text:
How to specify Phi Beta Kappa membership?
I am writing a letter of recommendation for a student whose record includes membership in the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.  How do I express this?

Jane was named to Phi Beta Kappa.
Jane was awarded Phi Beta Kappa.
Jane earned Phi Beta Kappa.
Jane was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

Or something else?

Moderators: Feel free to migrate to English Language Usage if that is more appropriate.  I wasn't sure.

"Inducted" is the term normally associated with the process of joining an honor society, whether it is a group such as Phi Beta Kappa or Tau Beta Pi, or a professional society such as the National Academy of Science, or even something cultural, like a sports hall of fame.
As a usage note, though, the term "inducted" is normally accompanied by a temporal reference.

Why not simply: Jane was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. Feel free to add relevant information, e.g. how long was she member, any outstanding exploits, perhaps even a statement how "elite" that particular society is, i.e. how hard it is to get in and her related accomplishments.

I think I'd like to stress that membership is not simply purchased but is an honor, without going into the details.  Since the letter is for a U.S. scholarship, I can assume the reader will be familiar with it.  (I realize my second sentence somewhat contradicts the first one.)

I'm aware that it is an honor, I'm sorry, but I don't see where I suggested it can be purchased. Can you be more specific what lacks clarity? I'll be happy to edit my answer. However, I still feel that the most efficient approach is the simple one. Even more so, if, as you say it, the reader is familiar with the society.

You didn't, but to me the term member has been tainted by the triviality of becoming a member of most organizations.  I meant no offense.


text:
How to teach from a tutorial-style book?
I will be teaching introductory computer science and am considering using a book [sample chapter] that is so well-written and self-contained that, at least for the first few chapters, it's not clear that the students need lectures.  Should I just spend a few minutes at the beginning of the class giving an overview, then set them to work lab-style, enlisting TAs to roam the room with me?  (I teach in a classroom with a computer for each student.) That seems lazy, but I'm not sure what value I can add (until the material gets more challenging around Chapter 4).  FWIW, I'm a tenured professor, so I don't have to worry about being judged by anyone (except myself).
UPDATE: It occurs to me that something else I can do during classtime is meet one-on-one with students to find out what they hope to get from the course and how it is going for them.

It sounds like what you are suggesting is similar to a "flipped classroom", with a well-written tutorial in the place of the usual online lecture.

@Corvus I thought of that, but (at this point) I wouldn't be asking them to watch videos or anything else outside of class.

@espertus to make sure you are adding value to the book, you can track the progress, identify difficulties, and host lectures on the topics that students find more challenging, explaining in a different way.

This kind of question would fit nicely at https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/92460/computer-science-educators (it's still in private beta, so you have to click "visit" from that page)

I'm concerned by your statement "That seems lazy" because it implies that you are focusing on yourself when really you should be focused on the student, specifically what the students are learning.
It is very easy for us to think from our own perspective but we must consider the perspective of student learning to be of primary importance.
If you believe the text is a good text (which you seem to) then it would seem the right path to take is to have students spending their class time working through the book (as a workshop) with you there to guide them if they get stuck or if they want some more advanced information.
In general, it's easy - that's good. Remember the old saying "Those who do, learn." So, you want the "students to do" rather than "you to do."

You're right, it shouldn't be about me.  OTOH, it's legitimate for me to apply extra scrutiny to a teaching strategy that drastically reduces the amount of prep I have to do, to make sure I'm doing it for the right reasons.

@espertus I agree completely.

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text:
Why do some US universities ban first-year graduate student from working outside TA/RA?
I read an email from UCSD (CSE department) stating:

M.S. Graduate students are not permitted to work at all during their first year (CPT or any employment) due to CSE polices instated by the faculty committee for our graduate students. Graduate students are eligible to apply for UCSD campus graduate student TAships or research positions.

Why do some US universities / departments ban first-year graduate students from working outside TA/RA?

It seems obvious that they want students to focus on their studies for the first year.
I don't know why they feel this way, but as a state funded education that is putting public resources into a student's education, they don't want those resources "wasted" or used ineffectively.
If a student proves him/herself the prohibition ends. I would hope that the last part is reinforcing this. TA fine. Research fine. Because we can have some control over how much effort is spent there.
I would object to such policies if they excluded financially needy students. I don't know how they manage that issue.
But even institutions that run graduate schools but are not publicly funded still subsidize student education to some extent. As high as tuition can be at some places it is often matched by other sources. I'm assuming the institutions are non-profit. Not all are, and that has its own problems, but those are very unlikely to have such rules.

Note: F-1 visas holders are restricted from working off-campus during the first year, and need to get permission after that.

@mkennedy (source: https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/complete-correct-form-i-9/complete-section-1-employee-information-and-attestation/foreign-academic-students)

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text:
Do industry-sponsored papers contain more incorrect results than papers that aren't industry-sponsored?
Are there any research/study/survey that tried to analyze whether industry-sponsored papers contain more incorrect results than  papers that aren't industry-sponsored, and if so, to what extent?
For example, if a drug company publishes a paper about the efficiency of one of their drugs, some readers might suspect results are more likely to be positively biased  than if the paper was published by an academic lab with no funding from the drug company. I wonder if these kinds of suspicion are actually grounded.

While the fact seems likely, this study would heavily rely on subjective and anecdotal evidences, and no new conclusion could be drawn from it. A thoroughly unscientific study. (And I know the world is full of studies consisting of such useless statistical surveys.) If you are suspicious about any paper, investigate the specific case.

Define an industry-sponsored paper? Do you suspect that the huge corpus of work from AT&T Bell Labs is more flawed than from some university? How do you determine that with enough statistics to really tell? (I would note that examples such as you gave are the reason for conflict of interest statements, so agree that it has happened in some fields.)

This reminds me of the Bayer and Amgen (companies) studies where they claim that they could not replicate approximately 90% of the published biomed papers they tested - but they did not publish what papers they attempted. Reference that notes this: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/rigorous-replication-effort-succeeds-just-two-five-cancer-papers I think the real problem would be identifying what papers are actually industry sponsored, as often this is unknown and only would mean directly sponsored - indirectly sponsored projects are hard to identify.

@JonCuster -- back in the day I read some really good AT&T Bell Labs research papers (mostly in acoustics, signal processing, and DSP).  They were awesome!

I think your hypothesis is implausible that industry-sponsored research is more incorrect or less reproducible than non-industry-sponsored. Or can you give some reasons for this assumption?
On the contrary looking at many of the meta-surveys (partly conducted by industry, because non-industry-sponsored research maybe is less reproducible to their experience) that investigated the reproducibility of academic research in the recent years, rather the opposite is maybe the case and known within industry.
Additionally, I don't see how it makes a difference if money financing a PhD student comes from industry or not? Wouldn't the rationale rather be, if money is spent by industry, then rather PhD scientists/Professors are hired for a project than cheap and still learning PhD students pressured by publish or perish? And to my knowledge more of the spotted scientific misconduct has been caused by untenured researchers. Again, publish or perish
And when industry research can't reproduce 70–90% of academic laboratory findings, then a better question is probably if most of the research projects are funded by industry or not and what kind of researchers are on average hired for industry-sponsored projects (PhD students, PhD's, tenured)
What maybe sounds plausible, that researchers carrying out industry-sponsored projects tend even more to make up results or buzzy headlines ("new battery technology allows charging up within 10% of normal time" which I read every month or so), is rather implausible to me, because important and valuable results in industry-sponsored research projects are often rather published as a patent than a paper.
More importantly, there is a clear correlation that research in branches being strongly entangled with industry (engineering, physics,...) is much better reproducible than weakly linked branches (social sciences, psychology, biomedical,...). Most of the meta-surveys are in such fields.
To take up your case of drug development, such only become legalized after 10 years of clinical trial, so I think the incentive for some PhD student is not significantly higher and often the PhD students have no clue if the money financing them comes from industry or public. And professors being biased by the funding source mostly don't conduct and evaluate the experiments and would have to alter the results (which also happened, but rarely)
Summa summarum I think there is no such study (my googling didn't find one but many meta-survey on reproducibility partly published by industry companies), as your hypothesis looks very implausible to me. There is probably a good virtual database with so much meta-surveys and the necesssity to name funding sources in a paper, still to me the important question would be, which kind of researcher (students, tenured,...) are typically hired for non-/industry sponsored projects? Because, the conclusion from the published meta-surveys in social sciences, psychology, biomedicine and the low reproducibility to be drawn is not that researchers in such fields tend to be more biased, tricking, cheating and therefore more incorrect results are published, but rather that industry is not much interested in such results and the level of scientific rigor is much lower than in hard sciences like quantitative physics or engineering, for which I didn't find a single meta-survey.

I don't know that the OP was specifically pushing the assumption. It is certainly something we see a lot nowadays with climate research for example. Data would be interesting. Though good point about the difference of fields. Industry probably is far less likely to waste their time and money with nonsense such as low power studies to analyze whether rich people are bigger jerks. So it would be hard to make a fair comparison of researchers.

What is a "result"?
Many industry papers I've seen do not contain any hard results anyway, but just report some andectodal evidence how they improved some software they used. I doubt there can be anything "wrong" there.
It's not as if they contained plenty of wrong proofs.

I think the question gives one example of results. If some papers don't have any results, then we can ignore them.

