text:
Is discovering a new (and noteworthy) branch of Mathematics not necessarily worth a PhD?
I'm currently enrolled for a master's degree in pure mathematics. My supervisor agrees with me that I discovered a new and noteworthy branch of mathematics (and rigorously proved the results).
We both also agree that discovering a new branch of mathematics is not a trivial task. I asked him about the possibility of upgrading my master's thesis to a PhD thesis. He says it is theoretically possible to upgrade a Master's to a PhD at our university, but he reckons my thesis does not have enough sustenance for the upgrade. (At our university there is an option to do a thesis-only masters and a thesis-only PhD, without formal coursework.)
He reckons that I would only be able to publish one paper with my current thesis. He also says that he would normally expect at least three publications to come from a PhD thesis in pure mathematics, but because my discovery required a greater than normal amount of creativity, he reckons an upgrade would still be possible if two publications came from my thesis.
Is this reasonable? Is discovering a new and noteworthy branch of Mathematics not necessarily worth a PhD (regardless of the quantity of papers that get published from it)?

A PhD is not a price. It is the first comment that came to my mind. BTW congratulations

Without reading the actual work you did this cannot be answered, but your supervisor is probably right.

How can you discover a whole new branch of mathematics, and only get one paper out of it? Even if you only get one paper out of proving the theoretical aspects, couldn't you get at least one paper out of trying to apply it to some real-world task?

@nick012000 My supervisor and I both agree that there is vast potential for additional discovery, and I'm in the process of doing it, but I'm running out of money to study and want to complete my degree ASAP

"I'm running out of money to study and want to complete my degree ASAP" Have you considered working as a tutor for the university? It's fairly common for PhD students to work as tutors, since it helps them develop the teaching skills that they'll need if they want to become full-time academics. Of course, changing from a Masters to a PhD would probably entail about 3 or 4 years of additional study, anyway, so it wouldn't be fast.

For readers here, the question is too abstract. We haven't seen the work. And our opinion is worth exactly nothing if your advisor and the university don't agree.
The work might be great, or good, or OK. The "new branch" might be significant or not. "Noteworthy" is a judgement that hasn't been tested yet in the wider world. We can't make the evaluation. But your advisor has seen it and is in a position to judge.
I suggest that you follow his advice and do what is necessary to complete the degree. It is probably best to move from the MS track to the PhD track, I think, rather than just take the lesser degree and then have to start over. You will probably benefit from taking a bit more time and a deeper look.
You will really only learn of the  potential impact of your work by submitting it for publication and letting the wider world have a look at it. Maybe you get a Fields Medal.

Without more details it's obviously impossible to tell from the outside, but in general, the supervisor is usually right. After all they know what their student did intimately, they know what the institution's requirements are, and so on.
Note your supervisor isn't saying your discovery isn't significant. They aren't even saying your work isn't at PhD level. They could very well be thinking of engaging more Masters/PhD students to follow up on what you've done. What they're saying is that you need to do more work (aka: get more results) to be awarded a PhD. Viewed another way, you're like a PhD student who's completed the first year of a three-year program. Said PhD student can't just decide to graduate because the results they got during the first year are robust; they need two more years of work to have enough material for their thesis.
So it's not unreasonable. If you want the PhD you'll have to put in more time. If money is a concern, you could ask if funding is available for you to convert to PhD studies; otherwise you'll have to be content with a Masters degree.

If he says you need more work, do it.  If this is a new and significant branch of mathematics, then lots of research should be possible starting with it.  Now (before publication) you have a head start on everyone else who will surely jump in to work on it after you publish.


text:
Who should I address and what format should I keep for letters in a PhD application?
I am trying to apply to some PhD programs and I have some questions regarding the required letters.
First, I looked for many differences between a cover letter and a motivation letter as such a cover letter is asked mostly by a company than a University and a motivation letter is vice versa, so, when a university asks for a cover letter which format I should keep when writing? For example, as explained in most online sources, a cover letter should explain your CV and experiences while a motivation should your motivation as it is clear from the name. So, when writing a cover letter for a university can I also talk about my motivation? if not, then how can I show it?
Second, I am applying for a PhD position that on the advertisement it is mentioned to send my application to an email with a recipient name (who I found to be the scientific coordinator) while the leader of the project is also mentioned for inquiries. The question is that, should I address my cover letter to the leader or to the person receiving my email?
thanks...

This depends on place. In the US, it is a committee that makes decisions. Elsewhere (or in some fields) individual professors actually "hire" doctoral students.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


text:
Future plans in a PhD application
I intend to apply for a couple of very interesting Ph.D. positions that I am highly interested to get admitted to, however, I have a situation here. I have finished my studies in agricultural genetics in Dec 2020 and since then I applied for many Ph.D. positions and received an invitation for only one interview (my applications seems to need some improvements).
So, now I found a couple of very interesting positions in a very renowned university in my field. I took and finished some online courses in bioinformatics to strengthen my CV, and hopefully received my admissions to three summer schools this year which will end before the start of the PhD positions. The summer schools are highly related to the PhD positions and I believe that they can have a very positive effect on my applications. however, they will start next month and I am wondering how I can include them in my CV or in my motivation letter (which I feel that they may miss reading whole letters due to the high number of applications).
Can I set a new heading with "Future plans" or "Further educations" in my CV?
or Can I write them in detail in a single sheet and upload them separately on the application?
I need to mention that for the application, they only asked for a motivation letter and a CV. Although, there is a non-mandatory option to upload anything as "Others".
I would really appreciate it if you can share your experiences or ideas.

Sure, it's fine to note things you will complete before the start date that you won't have done by application time. They can probably fit into existing parts of your CV, just note that they are "planned" or "future" in parentheses.
Everyone who is a current student likely has at least one "planned" rather than "completed" item on their CV: finishing their current degree.

Thanks Bryan, but as I searched on the internet about this, most people offered not to include such plans in a CV because the recruiter prefers to decide based on the present or done experiences. However, I really intend to include them and hope that it won't affect negatively my application.  I just put them in the EDUCATION sector and subtitled them as a "Fixed Plan".

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Requesting an unaddressed, open recommendation letter for use in non-academic settings
I am a European master student and recently accepted a PhD position (Computer Science/Machine Learning) in a German speaking country. I did multiple research internships in Europe during my master's, and I would argue, they define me more than my actual degree. To "onboard" with my university, the HR wants to know if I have relevant work experience (to determine my salary) and to back them up with e.g. what in German is called an "Arbeitszeugnis" and translates to a recommendation letter or reference by the employer. It was then that I realized that except for my signed contracts, I do not have any certificates or "open" reference letters from my research internships and also that in more non-academic or not so highly competitive settings, reference letters could be asked to be sent with the application by the applicant. Therefore, if for any reason I would drop out of my PhD, I think having an unaddressed reference letter by hand could come in favourable.
All my internship supervisors agreed to act as references for me and I have listed them in my reference sheet. I have no problem asking them to quickly write an official document certifying that I worked as an intern within their group, which will be enough for my university. Asking for an unaddressed recommendation letter, however, conflicts with my strong perception that in the academic world showing / giving recommendation letters to the applicant themselves is regarded as highly non-professional (the reference may not be honest!). At least, this is what I gathered from the attitudes of the professors in the research institutions I worked in and hence, did not at all think of the possibility and necessity of ever asking for such a letter.
Therefore, my question is, do you think it will hurt my reputation if I would approach my supervising professors and ask if they could send me an unaddressed letter of recommendation for later usage? Or, do you think it won't be necessary to have such letters of recommendation if I acquire a certificate of my employment, because I can always refer to the contact details of the professors in my reference sheet. As I am the first in my family to obtain university level education, I am unsure if I maybe misinterpret the "business world" (particularly in Europe, but also the US) and employers at the master or phd level will never ask for direct letters of recommendation?
One could argue that it is premature to ask for such "open" reference letters and I may only ask if I really need them. However, I am talking about research internships one and three years ago and hence, think I should ask rather now than later, before all my work will be "forgotten".
I would very much welcome any kind of feedback / opinions from any knowledgeable person :)

I would have no problem providing a generic open letter of recommendation. Other academics might. If you ask respectfully a "no" answer should not have any negative impact on future requests for particular letters.
I regularly share letters of recommendation for students with the students. They have usually waived their right to see them, but I  have not waived mine to show them (unasked).

Make sure to clearly date any open letter. If someone turns to the dark side you'd like to have a way to disavow earlier support going forward.

Do students usually argue why they need a generic open letter of recommendation? I do not have a particular reason except for possible later usage and I feel that this is a bad reason to bother a professor with. (In the countries I did my research internships in, employees actually have the right for such a recommendation, so I am considering if it is really necessary to give any reasons and if the reasons are self-evident anyway.)

@TheOtherStudent I've rarely been asked for such a letter. I am sometimes asked for letters  after students have graduated. Soon after is better - letters become stale. Writing letters of recommendation is part of my job - I never feek bothered by a request for one (though sometimes I can't write a good one and it's painful to have to say so).

I think you are complicating the situation by conflating two things.

