text:
How to change career as a software engineer in UK at 30 s' age? I am BSc graduate(Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry)
I have no any software developing experience. But I love to enter the field. Currently working as production planner in manufacturing and going to migrate UK.

You will want some sort of training - even self training. If you aren't a programmer already you will need to become one in some popular language. There are online courses and other face to face instruction that you might be able to find locally. It can be hard to learn from some online programs since there is less of a "goad" provided by a professor who grades your work and gives feedback.
There are a lot of self taught programmers, of course. Many of them are deficient in key areas required for actual development. Even such things as data structures and algorithms might be missing. Don't fall into the trap that all you need is some familiarity with, for example, Java or C. Go a bit deeper.
The UK has an excellent "distance" program in CS run by Open University. You can use them or other 'local' UK universities to give you what you need.
You might also be able to connect up with some open source project, initially as just an observer and later, as you learn some things, as a contributor. You can do this sort of thing from anywhere that has internet connectivity. But better if you can find some assistance. Even another person or two with similar interests so you have someone to discuss issues with.
Your background will make some parts of your learning regimen easier, I think.
Learn a lot and write some interesting programs. Large ones if possible. And don't neglect the human/organizational side of software development. Modern programs are built by teams for the most part.


text:
What are issues pertaining to an online summer internship?
Background: Due to COVID-19 pandemic I'm doing my summer internship on Mathematics in online mode.
I'm not sure whether this will make my resume stronger. Is it possible to get good recommendation letter form this online internship or will it be frowned upon during the PhD admission as an international applicant?
Also how to make most of these online internships because interaction with the professor is virtual along with professors busy schedule?

will it be frowned upon during the PhD admission as an international applicant?

During a pandemic, reasonable people will not penalize you for doing your research online.
Before the pandemic, people might have been confused by the idea of an online research internship.
It's not possible to predict attitudes towards online internships performed after the pandemic.

how to make most of these online internships

Communicate.  It's always good to communicate with your colleagues, but when working online it is especially important.

(I am assuming you're an undergrad. Most of what I say below might apply to a masters student as well. I am an undergrad myself).
To first note, the following things aren't affected online -

Your results. Whether you get them online or in a lab, if you have verified results that means your work has been worthwhile.
Communication with your advisor. From what I have noticed. Your advisor will be as busy as he was if the session was offline. If the internship has promised your advisor will dedicate time to you, he or she will even though it's on a call. How comfortable you are in an online format is separate issue.
Resume. Going back to the first point, if you get your desired results, it will look great on your resume. Honestly there would be no difference if you got the results online or offline. I don't think anyone has that much time in hand to look into that perspective of the results.

What Might get affected -

The depth of your results. If your research demands a lab environment, you might not be able to explore few aspects of your problem. I don't think that is something you will personally face given your domain.
Pay. All online internships pay less and provide lesser benefits.
Networking. This is the biggest drawback in my opinion. I don't think you will have a lot of opportunities interacting with people who aren't directly involved in your work. (If the lab has a slack group, it might be easier to network.)

The only positive I see in an online environment is flexibility. I don't think people pay much attention "when" you get the work done. (Though this is in my and a couple of friend's experience).
What I am unsure about is the LOR and PhD Admit.
A. If you get your desired results, I don't think there is any issue what so ever. Would be the same LOR you would've gotten offline with minor differences.
B. If you do not get the desired results, it depends how much effort is put in and how your advisor is willing to interpret that.
The PhD panel most likely will sway depending on the above as well. (please correct me if I'm wrong here.)

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Can I publish if I develop a tool, but it solve non important problem only? (Mathematics)
My research is in mathematics.
I have developed an interesting quantity X. Combined with other quantity Y, I can solve a certain problem.
However,

I don't know if the problem itself is important or not.
It needs to combined with other tools to work.

Can I still publish my idea?

As you've described it your result could be worth a fields medal (e.g. Cohen's method of forcing) or be of essentially no interest to anyone. I think you need to discuss this with someone whose work is related to your work and provide some specifics.

@DanielHatton It is the latter case, I am a student and my supervisor doesn't work on that field, so I don't know what to do.

Whether you can publish your current work or not depends on the publisher. But you can certainly write it up and submit it to an appropriate journal. At that point it will get reviewed by people with more experience than you have and you will get the feedback that you need.
The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) publishes a student focused journal that might be an appropriate place for your work.
I'd suggest that you get your advisor to review your paper before submission. You may get valuable feedback even if it isn't their main focus.
The reviewers might, of course, decide that your work is trivial and not worth publishing. But they might also notice connections that you don't. In any case, the process of writing it up formally is probably worth the effort.

Normally, the College Mathematics Journal does not publish original research.  It is a "student focused journal" in the sense that (hopefully) students are able to read it.

@GEdgar, thanks. Perhaps you can suggest a good journal to the OP. I vaguely remember from long ago that there was a journal for student work.

Rose-Hulman Undergraduate Mathematics Journal ; Involve: A Journal of Mathematics ; Minnesota Journal of Undergraduate Mathematics ; SIAM Undergraduate Research Online ; also see https://uncw.edu/honors/info/student-life/journals-that-publish-undergraduate-student-research.html

Based on your reply to @DanielHatton's comment, you may have some research to make in that subfield to know about uses of the tool you discovered. Make your research in the subfield your tool may apply to and talk to people.

If you find something: great, you now have an application for your tool
If you don't find anything: it doesn't mean your tool doesn't have any application, let me explain.

In my humble opinion, publishing findings which may seem to have no clear application at the moment could still be useful years down the line. There are examples in history where research work had no application for a long time before..it did (anyone having such an example in mind is welcome to edit).
(Unfortunately?) not all papers are ground breaking. Yours probably won't be (as the vast majority of papers), but it might, sooner or later.
So I would encourage you to write a paper about it. You also mentioned that you are a student and I think that practising paper writing is valuable for students. You'll have some experience in case you want to become an academic, and if you don't, papers always look good on a resume.

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


text:
Can I include new experiment results in a Camera Ready submission?
I have a paper accepted at a X conference. I have been working on changes for the camera ready version. I have some results from experiments that I ran after the paper's initial submission.
Questions:

Can I include the results of this new experiment in the Camera Ready version?
Will I need to inform the program chairs of this change?

No, this would usually not be allowed. One important aspect has not been explicitly covered in Buffy's answer: bypassing peer-review.
Adding new experimental results can significantly alter the paper's contributions and conclusions, and adding them while submitting the camera-ready version bypasses the peer-review process. This is also the reason why many conferences that allow rebuttals to reviews do not allow adding new results even in the rebuttal. For example, the guidelines of CVPR 2021 state:

The author rebuttal is optional and is meant to provide you with an
opportunity to rebut factual errors or to supply additional
information requested by the reviewers. It is NOT intended to add new
contributions (theorems, algorithms, experiments) that were absent in
the original submission and NOT specifically requested by the
reviewers. You may optionally add a figure, graph or proof to your
rebuttal to better illustrate your answer to the reviewers' comments.

I'll guess the answer from the committee would be no for a conference because of time constraints, but you can ask. Once camera ready copy is provided any changes require time and cost and are likely reserved only for minor changes.
But you can certainly ask. You can also discuss the updated material in any conference talk you give, but it won't likely show up in proceedings.
It is possible, however, that there are two stages and the current copy is just for distribution to attendees with a later corrected/updated version done for publication in proceedings. If that is possible, the chair will let you know.
But you should also consider a follow up paper to extend the one given at the conference.

