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How do I deal with postdoc acceptances that come in before my preferred institution makes its decision known?
I will graduate soon from the doctoral program. I will apply for multiple postdoc positions. The results of the one that I really think is great for my career will be probably announced later than the others. If I accept an earlier offer, and later learn that I could also get the one I desire the most, then I will really regret. However, I don't want to risk by refusing an early offer, since at the end I may get nothing.
Do you have any recommendations for such situations? Have you ever experienced this dilemma? How did you manage it?

Related at Workplace.SE: How do I coordinate the process of pursuing multiple job opportunities at the same time?

The same question could be asked about faculty positions.

You can always ask for (and often get) additional time from the place that has made an offer, while letting your preferred place know that you have a deadline and they'd better hurry up.  That worked for me.

This is an typical situation in application process with no perfect solution available. I is totally ok to apply for several positions at a time. The institutions are also talking to several applicants in parallel. But after signing a contract, it is not a nice gesture to revoke this w/o reason (even if notice periods would allow this legally). The institute has set trust in you and canceled the application of others. How would you feel if, after you have signed at an institute and canceled other applications, they would say : "Oh sorry, we got the confirmation from somebody which is more suitable to our business targets. Thanks for your time and good luck."
Below are some ideas on how to handle the dilemma. It is up to you, which one you want to follow:

Accept that in life you have to make decisions at time when you don't have all pros and cons available. It's is not like finding a solution to an exam, where the data available clearly defines which answer is correct and which is wrong.
Accept that, even if if you would have all offers available at the same time, you cannot say which offer is the best. Many unexpected events might happen at one position or the other: Your project might get canceled during your work. Your professor might change department. You might meet your future spouse.
If you are really sure which is the best position for you, but the confirmation from this position has still not arrived: Contact this potential employer and explain your situation. You are really interested in this position, but you have also agreements from other institutes so you need to make about the alternatives an decision. Is it possible for your target employer to give you an confirmation earlier? If the employer is really interested in you, they will try to shorten the decision time. Otherwise there is the risk that they lose you.
After signing a contract, withdraw all applications to other institutes. So you save them work. Additionally you avoid you dilemma, when you get an positive reply, but have signed already elsewhere.
Attention: Only be sure to have a job after you have signed a contract. Don't rely on verbal promises only. Things might change easily: The project start might be delayed by 1 year. Or the nephew of the CEO might be interested in the position ...
Asking for time (e.g. 1 weekend) to think it over an recent contract is ok. But at durations longer than 1 week, the employer might become impatient.
A bit more time can be gained, if you ask for some small modifications on an proposed contract. The employer might need some time (eg. 1 week) to issue a new contract. Anyhow this point (and the previous one) shall not be exploited too much. The employer might get the impression that you are not really interested and hire an other candidate in the meantime.
If possible, you can try to reduce the risk a bit, by smart timing of the applications. First send them out to one or two institutions which are not in your main target area. The benefit here, is that you have the opportunity to get some more training in the application process. You become more confident in interview situation. Second try your number 1 choice. You can hope for earlier feedback if there is an opportunity for you. With some delay you could contact departments which are a good fallback solution, althrough not the main target. The idea here is that you are not forced to early to decide to take or leave an offer here. If your number one declines, you might get some positive feedback from these good fallback solutions later.
Of course this strategy has to be adapted to time restrictions, and the application deadlines for the adverticed positions.
Career is not only defined by your first job. Of course this first job already gives you an direction in industry you will develop. Further corrections here might be energy and time consuming. But the final result, if you become an owner of an multinational enterprise, an university professor, or simply an employe w/o significant career step depends mostly on personality.
Potential employers prefer candidates who appear to be authentic. Don't try to play to much games with them.
Trust your gut feeling.

Unlike in science?

Yes. What I want to say is: At university you learn to analyse problems, by deeply analysing everything which influences the outcome. Publications should only include statements which are completly water-proof.    Also at exams you are drilled to find the clearly defined correct answer.    In contrary in life there is no exact correctand wrong. I admid that this statement is a bit provoking and simplifying. I know that during research you also have to make decision based on incomplete data. But I hope you get the main idea what I wanted to say.

I have edited my answer a bit in order to be more clear.

@BerndGit, I find many people in academia suggesting/recommending what you did to the OP (in summary, one shouldn't revoke a signed contract for another better offer). I wonder why different standards for academia and industry with respect to free-will/free-market? In most countries, including the US, the employers can not bind the employees even after signing a contract. There can't be any legal reasons for such advises, except for some specific cases. Are you saying that the OP should still go to an institute that offered 40K/year salary even if s\he later on gets an offer of 70K/year?

@John: Even in industry, it's definitely frowned upon to back out of a signed contract. I would never hire or recommend someone who I knew had done it, and I would never apply to or recommend a company that I knew had done it. I think the difference is just that in academia, "frowned upon" carries much more weight, since it's a much smaller community, with references and word-of-mouth playing a much larger role in hiring.

@John: I completly agree with ruakh.

BerndGit and @ruakh, in the industry, you can almost always manage to get next jobs if you have necessary skills. I wasnt usually pressed to provide references from particular set of people when I used to jump around companies in my non academia days, nor did leaving one job for a better paying job was ever considered immoral. If anything,  it is considered an obvious decision ther. In academia, in most desciplines, it is a buyers' market due to so less no of available jobs. The job seekers have to suck it up to any whimsical beliefs of the hiring sides, to survive.

As long as the agrement does not specifically bind the employees to the employer, then it is simply against the law to bind the employee. Yes, you can start bad mouthing against such an employee who went away from you because he/she was thinking about their own family more than you, but I wonder who would look a looser here?!

