text:
Mental health tips for transitioning from PhD to postdoc
I finished my PhD in physics in the middle of last year in the UK, and have started my postdoc in Germany. My PhD had a lot of guidance and I met with my supervisor every week, but it's totally different with my postdoc. The big thing is that my postdoc is not a fulfilment of a specific grant for an experiment or project, but is a general appointment and gives me total freedom to do what I want. This means I have to be totally self-motivated, but unfortunately I'm just not. I have work to do, but it just isn't happening, and it's almost physically painful to even consider doing it. I'm not alone in this country, I live with my wife, which helps a bit, but I do miss living in the UK too. My postdoc here is for 3 years at least.
I'm proud and happy with my PhD work, but this totally undirected self-motivated career is pretty crushing. Combined with working from home due to the pandemic, and having no regular meetings with my new boss, who seems to be letting whatever happens happen, it is difficult. When I was in my PhD my old supervisor mentioned that he went through a similar depression when he started his second postdoc which was similarly unguided. How on Earth do I make the transition? Is this normal?
I also have strong feelings of guilt: I'm being paid for this, yet I'm too lazy to actually work, and yet my wife is out there working a lot as a mechanical engineer.

Does your supervisor know of your struggles? They definitely should, as it would give them the opportunity to adapt their supervision style.

It might be a good idea to specify the field. (For instance, 25 students and 4 postdocs in one research group might be common in some fields, while it would be quite extreme in some other fields.)

Then let me rephrase: Does your boss know of your struggles? They definitely should, as it would give them the opportunity to adapt their management style. Even if they are very busy, they would certainly rather see a productive version of you than an unproductive one, and might be able to help with that.

I recommend that you talk to him about it as soon as possible. You have nothing to lose - seeking therapy will take a lot of time in which will you will stay unproductive. By being unproductive during your postdoc, you will not get a positive reference from him and will not have chances to get a good follow-up position. By seeking communication and support early, there's at least a chance for that.

Well, my point is that your boss might not feel bad about your work performance now, but if you keep delaying this conversation, there is a greater risk that he will feel bad about it because it's then to late to steer the course in a better direction. Good luck!

Have you considered that maybe research is not for you? I consider your situation ideal, in particular of having the intellectual freedom to do whatever you please, within your domain of course. Most postdocs are just a PhD on steroids where you are hired to perform a specific project written by PI. Maybe a few months break might help you take some distance and figure out if you are passionate about developing your own research. There are many other jobs where you are told what to do.

@subassembly Herman is not suggesting that you are not good enough, Herman is asking if you've considered if another type of job is a better fit: something you would actually be happier doing. Academia tends to trend towards more and more independence: post docs are more independent than PhDs, professors are more independent than post docs.

@subassembly I think there is a feeling in academia that research (specifically, academic research) is everything. The reason is because you're surrounded by people doing research, and it's hard to see the outside world from there, where most people are doing something very different. There's a culture in academia that people who stay in research are succeeding, and people who leave research have failed. That's just a culture, not a truth. I don't think Herman seeks to shame, the advice was instead to consider all options.

@subassembly you have missed the point of my suggestion. You are probably good enough because you have completed successfully your PhD and was hired by a professor who is very likely important considering the size of your research group. I'm just suggesting that a more "directed" job might be more suitable for your personality. I had a friend who was in a very similar situation, a very smart guy but that could not work independently, he needed to be told what to do. Maybe you can try to work in the private sector so you can make comparisons.

Please don't vandalise your post (it's useless and it would be restored anyway). If you really wish it, you can ask to have the post disassociated from your profile. See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/96732/how-do-i-remove-my-name-from-a-post-in-accordance-with-cc-by-sa

This sounds like classic burnout. It is a common occurrence after an intense degree program. The solution is to find a mental health professional who can give you advice.
Advice from a layperson may be helpful or not. But some things help, like getting exercise, taking breaks, getting enough sleep, taking up a hobby...
Anyway, yes, it is pretty normal. "Toughing your way through" is probably not optimal. For most it will probably clear normally over time, but you don't have a lot of time to be catatonic.
Talk to a pro. The university may be able to provide one for you, though I don't know the custom in Germany.

Your university should have counselors available. If you don't feel comfortable asking around, they can probably be found at the human resources portal. Good luck!

I disagree, this is not necessarily "burnout" at all, and there's no obvious reason that a mental health professional is needed. Working independently is really difficult. Perhaps you are not yet ready to do it. Contact your advisor and ask what she's working on; ask if you can be involved; ask if you can meet semi-regularly (fortnightly?); attend local seminars; if one doesn't exist organize one yourself; find someone else local and ask if you can help them with a problem they are working on; email your old PhD supervisor and ask if you can continue working with them; the possibilities are...

...endless. But you need do to something. I went through a very similar phase at the start of my first postdoc, I tried to work "independently" for a couple of years, which basically meant I produced nothing for 2 years. I should have sought more collaboration and intellectual support.

I'd leave these kinds of definitive rulings out to a mental health professional who talks to the topic starter directly. Something's worth talking about, so let them figure it out.

First, I do not doubt that Covid and the personal and professional isolation of working from home (in a foreign country) have some impact here. Getting the help Buffy suggests is highly recommended.
Second, looking back on my post-doc, I moved from the US to The Netherlands and took up a similarly unstructured post-doc role. I was pretty independent already, had lots of ideas, but it was not clear what I should do, exactly. What I decided to start with was jumping in to help the students make progress - I knew the research techniques and analysis tools quite well, and was a better writer/editor than they were. I also knew that I did not want to 'compete' with the students on ideas and projects. So, I helped a lot while I continued to contemplate what I could take on as my own. In the first few months I didn't personally get much done, but the students did. Lots of data (theirs) to discuss, ideas to bounce around, papers to write (and rewrite, and rewrite). And I got to know the students, and everyone else in the institute really well (staff, technicians, the coffee lady).
I also decided that I needed to learn Dutch since I lived in The Netherlands, so started taking courses. That got me out of the institute and meeting a variety of people, and got me feeling more comfortable at coffee time when everyone around me started speaking Dutch rather than the English used for science. I could schedule squash games with other players at the local club. I was no longer felt like a tourist, I lived there (in retrospect, I should have played tourist more).
Once I felt I was part of things, I started getting new ideas, could plan out new experiments, and got motivated to get things going. I could 'play' again in the lab and get excited about things. In some ways I am reminded of the section in one of Feynman's books when he went to Cornell after the Manhattan Project and felt really burned out until he saw a spinning plate in the cafeteria and started wondering about the mechanics of it even though it wasn't 'heavy duty' physics, just play. That reignited his motivation, much like mine was.
Now, none of what I did is currently possible for you because of Covid (although perhaps there is finally light at the end of the tunnel in Europe). Get help, get outside, get to meeting people at work and outside of work. Find a question to play with, with no deadlines or expectations.

@subassembly - no doubt all those discussions are great things, both personally and professionally. The question is, once Covid is 'over' will that be part of the landscape. Given I've seen it everywhere I've worked or visited, I think it likely, so that is something to look forward to. Good luck!

Some of that lack of discussion could be discomfort with using English. My own experience has been that even at the academic level, quite a few Germans feel their English is not good enough (even though I'm sure it really is). If you can establish a more personal connection with some of your colleagues (for example over social activities), perhaps this can be bridged.

@MiG - interesting. My experience (now quite dated) was that Germans PhDs were fine talking in English, and I would have assumed things were better now. The Dutch were, of course, quite comfortable in English. My Italian collaborators were good as well, but they were well connected internationally already. French researchers were much less comfortable for whatever reason. Understanding Scottish personnel was hard for all of us...

It wasn't the majority mind you, just a more than usual number of people that felt less comfortable using english. Scots and Irish people I can understand fairly well (I've worked with people from both countries in research projects) :]

@MiG - I have a distinct memory of sitting in a flat watching the World Cup on the BBC with an Italian and a Russian post-doc. At half time, an ex-Scotland player came on to do some commentary about the game so far, and both turned to me to translate for them. I was unable to...