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text:
Where does the budget surplus of a conference go?
When a conference gathers more money (e.g., from sponsorships, registration fees, or public subsidies) than what was spent for organizing the conference, where does the conference budget surplus go?

In a regional chapter of a well known technical society, any surplus goes to our scholarship fund and is used for that purpose.

Depending on who runs the conference, it could go into lining the organisers' pockets...

Here are some models I am aware of; combinations of these also exist:

There is a sponsor (e.g. government, local university or some academic organization) that covers part of the expenses but their rules for sponsoring are such that you cannot make surplus. You will need to return some of the sponsor money back to them so that the bottom line is non-positive.
There is a contingency fund for the conference series. Surplus from one year is used to cover deficit in another year, or to support other conference-related activities in the future years (say, sponsoring student travel).
There is a scientific organization (e.g. ACM) that runs the conference series and takes any surplus (and promises to help if something goes wrong).
The local university that organizes the event will keep any surplus (and they will also be responsible for helping if something goes wrong).
The local organizers will figure out some way to avoid surplus. More free coffee, additional student travel grants, last-minute conference fee discounts, additional awards, free city tour, honorariums for keynote speakers.
Some part of the income can be flexible. For example, the registration fee for local participants may be fixed only after the conference, once all other income and expenses are known, so that the bottom line will be close to zero if possible.

Indeed, distributing additional student (/young colleague) travel reimbursements is, in my experience, a very common use of small surplusses.

I can confirm the tours, or actually a a few places on a boat excursion with short demonstrations of sponsor's instruments.

A variant on the contingency fund: sometimes the surplus is simply given to the organizers of the next year.

In many (most?) fields, conferences have sponsors. In my field (CS) a typical sponsor might be the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) or one of its parts. Any surplus would go back to the sponsor.
But the sponsor is also responsible for any shortfalls that occur.
I've never been a conference chair (only lower level positions) and never the Finance Chair, but I suspect that most conferences are expected to at least break even and maybe return a bit to the sponsoring organization. I don't have examples of "cash cow" academic conferences, but suspect that they exist. There have been some monster conferences, though they are more like expositions.
My recollection of ACM conferences is that the conference committee always has a member who represents the organization directly, looking out for lots of things and giving advice to the chair(s) if they aren't already experienced.
I'll also note that the committee is (ACM, again) composed of volunteers, though some support clerical staff might be paid. In any case, it isn't the committee that benefits financially.

In my experience, when they "sponsor" a conference, the ACM insists on a budget with a large planned surplus, supposedly to reduce the risk of a deficit, but really because taking money from conferences in exchange for the ACM logo is part of their business model.

@MarcGlisse Displaying a logo that symbolizes paywalls doesn't make sense to me. Paying for it seems even more absurd.

@MarcGlisse, you seem to be suggesting that ACM is, in some way, predatory.

In order to finance their more charitable activities, they need money. Some ways to get money are charging for publications, taking a "tax" on conferences, and membership fees (which they increase by forcing conferences to be way more expensive for non-members, so most participants become members). The money does not go to shareholders, but it isn't surprising if their behavior may look kind of predatory in some contexts. (the main conference in my community left the ACM a few years ago)

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
When bidding for papers on softconf.com as a reviewer, does it make any difference between answering no or not bidding for a paper?
When bidding for papers on softconf.com as a reviewer, does it make any difference between answering no or not answering for a paper?
I.e., is there difference between:

and

?

Answering some comments:
http://softconf.com a.k.a. START:

START V2 is an integrated web-based solution for managing peer-reviewed conferences and workshops. START helps streamline all steps of the editorial process, including paper/abstract submission, committee formation, paper reviews, on-line technical committee meetings, report compilations, author notification, preliminary conference program creation - and a lot more.

Also, what is “paper bidding”?.

I have crossposted the question at:

Quora

Could you explain for context what this site is and does?

And have you asked them?

https://softconf.com/: "START V2 is an integrated web-based solution for managing peer-reviewed conferences and workshops. START helps streamline all steps of the editorial process, including paper/abstract submission, committee formation, paper reviews, on-line technical committee meetings, report compilations, author notification, preliminary conference program creation - and a lot more."

So what does "bid on a paper" mean?

@user111388 What is “paper bidding”?

I would venture a guess: No means that you do not want to have this paper. As chair, I would really avoid giving you this paper. No bid means, you have not seen it, not paid attention, don't care etc. So, you would not be under priority to get it, but if I do not find a reviewer who said yes or maybe, I would allocate it to you after all. Just my guess as how I would use such a system, that's why it's not an answer.

What @CaptainEmacs wrote matches my experience with EasyChair, which seems very similar to softconf as you describe it. But a particular program chair might have a different interpretation of the bids, which you could only find out by asking him/her.

I can't answer specifically for this service, but in general it can make a small difference if some papers fail to get bids. For some CS conferences, if you answer no for a paper you are unlikely to be asked again if a second round of bids is needed. If you don't answer at all, then not answering will be likely treated as more like "maybe" than "no".
But, while not especially rare, it only happens at the margins.
But it is even possible that a desperate program chair will come back and beg even "no" voters for reviews in a future "ask". Even less likely though.


text:
Given a DOI, how can I programmatically obtain all the author affiliations?
Given a DOI, how can I programmatically obtain all the author affiliations? The coding part isn't the issue, but finding a proper database/API is.
E.g. for DOI 10.1186/s12920-019-0598-0, the author affiliations are:

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, S7N 5A9 Canada
Division of Biomedical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, S7N 5A9 Canada
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Hainan Normal University, Haikou, 571158 China

If you are asking how to write a computer program for this, you are at the wrong place.

@Buffy I'm looking for an API or dataset. I'll add the database tag.

Maybe the Crossref REST API can be used for this. Do note that some affiliation data may be missing though.

First of all, the main sources of citation data are:

Proprietary data sources:

Google Scholar
Scopus
Web of Science (WoS)

Open access data:

Crossref
MEDLINE (focusing on medical papers)

Some papers compare the comprehensiveness between these different sources, e.g. see {1,2}.

To extract the author affiliations given a DOI, a few options (search for "affiliations" on the links below) :

https://support.datacite.org/docs/api-get-doi
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/licensee/elements_descriptions.html (MEDLINE database https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/medline.html)
https://github.com/CrossRef/rest-api-doc  suggested by Anyon.

For option 3 (CrossRef API), one can use the https://github.com/CrossRef/rest-api-doc  API via the Python library https://gitlab.com/crossref/crossref_commons_py:
# If testing in Docker
docker run --interactive --tty ubuntu:18.04 bash
apt update; apt install -y git nano wget htop python3 python3-pip unzip

# Requirements
pip3 install crossref-commons

# Python code
import crossref_commons.retrieval
crossref_commons.retrieval.get_publication_as_json('10.5621/sciefictstud.40.2.0382')  # affiliations are empty
crossref_commons.retrieval.get_publication_as_json('10.1148/radiol.2018180887')       # affiliations are present

though it seems that quite often authors have no affiliations on CrossRef.
My guess is that MEDLINE (option 2) has more thorough metainformation (I based my guess given the information I see on the PubMed website, which relies on MEDLINE database, e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6936069/ has author affiliations, but not crossref_commons.retrieval.get_publication_as_json('10.1186/s12920-019-0598-0'), even though 10.1186/s12920-019-0598-0 = PMC6936069. Anyon's comment also questions CrossRef's comprehensiveness for the author affiliations field). The MEDLINE database can either be downloaded or accessed via API (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/home/develop/api/). See https://stackoverflow.com/a/62974197/395857 on how to access the MEDLINE database in Python.

If one cannot find the affiliation in the metainformation and if the PDF can be obtained from the DOI, one could use PDF-to-text extraction programs for scientific papers, such as:

https://github.com/kermitt2/grobid (has the ability to parse affiliation and address blocks)
https://github.com/allenai/science-parse
https://github.com/allenai/spv2

To test pybliometrics that BND refers to in their answer:
# If testing in Docker
docker run --interactive --tty ubuntu:18.04 bash
apt update; apt install -y git nano wget htop python3 python3-pip unzip

# Install and configure pybliometrics
pip3 install pybliometrics
from pybliometrics.scopus.utils import config
config['Authentication']['APIKey'] = '' # Enter Elsevier API key obtained on http//dev.elsevier.com/myapikey.html

# Retrieve author affiliations
from pybliometrics.scopus import AbstractRetrieval
ab = AbstractRetrieval("10.1016/j.softx.2019.100263")
from pybliometrics.scopus import AuthorRetrieval
au1 = AuthorRetrieval(ab.authors[0].auid)
print(au1.affiliation_current)

Unfortunately pybliometrics relies on Elsevier Scopus's API, which isn't free: some institutions have subscribed to it, but fewer and fewer are willing to feed the Elsevier sharks.

References:

{1} Harzing, Anne-Wil, and Satu Alakangas. "Google Scholar, Scopus and the Web of Science: a longitudinal and cross-disciplinary comparison." Scientometrics 106, no. 2 (2016): 787-804. https://web.archive.org/web/20170922223941/http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/18511/1/gsscowos.pdf
{2} Van Eck, Nees Jan, Ludo Waltman, Vincent Larivière, and Cassidy Sugimoto. "Crossref as a new source of citation data: A comparison with Web of Science and Scopus." A blog post in the website of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, URL: https://www.cwts.nl/blog (2018). https://www.cwts.nl/blog?article=n-r2s234 (mirror)

FWIW I think some journals give free personal subscriptions to Scopus as a reward for reviewing?