@John: It is up to you, to decide how you want to deal with people in your life (as long as you stay within legal limits). However you might also experience consequences of your actions which you might not like (which are also legally ok).

@BerndGit, completely agreed. I just wanted to convey that the same applies to the employers too! At least in the industry where the power is not too much at the employers' side. Eg they wont get good candidates any more if the employers become so touchy about employes' natural decisions. In academia, because of the unfortunate power imbalance and some over authoratarion tenured profs, the employees may have to decide between personal good and suck it up.

I also personally think that your answer should clearly state that as long as there is nothing explicitly binding clause in the contract, the employer can not prevent the employee choosing a better offer, and that your answer is from the 'ethical/moral' point of view. Don't get me wrong. I seriously think that your answer is similar to what I hear from some tenured profs at various departments and hence is highly valuable to understand one particular perspective on the issue.

@John I think you're missing an important point about academic employment, which is that (in the US) it is heavily concentrated in one particular time of the year (roughly mid-winter, for starting the next fall).  In industry, if you lose a new hire, it's a pain, but you have just as good expectation of finding a good candidate one month later as you did in the first search (to first approximation).  If a postdoc accepts a job in January and changes their mind in April, a school can't go to its second or third-choice: they've been off the market for months.

@John and no one new will be available until a year later.  So having a candidate back out after accepting is much more disruptive; that's why there's such a norm against it.

@BenWebster, I agree to your point. It can certainly be disruptive up to certain extent to the universities. And I would not like to let any university be in such a situation. However, the worst disruption of this may be to find a replacement for the classes in the following fall semester. Given that the employers have full summer and potential adjuncts, this shouldn't be unmanageable. On the other hand, again, you are mentioning a situation from the employer's point of view and not from the employee's point of view which is the whole point of this discussion.

Regarding the disruption in the research goals of the PI who wanted to hire the postdoc. This becomes more problematic to the PI. But then the advice that 'This is not the end of your life. You need to move on.' would also apply to the PIs. The practice of preaching postdocs/new hires that they should stick to the first offer they have accepted no matter what is nothing but to protect the convenience of the employers here. The root to the fact that such practices and preaches continue lies in the bad job market in academia. In all other fields, arbitrage is a natural and obvious thing.

Please take extended discussion to [chat].

This can be difficult. If you get an offer with an uncomfortable deadline, I would recommend bringing it to the attention of departments which you prefer (and/or individual faculty at those departments).
This is not guaranteed to push them to make a faster decision, but it could.

It is perfectly ethical to apply to several positions at the same time. It is a different thing if you accept and then decline later on (as they may plan for you to come at that stage); still it happens, but it's not ideal.
The fairest solution is, once you get an acceptance from the first batch, to ask them to wait for a certain period - they may not like it, but you agreeing to getting interviewed is not a promise to join them and they have the option to deadline you if they need a quick decision. If you are strong, they may be more flexible in that respect.
You will not get entirely around this dilemma of balancing your and their legitimate interests.

"Ask them to wait" is spot on -- if they want (or even need) an answer immediately they can tell you.  You might want to use an approach like "time to consider" rather than "there's another job I fancy more".

I can answer this question from my experience
of applying for multiple postdoc positions
and accepting one of two offers.
A few years ago, I applied to around 6 postdoc positions.
The professor for one of the positions gave me an interview,
and gave me an exploding offer for position A with a one week deadline.
At the time, I felt that position A was the best fit for me,
so I was going to take the offer
and just withdraw from the other positions.
However, my PhD advisor advised me
to follow up with my other applications, just in case.
Upon his urging,
I sent a follow-up e-mail to each of the other positions
to which I applied, basically saying

I was wondering if there are any updates regarding my postdoc application? I would like to work with you, so I wanted to let you know that I just received an offer for another postdoc position, which I have to decide to accept by the date.

After I sent these e-mails, a few of the faculty told me that
they would not be able to make a decision quickly
and so would not be able to give an offer.
One of the faculty decided to give me an interview,
and eventually gave me an offer which I accepted.
I am thankful for my PhD advisor's advice
which led me to a position B which I felt was
a better fit for me than position A.
I am also thankful that the faculty at position A
gave me one week which was a reasonable time frame
for me to contact the other positions
and to work out an offer which I eventually accepted.
TL;DR
When you receive a firm offer,
you can politely let the other recruiters/faculty know
that you need to make a decision soon.
If they are interested in you,
that may spur them to act more quickly
to give you and interview and offer.

NOTE: I do not have any experience in applying a postdoc position; but this comes to my mind:
I logically guess that, there should be some time between the date that the university calls applicant and tells him that he passed evaluation tests and his application is accepted and the latest date that the applicant can inform the university or research institute that he will accept and register for his position.
I recommend you to take care of these dates and time gaps.
Maybe, when you are in the gap time that you can register for another institute where you are less interested in working; the more preferred one inform you that you are accepted and you may register there.
Another option may be contacting the institute you are applying to or the professor with whom you will be working (your mentor) and ask whether you can delay your registration/attendance or not. They may assist their applicant in some emergency conditions.
Please note that, I am not really sure whether it is ethical or not to decline your application after it is accepted by a university; or whether it is ethical to apply for more than one institute at a time. However, I have the sense that it is applicant's future and opportunities, and he can apply to many job positions simultaneously.


