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Do academics look down on well-designed academic websites?
Rationally, I should not be concerned about building a well-designed academic website for myself. But academic websites are consistently so visually spare and poorly designed that I would feel like a peacock designing the site in any way. I don't mean anything crazy, maybe a web font or a non-#0000ff link.
I realize this is broad, but I'd be curious if others feel this stigma of trying too hard in this area—same probably applies to clothing—and how they approach it.

I have observed that respected academics and advanced students for example in theoretical physics often have a well and clearly structureded homepage, without any features that blink or flicker or whatever. Being well structured, and functional is what makes an academic homepage looking professional and serious to me, whereas crazy colours and blinking features that distract from the content would give the converse impression ...

For example when looking the first time at Warren Siegels page, I wondered if that page is serious as it looked a bit too funny, even though he is a well respected physicist and he offers some good and serious advice apart from his nice  joke papers etc.

Would this be an example of a website that is visually spare and poorly designed? I ask because for me, at least, that website is nearly perfect. Contact information (including snail mail, which often gets overlooked) is not buried somewhere that takes a long time to find, all relevant academic information is given in a way that can be absorbed by a visitor in seconds, and the bandwidth isn't very high (which can be important to people in less developed countries).

@DaveLRenfro, that's a great example of what I mean. The content is perfect, but the style is odd to me: Lack of visual hierarchy, e.g. why is the snail mail address green? Lack of attention to detail, e.g. why is there a giant "?" between "of" and "North"? Weird gimmicks, e.g. that flashing bulb next to the publications. I find this much clearer in terms of visual hierarchy, consistency, and attention to detail. (She's a graphic design, so this isn't fair.) But you might see these details as a waste of time, which is why I'm asking this question.

Here's another example. LeCun is a great researcher, but I would have to actively try to make my website that visually incoherent. This seems the norm, though, and I worry about being subconsciously penalized for not adhering.

The green is probably because that's the school color (I had to google to learn this), but in checking some other web pages in the same department it appears that this isn't something mandated "from above". I thought the question mark was due to my browser not being the most current (I'm at work, where I have little control over this), but since you saw it also I'm now somewhat curious about it. I'm guessing the flashing bulb is a way to draw attention to what most everyone going to the page will want. FYI, the graphic artist page is fine by me too.

I have heard one of the professor in my department stating that it is ok to have poorly crafted website, since that allegedly would signal that you have no time to spare to fix it (which was of course said jokingly, but is one of those joke that might illustrate a piece of culture)

Design is about purpose as well as aesthetics. Certain features of graphic design which are desirable for a "usual" or "general" audience may be less desirable, or less important, for certain kinds of academics

For instance, I regard "visually spare" as desirable, not a bug!

Related: Why are professors' websites so ugly?

This answer by the way seem to indicate some academics indeed think that way. http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/38632/10643 which I find hard to believe.

Is your question about style or design? Because those 90s-looking websites tend to be fast loading, easily searchable, and get you straight to the content. That to me is well designed.

@gwg The website you linked, although being "dynamic" for mobiles, is not nice on my phone. I have to scroll through oversized text for quite some time til I get to the info I probably actually want. Static '90s-style' websites can usually be easily displayed on a phone too. There's zoom.  I prefer my website to be nicely structured, have some well-thought-through layout (I try to mimic LaTeX a bit) but be static, small and mostly jist functional

The arXiv (www.arxiv.org) is visually spare and restrained in its design. It is also useful and easy to use. It even works over a slow connection on a ten year old phone.

For some academics, a well designed website is a testimony to their ability (or perhaps the abilities of the maintainers).  E.g., I've always admired the webpage of Markus Krötzsch, http://korrekt.org/.  He's "head of [a] Knowledge Systems group", and much of the site is generated automatically (it's based on MediaWiki), which I think is an accolade.

I'll offer http://kskedlaya.org/ as excellent design for an academic website. I can find everything I want in a clear way, and it loads in no time.

@gwg: "I find this much clearer in terms of visual hierarchy, consistency, and attention to detail." Couldn't agree more on the consistency part. Whereas the other examples were highly amusing, this website you mentioned is the first one that, due to an inconspicuous body {visibility:hidden;}, displays nothing at all.

@jl6, my question is about design. I recognize that "fast-loading" and "easily-navigable" are important components of good design. But you also agree that "good design" is a multi-dimensional space in which rules like, "All buttons that do more or less the same thing should look similar" or "The biggest text is probably the most important text" or "Unnecessary GIFs are distracting" may also be important?

@user37208 In fact, I have said that several times today.

How much time do you expect people to spend on your academic website? If I go to an academic website it's usually just to find a few quick details and be done with it. I find most professor's websites are perfectly adequate for that.

@gwg I wouldn't call myself an academic but it makes me raise my eyebrows someone calling themselves an expert in computer science (LeCun in this instance) who thinks meta information about a web page belongs in the body, or that css should be commented out with html.

How has the word 'vanity' not come up in this discussion yet?!

The giant question mark is the Unicode Replacement Character, showing up because of invalid coding on the site in question. There's a bug in that website.

I think the reason so many academic web sites are like this is simply that most academics have never learned anything about design, and many learned to create web pages in the days when there was no such thing as web design -- the whole web looked like that (if not worse: http://contemporary-home-computing.org/still-there/geocities.html).

Possible duplicate of Why are professors' websites so ugly?

Funny thing is, that many people in my lab prefer Elsevier over RCS bcs, Royal have good looking jounals!!!

just want to point out that "visually spare" doesn't necessarily mean "poorly designed". "well-designed" also doesn't necessarily mean lots of bells and whistle (in fact, it rarely does). Rather, in my opinion one should ask whether the website layout, color, etc, helps with clarity of the content of the website, allows you to easily navigate and locate the info you want.

Academia is full of people who are deeply passionate about their work but sadly are less than deeply passionate about making an effort to communicate effectively about their work to the rest of the world. That is a bad thing, not a good thing. That is why we see poorly written papers, poorly prepared talks, and why we see poorly designed (or nonexistent) personal websites. Moreover, many academics lack the technical skills and design sense needed to create a good website. Again, that is a bad thing (well, the sky won't collapse because of it, but you know what I mean).
Thus, I think the premise of your question falls into a logical trap of thinking that because something is the norm, it is good. That simply isn't the case. If you know how to build a really good website, and care sufficiently about making your work known and understood by others to spend the time doing it, by all means -- do it (and, of course, if you know how to write really good papers and give really good presentations, do that as well!). Be a leader rather than a follower, and show people the way to improving this somewhat pathetic aspect of academia. It will be a great investment of your time and a good way to set yourself apart from your (perhaps equally talented but less web-savvy) peers, as long as you don't go overboard and spend so much time on the website that it will seriously impact your research productivity.
For what it's worth, I'm not here to promote my own work so I won't include a link, but Google will show you that I at least try to practice what I preach.
Edit: To clarify, as far as the OP's literal question is concerned: no, academics generally do not look down on well-designed academic websites. As I explained above, in my humble opinion you have everything to gain and virtually nothing to lose by putting in a reasonable amount of work to build a clean, nice-looking website that effectively communicates to the world what you and your work are about. Moreover, by doing so you will be serving as a good role model for others and advancing the culture of academic dissemination of knowledge. At least one academic (yours truly) definitely approves of that.

I am not convinced that the problem you identify in your first sentence is the main reason we get "poorly designed (or nonexistent) personal websites", although it is a factor in poorly written papers and talks.

Re papers and talks: I guess by "poorly written" you mean structural mistakes rather than grammar and idiom, where Anglophones have a head start? (Like the webpage, BTW)

@YemonChoi I was thinking of all aspects of poorly written papers that can be improved if the author(s) care enough to put in the work to improve them. That may include English grammar and such in some cases, notwithstanding your correct observation that native English speakers have an advantage in this area.

As for my first sentence, I'm sorry you are not convinced, but I had specific people in mind and stand behind my claim that at least some people don't bother to create a decent website just because they don't care enough about communicating their work to the rest of the world. In any case I don't really understand your objection - would you care to explain why you find my theory unconvincing?

This answer gives some very good advice, which I wholeheartedly support… but it doesn’t answer the question.  The question isn’t “should I try to design my website well?”  The question is “is there a stigma against well-designed webpages?”, which you don’t address at all.

Dan, I think I am unconvinced because I don't think of my website as a way to communicate my work to the rest of the world. I view my articles as the primary way to do that, which is I do put a lot of effort into them. (You might say that I should be trying to reach the wider world rather than merely academics, in which case I would love to hear your explanation of Hochschild cohomology of Banach algebras)

@PLL I think I answered the question, albeit indirectly. To clarify, I don't think there is a stigma associated with well-designed websites.

@YemonChoi ok, I see where you're coming from. Certainly papers are the primary means to communicate our work. At the same time, even people who don't understand Hochschild cohomology of Banach algebras may be interested to know that you exist, that you write papers on that subject, and what other things you do. I see you maintain a pretty nice and detailed website yourself so it sounds like you know that already. Anyway, my main point is that a good website is very valuable and worth the trouble of setting up, and that some very good researchers don't appreciate that as much as they should.