For a journal paper, the answer might be different, but it might also lead to a delay in publishing or even a new round of reviews. So, it might be best to skip it in any case.


text:
Copyright issue of recorded video game when publishing research paper about it?
Background: I'm preparing research about a music-based arcade game, playable in the arcade game center. Requiring video dataset (including music in it), I recorded videos from the game playing by myself.
Question: Is it legal to use the videos for publishing an academic paper, even though they are just a kind of replay-videos?
Like many published research about games (e.g., Super Mario, League of Legend, ...), it seems to be possible to use in-game contents for research. I know there is a copyright issue especially using audio data for commercial use, but I'm wondering if it is still an issue in terms of academic research.
Actually, I don't know where to start searching keywords about this.

Interesting.  Does research on music include excerpts of the music?  Does research on movies include clips from the movies?  Does research on poetry include quotes from the poems? I assume the same "fair use" allowances will apply in the case of research on arcade games.  But probably this is a legal question, so should be asked in law.se

@GEdgar Thanks for the reply, I'm just curious about how other people handle the copyright problem in their research. I'll go law.se for the same problem.

@GEdgar and well... there are several MIDI dataset or Movie dataset researchers can use without permission of content owners, and I haven't thought of the use of data beyond the well-known dataset. It is really the case for me...

If your university has a legal department that might answer IP questions, perhaps the office that manages grants and things, ask them. Media copyright owners are very trigger happy. There are some exceptions to copyright for research, but I don't think they are broad enough for what you suggest here. They order takedowns on non-commercial stuff also. You would like to avoid a lawsuit.

I’m voting to close this question because it's asking for legal advice.

Can you be more specific about what you're doing with it? Writing an analysis of the characters is different than, I dunno, reverse engineering

This question is unclear, but I think if you explain what you want to do, then the question will be a duplicate of https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/7683/in-the-us-when-is-fair-use-a-defense-to-copyright-infringement.

Don't worry about it.
After all, you might be using copyrighted data during your research, but when you're writing your paper, it's not going to include the music or gameplay recordings itself, right? It'll probably be a pdf file written in LaTeX, which wouldn't include encodings for rich media formats; at most, you'd just include screenshots of the process used to produce the data, or individual still images from the gameplay. Neither are likely to infringe copyright, being fairly clear Fair Use.
Of course, using copyrighted material in your datasets might prevent you from distributing the raw datasets, but that wouldn't stop you from writing papers about the analyses performed on the data, or the conclusions drawn from those analyses.

This has been solved in link, so I closed this question.

Quoting from www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html:
Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use.  Section 107 calls for consideration of the following four factors in evaluating a question of fair use:
The cited section of the copyright act would clearly cover your use of videos of you or someone else playing the game for scholarly purposes. Sentence (4) of this section states as a criterion:
"the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work"
which gives you additional cover. Outside of the US, similar rules apply.


text:
Is it okay to have an additional authors for majority of my work in my undergrad thesis?
Background: My undergrad thesis primarily consists of 4 Methods converted into individual chapters (excluding intro, results, conclusion etc.). One chapter dedicates one specific idea. Each chapter is based on a published/to be published/pre-pint "work". Basically, I have converted each "work" into a chapter.
Now, 3 out of the 4 chapters has 2 additional authors (plus my advisor) but I am the first author in all of them with the major contribution.
Questions:

Is this okay? Should I just leave this as separate papers and leave the thesis altogether? (I don't have the time to develop a separate research and form a thesis out of it.)
Should undergrad thesis work only be based on one author plus advisor?
How does this look front of a PhD CS admit panel? (Say USA).

Additional Reason to build the thesis: The 4 papers are bound by a core specific domain and are quite inter-related in there work.
Note: I have no constraint for course requirements from my university. The thesis is optional. I can drop it anytime. Even at the last second. My university if fine with point 1 and 2. I am asking in terms of phd admit panels and just "in the eyes of other academics" in general.

Questions 1 and 2 are dependent on your university's policies and you should ask your advisor about that. I don't see any problem with it personally: my PhD thesis was based on three published papers, one of which I was not even first author for.

Thank you, but I actually meant for admits and not my university. I framed the question wrong I guess. I'll change it in the note.

Since you are not asking about the legalities of handing in such a thesis, I will assume that you have checked that there are no problems obtaining your qualifying degree after handing it in. My answer is contingent on that. I am not in CS, but I don't think the answer is field specific. (in fact it is probably not even specific to academia, but also holds for industry to some degree)
The main question I want answered when I look at PhD applications is:

Can this person independently perform high quality work? Or do I have a reasonable expectation that it will be easy to teach the person to do so?

Strong indicators for this are:

Consistently good performance in courses.
A well-written undergraduate thesis which reflects independent work.
A publication based on thesis work, where it is clear that the student was a driving force.
Independent projects performed at eg. summer schools.

Weaker, but still good, indicators are:

Recommendation letters highlighting the candidate's independence.
Publications where it is clear that everything was completely driven by a supervisor, and the student was just along for the ride.
Experience working with different supervisors.

Red flags:

A weak thesis, not reflecting independent work at all.
Poor performance in courses.

If I got an application from a person with essentially no undergraduate thesis, but a compilation of pre-prints with co-authors, my natural question would be if the person has actually done any of this work themselves. I am not hiring the full team who published these papers - I am hiring one student, who is likely the most junior person on those teams. I would need to be convinced that these papers are the product of your work. You could do that by:

Specifying your contribution to the individual papers in your application.
Actually writing a full thesis, and not a compilation, at mark the papers as "based on thesis X". This would come off very strong, especially if they eventually get published.
Having a supervisor write a recommendation letter saying that, yes, you did a lot of work.

Thank you so much for this answer! This has helped me a lot and not only for this question alone. It was exactly what I was looking for :)


text:
Do LOR writers need to be someone who's taught you a class?
Background: (Undergrad applying For PhD in the US)
I need to submit 3 LOR's. I have one in mind from my personal university and 2 from other universities (with whom I have done extensive research with).
The one prof I plan to ask for an LOR from my personal university has not taught me in any class but I have done good amount of research with them (6-8 months). (This person has a professor grade with a doctorate and an extensive research portfolio and leads their own lab.)
I have another prof who has taught me several classes and I have done some research with them but have recently come in bad terms and I fear they might give me negative reviews. So I am quite skeptical of asking them now. (This person has a assistant-professor grade and no doctorate.)
Another reason why I ask this is because I am not a department topper and my courses at my university are quite mediocre, no stress upon lab components and no major project for any course. I even have mediocre attendance.
Question:
Is it okay if all 3 of my Letter writers did not teach me any class during my university tenure? Will it hamper my chances in any way?

Have mentioned plural everywhere as I do not want to give out any personal information. Them indicates a single person!

Whether they taught you a class or not is irrelevant. What you need is people who can confidently and honestly predict your future success. This implies that having worked with someone in a research environment is probably more valuable than having them as an instructor.
In fact, given that many places now have very large classes and student interacting mostly with TAs, instructors may not be nearly as valuable as they once were.
So, no, it won't hamper you provided that your letter writers can make that prediction honestly and enthusiastically.

Thank you so much for this answer. This really has eased the process! And yes I had forgotten to add that there are always 60-70 students in my class.


text:
What do PhD admission officers look for when evaluating an undergraduate thesis? (CS)
Background:

Undergrad CS Student (Junior year)
I have a few problem statements in mind for my undergrad thesis.

I have 2 semi-novel ideas (extension works) and 1 novel Idea for my undergrad thesis. All 3 will be separate chapters. I mostly won't be able to complete my experimentation for the novel idea before sending out my applications (for PhD CS in The US) and the other 2 will likely be only accepted in b-tier conferences.
Main question: Is that okay for an undergrad thesis? Do doctoral admissions committees expect only tier-1 conference work?
Other notes:

All 3 papers, I am the first author but there will be 3 other authors.
It only indirectly aligns with my interests which ill will be mentioning in my SOP for the PhD Application.
I have done (and am doing) other major projects. The sole purpose of this work was to carry forward with my interest.

