldn't want it to be different.

Thx Federico. Totally agreed, pre-publication peer reviews are a must also IMHO. But I was more (perhaps in an unclear way) hinting to the idea that the often error prone production stage could be replaced by arXiv or similar throughout the whole process. Big conferences have years ago started to label papers with "evaluated" or "reproduced" etc. Why can't we use such labels for arXiv? And "label management" would then be done by EiCs by help of reviewers if you like.

Review/editorial work is largely voluntary anyway. I wouldn't mind to do it equally for arXiv like for any other publisher, given I am willing to put trust in the corresponding EiC

The journal-ref field on Arxiv already serves a similar purpose, in the end.

I see, is there a particular process (on the arXiv side) associated with journal-ref that would avoid the need for going through the production stage of a publisher? Hmm, maybe we are talking of two different things here.

I see what you are looking for now. Many publishers are now reasonably quick to give you a DOI and put the paper online "preliminarly". And there some Arxiv "overlay journals" where the paper is published on Arxiv only. But I understand none of these answer your question exactly.

No, I think you are going in the right direction. The question is: can we be progressive and just spare the production step (which is at least in my field error prone and very costly). I might edit my question to make it clearer. Will do that at night.

With the edit I suppose this is the right answer, what you envision is already exactly the mathemaical and physical sciences work, except for an unimportant part at the end where eventually someone prints it up (but people still read papers primarily on the arxiv).  I don't understand why you care so much about eliminating this last step which doesn't really matter anyway.  (If your goal is to save money then the answer is that for various reasons biomed does things differently, and if you have a "big deal" you save nothing by cancelling some subscriptions.)

@Noah: All good points. Then let's copy math/phy practices. So, I want to save the last step because it postpones publications, proof preparation is error prone, proof correction cycles can take a lot of time, subscriptions or APCs cost the system a sh*d of money, publishers are working with old editorial systems, restrictive LaTeX settings, ... I could go on like this. But sure, there will be cons as well. I just don't see them right now.

I find that the proof part, though error-prone, isn’t that annoying because I mostly ignore it.  The delays don’t matter because no one is reading the journal version anyway and I can already list a paper as accepted on my CV even if it’s not published.  The cost part matters, but there the answer is all about the “big deal” and that med schools are really rich and don’t care about spending crazy amounts of money.  Math journals aren’t really costing universities money since they have to subscribe for biomed anyway.

@Noah: Thanks, these are interesting insights into a domain unfamiliar to me. In CS, it's quite different. Subscriptions are being replaced by gold OA, but that's expensive too. It doesn't change much for us. Ok, so it depends, I guess.

Yes. There is also a somewhat related math comment in Astronomy SE question about arXiv.

In a sense, there is post-publication review: It just doesn't happen on websites, but in subsequent papers written by others. And the opinions of others are also recorded: A citation is like a "Like" on Facebook: The citing authors thought the cited paper offered some useful background to readers of their authors.
In other words, papers that are highly cited are, in some sense, positively post-publication reviewed. The converse is also true.

Very true! :) Good point! :)

This is not correct because people also cite papers to show that they are wrong.

@AnonymousPhysicist You're nitpicking. Which fraction of citations overall does this apply to, and which fraction of highly cited papers are highly cited because others are complaining about them?

"people also cite papers to show that they are wrong" doesn't matter - it's still a form of review. Or, what should "post-publication review" do about bad papers - delete them completely? What should be the threshold for doing so?

As Tim Gowers wrote in 2013 in the context of an experimental peer review website:

[...] It is easy to come up with ideas for websites where people can review papers, complete with clever protocols for how the reviewing should take place, whether it is open, reward systems, etc. etc. It’s much less easy to persuade people to use the sites that are created as a result: what is going to persuade them to make the effort, when there’s only rather a small chance that the site will become in any sense “official”?

"Becoming official" is the problem here: the publishing system's main function is no longer scientific communication, no longer improving and evaluating papers. The system has been coopted by administrators and funders, in order to manage researchers' careers via bibliometric indicators. Its continued dominance makes it difficult for alternative modes of peer review to emerge, since any new initiative must compete with an entrenched, official system.

Thx, @Sylvain. Let's leave aside post-peer review and stick to the best we have: pre-pub peer review. I believe in certain fields, there are reasonably well established platforms, such as arXiv or the like, that could (AFAIS) be extended to perform high-quality classical peer review and curation, just without the money-eating/encrusted structures of traditional publishers.

Yes, arXiv could do it, but it is not doing it and may never do it. ArXiv could have done it from the start, but did not want to scare publishers. Now it is probably too late: after "becoming official", these platforms do not evolve much.

When my uni made me start using the institutional Figshare a few years back, I'm sure they still had a "Comments" feature; no sign of that recently. So moving away, rather than towards. :(

IMHO, the feature arXiv would need is to allow to label archived preprints as e.g. archived, peer-reviewed, evaluated, accepted, produced=published, etc. and make sure that those people currently voluntarily working as EiCs for journals are the only ones allowed to assign these labels exactly following their current editorial practices. I think there is a weak form of such a feature there (maybe called endorsement, don't know), but I don't really understand why it hasn't taken off.

As in the other answers, the premise of the question is a bit inaccurate.
For work that turns out to be important, people look at it critically (with interest) long after it has supposedly been "refereed" and "published" (in the sense of being endorsed by a journal). And will look at it critically (with interest) as soon as it's available (e.g., online), whether or not it's submitted to a journal.
And, as has been true for 20+ years, there is the internet. Public availability of documents is no longer monopolized by "publishers" in the traditional sense. Of course, some people are less shy than others about putting online dubious stuff.
If one wants to be confident of the correctness of a journal document, one should probably check it in detail oneself, unless it is a very high profile case. In recent years, the guidance I've gotten as referee is that it is not my duty to check for correctness! And, well, in cases where no one cares much whether the conclusion is correct or not... ?!?
In math, in the U.S., we are still in the situation that, in most places, the only official way to score career/status/tenure/promotion points is by publication in refereed journals. People scrambling for tenure are not going to throw away their professional currency. And, in my experience, many people who've succeeded in this system are loathe to "make it easier" for the next generation. (I myself have recovered from any affection for artificial suffering... :)

Thx for these valuable insights. I am aware that step changes like I suggest won't happen without loss. But still, I think, the way how established publishers work is prehistoric. There are platforms like PLOS or f1000research which however are just not AFAIK really established in my domain.

This does not answer the question because it's not peer review if the outcome is not public.

In recent years, the guidance I've gotten as referee is that it is not my duty to check for correctness! Sounds surprising (and ridiculous, and sad). Could you elaborate a bit?

@RichardHardy, yes, it is surprising, since we might think exactly the opposite. Nevertheless, in the last 10-20 years, quite a few substantial journals' official statements of what the referee's task is have said that it is not the referee's job to determine correctness.

Because post-publication peer reviews are not currently recognized as useful contributions, so why do them when I could do something that would help me get a job?

Note that this is a rhetorical question, not exactly me feelings on the issue

This is a correct answer, but I'd add that conventional peer review is also very unlikely to get you a job.