You would like to be able to provide evidence to support the entries in your CV.

You want references attesting to your capability.

For the first, I think it would be reasonable to ask your boss/supervisor to provide a 'To whom it may concern' letter on headed notepaper recording the facts ("TheOtherStudent was engaged as an intern within the ABC team of XYZ corporation from ... to ... "). I am not sure whether anyone will ever care much about seeing this, but I don't see any problem with requesting or providing it.
For the second: in reality, references need to be recent and verifiable. As such, I don't think employers will be that interested in the sort of letter that you envisage. If you need a reference in the next couple of years, there will almost certainly be someone at the company that remembers you, and can help you contact your original supervisor. If so much time has passed that everyone has moved on, you probably need a more recent reference anyway.
One thing you could do is 'connect' with your intership colleagues on a professional social networking site such as LinkedIn. This might be useful if you need to track them down in future.

An alternative to an open letter, that has its own advantages is as follows.
First, tell people that the time will come in the future that you will want/need their support in the form of letters. It is best if you do this when actually requesting a letter so that they have an opportunity to archive it for future reference.
More important, however, is to keep in contact with such people over time, even to the extent of collaborating if the opportunity presents itself. A circle of contacts (especially collaborators) is one of the most valuable assets of a researcher. It is a place to share ideas and get feedback. It is a way to get invited in to valuable discussions. And then, you don't need to worry about finding people to support you.
An unaddressed, but dated letter is only valid up to the point it was written. If time has passed then is says little or nothing about your current abilities.

Thank you very much for the advice of staying in contact!


text:
How do I cite an equation that has a typo in the source?
I want to cite an equation in my thesis that has a minor typo in the cited source (the wrong letter is used for an index). How should I do that? Can I simply correct the typo in my paper without commenting on it, or should I indicate somehow that the equation has been altered? I’m supposed to use APA style.

You should indicate what the typo was and that you corrected it. This will prevent your readers getting confused if/when they look up the reference, and related annoyances (e.g., the referee accusing you of making an error, your professor giving you a bad grade, or people generally just thinking you are sloppy). Noting the correction will also create a historical record of the typo, which could be useful for other researchers working on the same topic in the future.
Related discussion for a non-mathematical correction: Quoting a typo: Do I really have to do "sic", or can I just fix the sentence?

Could be a case where a footnote does the job. Cite as usual and explain the correction in the footnote.

@Snijderfrey, footnotes are fine in general, but not permitted with every "style".

Sure, a footnote is an appropriate way to mention it. I think I did exactly that in a recent paper of mine.

How do you use foot notes in an equation? A ¹ or ² can easily be confused with an exponent.

@Michael I assume that there will be some text introducing the equation, and you can place the footnote there.

@Michael as Snijderfrey says, the footnote is attached to the surrounding text rather than placing the marker in the equation itself.

@Michael There's an xkcd for that.

@Michael symbol footnotes *, †, etc., or alphabetical would help, though clearly not in all cases.  Quite a lot of Physics journals use numeric superscript citations and with a little care that's not a problem


text:
Do I have to Cite an Image I have edited?
I have received an Image from a source I am not sure about, I have edited it to suit my own project, now do I have to cite the main source?

Question aside, why would you use a source you are not sure about? Maybe this is licensed in a way that you are not even allowed to edit it, much less publish the edited version.

Of course, should you cite the original sources (just use the golden rule: think how you would like to be treated if you were the author of the original source). You may say something like
 adapted from < Figure X of original source >

However, as indicated in the comments, you should make sure that you have the right to do so. Note that sometimes it is possible to "read" the data values from an image and create your own image from those (but you still need to quote the source of the data).

I tend to use (author as derived from_________)
Your best bet is to use open sources. For example, when I manipulate maps I use openstreetmaps.com. Their policy explicitly allows for editing.
Otherwise, if the license is unknown, i.e. the author does not specify in any way, then you should contact the author and receive formal permission (this might need to be done with a form), if it is for formal publication.

I wouldn't use the source if you are not sure about it, and just use a new image.

It seems it's just your personal opinion. In order to develop an effective answer to a question you need to elaborate your reasons more concisely and give some example why you have this opinion regarding this matter.

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


text:
Putting "List of Figures, Tables, Conference Talks, etc." in thesis (Chemistry)
I would like to know what people think about putting lists of figures, schemes, and tables in PhD theses. Do you think it is necessary or just seems like "page filler".
I would also like people's thoughts on putting a list of conference talks. In some fields (e.g., computer science) this is very important, however, in chemistry (my subject) publications are more important. However, giving conference talks can be considered a good thing so I am thinking about putting it into my thesis.
To note, my university has no guidelines on these so it is probably flexible.

Putting a list of conference talks in a thesis seems like a complete misunderstanding of what the thesis is supposed to be, unless it has a much different role in chemistry. This is the sort of thing that goes in your CV.

Ok, there are two questions here, so let's go one by one:
For the list of figures I think you can put them without problem. They take maybe one or two pages, and that shouldn't make a significant difference that could be considered "page filling". If two pages are 10% of your whole thesis, then you still have work to do.
Especially if you refer to figures during your thesis, it is great to have a list, including page number, instead of having to search every time.
About conference talks: In my understanding (coming from a mathematical background), a PhD thesis is a long, more detailed (and hopefully really good) research paper, that might be read by other scientists. Thus, putting in conference talks seems like begging for a better grade, like "see how great I am, I even went to these conferences", something that has no place in a scientific work.
While going to conferences is surely important, I think it should not be put into the thesis but mentioned at a different place. As your advisor is surely aware of the conferences you visited, ask him how to best communicate this fact to the committee.

Incidentally, some places require a CV to be included in the dissertation.  But I agree with you and wouldn't include such information otherwise.

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


text:
Is there more prestige publishing in a special or regular issue?
Bit of a random thought, as publishing in either is good of course. I do not intend to demean anyone who has published in special issues.
I can think of pros and cons from one to the other:
Special issues may get more exposure from people searching within a collection. However, these tend to be offered through invitation, which often or not, the submitted paper may less likely be rejected. This means the quality has a potential to be of lower standard.
Regular issues in this instance may be harder to get accepted, especially in high impact journals, as many researchers will try to submit their work to the journal. Would this mean some people view special issues from invitations as a "free paper"? Where publications in regular issues may be more "genuine"?

The "invitation only" aspect of a special issue can work both ways. On the one hand, refereeing may be gentler, which would lower the prestige. On the other hand, editors of special issues tend to invite people from whom they expect to get good papers. So being invited to contribute to a special issue might bring some prestige --- at least the editors think reasonably highly of you.


text:
Can I tell the authors I was a referee for the same paper for another journal?
I have reviewed a paper for a journal, which I rejected. I wrote a 3 page report with major and minor comments. A week later, I received an invitation to review the same paper in another journal. The authors have nicely decided to ignore all of my comments, including correcting typos!
Is it OK to state in my new report that I was a referee for another journal, without revealing my identity of course. My report is going to be very similar to the previous one, but I was thinking of making a point about taking my comments more seriously (at least the obvious ones!). I am not planning to reject the paper straightaway, as I think the journal is now more appropriate and the paper has a good, if modest, contribution.

You didn’t reject the paper you made a recommendation to the editor that s/he should reject it.

Are you sure this is a new paper submission from after the authors received your comments? When only one week has passed, I would assume that the authors submitted the paper to the two journals at the same time.

What kind of comments did you have? Depending on the nature of the comments, a different answer from the available ones might apply.

This happened to a colleague of mine (math). He reviewed and rejected a manuscript 4 times for different journals. Each time he made a remark showing how trivial one of the results was by giving an example. The authors kept adding those examples to the body of the submission (without credit). At long last my colleague gave the editor a brief account of the history. The editor was and was not amused (depending on whom they addressed next). You may want to do the same.

A paper can be rejected from one journal but still be suitable for another one.

Does this answer your question? Asked again to review a paper, when the authors don't wish to modify it

@jusaca: Really?  That seems unlikely to me.  At least in my field, submitting to multiple journals simultaneously would be serious misconduct (against both journal policies and field norms), which I’ve never seen, and wouldn’t expect any halfway-respectable author to attempt.  Resubmitting without addressing comments is just laziness/bad judgement, and not awfully uncommon.  Also, the timing seems to fit this better than simultaneous submission.

@PLL Well, I do agree with you about it beeing misconduct. But the editor of the second journal would have to be pretty fast to send out the submission to reviewers!

I suggest copy-and-pasting your entire review, after double-checking nothing has changed, i.e., your review is still current. You should make your position clear to the editor and I suggest opening with a statement such as: I reviewed this manuscript a week ago for another journal. The authors have not addressed my comments and my opinion remains unchanged: ... Unlike another answer, I see no problem stating you were the reviewer to both the editor and the authors, since it'll be obvious to the authors anyhow.

In general I agree with this answer, but since OP will presumably change recommendation from "reject" to "major revision" I would simply say "for another journal". The authors already know what it is and I wouldn't want the editor to be influenced if they have a different opinion of the relative strength of the journal in question.