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Should the title be changed when converting a conference article into a journal article?
Recently, a (Springer) journal invited me to extend a (Springer) conference paper. The conference paper was published in April. After the extensions, I can submit the journal article as post-conference publication.
Regarding my question, should / must I keep the name of the conference article (when writing the journal article)? Or should I modify the name of the journal article?

What do you mean by 'extension'? It is the same article with more details or it is the previous study + some new calculations or experiment? If it is the second one, then you should definitely change the name pointing out the difference between the conference paper and the new one. If it is the first case then I don't understand the necessity of publishing it again.

Whatever you do about the title, be sure to make it clear in the journal version that it's based on the conference version. A common way of doing this is to add a phrase such as "A preliminary version of this paper appeared as [cite]" in the front-matter.

Ask the editor.

@artalexan: In some fields such as CS it is not unusual to publish an "extended version" of a conference paper in a journal. The journal article is usually expected to contain some 30% of new content compared to the conference paper, but that new content may primarily consist of more details, for example a more exhaustive formal definition of the concept presented or, say, a complete list of (e.g. novel user interface) elements used when the conference paper had only enough space for a few examples.

@DavidRicherby that's a must have --- already done 2 days ago

@artalexan as stated by O.R. Mapper, in CS, that's frequently seen. i am going to attach both theory (details) & additional experiment results.

If the content of the paper is not drastically different from the conference version (same main results, but more details / data), it is perfectly acceptable to use the same title. This is the usual approach in theoretical computer science. Of course, you are free to change the title if you want to.
Examples:
Oswin Aichholzer, Greg Aloupis, Erik D. Demaine, Martin L. Demaine, Sándor P. Fekete, Michael Hoffmann, Anna Lubiw, Jack Snoeyink, and Andrew Winslow, “Covering Folded Shapes”, in Proceedings of the 25th Canadian Conference on Computational Geometry (CCCG 2013), Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, August 8–10, 2013.
Oswin Aichholzer, Greg Aloupis, Erik D. Demaine, Martin L. Demaine, Sándor P. Fekete, Michael Hoffmann, Anna Lubiw, Jack Snoeyink, and Andrew Winslow, “Covering Folded Shapes”, Journal of Computational Geometry, volume 5, number 1, 2014.
Jeff Erickson, and Amir Nayyeri. "Tracing compressed curves in triangulated surfaces." Proceedings of the 2012 Symposium on Computational Geometry. ACM, 2012.
Jeff Erickson, and Amir Nayyeri. "Tracing compressed curves in triangulated surfaces." Discrete & Computational Geometry 49.4 (2013): 823-863.

I'm not sure there's any need to give examples here: in TCS, almost every journal paper that's based on a conference paper has the same title.

@DavidRicherby You're probably right. I just wanted to offer some facts along with my personal observations.

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Do published university admission acceptance rates include applicants for all courses or just undergraduate?
Does the acceptance rate of a university is only determined by how many students are applying for undergraduate? Or is it also determined by postgraduate or PhD students?
For example, Harvard has an acceptance rate of 5.2℅, does it also count the grad/phd students?

I believe you are correct.  The 5.2% is for beginning undergraduate admission.  There may also be separate statistics for other units: GRAS (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School, etc.

There is no enforced standard for acceptance rate - it means precisely whatever the institution decides it means (and is generally not audited or required to be made publicly available). It's largely used for marketing of admissions for an institution, so a cynic would point out that the numbers can be assumed to be less than rigorously straight-forward and should not be relied on to be meaningfully interpret-able.
However, generally acceptance rate is by category (undergraduate, Master's, PhD), and is usually defined as applications received compared to student's officially accepted. Some programs have less common relationships between Master's and PhD (such as offering an unfunded Master's to a PhD applicant, and it's unclear if they call that an acceptance or a rejection - but this varies by field).
Breakdowns in the numbers are sometimes available from some institutions, but you usually have to dig for them. I've seen institutions post acceptance rate of 5-10%, but then deep inspection shows some groups accepted at nearly a 50% rate. Some institutions post enough stats that you can break down by gender, reported race/ethnicity, domestic/foreign, and even give additional info on acceptance (the institution said yes), admittance (the student accepted the offer by the institution), and enrollment (the student actually showed up and started the program). Some provide almost none of this information, and even less institutions provide yearly updates.
Some programs will also give some incredibly limited stats about grades or test scores (average GPA of incoming students, etc - I don't think I've ever seen standard deviations provided).
Finally, as GEdgar pointed out in the comments, some institutions also break up the reporting by department/program (medical school separate from computer science, which is held apart from arts). Sometimes many areas are aggregated together, such as the entirety of the "graduate program" or across colleges, etc.
In the end, acceptance rate is purely a measure of applications in vs acceptances out. People use it to infer lots of other things, and that's a practice that is extremely questionable - but popular.

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Academic changing universities: How to negotiate start date to minimise problems with leaving previous university with little notice?
I have an offer at another university.  It is late June, just got it.  They want me asap.  I have asked to not go until after the fall semester as we have an accreditation site visit as well as a faculty member coming back for their first semester after cancer treatment.  I don't want to stress out the department with a job search now and to go through the site visit without me.  I literally have my current university's contract in my hand and have not returned it.  I would like to ask them if I can accept for just the fall semester.  That would give us time to get through our very important site visit, and the fall semester.  It would also provide 5 months for them to fill my position.  My fear is if I ask they could say no.  If I don't ask, I'm not sure what if any penalties there would be.  I want to do the right thing but not sure what to do.  Suggestions?

Have you already signed and returned your contract for the next academic year?  If so, you've got an obligation.  If not, you'd be within your rights to simply leave.  Have you accepted the offer from the other university?  Have you talked to them about the possibility of starting in the spring of 2017 instead of the fall of 2016?

does your department know that you have another job offer?