@BenBolker I don't review for paywalls or parasites ;-)

https://github.com/pybliometrics-dev/pybliometrics
The example on the github page is quite close to what you want to do.

Thanks, this looks great! Unfortunately pybliometrics relies on Elsevier Scopus's API, which isn't free. (and my institution hasn't subscribed to the Elsevier sharks).


text:
How to protect my research rights when my proposal was stolen by my chair?
I am an assistant professor; submitted an internal grant proposal.  It had been rejected.  Meanwhile I realized that my Dept. chair submitted my proposal to an external grant (listed herself as PI and me as CO-PI); she has been recently awarded.
My chair was really brutal to protect herself in this matter: forced me to say that I asked her to do & she got a new IRB for the same proposal to put herself as PI. Definitely I needed to argue with her regarding her misbehavior.
Then today she informed that my appointment would not be renewed; so I am in the situation to leave right after developing the survey and collecting data (in the middle of the grant).
What should I do?  Is there any way I can protect my research rights?
Any advice will be truly appreciated!

What should I do? -- I'd think that a good first step would be to stop working on all grant related matters, immediately.

The chair is trying to hire someone who can complete the study without me - the candidate did on-campus visit already.

The granting agency the grant is from should have an office that investigates grant misconduct.  I suggest you contact them.  (For the NSF in the US, this is the Office of the Inspector General.)

Aside from your research question, if this is the US you should probably get a lawyer that specializes in employment issues. Within the university the chair probably has all the advantage (not just via the rules but via the ability to bend them and call on allies).

Can you protect your data? If no one else has it yet... may not be legal but in this situation, protect first if you can...

If you have been informed that your contract isn't being renewed, then the question is how badly you want to burn any bridges. However, I suspect that your chair is going to be of no use to you in any event.
The first thing you need to do is collect all of your records related to the grant. Any email, correspondence, etc.—anything that shows you were the real originator of the grant, and that she basically stole the work. I would also include the correspondence showing that your contract will not be renewed, as well as the visit of your future replacement. All of this shows dishonest intent on the part of your chair. This evidence should then be sent simultaneously to:

the dean of your college;
whoever is responsible for research across the university;
the chief administrative officer of the university;
the agent in charge of the section at the agency who awarded the grant; and
the office at the grant agency responsible for investigations into the grant.

The way you have been treated is reprehensible and the chair under no circumstances should be allowed to "skate free."
It also goes without saying that you should not do any further work related to this grant. You should also find a good lawyer.

This answer assumes you are working in a country where people are generally honest, and the presumption that your chair is a lone corrupt actor is likely correct.  If you are in a country where everyone is likely to be corrupt (and some elements of the original story suggest this may be the case), you may wish to tread more carefully.


text:
How do you pick a major when you're interested in pursuing advanced study in an interdisciplinary field?
I have a keen interest in some interdisciplinary fields such as neurophilosophy, neuroethics, and neuroaesthethics. In the end, I have chosen to study biology, but I am not entirely sure if it is the best possible choice, and maybe philosophy would have been a better choice.
What advice would you give to people in general who desire to be involved in interdisciplinary research? Do multiple bachelor's or master's degrees? Maybe even different PhD in the fields of interest?

If you're planning on doing advanced study in a truly interdisciplinary field such as the ones that you've listed, I'd recommend to look for what programs exist at the graduate level, and what their "home" departments are. If they're consistently in one department, I would then plan to do a major in the "home" area, and at least a minor in the other discipline (presuming there are only two fields overlapping). If you're planning to stop with master's degrees, you might consider two master's, but only if they were both funded. If you plan to do a PhD, there's probably no need for two separate PhD's—instead, try to look for a program where you can take coursework in both areas and do a project that combines them.

For a Bachelor's you can double-major and often go further with a dual degree (depending on how much of the required coursework you take in the second area).
The question about what to do with the Master's will be completely overshadowed by whether or not you want to do a PhD. You may not need to do one at all or it may be a stepping-stone within your PhD program.
For the PhD, interdisciplinary research is extremely common. You may find programs and certainly advisers that are specifically focused on your interest. If not you can get co-advisors from different departments. This makes your home department more comfortable that someone outside their expertise is there to evaluate and help you. As doctorates are research degrees, not specific skill training like a Master's, you can go pretty far and wide with you thesis topic. But it does need to bring significant novelty as far as your home department is concerned. Just applying methods and ideas from field A to new area B (perhaps no one has done this before) would potentially make a fine thesis in department B, but less so in A.
Note also that multiple doctorates are often not allowed without special permission. Being a "Renaissance person" goes over well as an undergrad, but risks looking unfocused later. Hence it's probably much better to do one interdisciplinary program, versus combine multiple degrees and have to explain how they are complementary, and you aren't just a degree collector or professional student.
Personally, I'd pick the department with the best career prospects to fall back on.


text:
Why is having multiple PhDs frowned upon?
I've often read that having more than one PhD is badly seen. Is there a good reason for this? Good obviously means with some kind of evidence to back it up beyond plain and simple "personal experience" and opinion.
I've seen many comments about this matter, but often rely on a kind of judgment that sounds highly personal and by no means endowed with the academic objectity that I would expect.

I'm not sure I believe the premise of this question.  There are several answers on this site suggesting it's not generally a good idea to pursue multiple PhDs, but that's different from suggesting that already having multiple PhDs is viewed badly.  In any case, I think that among those earlier posts, this answer may come closest to addressing your question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17232/is-doing-two-phds-a-good-path/17245#17245

It's certainly not frowned upon in Hollywood! (sarcasm intended) Many times I've seen (in a movie, in a TV series show, etc.) a certain character's super-dooper scientific credentials established by mentioning the several Ph.D.'s he or she has.

Have you done any research on the topic?

"I've often read that having more than one PhD is badly seen" How many people with at least two PhDs have you seen? Such examples are really rare in my opinion. I personally only know two guys with two PhDs and they are quite successful in their careers after the second PhD. And they my personal heros.

I think your assertion really is an overgeneralization, but there are some negative points to pursuing more than one PhD.
It's the same concern as it would be for pouring an inordinate amount of resources into the wrong pursuit.  It might indicate something about the recipients decision-making abilities, or "perpetual student syndrome".
That said, if that's what one needs to do to pursue the career one wants, that's what one needs to do.
Let's look at two distinct situations.  A college junior starts thinking about her career path, and thinks"

I want a very specific, highly specialized pursuit.  I believe that I
  will need two PhD's to establish my credibility and skill set for this
  path.  I am setting out to get two PhD's, and have a good plan for
  doing so.  I've already considered whether I can acquire the skills
  and knowledge by doing one PhD, and then endeavoring to cover the
  shortfall by some other means, and I don't think I can.  I'm well
  aware that some of the skills I learn during one PhD will be redundant
  with what I learn in the second, but there's absolutely no way around
  it.

Contrast this with a senior, who doesn't manage to get a job, so enters graduate school -- gets one PhD, doesn't see the career prospects, then gets another PhD to fix things.
Clearly, the first situation is better (though, I'd argue, exceedingly rare, and often unnecessary).  The second situation is much more problematic, likely more common than the first, and arguably, what some people tend to think the path was when told someone has two PhDs.

I'm having a really hard time identifying a career path that requires two formal PhD's, unless one discipline is in the humanities and the other is in a STEM field, and one decided to start with the non-STEM field.

@aeismail -- yes, "exceedingly rare"

@aeismail Some people in philosophy of science do it that way. Massimo Pigliucci got first a PhD in biology, then philosophy (in his 40s or so).

I do not know of anybody in the first cohort, and have very hard times figuring the scenario. We seem to agree and have experience of the second instance. I do praise that kind of second PhD. That tells me of extreme passion for academic, of interdisciplinarità, of resilience and dedication in face of low pay and hard work. I know of one physicist retrained as economist and now professor.

Addition: in some academic fields the competition is much stronger than in others. Once forced to retrain, better retrain in something you are passionate about. And if you are passionate, you may also be ready to endure one more PhD.

@aeismail: I don't know about requiring multiple PhDs, but there are many fields that seemingly try to emulate having multiple PhDs. For example, bioinformatics borrows fairly heavily from Computer Science, Biology and Statistics. It's my impression that a PhD in such a field would like to have almost the equivalent of a PhD in each field, but that's a tall order.

@aeismail Maybe not exactly two PhDs, but MD + PhD is extremely common and JD + PhD is quite common too.

@ElizabethHenning: Yes, given that most medical schools run dual MD/PhD programs, that combination is obviously quite common. The need for double PhD's is not.

@CliffAB  there are a number of biomedical engineering departments with a strong presence in bioinformatics, and a PhD from those departments would do the job.

@aeismail why do you find the humanities first, sciences second more likely than the other way around?

@aeismail human and dental medicine for Mundkiefergesichtschirurgen (face, jaw, mouth surgeon) in germany normally have 2 dr. which is roughly equivalent to ph.d. afaik. My prof. in biomedicalengineering had one in engineering and one in human medicine, etc.