@YemonChoi: I find that students often read my website to learn about what I do. (Indeed three this year even decided that the best way is to read one of my papers!)

As has been stated several times, there is no such thing as a site being "too well designed."  Of course the design should take into account the audience that will be viewing the site—i.e. if you are designing a website gallery for minimalist paintings, it would be very odd indeed to use as many buttons and links as Amazon.com, whereas for an online store that isn't a bad design at all.
However, in my view, the keynote is really not so much design as implementation.
There are two crucial factors: file size (also known as website obesity), and overuse of scripts (which is closely related).
The website you linked in the comments doesn't load at all in my browser, because I have scripts disabled by default.  I enable them for sites that I expect to run scripts, such as gmail or youtube.
I grant that I may be in a minority of the general web browsing population...but I expect a disproportionate number of academics are aware of such things, and are more likely to be irritated by websites which require plug-ins, scripts and high bandwidth simply to display a bunch of text.
Do your design as well as you please, but try to keep it as minimal as possible on bandwidth, plug-ins and scripts.

(Note: My own personal settings aren't the main topic of this answer, but as several people have made noises of shock at my default blockage of scripts, I'll clarify: I don't block first party scripts that are served by the actual website I'm visiting.)

Yes, you are a minority. Unless you're highly paranoid(i don't want the facebook to know my every online move!) or still running on a 56K modem, nobody runs their browser without JS. And there's a huge difference between "scripts"(JS, used mainly for UX and oftentimes for tracking) and plug-ins - the latter require a specific user action and that's amongst the reasons Flash and company are dead. Every normal website out there uses at least a little bit of JS, and some of them are entirely written in JS. Like.. do you have any idea how much lighter an AJAX call vs a full-page reload is???

@AdrianTodorov I believe Wildcard is concerned as Richard Stallman explains in his "The JavaScript Trap" and the development of librejs. I myself have add-ons that block scripts by default but enable them as necessary. If a website works without them why would I enable scripts especially when many of them are simply tracking and collecting your online behavior. I'm not debating here but I it's the users right to know & accept or not something being run or downloaded on his system.

To be more precise, @AdrianTodorov, I have third party scripts blocked by default, along with third party plug-ins and cookies.  CSS and images are allowed from third parties, and scripts from the site I am visiting are allowed.  These are the default settings for the uMatrix Chrome extension.  This isn't completely relevant to the question but may be of interest.

@Wildcard, that's a bit better than the initial impression you gave, but it's still.. exceptional. You must have noticed how many sites(StackExchange includes) use CDNs or dedicated domains for said CDNs to serve all static content, js included. I can't imagine it being very convenient for general purpose web browsing, so i'd still say you're in a minority

While this answer offers good justifications for keeping a website simple—FWIW: (1) simple and well-designed typically go hand-in-hand in my experience, and (2) my website does not use JS—I'm a little surprised it's the most upvoted answer. I think we can say with confidence that the average academic does not design their website with security and latency issues due to JavaScript being a principal design criteria. And a minority of users disable JS, on the order of 1%.

Of course it's a minority. I also block scripts by default in part because of a rash of JS bug exploits in the wild when I first did it. It's partly about attack surface and partly that I'm always secretly hoping to be highly entertained by blog posts about graceful degradation / progressive enhancement that don't display until I enable JS on the page. I freely acknowledge that I'm creating an inconvenience for myself, but the question isn't really about whether I'm a Luddite to do so, it's about whether the questioner's page might be judged by Luddites whose high opinion he craves ;-)

@Wildcard "The website you linked in the comments" doesn't load at all in my browser, because I have scripts disabled by default. Yep, it's bad when one line of JS completely hides your page: $("body").css("visibility", "visible");. Well, it's actually the CSS doing it. But c'mon, seriously!

@djechlin, do you think the kind of undesigned minimalist academics' websites the Original Poster is asking about would have the necessary bandwidth reduced at all by using JS?  For static HTML webpages?  I don't think so.

Sorry but, there is no sane excuse to blocking JavaScript by default.

@Wildcard: a static HTML webpage will be useless when offline, unless you have the whole site cached. A page with js menus will still work offline because it is a single piece.

@MartinArgerami, a very good point.  But, they still don't have to be served by some other domain.  See my clarifying edit at the bottom of the post.

Agreed.--------

@AdrianTodorov Quite a few web browerses for the blind don't work will with JS.  If you are teaching you should have a site that students with disabilities can use.  The site should be navigatable without graphics or JS

@Q the Platypus: Not to mention that a lot of style & design will disappear for those of us who implement CSS and/or scripts that force web sites to appear the way WE want to see them.  This can be as simple as a preference for white text on black background (with no background images, please!) in a legible font and size, or as complex as making it usable for people with disabilities.

Well-designed isn't quite the same as appropriately designed.  A simple example demonstrates this:
An academic puts up a publications page with links and full titles/author lists, everything on one page.  It takes a bit of scrolling to get to the bottom, but find-in-page can instantly show you whether they've written with a certain co-author, or used certain keywords in the title.  But the page looks old-fashioned (raw html) and the lines are too wide on modern monitors.
The university forces¹ everyone onto pretty, standardised webpages through a CMS.  Line lengths are optimised for reading, but there are only 10 publications per page, and author lists are truncated with "et al." automatically.  No "search this author's publications" feature is implemented to make up for it.
Which would you rather use if looking up a potential collaborator? (If the academic keeps on top of such things, ORCID or ResearcherID can make up for this, Google scholar generally can't unless their name is very rare)
¹They turn off the server hosting the old pages and anything else they don't lock down, so anything non-standard wouldn't be on the university's domain.

You make a good point here, but the "pretty, standardised webpages" you describe sound anything but well-designed to me. I'd argue that pretty and nicely formatted do not equate with "well-designed", and that "well-designed" and what you refer to as "appropriately designed" are really more or less the same thing. The ideal website will be both pretty and functional, or (to the extent that those two characteristics may be in conflict with each other) find the optimal compromise between the two. You are of course correct that certain not-so-well-designed websites overly favor form over function.

@Dan: yeah, they aren't really better-designed (certainly not for the goals of the original author), but they may well be better styled, and I think from the question it's reasonably clear that the questioner is talking about a bit of style. The examples they give are font and link-colour, they aren't proposing to create the perfect UI before which nations tremble ;-)

@Dan I interpreted "well designed" from a graphical design point of view given hints in the question, rather than an engineering design perspective (which is more my thing)

Lots of mathematicians are not especially organized. Also they will want to code their html by hand, and tend to program in a "well, it works so it's good enough" fashion. Some mathematicians have webpages that are full of weird flashy things, some are spare and minimal, some have bugs (and of course some are well-designed and visually appealing).
But no, no mathematicians will look at a well designed web page and say "Why did they waste all this time making a nice webpage?"

I'm not sure that I agree with the last point. There are for sure people who will think that a lot of time polishing a website is a waste of effort.

@Eoin: I agree that such people exist. However, I think the relevant point is: when such people look at a website, is the first thing on their mind usually the amount of effort that must have been put in? Or is this more likely to be an afterthought?

@WillR The moment when they start thinking about the design of the website, usually, is when they can't find what they need.

no mathematicians will look at a well designed web page and say "Why did they waste all this time" ...  are you sure?  Example of coders intentionally making an annoying-looking page specifically to make a statement that many people care too much about what web pages look like.

And from a certain point of view, a website that doesn't break for 20 years is pretty efficient. "Nice-looking" and "maintainable" website designs might even be anticorrelated.

In general, no.
Many world-class academics (especially younger ones who find this sort of thing more fun) have gorgeous websites.
I think that relevant points, in addition to your analogy with clothing, which speaks to a common lack of concern with superficial appearance, are

These people are almost certainly capable of learning to build a website, but many don't see the benefit. Academics become masters of efficiency, and not all require pretty-looking websites to further their aims. A simple web page is often the easiest thing to maintain.

Academics are suspicious of things which are oversold, spun, or otherwise made to look better than they are. While this might not make them think poorly of shiny websites (provided they have content), it goes a long way to explain why they are so tolerant of less-than-shiny ones.

I actually think it's more than this. Having a badly designed website (as opposed to a well-designed or bare-bones one) can be a chest-thumping pose, as if they're saying "I'm so important that I don't need to have a good website." Similarly, a rockstar academic might go barefoot in the department, or bring their children to their seminars, or unicycle to work, just in order to show that they can.

True, but I'm not sure what that implies about how they would view a person with a nicer website. I think that they wouldn't be impressed, but I don't know if they would look down on you, if your work was otherwise good. Plus, if you are trying to make yourself look cool by being sloppy, you need some square to be compared against!

