text:
Where can I pay professional researchers online to verify my results and answer my questions?
I am looking for professional help to verify some results I am working on and maintaining in a write-up. However, I can't get anyone for free since I was forced to leave my old university, Case Western Reserve, (due to disagreements) and I don't know if I can find an online program that assists undergraduates in their research (I should have graduated my senior year with a bachelor's degree but am technically a freshman. I have studied rigorously up to differential equations; It's complicated). Moreover, professors are busy and would most likely ignore my requests no matter how much money I offer.
Therefore, is there a way to pay for professional research help? How can I receive feedback on what I am working on?
Details: My field is mathematics. I think the work may be complicated enough that graduate students won't be able to rigorously answer everything. I need someone with a Ph.D. on the level of professors.
(Technically, I am working on developing a finitely additive measure and sum that takes the average of functions defined on countably additive measure zero sets. I am looking to verify if my measure and average on a function gives in fact what I am looking for. For reference, the link to my pdf is here).

have you tried fiverr? Example Search. There is a lot of homework-level stuff, but a few entries like this look promising.

Chegg?          That can be option

Why not just ask in Mathematics Stack Exchange one specific question, one from near the beginning of your exposition, and see where that takes you? Incidentally, on the first page you wrote "why null sets have zero measure", which did slightly interest me (because one of my main interests is in various ways that sets can be small, and large in the sense of being co-small), but even after a couple of minutes quickly scanning the next few pages, I couldn't find what you mean by "null set", a term whose meaning varies a lot in the literature. (Consider this as advice for presenting your results.)

@DaveLRenfro Null sets mean sets that have zero measure for countably additive measures.

@DaveLRenfro I tried asking these questions on math stack exchange but they keep being downvoted I was recently suspended for frequent editing. All I want is an answer.

have zero measure for countably additive measures --- For ALL countably additive measures? (google "universal measure zero") If so, isn't "each null set has zero measure" automatic from a basic logic principle? I'm assuming "zero measure" refers to Lebesgue measure, which is a specific example of a countably additive measure. Anyway, this isn't the place for such a discussion. I recommend trying to get reinstated in Mathematics Stack Exchange and avoid doing whatever it is you did that annoyed the moderators.

@DaveLRenfro Yes, I meant Lebesgue Measure zero....
I have a feeling people on math stack exchange have a bias against me. Its more than the editing. Even before I was editing so frequently people were downvoting my post. (Though there were some upvotes). I honestly don't know what is going on.

I'm not saying you are a crank, but this might still be relevant: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18491/i-believe-i-have-solved-a-famous-open-problem-how-do-i-convince-people-in-the-f?r=SearchResults

How can you have been close to graduating but also "technically a freshman"?

I am 22 but due to constantly being kicked out of college I am trapped inside an 18 year old freshman. If you’re wondering why it’s because of my outbursts from bullying. They’re saying I’m delusional, I’m saying I’m not. Some of my statements were perceived as “threats” and hence I was kicked out.

I really, really encourage you to seek professional mental health counseling. People aren't kicked out over quote-unquote threats willy-nilly.

@Arbuja I can see you are really frustrated. It would appear your overall issue with interacting with others on SE is lack of clarity in your writing. I would recommend you slow down - break down every chunk that of content that you don't understand - and ask individual, very precise questions about these things once your account is un-suspended. Doing this will improve your ability to write clearly and think critically about the work you're interested in. You will likely answer some of your own questions that way, as well.

The harsh answer: You probably can't. At least, unless you are somehow quite wealthy, and if that was the case, I suppose you could simply pay for enrollment at another university. Let me try and clarify a bit.
As a researcher I get many requests from people who want me to look at their particular problem. This ranges from

Fellow researchers who want to discuss - I most often oblige (at least if I have time, and their request is interesting or relevant).
Students who I don't know in advance, who wants guidance - I help if their question is well researched and not too polemically phrased.
Students from my own institution, not under my supervision - I always help, as this is my job.
Amateurs who have invented the a new method or theory for something, and wants it checked - I rarely do more than skim it.
etc. etc. etc.

You are in the last category. If you are to convince me that I should prioritize your request over the others, then I should be immediately convinced that your idea is really something special. My field is not mathematics, so I can't tell here. But judging from comments from professional mathematicians, neither can they. The second option you mention is money, and this is where I think you need to be fairly rich. If a purely monetary argument should convince me to push you to the top of the stack, you would need to pay me the equivalent of my going rate when doing freelance work, around 200 €/hour.
My best bet is to either:

Try and get re-enrolled into a university. There people get paid to answer your questions.
Try and find someone who would be really interested in your specific problem, and write them.
Undo whatever you did to get banned at math stackexchange, and try again there. Being nice gets you a long way, being polemic and insisting that only a professor can answer your question, will get you few friends.

If you are describing research that you are doing, then you may just go ahead and contact a professor who does the research in the field you want.  Outline the scope of the work that they are required to do, and how much you are willing to pay.  You'll probably need an MoU that states how any results derived from this work are to be published, and who retains ownership.
I am not in mathematics but in my research days we received requests from private individuals not uncommonly.  Usually those individuals were representing themselves as entrepreneurs and they worked with us through their company, but if my advisor were to get a request to do research with potential rights to publish, and it would bring in some funding commensurate with the amount of work, we would take it whether it was a company or an individual.
So, to your point of "professors are busy and won't listen no matter how much money I offer", I think that's not true.  However, don't waste their time.  Presuming you are in the US or Canada, a professor can make up to and exceeding $100 per hour.  You need to realistically assess how much work they need to do and then make it worth their time.  If they need to do a few hours worth of work and will be paid $500, either personally or to their research accounts, that might not be very attractive.  If you are offering a few thousand for a collaboration that doesn't take up their entire working life, you are probably going to get more responses.  If you just want someone to check your work for like $10 and a high five, you don't want the person who accepts that offer to help you.

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet:
If your work is at a research level (i.e., not just homework), submit your work to a journal or conference to be peer-reviewed.
Generally, the way researchers get feedback on their work is through the peer review process. The process is: (i) You write your work up properly, explaining your contribution in the context of prior work. (ii) You submit it to a journal/conference for which it is in scope. (iii) It gets assigned to qualified reviewers. (iv) The reviewers read the paper and write up their comments. (v) These comments are sent back to you along with a decision.
For some reason, researchers will perform this service for free, but it may take a while.

For someone without any experience to submit a paper to a math journal is a fairly sure way to be desk rejected (i.e. the editor takes a glance at the paper, notices it is not written according to professional norms, to the point where it's almost impossible to figure out what the author means, and sends a refusal email with minimal to no feedback). The problem is that a person without professional training is very likely incapable of completing your step (i): writing papers is a skill, and not an easy one.

@DenisNardin Journal/Conference peer-review is the standard process for getting feedback on research and a thorough answer to this question should mention this avenue. I agree that desk rejection is a possibility, but in that case it's essentially the same feedback you'd get from other avenues.

There are degree-level maths tutors around on the Internet.  I'd approach one of them working in a related field and see if they're willing to work in this way.  They charge say $35-$120 per hour and it would be reasonable to pay them for the time they spend outside of lessons reading and assessing what you've done.
I think a lot of tutors might be reluctant because the costs could quickly mount up without the student appreciating how time-consuming it is, leaving the student with a bitter taste in their mouth - and no tutor wants that.

@MorganRodgers I agree the price I originally gave is at the low end. It depends if you charge every hour you work. $35/hr gives $1400 a week, which is only $70k per annum. But within about 30 seconds of reading your comment I could find a degree level maths tutor for this price: https://tutorful.co.uk/tutors/7vpnw2k2

@MorganRodgers bear in mind a lot of the tutors on that linked site are expecting to be paid the rate they quote for the actual lesson time and will have to do additional unpaid work outside of that. The price I indicated is assuming you also pay them for the out of lesson-time work they do too.


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How does academia handle bookbinding in the US?
To explain further, I have loved books for a very long time. I've always been interested in how they're made, and the possible "illnesses" that can befall books and how one goes about to "cure" them. I want to do it as a job, and the research I've done has lead me to learn that there's printing press bookbinding, with machines, and then "craft" bookbinding, the work by hand. I want to know how I can obtain the skills to become a "craft" bookbinder. The "old" way. Are such programs offered at US universities? If not, what is the usual path for gaining such skills in the US?

Check out the local university - at mine there was a business card for a little old lady who had a book-binding shop set up in her garage and very good she was too. I still have mine, bound in black with goldleaf lettering...  The local library may also know - where do they go to get out-of-print books rebound?

Googling 'bookbinding certificate' led to many reasonable-looking hits...