First of all, it’s not clear what you mean by “badly seen” and whether (or to what extent) your premise is correct. But to the extent that it is badly seen, I would argue that it has to do with efficient use of resources. If you think of your intellect as a resource, the general recipe for making the best use of this resource is:

Spend a few years developing your intellect by getting an education. This doesn’t produce an immediate “output” but is an investment (quite a costly one in fact) in the future.
Spend the remaining 30-40 years of your career working. What you produce during that time is the productive output that benefits you and the rest of society.

Most people who get a bachelor’s degree spend 3-4 years on stage 1. People who get a PhD invest another 4-5 years, and this is seen as justified (mostly!) thanks to the very specialized skills a PhD helps them acquire. However, when someone gets a second PhD they extend the unproductive period of stage 1 to a total of something like 12-15 years, taking away valuable productive time from stage 2. The added benefit in terms of specialized interdisciplinary knowledge that they acquire would in most cases not be enough to justify such a large investment. 99.99% of people simply do not need two PhDs to fulfill their potential in life. Even from the purely intellectual point of view of a person who is very curious and passionate about learning two subjects in depth, the first PhD already teaches them to be an independent researcher, which would enable them to get the knowledge they would pick up in the second PhD in a fraction of the time and effort that a formal PhD program typically requires.
Getting two PhDs might make practical sense for someone who decided on a drastic career change after their first PhD and want to go into a different profession where a PhD is a requirement.

True, but compare: a neurosurgeon spends up to 12 years (med school plus training) to be qualified, and nobody whines about the "nonproductive years spent."  I think part of the problem is that PhDs nowadays require less work and a less rigorous thesis than a MA/MS did 50 years ago.

@CarlWitthoft it’s not clear to me what can be learned from this comparison. I don’t know anything about neurosurgery but I would think that during much of the 12 year period you are describing, neurosurgeon trainees are already highly qualified doctors and are engaged in productive activities (working at a hospital and treating patients). Perhaps that explains why “nobody whines” about them.

@CarlWitthoft I take it to be a problem that many universities don't require a masters degree to enter a phd program. This has lowered the standards greatly.

I don't see what you mean by unproductive. Lots of PhD students publish their scientific research in journals. These PhD students make discoveries and some of them teach undergraduates. How is any of that unproductive?

I spent 11 total years getting an AA (Community College), BEE, MS EE, PhD (EE with signal processing emphasis).  That's a big percentage of one's life.

I think you misunderstand the purpose of a PhD.
A PhD does not establish you as an expert in a field.  Rather, it is the minimum entry criteria for a career in research.  The main focus of a PhD is actually preparing you for a career in research.  The secondary focus is deepening your knowledge in a particular subject area.
While there are obvious exceptions to this, your research as a doctoral student is unlikely to have any lasting impact or even to be strongly related to the areas where you focus on after receiving your PhD.
In this context, there is very little to gain and much to lose from spending several years pursuing a second PhD.  What you may gain is a deeper understanding of a second field. However, this will come at the expense of reverting to being a student and missing out on opportunities to build your career.  You will also have to repeat a significant amount of effort that again is unlikely to be related to actual work once you move beyond being a student.

"it is the minimum entry criteria for a career in research"
Then multiple PhD should be required to perform interdisciplinary research, since the person who has a PhD in a field, doesn't satisfy the minimum entry criteria for research in different topic.

@M.S It's not the minimum entry criteria to do research in a specific field, just the minimum entry criteria to do research in general. Think of a PhD more like a high school diploma for those wishing to do research. You need one to check a box on application forms, but having more than one wouldn't help you.

@M.S To clarify further, it's not that having a PhD in say biology immediately qualifies you to do research in astronomy, but you'll get there faster with better longer term results by following the traditional approach rather than starting over pursuing a second PhD in astronomy.  That is, identify areas for joint research with your secondary field, do joint research with collaborators in that field and work gradually towards doing the multi-disciplinary research or doing research directly in your secondary field.

Getting a (second) doctorate is a practicable way to become an actual expert in a(nother) field. Who would give you the necessary time while they have to pay you like a professional scientist?

@Karl Unless you're getting a different kind of doctorate (MD, JD, PhD), there's no need to get a second doctoral degree to be an expert in another field.  Generally, the person who gives you the time to do that is yourself: you spend your own time building up expertise by studying books and papers from the field, by doing interdisciplinary research, trying to publish papers in the new field, and so on.

A PhD is not really "the minimum entry criteria for a career in research" though. I say this as a person with only a Bachelor's degree who nonetheless has a career in research. I think it's more accurate to say that it's the minimum credential required to get grant funding agencies to take you seriously as a solo applicant. You can have a career in research without a PhD as long as you have PhD collaborator(s) to secure the necessary grant funding.

I don't see the general problem with a second doctorate.
If you want to make a streamlined career into management or faculty, don't do it.
If you need (or want) to be settled in a permanent position by the age of 32 for financial reasons (family etc.), don't do it.
But if you have the means and guts, if you really still want the second one after you've defended the first, why not? You might lose points with a few brainless HR people who think the apt treatment for kinks in a CV is the same as for wrinkles in a shirt, ironing them out. But who cares? Such company is for the dogs anyway.

"f you want to make a streamlined carreer into management or faculty, don't do it.
If you need (or want) to be settled in a permanent position by the age of 32 for financial reasons (family etc), don't do it."
Why would any of those occur?

@M.S Very reasonable goals imho. No?

There are a few possible reasons what HR/Hiring mangagers would not like  to see this.

If you follow a Phd and then a second Phd (before you obtain a permanent position, job or retire), it sounds a lot like you really want to go into research but something went wrong with your first Phd.
At the same time when you finish your second Phd, other applicants already have a few years of Job experience, while a second Phd more often than not doesn't add a big environment change
It may appear to some people that you lack focus.
Your hiring manager may lack self-esteem
You are supposed to be "too academic"
People may think you look down on other people

I will shortly complete a second PhD in a related, but distinct, field.
 In essence, the second study has been more akin to post doctoral work (but with an added degree) - I have had to undergo no training, my tutorials are virtually non-existent, and the resultant second thesis has already been accepted as a book. As with the first, I expect to complete with, at most, minor corrections. Both PhDs have been 100,000 words and both completed within 5 years (part-time) - thus 2.5FTE. Before the cynics comment - both have been/are being attained at universities ranked within the world top 100. I agree that there is a problem with people being non-productive for 10+ years - the answer is to work harder in the evenings and to ensure that PhDs are completed on time.
Though hardwork, it does enable me to now more readily apply for inter-disciplinary work and the fields of employment have doubled.

I think it is frowned on as excessive investment and limited return.  There is a ratio that Stephen Covey talks about (horrors a business book writer!) with the amount of effort spent in learning versus production.  In a way, a Ph.D. is already a bit of an indulgence.  Doing two of them sounds like you just like being in school all the time, versus being a PI.
In most fields, about 75% of the Ph.D. is research, not learning.  So if you just wanted to LEARN many fields, you should pick up multiple masters or even multiple bachelors.  Of course, you ought to be independently wealthy to allow that.
Doing multiple Ph.D.s feels a bit as if you are just collecting tickets without thinking of the meaning of them.  I mean once I had DONE a Ph.D., I really felt like I didn't need the sheepskin to contribute. Or at least part way through, it "clicked" and I got it and was an independent researcher.  I was a little older so it was easier for me (to draw on practical experience).  But even the "straight out of bachelors" clicked by the end of the Ph.D.  They could write their own papers, determine their own experiments, negotiate with vendors to buy apparatus, etc. etc.  Doing two would make no sense, since you've already got the "I can figure it out" gene turned on in your codex.
P.s. I agree with the comment that says you don't indicate having read the responses already on this site to this issue.  This is not a good trait...

I don't think it is frowned upon to have multiple PhDs.
However, it is definitely rare to meet a person who has multiple PhDs.
Anecdotally, I would estimate that fewer than 1% of people with a PhD
will have a second PhD.
I know of only one person from my social circle who has a second PhD:

Dr. Ye Lu received a PhD in operations research from MIT in 2009, a PhD in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame in 2006 and a Bachelor of Science degree in applied math from Tsinghua University in 2002.

In my opinion, it made sense for him to get a second PhD
because it allowed him to get a tenure-track academic job in Operations Research,
whereas it is much more difficult to get a tenure-track academic job in Mathematics.
In conclusion, it can make sense for you to get a second PhD,
but it depends very much on the particulars of your own circumstances.

I'm guessing Dr Lu is chasing a 'brand name' on his/her CV.

@Prof.SantaClaus I disagree. Notice that his second PhD was in a related but different field of study. I think that the main benefit was that he could get an academic job in a field where getting an academic job was relatively easier.

I agree with the comment @MarkMeckes -- the premise is not necessarily correct.  For example, people can get a PhD in philosophy, and if they are a pastor or just interested in religion, get one in Theology.  Such people may also get PhD's in original languages like Hebrew and Greek.  None-the-less, there are certainly reasons not to get more than one PhD:  Life is short, and a lot of dedication goes into getting even one Ph.D.  For what it's worth:  I have recurring dreams (maybe nightmares?) that I am trying to get my second PhD in EE. In the dream, what the motivation for obtaining the second PhD is itself unclear.  I am revisiting campus, but my colleagues think it is a sign failure (in the dream).  And I am always grateful when I wake up from that dream.