This is extremely dependent on the department and university to the point of like asking how long and on what topic a nonfiction book should be. Is there a reason you can't look at undergraduate theses written in recent years, ask some of your student friends (or contact some who have recently graduated), or ask faculty in the department? (moments later) Maybe the problem is that it not clear who "they" are in "Do they expect only". I assumed this was your own department, but in reading again it occurs to me that it might be the graduate departments receiving your application.

Incidentally, I think the reason I initially understood "they" as referring to your department is that my experience (probably dated) is that only a small percentage of applicants to a graduate program would have written an undergraduate thesis, since many (U.S.) colleges and universities do not have this possibility.

@DaveLRenfro, I think "they" refers to doctoral admission committees evaluating the OP's work, not the local department/professors.

@Buffy Yes you are right, I mean "they" as "doctoral admission committees evaluating the OP's work". But thank you Dave, That was quite insightful!

@Aymous I edited your question to clarify "they" as this was very unclear. You haven't even referred to the entity you mean by "they" at the point you use it. If you are asking generally about how admissions committees view contents of an undergraduate thesis (that is, how will it contribute to a candidate being viewed favorably) compared to how your undergraduate institution views contents of an undergraduate thesis (that is, will it be considered an acceptable thesis for some graduation requirement etc) then I strongly recommend you make your question clear on this point.

The question itself is unclear as well. Perhaps it should say something to the effect of: "What do PhD admission officers look for when evaluating an undergraduate thesis?"

Sorry about making that unclear, I will edit out the main topic to make it more clear for future readers, thank you all for taking your time.

I think that significant research at the undergraduate level is pretty rare, especially if it can be completed and published.
The problem is that there is seldom time enough to get the needed background and also follow up to completion on a significant problem. Research is really open ended, especially in time. It is why some doctoral students take much longer than others to complete.
If you are diving into the unknown on a research question then it is impossible to foretell where or when you will wind up.
For that reason, I think that pretty much any research experience at the undergraduate level will impress a doctoral admissions committee in the US. This would even be true if there are no publication (yet) but perhaps many interesting questions still to be answered.
What is acceptable to your own institution is, of course, up to them, but I doubt, given what you say, that you are likely to leave too many admissions folks unimpressed.

I agree that any type of publication or research as an undergraduate will impress future institutions.

Thank you so much for the answer, it really cleared any doubt I had. I was only asking in terms of a PhD admission committee. My university's department has their respective guidelines so I'll follow that!


text:
Importance of domain selection for undergrad applying to a PhD program (USA CS)
Background: CS undergrad applying to CS PhD programs in the USA right after graduation.
As an undergrad, I research on (and will be till applications are submitted) broadly on 3 applications of a single "Technique/Algorithm".
Reasons for the domain of choice: 2 of the 3 really interest me a lot and the third I took up because the lab is well renowned in the country and I learn a lot in the process.
While this has helped me develop good skills on a technical basis, I really haven't dived deep into a particular "problem" with a fixed domain. Which is the construct of a PhD (right?).
Question 1: Will this look bad on my profile? Will it show that I'm confused?
All 3 domains, I have good research work done. I invested additional time and made sure I am not at a superficial level for any of the domains.
I actually am not confused. There is one broad problem I have in mind which I want to solve during my PhD and that involves the whole "specialisation" aspect and deep diving into a single domain. I will be mentioning this in my SOP.
I am not able to proceed with that now as I won't be able to produce anything great by my own and it demands computational resources and proper guidance which I tried but failed to obtain.
(If the answer to question 1 is yes) Question 2: Will mentioning my plan to specialise benefit me in any way in the eyes of the admission committee?

Note: If it adds any value to the question. All 3 my letter writers will be backing me for the 3 different applications I work on. 1 letter each for 1 separate broad problem that I work on. (The 3 different problems are done at 3 different labs headed by 3 different profs).

You should apply to more than three PhD programmes!

I will! Im applying to around 8 schools. Thank you for the advice!

Actually, in the US, any research experience at entrance with a bachelors is a plus, possibly a big plus. Having an idea of where you want to go in research is a big plus, even if not entirely settled. So, yes, it is good to mention the specific areas that most interest you and any experience you have with those.
But acceptance depends on many things, from GPA to letters of recommendation.
I'd suggest that, other things being equal, having an idea of what you want to do in grad school will be an advantage and will help you choose more precisely when it comes time to do so.
But doctoral studies in the US normally start with a lot of advanced coursework leading up to the comprehensive exams so that candidates have a fairly broad exposure to mathematical concepts even before they specialize (and specialize...) on a dissertation topic.
It might be a mistake, however, to refuse to consider other options. Keep an open mind. You will have plenty of time to develop a formal plan.

My own experience was that, at entry, I would have been pretty happy with anything in analysis or topology, but nothing specific beyond that. And pretty unhappy with algebra. My only "research" experience was in the philosophy of math and it was pretty embarrassing. Long time ago, however.

Thank you for this answer. It cleared all my doubts! While my GPA is 9/10 (India) Im only top 15% in the department. My primary school in mind cancelled the requirement of GRE (which I am glad about) so I am banking on my research experience. And yes, I will make sure to keep an open mind!


text:
Is it okay to leave a conference paper as a pre-print?
Background: I just got an acceptance for a conference paper. While the conference isn't half bad (Nothing top of the domain. It's a top 80 conference in my domain as per guide2research), they are asking a hefty fee for registration and I won't be sponsored for it by my university.
Question: Is it okay to just keep the paper as a pre-print? I am extending that paper with another concept and a few more tests to submit it to a journal anyways.
In the eyes of a CS PhD (US) admit panel, does it make a difference whether I publish this paper or keep it as a pre-print?
P.S. If it makes any difference, I am an undergrad.

Dang there's domains out there with 80 conferences??

While @cheersmate's answer explains the difference between pre-prints and papers published in conference proceedings (however please note that none of this is necessarily true outside of Computer Science as conference culture is different between disciplines), I think it is important to mention some etiquette about publishing.
It is considered very bad form to send a paper to review, and then retract it post-acceptance. There are some exceptions to the rule (e.g. sudden illness, non-trivial errors in the results or data), such a retraction (or simply not paying the conference fees) can reflect very bad on you, as it points to:

Lack of foresight if the reason is lack of funds.
Conferences typically have publication and attendance fees. As historical fees are usually known, this is an expense that could have easily been foreseen. This is even more true during the current pandemic situation, as many conference fees are reduced to a fraction of their typical price and the conferences shifted to online events.

Lack of respect for reviewers time (if the reason is lack of funds; or lack of time to do the required revisions).
In order for a paper to get accepted to a conference, it will get assigned to an editor / session chair. That person will then need to read at least the abstract and the keywords, and attempt to solicit 2 or 3 reviewers for your paper.  They will contact more than that, and many will refuse. Finally, the editor/chair will read the reviews, and will have the responsibility of making the final decision about acceptance or rejection (it's not as simple as a ranking list where top-X get in). Indicating that you never had the intention of publishing shows a disregard for this process and the time of all the people involved.

Problems in academic conduct (if the reason is e.g. a dispute between co-authors).
It does not reflect well on anybody if you can't keep it civil with your co-authors for the period of time between submission and publication.

Problems with research rigour (if the reason is non-trivial errors in the results).
Infinitely better post-acceptance than post-publication, but... well.

If you do not give a reason, nothing good will be assumed.