If the second review came to OP one week later, then surely we need to suspect that the paper was submitted to both journals simultaneously; something probably both journals will look very poorly on. I'd recommend the OP at least mention the timeframe in their response to journal 2, and consider updating journal 1 of this development, too.

@CCTO If the second review came to OP one week later: I presume journal 1 rejected and the authors resubmitted (likely verbatim) to journal 2. I might be wrong.

@user2768: can things happen that fast? J1 gets OP's response, sends it (or a rejection) to the authors, they resubmit to J2, and J2 chooses reviewers and get it out for review...in a week? Of course the journals may have included the information as to when the manuscript was received, which would resolve the question.

@CCTO can things happen that fast? Plausible, but you're right, unlikely. Perhaps the OP can confirm

I would suggest sending that message ASAP. In case the editor decides to reject the paper based on this behavior, it may save another reviewer the trouble of reviewing that paper. And it isn't worth wasting more of your time on this paper at this point.

I would actually suggest not doing that. Send your comments to the editor rather than to the authors.
But if you make the same points in your report, then it will be pretty obvious to the authors that they have hit the same reviewer again.
And, as you say, the new journal has different standards.

As just a curious reader who is not working in academia (who maybe is hence missing something obvious), I wonder why you suggest not doing that. It sounds to me like there are no real arguments for either option?

@lucidbrot peer-review is supposed to be anonymous. If the OP tells the authors that she/he already reviewed the paper in question for Journal A, then this would leak the information that the OP is reviewer for both Journal A and Journal B. Clearly, the academic world is small sometimes, so this is bound to happen occasionally. Nonetheless, the review process is supposed to be anonymous, i.e. the authors should have no indication who reviewed their paper. In that case, the OP should reformulate her/his rejection, so that the fiction of anonymity can be upheld.

I think it is worth telling the authors as well.  They need to know that submitting the paper unchanged to another journal is not acceptable behaviour (peer review is intended to prevent incorrect arguments appearing in the literature so circumventing that quality control is a recipe for misleading the readers, who may not have the expertise to spot the flaws for themselves).  Hopefully the editor will make that point to them, but I think it is better to share the responsibility rather than to leave it all to the editor.

@DikranMarsupial, actually submitting after rejection without changing the paper is generally fine. It may not be in this particular case, but some rejections aren't about the quality of the paper but about the "fit" for the journal. But the review should be "about the paper itself" and not, at all, about who reviewed it.

I wouldn't say it was "generally fine", but that it is fine in the specific case of "this is not the right journal" type reviews, where sending it elsewhere is probably what the review advised them to do.  However I don't think that is the case here - "a point about taking my comments more seriously" suggests that there were substantive criticisms.  I have some sympathy with "about who reviewed it", but at the same time, I am uncomfortable with just leaving it to the editor (who are very busy and doing a rather thankless task).

I would state plainly the fact that you have previously reviewed this paper and your comments still stand. Of course, I don't know what your field of knowledge is, but in some journals it is actually expected from authors to have addressed comments from previous reviews even if they are from a different journal:

Resubmission of Previously Rejected Manuscripts. Authors of manuscripts rejected from any journal are allowed to resubmit their manuscripts only once. At the time of submission, you will be asked whether your manuscript is a new submission or a resubmission of an earlier rejected manuscript. If it is a resubmission of a manuscript previously rejected by any journal, you are expected to submit supporting documents identifying the previous submission and detailing how your new version addresses all of the reviewers’ comments. Papers that do not disclose connection to a previously rejected paper or that do not provide documentation as to changes made may be immediately rejected.

Of course, this rule may not apply to the journal you are currently reviewing for, but you can always check directly with the AE.

Plus 1 for signalling this possibile circumstance. Though I suspect that it actually happens when it is a point of force for authors (eg a referee discussing minor points, recommending rejection for A and submission to B. This case could have been one, if the authors would have considered recommendations from OP.

Sadly they have not, not even the typos, which seems to suggest they have completely ignored the (unpaid) reviewing work by the OP because they didn't like it or couldn't be bothered to at least consider if her/his points were valid.

I think you are misreading this.  I believe those rules are about resubmitting an article to the same journal.

@Kimball it specifically says "any journal"

@Kat I believe that is a statement from the publisher and they mean any of their journals.  It's not a resubmission if you're submitting a paper to a different journal.  However, I think it is relatively common in some fields to revise a paper and resubmit to the same journal after it has been rejected.

As I understand it reading the guidelines for AE editors ( https://signalprocessingsociety.org/publications-resources/guidelines-associate-editors#peer ), it applies to any journal, since 4.1.3 specifies additional information that is required if the rejected paper was previously submitted to a publication of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

But this is their definition of original submission: "An original submission is a manuscript that has not been submitted to that specific publication before."

@Kimball Ignoring comments is a big no-no, even if the specific quote might not apply here.

@Kimball I don't see how 4.1.1 and 4.1.3 are exclusive, but I won't argue anymore because ultimately we would have to ask an EiC from the IEEE SPS for clarification.

There may be a much larger issue at stake.
Simultaneous submissions are considered unethical for a series of reasons, the striking one because they lead to a waste of resources/workforce/brainwork.
Imagine the new submission was addressed by a different reviewer than you.
Then there will be effectively at least 2 reviewers (you and the new one) plus two editors working on exactly the same paper.
Does humanity have infinite resource to address research? no.
If this is not a problem to you, there is the more mundane copyright issue. When you submit, you generally have to disclaim if the paper has been submitted in the past to other journals, if it has been rejected, if you are submitting it to other journals at the same time, etcetc ... there you have to help the new editor, mentioning you reviewed the same paper.
Do you know if the previous editor already made a decision?
If no, then these authors should deserve a reprimend call, they judge themselves above the system and they show a lack of trust in the peers ... but they still want to try some shortcuts to publish a peer-reviewed paper, instead of addressing your points, or politely decline to address them, simply trying their luck with another set of reviewers.

"If no, then these authors should deserve a reprimend call (sic)" - from who? the editor('s), the reviewer?

@CGCampbell from the new editor, possibly from the old if it is clear that the two submissions were made in a short time span.
Have a look at https://www.elsevier.com/authors/policies-and-guidelines or https://academic.oup.com/clinchem/pages/General_Instructions#Journal%20Policies or the policies regarding Duplicate Submissions from any other decent publisher.

Not only a reprimand: some journals ( https://signalprocessingsociety.org/volunteers/policy-and-procedures-manual#section6 ) ban authors caught on multiple submissions for some time. This is only fair, considering that when you submit a paper you're mobilizing resources (AE and reviewers) you're not paying for, so getting multiple teams of people to work for you to simply discard the work of one or more of them is not very nice.

My answer is similar but slightly different that the others here:
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with taking a rejected paper to another journal and that the authors are free to ignore your comments from the first review (except for cases as described by Asuranceturix).
If you choose to disclose that you are reviewing the paper for a second time, this comment properly is sent to the editor of the journal, not the author(s) of the article under review.
While you are certainly free to use a verbatim review on the second instance of the article, consider that (at least in my field), the community is small enough that maybe 10% of the time you can figure out who wrote the review and providing the same review for two different Journals likely increases your chances of being identified by the authors. Whether you consider this a possibility and whether you care about it are up to you.

I disagree that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with ignoring comments, it is a recipe for publishing incorrect arguments.  If you send a paper to a sufficiently large number of journals in the publishing pyramid it will get published somewhere eventually.  If the reviewers reject your paper and you have no cogent counter-argument to their criticism, then they have done you a great favour in the long run.

I'd say there is nothing wrong with disagreeing with the reviewers' comments, as long as you can support your disagreement. Actually, if you can explain why the point raised by the reviewer is wrong, you should probably change (at least the wording of) your paper so that the next reader cannot raise the same objection.

@Asuranceturix very true.  ISTR reading that peer review is providing you for free the advice of an expert whose time you could not afford to buy.  We should try and get full value for their generosity.  If nothing else, the golden rule suggests we should treat reviews of our papers the way we would like others to treat our reviews (I suspect that wouldn't be ignoring them and submitting the paper somewhere else after we have spent time and effort to help them improve their work!).

@Asuranceturix Indeed, you're expected to address the comments, even misunderstandings, not just apply the suggestions; often it's by improving/clarifying the argument in the paper.

Yes, I chose poorly in saying "ignore" (I was thinking of one reviewer who asked me to remake a plot in what I considered to be both the most difficult to produce and visually horrifying way possible). As above, I rightly intended that the author is not obligated to do whatever a reviewer wants. Peer review is supposed to be a collaborative process, hence writing the reviews and responses laying out not just what changes, but also why.
The reviewers are your peers and you should read, consider, and treat their marks with the respect owed any other non-anonymous colleague.

I would be sure nothing was changed and then send my same comments to the editor.

This is also a straightforward answer. Perhaps even the more natural one.


text:
Paper in revision stage but a similar paper was just published
We have submitted a paper to a journal and got a major revision request. We were planning to resubmit our revised manuscript very soon, however, we noticed recently that a paper was published that basically studied the exact same thing with the similar conclusions.
How likely would our paper be rejected due to this rather than the fault of our studies? Or if rephrased, would it be ethical of a journal to suddenly reject a paper if a similar study was just published, even if all the revision queries are answered and there was no link between them?