@Anon True enough, but it is something people list under service, at least in my field

In a sense, post publication peer review has always been in place. Prior to publication peer review has the purpose of improving a paper before it appears (or at least prior to its formal publication). This is normally a private matter between a journal or conference and the authors.
Post publication, however, peer review has a different purpose and can no longe improve that paper. But anyone reading a paper can comment on it, make corrections to it and publish extensions or corrections. This has always been the case. Once a paper becomes visible it is open to comment by any "reviewer". This has, of course, let to some mighty intellectual battles, such as Leibniz v. Newton. If memory serves, Einstein's early papers weren't universally accepted but created some turmoil among the great names of the day. They generated a lot of comment, but also a lot of additional work attempting to refute or verify or extend them.

Thanks, Buffy. That's why I'm trying to suggest a combination, just without the production stage via a publisher. Because, talking mostly of CS/math, I believe most of the typesetting is done by authors anyway. So, established scientific quality assurance wouldn't change (at all).

No, you are wrong. Pre publication peer review isn't about typesetting. It is about correctness and impact as well as assuring that he author properly situates the paper within the literature (citations and such). For print journals, I also suspect that typesetting is done by professionals.

Sorry, I was making myself not clear enough in the question: Assume we have the scenario thinking - writing - submitting - pre-pub peer review - revision - production - publication - post-pub peer review - reading - citing - etc. I wonder whether production + publication can just be omitted by staying on arXiv?

Then no paper can be trusted to have been vetted by experts. I can publish on my own website, actually. If you want to trust me you have to do it on your own.

No, that's not what I meant. Just shifting the voluntary EiC/reviewer work from publisher to e.g. arXiv. Nothing essential on the academic side would change.

But the publisher need their own assurance of quality and uses reviewers they trust.

One could perhaps consider citations as post-publication review.

@Mario: You seem to be missing that at least 95% of the point of "publication" is just being able to write "accepted by J. Prestigious Results" on your CV.  Everything around copyediting, production, printing, etc. is basically unimportant.

@Buffy: I'm referring to a system where there is no publisher expect for self-archival. But there are editors and reviewers as is, and they carry through peer review at certain stages (with one stage corresponding to the "publication" stage, called pre-pub, post-pub, or else). I've modified the explanation in the question to make this clearer.

@Noah: That is a valid point. In that pessimistic case, my question is sort of useless. But I'm still not that pessimistic.

If everyone puts out whatever they think of, how can we sift through the whole pile and pick out what is actually quality? It's hard enough as is to find the good publications, think about how much worse it would be if there was 10x that much, completely uncurated.

@Wolfgang: Thx for your thoughts. I should note that I've never said anything about abandoning pre-publication peer review (actually I try to make the opposite point). I tried to make this clear in most of my comments and even in the original version of my question, I mentioned to keep pre-publication peer review. Peer review must remain THE quality assurance instrument. Absolutely agreed.

I'm taking the definition as provided in OP:

Why isn't full-fledged self-archival with classical peer review and curation, post-publication commenting, and avoidance of old-school production procedures finally taking off?

The first part has already "taken off" and is standard in my field (physics). The latter part, post-publication commenting, has not. The reason is, why should it have taken of? For something to supplant the original, it needs to be better. Post-publication commenting is not better for several reasons:

What would be the point? Pre-publication review can conceivably lead to the paper being improved. Post-publication review cannot.
What are you going to say? You can't provide suggestions for improvement because the paper is already published. You could say "This paper is great, I enjoyed reading it" which is nice to read but doesn't lead to anything. Meanwhile "This paper is bad, it should never have been accepted in the first place" is painful for the authors, especially if the criticism is public, and especially if the criticism is anonymous. Example I am aware of.
What would one gain from making the post-publication comment? Think about why people do peer review in the first place, and compare that to whether people should do post-publication commenting. Many of the reasons simply do not transfer: the results are already published so you don't get to read new exciting stuff before it's published, these things aren't organized by journals so you gain nothing from that front, and you can't say you're an acknowledged expert because odds are anyone who wants to submit a comment can do so.
Finally, it's not a reciprocal relationship. Traditional peer review is reciprocal - you peer review for others, and in return they will peer review for you. The same does not apply for post-publication commenting.

Everyone knows the traditional peer review model is flawed, but coming up with a better alternative is pretty damn hard. Post-publication commenting is an example. You might be interested in others - off the top of my head there is open peer review, where the identity of reviewers is public, and the accept-then-review model where the journal accepts every paper before putting them up for review.

But even if the paper can't be improved in response to the comments, the comments themselves could constitute valuable additions/improvements to the paper. Just like comments here on SE often add value to an answer even if they aren't edited into the answer. There's only so much that pre-publication peer review can do, the 100 post-publication readers will always find some unclear bits that the two per-publication reviewers found perfectly clear. If the authors could easily and publicly respond to requests for clarifications, most papers would get much easier to digest.

Post publication peer review has a model that has proven to work, in both principle and in practice: Stack Exchange. The "research question" is generally posed by someone other than the author; there are multiple short "articles" answering the research question; peer review consists of comments and, in many cases, other articles under the same question; and, ultimately, a quantitative rating is given to the quality of the question and most of the articles, with the original questioner getting a binary (checkmark) say as the "editor."
Imagine if, for example, someone posted a question on a (relevant subject) exchange to the effect of: "Is the linked article good?" Then, assuming it didn't get taken down for being off-topic or overly vague, the resulting exchange and ratings would constitute PPPR by almost any definition. (Wikipedia would be another example, but it doesn't allow original research. You might say that little on here consists of original research, but that's really only true for the quantitative, empirical sciences, and even then a lot of published journal articles just aggregate known information.)
Most of the reasons for PPPR's failure to launch, as given in other answers, are refuted by Stack Exchange. This community consists of thousands of people, including "real" experts, who are willing to read and respond to what frequently are indisputably boring or obvious questions, for free, in an unofficial forum. Some even perform basic copyediting! True, the questions and answers, individually, are shorter than an article. But Wikipedia shows that people are also willing to read and contribute to much longer articles. And sure, there's little incentive for authors to submit their work to an "unofficial" site, but as the above example shows, you don't need the author to submit it themselves.
So, either Stack Exchange has uniquely captured lightning in a bottle (in which case it should establish its own PPPR forum) or PPPR sites have failed to copy a remarkably effective format. And that's the answer to your question.

why did we preserve so many art masterpieces from the past? because we did PPPR of all the crap!


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How relevant is post-graduate experience in industry for a successful and sustainable academic career?
With practical experience before and during my studies, after graduation, I took up the role of a junior research engineer in an international company (halfheartedly trying to develop some research ideas for a PhD aside of quite an intense job back then).  Three years later, I changed occupation and spent about two years as a freelancer. After these five years, I returned to uni to focus on research and did my PhD, with the firm goal to pursue an academic career at a university. Now, after having been in the academic circus for more than a decade with a quite normal research and teaching track record, in job applications, I'm frequently encountering the argument that the candidate has published little in comparison with their peers. I to myself, well sure, I'm missing five full years of publishing, and some of you may know, you can do a hell of a lot in five years. My question complements questions about applying for studies, PhD programmes, and related decisions and is not only about the transition into an academic career.
So, how relevant is industrial experience (in my case, in the STEM/CS field) for pursuing an academic career successfully in the long-term? How likely is this time in industry getting in the way of an academic endeavor? My question should also be seen in the light of the unwritten but observable rule that only people with streamlined CVs are successful.