There are two main academic tracks I'm aware of that care about craft bookbinding, in a way that is beyond hobby: fine arts, and "library and archives".
In schools of fine arts it is not uncommon to have "3D design" classes that can include craft binding concepts and techniques as an option. Other classes can focus on leather-work, print-making, binding, embossing and imprinting (often used with book covers), etc. Depending on the size of the school and the local area, they may have occasional seminars specific to book-binding, and some will even be open to non-degree seeking students. So if you have a local arts program, it may be worth a visit/information/tour, and you can ask them if they may have any programming or faculty with experience in your area of interest. In may indeed just be a single person and you could try to take a class with them, or they may even be willing to work with you directly in a helper/apprentice/tutor role. You might also be interested in fine art restoration and preservation, though this is a not a program universally available at all art schools.
Artists are the primary 'consumers' and practitioners of modern craft book binding, because they care about one-offs and details in a way that commercial printers just don't (and can't) care about in the same way. Some commercial shops, especially serving high-end marketing/promotional companies do still buy craft binding work, but it would be hard for someone just with an interest in the practice to connect through this route.
The other main academic track is in library and archives, specifically in the sub-areas of preservation and restoration. This usually isn't focused only on books, though there are book-preservation specialties - but most people in the area will study a broad array of document preservation, from arts to historical documents to books and other artifacts. This will get you much closer to book illnesses if there is also a need for restoration. This is more of an academic path, as I don't know that they are as open to non-degree seeking students who just want to learn as book binding - but it might be a lead you can try to follow.
There may also be hobby-focused classes offered at community/trade schools in your area, as Buffy mentioned - which are also definitely worth a check, and probably your first point of contact if you are mostly interested specifically in learning how just to work with books.

It is possible that there are some academic programs. They would be more likely at a Community College, I think. But you might be able to obtain an internship or apprenticeship at some custom publisher or even a major book publisher.
To find such an opportunity I'd suggest the following steps. Your local library has a need to re-bind books and knows who does that. Find out the contact information for such a service and, starting with them, work up the chain of contacts to the people who do the actual production.
Other than librarians, you could also talk to a book-rep who visits your school or at an academic conference. Again, work up the chain of contacts to the production department.
There are a number of presses in the US who do custom small editions for authors and others. Thorndike Press in Maine used to be one of those, but I don't know if they still do it. But there are others. Search for Custom Publishing. But they may use suppliers of services and you will need to work to find who actually does the work. You are looking for, and may find, a company that actually uses hand crafting to bind books and even those that design the bindings using non-standard materials.
If you can find a really high quality book production outfit, you might explore either an internship or an apprenticeship with one of them. It might be paid or not. But even an entry level regular position will give you an opportunity to learn the skills.
Another source, but harder to find, are individual artisans who design and manufacture their own books (poetry, art, ...). I met one within the past year at a craft fair. But a search for "hand made books" might turn up something.

Art schools have the academic/professional connections to bookbinding. Particularly those with strong tracks to becoming a curator.

@JonCuster, yes. Good catch.

I was taught craft bookbinding in a university town - by the bookbinder to the university library. But he did not award degrees. Do you want to learn the craft or do you want a degree certificate? The two wishes may not be compatible.

My spouse worked in a small bookbinding shop in her university library as an undergrad as a work study assignment.  The shop was there to rebind and do other preservation work on the library's older books. It was very much a matter of learning under the supervision of one of the full-time employees.

The closest program would probably be a Library Science degree (e.g. MLS, MLIS). The actual percentage of the program that would directly deal with physical book construction and repair is almost certainly quite low, but what you will likely encounter in these programs are fellow enthusiasts who share your love of books and are likely to be able to point you toward potential opportunities.

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I accidentally failed to disclose a school I briefly attended. Have now been admitted to grad school; how to proceed?
When applying to grad school, I did not think enough about the requirements of disclosing past education.  I failed to disclose a school I attended because it was so short and brief and I received all W's, there is no GPA, but there is a transcript.  I did not realize how big a mistake this was at the time.  Now, I have been notified of acceptance from the department, still waiting official acceptance from the institute, and I am very nervous that this will all get messed up.  What should I do?  Tell the school? Decline offer and reapply next year with correct info?

Your options seem to be: tell them, don't tell them and hope for the best, or withdraw.
If you tell them, the worst that can happen is they revoke your admission and invite you to reapply next year. If you withdraw, this will happen for sure. So, I wouldn't even consider withdrawing.
I usually suggest not over-analyzing things, but in this case, I wouldn't just let the sleeping dog lie. You don't want this hanging over your head for the rest of your career. So, I would just send a brief e-mail saying exactly what you did above (and just as concisely) and asking how to proceed. I expect they will say that they will update your record and do not anticipate any problems -- but you should prepare for the worst-case scenario just in case.

Given that grades weren't assigned, there is no way to evaluate your work based on the transcript. I doubt that it matters much whether you inform them or not. Full transparency would suggest that you do, of course.
But if all the grades are W, meaning "withdrew", you might need to explain why.
They have judged that your supplied material is sufficient to decide you a candidate for success. I don't see how the additional information can change that. The same would be true of any informal self-learning you engaged in.
But, IMO, it is a pure judgement call. If you don't tell them and are called on it, your explanation here would likely be sufficient. If you do tell them it would be a bit of embarrassment, but not a deal killer.

That is the frustrating part.  They ask for all transcripts and note that failure to provide can disqualify.  This transcript has little to hide, I am just worried about being called out if it is discovered.

In which case revealing it with an explanation and an abject apology might be best. But if there is any way to speak with someone informally first, it might be worth the effort.

you mean like the admissions office?  if i call them will they talk about it without considering it an official admission of wrongdoing?

Actually, I was more thinking of a faculty member rather than the "establishment".

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What are some steps an undergrad can take to get on a Ph.D. track?
I'm a CS undergrad in the US. I'm graduating next semester and I have been accepted into grad school, but I'm having difficulty finding a full map of what one should do to successfully go from where I am now, to a Ph.D., to (eventually) a tenure track--hopefully as a full-time student through the process. Obviously, this is over the course of 10+ years, but I want to do everything I possibly can, as early as I can.
Some things my advisors have told me for the near future:

Write a thesis as part of your Master's program
Find a professor to research with (goes with the first bullet)
Go to at least two different schools throughout the whole process

Undergraduate advisors didn't have very much advise past that. I'm looking for a broad roadmap of what my future would require/look like if I were to go down this path.

Many students who want to study for the PhD in the US apply directly at graduation from their undergraduate education. A MS isn't needed for most fields, but might include one along the way for little or no additional effort. But expect that such a doctoral program will include additional coursework in your field prior to starting research, and, perhaps, prior to choosing a research advisor.
The advice you were given is good, but the MS isn't actually needed (most fields). What you need is a solid record of accomplishment and good letters of recommendation that suggest you will be a success in graduate study.
The advice about going to more than one school is so that you have more opportunities to view a variety of approaches and a wider range of ideas than you are likely to get if you stay at the same institution throughout.
In some doctoral programs you can get a MS just by asking for it and paying a fee (some paperwork). In some you write a thesis of lesser scope than a doctoral dissertation, but possibly giving some practice with research and writing.
The path might be something like 6-8 years, possibly as long as 10.
You need a way to support yourself. The common way is to serve as a TA in your doctoral department. Research Assistants are open as well, but to fewer people in some fields.
But in the US, the best advice for right now is to apply to a few programs that interest you, including some that are more likely to take you than some others.

I hate to necro an old thread, but I was going through my StEx history and saw this one. Your advice and @cag51 's absolutely paid off. I'm now in a CS PhD program at a great school (and getting paid to go there!) So thank you for answering! You saved me the trouble of getting an MS

Congratulations.

@Zaya:  Congratulations!  ❧  On StackExchange, you need never fear that you might face censure after you "necro an old thread".  In fact, when you have something new to contribute, bumping questions is encouraged, not discouraged.  (Source.)


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How is auditing a course viewed by professors teaching the course?
I'm a first year math Phd student. I'm undecided between focusing on mathematical computer science (MCS) and pure maths, so I'm taking courses in both. To keep my workload light enough to avoid stress, I've opted to audit one of the courses in MCS. The course is not in my research interests, so I'm taking it primarily to prepare for an exam required by my program later. My hope is to just drop into classes and be exposed to material, without taking the time to do all homeworks/prepare for exams, etc.
However, I'm interested in the professor as a potential advisor later, so it has the double benefit of helping me see if that would be a good fit down the line. My question is: could my auditing, rather than taking the course for credit, be perceived as lack of interest, laziness, etc? How is auditing a course perceived in general? Do I have the right attitude towards auditing?
Note: The course is not in the professor's research area either, so not being interested in the class doesn't contradict my interest in the professor.

One less exam to mark!

What do you mean by "just drop into classes"? I don't know about your university, but I'm pretty sure just dropping into a course for free is not seen as auditing by the university. I had to pay to audit courses at my university.

@DKNguyen, I mean attend classes as I am able/interested. Since everything is online these days, this amounts to me having the zoom link to the classroom. In any case I have a tuition waiver, so it doesn't seem like it would make a difference. Thanks for making me think of that point though

It is fine.  If it makes you feel better though you could clarify that the reason you're not taking it isn't just worry about the class.  I have used the line in an email before "I have an amateur interest in learning the material" which I think deflects any concern about why you're not committing to doing the course 'properly'. When I said it, it was true, and even if you think it might be a field you wish to participate in later, technically you're currently just dipping your toe in the water right?  So perhaps the same line would work for you.

You should talk to the professor in advance. Explain your reasons. Then they will understand why you are not on their class list, miss class occasionally (don't do this too often) and don't turn in assignments. If you can ask interesting questions in class, do.
There is a small chance that you will be told "no" and a small chance that there is an enforced university policy discouraging audits for which no fee is paid.


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Meeting PhD advisor during first year (coursework year)
I'm starting my Ph.D. this year. My first 2 years will only be coursework. So, I won't be able to do any serious independent research. My research will only be in the context of what's required for the specific courses, so nothing too serious.
I am aware that I should meet with my advisor regularly, but what should I talk about? Usually, graduate students will talk about their results, advancement of their thesis, etc. Should I be talking about my courses and such?
Thanks!