Sad for you, but things like that happen.
Something that might help: Usually, there is a note in a paper making transparent when it was initially submitted, when a revised version was submitted and when it was accepted for publication. If the other paper was accepted after your initial submission it is obvious that you could not have known the contents of that paper. In that case, as a neutral observer it is nice that two independent papers describe similar findings, i.e. reproduce the results. In that sense, your paper is worth publishing in any case.
You might be able to use this as an argument in a possibile discussion with the editor. However, there is a realistic chance that neither the reviewers nor the editor have heard of the other paper, so will not ask for any information in this direction.
Of course it would be best practice to make your current knowledge transparent to the editor anyway and maybe include some discussion about the other paper in your own paper. If I was the editor, and if the other paper was discussed properly, I would probably accept the paper for publication, given there are no other reasons not to do so (but this is my opinion).

Your paper might be published or not. It is up to the editor. But there are no ethical considerations here whether they decide to publish it or not. Presumably you don't have a contract with them for publication and you haven't paid for publication. Everyone worked in good faith up to this point, I assume.
Parallel work in hot fields is to be expected. A journal especially valuing novel work might choose not to publish. Not a happy outcome for a "second place finish", of course.


text:
How to deal with the fear of missing out?
I will be soon starting my Ph.D. but have already experienced some of the research environment. I have chosen to work on a field in machine learning that is becoming increasingly popular. Every time I see people publish something new in this field, I cannot help it but feel like a loser who missed out or has lost the opportunity to publish that others did. I feel like when I catch up and have the necessary skills, everything would have been already discovered.

Every time I see people publish...I cannot help it but feel like a loser who missed out or has lost the opportunity to publish [w]hat others did You cannot publish every result in the field.

I feel like when I [start research], everything would have been already discovered That's impossible, there's always more.

@user2768 What you say is true. I did not mean those literally but just expressing how I feel at the moment.

Can you set more realistic targets? E.g., I will publish my first paper during year one of my PhD; I will consider that paper a success if it appears at conference A, B or C; I would like that paper to receive 3-5 citations within eighteen months of publication; ... You can't miss out on these targets, since they are personal.

@user2768 You're right. I can't just compare myself with people who have spent years in the field already.

I'm fond of the following quote from Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: "The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too." — Remember that you are in excellent company; for each enviable new result, there are billions of people (and at least thousands of machine learning researchers) who didn't get to publish it.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm in machine learning as a staff scientist and feel pretty confident that there is A LOT left to do in this field. Finding a good mentor/lab will help make that apparent.

This is a downside of working in a "hot" area. But it is also why you have an advisor to guide you. In reality you can't do everything and your research will be (should be) deep and narrow. Therefore a lot of the stuff flying around you just isn't especially relevant to your research, provided that it is properly grounded.
Focus and treat all the other stuff as noise. Once you get some research published you can think about broader issues and where you want to take you next deep dive.
Don't completely ignore the general work going on, but don't be overly concerned if others are picking apples in the same orchard. Only get worried if it seems like others are making progress on your problem faster than you are. Your advisor should be able to help with this. But nothing is guaranteed. There is a lot of parallel work going on in hot areas.

It just feeds my procrastination as if I "lost" that opportunity. But reality is that I am just starting as a Ph.D. Thanks for your reply. It's very true


text:
CS PhD at University of Houston ranking importance on future career
Currently a undergraduate student planning to apply for PhD programs in a year or less. I have been working with a professor at University of Houston (my current location) for almost a year on machine learning. Everything is great. Our research interests align, relationship is getting stronger. I have some people tell me a university's ranking does matter a lot but heard quite the opposite from others. It makes sense to choose a PhD program by seeing what advisor wants you and how well you fit, which in my case is great. How would one speak of University of Houston? I am planning to join the industry afterwards preferably a big tech company but things change long way to go. Can and should one's H-index be a means of quality measure? I have spoken to his past and current students, all of them said positive things which reassures me as a future possible candidate. Please help me out with some advice and facts that I can use to understand and evaluate my situation.

The supervisor is more important than the university, especially one that can generate top publications or has industry connections in your case.  A PhD degree from a brand name university gets you a second look, but your publications will be a key factor that determines whether you get hire or an interview.  Also, would you want to work with someone you can get along with at Uni of Houston or someone you loathe at a brand name university?  In my experience, the latter case usually means you will quit and hence, leave empty handed.

@Prof.SantaClaus I agree with you Sir. Your point of view on this matter is correct and I believe at the end of the day that's what important. I also believe, that if I got to e.g. MIT and not be able to find a professor with similar interests, I will suffer. Also, since this professor at University of Houston and I have similar interests, he said it is possible for me to complete my PhD in 3-4 years assuming I keep working hard and focus. Which is good news for me. Also he offered an RA-ship which very few of his students had so far.


text:
In applying for fellowships, is it better for 'majority' students to select "Prefer not to respond" in racial identification?
I am a second-year graduate student in applied mathematics looking to apply for fellowships for this upcoming year. It also happens to be the case that I am a Caucasian male. Would it be more advantageous for me to select "Prefer not to respond" in applications that ask for my race and gender (especially applications that give preference to women and minority students), or is that generally considered to do more harm than good?

It shouldn't matter - their systems should split up application and demographic info, and anonymize the latter. No one on the review committee should be able to tie them together. That said, I'll let someone else answer because that's all hypothetical and I don't know if all systems do that well

I always select "prefer not to respond", not because I think it benefits me, but because it's the closest match to "that's none of your business."

@Azor-Ahai OP does not specify a location, but in the US what you say is actually wrong. US law prohibits race/gender discrimination in employment, but race/gender discrimination (for the purpose of enhancing diversity) is legal both in college admissions and in awarding scholarships and fellowships. This has been reaffirmed as late as 2016 by our Supreme Court. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_v.University_of_Texas(2016)

@David These are fellowship applications, not admissions. Unless the fellowship is targeted toward women or minority groups, then the information is probably separated. But, that's why I left a comment.

@Azor-Ahai I'm not sure what you're saying. OP specifically asks about fellowships that express a preference for women and minority applications. These programs have been upheld as legal- i.e. there is no requirement for separating and anonymizing applicant demographics. The review committee absolutely can make decisions based on applicant gender and race.

@david I'm trying to say, if the fellowship doesn't care, then picking "prefer not to answer" will be anonymized anyway. If they care, it obviously won't be. I confess I read past the parenthetical the first time. Most scholarships etc i have applied for has said "this information won't affect your application" but I also haven't applied for any thar claim to prefer one gender or race. Also, you keep mentioning legality, so I'd point out I didn't bring up any legal requirements in my comment.

While I agree that this is a weird thing, the main purpose of giving race info is that a higher authority confirms that there is no bias in the selection process, even unintentional bias. Note, not necessarily in favour/against any specific race, just bias. It is generally good, for everyone, that you give this information. In case they find bias they are not going to reject your fellowship or anything, they'll just try to fix the bias in the future

Please don't do this. Race/gender information has two purposes: 1) understanding the demographics of the applicant population, and 2) ensuring that strong candidates from underrepresented groups are not overlooked (i.e. some degree of affirmative action).
Most descriptions of 2) that I have heard essentially provide benefits to people who are underrepresented, or have in the past been discriminated against. Listing yourself either as a Caucasian male or as [decline to state] is likely to take you out of that population. [Caveat: I don't review fellowships myself, this is only based on what people have told me about admissions committees, etc.; for a given fellowship, the details of this may be publicly available.]
However, if a large fraction of Caucasian males decline to state their race/gender, the statistics that the NSF/whoever collects on their applicant pool will be biased. This will lead the NSF to have erroneous conclusions about whether their efforts to encourage diversity are working.
In essence, doing this is poisoning a well - corrupting a public source of data for negligible personal benefit.

It's probably zero personal benefit, not negligible personal benefit.

It's not like "prefer not to specify" carries no useful information.  It carries the information "this is a person who prefers not to specify."  If there's a lot of those people, it begs the question(s): why do so many prefer not to, and what can we do about it?


text:
Can a journal once removed from Scopus be reindexed in Scopus?
If a journal indexing in Scopus is cancelled, can such journal be indexed in Scopus again?

Yes, provided the reasons that led to delisting are addressed.


text:
how to be successful in CS field with inadequate background? Can just passion help for surviving grad school?
My background:
5 years ago, I did my undergrad from an Indian University and did some random jobs unrelated to my field of study.My undergraduate grade is 2.92/4.0. Now, I got admitted to grad school(in US) for CS and my grades are not well, I scored 2.80/4.0 for the course design and analysis of algorithms. BTW, I am still interested and feel passionate to complete masters.
My questions are:

How to survive grad school with bad grades and inadequate background knowledge.
How should I work to improve my programming skills? and what are the prerequisite skills in order to be successful in this field?
how to access myself if I am the right fit for grad school?