It might be the German culture (German here talking) but probably also just people having lived in this city for lots of time, not really in need of social interaction during work (maybe they also have known each other for long and informally talk). Have you tried initiating team coffees (virtual) or engage people more (i.e. ask them to bounce ideas with you if they work on similar topics). My experience (being abroad a few times) is that you as an "outsider" need to make an effort to engage people. It might not work but maybe it will and you get to meet people!

The problems of lack of motivation and difficulty getting started on a massive task aren't confined to those doing postdoc.
Here are some general tips:
Set a tiny goal
In Atomic Habits, author James Clear argues that if you aren't a runner, but you want to be, you should start with extremely small goals. Not 1km, not even 500meters, but just putting your shoes on and tying the laces!. The next day, try to do that again, or even go further and walk out the door. By slowly forming a habit, however small you start, you can build on it until it's at the extremely productive level you desire.
Identify the critical tasks
We can sometimes be unmotivated to take on tasks that feel impossible. Break the massive task into tiny ones, throw out (or at least set aside for now) the non-essential ones.
Take pause to think about why your task matters
If you're dreading a large task, take the pressure off, and try to find a way to get excited about it before you start working on it. That might be through things as simple as researching its history, finding people who work on the same problem who you admire, thinking about how it will benefit you, or understanding what makes it important (to someone, even if it doesn't feel  important to you right now).
Change environments
Take your laptop to a cafe or park table and work from there for 2 hours. Go for a walk and talk your idea out aloud on a video recording. Changing environments has massive effects on our psyches, and walking has been shown to improve creativity!
Survey the entire task/problem
Ask yourself: if I only had 2 hours to do this, how would I go about it?. Then set yourself the challenge to do it in that crazy timeframe (even if it's 2 months' work). You'll inevitably fail, but just getting ideas (however nascent) on paper can really help. You can delete whatever you produce (whether it be a written document, code, whatever) shortly after completing the exercise. I have done this exercise alone and with colleagues and have been very surprised how much we learned in such a short time. You'll also be indirectly surveying the problem, necessarily at a high-level (since you simply don't have time bogged down by details).
Get physical exercise
You'll be healthier and happier, and able to think more clearly. Of exercise, Tim Minchin (at 5m20s) says:

Play a sport. Do yoga, pump iron, and run, whatever but take care of your body, you’re going to need it.

And Sam Altman gives similar advice:

Exercise.  Eat well.  Sleep.  Get out into nature with some regularity.

Since I had the exact same experience with my first postdoc, I would write a few thoughts.
First, I don't believe it's just burnout. The motivation, for most normal people, is external. If your environment motivates you, you do things, if it doesn't, you don't.
The problem is that with the pandemic your environment is gone. You do have to have your regular meetings with someone, you have to have your busy schedule, prepare for conferences and so on. Your boss isn't giving you homework. Neither are your colleagues. Setup regular meetings with them and start designing new projects and promising (realistic) things and set deadlines for completing tasks.
Also, working from home isn't easy. If you don't remove all distractions, there is a high chance you won't work efficiently. If you can't, you need to work from somewhere else.


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What is 112328 in this publication?
I would like to cite this publication in my work. This has DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2020.112328, but I am not sure what attribute the number 112328 represents. Is it just an identifier, since it is also at the end of the DOI?
I am a little confused, because for other articles published by Elsevier, I’ve seen headers such as:

Modular Aspects of Medicine 31 (2010) 478–494

And here, 478–494 obviously refers to page numbers (this is from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mam.2010.09.002). However, for the article in question, I see

Industrial Crops & Products 148 (2020) 112328

at the same place. Surely, this journal does not have 112 328 pages?
Furthermore, when exporting to BibTeX on ScienceDirect, the contents include
@article{ZDUNIC2020112328,
title = {In vitro hypoglycemic, antioxidant and antineurodegenerative activity of chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) leaves},
journal = {Industrial Crops and Products},
volume = {148},
pages = {112328},
year = {2020},
issn = {0926-6690},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2020.112328},
[...]

which seems like 112328 refers to a page number.

@AzorAhai-him- almost, thanks for pointing out my duplicate. But I suppose I’d better ask further questions at the post you linked.

So I downloaded the full issue and it appears that it is the paper number, as every paper in that issue has a very similar number.

Since then, I understand how it goes: normally (or at least from what I’ve seen), articles within journals are described by the issue and volume numbers, and then with a page range, indicating where that specific article can be found within that issue. In this case, the published journal itself has its pages numbered from 1 to n and you need to know where between 1 and n the given article is. In this case, the journal numbers its pages differently. Within the journal, the articles are numbered from 1 to n. Thus, page numbers are relative to the article, not the journal. [...]

[...] The long number identifies the article within the journal.

source: Stack Exchange

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sort: votes


text:
I'm an undergraduate seeking to recruit academics for a research project: where and how can I recruit?
I am currently searching for participants to take part in my research exploring the work-life balance of academics who are fathers. However, so far recruitment has been unsuccessful.
Does anyone have suggestions of how or where I can advertise to recruit?
The approval from the ethics committee has been granted.

Perhaps start off with academics in your own department/university. Ask your supervisor if there is a mailing list they can forward your request to, for example.

Mailing list is a good suggestion. I'd also add "be as much upfront as possible" - people might be curious and willing to participate, but filling a google form without prior commitment is much different from agreeing to provide answers to questions one might be uncomfortable with. Also, do include a feedback form (just an optional text box asking for difficulties one had answering or possible improvements) - more often than not, the studies I've participated in seemed flawed and fairly biased by design.

One suggestion is to send emails to department heads (who usually have public email addresses) with a short abstract of what you want to study and asking if they will pass on a request for volunteers to appropriate faculty. Some will respond favorably, but many others will just delete the mail. You might get slightly better response if your advisor sends the mail on your behalf as a request from a faculty member is a bit harder to ignore.
However, make sure you have the appropriate sign-off from the local ethical committee before you complete your design, since you are dealing with human subjects. There will be privacy and other concerns.
The big problem, as I see it, is that you won't be able to conclude much from such a study as it will be very difficult to assure that you have a random sample of the population of study. You can get anecdotal evidence, but your sample will be self selected, which leads to the issue of likely bias that is hard to measure.
You might be able to examine extreme views from such a study. My (somewhat cloudy) crystal ball suggests that the extremely pleased and the extremely dissatisfied are more likely to submit to an interview than the "typical" faculty member.
Some things are very hard to study if you want any validity at all. And note, also, that for issues like this the population changes every day, since policies are in general flux. And don't neglect the fact that "general" satisfaction with work-life balance might be quite different in, say, philosophy and pharmacology.

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text:
Irish Degree Terminology
I'm from the US looking at an academic job in Ireland, and I'm not sure what the form below is asking for. It has a field for "qualification" and also for "result/class of award". If qualification is for the level of degree earned (masters, PhD, etc.) what does "result/class of award" mean?

It seems like this site might have something to do with the answer, but it only mentions "Class of award-type".

https://www.scholaro.com/pro/Countries/Ireland/Grading-System may help

I found that, but I wasn't sure if it was relevant, since it doesn't use the same language as the application. It also seems to mainly apply to grade conversions for classes, whereas I the application seems to be describing something that would apply to a degree.

Not an answer, but in the UK for instance, university undergraduate degrees are awarded including a class: “first-class honours” comes to mind. This wouldn’t be relevant for PhDs, of course, but it wouldn’t be the first time that an online form isn’t quite optimised… see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_classification

That would make sense, there are bachelors degrees in the dropdown menu, but it is odd that that "result/class of award" is a required field, since the most relevant degree for this position is a PdD.