I can share my experience, but it is a little different than yours. I went to grad school after college, got my PhD in CS with a decent publication record, and did two short postdocs. Then I became a research scientist at a tech company. I had a lot of freedom to do my own research and publish, so my publication record had no gaps.
Once per week, I would teach a graduate course at an Ivy League institution, which my company was happy that I did. This experience, and other matters, helped me decide that I would feel happier in an academic environment, so I applied for faculty jobs, and I got a very good job in my second round of applications. I stayed at the company 4 years in total.
Because my publication record had no gaps, and I was a research scientist (titles are important), I don't think there were issues in terms of how my research was evaluated when I applied to faculty jobs. But at the same time, in my application materials (all of them: cover letter, research statement, teaching statement, DEI statement), I tried to give a positive spin to my industry experience, explaining how it would inform my research, teaching, and DEI approach, and how it would benefit the students, the department, and the institution I was applying to.
So, if I may suggest something: try to present your industry experience as something positive, that makes you special as a candidate, and would benefit the place/people where you're applying.

Especially in engineering and CS fields, many of the schools I was applying to would advertise what percentage of faculty had industry experience.

Thanks, Matteo. Yes, your experience seems to significantly differ from mine. My publication record has a big gap, because the industrial environment made me unable to publish a lot. There was just far too much day-to-day work to be done even in the extra hours. And I dared to allow myself having some kind of private life back then. I am presenting the experience in a positive light in my cover letters. So, I think it has no negative effect, but it would have been better not to go to industry in the first place.

Esther, thanks for mentioning. I've never seen or heard of this. Sounds interesting. What I know is that in some countries and at certain unis, real industry experience is valued more. I believe, being in an industrial research unit with high reputation could possibly be of advantage. But rather plain practical experience might not. I don't know.

Just to add to this, I was at a university where one of the CS professor there ran a company and taught classes. He was not involved in any research (last publication in the 90s when he got his phd). What I remember from him talking to us, is that when they reached out to hire him  they told him they wanted him to keep running his business and not to worry about publishing as they wanted a CS professor who was working in industry

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Does publicly-funded academic research need to be free of non-scientific interests?
I'm asking this question in the context of purely publicly-funded academic research, which might perhaps make answers rather straightforward.
So, I wonder to what extent the outcome of a scientific investigation, a research activity, could be unnecessarily biased or influenced in an undesired way if overarching interests of any kind (e.g. political, commercial, personal/social, etc.) are in the way of the process. Sure, the scientific method might prevent such biases to a good extent. However, should the mere choice of research questions and hypotheses along the way, the research strategy so to say, be protected from such influences? For instance, should we deny questions such as "Is this relevant for current industrial practice?" or "Does this relate to a currently hot practical problem in the way practitioners view it?".
My current view goes in the direction that the aforementioned interests should not only be declared (which is mandatory anyway) but be assured to not influence academic research as good as possible.
My question is somewhat philosophical and, having found that question, I was unsure whether or not to ask it here. Yet, public funding agencies and universities have gotten rather pushy about telling researchers to address relatively short-term practical problems (not least because of attracting third-party funding from sources typically associated with quite focused interests). Hence, I believe, a plurality of answers to this question could be useful for others. Answers that go beyond a "yes or no"-nature and discuss the "how can ... be kept free of ..."-variant of the above question are much appreciated.
(I'm happy with closing the question again if folks feel this to be a non-SE question.)

If you want research to be totally divorced from society at large, then don't take funding from society.

I can't imagine any research done by a human to be free of non-scientific interests.  Indeed, I don't even know what it would mean to be free of non-scientific interests.  Science is a human activity done by scientists that is of course influenced by (and influences) the life of those scientists.

@AlexanderWoo I think, I know what you mean. Well, my question was perhaps more pragmatic in the sense: If my boss tells me to shape my questions according to what industry needs now, I'd like to say: Hold on, let's not focus too much on what they need now and see what we can find more generally, which might eventually be of interest to them even more. My experience is that such constraints unnecessarily limit the search for sustainable solutions to general problems.

In a democracy public funding and conditions attached to public funding are determined by the people (usually indirectly through elections of politicians). That is as it should be.
There is a good case to be made for funding fundamental research, i.e. research that does not have an immediate application. But it is also a trade-off: any euro/dollar/yen/hryvnia spent on research is a euro/dollar/yen/hryvnia not spent on better childcare, better healthcare, better roads, better bombshelters. It is ultimately up to the democratically elected officials to make that trade-off.
It is our job to make the case for fundamental research as good and as clear as possible, but also to accept democratically made decisions.
So a certain amount of political influence is unavoidable and desirable if you take public funding. If the politicians decide that certain topics are a priority and direct extra funding to that, then we may or may not agree but it is the politicians job to make such decisions.
That does not mean that all political influence is OK. It is for example not OK if politicians currently in power abuse their position to gain an unfair advantage over the opposition. It is not OK if they dictate what acceptable conclusions from your research should be (if you know the conclusions of your research before doing it, then it isn't research).

Generally it does not need to be free of non-scientific interests, but funding systems are actually designed to hold things apart.
In many countries with good research funding, there are two general types of funding schemes that are both financed by public money: bottom-up and top-down funding.
Bottom-up funding is typically handled by an institution that is relatively free of political influence but gets a defined budget from policymakers. They distribute their budget to project applications without constraints regarding the topic of the research, and the evaluation is typically completely handled by the research community as well. An example of such a funding organization in Europe is the European Research Council. One can probably say that bottom-up funding is organized to be mostly free of non-scientific interests.
In top-down funding, policymakers define a research topic based on a perceived societal need and start a funding program for that. Researchers can apply with projects, but of course they will need to argue in their application how the project will address the defined topic. This type of research funding is typically handled by ministries or other agencies engaged by policymakers, and in that way policymakers can usually retain a good degree of influence on the evaluation process.
In any case, there are good arguments for having both types of funding, and I think it is well accepted that society indeed needs both types of research funding. The relevant question is then which share of the public research money should go to which type of funding. Academic researchers would probably prefer to have a larger share in bottom-up funding (unless their field is expected to get a lot of top-down funding), while other stakeholders might prefer more top-down funding, but in the end this needs to be decided by a policital process.

Thanks, I like your concluding question.