When I read/misread @sally question, it sounds as if she is asking about 'how to negotiate end date?' (She worries whether her 'old' institution will let her sign a shortened contract or not  and appears to not have talked to them yet about leaving. She has  however said that she informed the new institution that she wants to wait 5 months. Did I read it incorrectly?

Also look at Possible to leave a contract academic position shortly after signing new contract? [closed]
But the decision appears not yours to make from my reading of the wording of the question.
If the current institution says no to a one semester contract, then the answer is given, as it would be kind of ridiculous to keep putting off the new position (assuming one wants to accept it) for however many years the old place keeps renewing the year-to-year contract.
But lets imagine that the OP is in a position where he/she is negotiating with both sides to stay one semester. The former department has requested that they 'need' the OP just a little bit longer. Accommodate the request or not?
There is no ethical obligation to stay (how would people ever change positions otherwise?). A junior faculty in a field where everyone knows everyone and a collaborative team player reputation is highly prized, might find it a smooth move to attempt to negotiate to stay one last semester at the desperate request of the former department. (If the new place says no, well then, figuring that out as soon as possible is more important to the old department than anything else).
But, even so, I get a sense from the question that the OP feels guilty for leaving, (which is normal).  I also suspect that is it pretty easy to mistake anxiety-over-getting-out-of-project  with being indispensable. ("It won't be done the way I would have done it" is not the same as being indispensible)


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If you're given an hour, is it bad to finish a job talk in half an hour?
I am applying for postdoc this year. I was given standard one hour for my job talk. I prepared for a 45-50 minute talk and 10-15 minutes for Q & A. But probably I spoke bit too fast and also people didn't interrupt me, my talk was over by 30-35 minutes. Is it really bad for getting a job?

Different people would consider it differently, and we can't guess what this particular PI / committee thinks.  It's over now, no point in worrying.

Well, there was this student giving a really fascinating, smooth, didactically perfect, seminar talk, everyone was fully absorbed, and when she finished, everybody was freshly filled with interesting information, and wide awake instead of in the usual post-seminar torpor - a rare event after exhausting and demanding 1-hour seminars, for a change. Then, she looked at the watch, and, surprised, she said "oh, I just used 25 minutes". Ouch! Bottom line: never wake the audience to reality if it's happy.

@CaptainEmacs That student's name?  Albert Einstein.

@Josh1billion No, it was something I witnessed, and I am not that old. I also am not aware that Einstein had a reputation for enthralling talks (unlike, say, Feynman). Dirac, on the other hand, had a reputation for meticulously planning out his talks. He had a rotating blackboard which he filled up exactly during his presentation. I've seen a mathematician's talk who filled spots and splotches on the blackboard, only at the end of his lecture to achieve a fully-fledged map of results and their interconnections.

@CaptainEmacs Just a joke.  Your first sentence reminded me heavily of the setup of a common internet joke whose punchline is what I posted.

This would be certainly bad for getting a tenure-track job. For a postdoc it's an understandable rookie mistake and it's understood you might not have given a lot of talks yet at this point in your career. I don't think it's very likely to have hurt you, but I'd still work on taking up more of your allotted time next time. Good luck on your job search!

@Anonymous: Actually, I think as a postdoc you should have given a lot of talks already, been to conferences, etc. Therefore, a postdoc should know how to keep the time. Usually stretching it out too long is way worse than finishing early for a conference program.

I don't know about this specific job talk but in general don't waffle. 'Getting the point' and being concise in your explanations is a skill, not a flaw.

I am confused about the two close votes for this question as being "off-topic".  This question seems to be 100% on-topic for this site.

@ian_itor: I agree that grad students should learn to give good talks and practice it quite a bit. My own advisor insisted on this, and I insist on it of my own students. But some advisors encourage their students to focus more exclusively on the science and very little on professionalism. I agree that not having learned to give good talks is a mistake, but I'm saying that such a mistake is likely to be mostly forgiven at such an early stage of one's career.

Giving such a short job talk is a negative rather than a positive.  Generally the point of a job talk is to engage and impress the audience with (i) your research and (ii) you as a potential research colleague.  They want to hear a narrative that starts from a place they know and builds up to some impressive results, ideally that they would like to hear more about over the coming months and years.  If other candidates are "filling the space with good content" and you come up 33% (or whatever) short, then you risk creating the impression that you don't have 60 minutes worth of good things to tell them.
That's just an impression though.  People who care will look back through your dossier, so you needn't worry too much about that.  Moreover, usually there are only a small number of candidates brought in for job talks and interviews, and a talk / interview has to be really bad indeed in order for those who were supporting you (in the current job market, getting interviewed is certainly a very strong show of support) to change their mind.  Ending very short doesn't seem to qualify in my opinion: people who are not in your favor may point out that your talk was short, while those in your favor will think "So what?  S/he's still a good candidate..."
You shouldn't be thinking in terms of having killed your chances for a job but rather of having not fully exploited the opportunity you've been given.  Based on what you write I will guess that you are not very experienced giving 60 minute talks.  (And in fact that's how you're going to look more than anything: inexperienced at giving such talks.)  That's something that's easy to improve upon: practice more at giving such talks.  Nowadays most people use powerpoint/beamer, which makes it pretty easy to control the pace.  For something like a job talk, you should have at least one "dress rehearsal," i.e., a practice talk in front of real, live people who will stop to ask you questions.  If you did that and still came up that short, there's something to figure out: did you get so nervous that you skipped a lot of material?  If so, you can compensate by making more slides.
Let me end with an anecdote.  When I was on the job market, I gave one talk much earlier than the rest: it was from my perspective before the semester even started.  For this and various other reasons I did not have a "dress rehearsal."  I had the opposite problem: I had way too many slides (I mean actual slides, printed onto clear plastic and put on an overheard projector; this was 11 years ago) and I ended up plunking down slides full of dense text and then skipping most of the text.  I went on to give three more versions of the same talk at other places, all of which were much more polished.  Where did this shaky job talk take place?  At my current institution.  They hired me anyway, though I heard that one of my colleagues was motivated to look back at my teaching letters for reassurance.