This answer/example would be stronger if it explained why a pastor would benefit from having multiple PhDs. I can certainly see why they would spend time studying/practicing theology and learning Hebrew/Greek to a very high level, but this does not require a PhD. If their religious position involved publishing academic research (as is sometimes the case), then one PhD might be required, but a PhD in religion or philosophy should be all they need to publish in any of the four subjects you listed.

In any case, I think you may have misinterpreted Mark's comment. I think the comment is pointing out that if Bob is a qualified candidate for a math professorship, they would not be at a disadvantage because they have a second PhD in art history.

A PhD is about learning how to do research correct? In a field that you are confident right(you have completed BSc and MSc)? But if during your first PhD you are seeing that your topic is interdisciplinary ( for instance clinical Psychology and cognitive Neuroscience) you want to learn how conduct research in a cognitive neuroscience for instance - you have no experience; why not? You would spend 4 years not only going deeper on your topic; you would lean how do research and acquire  brand new set of skills.
You can have masters and BSc sure; it depends on the main purpose. You could collaborate with other in adjacent field. If you want to independently learn how to you it yourself and you have time, funding and possibly why not?


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How to efficiently find citations for quotations after writing?
I wrote a long document about mathematics with a lot of quotations.
I must provide a citation for every quotation, but did not do this so far.
Now I’m stuck because I can’t efficiently find the origins of these quotations, given the plethora of available references.
What kind of workflow can I use to handle this task efficiently?

I tried to edit your question to make it more focussed and understandable. Please check whether everything is still according to your intentions.

Presumably you have an idea of which references you made the most use of, and can skim through them again. If you really have no idea, the most efficient way to find the source I can think of is Google (or your search engine of preference). Simply copy and paste (a text part of) a quotation, put quotation marks around it, and search for it. Then correlate the findings with your set of sources. Alternatively, if you have say PDFs of all/most of your sources, you can use advanced search features to search for a quotation in multiple files at the same time. Sometimes PDFs are scanned and non-searchable, so googling can be more capable.
Now, since you mention mathematics, let me also say that these techniques obviously don't work as well for equations. For those you can try searching for related terms/names, but it can be difficult to find the exact source that way. It's probably more efficient to skim through your sources for this, which works well except for in-text equations. The latter tend to require careful reading.
Overall though, consider this a lesson to cite as you write. Do this even for notes only you will see - if it's a useful source, you'll want to remember it later!


text:
Can I resubmit a paper published in a low-ranked journal?
I submitted my manuscript to a journal (Q4), according to SCIMAGO ranking and unfortunately it got published. I say "Unfortunately" because I think it should be submitted to a better journal. Now, is there any way to withdraw this publication? According to my googling, papers published in Q4 journals do not have any weight in CVs for academic positions such as postdocs.

The googling to find out that the level of the journal would not benefit your c.v.  Should have been done Before you submitted - in fact you should decide which journal before you really start the paper - ie “hey, these are good results -where can we submit a paper”...

No, you cannot withdraw a paper after it's been published to submit it elsewhere. In fact almost all journals will have a "submitting a paper here indicates that it has not been published elsewhere" policy. For example in Springer's author ethics page,

The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work (please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling (‘self-plagiarism’)).

Further, since the journal you submitted to has committed time and resources to peer review + publishing it, withdrawing it now is very unfair to them.
That's not to say you can't pretend that you've discovered a critical error and need to withdraw the article, and submit it elsewhere afterwards. But if you are discovered, you can expect the new journal to retract your article, and to be blacklisted by both publishers.


text:
Ph.D. candidate vs Ph.D
I have already submitted my Ph.D. thesis to my committee and plan to defend my thesis. I want to prepare an updated CV.
In my situation, what should I write in the CV:

Ph.D. candidate

or just

Ph.D

If I remember correctly, Ph.D. Candidate is used after passing the oral comprehensive exam and while waiting for the college or university to complete paperwork on finalizing your Ph.D. work.

@drsnark I think that is not accurate. Ph.D. candidate is the status after concluding all course work (if there is any) and passing a qualification exam, where you deliver and defend your project of thesis.

@The Doctor I think you are right.  I was not remembering the correct order.

Related https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10972/phd-candidate-vs-phd-student and https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9925/when-can-you-call-yourself-doctor

What is the updated CV for?

@StrongBad For applying for postdoc position

Typically, one writes Ph.D., 2018 (expected).
If you have a short description (e.g., bullet points) after this heading, you can also put the expected graduation/defense month or something to the effect of "thesis submitted 25 May 2018" in this area.

If you haven't defended yet, I would list (expected).
If you have defended and committee passed and thesis turned in and ruler lady passed and all done, done but are just waiting for the 6 month wheels to churn and send you a sheepskin, I would keep it simple and just list the Ph.D. as done.  If you stop using months on your CV and move to years, this helps you.


text:
How can a prospective PhD student assess whether a potential PhD advisor is hands-on or hands-off?
Different ways I thought of:

Looking at the size of the potential PhD advisor's lab: e.g., if many (>10) PhD students or post-doc, then likely to be quite hands-off.
Asking current or former members of the potential PhD advisor's lab. (but sometimes it is difficult to establish contact with them and obtain a frank answer, plus that's a bit tedious to do for each potential PhD advisor's lab).
Directly asking the potential PhD advisor but I am unsure whether this is a wise approach as for example if the prospective PhD student is asking the potential PhD advisor whether they are hands-on or hands-off, this could be construed as being too much dependent or independent from the PhD advisor (e.g., a hands-off PhD advisor would typically prefer independent PhD students), which might reduce the chance of being accepted in the PhD program in case of mismatch between the PhD advisor and prospective PhD student.

What could be other techniques for a prospective PhD student assess whether a potential PhD advisor is hands-on or hands-off, preferably without impacting that chance is to be accepted in the PhD program?

"which might reduce the chance of being accepted in the PhD program in case of mismatch between the PhD advisor and prospective PhD student." One might argue that this is actually an advantage of the third approach.

@JochenGlueck true, that depends on whether the PhD program has another PhD advisor that the student could be interested in

Thanks for your response! Ah yes, you're right, of course. I wasn't reading your words "accepted into the PhD program" carefully enough, and rather thought of "accepted by the advisor" (where I live, PhD programs are quite uncommon and PhD students are typically chosen directly by their advisors - which makes it quite desirable not to be accepted if there's a mismatch between the prospective PhD student and the prospective advisor).

Just ask their graduate students.  There’s no reason people won’t be frank about this question, hands-off advisors don’t think being hands-off is a bad thing and vice-versa.

I would suggest looking at the PhD thesis of former students of the advisor, especially at the thank you/ acknowledgement part. All of them will thank their advisor (no information there) and most of them will thank their parents (also not useful for you) but usually there will be a whole paragraph or two about the advsior where the students explain why their advisor is awesome. This will contain a lot phrases that let you judge what kind of advisor they are.

Great idea, thanks!

Such statements are written with the assumption that only the advisor (or nobody) will read them.

I agree with your methods. I know other techniques:

Check the publication list of the advisor. More than 20 publications per year as last author means that the advisor prioritizes quantity over quality and has no time to be hands-on.
Check the website Labvisor to see if there are any reviews from your potential lab.
Take a look at the advisor's office. If it's a mess it means the advisor has no time to organize it nor to be hands-on.
Ask the potential advisor how is the process to write/author papers. If the advisor just does the final review, that indicates a hands-off approach.
Is the advisor on the board of the Faculty or any other research institute? If so, the advisor has no time to be hands-on.
Check the websites PubPeer and Retraction Watch and see if there are comments on the advisor's papers. Draw your own conclusions.
Is the advisor wearing a lab coat? Then they are hands-on. If they wear a business dress, they might be too busy in meetings. Ask if there is a dress code in the office.
Ask something related to travelling. Is it normal to travel to research partners locations OFTEN as a PhD? To where in the World? Are there many potential conferences to travel to after the pandemic? A lot of travelling means hands-off.
Ask if you should collaborate with their current PhD students or just with the advisor. In the former case, they may be hands-off.
Is your potential advisor a PI? Being PI involve a lot of responsibilities that give no time to be hands-on.

Edit: These might be heuristic "techniques", like indirect questions in a job interview, that can give you a sense of how the potential advisor works. Of course one can not draw 100% certain conclusions from them. But some of these insights might be confirmed by some PhD candidates' experiences. What do you think?

I I think this is a great list thanks very much! Regarding the 10th point, I'd assume most professors to be principal investigators for at least some grants in the United States. Which country do you have in mind for your 10th point?

In some European countries there are professors as main advisors of PhD students that are not PIs of the research group. As you say, some may be PIs for at least some grants. In Germany the PI is totally hands-off, in practice your advisor is someone else.

Admittedly, I'm not too convinced about many points in this list. In particular, do not think that points 3. and 8. are reasonable indicators for the question at hand. But most importantly, I want to strongly object point 9. In fact, if an advisor wants their PhD students not to collaborate with each other, I would interpret this not only as a red flag, but rather as a burning red sail.

Most of these suggestions are irrelevant to the question.  Publications/year is primarily related to funding levels, not advising quality or strategy.

4 is the only one on this list that is good advice.


text:
Where can I find the number of citations the top x % of researchers of a given research field have received?
I wonder where I can find the number of citations the top x % of researchers of a given research field have received. I'm still specifically interested in the following two research fields: natural language processing and computer vision.
(No self-infatuation intended: I received some third-party request, but I'm fully aware of the numerous bibliometric pitfalls.)