My point not to make you feel bad, but that a paper that was peer-reviewed and accepted for publication, but not published (due to not paying conference fees/not presenting) does not give you any bragging rights on your CV. And while your plans to publish it in a journal certainly sound nice, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
To address your current situation: the one thing worse than retracting the paper by quietly not paying the conference fees is paying the conference fees and then quietly not showing up to present your paper. That might even land you on some blacklists on larger conferences, e.g. IEEE organised. If you truly can not find funding, I would suggest informing the conference as soon as possible for your reasons for retraction, and offering your apologies for your lack of foresight, rather than just quietly not paying.
I second @cheersmate's suggestions to look if the conference can waver the fees, or has any "student support" mini-grants, or if something might be available through your University (or even through a lab/team/professor if you are associated to one through an internship or TAing) or your co-authors. While it would have been better to do all this before submission, I hope you still find an avenue that allows you to publish your paper.

Thank you very much for this answer. It actually addressed a lot of my other concerns. I have anyways decided to go ahead and publish it hoping to get back the fees before the end of my tenure :)

Lots of good advice here. "No bragging rights" (no line in CV for published work, just work in progress). Get a fee waiver. More... +1. Note that many CS conferences have "student volunteers" to help handle the administrative tasks. They normally get attendance, etc, without fees. Some might even provide travel, at least partially. Ask. Student volunteers are authors moderately often, also, but mostly grad students, I think.

I assume it will make a big difference. Even without the conference being a major one (which would, of course, be better), acceptance shows that your paper passed peer review. That is the major difference to a preprint: anyone can in principle upload anything to a preprint server, so the value of having one "published" is (by itself) close to zero.
As a way to move forward, I suggest checking two things:

Can you acquire funding from a different source? Often, universities are research will have special programs which you might apply to. Some conference even allow requesting a waiver if you're not funded. It's worth checking these avenues.
Are there any other (similar, maybe even better) conferences that you can apply to where the cost is manageable, or which provide such a waiver?

On the other hand, if you plan to make a journal version, that is an alternative, too. But keep in mind that the time to get a journal paper published may be longer (with sometimes multiple rounds of peer review and multiple re-submissions if the paper is rejected), and, in particular, not foreseeable. Some papers take a long time until they appear in a journal, and that might be after you need the paper to appear on your CV in your application. Therefore, it's worth trying to find a way for the conference paper to get published.

Thank you very much for this answer, this cleared my mind :)

I'm worried about this. Withdrawing the paper after review leaves no public record of the fact that it ever "cleared review" since it won't appear. This puts any advantage back to zero and you just are left with a preprint which is really just "self published" without review. You can't really have it both ways here. For your future needs you need formal publication via journal or conference.

Thank you very much, I'll definitely keep that in mind!

@Buffy Not sure what merits worrying here as what you write is also part of my answer (maybe with slightly less emphasis). I did recommend publishing it via the conference where it is accepted, but if OP has no way to acquire the require funds, it is still worth considering the (obviously less preferred) alternatives.


text:
Include content in my PhD thesis from my paper whose content previously appeared in the PhD thesis of one of the coauthors of the aforementioned paper
I would want to include content in my PhD thesis from one of my research papers. I am a coauthor of the research paper. The order of the names of the authors in the research paper is not based on the importance of the individual contributions, but it is alphabetical. The point is that the content of the research paper is in turn based on the content of the PhD thesis of another coauthor of the research paper.
Given this situation, I want to know to which extent I would be guilty of plagiarism if I include the content in my PhD thesis with references to both the research paper and the PhD thesis of the other coauthor.

Is it a thesis on fractals?

A thesis can be and usually is based on previous research. I think that you don't have much problems with word counting.... It is just matter of explaining all.

Just be honest: Be clear who contributed what. (And follow institutional guidelines.)

The answer to this is going to depend on country and disciplinary norms. But in my field (molecular biology/genomics) and country (UK) this is perfectly fine, normal even,  as long as you are clear which data you generated, and which was generated by your collaborator.


text:
Papers on IEEE Xplore or ACM DL
Background: I am an undergrad student who took a CS elective.
My software engineering professor has asked us to review a bunch of research papers on certain topics in software development. He specifically wants us to review papers only from IEEE and ACM Transaction papers or conference papers.
I found a paper of interest in IEEEXplore. It says:

Publisher: IEEE

at the top, but below the abstract, it says:

Published in: 2018 Third International Conference on Informatics and Computing (ICIC)

I tried to find more about ICIC but could not figure out if this conference is affiliated to IEEE.
My questions:

Does this count as an IEEE Conference paper?
Can I safely assume that all papers available on IEEE Xplore or ACM Digital Library are published as IEEE transaction or conference papers, and ACM papers respectively?

Does this count as an IEEE Conference paper?

Yes

Can I safely assume that all papers available on IEEE Xplore or ACM
Digital Library are published as IEEE transaction or conference
papers, and ACM papers respectively?

I think so and will be surprised if that is not the case.

Please do edit your answer as not all ieee explore papers are transaction papers.

oh okay! Sorry about that!

Thanks @Wetenschaap! That is exactly what I want to say.

You can safely assume that. Since these are specific to the publishing body itself. For instance:

ScienceDirect for Elsevier,
ACM Digital Library for ACM Journals,
IEEE Xplore for IEEE related journals and conferences/proceedings,
Springerlink for Springer Journals and Conferences/proceedings etc

Does this count as an IEEE Conference paper?

Yes!
Can I safely assume that all papers available on IEEE Xplore or ACM Digital Library are published as IEEE transaction or conference papers, and ACM papers respectively?

Not all papers available on IEEE Xplore are transaction papers. Transaction papers are only "transaction papers" and not conference papers. I'm not entirely sure if this is correct but they can also be counted as "journal papers". Transaction papers are generally regarded as the highest quality papers in that field. Any accepted transaction paper will have the "transaction" as part of the transaction name on top of the paper.
All ieee conference papers are publised on ieee explore. Any paper on ieee explore is part of ieee (in form of a conference/journal/transaction etc.)
The same goes for ACM as well.
Here is a example of the "transaction".


text:
What does the With Editor status mean for an Elsevier journal after being with the Managing Editor (ME)?
I submitted a paper to an Elsevier journal, but it was not assigned to a reference number. They sent me a mail stating that the paper with the managing editor for initial evaluation . After tow weeks later, I got mail stating that the paper is with the Editor. And it was assigned to a reference number. What does this mean? Thanks in advance.

The Managing Editor handles technical publishing issues and record keeping (initial check in the chart), and is likely not an expert in the subject matter.  The Editor handles getting the paper evaluated, and is likely an expert in the subject matter.

"Managing editor" can mean many different things, e.g. for one of the journals I used to handle, the managing editors were effectively editor-in-chiefs using a different name.
In your case most probably the managing editor is some kind of gatekeeper to the journal. It could be the editor-in-chief, or it could be an employee of the publisher. They looked to see if your manuscript was within scope of the journal, and if it was, who the best member of the editorial board to handle it is. Then they forwarded the manuscript to that editorial board member.
There's nothing else to do except wait.


text:
The editor can't find additional reviewers
I received this message form the editor "Thanks for note. We have tried 11 potential reviewers to date and have one review at hand and another that is promised. We will be in touch once the second review is acquired".
What this meant? May be he rejected the submission if can't find the second reviewer

I don't see how "another review is promised" causes you to worry about the editor not finding a second reviewer.  You were told a second reviewer was found.

You have two lines of text, and that's really all there is: You can try to parse tea leaves, but you will never know. So sit back and relax: the decision will ultimately come, whatever it may be.
To be more to the point, the editor really just says what is happening: They're having difficulty finding people willing to review the paper. One could come up with a number of reasons why that might be so, but you really don't know, and speculation isn't going to get you any closer to the truth. The only way you could find out why they have difficulty finding reviewers is to ask the editor, who may or may not want to talk about it. You could also suggest possible reviewers in a reply to the editor, which the editor may or may not want to consider.
In the end, you really can't know what is happening from just these two sentences, and it is unproductive to spend your brain power in coming up with possible scenarios.