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Dealing with syllabus error as instructor
I hope it will be forgiven that I am going the anonymous-coward route when asking this question.
I am teaching two courses this semester.  My university has been mandating lots of evolving changes to syllabi, so I tried to organise my syllabi so that I could make changes to both in one place, rather than having to do lots of cut-and-pasting.  (Basically, lots of \includes in a TeX file.)  Somewhere along the way, I messed up which parts were common and which parts were course specific, and I listed the same textbook for both classes.
Classes start Monday.  The bookstore listings have been available for quite some time, though I don't know how long.  I made the class syllabi available yesterday.  Today, a student wrote me and asked about the conflict between the syllabus and the bookstore's listing.  I immediately fixed the error and sent out a class-wide announcement.
Unfortunately, it turned out that a student had already purchased the wrong book.  I don't know if this student purchased the book through the official bookstore (which might be eligible for return), or from Amazon, or somewhere else.  (I have reached out to check, but I want to have some idea of how to proceed regardless of what the student answers.)  I also don't know if this student is the only one affected.
If the student cannot return the textbook, then they have suffered for acting in good faith on information that I presented that they could not really have known was wrong.  I therefore feel the burden of dealing with that suffering is on me.  However, I am not sure how to proceed.  The easiest answer—in the sense of easiest to say, and to justify—is that I should reimburse the student (and I have checked with my dean that I am allowed to do this).  However, the book is $300 new (a footnote here, about how little I as a professor am aware of the cost of the books I assign), and there are 30 students in the class, and I cannot afford to commit to this option without knowing how many students are affected.  Is there any other ethical way to proceed?
(Another option that has been suggested to me is to suggest that the student sell the book, and then reimburse them for the difference.  This would at least defray some of the costs for me, but I am not sure if it is ethical for me to put that burden on the student.)

If the student can return the book, the question is moot. Maybe edit the question to just deal with if they can't? (Although I don't know of anyone with a return policy so onerous it couldn't be returned by now)

I don't have an answer, but thanks for asking and don't beat yourself up.

Well, you are polite enough to care about this deeply. I think one of your students might be polite enough to help you. As I understand, this "wrong" book actually is the course material in one of your other classes. You can ask in that class if someone who hasn't bought the book would like to buy that spare copy. You can incentivize it with a discount on the brand new book (something like 25 dollars) and you can pay the small difference to the student.


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Why would author contribution statements for conferences be (un)reasonable?
Slightly different from and generalising on interesting discussions  like that one, I wonder whether the increasingly widespread practice of including author contribution statements in many CS journals would also be a viable practice for CS conferences?
I believe this question is a valid one because, while it is usual in some CS sub-domains to put the authors in descending order of their contributions, in other sub-domains of CS it is usual to use alphabetical order. Independent of the preferred order, it may always be reasonable to indicate the corresponding author. However, to increase clarity about the actual roles (e.g., first, senior, consulting, data source, equal, ...) in a rather mixed authorship culture and order-independent, I would consider contribution statements to be relevant for conferences as well. So, again my question: Why would or wouldn't it make sense to adopt the existing practice of journals also for conference papers (whether or not using a quasi-standard like CReDiT or short variants just saying "all authors contributed equally")? Would such statements be a practical means to, for example, increase transparency of contributions and fairness of competitions?
Some background: In recent years, the DORA concept is increasingly adopted, by hiring committees for instance, with one principle of it being to deviate from entirely bibliometry-oriented assessments of candidates. And it turns out that it is not straightforward to individualise contribution and to qualitatively focus on relevant research output of an individual without more informative contribution statements.  Of course, there might be a host of other reasons for or against the adoption of author contribution statements.

Why would it be unreasonable?

@BryanKrause, because it can lead to infighting among authors as too many questions here demonstrate. That leads to less collaboration - a bad thing IMO.

@Buffy I don't think it's the author contribution statement causing infighting; I feel there is a lot more infighting over authorship itself, often heightened by the lack of recognition of different levels of contribution, which leads to less collaboration because adding more authors appears to dilute the contributions of everyone else.

Oh, I didn't want to put too much stress on "reasonable" but I realise I did. Perhaps there is a better way to phrase my question: Practical, fair, ...?

I don't think it would be unreasonable. I think that it would make more sense for journals and conferences to adopt something like the credit statement. That way, everyone is clear up front about who did what.
But, I agree with the above: the problem isn't necessarily the statements, it's more about authorship in principle. Just to give a personal example, I think that authorship should be discussed in the beginning.
I'm working on a paper with my mentor. The original idea for the paper, though, was my idea, along with my other coworker. When I offered to bring my mentor on the paper, he pretty much told me that me and my other coworker can take the lead, since he's excited to learn from us. So, we had the authorship discussion up front.
It's a small example, but having that discussion up front of who does what, who will be responsible for what, I think it would mitigate lots of the conflict that arises in these situations. I think having formalized statements helps for transparency purposes, but the key thing seems to be authorship itself where people run into problems.

By ... I agree with the above ..., would that per chance be ... I agree with @can't stop me now. Some have their answer listed in order of votes.

I think statements of contributions should be a necessary part of each publication. Author list provides only a slight indication of the contributions, but different reasearch groupd function differently and arange author names with different criteria.
For example in some research groups PHD students formulate their research questions alone, execute the research and only rarely receive feedback fom the advisor mainly during the writing of the paper.
In other groups the advisor provides a well defined question and sometimes also the solution, and the PhD student only has to implement the proposed solution with very little intellectual contribution.
A paper from both of these groups would have the PhD student as first author, and the advisor at last. But only the contribution statement would differentiate the intellectual contribution of the PhD students on each paper.

Thank you, I can only second this viewpoint.


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How to establish a presence at a community college that might lead to adjuncting
I'm an engineer with a M.S. and 20+ years of industry experience. I always wanted to teach but I left grad school for industry to help pay the bills.  I have no regrets, but I do have a very strong desire to go back into academia.  I remember my first real engineering class was taught by a adjunct who had a full time industry job.  I really appreciated the advice he gave about being an engineer in the real world.  I'd like to return that favor to future engineers by being an adjunct.
I'd like to start by establishing a presence at local community colleges.  I'd love the opportunity to do some volunteer work, collaborate, substitute or sit on an advisory board. I'd offer a unique perspective still being connected to industry, but with a strong interest in academia.  What would be  realistic?  What position should I contact at the community college and how should that conversation start?
Country United States

Please indicate the country. At least one answer assumes it's the USA, but it should be part of the question or its tags. Requirements for a teaching position can vary depending on the country.

@vsz Do community colleges exist and are they called that outside the US?

@NicoleHamilton : good point, but please not that those unfamiliar with the US education system might not recognize the community college, and why should we make them guess? It costs nothing to add a country tag.

Adjunct work is, relatively speaking, not in extremely high demand (on the part of teachers). Likely an email to the department chair is all it takes.

@nicolehamilton: On the Wikipedia page of Community College, there are (as of July 10, 2018), seven countries listed (which are all different). This question certainly needs a country tag.

Added country tag, my mistake sorry

I can't see a country tag?

Please specify the country either by replacing advisor tag(I see no relevance to the question) by your country tag or indicate your country in your question.