This will be sensitive to how you decide to count the total # of researchers in a field. I don't believe there is a clear place to draw the line between who counts and who doesn't.

This will also be sensitive to how citations are counted.  Every platform yields a different number, in part because every platform indexes different subsets of publications.  (I just checked seven different platforms for my own citation record.  I got seven different numbers, the largest of which was more than three times larger than the smallest.)

@DavidKetcheson true but the method to draw the line is likely field-independent, so at least it'll keep its comparative usefulness. One way is simply to count as researcher anyone with at least one publication.

@JeffE good point, ideally let's use all publications to count citations

@FranckDernoncourt Right, but what counts as a "publication"?  Review/survey article?  Conference proceedings paper? Unrefereed workshop abstract?  PhD thesis?  Master's thesis?  Research monograph? Textbook?  arXiv preprint?  PDF on ResearchGate?  Patent?  Github repository?  Popular press book?  Graphic novel?  Blog post?  YouTube video?  Wikipedia article?

@JeffE let's say a peer-reviewed paper.

That's a imperfect but reasonable restriction.  But what exactly counts as a "peer-reviewed paper"? I have peer-reviewed review articles, textbooks, and chapters of research monographs; do those count? Most computer science conferences are peer-reviewed, but are you sure you can tell which are not? What about papers published in Chinese in Chinese-only journals? What about papers in predatory journals? (And who decides if they're predatory?) Journals with editorial scandals? Journals that have only published their first issue? Et cetera. There are tons of tiny decisions and no ground truth.

@JeffE Good points. we'll have to live with some approximations and whatever is available :)

Use Web of Science (paywalled).
Search by the topic ("natural language processing"). You'll reach a page with, as of time of writing, 30,348 results. You can now sort the papers by authors (in the left-hand panel), and select the top x% researchers that way. Then you pick the author at the bottom of that x%, find only the papers by him/her, and generate a citation report.
As of time of writing, there are 62,594 authors. I'm not going to download all the data, but Web of Science makes it possible to display the top 500 of them. The 500th-ranked author is JIMENEZ-LOPEZ MD, which a quick Google search finds is this professor. Web of Science gives her h-index as 4, number of times cited as 59, and the number of citing articles as 44.
If you need help with operating Web of Science, feel free to ask your librarian.

Thanks, great to know!

Monsteriah suggested
to search by keyword on Google Scholar: this indeed allows us to get some decent estimate of the number of citations the top x researchers  in a given research field (defined by a Google Scholar keyword such as "computer vision" or "natural language processing").

Examples:

The #2000 researcher in computer vision (mirror 1, mirror 2) has received 3620 citations.
The #2000 researcher in natural language processing (mirror 1, mirror 2) has received 1005 citations.

Note: while it is very tempting to manually change the "astart" parameter
in the URL https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&hl=en&mauthors=label:natural_language_processing&before_author=ecWn_88nAAAJ&astart=190, this doesn't work and the result is misleading: the pagination will change but the display authors won't. One has to also change the parameter "after_author".
Limitations:

I don't know whether there is a way to retrieve the number of researchers with a given keyword on Google Scholar so this may not allow us to find the number of citations the top x % of researchers of a given research field have received.
It is very tedious to look at top 2000 researchers or more because once has to scroll down and click for each 10 researchers due to the current Google Scholar user interface.
It requires the authors to have a Google Scholar provide. Most do, at least in the computer science researchers who are alive, but not all. I believe it also requires that the authors have indicated keywords.

Screenshot of the keywords in a Google Scholar profile:


text:
Have researchers any incentive to publish negative or confirmatory results?
Negative results are sometimes seen as failures, and confirmatory results as lack of creativity, even though both kinds can be useful. Have researchers any incentive to publish negative or confirmatory results (put aside the cases when they are forced to, e.g. certain registered clinical trials)?

related:Why don't people publish failures?

There is certainly incentive to publish negative results: a good negative result that clearly establishes, "X is not possible" or "X is not true" can be extremely valuable.  I've published some negative results myself, and am proud of the work.
Negative results, however, typically must hew to a much higher standard of evidence than positive results, in order to distinguish between "X is not possible" and "I can't figure out how to do X." For positive results, showing "I can do X" automatically implies "X is possible," but the syllogism does not hold in reverse.  I think this is one of the main reasons why publishing negative results is so difficult. Also, it's easier for reviewers to argue with negative results, and harder to argue with positive: with negative, it matters strongly why they are negative, while with positive the "why" can be relegated to discussion and hypotheses for future investigation.
Confirmatory results, however, are much harder to justify in absence of an explicit mechanism requiring them, as for medical studies.  Typically, we get confirmatory results not directly, but indirectly through the development of new results building on the prior results: the prior results get confirmed through their use in the controls in the new study.

There are journals dedicated to negative results. If you have spent time and money trying to replicate a result but were not able to do so, you can either throw the data away or publish in one of these venues.
In addition, John Ioannidis' classic "meta-negative" paper achieved a minor sort of fame.
There are also journals that "encourage replication" (whatever that means in the context of high rejection rates), e.g. the IJF.
(Of course, negative results have value from a purely scientific point of view.)
So, overall you can certainly get citations by replicating results and/or publishing negative results.

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


text:
Can a University put a Creative Commons document containing a NonCommercial element (NC) behind a wall?
Can a University force web visitors to connect with their University ID to access a document licensed under Creative Commons containing a NonCommercial element (NC)?
Enrolling into at University a student often costs money, and the ability to access the document could be viewed as a perk for employees (i.e. indirect compensation): as a result, I wonder whether putting the document behind the University wall is considered as a commercial use of the document.
For example, I see that Stanford University forces web visitors to log in with their university account to access this CC BY-NC document:

You pay your ISP to access NC material on the web, because you pay them to access all material on the web: is that an issue? No, of course it isn't. And the university doesn't ask for a payment for each access to an NC paper, does it?

If you take 5 NC articles, append them and sell them as a book, you might run into trouble. If you take 1000 NC articles, put them on a FTP, and sell the access, I don't know what happens. Etc. I wonder from what point NC starts.

As a separate matter, as I understand it, in the US only the copyright holder can enforce a license, so you'd have to get the author to challenge them putting it behind a Stanford wall (and if the author, as part of some paperwork, signed something letting Stanford post it behind a Stanford wall, CC-NC doesn't apply because they aren't using it under that license).

Creative Commons "NonCommercial" prohibits uses that are "primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation."  Under U.S. law, where exactly the boundary lies can only ultimately be determined by development of precedent in case law, since the U.S. has a common-law legal system.
It is pretty clear, though, that this type of use would be non-infringing, for the following reasons:

Virtually no person pays to become a university student for the primary reason of access to online documents.  Likewise, it is an exceedingly minor perk for employees and could not be considered to give the university a significant commercial advantage (rare historical documents might be a different matter).
The actual barrier is a University ID, which can typically also be acquired in many ways that do not involve compensation passing in either direction (e.g. research affiliates).


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Pedagogical reasons for closed-book exams in graduate-level courses?
Is there any research/study/survey that looked at the pedagogical benefits of assessing students with closed-book exams for graduate-level courses (vs. open-book exams)?
I'm mostly interested in computer science and math education in the USA, if the answer is field- or country-dependent.

When I took grad classes in CS, we were given the option of closed book vs open book. Closed book would be "easier" and focus on conceptual core questions, while "open book" would involve writing code rather than core questions. Arguably speaking, mastery comes more out of a closed book test. In fact, lots of places I interviewed for a job had me write code on a white board or a piece of paper with no help after school. That being said, we stopped having exams after the intro and theory courses in favor of software as homework.

Related: Are open-book exams generally a superior way to test understanding on practical courses?

Related: Is it good practice to let students consult their text materials during exams?

I think it also depends on what you count as a "closed book" exam.  For my Masters, all of my exams were what I would consider "closed book" (i.e. no material whatsoever allowed to be brought in to the exam) but all included a list of common equations as part of the exam packet; some would consider that list of equations to constitute an "open book" exam.

You need to provide a context or narrow down the scope. In the current form, one can ask the same question for open-book exams. Without a context, it seems more like asking for opinions rather than an answer to a query.

@Parrhesiastes Thanks for the feedback, I edited the question to avoid excessively opinion-biased answers. Please let me know if that's okay now.

It depends on what you're trying to teach, and what you're trying to assess.
If your goal is to convey concepts, or to teach the things that everyone needs to be able to do without consulting references in order to be productive, closed book may be entirely appropriate.
If your goal is to test their ability to combine and apply the concepts, open book may be more appropriate.
(And yes, I too remember tests with "official" cheat sheets as a balance between these. Then again, I also remember one test whose official cheat sheet was essentially a set of mathematical jokes, because the test itself didn't require any of the rote-memorization material. Then again again, I also remember closed book tests where one of the tools I used was a set of mnemonics that would let me quickly scribble out my own cheat sheet for the formulas/simplifications I most needed -- I can still recite "quasineutrality, uniformity, equilibrium, low-level injection, steady state" but I'd have to hit the books to again remember how those assumptions were used.)