Dress rehearsal is so key. We need a question on how to prep for interviews/campus visits.

Overhead slides were common 11 years ago? Sounds more like 21 years ago.

@Sverre: In my field (mathematics)?  Yes.  But mathematicians are very resistant to powerpoint presentations.  To this day I have used powerpoint/beamer exactly once at my university: as preparation for a talk I was giving elsewhere the following week.  Not only have I never used powerpoint/beamer in any class I've taught, I've never seen it used in a university course.  From what I understand, this is quite unusual.

@PeteL.Clark We may be very resistant to using slide presentations in the course of normal teaching, but we are much less resistant to using slide presentations when making research presentations.

@Christopher: (Hello.)  Much less resistant than when teaching?  Sure.  But still quite resistant compared to other fields.  Even in 2016 some of our job talks used chalk.  Later this month I will give a talk at MIT...with chalk.  If you give me an hour and guarantee that I will have a blackboard that everyone can see, I will use chalk 99% of the time.  Not every mathematician is like me, and younger ones are less likely to be like me...but a lot are, including some of the younger ones.  And by the way, if your priority is being understood rather than getting through: don't use slides.

" And by the way, if your priority is being understood rather than getting through: don't use slides." I would need some citation for that. I've seen presentations with slides and with chalk, and I have the impression that those with chalk are much more often impossible for me to understand, and the reasons seem related to the method. But I don't know if this is real correlation or just a confirmation bias or something else. (How does one move an off-topic conversation into a chat before the link appears?)

Even in 2005, physical slides is an impressive anachronism! :)

One thing to add is that while a dress rehearsal is good, it can be hard to predict how often you will be interrupted with questions during the talk. To compensate, it can be a good idea to make sure the talk actually takes less time than you have, but that you have additional (and still interesting) material you can cover if there are only few interruptions. That way, you can fill out the time with good stuff without going over time in case of many questions.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit: I used physical slides for a math job talk in 2006.  (And I got the job.)  Handwritten, no less.

@MarkMeckes: Ticking the "senior citizen" box on the annual Equal Opportunities Employer report? ;) I jest, of course...

@LightnessRacesinOrbit: I was using physical slides at conferences until about 2011, and in my field (logic/category theory) they were still a significant minority option for a couple of years beyond that.

@PeteL.Clark I agree with everything you said in your comment. I admit that all three of my on-campus job talks were chalk talks. And I once even gave a 20-minute talk at an AMS meeting using hand-written physical slides (and a digital document camera).

Thanks everyone for valuable comments. I shall try to keep those in mind for my upcoming talks. Thanks a lot! :-)

There is really no way to know how this was perceived by the audience, and there is nothing you can do about it - so I wouldn't worry about it.
However, I think there is a chance that some people could interpret this in one of the following ways:

You were not prepared well enough - either by not planning the talk for the correct amount of time or by going through it too fast.
You were not prepared well enough - since you did not bother to ask what is the common practice with respect to questions and/or were not able to adjust accordingly.
You did not have enough material to fill the expected time.

Personally, I never attended a job talk that was 15 minutes shorter than it is supposed to be.
In the future, I suggest you prepare better by practicing and designing the talk accordingly (e.g. have optional extra material). Also you should try to inquire about the expected length and whether people usually ask questions during the talk.
But again, it might be a non-issue in your specific case.

The time itself is not a big problem; there are more important questions.

Was your speech fluent and logically ordered or chaotic?
Was it easy to hear you speaking or it sounded like lullaby?
Was your speech exciting or boring?
Were your slides accurate, well designed and well ballanced or it was heap of text, full of blurry (or boxy) figures?
Was your speech well supported or there were major flaws?

The only way the length of your speech can affect your chances is when the choice is reduced to you and someone with very same qualities except for the speech length.
Tl;dr
30 minutes of exciting talk is way better than 55 minutes of pure boredom or nonsense.

#8 Phase transition

 Boredom is condensig.

The time itself is not likely to be a problem ,although, for those with an ax to grind, it provides the grit. A job talk is to sell yourself, and we can't tell how well you did that. If you were prepared for questions, and none were forthcoming, that would have been a good time for fill material. Of course, from our perspective, you could have nailed it, and your audience left with big smiles on their faces. I have never applied for a post doc, but I imagine the problem would be to contain your 'pitch' to an hour. My advice is always rehearse, rehearse, rehearse (practice). That is not always possible, and you didn't ask for advice. If you made and answered your arguments well, you should be good.


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Should you include references in a research plan for a postdoc application?
While applying for postdoc positions, candidates are asked to submit a statement of research interests or research plan. Some institutes want that write up to be less than two or three pages. I was just wandering how strictly one should obey this page restriction and whether one should add references (bibliography) in such a write up.