Your first meeting(s) with your advisor should be...directed at answering this very question.
How should your meetings going forward be structured? What topics should you plan to discuss? What's your schedule for making progress toward degree requirements/prelim requirements? When can you start considering research directions? etc.
You might be used to interacting with professors as people who stand above you in some way, people who you only approach with deference and who are judging you at every step. A PhD advisor shouldn't be that person. They are training you to be their peer and colleague. It is expected that you will need some help along the way, and they should be there to help you, so you should feel free to have open conversations about what that advising relationship will look like between you. The earlier the better: often conflicts arise when there are mismatches of expectations. Set shared expectations to avoid conflict (including internal conflict: stress, anxiety, etc).

This is a challenge that I know we face from our end as a graduate program: the supervisor will be extremely important for the student, but not until they actually start their dissertation process.
So yes, regular meetings are key. You should talk about:

your courses: progress making, anything interesting that you're working on as part of the coursework;
any TA/RA duties: your supervisor might be able to find funding for you (field and university dependent), but can often serve as a sounding board around issues like balancing teaching and coursework, etc.
comprehensive exams: if applicable, your supervisor will want to make sure you suceed in comprehensive exams.
yourself: this depends on the supervisor, but we often want to know who are students are. How are you doing? Especially during COVID, your supervisor will probably want to know how you're holding up. You can make a bit of small talk and get to know each other.

This is important for building that relationship, and also for your supervisor to get to know you. What's working well for you? What successes have you found in coursework? It may come time for scholarship rankings and opportunities, and you want a supervisor who can make the case for you if they happen to be at those tables or have other opportunities.
All supervisors are different: some will want regular meetings, some less so, but you'll need to discover the shape of what will hopefully be a long and productive relationship to come.

Thanks for your answer! In my case, my advisor doesn't require weekly meetings, but has a calendar open for his students to take an appointment. Honestly, I'm concerned that if I take these appointments every week and only talk about my coursework (Can't be a TA/RA first year), he would judge this as a waste of his time.


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Taking PhD course with potential advisor?
I have been told by other grad students that it is a good idea to take the Ph.D. course given by a professor who you would want to be advised by in the future and even joining their lab.
In my case, there is a course given by a professor who I would want as a graduate advisor and possibly having him on my committee. This is an applied machine learning course in the PSYC department (I'm a social science Ph.D. student). However, there is also a graduate machine learning course given in the CS department that is more advanced, and I would obviously get more out of it.
So, should I take the course given by the potential advisor, or the more "interesting" course risking the lack of exposure?

Have you asked your potential advisor? If they don't know you want them to be your advisor, you can always ask the difference between the two courses.

@NathanS. I'm not sure what you mean. The difference between both courses is that one is applied in social science and given by a Prof. that I might want as advisor, while the other is more "true" to machine learning because it's meant for a CS audience.
For example, the applied course is given in R, while the CS course is in python.
Also, the CS course will go in deeper into details, so I will get more out of it.
So, is it a must to gain exposure to potential advisor in order to "impress" him or such. Or, is that a misbelief and simply emailing him my intentions is good enough?

It is certainly worthwhile to get to know your potential advisor, and get noticed back. Taking the course might help you explore common interests, even hint at potential thesis thema.
Taking a more advanced course can get you faster to the bleeding edge where your thesis will presumably move, if it is primarily in the area. Then again, you'll soon have to move beyond coursework. Perhaps somebody teaching the other courses is a better match?
Knowing nothing about your background, the involved courses, your interests and the ones of potential advisors, it is impossible to give real advise.


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What's the difference between textbooks and other non-fiction books?
Say, why is the book How The Immunse System Works (by Lauren Sompayrac) regarded as a "textbook" but, say, The Better Angels of Our Nature is not? There are thousands of non-fiction books, some of higher quality than others, some more technical or more difficult than others, some much bigger than the average (like Russell's History of Western Philosophy), but only a small fraction of them are called "textbooks". What's the difference? On what basis is a book judged as a "textbook"? Size? Academic rigor? Amount of detail? Level of technicality?

Designed and marketed to be used for formal teaching?

Technically, if there is a course in which it can be useful, then it is a textbook. So To Kill A Mockingbird fits the bill and it isn't even non-fiction. But I guess that isn't the answer you are after.
I think a big part of it is just a marketing decision by a publisher. If there are enough courses to which a book might apply it may be sold to a captive audience (students) as a textbook rather than to a wider audience but with less compulsion to buy.
Textbooks, however, tend to have student exercises in them to reinforce the work. The idea is that "learning is required". Non fiction usually doesn't have exercises and learning is optional. If a publisher decides to publish a work as a textbook there will be pressure on the author(s) to provide exercises and other instructional materials. There will also be pressure to provide, say, new editions every other year.
Textbooks also tend to be directed to a certain level of student attainment. Some books are written specifically for beginners. But at advanced levels, there is probably less distinction, as students then have the background needed without the pedagogical aids of lower level texts (we hope).
Often, but not always, textbooks are published to very high manufacturing standards with non-acid paper, sewn signatures, and such, imagining that a student will want to keep such books for several years. This is normally less of a concern in the popular press. I've had a number of books for over fifty years. (This attention to quality may be less true than it once was, I suppose.)
I think you can find a wide range of quality in either category, as well as a fairly wide range of difficulty. Nor is size an indicator. Most elementary Calculus books are fairly thick, and intended for two or three terms of study.
Cost is another factor. Text books are expensive since the intended audience is often quite small and balkanized into several different books. Non fiction, if well written, appeals to a wider audience and so can be sold for less, making the profit from volume.
I don't see a lot of distinction based on your other suggested criteria. Either can be detailed or not, more or less technical (based on "level"), etc. But textbooks are designed to be learned from whereas general non-fiction, like fiction, is designed to be enjoyed. There are a few truly beautiful textbooks, of course.

For "fun" I read a fair number of archaeology and anthropology books. None of them are intended as textbooks, but most would serve as such, since they have extensive bibliographies aiding a student in research. They are probably less useful, but not useless, for beginning students, but provide a good place to start a literature search for somewhat older reference materials. In an active research area they are less useful as things get old quickly. This may imply a crossover category, I suppose.

Thank you for your thoughtful and elaborate answer!


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How much time do I have after drop out to come back to my country?
I am a full funded international student of PhD grade in US. I like to know if I drop out the study, how much time do I have to stay in US before come back to my country?

I think this question is off-topic here. You should talk to your university's international office. Generally, students in the US on an F-1 visa have a 60-day grace period to leave the country after completing their program, but only 15 days if they withdraw. See e.g. https://www.gallaudet.edu/office-of-international-affairs/international-student-and-scholar-services/f-1-status-information/f-1-grace-periods

@Thomas Seems on-topic to me, it has to do with a problem academics (and only academics face). We have a [visa] tag, after all. You even just posted the answer

@AzorAhai--hehim This seems more appropriate for https://expatriates.stackexchange.com/ It's also a question that can be answered with 2 minutes of googling.

@Thomas Being on-topic at Expatriates has no bearing on whether it's on topic here. I don't think we have a rule on how easy an answer is to find, unlike some sites that have a "no research" reason.


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How to deal with overly helpful co-advisor?
I have 3 advisors; two are great (main prof and a daily advisor) and one ('Jill') is not. Jill invited herself to my advisor team after coming back to work from a long medical leave and she's ready to Kick! Some! Butt! in the academic arena. The problem is that her help is not very helpful because:

She is not directly involved in research and has little knowledge of my area so her feedback on my work is superficial, nitpicky or just plain useless.
She is often late to our meetings which is annoying and a waste of time for me since the meetings are planned only for her benefit (I speak regularly with my daily advisor so he knows my progress but for some reason we have a weekly meeting with Jill as well).
She is a Chatty Cathy and wants to make the office one big happy family. She's the kind of person who would judge you for being on the quieter side and make it her mission to prod you out of your shell.

I find her presence draining. She on the other hand is DESPERATE to help me and feel useful, so much so that it comes off as patronizing. Basically she treats me like her duckling.
I'm in my final months of writing and I just want to get my stuff done without having to involve her, but I can't get rid of her and don't want to burn bridges. The other advisors seem fine with her. How do I best manage this dynamic without going insane?

I know the type, we actually have our very own Jill in our office. They will devote hours to "help" students pick out the right fonts and colors for their presentations and make sure to single you out if you missed the "get cake together" meeting. Not saying bad intentions are involved, but Jill's personality doesn't mix up with everyone.

Consider reposting this on interpersonal - this isn't at all specific to academia.

It looks like you can postpone the meetings without much fuss.
Declare first with your daily advisor "I would like to postpone our next meeting to focus on writing/proofing/etc" and check his reaction. If he is fine, I am quite sure the main prof will be fine and Jil... well, she will try to arrange a personal meeting with you. Dodge it at all costs :) !

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Chatty%20Cathy (in case others, too, were wondering)

Claim you think you might have covid and she'll probably give you more space.

Sorry. Hint taken. I'll back off. (! was only trying to help :-( )

How long has she been on the team?

Hit ctrl-F soon as read the query, surprised to see no hits for 'extrovert' or 'introvert'. Sounds like a classic issue of an introvert without much social awareness invading the space of an introvert that hasn't learned methods to exit these situations with grace?