A Google search for "research on open book testing" gives many results.  For example, there is a paper "Examining the testing effect with open- and closed-book tests" by Agarwal, Karpicke, Kang, Roediger and McDermott (http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/acp.1391) with abstract as follows:

Two experiments examined the testing effect with open-book tests, in
  which students view notes and textbooks while taking the test, and
  closed-book tests, in which students take the test without viewing
  notes or textbooks. Subjects studied prose passages and then restudied
  or took an open- or closed-book test. Taking either kind of test, with
  feedback, enhanced long-term retention relative to conditions in which
  subjects restudied material or took a test without feedback. Open-book
  testing led to better initial performance than closed-book testing,
  but this benefit did not persist and both types of testing produced
  equivalent retention on a delayed test. Subjects predicted they would
  recall more after repeated studying, even though testing enhanced
  long-term retention more than restudying. These experiments
  demonstrate that the testing effect occurs with both open- and
  closed-book tests, and that subjects fail to predict the effectiveness
  of testing relative to studying in enhancing later recall.


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Citing (or not) a flawed or incomprehensible paper or preprint
Is there a good practice of citing (or not) a paper or preprint that you consider flawed (or at best - totally incomprehensible)?
Once I had a problem of that sort. I wrote a paper on a topic, which was not very popular. Even if I was not using other's results directly, I wanted to cite a few papers solving very similar issues.
Then I had a dilemma if to cite a preprint tackling the same problem, using methods I don't understand (with a feeling that it is incomplete, flawed or just extremely badly written).
Ii that case it is better to:

simply drop it,
cite but make it explicit that you are just mentioning it, not using their results,
or cite making it explicit that you have serious doubts on its content?

EDIT:
By a preprint I understand sth which is archived on arXiv or sth similar.

in what follows, I'm assuming you're correct in your assessment of the flaw.
The first step is to communicate with the authors. If you mutually resolve the flaw (they accept the mistake, and/or redo the proof), then you either cite the corrected version or mention when citing the paper that it has a flaw and cite your discussion with them as a personal communication.
If the conversation with the authors stall (they're nonresponsive or shift the goalposts), then you can cite the paper and briefly outline the flaw in an appendix (or if you're space constrained, post a brief link to a document available elsewhere). I'm not entirely happy with this last idea, but I can't think of anything better in a space-constrained scenario.
I don't think that incomprehensibility is a good reason for not citing, or citing negatively. You'd have to narrow down the incomprehensibility to something in particular that the authors are not clear on (a definition, a set of cases, or something like that). Again, this should be a last resort if the authors are not responsive to contact - ideally, matters of lack of understanding should be resolved between the authors without it making it into the paper.
post-caveat: my answer deals mostly with theoretical papers. In more applied works, it might be trickier to determine whether something is "known to be incorrect" or "not known to be correct".

To reiterate some other points: to my mind, citation (or not) is not about approval or endorsement, but simply acknowledgement of prior art. (I am in mathematics... in the the U.S., ...)
It is unfortunately true that most "peer-reviewed journal articles" are not at all scrupulous about acknowledging competitors' work. Nevertheless, if the question is about what one should do, one should acknowledge competitors, even if they've failed to reciprocate, and probably never will.
(Sadly-amazingly, a very good mathematician once told me that he scrupulously avoided looking at the papers of his competitors, so that he could in good conscience never cite them. One might think that he was joking, but, based on the citations in his papers, he was not.)
The issue of "non-canon" papers, e.g., arXiv and so on (for math, in the U.S., this is still slightly non-canon) I think is really the same, at least in the future. Sure, having editors approve and a referee or two approve is something positive... but, srsly, folks, if something serious of my own depends on it, I will want to have checked it through myself. For that matter, in recent years the requests for refereeing I get mostly say that it is not the referee's responsibility to certify correctness (!!!???!!!)... Whoa. Or, even if they do, that's only one other person... who very possibly has nothing on-the-line if the paper turns out to have a problem, in contrast to oneself, needing to depend on it.
That is, even before the internet and on-line archives, it was not truly feasible (or safe) to rely upon "refereed" journal articles. The main distinction between them and "preprints", in those days, was that people at universities did have access to the "published" (both literally and figuratively), but probably not to preprints, unless one had personal connections. This was why it was important in those days to go to conferences.
In particular, the alleged distinction between refereed and unrefereed (please, let's recover from burdening "published" with a special meaning so contrary to current reality) has become tenuous. Anything that is quasi-stably publicly available is "published", literally. If at a reputable site, by reputable authors, it is ordinarily taken seriously. Even if it is deeply flawed, it should be taken seriously, and acknowledged.
The subtler question is about language in one's own document to refer to other documents... that one may perceive as flawed, as pernicious, etc.

I understand that this may depend on the field.
I would personally avoid citing that paper if I am not very confident and there are plenty of other better references in the subject. I'd rather avoid introducing noise to the review process...
I once had a similar situation and didn't have many other references available. I wasn't being able to reproduce the results of one paper, and the other was really badly written. The first thing I tried was to contact the authors to clarify my concerns. Since neither responded, I decided not to cite them.
In my opinion, it's the authors' responsibility to ensure the results are reproducible and it's clearly reported if they expect to be cited.

I would never cite a pre-print except possibly as "personal communication".  In fact, that is how authors have asked me to cite their pre-prints.  If it is not published, it is not a part of the cannon.  That's what publishing is about.

Maybe we don't agree about what "preprint" means.  If it means a paper that is publicly circulated before publication, then anyone who makes use of it is ethically required to cite it, with full details (i.e., not just as a personal communication).  If the paper is not being circulated, but is just a working draft being kept private by the authors, then the situation is different, but I wouldn't consider that a preprint, just a draft.

I cite with as many details as I have (authors, title etc.) in the personal communication reference, but I still believe that pre-prints are definitionally drafts.

@JoannaBryson I couldn't disagree more. First, in my main field (quantum-ph) citing (arXiv) preprints is a widely accepted practice. Second, it may be true that on average papers are of better quality than preprints; however, I don't think it is a good practice to rely on the authority of the referees, instead of judging by oneself. Third, discrediting preprints means both a substantial delay in the scientific communications and backing up the closed access science.

Sorry, I thought you meant leaving out this information.  It sounds like our citations are very similar: you would write something like ", , personal communcation, " while I would write ", , preprint, ".  I'd suggest using the former for cases where the draft is not being widely circulated and the latter where it is, but either way it's got all the essential information.

Piotr, I am absolutely backing up all archival science, whether it is funded by readers "closed access" or by writers "open access".  I agree you should cite anyone whose work you use, whether they are friends, newspaper articles, web pages or wikipedia articles.  But having multiple academic reviewers and an editor confirm your opinion on quality increases the probability you are citing something that belongs in front of others.

Anonymous, I think for drafts (whatever you call them) you need the full date, not just the year.  These can change by the hour.

@JoannaBryson I added comment on preprints (I mean sth e.g. arXiv not an e-mailed pdf or even a working paper in a place where it can change or disappear without notice, otherwise, as you say, they are more "a personal communication"). I know the value of peer-review system both in terms of filtering and refining papers. So if your answer depends on the type (e.g. "peer-reviewed - cite, preprint - cite only if you are very sure in its quality") it may make a good point.

I don't see peer review as playing any role in deciding whether to cite something.  If you are just citing it as related work, then readers can decide for themselves what they make of it (possibly based on its preprint status), and there's no need to make an explicit assertion in your paper as to whether it's correct if you aren't sure.  On the other hand, if your work really depends on someone else's preprint, then hopefully you have carefully checked everything you are relying on.  In that case, you don't need to trust in peer review, since you've verified it yourself, which is even better.

Of course your verification could be wrong, but then again peer review can go astray as well.  Ultimately, nothing should be considered firmly established until lots of people have independently checked it, but it's useful to have a first approximation to that, and either checking it yourself or counting on peer review can be that first approximation.

@AnonymousMathematician: Don't you mean " , preprint, , "?

@JoannaBryson: Preprints are not necessarily unrefereed; they're just not yet printed.

@JeffE: Good point - occasionally someone circulates a preprint without putting it on the web, but of course one should always cite the most stable and accessible location to find a copy (e.g., the arXiv is better than the author's home page).


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Is there a way to save my students money on a textbook?
I'm considering requiring a textbook that sells for US$140 on Amazon.  Used copies cost $95 and up.  I expect about 60 students to take the course.  Our students are not wealthy.  Some will skip buying the book, and their academic performance will suffer, if they feel they cannot afford it.  I'd like to find ways of saving my students money.
One idea I have is to see if it's possible to get a bulk discount and pass the savings on to students.  Another idea is to set up an Amazon affiliate link and refund the kickbacks to students, although I'd probably be liable for income tax.  (Of course, I'd request approval from the Provost's office before trying something that could appear to be profiting off of students.)
I live in the United States. The publisher is Pearson, and there does not seem to be an international edition of the book.  There is only one edition of the textbook.  (For other classes, I've saved the students money by letting them use an earlier edition.)  I have been unable to find a textbook of comparable quality that is significantly cheaper.
Has anyone tried any of the above ideas or others?
Responses to comments
Why require a book?  I do not always require a book, but I think it is necessary for this course in order for students to learn the material.
Why not write my own book or lecture notes?  I have co-authored a book on a topic on which I am an expert and made the book available for free online.  I could not do as good a job as the expensive textbook's authors in this subject matter, especially because I expect to only teach this course once.
Why not use a free online textbook? I was unable to find a free book that did a good job covering the required material.
Why not encourage the students to find an illegal copy online?  I consider copyright legitimate and would not encourage my students to do something illegal or unethical.
Update
After I assigned the Pearson textbook, a student discovered that it was available for free online through the local public library. I immediately informed the other students of this option and let them know how to get a public library card. I will always know to check this option in the future. It had not occurred to me that a publisher would allow a popular textbook to be made available for free in this way (with no limit on the number of simultaneous viewers).