For now, I am trying to solve online coding challenges(project Euler, coder byte etc). Their easy level questions are a bit hard but I  am slowing trying to solve by myself. And want to utilize this summer break to fullest.
Please help me in figuring out things like, and what I should or shouldn't be doing both in my break and to survive grad school. Thanks!

That really depends a lot on what field of computer science you want to go into. What you really need to know for systems is quite different from what you need for design and analysis of algorithms, for example.

The reason I want to join master in CS is to explore and research in the field of Machine Learning, it might be fuzzy logic but has so many advantages to learn( not just commercially). What when wrong with my course work in DAA is - I wasn't able to compete because of my background especially 5 years gap. I still have the choice to repeat the course or to quit. wondering if I am the right fit.

Do you know specifically what background is missing? Mathematics? Programming skill?

@JeffE Being a nitpicker, the sentence is "Can just passion help for surviving grad school?" It can surely help. Yet, is it sufficient to pass, in the absence of everything (what exactly) else? Probably not, depending on the "everything". A passionate rock will not pass. A passionate but not painstakingly diligent student might. In any case, I'd say the question title could do with some clarification  - or "help" removal ;)

Mod note: I accidentally deleted the following comment from JeffE: ""Can just passion help for surviving grad school?" -- No. Passion alone is not enough."

You do not sound like the strongest CS student. It appears that with luck, you will just "get by" in CS, and graduate near the bottom of the class. As long as you are resigned to that likelihood, and to just doing what you need to survive, you should continue.
The potential rewards could well make the effort worthwhile. Modern corporate development, particularly management, is about computing. I envision a "management" track for you, rather than a programming track. And if so, your skill level, such as it is, will give you the advantage over many managers. Your "passion" would be a big plus in this environment.
Your "endgame" may well be a degree in management, with CS only as a stepping stone. It might even make sense for you to leave CS, take a degree in management (MBA or Indian equivalent), and return to CS later when you have better idea of how to "manage" yourself in such a program. Some MBA programs even offer CS as a minor, so you could take "a few" more CS courses there without risking a whole degree.

Your answer break down might not be what I expected, but I would definitely rethink my master's consideration. Thank you for the help!

It is hard to gauge if anyone is a fit for a particular field from the outside and from grades alone. A lot of people in CS (and other fields) struggle initially with very mediocre grades or some failed courses but go on to be outstanding later on in their studies (perhaps concentrating on a narrow sub-field), some get PhDs although they only barely got their Bachelor's.
However, there are different directions you can take with CS that require different basic abilities which may be relatively easily learnable background knowledge or talents hard to acquire later in live. If you lack those abilities, you either need to work harder than others to make it in the respective field or you need to look for some other field (or some niché sub-field that caters to your abilities).
At many universities, you get thrown a mix of all those facets at you in the beginning. Thus, if you're only good in some areas your average grades will reflect that. Also pre-existing knowledge varies highly among students at the beginning and typically levels out later. One important thing you should do during the time until you get your Bachelor's degree is figure out which areas fit for you and which don't, so you can focus on the right ones in your Master's or when looking for a job.
One basic distinction is theory and practical applications. If you love math and theoretical logic, but cannot deal with technical problems, you may be bad at the latter and excel at theoretical CS. Similarly, if you love to write a program, but you don't care much about complex theories on how compilers and programming languages work, you are more on the application side. However, in each of these main areas there is a ton of different sub-fields that require different abilities. Are you into finding the right tools for the job and want to know them all or are you into working with data and finding the right algorithm to efficiently process huge chunks of data? Or do love concurrency problems and parellization? Or hardware tinkering? Or do you look more at the endresult, love to discuss variations of how to do a UI and how to do team-cooperation? Or something else entirely?
In essence, grades are only a rough indicator how you broadly do. You need to figure out what it is you actually love about the field and what abilities you have - and then go for a direction that brings both somewhat together. I would think about going for something else if you cannot find such a combination rather than if your general grades aren't top-notch, especially at the Bachelor level.
Determination can make a huge difference. If you love what you do and you can produce at least acceptable results, I'd always say go for it. You may not become the best in your field (or it may be a hard walk or maybe it turns out easy once you made the hill in front of you), but either way, you can still have a more satisfying life than if you do something you don't enjoy and are not much better at. Just try to get a feeling for what you can and cannot do and be always open about it. Still, sometimes we also have to admit that something isn't the right thing for us. That decision however, no one can make for you, in particular not with the limited rough information on such a forum.


text:
Diploma equivalence from the old Belgian System
I graduated from DRCongo, and here we still use the old Belgian system.
I did the  Polytechnic, and my diploma is called license en Polytechnique Option Genie Electrique et Informatique.
Basically, we spend one year in pre-polytechnic class, the 3 years of grade and by the end we get a diploma de grade for the first cycle and then we spend another 2 years to get the so-called diploma de Licence en Polytechnic. Basically here we spend 6 years at Uni to get that diploma.
Now that I am applying for UK universities I don't know how my degree translates in the UK educational system.
Should I call it a Master degree or a 2nd Cycle Bachelor Degree?

I they don't call it a masters it would probably be a mistake for you to do so. If you can describe it accurately, as you do here, or even just give the official names of things, then a UK university can probably figure it out. Maybe Belgium has published equivalencies.

I couldn't see DRC in the country list in most of the UK universities. I only saw most English-speaking countries only..

yeah.. thanks a lot .. this is very helpful..

you can make this as an answer I think.

As a general rule, particularly for the parts of your application that will be read by an academic and not a computer or a bureaucrat, you should not translate official terms.  Simply say that your degree is a Licence en Polytechnique - academics are used to working with people from different educational systems and have ways of figuring out what that means.
If there is a form for some office you have to fill out and they don't allow you this option, you should inquire if you can and have the patience for it.  As an academic, I always hope in vain that the graduate admissions office will finally understand that foreign academic systems don't fit into the boxes they're used to seeing from domestic applicants and leave translation up to us.  In part this is because, if I really needed to know, I probably know someone who knows someone who can explain to me the system in your country (and whether a GPA of 8.2/10 is really brilliant or rather mediocre), while the graduate admissions office doesn't.

It's not a Masters and not a 2nd Cycle Bachelor degree, so you can't call it that. In places where you have free-form text, you can probably say that it's "comparable" or "equivalent to a Masters or 2nd Cycle Bachelor degree", but you should state the name of the degree you actually have first. If you encounter drop-down boxes in application forms that don't have your degree and no "other" category either, then you could probably pick the closest choice you have available.


text:
Is it okay to charge for a software created during a uni project?
Disclaimer: I'm not entirely sure whether this is on topic for this SE site, but it seemed the most fitting.
Prequisites:
In our masters programme in Computer Science, doing project work is mandatory and we get credits for it that count towards our degree. The projects are of different nature, most are more on the research and experiment side, but some are "commissioned" by companies, who can pitch a topic to the supervising professor and the professor can then choose to accept this as a semester project. We're in Germany, if that's relevant, and no contracts on the topic have been signed, neither with the company nor with the university.
The situation:
Over the course of the past semester, me and five other people have created a website for a company on the grounds of that software project. While the company had input (defining the goals, tools to use, giving feedback, etc.), all code has been written by us, without any "teaching" input from the company. The company now wants to launch the product we created, and is looking to get quite the revenue from it.
While we knew from the beginning that they would probably launch the website and make profit of it, we also assumed that we would be in some way compensated for our work that we - essentially - did for free, should the project actually launch into production.
However, in a discussion today, our sorta supervisor was a bit baffled today when we brought up that we would still need to talk about usage rights. He also seems to not be very knowledgable on the topic.
The question:
Is it generally considered okay for us to request compensation for our work, and withhold the transfer of usage rights should the company not agree to pay us? We're of course not looking to be paid significant amounts, seeing as it was a uni project after all, but we have created a product that can be launched to production as is, which will generate them at least some revenue.

You might need to get the university's lawyers involved - in the U.S., at least, anything made using university resources generally requires the university to have some cut of the revenue (unless that's been worked out beforehand).

Moreover, this should have been part of the supervising faculty member's original discussion with the company. But to my knowledge, work like this usually does not result in compensation for students outside of course credit. At least, that's how it worked for the senior design project I worked on as an undergrad.

Under German law, you have the copyright to that code, and that company owes you something for using it. Negotiate reasonably, because if a court has to decide, you won't see much of it. If your institution has been negligent enough to not make it clear beforehand to you and the company (i.e. let you sign for it) that they want a cut, they are out of their mind and afaik have no chance a getting anything.

At least at my University in Germany, we have the explicit statement, that it is forbidden to get paid for courses giving Credit Points. (Which gives huge problems with paid industrial final thesis)

You should get a lawyer.

@Karl that's what we thought as well

@henning we're not really looking to take this to court - it's more a question of ethics for me, and whether this is generally done or whether we're completely off in our assessment that we should of course we paid if they're gonna make money of the software we created.