The form is asking for "Result/Class of award". So, if you are filling it in for an undergraduate degree, you would write the corresponding class (described below).
For a Master's or PhD, you can write the result, i.e. Pass/Merit/Distinction for a Master's, and perhaps something like pass with no corrections/minor corrections/major corrections for PhD. Since it's a free text box you can word this however you want. I notice there is also a comment box provided at the end where you could give more details about your specific qualification (perhaps PhD GPA, if you have that -- I'm assuming you studied in the USA).
Undergraduate degrees in the UK and Ireland follow a classification system by which percentages are assigned a class:

70% and above: first class
60 -- 69%: second class upper division, or 2:1 (pronounced "two-one")
50 -- 59%: second class lower division, or 2:2 ("two-two")
40 -- 49%: third class
35 -- 39%: pass (some universities do not have this category)
below 35%: fail

Thanks! This was very helpful. It seems that not all North American universities have as rigorous a process for defending a thesis and it depends a lot on the discipline/program.


text:
What is the history of teaching assistants (TAs) in France?
I know that in France, as late as the early 20th century, although I'm not sure if this is true now, a university student (undergrad or grad?) would take a nationwide concours exam to receive the aggrégation "to be aggregated" in the French school system and be able to teach at lycées ("high schools"?), académies (universities), and grandes écoles.
Was one with an aggrégation essentially a TA?

The answer depends both on the time period you want to consider and on the fields. Let me try to give a partial answer.
Generally speaking, agrégation is indeed a nationwide competitive exam designed to recruit high school and classes préparatoires teachers. For a long time students began preparing for it after 4 years of university study, as it required a maîtrise. Nowadays, presenting the agrégation requires a master's degree, but for most students the master would in fact coincide with the competitive exam preparation.
The majority of successful candidates will end up being teachers in high school, junior high or (for a few) classes préparatoires. In first approximation, the answer to your question is therefore "no": the agrégation is not primarily designed to select "TA".
However, having the agrégation is not neutral for "TA" positions. Nowadays, for PhD students, it is much easier to obtain a teaching job if you passed the agrégation, as you will be given priority over students who did not. Additionnally, in some fields (mostly humanities) it is a requirement to have agrégation before even beginning a PhD (I am pretty sure there is no official rule to that effect, but an extremely generalized practice). So in a way, yes, having the agrégation helps become a TA.
Some decades ago  (since your question is about history), there was a faculty position called maître assistant, which seems to correspond pretty well to "TA" (the maître assistant was apparently in charge of making students work in small groups) and was indeed accessible with agrégation. This position no longer exists: it was merged within the "corps des maîtres de conférence", to enter which you need a PhD.
Finally, note that in law, political science, economics and management agrégation can play a role very different from what I describe above. As I understand, they are designed to recruit university professors, but I really do not know much about it.

(+1) The agrégation in question in the last paragraph (technically agrégation de l'enseignement supérieur) is simply something entirely different that happens to have the same name. In economics and management, there is even an agrégation for secondary school teachers and several for university professors but passing the first one obviously does not make you a university professor in either disciplines.

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text:
How can we find who owns an old book's copyright?
How can we find who owns an old book's copyright today, especially if the publishing company who printed said book no longer exists? This would also apply for other (non-book) publications.

According to the French Wikipedia, Gauthier-Villars was bought by Dunod in 1971. Dunod is now part of the Hachette group. Is the copyright held by the publisher rather than the author for the book?

It's not really clear to me how this is about academia as defined in the [help]; this seems to be a general question about books and copyright (not specifically about copyright of academic works; there's no difference between academic and non-academic books in the context of this question)

@mkennedy: Thanks. The book I'm inquiring about was published in France in 1923, and the author is dead. If it were published in 1924 or later, it might have been in the public domain (at least in the US; cf. this).

Some things that might help: If the author died more than X years ago (where X depends on the legislation), it might be public domain. Also, it may be an orphan work, which would allow you to do certain things with it.

It is relatively easy to find out if it is public domain, but if not, you are most probably scr*d. Legal (IP) status of such documents is almost always a gray area, most cases impossible to figure out. Try to verify if it is public domain

Columbia University Libraries has a helpful document that provides guidance on determining the copyright status of books published in the United States. The guide provides links to online resources to allow you to determine the copyright holder.

Researching the Copyright Status of a Book: Protected or Public
  Domain?
A project of the Copyright Advisory Office Columbia University Libraries
  Kenneth D. Crews, Director
www.copyright.columbia.edu

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text:
How hard is it for a graduate from Canada to find an employment in the US?
I'm an international PhD student currently at a university in the US (F1 visa). My professor is moving to the University of Toronto, and has invited me to move as a part of his research group. While I understand that my decision to move should depend on the advisor and not on the school, the following question bugs me since the school is in Canada.
How easy or difficult is it for an international student in Canada to find an internship or employment after graduation in the US? I'm interested in CS companies such as Google, IBM, Microsoft Research and start-ups in Silicon valley. If its difficult to get work in the US, what are equivalent opportunities in Canada?

Your industry job opportunities depend on your field and skills. If you have something the company wants, you get a job. That's it. I don't know about Canada. In the US, you'll have visa issue if you are not a US citizen or a green card holder

I agree. But while hiring an international student, a company in the US will have to justify using up a slot in its H1B quota. If I'm a student who has graduated in the US, I can work on my F1 for 29 months after graduation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optional_Practical_Training). It seems on the outset that a company would be inclined towards hiring an international student in the US over an international student from a foreign country, since there's no risk (of wasting an H1B) involved.

Unless you're a US citizen or permanent resident, you need a non-student visa to work in US.  OPT only delays the visa requirement; it doesn't replace it  (unless you expect to be fired after 29 months).

@elexhobby I believe I said very clear, If you have something the company wants, you get a job. H1B is a problem for you. But, if your employer wants you badly, the visa will not be a problem. For example, they can put you work at a location in Canada until you get the visa, etc. Generally speaking, it all depends on the employer. There is no simple answer to how to handle H1B.

To the guy who flagged this as off-topic, this question is on-topic according to current standards, as it relates to research-related industry positions.

Not exactly an advice, but just based on what I know of my friends working in US.
I am not familiar with international visa issues, but I have at least 2 Canadian friends (as far as I know they don't have US citizenship) who graduated from Canadian schools and now work for Google and Twitter (actually one of them has BSc). So I agree with scaaahu's comment to your question, that it is much more important to have the skills that your potential employer wants.


text:
Do I have to request permission from a website to use an image that they use to promote their product on their site?
I am currently checking proofs for a Springer article. The editor has asked us to provide permission details for all figures.
One of the figures is a screenshot from a software product, as found in the front page of the product's website. We use it to exemplify typical interfaces found in these types of products, and cite the site that it was taken from. With a bit of work we could re-generate the same image by downloading the product (its free, but supported by a for-profit company) and adding in sample data.
Since the screenshot is promotional material by the company, must I contact the company to request permission to use it in our paper, given that attribution is already correct, or can I already claim fair use due to its status as "promotional"? Re-creating the screenshot would also rely on fair use, according to this answer.

It's good practice to always ask.

Doesn't seem like your choice.  The editor has asked you to seek permission, and that's that

@ScottSeidman The editor has asked for "permission details for all figures". For most, we will reply with "we made this figure ourselves". For this one, we can either reply "fair use", or wait a few weeks until the site replies to what should be a pro-forma request.

The page you copied is probably copyright.. and asking the company would waste less time than asking on this forum.

@PeterK. It is, without doubt, copyrighted. I have already asked for permission, but have not heard back. This question here is to ask fellow academics for best practices in what is probably a common scenario.

Best practice would be to ask for permission when you first think about including a picture in your draft manuscript.

It doesn't matter if the material is promotional or not. It doesn't matter if the material is freely available or not. What matters is copyright. You have to ask if you want to use copyrighted material.
On a different note, the company may really be unhappy if you use a screenshot which might be of bad quality (at least it's a pixel image) instead of a high quality, tailor made (possibly vector graphics) image for that purpose.

Yes, most definitely, if you have used an image that is from a companies website then you absolutely have to get their permission. Unless they have released it under a Creative Commons licence then you need their permission to redistribute it.
You could probably call them and they'd tell you right away if it was okay or not (which under those circumstances I'd be almost certain it would).