You can, but you don't need to, include references to other works in the field. You may use them to explain in the first part of your statement what the big questions are that you are trying to answer. One could use review papers, or references to the really important papers that started a field here, but it is probably just as fine to write statements such as "In 1971, Grothendieck asked the question..." without further references -- whoever understands the question, will also know where it came from or how it fits into mathematics. (Obviously, the same is true in other fields, if you reference luminaries.)
What is really important, though, is that you reference your own papers to explain how your own (published) work fits into the field. If you apply for postdoc positions, your list of publications is likely not very long, so it is important that your statement explains not only what you are interested in or plan to do, but also where you expertise is in.


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Why does Switzerland prevent foreign students from studying medicine?
I have been browsing for information on language requirements for universities in Switzerland, and on a page studyineurope.eu I accidentally read a quite interesting note about studying medicine in Switzerland. They say:

foreign students are not allowed to apply for study programs related to medicine, dentistry, veterinary and chiropractic in Switzerland

Now, I'm not interested in studying medicine, but I'm curious about this policy, because it seems unusual. Googling the topic gave me no results, so I thought I would ask it here. Do you know or have any idea why would they have such a bizarre policy?

Related question about the United States: Can an international student gain admission to medical school in the USA?

In Switzerland, access to medicine, dentistry and veterinary is limited due to high demand (also for Swiss students). The test for admission is called Numerus clauses and it was introduced because the capacity of the universities are too low and demand too high. Basically they are allowed to test students if demand is more than 20% above capacity.
Regarding the information about foreign students, this does not seem to be the case. On the University of Zurich website (in German http://www.med.uzh.ch/Medizinstudium/humanmedizinstudium.html ) they state that everybody, Swiss and foreigners, have to take the test but in principle foreign students can study medicine at a Swiss university (at least according to UZH):

Zum Medizinstudium sind Schweizerinnen und Schweizer sowie Ausländerinnen und Ausländer, die bestimmte Zulassungskriterien erfüllen müssen, zugelassen

A new user (@Grace Vontobel) found this link, which suggests that only certain groups of foreigners are eligible. The largest group of eligible foreigners seem to be "EU nationals with a Swiss work permit." I do not know how easy it is to get a Swiss work permit, but certainly it seems like EU citizens may have an easier time than citizens of other nationalities (which may explain the German article that this answer mentions).

@cag51 The link uses this link as reference: https://www.swissuniversities.ch/fileadmin/swissuniversities/Dokumente/Lehre/Medizin/angepasste_Empfehlungen_2020_EN.pdf But this only talks about groups that enjoy the same privileges as Swiss citizens, not that foreigners are not allowed, it is a different thing.

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How to respond to reviewers that ask you to "look again at your results" without providing further details?
Recently my research paper got major revision in which one of the reviewer ask me to look again at the results I have derived without pointing to any specific item of results. I have double checked my results and all results found to be correct and now I am confused that what actually reviewer is trying to say as he/she did not specifically mentioned nature of error in my results.
So how should I respond? (The second reviewer is satisfied with my results)

What is the field?

Sometimes you make mistakes that are absolutely obvious to everyone reading it, but not to the person who wrote it.

Email the editor to ask for clarification. They are the person you need to satisfy. If they don't understand what is needed either, they will either get in touch with the reviewer to ask, or they will tell you not to worry.

Maybe the first reviewer could not understand the derivation or the paper (perhaps it is outside his/her field)? If they have found something wrong, I believe they would (and should) have pointed it out! If you are comfortable with the results and as you said "double checked them", you should be fine. You can address his comment by stating that the results have been rechecked and validated (if possible) - as my advisor says, a vague question requires a general answer!
I will play the devil advocates for a second. I understand that the second reviewer is happy with the results (but, that does not assure us (the readers), that the results are fine). For all we know, s/he did not even go through them! Or maybe they did, but could not see the point of the first reviewer (if any). The first reviewer's comment is vague and to be it to rest, perhaps, you can ask a colleague of yours (who knows your field) to go over them again?

authors: Ярослав Слащев


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Do peer reviewers receive any salary?
Do academic peer reviewers receive any salary?
If yes, what is the annual average?

Related: Why don't researchers request payment for refereeing?, Are there any journals that pay reviewers?.

Peer reviewers receive a salary... from their university, i.e. they are not paid by either the authors or the publisher but they are not random “volunteers” doing it on their free time either, nearly all of them are academics and it's part of their job.

@Relaxed: Though it's not unknown for the academics to pass the reviewing on to their grad students.

@Relaxed this is sort of true. Reviewers are usually employed and usually consider it part of their duty to the academic community. Their employers don't always entirely agree. I work for a government research organisation. We have to charge almost all our time to projects, so reviewing tends to end up being done as unpaid overtime.

First, being proposed to review papers means thats someone considers you as some expert in the field (or make you believe that in order to avoid reviewing a bad/boring paper themselves). Second, it gives you an access to the work of other researchers at a preliminary stage, so it can be an advantage for your own work.

The vast majority not a cent, of whatever currency (see this answer for exceptions).
Peer reviewers are asked to volunteer, and they volunteer because they know that someone else would have to review their papers too (as Dilworth points out in a comment there can be other motivations too).
Said differently, peer reviewing is a mutual exchange, necessary for science to work (though the peer review system has been sometimes criticized).

@user3653831 Grants might be a different story with respect to journal papers: in certain cases (I know of a few) there might be meetings abroad that need at least to be refunded or, as you said, there might be the involvement of foreigner referees for national fundings.