It's just three sentences but it's quite revealing:

They invited 11 reviewers
At least two reviewers agreed to review the paper
One of them has already submitted the review
The other has a review due date that's sometime in the future, and the editor believes that the reviewer will actually submit a review

Your editor isn't having trouble finding reviewers - he/she has already acquired one review and another is promised.
On the other hand it's impossible to tell if your paper is going to be rejected, since after all it's impossible to tell what the contents of the review actually are. There's nothing to do except wait.


text:
How can I share my Google Scholar profile with selected people only?
In Google Scholar under the section:
My profile > Pencil symbol > Make my profile public
I have unchecked the option.
This has made my Google Scholar profile private. Now I want the ability to share my profile with few of my friends, not all. How do I do that?

Presumably a profile can be public or private, not somewhere in between, so

I want the ability to share my profile with [a] few of my friends

this isn't possible unless you adopt an ad hoc solution, e.g., you could save the page and share by email. (More sophisticated solutions exist, for instance, you could mirror the page somewhere and grant a few friends access to the mirror, but such a solution will be time consuming to deploy.)

Related: https://www.xkcd.com/2106/ With Google Scholar there are also two options, but its between 1 person (yourself) and a billion+. Go figure!

Any third party solution?

@BrianH in that meme it says 300 or billion. Here it's myself or billion of people. Come on, there is no way? Or at least a tracking mechanism?

I have posted this query in their help page. Here: https://support.google.com/scholar/contact/general


text:
What does it mean when a paper is rejected but encourages resubmission without a suggestion of new experiments?
My paper has been rejected but encouraged re-submission. The reviewers were overall positive said it was well written and that all the analyses were correct. The problems pointed out were changes to the introduction and conclusion to change the scope of how the experiments are framed, not to any of the experiments themselves. There were no mentions of lack of novelty or other common reasons for rejection. There was also no mention that anything I wrote was overstated or incorrect.
I am unsure of whether to  re-submit when it has been rejected for this reason because I don't understand how a manuscript could be rejected if the experiments were correct and found to be novel?
If the problem is that I need to modify my introduction and conclusion than why not accept the manuscript, since re-writing the introduction/conclusion would not be very difficult. I would consider doing so would be a minor revision.
I am wondering whether anyone has had this type of rejection before and if they decided to re-submit or submit elsewhere?

Related: What does “reject and resubmit” mean?

"I would consider doing so would be a minor revision." And the editor disagreed.  That is your explanation.

It could simply also be that they had a larger than average pile of submissions and your paper, while good enough under "normal" circumstances, wasn't good enough with this crop.  Your paper needs a bit more polish (in the editor's eyes) and will likely be in the top of the pile next go around.  As to what you should do about it, it's up to you to see if you can get it submitted elsewhere before the next publication of this journal.

Please remove the last sentence.  Questions that ask for other people's experiences are likely to get removed from the site.

Many journals are now encouraged to publish the data on the "efficiency" of the review process, e.g. the average time before initial submission and publication. Expected time to publication may be an important consideration for authors, along with the journals impact factor.
So, imagine that you run a journal, where a paper on average goes through 2.5 rounds of review and each round takes 3-6 months. If you sum it together, 12+ months from submission to publication would not look too attractive. But you only need to sum up if you invite revisions. If you "reject and resubmit", then technically you look at a completely new submission, and it counts as a new paper in your statistics. So, your processing rate gets shorter (which authors like), and your acceptance rate gets lower (which makes your journal sort of a prestigious one, tough to get into).
This is the main reason (in my personal opinion), why so many journals now rebrand "major revision" decision (and often "minor revision" as well) as "reject and resubmit".

Even the multiple choice that journals offer seem to be tailored to attain this. I usually find myself in troubles and have to carefully explain when a ms must be extendly change but I considered it accepted if suggestions are confronted/taken into account.

It does seem unusual, but I would still suggest resubmitting to this journal:

Since the reviews were positive, you may have a good chance of acceptance on the second round.
If the reviewers had deeper concerns which didn't come through in their reviews, you may get a better explanation on the second round, thus giving you a chance to really improve the paper.
In any case, since you're working with reviewers who have already read the paper once, you'll probably get a decision much faster than if you were to submit to a new journal.

This does not answer the title question.

I don't know the answer to the title question, but I did feel I could answer the question from the body "I am unsure of whether to re-submit when it has been rejected [...] ?"

If the reviewers didn't express much dissatisfaction, or rather, expressed general satisfaction, it may have been an editorial decision. I suspect that the journal's editors know their readers well and are just trying to match your paper to reader expectations. Some journals place a very high value on the presentation, which you indicate is fine, but the editors may just want the introduction to make the significance of the results clearer for their subscribers.
I think it is to your advantage to work with them on this. It may be the difference between a good and a great paper.

Write back to the journal asking if the decision is correct, for the reasons you gave in the OP. It feels like they were intending to make a major revision decision, but made a reject & resubmit decision instead. In many editorial management systems, the buttons to reject and to revise are right next to each other, and human error can easily cause the confusion.

Based on what you have said, the editor has, based on the reviews, decided that your introduction and conclusions were not suitable for the journal.  Therefore the editor rejected your paper.
You seem to suggest that the journal should accept every paper that has novel, correct experiments.  That is not the way most journals work.  Usually the criteria are more complex.  Often, the results must be meaningful as well as novel, and the style of presentation must meet some subjective threshold.


text:
Withdrawing from present studies in order to be allowed to apply for another one? Asking for clarification of a clause in my admission letter
I'm a second-year PhD student studying in a foreign country on a student visa, and I've been admitted to another PhD program in another foreign country (so I'm planning to leave the current program unfinished and started the new one). My official offer has this clause and I have to accept it in order to get the confirmation letter that allows me to apply for a student visa for the new country: "I confirm that I am not bound to enrolment at another education institution that would require a release." Does this mean that I will have to withdraw from my studies at where I am now, in order to start the visa application? This would be very impractical, though: taking a student visa in the new country takes at least 5 months or so, but upon withdrawing from my studies at the present institution, my current student visa will be canceled (not to mention that I'll lose the funds that I'd need to live on in the next few months that I'll be waiting for the visa) and I will have to leave the present county (presumably to home) long before my new student visa is ready. (Also, my passport isn't strong enough to keep me around on its own.)
Please tell me that I've misunderstood the clause! If not, do you know any way out of this?
PS 1: My initial thought is that this clause can't mean what I've taken it to mean, as it's very customary to apply for grad schools, get admitted, and start applying for visas while you're in your last year/semester. It's just that for me the starting date is before fall, and my present studies won't end before my new studies start.
PS 2: I can provide you with country specifics, etc., if needed.
PS 3: I've asked this question here as well, but I thought this forum is more relevant.

@Libor Thanks. The current country of my studies is Canada, and the new country is Australia.

"I confirm that I am not bound to enrolment at another education institution that would require a release."