As the editor requires you to, it would be better to sought the permission from the site and cite the same on your paper. You may also include the caption

"Courtesy of X [citation]" or "Included with permission [citation]"

along with the figure so that the permission aspect would not be questionable.


text:
Can I submit a conference abstract that duplicates a submitted paper?
I have a paper already submitted to a journal. Now, I want to try and submit an abstract to International Congress of Mathematicians 2014. The abstract basically contains the same thought and spirit of the submitted paper though I plan to rephrase it differently from the abstract and introduction of the submitted paper. Does this violate publication ethics?

I changed your title to one that more specifically summarizes your question.

If you are submitting an abstract for a contributed talk or poster at the ICM and your paper is submitted to a math journal, then there is no issue.  The mathematics community does not consider the abstract to be a publication and there is no conflict with simultaneous submission of a paper.  In fact, this would be common.
If you are writing a paper for the ICM proceedings (i.e., you are giving an invited talk), then this could theoretically be an issue.  It would be polite and proper to inquire with the journal to make sure they are OK with it, but they will certainly say yes.  ICM proceedings papers are considered expository, and being invited to speak is an honor, so there's no way anybody will interfere with it.

Thank you very much for your answer. This clears doubts in my mind. So I can now try my luck for an oral presentation.

Not ethics, but you do need to check if it violates the policies of either the journal or the conference. That's something that you should be able to find out from their websites or by contacting them directly.
Sadly, ICM doesn't seem to list an explicit policy about dual submissions on the website, so you'll need to email someone (probably abstract@icm2014.org) to ask.
In my experience, a dual submission to a journal and a conference has been allowed, whereas a dual submission of the same work to two journals, or to two conferences, has not been allowed. Even then, some conferences are less strict.

I completely agree with this as a generic answer (independent of the field and conference), and the only reason I gave another answer is to say something math/ICM-specific.


text:
Is it ethical to withdraw a paper after acceptance in order to resubmit to a better journal?
I think the title asks the question, but once again in more words:
Suppose you submit a paper to a journal and it is accepted by the journal.  By this I mean that the journal tells you that they have decided to publish your paper but you have not submitted or examined final proofs and -- especially -- not signed any paperwork allowing the journal to publish the paper.
I wonder how people feel about the ethics of deciding not to go through with the publication because you now feel that the paper could be published in a better journal?  This could happen either because of outside feedback you received in the meantime or because of feedback from the referees/editors of the journal itself.  (Added: In case this was not clear, I am assuming that upon submission one was seeking to publish in that journal conditional on not learning that one has "shot way too low".)
As far as I can see, it is absolutely legal to do this, so I am not interested in the legality of it, but rather its ethics and ramifications as an academic practice.  I also think I will get better answers if I do not telegraph my own feelings about this; I will be happy to document them later on.  Let me just say (i) this is a hypothetical question, but (ii) based on my own experience it is not ridiculous that it might be in the interest of the author to engage in this practice, if it happened to be kosher to all parties involved.
Note: I had previously asked a related question, at the time wondering whether it would be better asked separately.  Based on the way things have gone thus far, I now think it is better to post this followup question separately (not necessarily right away).

A related, and perhaps more realistic, situation: what if you realise that by doing some (relatively minor) additional work on the paper, you can transform its significance? What about if that realisation is entirely prompted by a review comment recieved from the third-rate journal? Are you beholden to that journal?

@avid: That is indeed the sort of thing I have in mind.  For instance, what if you realize that your work actually solves an important problem that was either unknown to you or its significance in some circles was unknown to you?  (I don't know how this sounds to a general academic audience: farfetched, perhaps.  In mathematics at least, it really is not.)

Here is a different slice of the same ethical pie: imagine you are the editor of a journal which is serious but really third-rate.  (There are a lot more than three rates of journals in most academic fields: third-rate is nothing to sneeze at.)  Suppose you get a paper from a young person at an undistinguished institution, and as a professional it is clear to you that the paper would be gladly accepted by the top journal in your academic subject.  Would it be ethical to inform the young person of this, or is it fully kosher to just look forward to the bump in your journal's impact factor?

@PeteL.Clark - You have to remember how many  scientific breakthroughs were published in second (and lower) tier journals because the majors were too stuck in their ways to realize the innovation of the author. That's why many of us continue to read broadly across the journal tiers because we realize the top journals are not always the site of top research.

@RoboKaren: I am puzzled how you got from my previous comment that a paper published in a lower tier journal which solves an important problem will not be read.  I explicitly suggested the opposite.  There are other considerations here besides publicity.

That's exactly my point. Read my response more carefully. :-)

@RoboKaren: I have read everything you've written thoroughly.  If you sincerely feel that I have misunderstood something you've said, I'd take it as a favor if you'd point it out explicitly.

@PeteL.Clark - I assumed that you are junior faculty because senior faculty would either: 1) know better or 2) know the rules but be enough of a jerk that they wouldn't care whose toes they stepped on.

I edited my original response (tapped on my phone) for clarity since it seemed it was being misread in the exact opposite direction that it was intended (you can see edits to see that my position hasn't changed).

@RoboKaren: I am starting to get frustrated with your inattention to the nuances of the question.  You missed the fact that I am not asking about this on my own behalf and I am not asking whether this is strategically sound.  I am asking about the ETHICS of the question.  Does the ethics of the practice depend upon whether the author is junior, senior or faculty at all?  I don't see how.  And, though I see no relevance to this particular question, there is no need to make  assumptions about my academic background: my profile links to my academic homepage.

The ethics don't change: it's unethical behavior. What changes is that because of their position of power, senior faculty can get away with crap that junior faculty can't. That doesn't make it any better ethically. It's still ethically and morally wrong.

I guess I'm failing to see the point of the question. You know that the behavior is wrong on multiple levels. So what exactly are you asking???

I am sorry that I assumed that you (Pete) as the poster of the question were the person asking the question. I guess I've heard too many "My friend wanted to know..." type questions and assumed that this was the case.

If you are submitting to a journal that you have no intent in publishing in, you are indeed a grade 1 jerk. (I would use the ahe word in this case).

To clarify my position: there are no particularities that would make yanking your paper out of a journal for the purpose of submitting it to another acceptable. Senior faculty occasionally get away with it, but the behavior itself is reviled.

@RoboKaren: I'm sorry, at this point I am forced to agree that you are failing to see the point of the question.  If I were to continue this discussion publicly I would have to address your responses in a way which feels too confrontational to me.  Please feel free to contact me privately if you really want to understand.

Another way to slice this: would it be ethical for a journal to require, at submission, a contract not to do what this question is asking about, i.e. later withdraw solely for the purpose of submitting to a preferred venue? If this behavior is unethical, can one seriously make an ethical objection against being required not to do it? Whereas if this is ethical, then it may or may not be ethical to require a contract against it, depending on other considerations.

There are certainly cases in which withdrawing a paper after acceptance is reasonable, for example if the author feels misled or mistreated by the journal (as Benoît Kloeckner points out in his answer).  However, when the journal and referees have behaved blamelessly, it's hard to justify unilaterally withdrawing the paper after acceptance.  When you submitted the paper, you implicitly agreed to publish it there if accepted.  This is part of the research community's norms: a submitted paper is a request for publication, not a request for the option to publish.
Of course it's not a legally binding promise, or even a particularly grave moral promise, but it's still not something you can reasonably violate without a compelling reason beyond self interest.  I don't think this is even worth considering except in extraordinary circumstances, such as a paper that was submitted in good faith but turned out to be far more important than the author could have foreseen.  Fortunately, there's a simple solution in these cases, namely asking the editor for permission.  It's a little awkward, but certainly less so than just going ahead and withdrawing the paper without asking, and an apologetic explanation can help.  If there's a truly compelling reason to withdraw the paper and resubmit elsewhere, then there's a good chance of getting the editor's blessing, which would resolve the ethical issues.  If, on the other hand, the editor disagrees with the reasoning, then the author is stuck.  But it's better to be stuck publishing in a low-prestige journal than to do something inappropriate or unethical, and being unable to convince the editor is a bad sign regarding the ethics.
This is a special case of a broader principle: if you believe unusual circumstances justify behavior that might otherwise be considered unethical, and there's someone who could in principle grant permission, then it's generally better to ask for permission than to take action unilaterally.