I don't think anyone really takes on a decision to review a paper because someone else would have to review his/her papers. This is certainly not a consideration, because in any case the review is anonymous most of the time. So even if you refuse to review papers, you'll get reviewed myself. The reason for reviewing is that one wants to have a say in his/her community, or that one feels obliged to the editor/PC member asking him/her, or that the paper is interesting, etc. There is indeed a sense of responsibility for the community, but I wouldn't put this as the major reason.

@Dilworth But if everyone refuses to review, then the system is broken. So you do it because you know that science needs reviewers.

I guess those who subscribe to the categorical imperative (Massimo) do it for different reasons from those who maximise their local utility function (Dilworth). Which is to be expected when different moral principles are used for post hoc rationalisation of the same behaviour ;-)

@Toni, yes if everyone refuses things are broken. But here we are talking about the individual: if an individual refuses nothing gets broken, because the individual doesn't expect that everyone would follow him. Actually, I know a person who refuses to review anything. And viola, the system still works.

Academic journals that pay referees certainly exist. It may not be much, but certainly more than one cent.

I think not for journals, but sometimes "token" amounts, really "honorariums", for national-level grants. I've been asked to review/referee some grant proposals from some small countries, with perhaps a few hundred USD offered as token. I don't view it as any serious sort of "salary", certainly not enough to induce me to do a thing I didn't want to do, and I don't imagine the people offering it would think so, either. Rather, I suppose one could have a cultural viewpoint in which making some token offer is a good thing. I can equally-well imagine that making a too-small offer could be construed as an insult... ?!? But much public discourse is sooo insulting already that I don't usually think in those terms. :)

It is true that most reviewers (actually, nearly all) do not get paid. It is said to be an altruistic act that would be considered to be prestigious. But, there is a journal that functions differently. It is called Collabra, you could read the news about it here. There are others who do this feature too.
There are several concerns on why this should be paid as reviews do devote their precious time for this. The fact that they continue to do so for free is what still makes the publishers feel it is fine not to pay for them. As long as altruistic reviewers (well, in the case of money) exist, journals will continue to function without paying the reviewers.
This is nearly the same question:
Are there any journals that pay reviewers?
The accepted answer that post would list you quite a few journals who pay their reviewers.
If you are concerned about whether reviewers should get paid for this, there are a lot of deep discussions about this issue you might want to take a look at:

Academia.SE: Why don't researchers request payment for refereeing?
Quora: Should reviewers of academic articles be paid?
ResearchGate: Should reviewers of scientific papers be paid for their work?

Do peer reviewers receive any salary?
In my limited experience (mathematics).
Referees for papers submitted to journals or conferences: no.
Books, perhaps.  On one occasion, as reward for reviewing a book proposed to be published, I received a "free book" of my choice from that publisher.  On some other occasions, in return for writing for publication a review of a book already published, I received a free copy of the book.
Once for reviewing some proposed mathematical software I got a free copy of it.
Referee of candidates for promotion or tenure: mathematics, no; computer science, yes.

Just to clarify, though, those reviews would have been published separately, right?

No, reviewers are not usually paid by the journal.  However, there seems to be a company, Rubriq, which offers paid peer-review services.  I don't know who their current clients are, if any.
A couple of years ago Scientific Reports initiated a project where authors could pay for fast-track peer review, guaranteed within two weeks through Rubriq.  The editorial board revolted over the decision and threatened to quit.  They argued that doing this would create a peer-review market driven by profit, mostly with undesirable effects on the quality of reviews (reviewers are not selected based on their expertise), and that it would create a two-tier system where researchers who can afford this service would have an unfair advantage in publishing.  Finally the project was cancelled.
Take a look at the following webpages:

Editor quits journal over pay-for-expedited peer-review offer
Concern raised over payment for fast-track peer review (Note: Nature is not exactly a neutral source for this)
http://www.peerreviewneutrality.org/ is a site created by the editors.

This story illustrates why most researchers would oppose a system where peer-review is paid.  There's also the issue of nearly 100-fold greater salaries on some countries than in others, so what would be a reasonable amount to pay for a review? In the end, paid review could likely create incentives which are not at all aligned with the quality of research.


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What to do when two months after submitting a major revision, its status is still "Editor Assigned"?
I have submitted a paper to a journal, and received the editors decision (Major Revision). One reviewer suggested minor corrections and one reviewer suggested major corrections. I then resubmitted the paper a month later.
However, two months after submitting the revisions, the status of the submission is still "Editor Assigned".
I sent two emails to the "handling editor" asking if there is any problem with my paper but no reply.

What does it mean for a submitted revision to have a status "Editor Assigned"?
What should you do if that status has not changed two months after submitting a revision?

Why are you so impatient?  Some academics may take the summer off.

@GEdgar: … and some journals make sure to know about this, so that they can assign deputy editors or similar. Of course, this may also depend on the field: In my field, where the average review time from submission to receiving the reviews is one month, this would be a major annoyance.

I have a same problem with Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. We have submitted a major revision with positive comments from both reviewers and after one and half month it is still with editor. We have emailed to EIC several times to request the status but no reply.

I'm in the same situation. What happened to your paper and how much time it took? Please reply...

It's impossible to know what "Editor Assigned" means without knowing the particulars of the journal's system.  I'll presume this is different than what you saw during the prior round of review, however, and it would in fact be unusual for a paper to be stuck with an editor for two months without going out for review.
If you've emailed the handling editor a couple of times at reasonable intervals and gotten not response, then the next step would be to send a polite query to the next level up, which would typically be the chief editors of the journal.  If you get no response there as well, then you've basically got two choices: wait it out some more, or withdraw and submit elsewhere.