All you need to teach undergrad courses at the university level here in the US is a masters, which you have.  You can't be tenure track (a professor) without the PhD, but you can be a lecturer.  And you can certainly be a part-time adjunct or affiliate.
Contact the department chairs in the engineering departments of these local schools.  Ask to meet to discuss their current or possible needs for adjunct or affiliate faculty and any advice they might offer.  Without previous classroom experience, your first assignment won't be a big lecture class.  But you might start (as I did, about 6 years ago) as a lab instructor or as a faculty adviser for a team of students working on their senior project.  As you gain more experience and begin to figure your way around how a university works and how a class is run, you can ask for more interesting assignments.
Good luck.  I've really enjoyed the transition from industry to academia.  I love working with my students and my colleagues.  I think you will, too.

Although rare, there are faculty in STEM fields without a PhD. In other fields they aren't required at all (an MFA is a terminal degree in art).

@AustinHenley I just knew someone would nitpick that.  Check my edit history on this.  I had that in, then took it out as just too detailish to be helpful to an engineer, not an MFA, wanting to get started.  I'm FT faculty at UMich in CS without a PhD, so yes, it happens.  (But I'm a lecturer, not TT.)

I understand, and your answer fits perfectly for the OP. I just wanted to point it out to make it more generalizable (funny enough, my PhD advisor went the other direction, from art to CS!)

Or if you teach to the AS level you don't even need a degree - the key is the course must not go up to a 4 year degree.  Just finishing my BS in software dev, been teaching Linux Admin courses for 10 years as an adjunct....

Can you explain "MFA", "FT", "UMich" (probably some university) and AS, please?

@Udank MFA = Master of Fine Arts, FT = full time, UMich = University of Michigan (umich.edu), AS = Associate of Science (a 2-yr degree).

I would suggest that as first steps you contact a faculty member (or two) in a department for which you have an interest. You can find the scheduled office hours from the administration and you may be able to find an email address there or even online. First talk to one or two faculty, expressing your interest. In particular you can offer to speak to the students about your specialty and/or your background, both educational and professional. Some places have dedicated times for such speakers. Otherwise a faculty member may just invite you to a class.
First establish that sort of relationship and if it works out, offer to do more.
You can also offer to supply needed educational resources to an instructor. This could be anything from computer code to surplus but still relevant equipment - even just manuals for equipment might be appreciated.
I think this bottom-up way is a better approach than one that starts with the administration. You will need to establish an inherent trust in your skills rather than just being imposed from above.
Having met a few faculty and working with students you will naturally be introduced to other faculty and administration. Take advantage of these opportunities. Eventually, the administration will come to trust you, if you are doing good things, and might seek out your advice more generally.
One thing you may be able to do that would be appreciated in a lot of places is to serve as a "talent agency" for finding speakers from your profession, or mentors for specific students. Be careful, of course, to bring in only people that can be trusted to do a good job. Setting up short term internships or even "take a student to work day" situations might work out. I think a lot of students are looking for opportunities to explore what their life would be like if they choose a certain profession. High School and Junior/Community College students are likely very interested in this as they are not yet committed to a particular path.
However, that some kinds of volunteering is frowned upon if it is interpreted as denying someone else (younger) a paid position. Don't offer services that replace people, but only those that augment. So, your suggestion of winding up as an adjunct instructor (paid) is a good one. But the pay will be very low. Those who try to live on the salary paid to adjuncts have a very hard life.

This is an excellent answer. Let me add that it would be worthwhile to check whether a nearby community college has something like my department's annual "career day", where people working in industry talk to our students about the work they do and career prospects in their field. If such a thing exists in your area, see whether they'd like you to participate. (You might even be able to participate as an official representative of your employer.)

-1 While appreciating the time taken to write this, it is more convoluted than necessary for the real-world situation. Adjuncting is not super high-in-demand, and it may only take an email to the department chair.

@DanielR.Collins, fine, but that didn't seem to match the stated needs/desires of the OP, hence the indirect approach.

Excellent answer indeed. I appreciate your warning about denying a paid position

At a non-trivial number of departments at small colleges there is an ongoing need to have potential adjuncts on file. (My chair is endlessly asking new hires if their spouse might have the credentials and interest in taking an occasional class.)
In those cases it is generally enough to walk into the department head's office and introduce yourself (and think about which departments, you may be able to teach the introductory physics classes as well as classes with more engineering focus). They will tell you what credentials they need to check, and may want to have a mini-interview with some of the other faculty.
How many classes you'll actually get scheduled for is another matter. Until they know you, you'll be queued up behind people they have a developed relationship with.

You seem to be in an excellent position to teach at a community college.  A Master's plus job experience puts you in a strong position.  A Ph.D. sometimes makes an applicant more competitive for the full-time positions, but so would lots of work experience or good teaching experience.
For instance, here is a handbook listing the educational/work requirements for California community colleges, by field.  WARNING:  pdf
Community colleges everywhere in the U.S. hire tenure track faculty with Master's degrees or other credentials, and hire many part time faculty (where they are teaching the community college course on the side).  Community colleges often hire in a way similar to K-12 schools or general state government positions through state job boards.  For a tenure track position you would need to find an open position posted, for a part-time adjunct position, you probably could go directly to the department and ask, or find it on the job board.  I'd guess that this is to a large extent specific to what state you are in, as it involves the state government hiring process.  Some ads may even run in local papers or the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Some generic advice I'll toss out:
You can meet the Dept. Chair (that is probably the best initial contact), ask to observe a class, or offer to teach a continuing education or non-credit elder (such as Osher Lifelong Learning) or personal enrichment classes.  That let's you get some visibility.  Any teaching experience is a huge plus for CC positions.
Look at the district's home page for a job board, there should be occasional part time adjunct 'pool' positions you could apply for.
In the same location (or a state-wide government job board) you might find a full-time tenure track position opening.
There is a possible danger spot:  I've heard that some CCs have a 'prejudice' against hiring their adjunct into full time positions.  I haven't observed that with CC faculty I know (who transitioned from adjunct to full-time just fine), but I've heard it happens in some places.
Here is a nice article on general community college teaching (comments are interesting, too) by Rob Jenkins in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  And another one by him, about getting hired as a CC applicant.

Thank you for your answer. I have a lot to think about. I think I will be fine with part time work. I appreciate the links


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What are the typical steps to be admitted to a masters program later in life?
I graduated from college with a BS in Civil Engineering a bit more than 10 years ago. My GPA was about 3.0, but I think that was pulled up more by some electives and liberals arts classes that I excelled in because I recall struggling a bit with some of the more advanced technical courses and walking away with an A+ in History of Rock and Roll I and II.
Since graduating, I've since tested for and passed the PE exam and am licensed to practice engineering in addition, I've since become a lot more proficient at advanced technical aspects of engineering via practice.
I've never before attempted an application to grad school, but more and more I'm finding professionally that there are a lot of advantages to having a broader knowledge in engineering than the narrow specialization that my BS prepared me with.
What are the typical steps I would need to complete in order to gain admission to grad school. Is it necessary to take the GRE? Would a GPA below 3.0 in technical courses pretty much bar me out?

Be aware that most often a masters programm will give you an even narrower specialization in the related subfield than a bachelors. Just so you don´t go in there with the wrong expectations.

Just apply.  Many schools will be glad to have you.  The web pages of schools to which you'd like to apply will tell you what exams, if any, you need to take.