@user6522399 afaik, there is no such statement in place for us - and either way, copyright would still lie with us, afaik? since you can't transfer the German "Urheberrecht" - just usage rights

@tonysdg this doesn't really involve university ressources as such, apart from them providing the initial contact and the supervisor from the company putting in our grades into the uni system in the end

Did you do all of the work on your personal computers? Were you using university Wi-Fi at any point during the process? Did you ask your supervisor for time/meetings/advice? I'm not trying to be pedantic here, I promise -- just indicating that university lawyers (at least, the ones in the U.S.) consider all of these things as "using university resources". It's a bit stupid, IMO, but unfortunately because of that I think the "lawyer up" advice might not be a bad idea. At least familiarize yourself with your university's regulations/relevant laws.

Ohyes it does. As a taxpayer, I'll say your university supervisors and the company are embezzling. You, however, simply have the copyright to a piece of code. Usage rights for intellectual property cannot be transferred without compensation. And no, a grade is not a compensation.

@tonysdg it will be hard to tell apart - if we've been in a seminar in a different course and agreed to meet later for discussing the project, does it count as using university ressources because we had that talk in the hallway? though I think either way we should hold the copyright - so if we say "no you can't use it", then they can't use it, no?

IANAL, so I honestly can't say. All I know is that at my undergrad (again, U.S, so laws are different), pretty much anything done using university resources (which was rather broadly defined) meant the university got to weigh in on final compensation.

@Laura while you don't think you have signed a contract, you did when you enrolled at the institution - you should check that before you think about suing for intellectual property etc etc...

@Karl I think your comments are really helpful. Consider converting them into an answer.

You'd have to check the case of your specific school and country. At least here in Chile, by law everything a student creates as part of their classes belongs to the school.
Sure, they'll probably be generous in their relation with you, but you must at very least talk to them.

And it also depends on the admissions contract each student signed when joining the school...

The term "okay" is undefined.
If "okay" means legal then as vonbrand said: the Intellectual Property regulations at your institute should be consulted. This is the only thing that matters I think.
If "okay" means normative and maintaining good relations in your departments or with your academic supervisor, then it depends on local norms at your German university. You should ask around there.


text:
How to make sure that my lecture notes do not infringe on copyrights?
I'm trying to change the numbers in problems I write for examples I use in my class as well as assignments. However the problems are still inspired by the textbook. Are the problems sufficiently different from the textbook problems to not have copyright issues? There is also an issue of theorems and definitions. Authors of the calculus textbook certainly did not come up with these things. Is it OK to just copy them down in my lecture notes?
By the way I do share my lecture notes on Piazza and the course I'm teaching is multivariable calculus.

What about a set of references at the last page of assignment with a note saying "Many of the problems are inspired by The Text Book [1]".

@Coder That does not solve the copyright issue. If I distribute pirated music on my website, writing "these songs are taken from the album Whenever You Need Somebody" doesn't make it legal.

Some more context that is probably relevant: 1. What country are you in? 2. Are you using this textbook in class (i.e. do your students have their own copies)? 3. Is there a license agreement of any sort for your instructor's copy? 4. I'm not familiar with Piazza; are your notes available to everyone, or do your students need a password to access? In any case, you might get better responses over at [law.se].

Using their problems in class is exactly what the textbook authors wanted you to do when they put them in there. Copying the problems and distributing them on some public website, however, is imo rather bad style, and could easily be a copyright infringement.

I'm in the United States. I do ask my students to read the textbook, My notes are only available to my students.

In the case of using problems from a text book, you would not need to worry about copyrights as long as you cite it (whether you change the numbers or not). It would be good to include a references section with the bibliography information of the book included in it.
Edit:
Academic textbooks are generally meant to be reusable for educational purposes. Having stated the above, depending on the country and the copyrights explicitly mentioned in the textbook, you might have to obtain prior permission from the publisher or author. (Please refer the discussion in the comments for details)

"you would not need to worry about copyrights" - what is this claim based on?

Quotations are usually permitted by the copyright law of most countries, but then again using a massive number of problems from a text book and citing the text book doesn't sound like permitted quotations. But using 1 problem is usually fine.

@O.R.Mapper Text book problems are meant to be reused by the instructors to teach their students. Some of which also have separate instructor's solution book for the contained exercises. Never have I seen an academic textbook with a EULA which prevents it from being reproduced except for financial gain. Reproducing for credit will come under plagiarism and hence I added the note on citing it. There are many lecture notes available in the Internet. They cite the original source like "Adapted from XYZ by ABC".

@juhist I agree

@ÉbeIsaac: Note that depending on what the relevant jurisdiction assumes to be the default case, the textbook would have to have an EULA that explicitly allows reproduction.

@O.R.Mapper Intriguing. Thanks for the heads up. Do you know of any default case that prevents this act (constraint to academic texts)?

@ÉbeIsaac: Well, for instance, German copyright law says, on that topic: "The creation of copies of small parts of works, of overall small works, or of single articles published in magazines (...) is permitted (...) for supporting instruction in schools (...) at an appropriate number of copies for the number of participants in the class or (...) for exams in schools, and colleges/universities (...) Copying of works meant for use in class at schools is, in any case, only allowed with the explicit permit of the rights holder." Other jurisdictions ...

... may impose similar restrictions.

@O.R.Mapper Thanks for the detailed example. I've added the exception in the answer.


text:
Doing an executive MBA after a PhD
I have a PhD in Physics and about 10 years of experience post the PhD, 6 years in academia and the rest in Industry as a research Data Scientist. I would like to move more towards management and am considering an executive MBA. Another reason for considering the MBA is that my PhD was from US and then I returned back to India. Now I am looking to go back and considering this as an avenue to return to US. Does it sound like a reasonable idea?

IF you're already a data scientist, then many US firms are crying out for your skills, and willing to pay really good salaries. I'd have a look at coming across to the US in employment as a data scientist with a good company that will probably be willing to invest in management training. The danger with the MBA route (assuming you mean full time at a good business school) is high cost outlay together with a period with no income - but then again only you know your financial position!


text:
What is the purpose of letter of recommendation?
I have completed 2.5 postdocs in the US. In all of my applications plus a Green Card application, letters of recommendation were a great deal. In all cases (overall, about 10 letters signed by professors at top US universities), I was asked to write the draft and my supporter did not change more than a sentence or two.
I wonder if anyone really reads the letters of recommendation. And if yes, the judgment is simply based on my words about myself.
My interest in the answer is that I am applying for Assistant Professor position now, and my references asked me to prepare the draft. In the past, I thought that it was because of a special trust in me and I wrote the letters with modesty to respect their trusts. Now, I found it is the norm and professors/PIs do not have time to write such letters (there are about 20 postdocs in my current lab). How should I write the drafts of three different letters of recommendations for myself (sounds funny)!

Related: Asked to draft own recommendation letter for faculty application, Points to remember when having to write recommendation letter yourself, How widespread is the practice of delegating LoR writing to the applicant?, What does it mean if a professor asks you to draft his reference letter for you?, Is it acceptable to write a reference letter for yourself?

(Let's not rehash all the comments and answers on those questions, here.)

Does anyone really read the LoRs? Yes, if your application is taken seriously.

I hate that this is a legitimate question, but it is. Yes, letters are weighted heavily, in my experience. The fact that you (and many others) are often asked to write their own letters is very troubling. For one thing, it's biased. Secondly, confidentiality is absolutely violated despite most such letters being assumed as such. Now you are in the awkward position to have to write 3, and feign separate ghost writers.
It is impossible to defend this from any logical or ethical standpoint, particularly if confidentiality is assumed.
The best course of action is to thoughtfully ask the recommender to write his/her own letter. But you can make it easy on them by providing a CV, papers, manuscripts, etc. Give them the information you'd like to highlight but not the words.

I'd add: as a reader of letters of recommendation, it is usually easy to detect the "voice" in such letters, so that one can detect self-written letters, rather than letters composed by more-senior people who're willing to take the trouble to write things in their own voice. Thus, the real issue is to find senior people willing to take the trouble to write a letter themselves (thus, in their own voice). And, yes, I read letters of recommendation very seriously. Perhaps more seriously than I read peoples' self-statements about research and teaching, since these will inevitably be naive...

I wonder if anyone really reads the letters of recommendation.

I've served for about 15 years on my (top-10 US computer science) department's faculty recruiting committee, including three years as its chair.
Yes, we really do read recommendation letters. In detail.
We also compare multiple letters written for the same applicant. Letters that all cover the same strengths are suspicious, especially if the same list of strengths appears in the applicant's research statement.  Letters from different authors that contain common turns of phrase are deeply suspicious, especially if those turns of phrase also appear in the applicant's research statement.
We also directly compare multiple recommendation letters written (at least ostensibly) by the same recommender. If someone writes a significantly stronger letter for applicant X than for applicant Y, we are generally more likely to interview applicant X.  Letters (ostensibly) from the same author with significantly different writing styles are deeply suspicious.
(On the other hand, if we were convinced by a strong letter to interview someone a few years ago, and that interview out to be a disaster, we're much less likely to trust a new letter from the same recommender this year. Similarly, if someone writes "This is the strongest student in Area Z in the last five years" every year, we don't believe them.)
We also look for evidence of the (ostensible) author's expertise in every letter, not as an expert researcher, but as someone who understands the faculty job market better than the applicant. We prefer letters that offer direct, well-informed comparisons between the applicant and other researchers in the same field, past and present, at the same career stage.  (But again, multiple letters offering the same comparisons are suspect.)
We also occassionally contact references directly to clarify points raised in their letters.
Any suspicion that a recommendation letter was not written personally by the person who signed it will almost certainly kill the application. It will also undermine any other letters "written" by the same author, and possibly other applications from the applicant's department (or at least their research group/lab). Applicant-written letters risk the professional reputation of the applicant, the ostensible author, and anyone else for whom the ostensible author is a reference.

professors/PIs do not have time to write such letters

Nonsense.  Writing recommendation letters is a professional duty.