Set a meeting with all three advisors, explain you'd like to focus entirely on the writing, and ask whether regular meetings can be replaced with less-regular meetings when you need support.

That is the best way. No personal feeling involved, I suppose the daily meeting with the advisor is informal so it will still take place, while the weekly meeting will be every two weeks and slowly fading out.
For example, it does not hurt to send an email to Jill some days before the meeting stating "sorry Jill, I am behind with my schedule, i prefer to postpone our next week meeting" and CC'ing the first advisor ...

If she isn't a formal advisor you might just get by ignoring her. But if that doesn't seem right, I'd suggest working through one or both of your other advisors. They can quietly speak to her about the fact that her communications are disruptive and not helpful. It might be harmful for you to say the things they they can say comfortably. Let this be a faculty fight if a fight needs to occur, not a student v faculty issue.

Thanks Buffy, unfortunately she's officially on my supervisory team as a secondary co-advisor so it's hard to avoid her. She also doesn't do anything bad that I can complain about to my other advisors; they would see her as a helpful person. I think it's just that our personalities don't gel. I'd be happier if we could skip the weekly meetings and I could meet her specifically if/when I need help on something. I don't know how to frame this to someone who is obsessed with helping. Any advice?

Can you get her to copy the other advisors on her communications? That might generate the needed actions without anything else from you, if the others get annoyed.

@seesaw Surely becoming an advisor does not remove all someone's brain cells? ;-) If we here are able to see why your co-advisor is a problem, and not a "helpful person", surely your other advisors would be able to see this also, as long as you are careful about how you address it.

@GlennWillen, in my view, we only able to see it, because we accept there is something wrong with Jill. In practice, you cannot come to your adviser and claim that. All you can say is that your personalities do not gel, and this can be written off as your personal issue you need to work around yourself. Because from this reference point Jill did nothing wrong.

This sounds like a rather delicate matter. On the one hand, your request to not have your supervisory team shaken up while you are finishing your thesis is completely reasonable. On the other hand, if she was your supervisor before leaving it can be painful to come back from a long medical leave and see that your projects moved on to the extent that you aren't actually needed (or even useful) anymore.
If you have a healthy relationship to your main supervisor I would have a frank discussion with them. You should not complain, but saying that you feel that this de-facto change in your supervision isn't actually helping you is completely fair. However, as always in these matters, stick to the facts and leave out any speculation about her motives. Don't say or imply that she is desperate to help you or to feel useful. Just say that these additional meetings are draining your time and energy, and that you feel like you are not getting much feedback that is useful to you in this phase of the project.
Maybe your advisor will see the issue and talk gently to Jill, or maybe they won't. In the latter case, simply humouring her and sticking it out for the last few months is probably a better option than escalating this into a big conflict.

As a sidenote, I would also be slightly annoyed as your main advisor. I would generally not appreciate if people swoop in and decide to take my students "under their wing", because this implies that I am currently not doing my job.

I'll be the one dissenting voice and suggest you look for the silver lining. Maybe the reason the other two advisors aren't pushing her out is because they also see the value of some grist in the mill. Life is about gleaning hidden lessons. Maybe she really does have something to contribute even if in a way you don't fully appreciate right now.
If her feedback is generally kind of useless it might be because she doesn't really understand what you're doing. If a member of your advisory panel doesn't understand then there is little hope for others outside your tight circle. Most academics work never gets out to affect the world because they write for an audience of 10 or at most 100 people in their field.
Just some thoughts. More than a comment. Less than an answer.

I've read the other answers and I don't think anyone else has mentioned the following.
This is a classic case of the old proverb, "too many cooks spoil the broth". Either that or you could present it that way.
You could explain that you simply find it confusing to get advice from so many sources and would prefer to limit this. Of course the risk is that you could lose one of the good ones. However if you present the matter as simply "too many cooks" and talk individually to the other advisers saying that you particularly like their help and you don't want to lose it, then there is no need to criticise anyone - all your words are positive.
This is just a suggestion and of course there are no guarantees in life that things work out perfectly. Good luck!


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Can someone do another Masters in Canada if you already have a Masters and PhD from the UK?
Can someone do another Masters in Canada if you already have a Masters and PhD from the UK?

What is your goal?

How different would the subject of the new Masters be from the old one and the PhD?

Many thank you Azor.
Change of profession-the PhD really didn't provide me with the  opportunity I wanted into my teaching career- So, i am thinking of doing Masters in Education  that may allow me into teaching along the process of the programme and after the programme

partricia- The My First Masters is in environment- But i really want to get into teaching thats why i want to do the masters- BUT, the main reason why i am asking is from immigration perspectives - if Canadian immigration would allow an international person do that

I don't know if it is the same in Canada, but in the US, an  EDU masters is more directed at pre-college teaching. There are many specialties within it, however.

I know a lecturer in my university who did his Masters and PhD in Computer Science and also has a Masters in soil science. So yes, you could do any number of Masters you want.  I doubt immigration really cares about your background. If you have admission and support letter from a Canadian university, you should be able to get a visa. And if you are paying fees for your Masters it is unlikely you will have any problems.

You can study for a second masters, but funding may have different conditions.
I know several people with 2 masters and they did them for their own reasons.

2 downvoters who obviously don’t have a masters...


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Transferring PhD to another university because advisor goes on a leave of absence for two years?
I am starting my second year of PhD (in engineering) in the US after earning Master's degree outside the US.
My advisor notified me that he'll be going abroad for leave of absence for at least 1 year, and probably extend it to 2 years.
He told me the funding is available for 3 years but unsure of how much he can advise me closely.
Every meeting will be remote for the next two years, and not as frequent as before.
Also, I am now assigned to a different professor as a co-advisor.
He said he is planning to come back after 2 years, but that is also not guaranteed because he said he cannot predict the future.
In this case, would it be wise to discuss with him on transferring to another university?
I would have to sacrifice two years if re-apply for PhD, but if that helps for my PhD I would surely do it.
Also, I would like my advisor to help me transfer since I believe we do not have any conflicts or bad relationship.
What worries me is that I might make him upset for trying to move since he already assured me of the funding. But I am not here just for the funding but for his advice on my graduate career. I am not sure how much I can have that.
Any advice in this situation? Thank you in advance.

Would it be possible for you to go with your adviser for the year or two that he'll be away? If not, would it be possible to set up regular skype or zoom meetings with your adviser?

Is there any reason why you can't keep the funding and transfer to another advisor that is actually present at the university?

It seems feasible to continue where you are

@AndreasBlass Indeed: Go with the advisor, if viable.

Sorry that I'm late with this, but going away for a year or two is sometimes (often?) the precursor to going away permanently. A sort of informal probation period at the new place prior to offering a permanent job. If you haven't made enough progress in the year since you asked this, you might consider a move yourself, possibly to the professor's new institution.

It is fairly common that a PhD student change advisors in the middle of a thesis. There are lots of reasons why advisors change jobs, or even interests, and the reasons can sometimes be sudden. The smart choice for the student, though, depends a lot on their situation and their goals.
A student who is in the later stages of writing their dissertation may prefer the relative tranquility of their advisor's absence, and be happiest with a weekly video meeting and an exchange of manuscript pages. A highly-autonomous student may even prefer this from year two. In that case the main interaction continues with the old advisor, with the co-advisor as an institutional backstop.
A student at the beginning of their thesis will generally prefer to have their advisor more available than that, especially if there are skills that have to be learned hands-on. In that case the best choice is to either lean heavily on the new co-advisor, or simple to change advisors. It also depends on how much the co-advisor is invested in the topic; if it is an orphan topic, then choosing a new one more aligned with the co-advisor's interests might be useful.
It also depends on the the informal support group of the research team. In a team with a good esprit de corps the environment is almost as valuable as the choice of advisor. In a small team you need to choose you advisor with particular care.
If your advisor offers to bring you with them to their new institution, which can happen but is not always possible, then it is a seller's market and you should choose what you prefer. At least it is proof that your advisor thinks highly of your work.
I do not recommend going on hiatus until your advisor comes back. I can't think of a single example in the past 20 years where a student came back to finish their thesis after a hiatus of more than a year.

I also don't recommend going on hiatus, but there is at least one example of someone coming back to finish their thesis: Brian May, the guitarist from Queen, worked on his thesis between 1970 and 1974. He came back to Imperial in 2006 and submitted in 2007.

The exception establishes the rule for the unexcepted cases! You can defend your thesis after a hiatus if you are a successful rock guitarist.


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Performing Poorly in Qualify Exam
I just finished my qualify exam, and I think I performed very bad. My advisor even said it was not up to par. I am not sure if I will pass or not, since my advisor also said they might pass me, if the committee thinks that my research is good enough to compensate for my mistakes.
If I fail, I can retake it one more time. But the pressure would be enormous.
I feel horrible and cannot stop thinking about it. Any suggestions? I did try to distract myself, which led me here.

Just an update, I passed! Thank god! My advisor said the research project probably contributed greatly to my pass. I was thinking maybe COVID also played a role.


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How to find out if a paper is diamond/gold/green access?
Recently I learned about open access and that there are many ways in which the publishers implement it. How do I find out if a paper is Diamond/Gold/Green access?
I guess if the paper is listed in a journal but a pre-print is available on the authors' webpage/repository then it is Green access. Is that correct?
Next how do I find out whether a paper appearing on the journal's website is gold access or diamond access? (Basically did the authors pay to make their paper open)
Thanks

I think your first question is answered here: What is the difference between "Green" and "Gold" Open Access?  I suggest editing the question so it only contains one question (the second one).