@JayFromA My understanding for civil engineering is that you can complete a master's program that focuses upon higher level technical coursework. I know in my senior year, I had access to take a lot of advanced classes in different subjects but only had time and permission to take a handful. Thus I ended up leaving with a BS specialized in certain aspects of civil engineering and now wish to return and try my hand at those other classes.

You're right. I think the GMAT's for MBA candidates.

Each university will have its own requirements for all these things, so the place to get answers is with them. They might be different at every place. I don't think the age of your degree will matter too much if you've been working in the field and learning things.
But your application letter should stress your experience, not just your academic credentials. It might be good to mention the sophisticated sorts of things you've worked on. It will always be good to mention what you hope to get out of a new degree.
If you did poorly in major subjects, however, you may have to account for that - not so much why you did poorly, but how that hasn't affected your capabilities since you graduated. I suspect that you will have an interview unless the new university is especially large. Be prepared to speak honestly about your background and goals.


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How well does "Applied Mathematics" cover "pure math?"
Ill be going into my first year of college fairly soon, with a prominent interest in studying and researching (as a career) pure/theoretical mathematics (especially number theory). However, the college I'll be entering only offers an "Applied Mathematics" major, which I understand may be more suitable for engineers, economists, physicists, etc (but my perception on that point may be incorrect). Given this conflict, I have been considering transferring to another university.
My question is: Is an Applied Mathematics major still satisfactory for my interests in pure math, or should I transfer to pursue a major more closely connected with these interests?
Thank you kindly!

I graduated from an "Applied Mathematics" program, but the name was almost completely for historical reasons. Indeed, the classes I took aligned with a standard "Pure Mathematics" curriculum. It is certainly worth asking any (math) advisers at the college whether your interests will be met. The people there are in the best position to answer your questions.

I have a correlated concern.  Most (though not all - good but not exceptional engineering schools are a prominent exception) schools with only applied mathematics departments don't have very good students.  This means, unless the school is small, professors probably will not be able to challenge you sufficiently for you to develop into someone who can get into the top grad school where professors can challenge grad students enough to develop most of them into mathematicians competitive in the current job market.  There are late bloomers, but they are an exception, not the rule.

For undergraduate math, programs tend to be really similar. You do calculus, then multivariable calculus, then linear algebra and differential equations, and you move on to an elementary analysis course and abstract algebra. These are usually what a student does through their freshman year for any math degree (and many for sophomore year depending on how prepared you were).
After you go through these, there will be upper division courses in PDEs, dynamical systems, manifolds/geometry, complex analysis, numerical analysis, etc. I assume that the main difference would be that an undergraduate program with only applied math would have less algebra courses (more courses in ring theory, Galois theory, etc.), one or maybe no upper division number theory course (except maybe a cryptography course in a CS department), and more courses based in modeling, numerics, and differential equations (numerical linear algebra, finite element methods, etc.).
But there's really one way to know for sure: look at the courses they offer. It's always online. Don't look at just one year since the upper division courses tend to be every other year, so look at maybe the last 3 or 4 years. Look at what they offer and ask "are there 3-4 courses a quarter here that interest me?". Look at some syllabuses, crack open some books, look through Wikipedia. Then do the same for places you are wishing to transfer to.

And possibly even zero elementary analysis, if by that you mean a course that involves proofs to a significant degree.

I am going on this example, this example, and this example. I can't (quickly) find a program which only has applied math, but if they don't make you take algebra, it seems they usually recommend it. Same with analysis. But the best way to know for sure is look at your exact case.

I'm thinking more like this.  You're pointing at programs at (very) selective institutions.  I don't think that's what's going on here.

Well if you look at the courses, it's still all there. Abstract Algebra is applied abstract algebra, but look like it has the same stuff. Analysis isn't required but it's there. As expected, there's tons of modeling, numerical analysis, and differential equations / dynamical systems. There's just no number theory course.

However, there is a good bit of number theory in the discrete analysis course, and you can always supplement this with Coursera courses or other online materials.

Applied math is basically applications of pure math. That is, it is the math that is used in "field research" rather than theory.
This shouldn't be an issue for you until at least your junior or senior year. If there are advantages to the applied math program (e.g. it is cheaper), I wouldn't worry about it now. The time to "jump" is one (or at most two) years before you would go to graduate school, when you'll want more pure math in preparation.
Alternatively, take the applied math degree and take a few courses in pure math elsewhere as a "special student" before grad school.

This isn't technically wrong, but I think it is still wrong.  While, technically speaking, the courses that are specific to pure mathematics are upper division courses meant for juniors and seniors, most people who end up in mathematics as a career take them "early" and end up either with a wider variety of advanced undergraduate courses beyond the minimal requirements or with some graduate courses taken as undergraduates.  Reading and writing proofs takes a different kind of thinking, and the earlier and more frequently you are exposed to it, the better off you will be.

(cont) - If your aim is to be a research mathematician, you need to aim to get into a top-40 graduate school, and ideally a top-5 graduate school, because the market is extremely competitive and the quality of your fellow graduate students makes a big difference in your own development.  See for example, http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/94861/what-does-it-take-to-get-a-job-at-a-top-50-math-program-in-the-u-s

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


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Google Scholar: How to search by author's email?
I want to search for paper come from Google, Airbnb and Bytedance etc. (to learn about their machine learning application).
If I search for Airbnb.com, the result would look like this

Some are what I want, but some just mention airbnb.com in title or in content.
How can I restrcit airbnb to email address from authors?
Thanks!

See my answer to a related question here. Basically, Google (and seemingly also Google Scholar) appears to strip the at sign from the search query.
Unfortunately, I think this means Google Scholar is the wrong tool for this kind of search. Some of the better paywalled databases (such as Web of Science or Scopus) allow filtering by affiliation. You can check with your university librarians what resources you have access to.


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Apply for two different Ph.D. positions at same group?
Currently, I am applying for several Ph.D. positions. I have seen two interesting positions from the same group/professor. The requirements for both positions are really similar but the topics are different (but same field). Since there are not that many positions within my field, I considered applying for both positions, but I wonder what the professor might think? The documents (CV, cover letter ...) would be the same and he might think I just copy & paste my applications.
Should I contact him before? What could I say?

Only the professor knows what the professor thinks.  You could ask them or you could just apply for both.

Personally, I would prefer to get one application in which you clearly indicate that you are interested in both of these and also showing your qualifications for them both.
But I don't know what rules there might be at the institution you are applying to or what constraints the PI might be under. So, it would be best to ask first and see what advice you get. It isn't outside the realm of possibility that the PI is delegating the examination of the applications to others for initial assessment.
Alternatively, prepare applications for each separately and when you submit them, do so with a note that you are interested and qualified for both and that the two applications have overlap in some ways.


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Should I always address both PhD supervisors in emails?
I am starting my PhD and have two equivalent supervisors at different universities in different cities. I am going to city A first and then later to B and so on.
What is the etiquette regarding emails? Is it impolite to address emails to just one supervisor even if it's not an important subject like informing that I arrived in city A? Should I always send emails to both of them?