Your question is not only too broad and opinionated, but it is also formulated in such way that it is quite difficult to answer, in general. Simply because there is no universal definition of what attribute "well-designed" means. It could mean different things to different people. There are no clear and universal criteria for judging whether a website (or any other object, for that matter) is well designed or not and, if Yes, how well. Certainly, there are various heuristics and checklists for assessing the quality of design of a website, but they are not universal at all, as each criterion's weight is strongly dependent on the context, which, in this particular case, includes goals of the assessment, the website's audience, the assessor's judgement, the layout and essence of the site's content.
In addition to the above, the academic audience is likely to pay more attention to the essence of a website, rather then its design (unless it shows a clear disrespect to potential visitors - in a form of poor spelling, offensive language, excessive use of advertising, frequently appearing mailing list pop-up windows, extremely bright or dis-balanced colors as well as accessibility, readability and navigability issues, among others).
Having said that, I don't see any reasons for why academics would look down on a well-designed academic website (provided that it is somehow determined that the website in question is indeed a well-designed one). That is, of course, unless the site contains irrelevant or poor quality content.

Academics websites are usually not intended for people who like to browse, discover, or just look for interesting stuff on the web. Or perhaps I should say: the purpose of academics websites is not so much to have an "online presence" but to provide simple information: mostly contact details and publications.
I don't think I've ever been to one of those minimally designed, HTML-only websites of academics and experienced a problem that a better-designed page would have solved. That's because the typical interactions I perform is this:

Open the page.
Click on "publications" / CTRL-f for "publications".
CTRL-f for the paper I'm after.
Hope for a PDF link.

Done.
That is: in 99% of the cases I go to these pages with a very specific task in mind, and the minimal, everything-on-one-or-two-pages design is absolutely appropriate for that task. After I found what I was after, or didn't find it, I'm off their page.
And that is not because I'm not interested in their work -- but the main means of learning about the research of these academics is through their actual publications. Their web presence is only a means to an end.

When the web first became popular around the mid 1990s, many computer experts learned HTML, and they learned that different web browsers can make the same HTML look different.  There were some efforts to spread the word that web pages should be about content, and that web designers should not try to exert much control over what the web page looks like.  For instance, using an <H1> header tag may have different effects with different browsers.

I don't mean anything crazy, maybe a web font

You make it sound like "a web font" is a simple thing.  Some people tried to use different fonts by having web pages download graphics that contained pictures of the letters.  When support for fonts started to be supported by Internet Explorer, I recall there being significant challenges from common font files being unsupported by certain web browsers.
A lot of companies figured out that paying customers frequently liked pretty websites, and they could have such sites by getting "graphic designers" to be in charge of website design.  Such people were often familiar with creating advertisement materials on other platforms, and so they were used to having lots of control over how things looked.  They favored making websites that specified customized looks for everything, leaving very little room for a web browser to apply a different default setting than another web browser.  Such control often involved loading more files, creating a slower web, and creating websites that really didn't work well on anything except for certain configurations, like computer screens that were over 12 inches tall and 800x600 (or larger, especially after typical technology improved over time).
When mobile devices, like phones, became far more popular, then suddenly a lot of professionally-created websites, created based on tons of assumptions, had problems.  You might be surprised at just how many of these academics' websites kept working just fine, because their simplicity permitted lots of flexibility with browser rendering.  Of course, the people were created atrociously beautiful websites had years of experience calling themselves professional web designers, so they actually benefited from the problems experienced by their creations, because they managed to have a built-in excuse for asking people for more money.  After all, new web page designs were needed to accommodate mobile devices which have grown in popularity.
I, for one, appreciated the simplicity of having most websites use hyperlinks that are easily identifiable by having underlined blue text.  You seem to have a differing opinion, and I'm not trying to pick a fight about the topic.  (Such discussion may be more appropriate for the webmasters.stackexchange.com site.)  I'm actually just trying to answer your question.  To recap, my answer was: simplicity.
I would rather have websites that can be loaded quickly and rendered quickly, easily parsed by automated tools like web spyders, so I can just find the desired information and move on.  Although one of my websites has some more functional CSS than what I've encountered on most sites, many "scrap" sites are hand-coded and use minimal formatting.  When I do use formatting, I tend to use browser tags like <H1> and <STRONG> rather than trying to tinker with how the site will look with a specific browser.  If you don't like how my site looks in your browser, then the most appropriate way for that issue to be fixed is for your browser to render things differently, not for me to waste a bunch of time trying to impose a specific look (which you happen to like, and which other people may not).

@NajibIdrissi : Does such a size hamper significantly? Well, not extremely intolerably.  But the wait does hamper, noticeably. The bytes may transfer fast, but I find browser rendering can also take a noticeable amount of time. Not counting ZIP files, my fanciest website that I've spent the most time recently designing contains 36,701,692 bytes in 1,339 files = 27,409.7774 bytes per file, including a font. The 300KB you cite is over 10 times that size. Downloading a page from my remote site takes under one second (including rendering time). It can feel faster than many more-graphical sites

@Najib Idrissi: In response to your first sentence, yes, much of the world wide web is frequently pretty unusable with some of the connectivity available at certain times.  Google's front page used to be faster.

I went possibly a little overboard with the CSS on my own website and worried about this for a while. But all of the comments I've spontaneously received on my site have been positive.
As the comments suggest, I'd say as long as you prioritize straightforwardness in navigation, layout, etc., you'll be fine. If your site feels too much like a gimmick or a web-based game, then sure, your colleagues might get exasperated and/or start wondering if you've put too much time into that rather than your research. But as long as your site is easy to use and doesn't take half an hour to load, it should go over well, at a guess. (There may be field-specific factors here. I'm in linguistics, where enough people do programming that pretty websites aren't unusual.)
In particular, my opinion is that a bit of whimsy is okay if it isn't the only way of using your site. I have one colleague who has a fairly prominent CSS rotating cube with site-internal links on each face, but those links are also available via a conventional menu-bar. Another colleague of mine has a nifty little box with upcoming events scrolling through it, but the thing sits at the bottom of the page and isn't a crucial part of the site.

Would you be willing to link your site?

"Looking down" on a well-designed website, whether academic or not, would be a severe character flaw, maybe caused by jealousy, by generally being miserable and hating nice things, or by other inadequacies.
There are many academics, so surely some will have this character flaw, but I wouldn't expect it to be more common among academics than among any other group of people. And since it's their character flaw, I wouldn't worry about it.
If you can create a well-designed website, and it is worth the effort relative to the benefit that the users of the website experience and your pleasure at having a nice website and hopefully positive feedback, then go for it. If it's well designed and someone looks down on it, that's their problem and not yours.
I think if you see academic websites that are not very well designed, the reason is not that the person responsible doesn't want a nicer website, it's because either they are not very designing websites (which is perfectly Ok, I want my brain surgeon to be good at brain surgery, not at web design), and perhaps that in their estimation, the cost / benefit ratio of good web design is worse than for you. If you like creating web sites and someone else hates it, then to you the cost is a lot lower. Spending eight hours on something you enjoy is a lot cheaper than spending eight hours on something you hate doing.

I think the main premise of your question is false. A visually sparse website is not inherently a poorly designed one. A website has to take its target audience into account.
The average person who reads this type website is likely not going to be all that impressed by CSS3 skills, even if your personal website is as basic as just a bunch of HTML, a person reading it can still get all the information he/she needs from at and with that it can fully serve its purpose.
The form has to follow function and when your function is simply to have a set amount of information set to a broad audience then a 'visually sparse' website may still be fine.
Then again people can have different views on web-site design. You may think of a website in the same manner as what certain people think of there work clothes.
It is the way in which you portray yourself to the outside world and that portrayel is important. I cannot say that your view is actually all that much wrong, it is just different strokes for different folks, I guess.


text:
When publication A cites B, should I cite A or B?
Let's say publication A has a nice overview of a topic and cites B and C sources to back up a few important points. Should I cite A, since it provided me with B and C? Or do I have a responsibility to read these citations? What if B is a 40-page, esoteric paper that I am unlikely to read. This seems like a rabbit hole, and I'm not sure how far down my due diligence should take me.

You would need to read/skim it to make sure A (was correct! and actually cited B in the correct context).

It really depends on what your due diligence is, to be honest. So it can really vary depending on the paper, discipline, etc. If you're speaking about something really essential to your thesis, make sure you've got a seminal work cited (and you really should read it), but otherwise it's up to you, however deep you need to go to find the basis of the model/concept/etc.

If you have not read the original source, you should cite it as (Original 1990, as discussed in Secondary 2005), or something along those lines. It is preferable to read the original source, but whether it's necessary depends on the level you're writing at. If you're writing for publication, you should read the original unless it is somehow impossible to find or if it's technical in a way that would require developing an entire new skill to understand (ex. proofs in math/logic). If you are writing a course paper, the bar is lower—ex. obscure notation, esotericness, even a simple lack of time.

Whenever possible, you should try and cite the original source to make sure proper credit is attributed, especially if the original work is not well known enough to constitute "textbook material". For example, you can probably skip citing Einstein's original paper on special relativity and cite a newer textbook instead, where current standard notation and more context to the theory is provided.
Some times citing the derivative work can add to the discussion in the way of a simplified treatment over the original, further clarifications, notes on implications, and so on. Keep in mind that original work is often obscure, may not yet incorporate terminology or concepts that became mainstream after it was published, etc. In these cases I would recommend citing both the original and the derivative work. In my own papers I have used sentences such as "... our treatment is based on the theory presented by Doe and collaborators in their seminal paper [1], later reviewed more pedagogically by Smith [2]." Some journal editors will ask you to remove citations if they think they are redundant. This usually applies to obvious cases such as "... according to literature sources [1-25]..", but I guess an occasional picky editor might ask you to remove some of the references even if you're using them reasonably. In that case you need to judge by yourself if its worth insisting on keeping all the citations.
To summarize, when it doubt, I think it's best to err on the side of inclusion and make sure 1) that due credit is given to all the authors that deserve it and 2) that previous work you rely on for your study can be traced back following the items provided in the list of references.