Why would "a paper that was submitted in good faith but turned out to be far more important than the author could have foreseen" be an extraordinary circumstance?

@adipro: I have in mind an extreme case in which the author enormously underestimated the quality of the paper (not "Gee, I wonder in hindsight whether this could have been accepted at an even better journal" but rather "I thought this was just recreational mathematics, but people in field X tell me I've solved a famous open problem without realizing it").  Whether this counts as truly extraordinary would depend on the circumstances, though.  I'm not convinced this situation would justify unilateral withdrawal, but the editor might well be sympathetic.

Thank you. It is more about getting a journal with a more fitting scope then, rather than low vs high quality journal?

It is not ethical to withdraw a paper that has been accepted. Journals, editors, and reviewers invest time in the publication process. To withdraw a paper after it has entered this process is a waste of their time. While the legal ramifications of is behaviour are probably limited, it will result in bad feelings.
As for not having the money to publish. Assuming the journal fees are available prior to submission, and reputable journals make their fees known, then if you don't have the money, then you don't get to submit. If they have a paid expedited service and you are worried about the back log, then ask up front. The only case that it might be acceptable is if he review process drags on for so long that your funding ends.

"To withdraw a paper after it has entered this process is a waste of their time."  Well, let me play devil's advocate.  Rejected papers certainly get refereed multiple times.  It is a standard piece of advice to shoot too high in one's first submission.  Isn't shooting way too high and then slowly coming down more of a waste of people's time than taking your best guess the first time and then modifying as new information becomes available?

@PeteL.Clark but that is an issue with the handling editor. If it you have shot way too high, then the paper never goes out for review. When handling editors send out too many poor manuscripts, it becomes harder for them to find reviewers.

"While the legal ramifications of is behaviour are probably limited" That's a strange thing to say about a practice that is completely, absolutely legal.  Did you notice that I indicated in my question that I was not interested in legal issues?  "...it will result in bad feelings." Yes, I am inclined to agree.

"If it you have shot way too high, then the paper never goes out for review."  That really depends on the specific journal and its practices.  I certainly know people start at a certain point and move down 2-4 levels before they get published, getting a referee report every time.  So the argument "submitting more than once is a waste of time" seems like it's on the right track but needs more explanation to be definitive.

I am speaking from direct experience here.  More than once I have received a paper from a very prestigious journal asking for a "quick opinion".  What this means is that they think the paper has shot way too high, but -- mathematics being the technical field that it is, even the superstars who are editors in these journals do not have expertise in everything -- they still solicit outside help.  The effort of doing a quick report is not an order of magnitude less than doing an ordinary report...and moreover it is usually done "quickly".  So shooting too high is hardly a victimless crime.

Apart from the ethics, it would be a risky game to play. What happens if  won't take it? You will probably get short shrift from the original editor if you try going back there... and you can't hedge your bets, because you have to confirm that the article isn't under consideration elsewhere when you submit. (Pedantically, could you argue it's no longer under consideration once it's been accepted?)

@avid: The fact one incurs considerable risk in doing this is one of the things that makes the practice not completely obviously unethical to me.  I agree that it is absolutely an ethical requirement to close the door on the journal that has accepted your paper before you try a different journal.  If your parenthetical comment is meant to suggest that one could circumvent that....no, I think that's totally shady.

Quite. I wasn't seriously advocating it...

@PeteL.Clark: Some of the top journals (e.g., the Annals or JAMS) almost always ask for a quick opinion before full refereeing, unless they just reject the paper outright as obviously inappropriate.  So I don't think it should be viewed as a sign they think the author is shooting too high.

@Anonymous: well, when they send the paper to me...But doesn't the fact that top journals do this when most others do not mean that they are simply more systematically defending against shooting too high?  I think this shows that "up-shooting" is something that is not totally unworthy of ethical scrutiny.

I agree that it's largely a defense against shooting too high; I just mean that they do it pretty systematically, so being asked for a quick opinion shouldn't be viewed as an implicit negative comment on the paper by the editor.

On the other hand, the number of "quick opinions" I get asked for is increasing across the board.  I don't necessarily like it: I feel like I am being given less time to make a judgment which is no less weighty.  Usually I either dismiss the paper quickly (and I feel that that is somehow expected of me) or I say, "Well, it looks plausible, would you like me to actually referee it?" and they respond with "Oh, goody, please do!"  One gets the sense that finding enough referees is a serious problem...which of course is highly relevant to this answer we're commenting on, and the point is taken.

I am asked for a quick opinion on borderline papers. The editor wants a single referee to state whether there is anything there there. If I agree that it has plausibility, then the editor will send it out to further referees.

Suppose I submit a paper to Journal A. Under what circumstances can I then ethically withdraw it?

Upon receipt of the reviews. The review process can be thought of rather like the (English) law on contracts. I offer Journal A a paper in a certain form. They think about it for a while, and then (typically) reject my initial proposal, but offer to publish a related paper ("If you add X and Y we'll take it"). Typically, I then make revisions and submit them, forming a new "offer". Eventually, we reach a stage where the proposal is acceptable to both parties, and the paper is accepted. However, I'm under no obligation to continue to negotiate with the journal if at some point I decide that I don't like the terms they're offering (e.g. the reviewers ask for changes that I don't want to make). Does it make a difference if the reviews are largely positive, instead of largely negative? Intuitively, I'd say it does, but I'm struggling to come up with a sound justification for this. [Edited to add:] I suppose the difference is that withdrawing after good reviews would seem to indicate that I'm acting "in bad faith"; see below.
If I discover a serious flaw in the paper. Clearly, I have a responsibility to withdraw it as soon as the flaw is recognised, to avoid wasting everyone's time. Once the flaw has been fixed, the paper may well look quite different (in content); thus, it seems implausible that I am bound to choose the same journal upon resubmission.
If I realise the paper could be significantly improved. This is a trickier one. You might well argue that it was unethical of me to submit it in the first place, as it wasn't "complete". On the other hand, this could easily arise without me being at fault: perhaps someone else has just published a new statistical test which provides additional insights into my results; perhaps I'm working in a field where data is sparse, and an additional set of data points have just been obtained. It seems weird to suggest that it's wholly unethical to withdraw the paper and improve it. (Indeed, it seems arguable that it's more ethical than allowing the incomplete paper to be published, and then immediately writing a follow-up.) Again, when it comes to resubmission, it makes sense to decide the venue based on a fresh assessment of the merits.

Furthermore, I don't see that these latter two points necessarily cease to apply once the paper is "accepted" (rather than "in review"). Certainly, I'm still responsible for fixing any flaws. On the other hand, in the "legal" analysis, acceptance constitutes the making of a contract, which cannot then be broken without consequences.
So, to go back to the original question: if I (a) originally submitted in good faith, and (b) would need to do some nontrivial amount of work to adapt the paper for the more prestigious journal, it seems that it's not unethical for me to withdraw with the intention of "moving upmarket", at least provided I do it before acceptance. After acceptance, it is probably unethical.
However, there are a lot of interesting grey areas. Do I have a responsibility to my funding providers to get maximum exposure for the research they support? What if my paper will directly help, say, a cure for cancer - so that getting it widely known in the relevant community has positive implications for humanity?
The main argument against permitting withdrawal would appear to be the fact that it wastes people's time. Again, a legal comparison is instructive: if you walk away from contract negotiations, you are not in any way breaching the contract: it hasn't yet been made. However, if the other side think they can argue you weren't acting in good faith, you may well find yourself being sued for their costs. However, I would class that as a business matter, not an ethical one.
Finally, to address a point made in the comments: does an editor have a responsibility to inform an author that they're underselling their work? I'm not sure that they do (just as, provided I have not made any misrepresentations, I'm not obliged to tell a prospective buyer that he's offering me too much money for my house). If editors start second-guessing authors' choices in submitting to this or that journal, the system would quickly descend into chaos. However, reviewers (who act like the legal advisors on the house-sale analogy) may well be obliged to make the significance of the work clear (though, perhaps, not to go as far as recommending the author take one course of action over another).