I think that asking won’t hurt. But that said, just because two PIs are jointly advising a student on a degree does not entitle one to be privy to all exchanges with the other. Or put another way: just because you have two advisors doesn’t mean you lose all rights of privacy when communicating with either one of them. Of course sometimes information concerns both, so an email addressed to both is appropriate.

Seems like my day to be thanking you.

I’m quickly learning that it’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing or focusing on a single aspect of a question. Twice today I deleted and rewrite an answer because of it. This ‘quorum model’ seems to be useful. :)

Actually, you should ask them directly. Different people will have different preferences. Alternatively you could start out copying both and then stop if either of them suggests it.
But, it is probably best to keep them equally informed about your progress and current activities.
Questions that are more in the purview of one of them than the other might be directed at the more appropriate person, I suppose.

The answer here of Mario Niepel reminds me that I was only thinking of technical communications, not personal ones.


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Should I mention planned publications in an application?
I am applying for a Ph.D. position but am still finishing my master's thesis. My supervisor and I plan to publish my results. However, it probably will still take some months to be a publishable paper. Probably, I have found a Ph.D. position until then but I might still need to invest some time in my master's paper.
I wonder if it would be beneficial for me to state that I plan to publish my work in the application or if it might rather be harmful because I would create the impression that I cannot 110% focus on the Ph.D.

Generally, "work in progress" is a valid thing to put into a CV and has positive value in an application. Normally the implication isn't that you won't perform the duties of the position you are applying for unless you otherwise indicate that it might.
And, if the doctoral work is, in any way, an extension of the masters level work then it is even more positive.
Moreover, in most places, the two are unlikely to conflict, though if they do, you will need to make choices, but that is a question for the future and for discussion(s) with your present advisor and your future one.
But, it is better to list it than not. Just don't add language that makes it problematic.


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Declining PhD Interview
I have applied to a PhD position some weeks ago. After thinking about the given topic and institute for a longer time, I don't want to do my PhD there anymore. They want to interview me but since I would not even accept an offer, I don't want to do the interview (additional stress).
How can I politely decline the interview?

Incidentally: please decline the interview as soon as you are sure you will not attend it. The longer you wait, the more people have wrapped their schedules around this calendar item, so it's professional to cancel as early as possible. And whatever you do, don't just not attend without canceling - that is unprofessional, and people tend to remember this. Academia is a very small town. (I'm not saying you would ghost them, this is more for the benefit of other readers.)

Don't waste their time, just do it.

Dear XYZ,
thank you for considering me for this position. Unfortunately, for personal reasons I am no longer considering this option. Hence, I have to decline this invitation.
With best regards, clearseplex

In other words, like you would politely say no to any other opportunity - polite, short, and without going into details why exactly you changed your mind.

Yes. Note that it is not necessary to give any reasons.

@Buffy Agreed, but it feels more polite to say "for personal reasons" (which really doesn't mean anything) than to just say "sorry, I decline". Might be my personal sensibility, though.

Actually, I'm agreeing completely with your formulation.  No need to be "specific" about the reasons.

I agree there is no need to be specific.  "Personal reasons" however sounds like personal circumstances (family etc.).  Unless these have changed this would however been a reason to not apply in the first place.  So in that case, it sounds a bit fishy ...  (Maybe "change in personal circumstances" sounds better?)

Another phrasing would be "Unfortunately, in my present circumstances I am..."

@wimi Depends. And that's why I wanted to raise it, as a possible point to take into account. Depends: First on whether this is an individual offer from a professor, or an offer from a university through a committee.  If it is a professor, they will think more than a second: They made an offer, they committed the position to the OP, and they might have turned down other candidates, or put them on hold (risking that they take other jobs).  Second, whether the OP might meet that professor again, or otherwise depend on them in the future. So I don't think the 5 seconds apply in generality.

"Personal reasons" may be interpreted as having something personal against the university or its faculty. I would suggest "personal circumstances" instead of "personal reasons" to sound more neutral.

@user151413 There was no offer of a position; there was an offer of an interview. Nothing has been committed, except perhaps a block of time that can easily be reclaimed.

I don't think "personal reasons" is the right one. That usually means sometihng in your personal life (a death in the family, illness, baby...) This is most likely professional reasons. I think a better formulation is, "After much consideration, I am no longer considering this option". I would also add a thank you, like "Thank you very much for taking the time to consider me as a candidate" or something.

I like present circumstances more than personal reasons. I would think somebody died or something. If you just were prioritizing a different school, and I found out later, I'd think it was misleading.

I don't think you should worry too much about wording, but is "unfortunately" warranted.  It sounds like a good thing to me (you have better realized your direction in life.)

I thought I might give an alternate opinion here: is declining the interview in your best interests?
I am not an academic but I have recently been in the position of having multiple interviews / opportunities where I preferred some over others. What I didn't do was decline to speak with someone, knowing that the interview itself might actually convince me to join the company.
There are many benefits to speaking with them:

The way a person / company interviews a candidate should be part of
your decision making process, perhaps there are parameters you are
unaware of that might sway your decision.
You can get valuable experience in the exact setting you would be hoping to to do well in under the same or similar context even.
An offer from another university may actually improve your odds at landing the one you
want. (stalking horse)

I don't think any apology is necessary.
Actually, I don't think
"unfortunately" as suggested by @xLeitix is necessary. After all,
who are you saying it is unfortunate for? You? No, you don't want
the interview. Them? That seems presumptuous - you are implying they
are unfortunate for missing out on your presence.

My suggestion
Thank you so much for your offer of an interview for blah, blah blah. After thinking about it seriously I have decided that the topic of this PhD is not for me at the present time.
For that reason I shall withdraw my application at this point. I appreciate the time you have given me.
EDIT
See comment by @JBentley. I agree and would change "After thinking about it seriously" with "On considering my options" or similar.

It's unfortunate that everyone invested effort in getting to an interview for the OP to decline unilaterally. Not really a big deal either way

It may very well be unfortunate for the university. The prospective supervisor might not get another student this year, or perhaps the student is extremely good and therefore sought after. Also what @Azor Ahai -- he him said.

Hmm I suppose. To me this is just the cost associated with running a program. Just like in companies leaving a job with adequate notice (but no replacement) or declining an offer is the cost of doing business. Just because someone else volunteered time doesn't obligate you.

"After thinking about it seriously" - shouldn't they have thought about it seriously before applying? IMO the accepted answer is better as it doesn't give a negative impression of the applicant.

@JBentley - You're right. On looking back, I would perhaps substitute "On considering my options", or similar.

Just politely decline the offer? It saves you time and it saves them time so they can schedule somebody else faster. You’ll be doing everyone a favour, just be polite and cordial, thanking them for the opportunity but letting them know you decided to go in a different direction.

OP was asking how to do this, they already knew they wanted to decline politely.

I don't want to do my PhD there anymore.

Okay that's how you feel, but reconsider, for several reasons:
A very smart and beloved Physics professor once told me:

Never turn down a job that hasn't been offered to you.