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text:
Can I improve a project after submitting it to a CS conference?
How much can I improve a project after submitting it to an academic conference in CS?
Recently, I submitted my first conference paper. The work is honest, but it was rushed due to getting promising results only a few days before the deadline. Furthermore, the process of trying to justify the work helped clarify it in my mind, and there are experiments, baselines, and comparisons I now believe I need to run to be more convincing. Is it standard to keep working on a project until the reviewers respond, such that I can say, "Thank you for such and such feedback. We are now including such and such an experiment/table/figure to address this concern." The writing could also be improved, but I'm not sure what is an acceptable number of modifications.

Regardless of what you do, make sure you keep a copy of the submitted paper. You'll want this when trying to understand the reviews.

There's a saying that "a published paper is just a progress report". So definitely yes you can keep working on it.

No one can stop you from becoming smarter ;-).
In CS it is not uncoimmon, that you submit a first version of an algorithm / system etc., and improve it afterwards which might lead to the next publication.
In your specific situation it might be a good idea to include the optimizations in the revision, as long as you do not change the overall algorithm / experiments etc which would invalidate the review process. Wording and grammar issues can always be corrected.
I would suggest to wait for the review, adress all reviewers comments, and maybe you can use your newer results / ideas to do so.
Furthermore, you can always add additional information in your presentation. "In our paper we had the following results, but changing xyz led to even better results as shown here". Many people would consider making a new paper based on the optimized results, but without knowing your project it's hard to give advise whether it's a good idea or not (personally, I'm not a friend of incremental publishing).

Any new results could be saved for a journal version

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How can I carefully find out if a professor's work is well-respected within the department?
I am a first-year PhD student interested in working with a professor at my university. I have had two nice meetings with him and liked the project ideas we discussed.
But a student told me that he thought the professor's work was derivative and mostly hyped. I asked my academic advisor (a professor who suggests courses to take, answers questions, etc.), who agreed. The thing that stood out from his answer was: "Yeah. Professors talk about other professors, and ..." Which suggested to me that this was not a solitary opinion. The advisor's point was, without being primed, essentially the same as the other student's: the work often seemed like a rebranding and slight modification of other people's work. FWIW, my academic advisor is the research advisor of the student who first warned me. I didn't tell them what they each said, but I can assume they have talked.
Anyway, now I am wary. How can I better judge for myself, given that I am too junior to honestly know if the work is derivative. The professor is quite young but has been publishing in the top journals/conferences in the field.

Seeing as the title specifies "within the department", I would say you already have. Looking at what their students have gone onto, and where they've published will undoubtedly be more insightful, but it's not an "answer" to this question, as asked.

It's almost certain that your advisor was the source of his student's opinion, so I don't think you can read anything into them both giving the same opinion to you. (Though you say "I can assume they have talked" so I guess you've already taken this into account.)

Be careful.  Professors can have a low opinion of other professors based on nothing but subfield.  Where I went to graduate school, many of the mathematics profs looked down on the statistics professors, but the latter did perfectly fine research and graduated many successful students.  My funniest recollection of this was when the department probabilist felt the need to tell everyone he wasn't a statistician, so that the math faculty wouldn't look down on him...

Be aware that (the professors in) "the department" may be fairly disconnected from the professor's work. Unless we are talking about a very big department, chances are the professor in question is the one professor who is the head of the one institute that does research on topic X, with the sum of all institutes in the department more or less covering the entirety of the field. For instance, in a CS department, there might be a professor with expertise about compilers, one about theoretical CS, one about web-based architectures, etc., but none of them will be particularly knowledgeable ...

... about the work of the other professors, except for possible small overlaps of some subtopics.

First of all, every academic has their own opinion of others' work. Just because a student (or your advisor) thought that someone else's work was not significant does not necessarily mean that it is the truth. Although your advisor cites "others" in relaying his opinions, maybe your advisor and the professor in question hate each other, maybe the department places little importance on the professor's work, etc. On the other hand, note that if the professor is publishing in the top journals, then there are some people who think that your professor's work is great also! The point here is that most of the time, opinions are subjective.
There are a couple of ways that you can judge someone's work, being junior.
The first is to see how their students do after graduation. Look at their recent students and postdocs, and see how many remain in academia. Did they manage to secure good positions? Are they productive with research? These are good indications of whether your professor's work is derivative or original.
Secondly, talk to the older grad students or postdocs. They have been around the field long enough to understand what work is important, but not long enough that they are straightforward with you. Talk to a lot of them, and see if there is a consensus, although it would be difficult to get a fair sample!
But most of all, do what interests you! It is good to have an influential advisor, but unless you really believe in your work, I don't think it matters too much whether your research is important or not.

+1 for "Look at their recent students and postdocs, and see how many remain in academia."

"They have been around the field long enough to understand what work is important, but not long enough that they are straightforward with you." Should there be a "not" before "straightforward", perhaps?

"Look at how their students do after graduation"... I feel like this might be an indicator, but in a more indirect manner than you'd initially expect. Generally speaking, better professors end up with better students in the beginning, so of course their students will generally do better. So yes, it supports what you're saying but very much worth noting the indirect self-selection effect here.

@CaptainEmacs, is remaining in academia really the goal of academia?  What about getting an excellent and productive job in the field in which one has been educated?

@Wildcard It's just an example. An excellent and (from the candidate's point of view) attractive job is perfectly fine as an indicator. Mehrdad, as for better students attracting better students - yes, of course, that's one reason to go to a group, not necessarily the prof alone.

Publications at top journals/conferences are a major accomplishment and an indicator that his work is seen as significant, at least by the community of his research area.
People from other areas may be generally inclined against that area for various reasons, including a more fundamental/pure stance of their own area (relevant XKCD). But that is a fact of life that one can easily live with, especially since the academic job market does not show a particular trend towards more fundamental/pure research.

How can I carefully find out if a professor's work is well-respected within the department?

Talk to the dean or director of graduate studies in your department.  Your department has a responsibility to guide you in choosing an advisor.

Would a dean really tell a student that Professor X's research is rather shallow or considered such by many? I mean, outside of clear-cut cases where X is a quack and his work is built on obvious errors. How much depth and novelty an idea has is notoriously subjective and hard to know; I have seen several fields for which it has been questioned, and I find judging them far from straightforward. I certainly wouldn't expect a dean to volunteer their judgment on such a complex question to a stranger.

@darijgrinberg - A stranger?  The student is part of his or her flock.  The dean can gently steer the student away from the candidate advisor if need be.

Okay, maybe some will do so (though "gently" always incurs a danger of being misunderstood). But the professor is also part of his or her flock. And the student could always snitch to the professor... I'd personally be happy if deans would be open like this, but I'm not sure how often this is actually the case.

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Conference rebuttal: can I add results?
I have just received my reviews for a paper I submitted to a CS conference. I would like to address the concerns of the reviewers, but doing so would require adding new results. For example, if Reviewer 2 says, "This method looks great, but it lacks X and Y evaluations", am I allowed to perform that evaluation and say, "Thank you for this feedback. We totally agree. We have run X and Y evaluations and can include it in the final copy."
I can do this extra work, but adding such evaluations would represent a modification to the final paper—in my case, probably adding one plot and one table of evaluations.
I've only submitted to journals before, in which case the above was the norm. In the context of a CS conference, it is not clear whether or not I can modify the paper in this way.

You should check the conference's policy on rebuttals.
In general, you can add results in the rebuttal, but they may or may not be ignored. A rebuttal should be equivalent to a minor revision, not a major revision. That said, there is not much harm in trying as an author to promise more in the rebuttal.
The problem is that rebuttals sometimes promise amazing improvements to the paper, but there is no way for the conference program committee to evaluate the promised improvements before making an accept/reject decision. So the general policy is that authors should ensure that the original submission is up to scratch and not rely on the rebuttal to make major improvements. Reviewers are instructed to evaluate the submitted paper on its own merits.
In your case, the reviewer has explicitly asked for something -- that is a clear license to provide it. If space allows, you can include that in the rebuttal and promise to add that to the final version of the paper.

Good advice.  Also, rather than saying "we have run this evaluation and we will include results in the final copy" (without specifying what the results are), it might be more helpful to say "we have run this evaluation and our results are (summary / headline numbers); we will include details in the revised version".  They still are free to ignore it, as you say.