To me the phrases here "bound to enrollment" and "require a release" seem important; the first phrase suggests some sort of contract, the second suggests that you require permission from those who have you bound to leave this contract. Joining these phrases with "that" suggests that both situations must be true: contract that requires permission from someone else for you to withdraw from it.
My non-lawyer reading is that if, like most educational programs, you can simply choose to leave at the end of a semester without particular penalty, then you are not bound to enrollment and do not require a release. You might be bound if you have an agreement to do some work for funding, and especially if you have tuition remission that becomes void if you leave in the middle of a semester.
However, since the potential fallout from violating this policy could include losing your offer, I think it's worth verifying that you are in the clear. Assuming you can leave your program in Canada at any time, I would still confirm with the program in Australia that your current attendance is not an issue. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise to them because I'm sure you explained your situation in your application. Explain to them any terms of your current enrollment, and your plans for how and when you will leave the current program, and any restrictions or lack of restrictions on doing so.
You also definitely do not want to lie or mislead on any visa application. My understanding that doing so can permanently (or at least for many years) disqualify you for a visa, even if you did not intend to mislead.
You could also have a lawyer interpret the phrasing and give you legal advice, but you can't get personal legal advice from Stack Exchange.


text:
Is it possible to automatically obtain abstracts and citations from a list of references?
I have a list of about 150 references stored in my reference manager. They are from my dissertation. My end goal is to do a bibliometric analysis of these papers to visualize their network of connections based on the overlap of articles cited within each paper (and alternatively based on shared terms in the abstracts). Typically I do network analysis on papers returned from searches using the Web of Science, which generates a file containing the abstracts and lists of references for all of the papers I am analyzing. There appears to be no way to compile sets of papers using WoS other than to do a search though. This means I would have to individually search for all ~150 of my dissertation references and add them to my marked list. That is impractical. Are there any citation databases into which I can import a reference list and automatically compile a set of abstracts/references-cited for each reference?

I don't have an answer for you, but from the little I know about bibliometrics, matching references is very difficult. So, it might not be as easy as you think to just feed in a list of references from one source (your reference manager) and automatically match them from a database (e.g. WoS).

I was afraid of that.

Which citation analysis software do you use? A possible answer might be available for specific software. Please edit your question to specify. You can also specify your specific reference manager.

If a solution exists, I would probably start from the scholarly database (e.g. WoS) and see if they have any instructions for importing a list of references (maybe using DOIs) whose full details they would then display. If there is no import option from the database end, then there is likely no solution for that particular database.

If you have a list of DOI's and a scopus/web of science login (via your institution) they have API's available to automatically obtain this data. For example, using python, you could use the packages pybliometrics or wos to go through this list.


text:
MS in Computer Science for non-CS undergraduates
I am a 2nd year BTech. student from Metallurgical and Material Science Engineering branch from a decent college in India.I am proficient in C++,Java ,Python programming and Web development.I really wish to pursue MS in CS from good schools in US. How should I build up my profile for the same ?

There is a lot more in a US CS undergraduate program than what you are currently proficient in, I think. The course of study isn't "Computer programming in several languages", but something broader and deeper.
Find any good US undergraduate university and get a list of courses required in the major as well as the important elective courses. Find one that provides good course descriptions, not just names. That is your course of study.
You won't need all of that, but you will need quite a bit of it. Perhaps you can find local or online courses (that provide evaluation) to fill in as much of the gap as you can.
That said, most places do individual assessments of candidates at some level, but you need to get past any initial weeding-out so that you reach the second stage. And competition from "good schools" is quite intense.


text:
Can my school fire me on the grounds that I have applied to another school?
I'm in the middle of a 4-year Ph.D. program on a full scholarship, in a foreign country. Due to expertise issues, lack of community, and other reasons I have decided that this program is not suitable for me, and have applied and been admitted to another program in another country. I haven't informed my current school/supervisor, as I was supposed to leave here for the new institution by the July of this year (so I thought "why would I even endanger my position by informing them?"), but due to the pandemic and some complications related to my visa application I couldn't, so I deferred my studies for a whole year (to late 2022). Now I'm sitting here and wondering what would happen if my current school finds out that all the money they've been spending on me has been on nothing; worse for them, they'll still be paying me due to the scholarship commitments. (Very likely they will find out, soon or late.)
Are there any grounds that they can fire me? Like, is what I have done one such ground? What do you suggest, in general, I should do if they find out about my new school application? I was thinking to suggest to them that I can donate a portion of the scholarships that I've awarded back to them upon leaving here, but not sure if that's a good idea. (I have no legal commitment whatsoever in returning my scholarships under any circumstances; I just thought of my idea as a deal or something.)

Update (April 6): The Office of Graduate Studies confirmed that unless due to unsatisfactory progress (such as falling candidacy exams, etc.), my funding as well as registration status as a student in the current school is bound by my initial contract and cannot be cancelled on any other grounds.

I doubt it, but laws vary. Where are you? Country. I don't know what you mean that the scholarships are "your property".

I'm currently in Canada. By "my property" I meant to say that I'm not required to return them even after I withdraw from my studies here.

@gnometorule What does "fit" amount to, though? I'm on top of my program in terms of grades and achievements. Can they just decide that I'm not fit -- just like that?

In the US, absent a contract to the contrary, anyone can fire anyone at any time for any or no reason, as long as the reason isn't race, gender, religion, or a number of other similar types of illegal discrimination.  That doesn't mean they will.

Not a direct answer since I can’t presume to know what someone else would do, but you have several misconceptions about how university departments think and act, and maybe understanding them would help guide your thinking. Departments are quite used to spending money on “nothing” — your derogatory but totally inaccurate term for students who leave without completing their degree. From the department’s point of view that’s a completely normal and predictable part of the cost of running their operations, and nothing to get worked up about.
Second, a student who leaves without a degree is in no sense a waste of time or money. Such a student came, gained some useful knowledge, learned some things about themselves that made them a wiser person who is better able to fulfill their potential in the future, and left to go somewhere else. Degree or no degree, the resources spent on such a student are entirely consistent with the mission of a university.
Third, donations are to be given because you have a genuine desire to give money rather than out of a sense of duty, coercion, or a fear of retaliation. If those are your motives, then it’s not donation, it’s extortion.

I sure didn't mean my post to imply any disrespect to my current school or academia. Of course, I have learned quite a lot about different things here, but the reasons to leave for me weigh more. I have to admit, though, that I did have many misconceptions and I appreciate your insightful reply.

@qu71 I did not infer any disrespect on your part.

While I wish this were true, it is not always. For example, in the UK, university departments are judged on their completion rates, and once completion rates drop below 80% that department in ineligible for government funding. Of course, this is an inducement for them not to fire anyone - fireing someone counts the same as someone leaving without submitting.


text:
Wrong PhD better than no PhD?
I have BSc and MSc in Chemistry, and I have enrolled in a PhD project in Europe since mid of last year. The project is funded by the food department that means I would officially be a "PhD in Food Science" after completion.
I think I have made the wrong decision to be here because I want to find a position in chemistry department or industry. I have checked job advertisements from chemistry institutions and found that none of them hiring PhD in Food even for the subfield (not Food chemistry, unfortunately) I'm working on.
Chemistry is a highly competitive field and I think I would lose my competence. I also doubt if I'm qualified to be a food scientist without previous education in food.
In the end, my choice would be to quit or stick it out. But I'm debating if an MSc in A plus PhD in B better than MSc in A for a job in A field. Anyone have experienced this situation before?

A PhD is always a very specialized education. Saying that you have a PhD in Chemistry or 'Food' doesn't say much. Doing a PhD is about the specific topic you will be working on, and mainly about the general researching and managing experience that you will get by doing a PhD. The latter is usually transversal to any PhD.
That being said, I think you are downplaying having a PhD in 'Food' (I would not call it that by the ways - maybe 'Food Chemistry'), because there is a huge market and reasearch potential in that field. So, while you might dislike it, it doesn't seem a bad professional option

Thanks, cinico. I'm not working on food chemistry, that's why I'm so worried.

@Aaawhy Then, could you explain in a general way (without disclosing sensitive information) what the project is about? I'm not sure that it will help answering your question, but maybe it will...

Why are you doing a project you are so uninterested in that you consider ditching it because of four letters in the diploma?

This may not answer much because I'm in the US and these are different fields but I got my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, mostly now I'm exclusively a software engineer. So such changes do take place.  You might look at linked-in profiles of people with jobs you want and see what education they have in your country/region.  If you are close to obtaining your PhD (say less than a year) I'd stick it out and get it, but that's me

My PhD at the faculty of medicine was funded by the orthopedic department. I still claim to be a computer/computational scientist and do not consider myself an orthopedic surgeon...