What was meant is that you never know when you might really like a situation, or a specific professor, once you find out more! Appearances from a distance may be totally different than ground truth.
Is there no chance at all that more information might change your mind? What happened to the reasons that made you decide not to go? Are you simply second-guessing your own intuition?
If you feel it necessary, consider a note simply explaining your concerns, and ask if they would still like you to go to the interview. If it's fine with them, then okay you've been upfront.
If that's even a possibility, then consider the added benefit to yourself of practice. In industry where interviews are "just a part of doing business" it's not uncommon to do the first interview for a job (one believes that) one doesn't want very much. It gives the opportunity practice in a lower-stress situation, and to have some experience before doing an interview for a job (one believes that) one really wants.
That will be a bit less common for PhD program interviews of course.
If there are other reasons one wants to skip the interview, then okay. But if the reasons aren't firm, then consider what's potentially lost by not going compared to what's lost by going, and reexamine why you thought you'd like to go and see if those reasons have really changed.


text:
Listing ongoing grant application on CV
I am planning to apply for a faculty position almost straight out of my PhD. While my CV generally looks very good for my career stage, I have no record of securing external funding. However, I have a ongoing (significant) grant application and I expect a a decision regarding the grant soon after the application deadline for the faculty position.
Is it acceptable to list ongoing grant applications on the CV in this case? I fear that I might need to justify a failed grant if I do not get funding.

My answer is US-centric and my discipline is Statistics.
Yes, you should absolutely list any grant experience on your CV. Be clear about the status: I like to use "In Prep", "Pending", "Awarded", "Not Awarded".
Regarding "I fear that I might need to justify a failed grant if I do not get funding.", this is the complete opposite of the attitude that you should have. Committees will be looking for evidence that you will be able to get funding in the long term. The best way to show that you're serious about acquiring funding is to submit proposals. Everyone is aware that being awarded grants is 1) really difficult 2) very random. In my experience, having a grant submitted which was not awarded is viewed as a very positive thing. It is not a "failed grant": once you have a project description,  you can improve and resubmit in the future. The people who get lots of funding over their careers submit many grants and have many of them go unawarded.
Even having multiple unawarded grants would still be viewed positively. Yes, presumably, if you had submitted 100 proposals and they were all rejected, that would look weird. But so long as you are taking the proposals seriously, it is essentially not possible to have this problem early career.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with "in prep", especially for a grant application.  If it isn't at least submitted, it's a pipe dream.  Even for papers, to many "in prep" entries can signal a real issue.  If the application is viewed favorably, the applicant will likely get  plenty of time to discuss their grantsmanship and funding strategy.

@ScottSeidman "If it isn't at least submitted, it's a pipe dream". It could be a pipe dream. Or it could be that I have the entire 15 page project description/other docs sitting with the preaward office. In situations more similar to the latter case, I think it makes sense to say "In Prep".

Then an intended submission date will serve to make a reader understand.

Yea, "In Prep" (the term) is too broad. It might mean "I have this idea in mind, but have come around to finishing it"

It is fine to list it, but I'd suggest factoring it out into a section titled something like "Work in Progress".
Whether you need to worry about explaining a failed grant application is a judgement call. You might have some information about likelihood or not. But most grants are competitive, which fact people understand.

To add to that, it is helpful to prepare a brief explanation of your work for these grants. If you are rejected, you can explain what you learned from that experience, and if you are awarded the grant, that is even better.


text:
Who should cover conferences expenses for research work done in a lab a researcher just left for another lab?
It would be quite interesting to have others' experience and opinion on what guidelines are followed, and/or would make sense to follow regarding conference expenses for a researcher having recently transitioned laboratories.
It is very common for PhD researchers to do a post-doc in a different lab, and for post-docs to move from one lab to another. In that case, which lab should cover the conference expenses to present the work done (and fully completed) at the previous lab which the researcher just left? Should it be the one where the work was done? If that lab refuses, should the new one cover the expenses or should the researcher give up the opportunity to present his work? Or maybe the new lab should cover the expenses anyways as the researcher is now affiliated there?

Who should, who can, and who does are often different things. As indicated by a comment of mine below, I prefer the last option for my people, and that principle was applied during my various movements.

My perspective comes as a research group manager at a US national lab.
I pay for conference attendance for my people - it is part of their job, and their ability to grow as a researcher depends on attending conferences. Whether they are post-docs or new staff, I hired them in no small part because they were performing work that was at least tangentially relevant to their first assignments. So, I will get them to the conference to maintain and grow their reputation and skills. The cost of registration and travel is really small compared with a loaded salary. And I at least get my institution listed as their current address at the talk.
For post-docs in particular, I tell them that 'the job of a post-doc is to get a job.' The way they will get a (permanent) job is by doing good work, publishing, and presenting at conferences. They need to be visible, have chances to network, and come back with good ideas. So what if the first conference they go to is based on older work? They need to be out there to keep developing, and it is my job to make sure they develop.
Finally, I do this at least partly because that is how I was treated as a post-doc and new staff. That first conference at each institution was based on my 'old' work, but it was at conferences and in areas that were important to my 'new' job. And, my bosses agreed. The least I can do is arrange that for others.
I understand that there may be budget issues in other situations. However, the PIs really should consider if they are being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Good things happen at conferences, for both the post-docs and the PIs.

+1 for the wisdom of the policy, not just the answer.

It's pretty hard for me to imagine the new lab paying. The funding for a lab is, one hopes, related to the work of that lab. It is also rather a lot less than infinite. The old lab may desire to pay for it to get their own work presented, but may not if the researcher is no longer affiliated.
In general, I think this situation may not be covered by established rules and you should approach the lab director for funds. Starting at the old lab if you haven't already been approved. The new lab's director may, contrary to good sense and if funds are closer to infinity, agree to fund the travel if the researcher is valued enough. But the old lab's director might refuse to pay on symmetric grounds since the researcher is no longer contributing to the work. Begging may be indicated.
It may also be that the funding grant for the lab includes travel for presentation. I think this is pretty common. However, the lab director may have discretion over who presents the results. They may be considered as the "property" of the lab, not of individuals. But that probably varies widely.
On the other hand, if funding comes from some common containing organization, the question may be moot.

Thanks a lot for you input @Buffy, I added a couple of words in the post to clarify that the case considered is when the work has been fully completed in the previous lab (and no one is taking over, or at least not yet). Begging is often indeed too common a requirement for non-PI to attend conferences (although highly lab-specific).

With new post-docs and staff, I always pay for conference attendance on the previous work. Attending the conference is probably a good thing (they were hired based on some of that work!) for them, and that makes it a good thing for my group. Compared with salary, conference and travel fees are peanuts. (Context: US national lab).

@JonCuster, good for you. I think a wise choice. Sign me up.

@JonCuster this is a very interesting feedback. As shown from Buffy's comment, the opposite opinion also exists, and it is possible there is no agreement to my question. Intuitively I would have thought the lab where the work was done would be the primary responsible institution for conference expenses relating to that work.

@michael - each PI's budget is different with different pressures. To me, a conference trip is a rounding error in the total cost of a post-doc (i.e. <1%). At universities that is not necessarily true.

@JonCuster Why not write that as an answer?