This may depend on the conference. You can contact the program or conference chair for guidance. However, I suspect that the answer will be yes. They want high quality papers presented in the conference and in the proceedings, which is why you get reviewer feedback not just an acceptance/rejection decision.
But don't expand the length of the paper too much or change its structure more than necessary. If you do, it may need additional review, and then you run up against conference deadlines which might result in rejection.
But it is the committee that decides these things, not consensus here. Ask.
And it is probably best not to think of the changes as a "rebuttal". Disputing the referees is a bad choice to include in a paper, though I realize you aren't suggesting that. Revisions is a better way to think of it than rebuttal.
But note that the referees are offering advice, not instructions. You are free to accept or reject that advice. But you should neither just ignore it, nor dispute it (in the paper). Just use the advice to improve the paper as you see fit.

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Can I exclude papers from my CV/Google Scholar when my contribution was marginal?
Years ago, when I had no academic experience and no sense of what constituted authorship, I worked as a software developer in a biology lab whose PI was very generous with authorship. If you gave another student some analysis code or met with them a dozen times to get them up to speed on a new project, you were listed as an author on any subsequent paper. For example, a year or two after I left this lab, I got an email notification about an accepted paper from this lab that I was n-th author on. Why? Because I had helped a summer student a handful of times—maybe half a dozen meetings, less than a few hours of work. I didn't speak up because the PI had an outsized impact on my application to graduate school. While I wondered if he was being too generous, I didn't actually know what constituted authorship, and it felt safer to just ignore the issue.
Now I'm nearing the end of a PhD in CS/ML and considering postdoc or research scientist positions. I've developed my own research taste and collaborated with others who are much more rigorous and intentional about what academic authorship means. I've learned a lot. This biology work (1) is not in my field, (2) clutters my CV, and (3) is embarrassing to discuss since my contributions are so marginal. This problem is compounded by the fact that a few of these projects are well-cited. One paper has nearly 2000 citations. My contribution was to help write the documentation (it's bioinformatics software). It has nothing to do with my chosen field; my contribution was non-technical and uninteresting; and yet it dominates my Google Scholar. It's plausible that for the rest of my career, this paper could be at the top of my Google Scholar.
Ethically speaking, can I exclude these papers from my CV? Can I delete them from my Google Scholar? When I was in college, I mowed lawns, but I don't put that on my resume because there's nothing to talk about. I wonder if the same rules apply even to papers that you're officially an author on.

This and its linked questions partly address half of your question.

I do not know the answer to the Scholar question, so I won't answer, but 1) consider that CS/ML standards of authorship are not the same as biology, and 2) including them in your CV shows a breadth of experience. It sounds like you were not outwardly fraudulent, so why not keep them? Do they come up in discussion that frequently?

Can you? Yes. You are free to curate your Google Scholar page as you wish, and you can easily re-title the "Publications" section in your CV as "Selected Publications".
Should you? This is probably the more difficult question. I don't think your case is that unusual: I can think of a few people who have publications from 'a previous life' as a scientific software developer or lab technician before they started their PhD. I don't think anyone is misled by their publication lists - there's usually a fairly obvious transition into a more focussed area around the time they started their PhD. This is all the more true in the case of a CV, where (presumably) your pre-PhD employment is already itemized. I think people are far more likely to wonder why you have omitted certain papers than wonder why you kept them in.
I would argue that you should keep everything on Google Scholar. It is fundamentally an interface to a search engine, and users landing on your page may come with a variety of motivations. People can always 'sort by year' if they want to find your recent work. The only people who would seem to be seriously inconvenienced by you keeping everything are those who want to judge you solely based on your citation statistics - and do you really want to make their lives easy?
For a CV, the obvious choice is to explicitly divide your publication list into two sections: pre- and post- PhD commencement (or perhaps "Publications in < main research area >" and "Other publications", if that's a neater division). This would seem to strike a good balance between completeness and offering an acknowledgement that not all your publications are equally relevant to your current career. In circumstances where you need a 'short-form' CV, you might then compress the "Other" section to a brief summary sentence, perhaps with a link to a full listing on your website.

For anyone else reading: I made two changes. One, I created a "publications" page on my website with "Select publications" and "Other publications". Second, I changed my link to Google Scholar to point to the sort-by-time view, making my more recent CS/ML publications come to the top.


text:
How to more effectively read papers?
I just started my Ph.D. and am trying to participate in a couple reading groups. Often, these groups will cover 2–4 papers a week. Upperclassmen seem to have no issue staying up-to-date and informed, but it typically takes me 2 hours minimum to digest a paper and probably something like 3–4 hours to really start grokking the equations. How can I read papers more efficiently?
I assume part of the answer is just practice. After a while, I will get faster. But are there any habits I can form now that will help?

Are you moving in to a new area? It may take a while to get immersed in a new field.

Yeah. I was a software developer before starting my Ph.D. and the readings are typically in computer networks and machine learning.

So, you have some catching up to do. If in another month things aren't going a lot quicker as you recognize the basics instantly, then you might have an issue.

2 hours minimum to digest a paper — Wow.  That's one or two orders of magnitude less time than it takes me to digest a paper.  What's your secret?!

Simply continue reading papers and going to your reading groups.  When you first start graduate works (which includes reading papers), it feels overwhelming.  When you first start, 2 hours isn't uncommon.
A couple of things I learned about reading papers
1) Quickly read through each paper first (to get an idea of what is presented), then read it more carefully.
2) Print it and write questions in the margins.
3) Give yourself a set amount of time to study each paper.  Once that time is up finish noting down things you do not understand and move on.  Bring your questions to the reading group.
4) By "upperclassman" I assume you mean students that have been studying for their PhD for a while.  If possible, arrange to read the paper with one of these more knowledgeable students.  They will be able to guide the inevitable self study you'll need.

I've been following your suggestions this week, and have been better at keeping up with the suggested readings. I think the key for me is actually step 3. It is easy to always want to understand a problem more fully, but just timeboxing really forces me to get a high-level understanding. I can always read it again in detail if it is directly applicable to my research.

I would also add to step 2: go to a quiet place and read with your cellphone and laptop turned off (or on quiet mode/closed).

Yeah - I should have mentioned making sure your study time isn't interrupted.  This can be a pair of head-phones or simply waiting until most people in the department have gone home for the day.


text:
Is it unprofessional or a bad idea to use my department mailing address for personal mail?
I will start a PhD in another city next month, and I need to update my address with the USPS, my bank, and so on. Since I'll be living in graduate housing and expect to move a few times during the program—say I take a summer internship, and graduate housing assigns me to a new room the next academic year—, I would like to make my permanent address my department address. Is this unprofessional or a bad idea? I would be receiving credit card statements, junk mail, and everything in between at my department address. Alternatively, I could just keep changing my address with the USPS every time I move.

It might be disallowed by your department so you should check that first.

Check with the department/school first.
In general for use of any work address:
For something like receiving a single package, it should be fine.
For something like receiving regular mail on a daily basis, no you should not do this.  Besides the issues of policy, there is an increased labor of the recipient to deliver your personal mail.  There may be delays.  And, normally these boxes are in a partially-public area and subject to theft.
I've been in situations like this, so I got a PO box once and a private mailbox company another time.

Yes, I have seen a range of policies.


text:
4th year phd in BiomedEngineering - How do I maximize my chances of getting an assistant professorship in my hometown?
Preface: I know

how how difficult is to get any professorship
that i should write really good research papers etc...
that its not smart to plan on this and only this

My hometown is middle of the country, only 2 universities in my field.
Help me out, how do I maximize my chances of being near my family and getting my ideal job?

You should try to generalize this a tad more. For example, instead of "in my hometown" you can indicate in "my preferred geographic location." Some people, for example, might want to go to another geographic location that is not their hometown.

As to starting off, in your statement of purpose, you can indicate your connection to a certain location as being the inspiration for you pursuing the field.

Take a good, hard look at the research being done in the department, and the specialties of the professors. Are there any subfields where the department is weak? Are there cross-field collaborations that could be done, but aren't? Is there an emeritus or soon-to-be emeritus professor that will leave a gap in coverage?
What you're looking for is a niche that you can fill.

One you've found specific gaps to fill in your own department, take a look at how you could get experience in those areas by post-doccing at a more prestigious university ( or even industry). A lot of selection committees require that candidates have moved around during their training. Also ask your current supervisor what the department looks for when they do selection committees for new professors.
Then take a long, hard look at your situation and decide whether it will even be feasible. You will have less than half a dozen shots at this, and the competition for every one of those will be steep. If your primary goal is to stay in your home town, make backup plans for if the professorship doesn't pan out. Look into becoming a lecturer, or staff scientist, or working in industry in your home state.


text:
Can I do a phd in germany after an Online master's degree in the uk?
I am currently working in Germany and I will do my master's degree remotely from England. When I asked those at the university where I will do my master's degree, he said that the diploma is equal to the master's degree at the campus. However, what kind of problems do I have in the online master, will it be a problem for me to do a phd or MBA after this master?

Short comment: When wishing to pursue a PhD in Germany, the primary concern is typically funding, and acceptance into the PhD program normally follows from that. While Stephan Kolassa's answer is spot-on regarding the latter, for the former, it may be different. In particular, most PhD students hold "scientific employee" positions while pursuing their doctoral studies, and the first concern should be whether the degree counts for the hiring process of such a position. Check "https://anabin.kmk.org/" for a first estimate.