I have a friend who did his PhD in nuclear physics and is now employed as a data scientist.... Not surprising since both have lots of statistics and simulations... What skills and what connections you acquire in the process may be more important than your title... Ask to see what other people with the same advisor did after graduating...

" I want to find a position in chemistry department or industry." That's a very relevant "or". As far as I can tell in the industry no one really cares what was your PhD in, all that matters is if you have the relevant skills for the (extremely specialized, otherwise the PhD is of little relevance) position advertised.

When you say "PhD in Food Science", you mean what your actual Doctoral diploma would say? In which European country is this?

My PhD, from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, doesn't specify a department or a field. It just mentioned the title of my thesis and the name of my advisor. A PhD is about what you learn during that time. If what you learn is interesting to you, you're golden. If what you learn is not interesting to you, quit. Don't look at the title. People don't go around saying "Aaawhy, PhD in Food", it's "Aaawhy, PhD".

I’m not European, but I assume PhDs in Food are not the most common thing and are not offered by most universities. This answer is proceeding under that assumption.
Assuming that you are doing research in chemistry and developing the necessary skills and competencies to work as an industrial chemist, I do not think having a PhD that’s officially in “Food” will be a significant hurdle. There are a lot of things that you can get a PhD in, and it’s impossible for job postings to list all possibly relevant departments. This is why you will often see language like “PhD in X, Y, Z, or a related field.” Institutions are aware that there are all sorts of unusual official degree titles, and tend to not be very strict about only allowing people with PhDs in a short list of approved fields get jobs.
What is important is that your CV clearly indicates that you are a chemist. This means that you are a member of chemistry academic associations, publish in chemistry journals, and speak at chemistry conferences. It’s fine if you also do those things at food science venues, but it’s important that someone with no knowledge of food looks at your CV and says “ah yes, this person is a chemist.”
If you have members of the chemistry department on your dissertation committee, ask them for advice about positioning yourself as a chemist. The same goes for professors in the chemistry department who you collaborate with or who have expressed interest in your research. If you do not have any such people, that may be a sign that your current trajectory isn’t “chemistry enough” to be recognized as chemistry by the academic community.
Another good strategy is to look at recent placements for people with degrees in Food at your university. Do they get jobs at the kinds of places you want to be? If there are a variety of types of people in the Food program (food anthropologists, food chemists, food historians, etc) you should focus on the Food chemists specifically.

Thanks and Do they get jobs at the kinds of places you want to be? The answer is No after I searching on Linkedin, Food industries are not investing in my topic in their companies; chemistry industries do, but they require PhD in chemistry-related background and do not have PhD in food science on their list.

@Aaawhy do you do research that could be published in a chemistry journal?

@Aaawhy - the question is not "can you find jobs on linkedin which mention your course?", but "what jobs do other recent graduates from your course have?" - if some of the recent graduates have gone into chemistry jobs, then you can too.

@StellaBiderman Yes, we can.

@Stobor, no. They got jobs in food industries for food-related work I have no knowledge of.

@Aaawhy The question is less about "can you" and more about "do you." Do you publish chemistry research? Do you interact with chemistry professors at your university?

@Aaawhy "food science" not being on the list shouldn't discourage you, because there are far too many potentially relevant fields for them to list all of them. That's why they ask for a "chemistry-related background" - it covers anything relevant, without having to worry about exactly what's written on the certificate. And if the food industry isn't investing in your topic but chemistry is, it's extremely difficult to imagine doing a PhD on that topic wouldn't be considered a "chemistry-related background".

I don't know what is right for you, but I'll tell you that there is little in life that is worse than a career in something that you don't care about while having unfulfilled dreams.
I suspect that you are early enough in your studies that a change won't cost you much, and spending a year now to avoid 30 years of boredom might (might) be a good investment.
There are a lot of people in the world who don't get a chance to choose. If you do, then, perhaps you should look for an optimal path and see if you have a way to follow it.
Changing fields after a doctorate is not impossible, but hard since you need to perform in the old field while preparing for the new. That takes time also.
I can't answer the specific question about balancing MS degrees and such since I don't know your goals for a "job".

Your life isn't a "dress rehearsal" for something else.

Your life must be truly blessed if you really believe there is little in life that is worse than that.

Changing fields after a doctorate is not impossible It is quite common, actually, for people going to industry after a PhD. We have plenty of doctors in physics or math doing engineering jobs (me being one of them, from physics to IT)

@user159517, see https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/subterranean-homesick-blues/

Having no career at all is worse than a career in something that you don't care about while having unfulfilled dreams. Overqualifying yourself out of the jobs you want to do is bad news. It's good that you've spotted this as a potential problem before you invested the years necessary to get the PhD.
On the bright side, statistics indicate it's rare for PhDs to be unemployed - so you should be able to get a job somewhere, even if it's not something you really want to do.
I suggest visiting your university's career center. They will be familiar with your local job market. They can confirm if your conclusions are correct, and advise you on your options if you decide to quit now. For example, it could be possible that employers aren't advertising for for PhDs, but they will accept PhDs anyway. It's an important decision, so make sure you have all the information you can get before you make it.

PhDs are all unique - I've heard it said that a PhD is the process of becoming so specialised in a field that you are the world expert by default.
As a consequence, when hiring someone with a PhD a (good!) recruiter won't worry about exactly what the PhD was in (because it'll never match what they want) so much as what skills you learnt along the way - scientific method, many forms of communication skills, evidence evaluation, structuring large documents and long projects, and, most importantly, how quickly you can learn new stuff.
Job adverts are a poor guide to what recruiters want. Many are badly written and/or managed, and those ones go unfilled and thus stay open for longer. Good job adverts by good recruiters disappear fast because they get an appropriate candidate quickly. So at at any particular time, bad job adverts are over-represented compared to the good adverts.
I suggest you talk to your university / department / course careers advice and/or pastoral care contact. They will be able to give you a far more accurate view of possible career paths, and opportunities that might be available for you e.g. industrial placement, which are great if you see yourself outside of academia in the long term. A PhD is a long and difficult process, and many that start see them selves as an academic at the end - but that is impractical for the vast majority simply because 1 academic will have 20+ PhD students over their career when only 1 is needed to replace them. You may find that career paths are available to you that you had not considered, or you may find that you don't want what you thought you did.
I strongly recommend no rash actions - take at least 3 months to think it over, and get a wide range of viewpoints on your situation. I think you would find it hard to get a second PhD opportunity without a life and death reason for stopping the first.

in which country specifically are you doing your PhD? I live in Europe and I've been a scientist for some years already, but I've never heard of a title "PhD in Food". Usually the titles sound more serious than that.
Quick internet search showed me, there's "Professional Doctorate in Agriculture and Food (DAgriFood)" in the UK, but as I understand it's not a PhD (Brits, correct me if I'm wrong). There's also "PhD in Food Science" in Finland, which I'd assume would be accepted as similar field in job offers for PhD in Chemistry (especially in the food industry). You should definitely have it checked, what exactly the title is, perhaps you are worrying for nothing.
There are two things you should keep in mind. The PhD studies are quite formative, but with a high probability you won't use the very specific knowledge you'll obtain working on your PhD project, if you leave academia. In that sense, the project itself doesn't play much of a role, the point is you get the title. The other thing to consider is, however, whether  the project is interesting to you. PhD studies can be a great adventure, but only when you are happy about what you are doing. If you are disinterested, you are doing a disservice both yourself and your supervisor.
Hope that helps a little.