Related: Is there any way to pressure textbook publishers to reduce price?

How about NOT requiring the book?

Check if a pdf version of the book exists (e.g. by using "name of book" pdf as search query in google. If such a pdf exists, just hint them that such a resource exists).

Why do you need a book? I have studied my long 5 years of engineering without any teacher requiring a book for any of the lectures. IT can be done, and it saves students LOTS of money.

@Sumurai8 even if there is no pdf version, someone can make it (used copy of the book + scanner)

@LeonidSemyonov Making a pdf is technically copyright infringement I think. Putting it up at a publically viewable place is a risk. If it is already available then there is less harm in linking to it.

@Sumurai8 they can use it only among themselves

Related: Should I inform students that there are cheaper alternatives to the on-campus book store?

I have been unable to find a textbook of comparable quality that is significantly cheaper. — So write one!

@JeffE you automatically assume that the OP can write a book of a comparable quality. But this could take years to do, if at all possible (I don't know the level of OP's expertise).

@Ruslan: With respect to the content quality, I am not sure I can imagine how someone can teach about a topic in a lecture while being unable to write down that same information. It doesn't need to be a book book, but a lecture notes book should be feasible by any lecturer. I second previous commenters in that I never bought a single book throughout my whole studies, because all of my professors did just that - they provided written lecture notes as a written complement of their lectures.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3621#comic

Is there any kind of digital option available through your library? Could you potentially digitise chapters from various textbooks through the formal library copyright etc services and these are stored online available via download through an online reading list (that requires authentication?) This is what we do at my university which is handled at the library (we send them a list, they do all the work), mind you we have a 10% cut off for digitised content for any one book, but I haven't used a textbook or a course reader since 2012.

The approach taking in my department was not to require textbooks at all. Each course had some suggested books (which were available in the library) for those students who wanted to read more on the subject and/or wanted a different perspective from the lecturer but all the critical material was in the lecture handouts.

For more than 20 years, I've been making "course notes" for all courses I've taught, exactly because of the ridiculous pricing of textbooks. I'd encourage everyone to expend some effort in that direction.

It had not occurred to me that a publisher would allow a popular textbook to be made available for free in this way (with no limit on the number of simultaneous viewers). Chances are the publisher didn't make the book available for free; it's part of a deal with the library where the library pays the publisher money and gets to make the book available for free.

@Allure, yes, our tax dollars at work. University libraries can probably do the same.

An easy thing to do that can be very helpful to your students is to put a copy of the textbook (or two or three copies) on reserve in the university library.  Students can then photocopy critical sections of the book (e.g. the homework exercises.)  This is particularly helpful at the start of the semester when students are waiting for copies of the book that they've ordered online to arrive.
If you have control over the choice of the textbook, you should consider moving to a cheaper book or even an open educational resource (OER) that is completely free to students.

"If you have control over the choice of the textbook, you should consider moving to a cheaper book or even an open educational resource (OER) that is completely free to students." --  but don't compromise the quality! Academic books cost more, in general, and fair or not, not all are created equal!

+1. In addition, this way students can check out the book before buying it.

As mentioned in the OP: "I have been unable to find a textbook of comparable quality that is significantly cheaper."

This may be the best solution.  I may also check if I can legally copy the homework problems onto assignment sheets.

I've come to the conclusion that it's no longer practical to use homework assignments from books for graded homework assignments. Solutions (either official solution manuals or just informally collected student solutions) are so widely available online that cheating by copying the solution is trivial.  Rather, I make up my own problems or take problems from a bunch of other sources.  Finding solutions to such an assignment would take more work than actually doing the problems...

@BrianBorchers When teaching the first time from a book, I tend to use their exercises, then make my own modifications after seeing how those work out. (Believe it or not, cheating is not a big problem at my school.) I would not create my own assignments the first time teaching a course, if at all possible, since mine are more likely to be flawed than the published ones.

@espertus "Believe it or not, cheating is not a big problem at my school" How would you know? Only terrible cheaters get caught. Unfortunately, cheaters who put effort into cheating are very difficult to catch (at least for HW cheating, in class exams are different).

@WetLabStudent 1. The classes are small enough that I have a good idea of each student's ability, and their test performance is consistent with that. 2. There are a lot of wrong answers on tests, even though it would be easy to cheat to get the correct answers.  (The same is true of many homework problems, which I see students spend hours working on.)  3. Pairs of students who work together on homework assignments often have very different answers on tests.  4. When I ask students if other students cheat, they say no. 5. Rare in-class quiz scores are consistent with take-home tests.

I have found, by direct experience, that publishers are sometimes willing to offer steep discounts. At any rate I pulled this off once, and arranged for my students to be able to buy their book at an approximately 40% discount to what was available on Amazon or anywhere else.
This involved the students buying their books directly by mail from a private page on the publisher's website, and this led to an ugly argument when the bookstore's manager found out about this. I ended up having to read my faculty manual closely so that I could call the manager's bluff. In the end, I (and more importantly my students) won.
This could well work for others, and without the argument. :) But the bottom line is that publishers will negotiate. "I'm considering requiring a textbook..." are precisely the magic words. Just look up the contact information for the publisher's regional sales rep on the Internet, and call or e-mail them.

+1, and I'll add that the publisher is likely to agree to a bulk discount for the same reason most other vendors of virtually any product will agree to a bulk discount. It's especially good for the publisher if the instructor of a course decides to use one of their textbooks - the publisher can look forward to some recurring revenue every semester.

If your textbook happens to have multiple editions, you can tell the students that previous editions will work for the course. Many online sites sell older editions of a textbook at a steep discount.
I have one course where we use the 4th edition of the book, but I have a table in the syllabus that maps the chapters of the 3rd edition to the chapters in the 4th edition. That way, if the reading assignment for the week is Chapter 7, students who are using the older edition know that they should be reading, say, Chapter 5.
Quite often there is enough overlap of material in the older addition that a student can get by just fine.

Great point! I have often done that in other classes. Unfortunately, it was not an option this one.

Another option is to contact the authors and explain the situation. It is possible that they have a PDF version that can be used without legal issues (for example of an earlier edition or a pre-final version).

Has this worked?  Some authors post their textbook pdfs online for free, but I can only imagine other authors being amenable to this in special circumstances (e.g., a course in an especially poor country).

@Kimball I can think of cases where this would work. It could help if the author knows you or you're in a poor country, but in the end it really depends on the authors - some are not in it for the money and and would be understanding.

@Bitwise The OP writes he lives in the US; I guess it does not qualify as a poor country.

@Kimball, sometimes there are "special country editions". I have seen some for India circulated around here (I presume illegally, as they seem to have been for restricted distribution).

@vonbrand  If "here" is the United States, The Supremes have ruled that the first-sale doctrine applies to textbooks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtsaeng_v.John_Wiley%26_Sons,_Inc.

You should talk to your 1- University Book Store and 2- a college librarian about what all your options are.  There are often rental options, even for new books, and the librarian can tell you whether the university can acquire your textbook in an online format that can be available to enough students.


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Aren't YouTube captions good enough not to violate the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990?
I read on Berkeley will begin removing more than 20,000 video and audio lectures from public view as a result of a Justice Department accessibility order  (mirror)  (published on  2017-03-06)

The Justice Department, following an investigation, in August determined that the university was violating the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. The department reached that conclusion after receiving complaints from two employees of Gallaudet University, saying Berkeley’s free online educational content was inaccessible to blind and deaf people because of a lack of captions, screen reader compatibility and other issues.

If a University uploads a video of a course to YouTube, aren't YouTube captions good enough not to  violate the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990?

Related: How much does it cost to make a MOOC universally accessible, as defined by the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

No, auto generated captions are gibberish. Try watching a complicated lecture on a scientific topic but turn down the volume and only look at the automatically generated captions. Not only is there a high error rate but there is no punctuation.
Note: the DOJ findings letter is online  (mirror) and you can see the legal rationale behind  the findings of law.
It should be noted that other universities followed the law when they implemented their MOOC programs and captioned their videos from their videos from the start. UC Berkeley was warned by its own academic accommodations committee in 2012 that the way they were implementing their MOOC was not only a violation of their own policies but would probably result in a violation of the ADA, especially given their status as a public university.
Furthermore, contrary to media reports Berkeley was not "forced" to take down the videos. The complainants from the very beginning (circa 2014) wanted to engage in an interactive process that would ensure access, even if over time. Berkeley declined to engage which resulted in the complaint being escalated to the DOJ. However, even the DOJ letter did not request a takedown. This was entirely the decision of UC Berkeley's senior administration

Worse still if someone bss a string foreign accent — or even native (the Micalense accent in Portuguese is regularly so identified as French). Worse still if the languages change, as it's not smart enough to detect a Spanish word or phrase embedded in an English phrase.