This will probably depend hugely on just what university you are doing your master's at.
In any case, whether a given foreign degree is accepted as a prerequisite for a Ph.D. or other program is up to the receiving university:

Für die Anerkennung zum Zweck des Hochschulzugangs, des Zugangs zu weiterführenden Studien wie auch für die Anrechnung von Studien- und Prüfungsleistungen sind die Hochschulen zuständig.

Universities (Hochschulen, so also universities of applied science, formerly known as Fachhochschulen) are in charge of acceptance [of foreign degrees or diplomas] for purposes of acceptance to study or postgraduate programs, as well as of crediting of foreign studies or examinations.

So your best course of action is likely to talk about this directly with any university you are interested in applying to.
It's a good idea to start this process as early as possible. First, because German bureaucracy can be glacially slow. Second, because they might be asking for additional information. Third, because they might answer with something like "no problem, as long as X", and you might still be able to address any preconditions X right now, rather than finishing your master's and having to do X afterwards, potentially losing time.

I want to add that master's degrees obtained in the EU are recognised within the EU. If you are not hung up on doing it in the UK, there are other EU universities offering remote courses. Consider, I would consider Ireland too ;).

thanks for your informativ explanation :)


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Should I mention the number of followers of my blog in my SOP for grad school?
I maintain a technical blog (posts are in direct correspondence with my interested field of study) which has around 150000 followers. I have two questions:
(a) Do I mention the number of followers in my SOP/CV?
(b) Would mentioning the fact that I maintain this technical blog have any impact in admissions? (or do I even mention the blog in my CV/SOP?)
Thanks !

(a) There is not harm in mentioning it. Of course, how they interpret it is up to the department. In my cohort (social sciences), there was one student with a blog that he runs that generates quite some views. I am sure he included that (views) in his application.
(b) I would imagine it can only have a positive effect on your application.

I could imagine a negative effect, if the committee thought that work on the blog might interfere with graduate work. To have built up 150,000 followers suggest a fair volume of material.

I would concede that it may be field/topic dependent but at least in my field and the two institutions that I have been in: such public educational projects were definitely viewed positively.

I'll clarify - I didn't mean that it should be considered a negative, just that it is conceivable that it could raise some questions. Somebody with 150,000 YouTube followers is likely putting up fresh content on a pretty regular and demanding schedule. Somebody else who has developed some really cool software tools, not so much...

But a technical blog with 150K followers is much more impressive than a cosmetology/dance/unboxing YouTube channel with 150K followers.

@JonCuster At least they have to do relevant work for their blog. They could well be windsurfing or skiing every weekend or competitively practicing some sport. All of this would take a lot of time. The blog is at least a relevant hobby.

@skymningen I'll second that. I think to an assessor, it would also demonstrate very clearly a passion for the subject and a self-starting attitude to getting projects off the ground.

@skymningen - anybody capable of focusing on one skill in life is capable of focusing on another. The skills of time management transfer. You might be surprised how many professionals (science or otherwise) participate in time intensive activities like sports or music at a high level, and have done them for their entire life. Don't diss what others do just because it isn't your cup of tea.

@JonCuster I did not diss anything others do. I rather tried to make the point to not diss someone on a relevant hobby as a negative because they have to spend time on it because many others (including myself) do have similarly time intensive hobbies that are just not relevant and thus not mentioned in the SOP. I wanted to offset the "negative effect" you imagined. Most people in the committee probably have hobbies. Compared to all the irrelevant things an applicant could be (and should be) doing, a relevant hobby sure is not seen as a negative by a committee of academics (with hobbies).

@skymningen - I'm sorry you thought I was trying to diss anyone - I did stress above that I didn't think that the blog should be an issue, but did see how it could be an issue. However, your dismissal of hobbies (like windsurfing) as not 'relevant' for those in academia is quite short sighted. For those that do them, they are often seen as necessary to being creative and productive in their field, regardless of how many 'followers' they may have. I will gladly take on a post-doc who played a collegiate sport as an undergrad - they clearly know how to manage their time.

I would mention the blog, for sure, especially if it is relating to the Topic of studies. It lifts the CV more than pushes it down, as it shows that you are genuinely interested in the field as well as devoted to started projects (it is not easy to keep a blog!). Moreover, you could mention it as an experience in communication with the masses and depending on an Institution you are applying to, it might be a huge benefit, as professionals who can communicate their topic to the public are very much wanted.
To mention the number of followers is up to you but I believe if the person reading your profile will be interested in the blog he/she would ask you to tell more about it during the interview, if they do not ask/mention it, most likely it is not important for them. So keeping the numbers to yourself might be an advantage as it would not irritate not interested ones.
At the end all that matters is how you manage to show it as an advantage that would help you in the position you are applying for.
Good luck!


text:
Are there professional grant writers?
I've personally witnessed a talented scientist spend a lot of time writing more than one grant for pretty specific geochronology work. On the question that spawned this one, a discussion broke out on my second-hand answer, and I wonder if there is a career in designing and writing grants for focused specialties.
Like a wedding planner for the physical sciences.

They are common in nonprofits outside academia.

I wonder how the economics of that would work out for a university.  The grant-writer would need to have similar scientific knowledge to the PI, and not only be paid less than the PI, but less than the lowest replacement cost of the PI's activities (e.g. less than paying an adjunct to teach one of the PI's classes, to give the PI more time to write grants).

Universities usually do have an office to assist with writing and submitting grants, but those staff don't necessarily have a scientific background in "focused specialties".

Isn't grant writing part of a professor's job?

@OlegLobachev "writing" as in generating research ideas, yes. Writing as in filling in obscure forms, not necessarily.

@NateEldredge I was speculating on that. I think the writer's salary could be paid out from the grant itself. Though this may make the writer's work at-wrisk, and grants may frown on paying for work done from before the start date.

@joshperry: Maybe.  I know that in at least some cases, it is forbidden to use grant funds to pay anyone (including the PI) for past or future  grant writing.  Of course, the university could pay it out of indirects (this is often how the grants office is funded).

For H2020 submissions in Europe, there are many companies specialized in improving a grant proposal, and managing administratively the project if it gets funded. Such projects have to have several partners (both academic and from industry) from several European countries in their consortium.
In particular, because H2020 requires (see this template) a chapter like Impact (on the European economy or society) on which academics are probably not the best to write about. Sometimes that chapter is written by industrial partners of the H2020 consortium.

which one would you suggest

I'm not the best at suggesting one, and that would be a matter of opinion, and probably depends upon the particular H2020 call you are submitting to

As stated in the comments, yes, they are common outside of universities. Big for-profit research shops (e.g., Lockheed, Raytheon) also have them. It's actually more cost effective to pay technical writers than to have the well-paid scientists spending their limited time on this. Similarly, such companies typically have also an "art department" just for the graphics in proposals and reports -- system diagrams, logos, etc. (separate from whatever CAD software they use for technical drawings).
I've never worked with either of these myself, but my understanding is that the PI is still responsible for the proposal and everything in it -- they generate the ideas, approach, etc. -- the technical writer is just translating the ideas into proposal form (and wrangling with Microsoft Word -- not all funding agencies accept LaTeX!).

"translating the ideas into proposal form": and into English, in the case of the grant writer I know socially, who is a native speaker living in Spain.

"not all funding agencies accept LaTeX!" D: Well, at least I learned something new again...

@SK19 - it gets worse when you get to cybersecurity-related stuff -- some of the agencies require you to access their site using Internet Explorer in Windows (the least secure browser in the least secure OS) to access Government sites that have invalid certificates (such that modern browsers refuse to load them because they're insecure) -- in order to load security-related stuff! What a joke...


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What should I do with a bad dissertation from a good school?
I am a Ph.D. student who is at most two semesters away from graduation at one of the top institutions in the field. My field is not well-funded and can be highly competitive, and I am especially concerned because my dissertation is not very relevant to the field I am interested in(I wrote/presented/am on the way to publish some other research papers that are more relevant to the field of my interest, but these are unrelated to my dissertation), and because I find it very uninspiring and uninteresting; it is based solely on a meta-analysis and not on any actual innovative research.
I am not intending to publish the dissertation, since I feel that the additional work needed to submit will be simply a waste of time, and I do not want bad research papers to be associated with my name.
What should I do in order to still look for a postdoc with a bad dissertation? Should I simply give up on academia and attempt to find a different career path?

I think people hiring you for a postdoc will be far more interested in your published papers than your dissertation. They won't know if it's good or bad, as they are very unlikely to even read it.

A good dissertation is a done dissertation. Just get it submitted.
As another person commented, what you do for your postdoc does not have to be directly related to your dissertation. Having done a dissertation just shows that you are capable of research, writing, and going through the process of peer review. I'm sure many people never read the dissertations of the postdocs they hire.


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How to publish and protect IP when starting a company
I'm a PhD researcher at a U.S. university who has developed a new deep learning method for an application with a high potential economic impact. I have a pending patent and plan to start a company to commercialize the method. I also aim to publish the work in a relatively high impact journal, but I am worried that the editors/reviewers will require me to release my code to the public. In most cases, I believe open sharing of code in research should be done. But because I'm starting a company, I can't risk releasing my code/model to competitors. Not only will it hurt my competitive advantage, but it would also put off potential investors.
How should I proceed with publishing, given the circumstances?
Are there any examples of successful companies who navigated this path?