What is the difference between "gold" and "diamond"??  And does it matter, from the point of view of open access?

@user151413 see e.g. Wiki on this, diamond OA is free for both the reader and the author. Gold OA is free for the reader, but not the author.

if the paper is listed in a journal but a pre-print is available on the authors' webpage/repository then it is Green access. Is that correct?

Not exactly. The paper may be published under a green OA agreement even if the author did not publish it on their webpage, or the author may have shared it illegally. For a more authoritative answer, you should instead look up the journal on Sherpa/Romeo and see if it allows publishing pre/postprints.

Next how do I find out whether a paper appearing on the journal's website is gold access or diamond access? (Basically did the authors pay to make their paper open)

The journal's webpage will usually tell you if there are publication charges, and how much they are. Even if they advertise charges, these may be waived under certain conditions (for instance: agreement with the author's institution; author comes from a developing country). Ultimately, there is no way to pay if two third parties reached an agreement and waived that fee; that is a private contract between them and none of your business. :)
(Anyway, why do you care exactly? Is this to know if you will be charged to publish your future paper in the same venue? Or for a research/statistic?)

I guess if the paper is listed in a journal but a pre-print is available on the authors' webpage/repository then it is Green access. Is that correct?

Not necessarily. Green OA allows archiving of the published paper, which is not the same as the preprint. If you find the published paper then yes it is green OA.

Next how do I find out whether a paper appearing on the journal's website is gold access or diamond access? (Basically did the authors pay to make their paper open)

Access the paper, then look at the top of the first page with the copyright. If it says (c) the authors, it is usually gold/diamond open access. As for whether the authors paid for it, go to the journal's webpage and see if they have publication fees. If they don't, it's diamond.

I don't think the claim here that "free availability of a pre-print does not count as open access" is correct -- in practical terms, or in common usage.  See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access#Archiving .

What if it is not the authors who paid for it, but there is an agreement between the publisher and their employer/organization/etc.?

@DavidKetcheson did I write "free availability of a pre-print does not count as open access"? What gave you that impression?

If you're referring to green OA, note that is green OA, which is not the same as OA. That's backed up in the Wikipedia page you link, The "green" route to OA refers to author self-archiving, in which a version of the article (often the peer-reviewed version before editorial typesetting, called "postprint") is posted online to an institutional and/or subject repository. (The postprint is also not the same as the preprint.)

@user151413 it'd be some shade of OA then, probably gold.

If a preprint is available for free, we call that green open access.   The "usually" clause on Wikipedia does not contradict that.  This is consistent with common sense, and all references I know of (e.g. https://casrai.org/open-access-glossary/, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/open-access-and-the-humanities/glossary-of-open-access-terms/6E0F41EB7B359E91A17137E91F97B401, https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/content/definitions-terms-used-open-science-and-open-access-introductory.

@DavidKetcheson if we take that definition then most physics papers are already green OA, rendering the term not very meaningful. Your interpretation is also contradicted by, e.g., https://publishingsupport.iopscience.iop.org/questions/what-is-iop-publishings-green-open-access-policy/, plus one of the links you cite which says "Is often subject to an embargo period imposed by publishers, generally of between 6 and 12 months" - something that doesn't usually apply to preprints.

I will further point out that many publishers, e.g. Elsevier (https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/sharing) already allow preprints to be shared anywhere at any time. If one takes OA to mean "preprints are freely available" then Elsevier is an open access publisher, which violates common sense.

I can't follow your logic, and I think you've wandered from the topic at hand.  In any case, I doubt that further exchange of comments here will accomplish anything.


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Software for recommending papers -- does this exist?
I spend a lot of time on google scholar making sure I haven't missed relevant literature. Usually this means scrolling through the "cited by" list one by one for at least 5-10 major papers on the topic.
It occurs to me that this could be done better and faster by a computer. Has anyone made software that does something like the following?
Input: A collection of papers
Output: Some papers similar to the input papers, based on citations or semantic analysis
I have in mind something like the "related papers" link on google scholar, but accepting more than one paper as input.

Mendeley tries this.

Thanks! This helps. It sounds like they have the methods I already use, plus Mendeley suggest (which I'll now try out). It's really good to learn about this.

You may want to have a look at https://www.meta.org/ - you can create research interests and the search engine then suggests relevant articles for you (or tries to), based on machine learning.


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Is it common for German universities to not notify candidates who have not been put on a shortlist?
This is specifically about German university practices. When applying for a W1/W2 professorship, should I expect to be notified about my application not being considered further once the shortlist has been put together?
Do they generally notify everybody after the first round? Does it differ from position to position?

Addition: I know that they do not notify people who were shortlisted and interviewed, once they actually start making offers because they wait how it goes with no. 1 on the list and then move down the list. I don't know how common this truly is but from personal experience I know that a friend who was second on the list did not get notified when I was offered a position (Juniorprofessur, non-tenure-track), but they contacted her immediately after I said no. That took a month but in that case, she was informed because we talked. I imagine others on the list had no idea.

Not "once the shortlist has been put together", but "once the hiring is completed and negotiations are done". But mind that it will be months or years until this point, so for all intents and purposes: no.

The process is so slow in Germany that there is no point in doing so.

@CaptainEmacs The process is slow after the short listing. Usually, the short list is made early and candidates are invited for a talk pretty quickly. But thereafter the decision process is quite lengthy.

@Walter Exactly. That's why there is no point knowing when one is not #1.

@Walter Do you have any (personal) estimate of what putting together the shortlist quickly can mean? In the case where I was shortlisted, I hadn't heard from them in over 2 months. Is that a common time frame? It seems extremely long, so I'm hoping that the turnaround is usually quicker?

@story_without_a_title the shortlist usually needs to be put together by committee (Berufungskommission). All the documents need to be checked by admin, sent out to the committee, the committee needs to be allowed time to read them, find a meeting time that works for everyone, debate for hours, send the shortlist back to admin, ....two months doesn't sound that odd.

@coffee_into_plots Thanks for the perspective! I've been part of a committee at my current university but only from the second stage, so I didn't  get all the details from start to finish.

I have applied to several positions at German universities. I was never informed of not being short listed in a timely fashion. In a few cases I was informed that my application was unsuccessful about 1-2 years after the application (in one case even per snail mail).

Wow, that's crazy. Thanks! In some US applications, I got back a reply with the shortlist, whether I was on it or not. But I guess the process in those cases was more open. But at the moment, I do not plan to go back and I'm actively looking into positions in Germany for the first time and it's confusing. I'm in Switzerland now and the systems are so different.

A German Unsitte not to reply to applications. Very wide spread though.

No, don't expect anything if you are not short listed. There may have been 100-1000 applications and contacting them all is tedious and there is little point. At least this is the experience of my colleagues.

Now you got me interested: In which field are there up to 1000 applicants per position at a German university? The most extreme cases I'm aware of in mathematics are somewhere between 100 and 200. For some positions - if the position is defined more narrowly - less than 50 can also happen.

Thanks, Walter! That's really useful. I'm wondering about how many applicants some of these jobs get. I was on a hiring committee at my current university (in Switzerland) and the applicant pool was fairly limited, which surprised me, given the amazing conditions Swiss unis have. it must depend on how specific the position is.


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How serious are German universities about the locality requirement?
Looking through requirements for both junior/W3 professor positions and some fellowships at individual institutions, I keep seeing a requirement along the lines of the applicant's willingness to move to the location of the university/have their center of living at the location.
Does anybody have experience with this or knows how strict it is?
My husband and I are experiencing the classic two body problem but there would be several options where we could live in a place together and either one or both would commute to their place of work on multiple days a week (within 2-3 hours).
If I say during the interview that I would be willing to move but then would have to reconsider, if my husband's job doesn't allow for a move to that city, is there anything they can legally do? Would I be violating the terms of my contract?
Either way, I would still have a room to stay in the city of the university but the place where I would be taxed would be elsewhere, possibly even in France or Belgium instead of Germany.

Note that international commuting (Grenzgänger) comes with its own set of hassles. For instance, I commute from Germany into Switzerland. I pay my joblessness contributions in Switzerland, but would get any benefits from Germany. So Germany in turn says that if I perform "a lot" of my work in the German home office, they want to get a portion of the contributions... which my Swiss employer does not want to deal with and therefore requires me to work in the office for at least 75% of my working hours. ...

... I have zero knowledge about how this works out for a Beamter commuting within the EU, but would very strongly suggest you figure out how it does before you find out the hard way that your envisaged way of life is legally not possible. This may impact where you need to live, and/or whether you need to get a secondary residence.

@StephanKolassa Thanks! That is, unfortunately, a major issue in our case. We are both American and Switzerland-Germany might also be an option we'd have to consider, which seems complicated due to taxes and contributions and all that.

For the specific CH-DE situation, I recommend https://www.hallo-schweiz.ch/ (in German). I can't speak to intra-EU regulations. In terms of taxes, I would recommend getting a Steuerberater close to the border, who gets more Grenzgänger clients and therefore almost certainly has more experience than someone farther inland. (I had to explain the finer points of the Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen to my local Finanzamt, which was quite understandably not conversant with it, being about 120km away from the Swiss border...) Good luck!