What a great answer.  The idea that submitting a paper is similar to making a business offer is an interesting one: if the journal agrees to take the paper "as is" and you then try to withdraw it, then you are revealing that your initial offer was in "bad faith".  I find this argument rather compelling, but there are two complicating factors: (i) journals rarely take papers "as is"; even very positive reports will ask for some changes made, including some changes that an author may in their heart prefer not to make; and (ii) the referee report itself doesn't have a clear "business" analogue.

There is also a third complicating factor in that after you feel like the intellectual transaction is finished you still have to deal with the production of the paper and the signing of the contract.  Many current practices of big publishing companies look obnoxious/unethical to academics, and occasionally I do hold my nose a little when I sign such contracts.  I think many authors are not seeing the fine print on these contracts until after their papers are accepted (and many more are not looking...).  This makes the idea that the initial submission is contractually binding look weaker.

When I get the reviews, I have a business decision to make: does the cost of attempting to secure more agreeable terms elsewhere outweigh the value of the concessions I'm being asked to make? Note, too, that there's nothing stopping me informing the editor that I'm not prepared to resile from my position, and inviting him to reconsider his. And yes, one could perhaps see the signing of releases,  etc, as part of the negotiations - but you should have researched these as part of your "due diligence" before making your initial offer.

I'll also make the general observation that there is a distinction here between unethical behaviour,  and behaviour that will impact adversely upon your reputation. It is quite possible to make yourself deeply unpopular without ever doing anything unethical.

Yes, I agree: that's an important distinction to make here.  Other answers and comments have focused on the fact that doing this practice will probably make the practitioner less popular.  I agree with that, and I will say that I personally have no less aversion to being unpopular in the circles that I frequent than the average person.  Still, if there were no ethical problem then many people would at least perform the expected value computation, and I think there are circumstances in which incurring some unpopularity would be worth it from a self-interest perspective.

What a great answer. Unlike all the others, it seems to say what the asker wants to hear.

"you should have researched these as part of your "due diligence" before making your initial offer" -- or arguably, the editor should have sent you these as part of the journal's due diligence before investing time in reviewing the paper. But whoever is at fault when nasty surprises do occur at contract-time, if nothing in the final contract surprises you and you never made any attempt to negotiate its terms, then you can hardly use its unsatisfactory fine print as the basis of an ethical justification for withdrawing.

I can imagine some cases where withdrawing an accepted paper would be ethical.
Some where already given by Avid's answer, e.g. when the author realize that the paper is flawed. Another one would be if the author realize after acceptance that the journal editorial policy is far below what is expected (e.g. the author realizes that the journal is predatory). More specific cases could be:

the author receives a very quick positive report, where the reviewer makes it pretty clear he or she did not read the paper,
the author is asked pages charges, or article processing charges while the journal did not made it clear that they are charging the author,
the editor accepts the paper but (kindly) asks the author to add some references to the journal so as to increase their impact factor (sadly, this is not a fictional case).

I would say that most of the time, withdrawing after acceptance is on the unethical side of the border line (for the reason given by StrongBad: it wastes other's time), but that some specific circumstances make it ethical or even the way to go.

While this sort of behavior is not unheard of in the social sciences, it is certainly frowned upon. It could also lead to you being blacklisted by the original journal, if not more serious negative sanctions.
You also have to remember that in many fields that:

Journal editors know each other and socialize together
The number of referees for any random obscure topic is low

If you did this, you would get caught either 1) when the 2nd journal accepts the paper and publishes it; 2) before this when the journal editor #1 has drinks with journal editor #2; or 3) by random luck, journal editor #2 sends it to the same referee who green lighted it for journal #1.
Don't mess with journals. It's much better to have a first article in a journal with a low citation index than it is to create bad blood with journal editors.
If you're smart enough, you can write a second essay on a following topic that you can send to journal #2 once you've established yourself with your initial essay in the original journal #1.
[Edited for clarity]

What about the case of an established researcher withdrawing and resubmitting?

Authors certainly have the right to withdraw, however if the journal editor suspects you are doing it to journal shop, they are within their rights to not want to do business with you again.

I don't understand why you seem to think this is about citation indices: I didn't say that, and in fact in 2014 as long as you publish a paper in a mainstream journal, it will get cited just as much as if you publish it in a top journal.  I also don't understand why you are assuming the author is not "established".

I agree that this is something that is going to be frowned upon, and that is a very important practical consideration.  However, I asked about the ethics of the practice, and your answer does not address ethics in any way that I could see.  You also seem to be assuming that the author would be hiding the fact that this has been done.  Why is that?

(By the way, it is useful information that this sort of behavior is not unheard of in the social sciences.  I have literally never heard of anyone in my field -- mathematics -- engaging in this practice.)

The low citation index reference is for the journal not the paper.

@RoboKaren: That is not what you wrote.  If you are trying to claim that it is never to anyone's advantage to publish in a more prestigious journal at the cost of ruffling some feathers, then I would say: (i) that is far from obvious and (ii) that's not what I asked.

@JimConant - Also unfortunately the more senior you are, the more you get away with. That doesn't make it any more morally acceptable.

@PeteL.Clark -I know of no author that would blatantly tell journal #1 that they were taking their paper to journal#2 absent bad behavior on #1's part. Unless he was a serious egoistical jerk.

@PeteL.Clark - not for someone early career. I would never say never, but the risk for junior faculty would not outweigh the possible benefit.

I want to make it clear I would never do this nor do I fully endorse it but I think the argument has validity. You ask is it ethical or moral.
1)  Many journals make plenty of money, not all but many.  “According to The Economist, Elsevier made $1.1 billion in profit in 2010 with a profit margin of 36%, which grew to a reported profit margin of 39% in 2013, and 37% in 2014. T&F’s profit margin was 25% in 2010, per T&F” (MIT Library 2015). Journal publication is a free-market industry that is often cutthroat and makes large profits on our graft. You have every right to withdraw your paper. It is not your issue or fault that for-profit journals do not properly compensate editors or reviewers and this appears to be the major argument others use stating why it is unethical. It is my fault I give my time freely to these companies and you should not feel ethically obligated to me for doing this. It is nice that you are but you should not feel this way.
2)  This is your intellectual property at this point as you have not signed over any material and hence you can withdraw your paper as long as you did not commit to not doing this in some box you checked or similar. It may be problematic morally for many reasons but it is not wrong. This is the result of your labor and intellect and if you decide not to sign the final publication agreements then so be it. Maybe you should not have submitted to this journal and you certainly should have withdrawn earlier to help your colleagues not waste time on review but it is not unethical in such a free-market for-profit industry. At this point if you get cold-feet we have to just accept it. Again, I make the for-profit distinction.
3)  It is a two-way street. They can often decline you without much reason at the start of the process (editorial decline) so why can you not withdraw for no good reason at the end of the process? You can withdraw for any reason or no reason. Again, it is not your fault that we as academics do not insist on proper compensation from for-profit journals when we review or edit for them.
I would say think about it deeply but if this is a for-profit journal and you want to withdraw your paper at the last minute for any reason or no reason (good or bad) then so be it. It is a free, competitive, and often cutthroat industry. If this is a non-profit journal and we are all giving our time freely for the good of society I would not do it, ethical issues exist then. You see we as academics are generally reasonable and nice people (why it is often great to work in academia) and we want to be nice to our colleagues who have edited or reviewed a paper but in the end if this is a for-profit journal then it is us that should be demanding compensation for doing these activities (I repeat >$1,.1 billion profit for one journal publishing group) and you should not worry about withdrawing your paper.


text:
How important is primary authorship in judging someone's research contributions?
I wanted to know how the research profile of a doctoral student or a post-doc is usually judged in academia. In the list of peer-reviewed conference or journal publications, how crucial is the position in the authors list, to judge the research calibre.
I am aware that being the first (primary) author is most important. As an example, consider a case where a candidate has 4-5 publications. In all these publications he/she is neither the primary author nor the supervisor of that project. On the other hand, assume he/she has 2 highly ranked publications as the first author. Which of these two cases can be used as a comparative study of the candidate's research contribution.
I see these days a kind of rat-race for papers, where each publication has more than 4 authors. Is the "number of papers" parameter lone enough?
Agreeing that working on multiple projects is important, should the focus be more on publishing one's own work rather than collaborating on multiple papers where the contribution is not significant.