How should I write the drafts of three different letters of recommendations for myself

You shouldn't. You should provide your references with all your other application materials, including your research statement, which already spells out your judgement of your research record. You may want to provide bullet lists of accomplishments that don't fit into your statements.  But you do not have the necessary expertise to write an effective recommendation letter yourself.

I will never understand how you can really accept (proudly) a system where your chances of being hired depend so heavily on someone else's capacity for writing good recommendation letters.

How do you keep track of the letter writers? Thousands of people could have written such letters for your applicants. Do you know all of them to avoid their letters in the next committees? I assume you may remember the name of people who are famous or you know personally. But I anticipate you always trust those people.

But I anticipate you always trust those people — Sadly, no.

@MassimoOrtolano Conversely, I will never understand how you can really accept (proudly) a system where your chances of being hired depend so heavily on the narrow expertise of the hiring committee.  We ask for letters from external experts for the same reason that editors ask for referee reports. No committee has the internal expertise to evaluate the depth, importance, and impact of the several hundred applicants for each faculty position.

Jeff, the recruiting system in my country is completely flawed. I'm certainly not proud of it, I criticized it here at various times (e.g. here and the comments below), but there's nothing I can do about it: the recruiting system is decided by the government and each new ministry added issues to issues. But, yes, in general I prefer the expertise of a good hiring committee to recommendation letters.

I find this very troubling.  I have also had to write many of my recommendations. It is difficult to just find "senior people willing to take the trouble" if it is the norm across your dept and EVERY person you have worked with had their students write their own letters.  I am not sure why the applicant should be penalized for their advisors and/or collaborators refusal to write a letter.  Not to mention, the suggestion of just "not write it" doesn't take into account the much talked about student-professor power dynamic.  I know I am not alone in that I have a relationship with my advisor that only goes well when I never challenge.  I was able to play a bit with that earlier in my PhD, but when on the market and trying to graduate the LAST thing you need is damage the relationship of the ppl who are supposed to endorse you.


text:
How would you write an ethics approval for a study conducted on human data, when the dataset is publicly available?
The dataset was not collected by the authors, but the study was conducted on a publicly available dataset. The source of the data is cited, but the source does not have an ethics statement itself. The data is heartbeat time series.

Please specify ethics: in agreement to which moral values? of which culture?

This is really a question about your local law.  Did you consult your ethics committee coordinator?  Consider adding your country.

Does your uni have an ethics council (or whatever it is locally called) that can help you? Could you retro-construct an ethics statement for the data? If it's a very benign study it may be easy. For example, if collecting the heartbeat info was from all informed volunteer subjects, involved no danger or harm to the subjects, and was entirely anonymous.

Can you give a link to the source? That might be helpful in giving a more precise answer.

http://www.timeseriesclassification.com/description.php?Dataset=ECG200

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bobski/pubs/tr01108-twosided.pdf

The ECG database for the experiment was drawn from the Supraventricular Arrhythmia Database  (SVDB) [40] which is available on the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database CD-ROM [64] and the affiliated on-line repository PhysioNet[34].

The following assumes that the analysis is being done as research (i.e., as a systematic investigation intended to contribute to generalizable knowledge) and that the intention is to publish the results of the analysis in a scientific journal.
There are two separate questions here.
What kind of ethics review is required when analyzing publicly available data about humans?
How should the ethical review of data about the analysis of publicly available data about humans be described when submitting a manuscript that reports the results of the analysis?
The answer to each question is complex.   The answer to the first question would be modified by the specific requirements of the author’s institution as well as the local (country) context.  The answer to the second question would depend on the specific requirements of any journal in which an attempt is made to publish the results of the analysis of the data.
You should clarify your institution’s requirements for review of publicly available data with an expert on these matters at your institution.  They are likely to want to know a lot more about the data:  when it was collected, how it was collected, whether the humans whose data are contained in the dataset consented to the data collection and to the use of the data for research, and, importantly in secondary analysis, whether there are elements of the data that could be used to identify or potentially identify a specific living human being.
Medical journals vary widely in what they require in an ethics statement.  You should think about what journals might be interested in the results of your analysis and review their requirements for an ethics statement.  A review of two or three journals that might be interested would give you an idea of the range of requirements.
A “fail-safe” method for assuring that an analysis of publicly available data about humans will not raise concerns about the ethics of use of the data at the journal submission stage (or worse, after publication) is to submit the plan for the analysis to the institutional entity charged with ethics review and have this entity determine what kind of review is required or deem that the analysis is not subject to (further) review.  This sounds like (and is) quite bureaucratic but it also protects the analyst(s) from allegations that ethics were breached in analyzing the data.

This is the best (safest/most practical) answer so far.

You should not need ethics clearance at all.  There is no ethical impediment to making inferences from publicly available data and reporting your results publicly.

Example of past ethical issues:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/is-it-acceptable-to-use-data-from-nazi-medical-experiments-1.4388509

Thanks for the link.  An interesting case, but note that in that case the data is not yet public, and the ethics argument is over whether the data should be published, rather than whether a research can make inferences from published data.

I tend to argue that data were public, because German data from the late 30s/ early 40s were used in literature from the 50s to the 80s, although not openly cited. However, citing the literature from the 50s/80s, data were accessible (secundary sources, however you do not measure gravity every time you need to use gravity acceleration value in your calculations).

This is dangerous advice; check your local laws and regulations. Not everything that is ethical is legal.

Can you suggest a possible law that could prohibit making and reporting inferences from publicly available datasets?

@Ben: This is a hot-topic being discussed in the remote sensing community. See for example: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019WR025080
In short: public data can lead to loss of privacy or uninformed revelation of sensitive data.

Thanks, that is interesting.  But again, that appears to be a discussion about whether or not the dataset should be made publicly available in the first place, which is not the issue here.

I agree, but (as you can see from comments on your answer and mine) there are a million edge cases that people worry about ...

@Ben thanks God (or whatever deity you care for) they are discussing before publishing: if a dataset is published, it is out and public and cannot be removed. In fact there are dataset from remote sensing exactly with those characteristics, used in the methods described in the paper. However, if you are the editor of the journal, unless you found exciting having you and your published peer-reviewed papers getting in trouble with legal procedures related to ethical aspects themselves, you avoid a paper discussing real, actual cases..

I just want to clarify for everyone that the OP is about analysis of a dataset that is already publicly available.  Any ethical issues concerning publication of data, while interesting in other contexts, are not applicable here.  Instead, the operative question is whether there is any ethical impediment to analysis of public data and publication of findings.

In general you wouldn't need ethics approval to use this data set; it would be covered by the ethics statement from the original experiment. Presumably the original data collectors had one, even if it's not referenced; if you want to be extra-careful, you should try to find the peer-reviewed publication associated with the data set, and look there for the ethics statement.
More generally, it's hard to see how you could be causing harm by using a public, already collected data set; you didn't have any interaction at all with the subjects! The exception to this would be if you had reason to believe that the original data set might not have been ethically collected, in which there would be an argument for not using the data even though it has already been collected. Practically speaking, though, if these are data collected in the last few decades, it's likely that the researchers were required to undergo ethics approval before data collection.
There are lots of edge cases here:

data that were unethically collected, either decades ago (Tuskegee/Nazis/Stanford Prison study/Milgrom obedience studies etc.) or more recent studies that slipped through the cracks of the modern research-ethics framework
data that are insufficiently anonymized
data that are OK in the jurisdiction where they were originally collected but not in yours

If possible, you should be careful and follow @DianaPetitti's advice by checking with your university's research ethics board; hopefully they will tell you you're good to go. (Although I absolutely understand why it is so, ethics boards are often cautious to the point of [researcher] frustration even when the probability of harm is almost vanishingly small.)
Disclaimer: I am not an ethicist and have not been involved in dealing with ethics statements with the exception of a few surveys and student evaluation exercises.

Tracking the source of the data back we get to Greenwald, S.D. (1990). Improved detection and classification of arrhythmias in noise-corrupted electrocardiograms using contextual information. Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/29206

We established a test database of 35 half-hour ECG records ...
[Some data] are from the MIT/BIH Arrhythmia Database ...
[Some other data] are from the AHA Arrhythmia Database ...
Tapes in the 800 series were collected for this research from long-term Holter records archived in the Beth Israel Hospital Arrhythmia Laboratory ...