@StephanKolassa Thank you! Those are some valuable pointers, should we actually be in this kind of situation. Here I was all idealistic, thinking financial advisors are for the rich only and that academia is the land of a mind freed from bureaucracy. I've since had a look at what this mythical German WissZeitVG is and I'm still recovering. I thought I was good at German... Now I feel like I'm just learning to read.

This is not a complete answer. I know several Professors at German Universities that commute quite a long way (~2 hours either way). Note that a German Professor is not compelled to actually be in his office at any time -- the only requirement is to do their duties (teaching and admin) -- so you could actually work from home quite some time.
Having said that, the best way forward is to directly ask at the job interview.

It may be worth while to add that the duties are also looking after one's group and students.

Yeah, I have worked with professors who worked from home most days. It's more about what they might say if I said that I'd like to keep my center of life in my current city and if that would be in violation of their stated terms in any way. (It's also silly to worry about, I guess)

I also think this is rather negotiable, not only nowadays but already 20 years back there was the term DiMiDo-prof (prof being at university only Tue through Thu, typically with a family several 100 km away and a room in town where they stayed when at university)
However, I also think that you need to think out carefully how you want to establish and run your work group, and the impact of not or only very slowly getting to know people at the university will have if you only commute in a day or two per week (multiple times per week at 2 - 3 h one way may get a downgrade in practice...).
I'd guess that this may be the more difficult issue.

thanks! I had an advisor who did the 3 hour commute each way on 3 days a week. It's quite tough. Depending on the train situation, it might be more or less easy to get some work done, especially those pesky small tasks that take way too much time.


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Mastering in the same field as my Bachelors
I completed my Bachelors in Human Resources Management. Is there any benefit of completing a Masters degree in Human Resources Management, or should I chose another field?

What are your goals? There can be benefit in even mastering in underwater basket weaving. The question at hand that you need to decide is what benefit do you want to get out of it?

You may be able to figure this out by doing some career exploration, shadowing a couple of people working in the kind of job you are aiming for.

I would say it all depends on where you want to go. Of course, you may not yet be 100% sure yet. I was in a similar situation a few years ago. Here are a few things right off my head that may help you decide:

You probably did a Bachelor thesis or some kind of final work for your undergraduate. What was the closest field to the topic of your thesis? Human Resource Management in general or, say, something more specific like Employee Stress Performance (I just made that up, not sure if that is a valid subfield of HRM)?. Did you like it? Would you have liked a different topic in another subfield better?
What are fields related to HRM? Is it hard to switch from one to the other? Would one require you to learn difficult skills or acquire knowledge in disciplines considered to be difficult (for example math or computing)?. Would you like to acquire those? Would it be beneficial to acquire those skills, even if ending up working in a different field?
Do you have an idol in your field? Some guy who wrote a book about HRM that you like? Your supervisor? Check their CV's and career path? Did they study HRM for a Master's or do they have a very diversified path? Or ask one of your professors for advice.

Finally, a recommendation: why not wait a year or so and work in your field? Probably you would see much clearer which study would be most beneficial, if you'd like continue to study and you would also have had contact to people who'd just have finished their Master's and could give you some more feedback.

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


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Avoiding "First et al."
If a paper has four or more authors, it is common to use the style "Firstauthor et al. discovered that the sky is blue.".
I do not like this style, as it is unfair to the other authors. In my field, authors are always listed alphabetically. So being first author is an accident of birth, rather than an indication of being the main contributor.
One option is to list out all the names, but this can be impractical. (A compromise is to list out all the names at the first mention, and then revert to "Firstauthor et al." when mentioning the same paper again.)
I often see no names used e.g. "[1] discovered that the sky is blue." However, this is bad grammar -- parenthetical citations should not be treated like proper nouns. (The passive voice is one way to avoid this issue. i.e. "It is known that the sky is blue [1].")
Is there a style that avoids these problems? Is it acceptable to refer to a paper by an acronym, as in "ABCD discovered that the sky is blue." or "ABCD [1] discovered that the sky is blue"?

Every field uses different norms (first author most important, last author most important, alphabetical, etc).  If your field lists people alphabetically, then being "first author" is not a meritorious distinction and people in your field won't read it as such.  At the end of the day, references are to help the reader find the work and, in the prose itself, help the text read easier.  If the nature of the authors is actually important, then you can spend time discussing that in the paper, e.g. "The common thread in all our papers is Dr. So-and-so, which is important to point out because…"

@guifa Even if you know that being first author is meaningless, it's hard to avoid the unconscious bias -- "Aaronson? Yes. That name sounds familiar. Zhang? No. I've never heard of him."

Maybe. I come from a field where virtually all works are single author (every so often I come across a two author) so my bias is quite different —when I see ten authors, I figure each person did a tenth of a paper, and ten papers like that on a CV is equivalent to one real paper :-)

But in all seriousness, if you care enough, surely you would look up the actual paper or its works cited entry and see who did what, no? I always look at the bibliography, not just the for name —the journals, editors, date, country— and surely in the multiauthor norm fields, y'all put each author in the works cited if not in the prose, no? And especially these days it's easy to just click on the reference, see the works cited entry, glance for names you do recognize, etc, and then hop back up to reading.

In this situation everyone in your field know that first authorship means nothing so I don't see any problem. If you yourself pick the main contributor it seems much more unfair and questionable, assuming you did not know the story of every single paper, so you will judge based only your guts. From grammatical point of view  "whoever and coauthors" is the answer to your question.

@guifa In my area collaboration is the norm and most papers have 2-6 authors. It's enough of a problem that I know one person who is rumored to have changed their name for this reason.

@Greg I agree that one shouldn't take liberties with assigning credit. It should be systematic.

Alternative answer is using passive voice along "as it was recently found/reported... [1],"

In physics, there are publications with hundrets(!) of authors, that's why they mainly use the [1] style, which makes sense in this context.

Why would you need the passive voice?  The sky is blue [1]. does not use passive.

Things like "ABCD discovered that the sky is blue." are common in my field. See, e.g., here on page 3 "GGPR show that...", where GGPR stands for the authors of [30].

When using things like LaTeX (or, perhaps more accurately, things like BibTeX), it can be extremely easy to switch citation styles.  Simply changing one (optional) parameter can switch "First et al." to something like "First, Second, and Third", and other packages like cleveref let you do a certain amount of mixing and matching (so you can use names or not whenever the grammar/context calls for it).  There's a Latex.SE here that can help, and plenty of other sources for Latex or other programs you might use for putting together an article and bibliography.

If the authors all have something in common, such as an academic affiliation, then you could use that as an identifier, e.g. "A Harvard group [or: A Harvard-based group] found evidence the sky is blue [1]."  Or rewrite your sentence, e.g. "A novel approach is to describe the color of the sky as blue [1]."

"However, this is bad grammar -- parenthetical citations should not be treated like proper nouns." This isn't bad grammar, because there's no objective rule of English writing that says citations aren't nouns. It may be bad style, and you're free to dislike it and not use it, but plenty of people think citations should be treated like proper nouns, and that's not a right or wrong difference, it's a matter of stylistic opinion.

I'm going to advocate for using the style "[1] discovered that the sky is blue," even though you dislike it for grammatical reasons. I don't think that citations written like this need to be considered as parenthetical comments - they are just references, and can be used in place of the authors' names. Sometimes I will also see "Ref. 1 discovered that the sky is blue," which at least avoids putting the citation at the beginning of the sentence.
I agree that using "X et al." for an alphabetical paper is often misleading, and even though people are aware of this, it is difficult to avoid that bias. I have seen, in related cases, people refer to, e.g. "work from the group of Y" to avoid this. However, I do not recommend this, as it attributes more importance to the supervisor's contribution, and it is very easy to misunderstand the roles of people on a given project. (This also intersects with seniority, gender, etc. - big shot authors are more likely to be credited in this way.)
Author names as an acronym also seems quite useful, but I've mostly seen them used in cases where either A) there is a paper or idea that is classic in the field, or B) a single paper is a subject of focused discussion, and is discussed in depth by many other papers. For an example of B, there is the AMPS "firewall" paper in physics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall_(physics) - they are also not compatible with giant author lists more common in some fields!

Thanks for the thoughtful answer. I haven't seen "Ref. 1 discovered that the sky is blue" before. Is it common in your area?

Also, *The paper [1] shows that the sky is blue."

Personally I'd go with 'In [1] it was shown that the sky is blue'.

In my field, the Ref. 1 style is fairly common, though I've also seen the variants Federico and Jessica note, those are also good options!

Eeeew. No. Papers do not discover things; people discover things!

Stick to the journal's rules.
Most serious journals have a style guide that will cover this issue. Focus your creativity on the content, not on the form.
The purpose of citations is simply to give an easy an convenient way for readers to locate the earlier work you relied on. It is not to show deference or to "pay tribute" to other researchers or to indicate who you think contributed most to a given paper. Let epistemology scholars and historian worry about who discovered what first.

Indeed, some journals explicitly forbid the "[1] did something" format.

Sure. If I don't have a choice, then I don't have a choice. But often I do have a choice e.g. when uploading preprints to arxiv.

Let's go over the alternatives proposed so far, plus one of my own:

Foo et al. proposes that the sky is blue [ 1 ]. This is in contrast to Fizz and Buzz, which maintain that the sky is more greenish [ 2 ].