Context:
In Germany, the Doctor title is usually completed with the field in a crude historic way. What kind of Doctor is available depends on the faculty - in my case my faculty (which also deals with food and more) awarded some funny Dr. types (engineering, food, etc.), but not a Dr. rer. nat (natural science, fitting for chemistry, physics, biology, environmental science and more). I, along with half of the PhD students of the faculty just did the dissertation with some formal cooperation with the "real science" faculty and we got our Dr. rer. nat. After at least 20 years of this practice my faculty decided at last to award the Dr. rer. nat. directly, thus solving this "problem".
Answer to the question:
You might be able to get the "right" PhD by cooperating with another faculty, but it depends on culture, written and unwritten rules of your department / faculty. There is a good chance you are not the first with that situation. So the answer is, as in most cases at this site: Speak with your advisor.


text:
Master's Research Thesis vs. PhD Thesis
What are some differences between a Masters' Research Thesis versus a PhD Thesis for STEM fields? From program websites, I learned that a Masters thesis is not as "rigorous, broad, deep" as a PhD thesis, so I get the general idea that a Masters Research Thesis is "easier" than a PhD one. However, I find the description vague. In what specific ways are they different? How are the expectations different? Does a PhD thesis have to be "ground breaking", while a Masters one does not have to be? Can anyone who has written both types share their observations on the differences?

Two questions should be split up into two posts.

@AzorAhai-him- Will do.

@AzorAhai-him- One question now

I'm not sure I get the point of the question: Master's theses are between 4 month and a year (roughly), PhD theses are between 3 and 5 years (roughly). Why would you even think they are the same? Where would you even start to compare them? Or would the point about their different duration already be an answer?

German perspective:
Master theses are short (duration-wise), PhD theses are long. How short and how long depends on details, but the relative difference is there regardless.
Master theses consist of one problem, while in STEM, PhD theses are often a collection of works which are not necessarily very closely related.
Both should contain original results. A 6-12 month master thesis which does not contain any original results has significant shortcomings.
From a supervisor's perspective: A master thesis which leads to one paper in a reputable journal is a good (top 1/3 or so) master thesis. A PhD thesis which only gives rise to one paper is a below average (lower 1/3) PhD thesis.

When you mean "original", it does not mean "groundbreaking" right? The results can be simple things that no one has come up with, right?

Yes. (Anyway, when do you call something "groundbreaking"? The vast majority of papers in STEM is not groundbreaking.)


text:
What should I do if I do not like research in a particular field?
This is my last semester as an undergraduate and I am taking a graduate course in a physics field I was interested in (won't mention the name since I do not want to offend anyone who is researching in this field). The class ends with a report in which we have to summarize research in a particular subfield. Looking over and reading papers to write this report, I realize I do not like this subfield at all. The papers are confusing and technical; I have a basic understanding of each of them but not a thorough understanding of all of them. So far I have read 7 papers and I am comfortable talking about and explaining the methodologies and results of 3 of them; for two of them I am comfortable talking about the methodologies but not the results; and for the last two I have a vague idea of the procedure. I also do not have the stamina to read more papers. I find the topic boring, complicated, and difficult.
What should I do? Should I abandon the idea of going to graduate school? I do not really want to go to industry that much and I really do like physics. Or should I try exploring a new field in physics? Or will an advisor in this field be helpful, since I am reading the papers on my own to write this report and no one is guiding me?
Any advice will be appreciated.
PS: I am not enrolled into a graduate program yet.
Update:
If I go to another field in physics, what should I do to see if I like researching in that field? Should I read papers, introductory textbooks? What papers would be the best for a beginner like me? How can I find introductory papers on, let's say, arxiv (is there some kind of section called "Basic"). I am not enrolled in a graduate program yet, and thus I do not have an advisor, so I like to know what I should do in the meantime. Also, my parents and relatives are not researchers so I am kind of alone in this right now.

Then you should not do research in that field.

@AzorAhai-him- I have some other questions about preparing for a new field, which I also posted above under "update." If I go to another field in physics, what should I do to see if I like researching in that field? Should I read papers, introductory textbooks? What papers would be the best for a beginner like me? How can I find introductory papers on, let's say, arxiv (is there some kind of section called "Basic").

It sounds like the main reason you are not interested in the particular area is because you do not understand the papers?

There's now too many questions to address in one answer

@kjacks21 Yes that appears to be the main reason to me. What should I do to find easy-to-understand introductory papers in this or another field?

@AzorAhai-him- How about just these questions: Should I read papers, introductory textbooks? What papers would be the best for a beginner like me?

We can't list papers a beginner is physics subfield X should read

@AzorAhai-him- Sorry; what I meant was are there places online that contain introductory papers in general?

@user758469 I'm not sure "introductory papers" exist. Textbooks, which exist to teach people new things, would be a better place to start.

Read material oriented to undergraduate- and graduate-level students:

Grab a year's worth of the American Journal of Physics.
Skim until you find articles of interest to you, ones you can latch onto.
Read them, understand them, work backward from the references they use, find appropriate textbooks.

Try to figure out reasonable entries to current research fields:

Hang out at Physics Stack Exchange.
See what interests you and ask questions as appropriate.
Ask for recommendations for good new and old review articles and read them.

Reflect and digest, concurrently with the above:

Explore what your attraction to graduate work is: personal satisfaction, a calling, career preparation, fear of leaving the educational system, and so forth.
Learn as you go and observe your reactions to what you learn.

+1 I think your penultimate bullet point is very important.

There're a few ways to interpret why you don't like research in this field:
First way: you don't like the particular field because the papers are confusing and technical. In this case I want to point out that from your description, you've done spectacularly well. I was barely able to understand one single paper when I was an undergraduate, and you understand seven! You have nothing to fear about graduate school in this field, in that case.
Second way: you don't like the particular field because the topic is boring. This is a more serious objection. If you genuinely find the topic boring (that is, you find the end goal boring, even if it is achieved; or if you find the problems that you'd solve daily uninteresting) you might want to work on another topic.
Third way: you don't like the particular field because the topic is complicated and difficult. Unfortunately enough, graduate study in virtually every field is complicated and difficult. That's a big part of the reason why many people never attempt it. If you genuinely do not like complicated and difficult things, you might want to avoid graduate school entirely.

If I go to another field in physics, what should I do to see if I like researching in that field?

Ask someone who's researching in that field. If you don't know anyone to ask, try asking the graduate students and/or professors in your department, even if they don't work in that field. It's possible your department will have a graduate advisor of some kind. Here's an example from Stanford. Even if you are not a graduate student, you could still ask the graduate advisor.

I'm going to address your primary concern, which is that you are finding the papers in this particular area difficult to understand.
Let me be clear - this is perfectly natural, especially when you are not familiar with reading papers or a particular field. Reading papers is a skill you learn, especially in graduate school, so do not fret. In graduate school, especially for PhD programs in the USA, the may have introductory research classes that pair you with a professor. This allows you to explore research in certain areas with guidance and work through understanding papers together (hopefully).
My recommendations on next steps are as follows:

Speak with your class instructor or a professor at your institution about this area. Ask them about their thoughts on the state of research and starting materials to familiarize yourself.
Look at the references in these papers. Are they citing certain textbooks? Can you follow the chain of references back to the seminal works that they are likely building on?

Thanks for your response. Another problem I have is that I have not been accepted to a graduate school this cycle and am still waiting to hear back from Masters programs (after my experience with these papers, I see why I was not accepted ---- I do not have any experience at all) and this dropped my morale A LOT this semester. What should I do in the meantime? Do you think your recommendations still apply for my situation

Try not to get too discouraged, graduate school is meant to train you in more advanced topics. My recommendations still apply. I can't emphasize enough that what you are experiencing is normal. In the meantime, talk to professors you have access to about research areas they are interested in and where you can start reading.

One may remark that some fields tend to advocate worse writing practices than others, often based on archaic rules that nobody has the courage to change, or because people just don't care. If one is a person who is easily frustrated by poor writing, that can be a valid argument against pursuing a career in a particular field.