Your title is "How are publications weighed against the research potential?", but your actual question does not talk at all about research potential. Maybe you want to update your title.

I hope I've put it here "judging the research calibre".

I edited your question title so it would reflect the body of your question a bit better. Feel free to roll back or change.

Two possible duplicates: What does first authorship really mean? and Order of authors on publications.

Note that what it means to be "first author" is highly field dependent. In mathematics, it means your last name is closer to the start of the alphabet than those of your coauthors.

Edited to highlight difference from suggested duplicates (which are mostly about authorship conventions in different fields)

@ff524 in the question Order of authors on publications the OP is exactly asking for the amount of contribution the first author might have done to a publication and the alphabetical order of authors might mislead the reader about their contribution to the paper. I think the question is still a duplicate and needs more improvement.

@EnthusiasticStudent The question you link is about how people look at an individual paper, and decide how much each author contributed based on order. This question is about how people look at an individual's complete publication history and judge his ability based on how many papers he was primary author on (whatever position primary authorship happens to be in his field). (In other words, "How much more important are primary-author papers for my career?")

@ff524, you have got my question correctly.

What field are you asking about? This makes a huge difference to any potential answer.

First, it is worth mentioning that there are several models for authorship in use. In some fields alphabetaical is used, in some the last author is considered the important person (usually project leader), in some single author is used even when collaborations are performed. That said, however, the most common form is by weight and I mean weight in an ambiguous way because this is what is usually the problem, weight can be input but also importance or even by bullying.
So, the way in which to judge placement in an authorship list has shown signs of collapse, not to mention inflation. To remedy this many journals start to ask for accounts of the contributions made by each author. The notion of contributorship rather than authorship is emerging (see e.g. the BMJ description of their use fo the terms in practise). The ideas are based on the (expanded) Vancouver Protocol definitions of authorship which is as follows

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;

AND

Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;

AND

Final approval of the version to be published;

AND

Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

This has been reproduced numerous times in replies on Academia.sx so you may want to do a search on the authorship tag and on the term contributorship to see more discussions.
So as the idea of contributorship and the definition of what contributions mean the view on author order might become closer to what it originally was intended. There is thus good incentives for listing contributions in paper even if it is not requested by journals. My suspicion (any certainty will have to come with time) is that when publications are assessed for job applications and promotions, the contributorship will be increasingly important, and by that coherence between author order (including appearance as author) and actual contribution.
In the end being high on the list is important, clearly showing author's contributions is necessary to judge the placement. This, I would argue, is particularly important for early career scientists.

I've heard of using alphabetical order, emphasizing the first author, and emphasizing the last author, but what's an example where "single author is used even when collaborations are performed"?  The closest cases I can think of are at best ethically on the borderline (and in my view unethical).  For example, there have been a few law professors in the U.S. who attracted negative attention for using research assistants to do lots of research and writing for their books, without giving the assistants authorship but blaming them if any plagiarism or mistakes were discovered.

Ghost writing is a nonacademic case in which this is widely accepted (but I don't think there's any academic field in which ghost writing is considered ethical for scholarly writing).

Your focus needs to be on accomplishing significant work, and then receiving appropriate credit for that work.  Number of papers is often a reflection of that, but is not, ultimately, the metric on which you will be judged by anybody who is actually thinking of hiring you.  More distant reviewers of various sorts (e.g., for a grant or a tenure case) are more likely to apply publication-based metrics out of a lack of knowledge or imagination.  Anybody who is considering hiring you, however, should be less interested in what your rank order in authorship is and more interested in what you have accomplished (which is partially reflected by author order).
For example, in your question about comparing a candidate with middle authorships vs. first authorships, I would want to know what, exactly, either candidate had done.  Did the first author candidate actually conceive the work and do most of the writing, or were they just acting as a lab tech on behalf of the more senior authors?  Was the middle-author candidate just along for the ride, or was it a complicated project where their contribution was critical, but others happened to be more critical.
Thus, in a statement of purpose or other self-presentation, I look for a candidate to be saying, "I accomplished all of these things (as reflected by these publications)", rather than simply "I have all of these publications."


text:
How should I cite a website URL?
I am currently writing a report and I have been compiling a list of references (from IEEE mostly) and I also have a number of websites.

My question is, what is the best way to note a website URL? Would it be to reference and cite a URL, would it be adding a footnote? An example would be a reference to google.com. Would it be the correct to just create a footnote?

I've started to just add a footnote each time a website is mentioned (using LaTeX) so for example if a javascript plugin is mentioned then a footnote would be added to the website URL. How would be best to do this as it would not suffice as a reference as it is just noting a website for further reading. I do not have time to waste be writing the whole report to then have to go back through and edit the document hence my question.

Question is not very clear. Or perhaps you are answering your own question. Why not use a footnote combined with \url{} (from the url package)?

In addition to Dave's advice (which is what I basically do in most circumstances) - it isn't that crazy to just cite a website. See some examples in APA here.

Oh sorry, the question was supposed to say what is the best way to note a website url? Would it be to reference and cite a url, would it be adding a footnote?
an example would be to reference to http://google.com. Would it be the correct to just create a footnote?

Why doesn't a web site suffice as a reference?  Isn't every reference just noting a document for further reading?

As a meta-comment, if you are trying to produce a high-quality, well-written report, then trying to avoid having to go back and edit anything is a questionable strategy.  Maybe it doesn't matter (some things just need to be recorded crudely, and polishing them is irrelevant), but the last sentence of the question ("I do not have time to waste...") seemed a little worrisome.

@AnonymousMathematician it was regarding re-structuring something that could be done correctly the first time around

About "not going back and forth"... LaTeX usually provides comfy ways to say "meh, I'll decide how that looks later, first I finish writing this paragraph/chapter/report". In this specific case, it may not be completely trivial, but I'm sure it's possible. Also, if you want to mark these URL as references, you'll need more metadata to describe the reference (a title and an author at least), so that someone reading only the list of references will know what they are about.

I've edited the original question to reflect the poster's clarification.

I suppose the easiest way would be to use the \newcommand command in LaTeX.
Put something like this before your \begin{document}:
\newcommand{\jquerynote}{\footnote{\url{http://jquery.com}}~}

Use it as follows.
We used JQuery\jquerynote to build the user interface.

If you want to change the reference to a citation or another format, you can replace the contents of the \newcommand
As far as to "What is the best way to cite a website URL?" the answer generally is that there isn't a standard. Personally, I use web sites as a citation if it contributes some kind of important intellectual argument to the paper. If I use web sites as a footnote, it's because it has to do with some kind of tool I used and is there simply to inform the user that I used Tool XYZ.
Using your example, if I said in my paper, "We used the Google search engine to identify evidence of bias in search engine results" I'd probably put that as a footnote, whereas if I said, "Company web sites from Google, Microsoft, and Apple about employment all state that having fun at work is important" may be citations.
(I should finally note that this is a personal convention rather than anything spelled out in a styleguide, but maybe it helps you?).

I'm not really a fan of this solution. To me the more correct approach would be to simply include the link as a citation in the references section. This is a nice hack, but it's not standard.