The most clean alternative, but I see where the OP is coming from. If everybody does that, and assuming that especially in large cooperations alphabetical ordering of authors becomes natural, it certainly becomes an advantage to have a last name starting with "Aa".

[ 1 ] proposes that the sky is blue. This is in contrast to [ 2 ], which maintains that the sky is more greenish.

This is the solution proposed by AJK in her/his answer. Many "style purists" don't particularly like this writing, as it essentially uses references as nouns rather than as annotations to the text. I personally don't mind this style, as I think it communicates intent fairly well, and that should be what it's all about. However, be wary that some might find this style of writing to be "wrong" and complain about it.

The paper [ 1 ] proposes that the sky is blue. This is in contrast to the paper [ 2 ], which maintains that the sky is more greenish.

I see no real advantage of this phrasing in comparison to the previous approach - it's only longer. Note that even in this version the references are not really annotations, but part of the text itself. That is, if you remove the references from the above sentence, it does not actually make much sense anymore (unlike in the first variant).

Ref 1 proposes that the sky is blue. This is in contrast to Ref 2, which maintains that the sky is more greenish.

I have seen this variation maybe two or three times in the wild so far, and I am not sure why you would use it over the second variation. The only advantage I see is that it "looks" more like a regular English sentence, but it still has the problem that the reference is part of the sentence rather than being an annotation.

A common thought in research is that the sky is blue [ 1 ]. However, some challenge this by arguing that the sky is more greenish [ 2 ].

My personally preferred option is to rephrase the statement to focus on the thought or result itself, rather than on who produced it. If you do that, the problem tends to go away naturally. Even independently of writing style, I have always found texts to read better once you remove all the "A said, B said, C said" boilerplate and focus on what has actually been said.

I agree with the rule that the sentence should still parse after any citations in brackets are removed. Phrasing things so as to avoid discussing who made the contribution is good. However, sometimes it's hard to do. e.g when contrasting the contributions of different papers.

I would emphatically oppose xLeitix' suggestion of

[ 1 ] proposes that the sky is blue. This is in contrast to [ 2 ], which maintains that the sky is more greenish.

or

The paper [ 1 ] proposes that the sky is blue. This is in contrast to the paper [ 2 ], which maintains that the sky is more greenish.

Instead, I believe that

Ref 1 proposes that the sky is blue. This is in contrast to Ref 2, which maintains that the sky is more greenish.

is the way to go if you would like to avoid First et al. Yes, the reference here is a part of the sentence, not just an annotation, and that's OK since it isn't parenthesized. In the same spirit, it is common to also write

Figure 3 shows the XYZ dependence of ABC.

where "Figure 3" is also clearly a part of the sentence, and not just annotation.

I agree that parentheticals should be viewed as annotations, rather than part of the sentence. However, it's a rule that is often ignored. I see "Substituting x=0 into (1) gives y=2." in math papers, rather than the more grammatical "Substituting x=0 into Equation 1 gives y=2.".

@oval Funny that you mention this, I'm also guilty of this sin, though I adhere to the guidelines of my answer.

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


text:
Where to find papers when Google Scholar and libraries fail?
I'm trying to find the following paper:
R.M. Wilson, “Decomposition of a complete graph into subgraphs isomorphic to a given graph.“ Congressus Numerantium XV (1975), 647-659. MR0396347 (53:214)
Also seen cited as:
R.M. Wilson, “Decomposition of a complete graph into subgraphs isomorphic to a given graph.“ Utilitas Math, Winnipeg (1976)
I cannot find it anywhere, online or offline. How am I supposed to progress here?

In addition to consulting libraries, also consult librarians.  They can often find papers for you housed at other libraries.

The most complete repositories are probably sci-hub.tw and libgen.rs, but both of those resources infringe on copyright laws (by ignoring them altogether) quite drastically — just be aware of the ethical and legal issues here.

Perhaps you are from Germany, this may be something to check at http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/924748959. Regarding libgen, I use it without fear.

Wouldn't this question be more appropriate for a Math site?

Does this answer your question? Help finding a research paper published 70 years ago, not able to find it anywhere

Does this answer your question? https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7797/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-yourselves-with-an-unreadable-inaccessible-paper

If you are at a university, you can go to your library and request the article through their document delivery service.  This is a service available through every university library I know of, and a librarian will find a copy one way or another.  There may be a cost; often it is paid by the library, and if this is for research then it should be possible to pay for it through the associated grant.

Really? Any ILL I've ever submitted as a student has been free. Are faculty charged?

@AzorAhai-him- It depends on the university/library. Some do, some don't. Oxford will charge to fetch a scan of a document they have in storage... (Or did in 2016/2017)

Yes, even faculty pay at my school, but at 1,50€ a pop it doesn't break the bank. My librarians are AWESOME at finding obscure stuff I want! I also want this paper, too...

@AzorAhai-him- clearly there is a cost associated - someone is going to pay it. My university (i.e., student's fees) assume the cost up to a reasonably number of requests or assigns it to the research  grant if applicable. Some other do the same and requires a token payment to avoid overuse... (I think that the cost is around 30€ per search).

@AzorAhai-him- at my former university, the library is obligated to charge the department for some weird legal reasons (or so said the librarian). But it is cheap. Probably, handling the payment costs more than the actual value.

@Rmano Wow, 30 euro is a lot more than token! I'm in a field where I don't have to do these very often, but I did just have to submit like 7 (?) and like I said, I've never been charged for one. They also aren't for a grant, but for my oral exams so I wonder if my dept is being charged behind the scenes or if there's a limit I just haven't hit yet.

@AzorAhai-him- sorry, I explained myself badly --- I think that the real cost is around that figure.

Kindly ask all the authors that recently cited that paper ... at least one of them must have a printed copy or a pdf that can be shared privately with you.
Start from here to look for all citations since 2018

This is not a bad idea. But asking a librarian or trying harder to find it yourself (as in my answer) might be better.

@Oliver882  I presume OP already asked librarians, since OP states "I cannot find it anywhere, online or offline"... but I also know I may be wrong. :) .
I had similar issue with a paper from a widely cited paper from the beginning of the 90s: too new to be widely found, too old to be readily available in pdf. Solution: the library provided me microfilms (!) and they thaught me how to use the microfilm scanner in the library (!!).

Actually I assumed OP had not already asked librarians, because if he/she had, the librarian would probably have found it! But I may be wrong too.

"at least one of them must have a printed copy or a pdf" LOL. Most people cite stuff without reading it first. This citation has probably been copied from paper to paper since the 1970's, without anyone reading it.

Based on similar references elsewhere, I think it is in "Proceedings of the Fifth British Combinatorial Conference". https://lccn.loc.gov/77361732
See reference 4 in https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02321683/document
or reference 1 in https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016750600870654X
So now you just have to get this proceedings from a library.
I found this by googling "Congressus Numerantium XV" to find out what that was.

It appears to have been an invited talk too, see http://staff.computing.dundee.ac.uk/kedwards/bcc/past.html#bcc5

Yea, the relevant library entry is this one on WorldCat

The following may be useful if you have access: https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/pdf/396347.pdf?pg1=MR&s1=53:214&loc=fromreflist
I also found the following citations with slightly more information:

https://epubs.siam.org/doi/10.1137/S0097539792229507 [14] R. M. Wilson, Decomposition of a Complete Graph into Subgraphs Isomorphic to a Given Graph, Utilitas Mathematica Publishing, Winnipeg, MB, 1976, pp. 647–695.
https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet-getitem?mr=0396347: MR396347 05C99 Wilson, Richard M. Decompositions of complete graphs into subgraphs isomorphic to a given graph. Proceedings of the Fifth British Combinatorial Conference (Univ. Aberdeen, Aberdeen, 1975) , pp. 647–659. Congressus Numerantium, No. XV, Utilitas Math., Winnipeg, Man., 1976.
http://staff.computing.dundee.ac.uk/kedwards/biblio.html (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sA6vqpGSoXkJ:staff.computing.dundee.ac.uk/kedwards/biblio.html): 198. R. M. Wilson, Decomposition of complete graphs into subgraphs isomorphic to a given graph, in Proceedings of Fifth British Combinatorial Conference (Aberdeen, 1975) (eds. C. St. J. A. Nash-Williams & J. Sheehan), Congressus Numerantium, 15, (1976), pp. 647-659. MR0396347 (53 #214)


text:
Do I have to make someone coauthor if he/she solves a problem in StackExchange, asked by myself, which is later used in my paper?
Suppose, in my research (mathematical) I have a critical step that I need to solve, and, due to various reasons I cannot find decent answer to that step by myself or by contacting friends or colleagues, so that I decide to post a similar but simpler problem to the relevant StackExchange (Math). Now, if someone comes up with a good answer that I can use to further my research, will it be enough to acknowledge the contribution of the author of the answer and citing that particular thread of StackExchange, or do I need to include that person as a coauthor of the paper that I might prepare based on that answer?
I emphasize here that the paper is supposed to be not all about that particular result, there are many other things, and that particular answer is useful, albeit critically, at an intermediate stage of proving some results in the paper. I personally feel that citing and acknowledging the contribution is respectful enough. However, I want to know what the standard norm is.

If you are using other people's work then you should cite them.

Possible duplicate of Attributing contributions to academic work that occur in Stack Exchange (plus all the questions in the sidebar 'linked' section)

@SolarMike that seems like a good answer, please post it as such instead of as a comment.