This is admittedly a little disappointing; there's no evidence that informed consent was obtained, although from a practical standpoint it seems incredibly unlikely that these records could either be personally identified, or that any significant harm was caused in their collection. (This describes the data that are first presented in the thesis — for complete diligence you'd have to go back farther to the sources of the other two arrhythmia databases listed here and see what they say about sample collection ..)

It is NOT safe to assume that data collected in the last few decades are "safe". Example:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4132579/

This is dangerous advice; check your local laws and regulations.  Not everything that is ethical is legal.

"it's hard to see how you could be causing harm by using an already collected data set; you didn't have any interaction at all with the subjects"  This does not apply if the data is not public and is identifiable.

@Anonymous Physicist: Again, can you suggest a possible law that could prohibit making and reporting inferences from publicly available datasets?  I.e., What exactly are you suggesting we look for.

Censorship laws are an obvious example.  Especially if the publicly available dataset is from outside the jurisdiction that has censorship.

clarified in response to some comments.

@DanielHatton: Then the dataset is not publicly available, which contradicts the premise of the question.

@Ben: to be fair, an earlier version of my answer didn't include the qualifier "public". Also, DanielHatton says "hitherto-unsuspected subtle features in the published data set" make it identifiable. I think this is stretching a hypothetical point too far, but it's certainly possible

@BenBolker: Fair enough, but I am going by the question rather than your answer.  The question states that it concerns a "publicly available dataset".  In my view, several of the objections raised by some of the commentators here do not apply in that case.

Even if you are talking about data that is "insufficiently anonymised", if it is already a published dataset that is insufficiently anonymised, it is unclear how you make anything worse by making inference from that.

I suggest to start your research for answers from expert in the field of ethics and data usage. For example:
https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/ethics/release-data-unethical-experiments
Please avoid expecting a meaningful response for such kind of delicate questions.

"the source does not have an ethics statement itself" ---> the data collection should be considered as unethical (on the basis of good practices not being respected).
Thanks to the downvote(s) for considering not useful this answer.

I think this answer would be more useful if you included some more of the information from the link.


text:
Has anyone else seen a message about processing slowness on the Elsevier editorial manager?
Seeing this message on the top of the editorial manager page. Does this mean the journal is overwhelmed with articles or does it simply mean the system is slow when loading pages? Not sure how to interpret it.
"Aries has detected slowness issues in EM/PM and users may experience some processing delays. Please know that work queues in the order received on the servers and while it may take some time to render your work will not be lost. We will share additional status updates as soon as possible."

Aries is a private company that operates the journal management program Editorial Manager. Every journal has its own "Editorial Manager", configured with its settings.
The message sounds to me like Aries's servers hosting this journal's Editorial Manager is having issues. If so, it's obviously not ideal, but it's also why servers need to be maintained.


text:
In academic papers, is it always necessary to show the full mathematical description of well-accepted norms?
For example, let's say you use a well-excepted data normalization method like z-normalization. To avoid clutter and help the flow of the paper, can you simply cite a source for z-normalization and move on, or will reviewers generally want to see everything formally defined in the paper itself? This assumes there is only one possible version of the technique being mentioned (if there were multiple, I would see why a full description would be needed).

Does this answer your question? For most journals, do peer reviewers expect common notions such as arithmetic mean to be formally defined?

It depends entirely on the specific journal you publish in, as well as the topic of your paper. The paper is meant to be read by other experts in your field: hence if something is well known, it doesn't need to be defined. For the average reader of your paper, will they already know what z-normalization is? If so, you don't need to define it.

There is no need to repeat well known information. A citation is enough. Not every paper is a dissertation.
Often the name alone is enough.

If you feel a reference isn't sufficient, depending on the journal, you may have room for an appendix, or a methods section.

It really depends on which journal you're submitting your manuscript to. Probably a good heuristic is to have a look at past publications on the same journal, maybe the top-cited ones.


text:
Do you have to wait for confirmation from the journal to consider an article withdrawn?
If you'd like to withdraw an article for any reason, can you start submitting elsewhere once you've notified the journal, or do you have to wait for a response? How can this be handled in case the journal is not responsive?

Does this answer your question? When editor does not respond to the request for withdrawal

Note especially at the suggested duplicate, the note about copyright.

Depending on the stage. If the journal didn't clear the copyright issue, which is usually done after acceptance, I would say that notifying them suffices. Check if you give them copyright by just submitting, to be sure.

A journal publication is based on a two-sided contract. To be valid (and executable), therefore, both parties need to agree about the key performance of this contractual relationship, i.e., the Author granting to the Publisher an (exclusive) license "to use, publish, edit, reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, and prepare derivative works based upon the Work" (to cite § 3.3.2 of the "Model Publishing Contract for Digital Scholarship").
If, in the negotiation stage (e.g. during peer review), one of the parties notifies to the other that there is no will to feel bound to such a contract anymore, then there is no contract. The publisher cannot claim to have won a "unilateral contract" against the author's will.
As a result, I would say that you are free to submit your manuscript elsewhere as soon as you notify the first journal about it.
(However, note that I am not aware of a court case about this; it is simply my legal interpretation.)


text:
If the status date does not change while an article is under review, does it mean things aren't moving along?
Initially, it took a very long time for the editor to finally screen the article and invite reviewers. My concern is that some reviewers will decline to review, and the editor will not invite new ones quickly at all...it seems like they check in the system very infrequently (once every month or two). If the status date is not changing while under review, could it be that reviewers haven't accepted? This is the Elsevier system.

How long is a "very long time"? It is not unusual to take a month or two before you get through the desk, depending on discipline and journal.

Elsevier's system varies between journals. Also, they have 2 different platforms for journal management, depending upon the journal.

Actually the main cause of delays isn't reviewers declining; it's reviewers ghosting editors and not giving an answer, even after two-three weeks and multiple reminders.

Like for so many other questions about the status of submissions on this forum (search!), there is just no way for you to know. It may be that the editor has found the requisite number of reviewers but reviewers are taking their sweet time to get their assessments written; or that the editor is sitting on their hands and not doing much; or or or. You just can't know, and it's a waste of your time and energy to wonder about it.
Relax, move that paper to some archive storage place in your brain and be productive on something else until the paper comes back for something you actively need to do.

The answer to the title question is "no". Many editorial management systems will not change the status date unless the status itself changes. If reviewers decline to review and the editor invites new reviewers, the status stays as "under review", and the status date stays at the date at which the first reviewers were invited.

My concern is that some reviewers will decline to review, and the editor will not invite new ones quickly at all.

Even if this is the case, you can't do anything about it. There's nothing to do except wait.


text:
Why would article processing fees be waived for this journal? Is this suspect?
Here is the link to the journal: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/computer-methods-and-programs-in-biomedicine-update/
I'm not sure why the fee is waived or if this is a red flag in any way?

Article processing charges are quite often waived for new open access journals (as this one appears to be - Volume 1 is listed as "in progress"). As I understand it the hope is to attract researchers to publish in these journals, even though they might not yet be listed in particular databases (Scopus, PubMed etc.) and don't have impact factors (or other ways to measure journal quality, good or bad). It's a way to kickstart a journal with articles to prove it should be taken seriously (and presumably attract paying submissions later on).

It is pure marketing.

@AnonymousPhysicist But if you are low on funds and your research fits the scope it can - on the other hand - be a great opportunity for authors as well.

It shouldn't be a problem for an established publisher. Perhaps they just wound up with some extra funds and decided this would be good community relations. A smaller press might have gotten a grant for such things, but this just sounds like a feel-good gesture.
It is also possible that they have a need to catapult submissions for some of their journals. But I don't see any negative aspects to it.

See the other answer; https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/170023/13240 As has been mentioned numerous times on this site, Elsevier is not know for being generous with its extra funds.


text:
Is it too much to email an editor thanking them for sending a paper for review?
I was thinking of thanking the editor for considering the paper and I look forward to hearing reviewer’s comments making changes if need be. Does this seem unprofessional or strange?

Yes it is too much.

No need to do this. I wouldn't necessarily say it rises to the level of unprofessionalness, but it is "noise".
It's fine to include a brief thank you just out of politeness if you have some other reason for correspondence, but I definitely wouldn't send an email simply to thank, and there is no correspondence needed at this time.

Moreover, thanking the editor for sending your paper for review conveys the impression that you thought your paper might not really be good enough for the journal.

I'd suggest against it. This is their job. The note would be just noise. Save your thanks for the final disposition of your paper, if at all, or, more appropriately, for some action beyond the minimal requirements of their job.
It isn't bad to do it, just a distraction.

That is fine, just be brief:

Dear [editor], I just received the notification that our manuscript been sent out for review. Please let me know if there is anything more we should do. Thank you, Sincerely, [corresponding author]

Thanking editor will not change anything or influence the process at all

If you know the process and still ask for instructions how to proceed that risks the editor wasting their time in pointing the next steps out to you. Thereby potentially turning a potential tiny social pro (sending an explicit thank your doing their job) into a con by slightly annoying the editor with additional work that in this case is even unnecessary.