I imagine if you’re going to publish, you’ll have to describe the algorithm, or a sketch of it, at least, otherwise you’d be publishing on a black box. I don’t think you’ll be required to make source available.

What does the patent reveal? Remember that will be public.

These are good points. The patent and paper will describe the method, but I am trying to avoid releasing my specific implementation. I am comfortable revealing those broader details even though it will allow competitors to develop their own implementation. It's a trade-off I am willing to accept in order to contribute to the scientific literature.

Hire some good patent/IP lawyers. That is your main protection, though trade secrets and trademark can help as well. But "publishing" is to literally make public, and you have to satisfy any publisher that you reveal enough so that reviewers can trust your claims. That doesn't mean publishing your code, necessarily, but if claims aren't backed by evidence then they are less likely to be published (by a reputable house, at least).
The lawyers can advise you if you have sufficient patent protection for the life of the patent(s), but they eventually expire.
And, don't forget that reverse engineering is always a possibility for any "product", especially in the LLM AI era we are now in. But if competitors know how you do things they are still bound by patent.
And make sure you are covered internationally by those patents.
Finally, note that IP law has the intention of supporting the public good, not just inventors. That is why copyright and patent rights are time-limited.
Talk to your lawyers about what you can and should publish and what you should hold as trade secrets. It ain't free, of course.


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Does having qualifying exam subjects on my transcript help? (Math)
For context, I am a international (undergrad) student in mathematics willing to apply to a pure math PhD program in the U.S. this year. Recently I've been interested in commutative algebra and algebraic geometry, and I'm planning to take graduate courses in algebra/commutative algebra and intersection theory this upcoming semester. On top of this, I was initially planning to take a course on smooth manifolds, but recently I felt that first of all I might not have enough time to prepare for all the midterms/final exams, and more importantly I have learned the subject material by myself and I do not want to spend more time going through exercises again to prepare for the exam. Instead, I want to focus on practicing commutative algebra/homological algebra.
The reason I'm hesitating is that a graduate student friend of mine currently in a U.S. institute told me that having qual courses on my transcript (in this case smooth manifolds) would really help in the whole application process. When it comes to PhD applications I know that there are no definite answers, but I want to know if this is true from a committee point of view, heuristically speaking. Any information would really help.

Doing well in any advanced courses, whether intended as preparation for qualifying exams or not, is a plus. But you need to do well in them, not just have them on your transcript.
Note, also, that in the US, admissions is broad based, not just GPA based. In particular, good letters of recommendation are important. The writers who are best are probably those you have worked more closely with than just having taken some advanced course with. "Mr. Lee did well in my manifolds course." isn't enough.
If you are as advanced as this question suggests, consider doing a research project with some professor. Their letter would hold more weight if you do well, even if it doesn't result in publication.
Also note that qualifiers will differ somewhat between institutions and among subfields, though probably less in math than in some other fields.


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What is the workload like when being a volunteer reviewer for NSF?
For those of us who have volunteered to review grants for the NSF, what was it like? E.g.,

How much time did it take for you?
How many proposals were you asked to review?
How long were the proposals typically?

I'm particularly curious about NSF-MPS and NSF-CISE, but any information would be helpful.

What is -MPS and -CISE?

I was recently a first-time reviewer for an MPS panel.  We were each given 10 proposals to review individually, over 2-3 weeks before the panel meeting.  Proposals are strictly limited to 15 pages for the Project Description (plus additional pages for the budget, etc, which the reviewers don't need to spend as much time on), and most of the proposals used all 15 pages or nearly so.  I found they took me about 2-3 hours each, on average, to read the proposal and write my review.  They got a little faster as I got the hang of it, and I expect that if I'm on a panel again in the future, it won't take as long.
The panel meeting itself was scheduled for 3 full workdays over Zoom, but in our case we were able to finish in 2 days.  Each proposal is assigned a "scribe", a member of the panel who is to take notes of the discussion of that proposal and write up a summary, and so there was some extra work in the evenings of those days to write up my assigned summaries.
All in all, I would estimate I spent about 40-50 hours.  Again, it would probably be somewhat less if it wasn't my first time.  My advice would be to clear your schedule of anything discretionary for 1-2 weeks before the panel, and clear it completely for the days of the panel itself (cancel other meetings, get substitutes for your classes, etc).
By the way, it's not technically "volunteering" because you do get paid: at the time for me it was $600.  That's if you are participating virtually over Zoom, which I think everyone on my panel did.  You also have the option to travel to Washington DC to attend in person, in which case I believe they pay your travel expenses instead; that could be good for networking if most of the rest of the panel is doing the same, but otherwise is probably not worthwhile.
You can work out for yourself what the hourly wage came out to be, but at least it'd cover a nice weekend vacation afterwards, which you'll probably need once you get caught up on your regular work which accumulated during the panel.

Over the many years of reviewing, I've typically estimated that it takes me ~4 hours on average to read a proposal and write a good review. Indeed, the days of the panel, you have to clear your schedule and be present.

This agrees with my experience, though I agree with @WolfgangBangerth that it takes me slightly longer to read and review a proposal well.

What is MPS? ..

MPS = Mathematics and Physical Sciences

I reviewed for CISE recently. I had, IIRC, 4 proposals to review. Reading and writing the review takes me about 3-4 hours per proposal. I try to split them in chunks of 2 hours, as it is intellectually demanding, especially when not exactly in your area. The panel was 2 days, over zoom, and you need to clear the schedule for those days, essentially. They are long, tiring days, and a bit alienating, as 8-hour zoom meetings can be. On the other hand, they are really informative about what the community finds interesting.


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Decision after 13 months without any peer review. Do all Wiley journals have such a slow review process?
The first time I submitted an article to the journal "Software: Practice and Experience". It took a month and a half to make a decision. It didn't get to peer review. Only the decision.
The second submission took much longer (over 13 months). The journal is "Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience" (again, Wiley). I submitted the article on December 1, 2022. The decision was made on January 16, 2024. Again, no peer review. I wrote to the editorial office several times. They replied that they cannot find reviewers. At some point, the editorial office stopped responding. I didn't even know how to withdraw the paper to resubmit it to another journal.
Finally, after more than 13 months, it was rejected without review. I received a response from an Associate Editor. And all this time, after numerous emails (when I asked about the current status, and I was told that the paper was under review and they were looking for reviewers), in fact they weren't going to review it at all.
I've never encountered anything like this before. How common is this? How can I withdraw a paper for resubmission to another journal if it is stuck in such a situation?

"they weren't going to review it at all": it is quite possible that they did try to have it reviewed, but all potential reviewers they asked declined (or ghosted the AE). You can always withdraw your paper simply by notifying the journal. (Keep a paper trail if you do so.)

Editors all around have been finding it difficult to find peer reviewers. Studies of peer review indicate that a lot of people don't pull their weight in peer review (that is, review 2-3X as many papers as they submit) and the rest of the people shouldering the burden for little professional credit and no financial compensation are sick of it.

@BryanKrause: plus, if you do a good job reviewing, you get "rewarded" by getting asked more often. People who do a bad job do not get asked again. The incentives are bass-ackwards.

Also worth noting that Wiley bought Hindawi, a borderline predatory publisher with a lot of problems. Publishers like Hindawi and MDPI have massively increased the total number of papers published through special issues and permissive editorial policies. They really suck to review for because the work submitted is often low quality but the journal just wants it published so they can get their fee. I don't know if any of the journals you mention are former Hindawi properties but that might be another reason reviewers are hesitant.

@Stephan Kolassa: But what if the editorial office stops answering letters, as in my case? Maybe I should have tried a different address...

You don't need to receive a response to a withdrawal request. I'd wait a little time to be polite and then move on. Stephan recommends a paper trail so that if the journal claims you never withdrew you have the receipts to show you did.

@BryanKrause: That's probably what I should have done (notify about withdrawal).

@ BryanKrause: In the case of Hindawi, you will receive an email after 4 months stating that they were "unable to secure reviewers". I had this multiple times with Hindawi. This can even happen during peer review as they claim that the previous AE became "unresponsive". At least you do not have to wait 13 months...

I think that this is an exceptional thing. It can happen but it is very rare. Maybe the editor has long time health problems or something like that. I don't think it has to do with the publisher. The editor should have a strong interest to avoid situations like this.

@ChristianHennig: I wish I knew the real reason then. I would completely understand health problems or some other explainable ones. In the decision they said something like it doesn't fit the journal. I.e. the same reason they could give within a week or two after the submission (as it usually happens). So they could just say the real reason and I would accept that with no problems...