Do you know when you would offer coauthorship versus just giving an acknowledgement? The threshold shouldn't be any different for asking a question on SE versus in person/email/etc.

I think none of the commentators have entertained the possibility that the contributor does not want to be listed as coauthor.  People can be cited against their will but should never be made coauthor involuntarily.

I have been in this precise situation. I wrote the manuscript to a reasonably finished state and then contacted the helpful SE person, asking if they want to be a coauthor and whether the attribution is sufficient. The attribution consisted of citing the MO answer and additionally naming them in the acknowledgements.
This approach has the benefit of maintaining or building a good relationship with the helpful person.
Remember that the typical norms of co-authorship include intellectual contribution, as well as writing or critical review of the manuscript, and in any case accepting the final paper. If you see their contribution as relatively minor, you might want to offer them the possibility to extend or otherwise improve the paper if they are interested in co-authorship.
If the contribution does not merit co-authorship, you can still cite it or acknowledge the (possibly anonymous) contributor on SE, if that is warranted. It is polite, but not required, to ask the person how they should be referred to, in any case.

This is straightforward/normal procedure on MathOverflow or any conference talk/poster that leads to someone helping you. But what to do on other stackexchange sites with users which are no professional reasearchers, having no scientific degrees that have no public profile? Implicitly, does one really have to ask for co-authorship or even acknowledgment of user_xyz?! Soon many papers will be full of stackexchange acknowledgments of random people without an institution, do editors really want to see this in practice? I'm undecided...there is a ethical and a practical answer to OP's question

@user847982 If their contribution is something that one can find elsewhere, at a better source, than one can also cite that. I suppose most contributions by non-scientists would fit in this category, or at least be minor enough to not warrant co-authorship, but rahter only a thank you or an acknowledgement. But if an amateur provides a missing piece to some work, credit is due.

Thanks for the answer. I also think that citing the answer and acknowledging the author, if a paper is ultimately prepared, should be the reasonable way to give due credit to the author.

@user847982 Why would you think it is practical or ethical to simply withhold attribution for contributions from anyone who doesn't meet some arbitrary threshold of notability or identifiability?  There is a simple term for that - plagiarism.

You use results - you cite. The results are substantial in making your paper work as a whole, you offer co-authorship. But citation is minimum, whether or not the person is a full-time academic. It doesn't matter if the problem was solved by Will Hunting the janitor, Pierre de Fermat, the judge or James Garfield, the president.

@DarrenRinger if I go onto your stackexchange profile page, I don't see even a mail adress, so I fear while ethical and suggested here, it's totally unpractical to arrange this here. I also would suppose if someone posts here anonymously and without mail adress here, he is also not really interested in co-authoring and acknowledgement. On Mathoverflow there are probably not so many anonymous user as on most other SE sites. And if you can plagiarize an anonymous contribution on stackexchange is another question...

@user847982 Inconvenience is not an excuse for plagiarism.

@user847982 Then quote the handle. In literature, the Treasure of the Sierra Madre is written by someone code-named B. Traven, but nobody knows for sure who that is; the identity of that person is unknown. So, you cite "B. Traven". If someone contributing an important proof on SE calls themselves "AStupidDork" and leaves no other way to credit them, it's their problem - but it's also still their credit.

@CaptainEmacs  Back to OP,he writes about a "step", but no new theorem or alike which was contributed. It's nice if we all agree here on the most ethical answer to his question, which is on the other hand pretty unpractical or differently handled between mathematicians and programmers who copy paste all along probably a lot of steps, hints and answers pusblished here on stackexchange for CS research work. I "guess" copy paste is much much more common here than co-authoring. Writing a book or an advise on se are imho two different things like composing a song and "inventing" a chord progression

@user847982, you seem to be arguing against your own position: inviting people to be co-authors reduces "stackexchange acknowledgements of random people without an institution". I doubt you will find many reputable journals whose conditions for accepting a paper include every author having institutional contact details. As for practicalities: if you can't find contact details in a profile, you can post a comment with your own contact details and ask the person to contact you. That's what Mike Spivey did to coordinate https://doi.org/10.4169/math.mag.86.1.039

@PeterTaylor I didn't say this but question the point/effort of citing/acknowledging anonymous users here for contributing steps in a proof and who knows how long the content will be online here? https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1581/41661 This answer imho is useful to my problem where to draw the line between co-authorship, citation, acknowledgement... The advise here to cite always and everybody is too simple imho. But let's stop here we won't convince each other ;-)

@user847982 Since you have strong and well-argued opinions about the matter, please post an answer, rather than only hiding your inputs in this comment thread.

@TommiBrander Sorry that exaggerated in the comments. I commented your answer to ask for the line between co-authorship, acknowledgments, not mentioning, some other answers and the linked in the above comment anser this now. Moderator can delete the discussion here or move to chat...

There is the question of what you are ethically obligated to do, and what I would advise you to do. (I've had a somewhat similar situation.)
I do not think you are ethically obligated to offer coauthorship. The situation is similar to if the person posted a short note to the arxiv. They can expect to be cited, and they can expect that your paper will not take credit for their work, but they can't claim coauthorship of the next work to use the result. Once posted, answers should be free for all to cite, not attached to strings.
Now, if you don't coauthor, you MUST cite the result properly (stackexchange sites often have a link below answers for this) and attribute credit for the result in your paper. (I would include a full proof for completeness, though.) If you find that your paper still stands on its own when this result is reduced to citation of an outside source, this may be a sign that coauthorship would not be very necessary. If you find the paper is weak because all the hard parts have been reduced to citations, you still aren't ethically obliged to coauthor, you just have a weak paper.
If you do coauthor, then I would suggest still citing the stackexchange post, But it is, in my opinion, correct and ethical to present the work as an original contribution of the research paper, since SE is not archival and the author of the post is an author of your paper. In this case, you may find that the paper becomes stronger and its contribution more impressive, which is a sign that coauthorship is a smart move.
But aside from this, for many reasons, I agree with others that regardless, the best advice is probably to pursue coauthorship first. It is a nicer and more polite approach, it makes your paper stronger, it may help that person receive more recognition for their contributions, they are probably an expert in the area and can improve the whole paper and bring recognition, it may improve your personal network even if they say no, etc.

I'm confused. You seem to be saying, actually, that your paper wouldn't exist if it wasn't for that contribution: "critical" twice.
If that is the case, then certainly they are "worthy" of co-authorship.  If it is "critical" then you couldn't have done it without them.
If you suggest it to them they might agree or not. If they don't then citation would be appropriate.

Let me turn it around, just as a thought experiment. This other person produced a result to a question you posed. It was their work. Suppose they decide to publish that result. Suppose, indeed, that they think about it for a bit and decide to publish a generalization of that result. Are they justified in doing so? Are they justified in doing so as sole-author? Worth thinking about, I suppose. I doubt that they should publish as sole author without attribution, of course, but their situation seems to be a direct reflection of yours.

I am not saying that the paper cannot be prepared without the result, I can probably improve a paper using that result.

Hmmm. Actually "they" probably improved the paper with that result. It might also open up opportunities for collaboration in the future. I'm still feeling "itchy" about this. If you write a paper without the result and another version with the result. The difference is due to the other person, except that you proposed the framework (which isn't nothing, of course).

The thing is that my paper is supposed to have several results. I have proved one of the key results based upon some assumptions which I am trying to get rid of using different strategies. One such strategy requires proving certain claim that I hope to prove using the result that was given to me as an answer in SE. So, although, without any doubt, the result, coupled with my further analysis, may strengthen my paper, there is other analysis, along with the framework, which is my work. That is why I was asking, whether, if I can prepare a final paper, I can assign due credit by citation.

@SamratMukhopadhyay Think of each of those results as a different paper. For one of those papers, this person did a critical contribution and thus deserves credit. If you had compiled those various mini-papers into a single, larger meta-paper, you would have to credit every author that contributed to every single one of those smaller papers. This is no different, in my opinion.

@T.Sar, of course I have to give credit to each them, but what I am asking is that do I need to offer them co-authorship, or citing their contribution is enough?

@SamratMukhopadhyay You should apply the same standards you would apply to anyone else in making that determination. If someone asks me whether a paired samples t-test is appropriate for their research question, and I tell them yes, I definitely don't expect an acknowledgment or authorship. If I go to the lab down the hall and ask if anyone there has had familiarity dissolving some hard-to-dissolve compound and they recommend a solvent they've used, I'm probably not going to acknowledge or grant authorship to that contribution. If they helped with an entire assay I definitely would.

It is always a good idea to be generous with coauthorship.  Consider the risk/reward:
Offering coauthorship has many benefits: good relations with the recipient, reputation of generosity, increased network of coauthors.  The only drawback is that if the offer is accepted, then in some situations some people might have an incorrectly diminished view of your contributions to the joint paper.  This is rare and minor -- people know that authors sometimes have differing contributions.
Failing to offer coauthorship has many risks: alienating the recipient, reputation of stinginess (which can lead to fewer future collaborators), accusations of academic misconduct.

Of course one should not read someone's mind; that would not fall under "completely certain".

The only way to be completely certain is to make the offer.  So the only reason not to make the offer is if you have already made the offer and it was refused.

Good answer, I wanted to upvote, but then I saw the last sentence, and agree with the others.

Upon reflection, I've deleted the controversial last sentence.