I initially answered the question addressing it as the problem of, "I don't know if I want to make it a footnote, or a citation, and I want to make it easy to switch out later". With respect to URLs in citations, that works in certain documents, but it actually can make your references look weak to some reviewers if they scan the citations and see a handful of URLs.

If it's the right reference, then it's the right reference, no matter what the reviewer thinks.  Cite it.

Thankyou @Irwin. You used jQuery as an example and thats what i've been doing and linking mostly to github repos

Echoing the comments and other answers, citing a website is no different to citing any other resource, such as a book, or a paper. Depending on your favorite text editor and reference manager, you would like to produce bibliographic entries, such as

... for the implementation of the prototype, we used the Ruby programming language [23] and ...
  ...
  ...
Bibliography
  ...
  23. Matsumoto, Yukihiro. Ruby Programming Language. http://www.ruby-lang.org/, 2009.

In BibTeX, there's @misc entry for that. You would use it as follows:
@misc{links/Java,
        author = {{Sun Microsystems Inc.}},
        title = {{J}ava{\texttrademark} {P}latform, {S}tandard {E}dition 6},
        howpublished={\url{http://java.sun.com/}},
        month{jun},
        year = {2006}
}

 @misc{links/xml,
        author = {{W3C}},
        title = {{Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0}},
        howpublished = {\url{http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/}},
        publisher = {World Wide Web Consortium},
        year = {2008},
        month = {November}
}

Since websites are a dynamic resource, you should always include the date (year/month) of the last retrieval.
For the url, the code above would assume \usepackage{url}.
Another technical issue with this is whether your chosen bibliography style would include the URL in the reference, or not. You might want to consult this questions at tex.SE

I use a modified BibTeX style that parse two additional fields: url (for bare URLs, as in Marc van Dongen's answer) and arxiv (for ArXiv document IDs).

+1 for stating the last retrieval. If it's a URL to a discussion, the consensus on that thread may change after you access it. If it just vanishes, having a URL and a known date when it did exist gives you an key for the Wayback Machine at http://web.archive.org/

@Emyr You always have to include a date of retrieval for an URL, otherwise the citation is invalid.

I wouldn't use footnotes because they are disruptive. Also this may lead to an abundance of repetition in your document, with the same footnote appearing over and over again.
Instead, I suggest you treat URLs as normal references.
The biblatex packages provides support for URL references. Another advantage of using the package is that it lets you create a separate bibliography for the URLs. This is not explained here.
The package supports values for url, date, and urldate keys in your BibTeX database.

url describes the URL.
date describes the official date.
urldate describes the date you visited/retrieved the URL.

The package also lets you customise the text in the bibliography that precedes the value for urldate. For example, you can set it to Visited or Retrieved. Customising the string is done by setting the bibliography string urlseen.
The following is based on an example from Marco Daniel. It shows the basic mechanism. Save it, run LateX on it, then bibtex, and LaTeX.
\documentclass{article}

\RequirePackage[style=authoryear,
                useprefix=true,
                backend=bibtex,
                block=space,
                language=british]{biblatex}
\renewcommand*{\bibopenparen}{[}
\renewcommand*{\bibcloseparen}{]}
\renewcommand*{\finalandcomma}{,}
\renewcommand*{\finalnamedelim}{, and~}
% 3em recommended by Bringhurst, p 80.
\renewcommand*\bibnamedash{\rule[0.48ex]{3em}{0.14ex}\space}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@Online{ctan,
  label       = {CTAN},
  title       = {CTAN},
  subtitle    = {The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network},
  date        = {2006},
  url         = {http://www.ctan.org},
  urldate     = {2012-04-07},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%
urlseen = {Retrieved},
}

\begin{document}
I always get my {\LaTeX} packages from
 the Comprehensive {\TeX} Archive Network~\parencite{ctan}.

\printbibliography
\end{document}

The \parencite command is for parenthetical citations. (biblatex also provides other kinds of citation commands.) The filecontent related stuff makes the example a standalone example (so you won't have to create the BibTeX file). The command is not recommended for day-to-day LaTeX.

Given that web content disappears, you could cite the Internet Archive URL, e.g., https://web.archive.org/web/19981111184551/http://google.com/ rather than http://google.com/ (I bet you can't remember Google looking like that!) This also ensures that the content you cite is the content your readers see.

If you are using BibTeX to maintain your bibliography, you might want to use the IEEEtran bibliography style, which takes care of the url field in the BibTeX entries by adding an [Online] tag in the bibliography followed by the given url.


text:
What are the strategies for getting feedback on articles?
As an academic, one has to publish. Often, an article is drafted, and you need feedback of a colleague.  I see that quite often some perspective articles are often written by long-term collaborating pairs of authors.
What are some strategies people use to get feedback on their articles  (outside of immediate boss; and in the case that none of the friends in the field of work in the specific domain of the article, and one needs specific (not general) feedback)?
How do you approach a colleague to simply read your article. Or do you just mention it at a conference to the most suitable colleague - would you like to read an article and give me feedback? How do handle the co-authorship or acknowledgement? Do you establish the limits at the "approach time"?
What are some strategies to establish a "publishing" duos (buddies).

A great question, but combining two things: getting feedback of articles and establishing a long-term co-authorship? (They are different (the later implies the former, but not converse).)

Related: How do researchers send unsolicited emails asking for feedback on their works?

When I have a manuscript nearly ready to submit, I send it (by e-mail) to colleagues who I think would be interested in it.  I politely ask them to read it and send me any comments they have.  Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't; it's understood that there is not an obligation.  Of course, some of them send me their manuscripts too, and they're more likely to read mine if I have read and commented on theirs.
The colleagues I send the paper to (usually about 2-4 in number) may include:

Senior people who have mentored me
Past coauthors and collaborators
People I don't know but whose work is essential to that in my manuscript

People in the first two categories are usually willing to assist based on our existing relationship; those in the last category are generally pleased to see their work being cited and built on.
I don't usually need very specific feedback at this point in the process.  If I was concerned, say, about the correctness of some part of the work, I would have worried about that long before I wrote the article.  Occasionally I may have a specific question about, e.g., suitability of the manuscript for a particular journal.  In that case, I would send the article to one of the editors of the journal or to a colleague who often publishes in that journal, and ask specifically.
Any colleagues who provide substantial feedback will be acknowledged at the end of the paper.  Providing this kind of feedback certainly wouldn't qualify one for co-authorship.

Apart from the excellent answer by David, I guess that any (experienced) academic knows that this job has a long memory and it's a non-zero-sum game, so the more you give to others the better you are perceived. So my answer would include also a pro-active behaviour in reviewing papers for others too. This way you'll learn more about writing styles, will be perceived as a contributor to someone else's research, and will be more likely to receive feedback from others

Internet is there for us to help and collaborate. Banyan recently launched a public beta version. It is for "sharing, collaborating & publishing research".
Personally I think this product, or a similar product that applies open source idea (which is working pretty good for software development) into research, can both help with getting feedback of an ongoing work and establishing a long-term co-authorship as well.

Well they seem to have shut down, so this is probably not meant to work in the contemporary scientific culture.....

Unfortunately, an academic researcher either exists in the echo chamber of his lab (specialists in their field), or among competitors, or among the lay public. None of these are ideal arenas to form "publishing" duos (buddies). One would always want the upper hand or to be placed in a more prominent spot in the author list. In this way, research is often observed to be siloed or split off into various factions. The academic publishing machine pairs you up with 3 often anonymous people you have little influence in choosing to critically review your manuscript but of course negative feedback that is not interactive nor a discussion but a letter in response to your letter as it existed so many years ago. If rejected, you can use the reviews to improve your paper, but of course you have burned the bridge of being able to submit that topic to that particular journal again. The concept of a publishing buddy would exist in the balance of a knowledgeable field specialist and generalist.

"an academic researcher either exists in the echo chamber of his lab (specialists in heir field), or among competitors, or among the lay public" - this is incorrect; academic researchers, at least in some discplines, will form part of a community that reaches outside their department or lab, quite possibly outside their country