Very unprofessional works by the journal. If they didn't find referees in a month or two, they should immediately let you know that and return the article without wasting time

@BryanKrause both of the mentioned journals are long-established, decently respected computer science publications. They're not marginal things that came from Hindawi

The time taken to peer review is highly random - it depends on a lot of things, such as:

Whether the editor assigned to it is active
Whether the reviewers you invite the first time are available
Whether the reviewers are able to write a review within the deadline
Whether the editor is free to make a decision once the review is done

Therefore you should not draw any conclusions on "all Wiley journals" based on one or two papers. Many Wiley journals won't share any editors or reviewers at all. Even if they do (i.e. they have overlapping scope), because of the highly random nature of peer review, it's very possible your next paper is reviewed quickly.*
It sounds like what happened to your paper was that they tried to find reviewers for it, but repeatedly failed. This doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Only thing you can do about that is write more interesting papers so people are more interested to review it (very helpful advice, I know).
*An exception applies to MDPI journals, which tend to be very fast because the journal staff (not editorial board members) handle the reviewer invitations. Full-time editorial staff speeds up peer review by a lot because they will react immediately when a reviewer decline, and continuously invite reviewers when they don't respond. This shows in the fact that MDPI's average reviewers invited are 2-2.5x more than other journals. The tradeoff is that review quality is relatively poor - last I looked there's a roughly 50% chance your paper is reviewed by someone without direct subject expertise. But don't listen to Bryan Krause when he says things like "the journal just wants it published so they can get their fee". The great bulk of these papers also have waived APCs, and there is no fee.

It's just among many journals, in all my cases where a paper has been rejected before review, it happened within a week or two. Only two journals have taken more than a month, and both from Wiley. Maybe it's just a coincidence, I don't know. This particular paper is somewhat "boring", but I'm guided by what works have already been published in journals, so this one seemed to fit the journal. But even if a paper doesn't fit a journal, the author shouldn't have to wait 13 months. I was under the false impression that review was ongoing and it was worth waiting for, but it wasn't the case.

What happens at MPDI journals is, in my opinion, much worse. So even this unpleasant experience is still better than MDPI (and similar predatory or semi-predatory publishers).

@Dmitry I'd recommend against drawing conclusions based on a sample size of two. As for whether the review was ongoing - it's very common to say a manuscript is under review once it passes desk review. Some publishers distinguish between 'reviewers invited' and 'under review', but that's not a reliable difference because the publisher cannot tell if the reviewers are actually reviewing the article until the review is submitted. 'Worth waiting for' is even more difficult because I doubt even the reviewer knows if the review is worth waiting for, until they read the article.

I also highly doubt you know what happens at MDPI journals - most people don't, including me (and I had years of experience in publishing) - so I'd recommend against drawing conclusions on flimsy data.


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What methods to contain in an abstract?
It is my first time writing an abstract for an assignment and I am wondering if I need to include all of the methods used within a piece of research. I understand I don't need to include every tiny detail of the procedures, however say if the research has multiple methods used, e.g five different individual types of psychological tests administered to a participant and only three of them yield significant results, should I include them all? Should I instead only include ones that I report in the results section of the abstract i.e significant findings. Many thanks.

Usually when requested to write an abstract there are parameters like word limits, section titles, etc. if this assignment did not include parameters then it is left to your discretion. You can find published manuscripts in your subject area for examples. Once you read a few you should have a good idea of what to do. Typically, I describe the results the most and would suggest describing the methods that are unique the most and summarizing the steps that are not. Focus on novelty, results and implications. Keep the intro short and sweet.

A good abstract provides brief information about the article and does not hide anything. The goal is to attract other scientists who are searching the literature to read the article. And here it is necessary to state that even information about methods that did not bring results is desirable information. So you can put it in the abstract. However, if the names of the methods are too long, then only listing those that have produced results, would be sufficient.


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Can I transfer my PhD to another university (the university's offer I had rejected)?
I am doing PhD (1st year) at University X and my advisor hasn't been finalized yet since the professor working in the field in which I was interested didn't have much funding. Now I am left with the option of either working with another professor whose area of specialization is different or working in collaboration with other 2 professors. Given the circumstances and their field of work, I am not sure whether to continue with PhD at X.
However, before joining this university I had an offer from a professor at University Y(in whose work I was interested) but I rejected his offer to go to my current university.
Should reaching out to him for readmission can be an option?

It never hurts to ask. If you can ask the question on academia.se, you can just as easily send an email to the professor at Y and ask about this. Good luck!

Yes, you can reach out, but your chances might not be great for lots of reasons. He may not have an opening at the moment. And he might question your dedication. Nothing is certain. But you can ask. Don't burn local bridges in the meantime.


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Evaluation of withdrawing an article undergoing Editorial Decision after two rounds of peer-review
I am reaching out to seek your advice regarding a situation I am facing with a scientific article that I have submitted for publication. After undergoing two rounds of peer review, my article has now been in the editorial decision phase for approximately two months. In the system, I have read favorable opinions from the three reviewers involved in the process. However, I have not yet received a final decision from the academic editor, despite my attempts to communicate with the editorial office.
Given this scenario, I am considering the possibility of withdrawing my article from the current journal and submitting it to another. This is the third scientific article that I have submitted, and its publication is crucial for my doctoral studies.
My specific questions for the forum are as follows:

Is it advisable to continue waiting for the editor's decision under these circumstances, or would it be more prudent to withdraw the article and submit it to another journal?
In case I opt for withdrawal, what are the ethical and professional implications that I should consider?
What are the experiences of other colleagues in similar situations and what course of action did they find most beneficial in the long term?

I appreciate in advance any guidance or shared experiences you can provide.

“Attempts to communicate with the editorial office” —- what is the specific nature of those attempts?

If you have email for the specific editor, ask them for an update, mentioning that your degree is possibly at stake.
But withdrawal, which is your right until you sign over copyright, will only delay you. If you submit elsewhere the process starts over with no guarantee (or expectation) that it will be finished quickly.
I'd think your best bet is to try to keep communication open. Had the reviews been negative, withdrawal might be more reasonable.

Yes, if you are working with a specific editor, you might try emailing them through their work email rather than through the editorial system. It can be perceived as a bit pushy, but every conversation I have had with an editor indicates that your situation is one where they would be forgiving of a bit of pushiness.

They just rejected my paper. I have been contacting the editorial office to inquire about my case. At first, they told me that the decision was being delayed due to the Christmas holidays. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote to them again and they told me to keep waiting. Finally, today they notified me that the paper is being rejected for editorial reasons. Well, time to submit to another journal.


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faculty final interview
I had a full day faculty interview, after three weeks i requested a follow up to department chair he replied this" I hope you are having a good week. I'll be in touch within the next week or so to let you know of our decision. We are currently reviewing applicants and should make a decision in the next few days. Thank you and all the best." what should i expect? since then one week passed no reply. Is this a rejection?

It means what it says, no more and no less. Do not try to read the tea leaves. More details in the linked thread

Where are the threads ?? I mean links?

It is not a rejection. There is no point in not making a rejection known past a self-imposed deadline.
Usually, a number of candidates are invited to campus. Schedules are difficult to make as the candidate needs to meet with a variety of people, so it could be that a single candidate is invited per week.
After all the interviews are done, a decision is made on the order of applicants, the cut-off, and then the applicants above the cut-off are contacted in order. The first one in this order receives an offer with the request to make a decision soon. If the first one does not accept the offer, then the offer goes to the second one, etc. Often, people who receive an offer might have other offers or are waiting for an offer from a more favorite place.
In effect, you have to expect for some time before you know whether you will get an offer or not. Unfortunately, if you are deemed acceptable, but are ranked low, e.g. they would take you but you are not the favorite candidate, they want tell you this because you might go away before they get to you, in which case they might not end up filling the position. Not filling a position is not a catastrophe, but it is quite bad.

Good answer.  Similarly, I'd explicitly point out that you can feel free to apply for, interview for, and potentially take other jobs if they don't make you an offer.  I've had industry experience and sometimes some of the job offers I got came in late so it's clear I wasn't the first choice.  However, it was good for me to be able to take such offers, because often one needs some job!

Thankyou so much! I agree


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Hearing back for job outcome
I have given interviews at two colleges in August but still not getting any email for decision? Not even rejection. At one place I inquired to a member of search committee and he said no official information is available but he said you lack experience of medicine teaching. But the head of search committee just replied to my inquiry that they have slowed down the process because of semester load so they will keep me updated. What should I assume?

All you can assume is what they have said explicitly. You haven't been rejected. Don't neglect to follow up on other opportunities.
The information from the committee head is probably a bit more important than from an arbitrary member, but only they know.

As I've mentioned in response to similar questions: we can't be certain, but if you haven't heard back from a recruitment committee after two or three months (since August), depending on the country, your chances are likely low. The common reasons for such delays are usually that the hiring committee ranked you lower and has already extended an offer to another candidate. While they wait for that candidate's acceptance, they haven't yet ruled out the lower-ranked applicants. In some institutions, even candidates who have been ruled out don't always receive a formal rejection notice due to various reasons, such as lack of organization or a cultural tendency toward non-transparency.
The information from the arbitrary faculty member is usually more reliable than that of the committee head: the latter is bound by regulations and other commitments of confidentiality, while the former isn't (or isn't aware of those) and is probably extending their honest opinion and internal knowledge.

But I am frustrated why can’t they just tell and send me rejection letter. I am waiting to hear back from two places.

Usually, they are lazy, or disorganized. I agree this shows some form of disrespect to those rejected, and is not okay.