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When did citation counts emerge as indicators of academic impact?
As we know, today, citations of an academic get lots of attentions about whether his research is impfactful. I am just wondering what is the history of citation numbers becoming this important? When were they first calculated and whose idea was this?

Science Citations Index (SCI) was the first reference source that provided a way to find the publications in which a scientific paper was cited.  SCI began in 1964.  SCI existed only in paper form until it went online as the Web of Science in 1997.  Statistics like citation counts and the H-index really weren't practical until the turn of the 21st century.

@BrianBorchers can you just add that as an answer, so I can mark it as the correct answer? Thank you very much.

Science Citations Index (SCI) was the first reference source that provided a way to find the publications in which a scientific paper was cited. SCI began in 1964. SCI existed only in paper form until it went online as the Web of Science in 1997. Statistics like citation counts and the H-index really weren't practical until the turn of the 21st century

I would like to draw your attention to similar issues in admission. GRE or SAT content have little to do with what one does in the University. However, they are used to reduce a large number of applicants to lower levels. In essence it is a measurable and comparable criteria to judge a person.
Citations and impact scores, roughly, used to judge people swiftly. I believe, it can be wildly inaccurate and unjust.

And lead to bad behavior. I'll cite you if you cite me!!!

@buffy I speculate this even might drive people away from less hot topics and punish them for looking into cold topics. I haven't seen any examples of people elliminating research fields by their activeness but wouldn't be suprised if anyone considered it.

I doubt that is much of an issue, actually. While there are exceptions, and some of them show up here, I think most academics just chase interesting ideas and follow them where they lead, rather than searching under rocks for citations. The latter is a waste of a potentially interesting life.

@Buffy what about grad students worrying about employment and US universities looking to rank higher in rankings?

Well, there are lots of ways to waste a life, I suppose. Do good work. Find an environment in which you can continue to do it. Get good letters of recommendation. The universities trying to game the system probably aren't where you want to work, I think. Can you spell "collateral damage"?

While it is a common trope among academicians to bash citation counts, the reality is of course that they're never used in isolation. They're just one component of an evaluation, and for that they're quite useful. It's just a cheap shot to complain about them -- because in reality the same could be said about any other metric as well, leaving us unable to evaluate anyone. What makes evaluations possible and fair is the combination of all of these metrics.

The universities trying to game the system probably aren't where you want to work, I think — Careful.  I'm not aware of any universities that aren't at least trying to improve or maintain various rankings.  Whether that effort constitutes "gaming" is a matter of debate.

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What to do if an audience member refuses to let you answer their question?
I was reading this question about famous people asking rude questions in talks, and it reminded me of a situation which happened at the end of my academic career. I would really like some advice on how I should have handled it.
I was giving a short talk at a conference and at the end the session chair asked for questions or comments. An eminent Belgian professor said "I really think you should look at X from 197y" and, since I had looked at X, I began to reply, and then the professor interrupted my reply with

"That wasn't a question. That was a comment."

I was speechless. This is Treppenwitz as it was several years ago, but what would have been a good comeback?

Heard in the back of the room: "Shut up, Alex Trebek!"

"Thanks for the comment. I'd like to expand on it. As I was saying..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b11PeG9T4ys

"This is not an answer, but an invalidating counter-statement."

I would give the audience a knowing sad-but-pained smile and move onto the next question. I think everyone in the room knew exactly what the elderly scholar was trying to do.

"Then it wasn't an answer, it was instruction."

you could have said: "no comment, then"

Thanks for the comment! I should make a short note here: due to the brevity of the talk some details may be unclear, however I've checked that reference and it has been had into due consideration for the current work. You may like to check into more detail the presented paper/publications/work or we can talk about it later. Are there any more questions?

@RoboKaren, I think a long pause and a deep sight might also be suitable for this situation. Eye-rolling not entirely out of the question.

Stop playing their stupid games and refuse to answer their question.

Have somebody in the audience (or a quickly reacting chair) who actually asks about X.

He ought to be really quick and mind-guessing to interrupt your four words: "I did, in fact." Even if you only got out the first two, his interruption will put him in a VERY bad light afterwards.

"There are no stupid questions, only stupid comments." :-)

This reminds me of a situation where a low status (but in certain circles well known) person in the audience attacked a world class researcher and his work by a long embarassing and disparaging monologue after a public talk, without any moderator or responsible for leading through the event person intervening ... The researcher had no opportunity to reply but could just stand there and smile patiently.

@Dilaton Well I happen to have a remedy for that! Exactly the same thing happened to me. I let the guy talk for a couple of minutes and when the audience looked bored, I turned to them and said: "I swear, every time I give a lecture, this happens..." and they laughed, which made the guy shut up.

The question's title does not reveal the status of the obstructionist questioner, and this status matters enormously. Lower-status people behaving this way could not "get away with it". High-status people often can.
Given all the implicit primate-interaction and other presumption in anyone's behaving like that, in particular denying response, this should be treated like bad drivers on the highway, specifically, potentially more reactive than the indifferent bad weather or bad luck of various sorts. Namely, any substantial response, especially any expression of annoyance or umbrage, will incur a cost that makes whatever satisfaction one had hoped-for too expensive.
Instead, a dumb-happy-innocent smile and "thanks for your comment... then", to avoid engagement, is wise.
Sure, this amounts to a sort of impersonal bullying, but you yourself could not likely change the outcome. It'd require the intervention of someone of comparable status, blah-blah-blah.
So, in summary, no, such "comments" are not productive, are status-reiterating, ... and do create a generally stifling status-conscious atmosphere. Not that most human scenarios aren't status-conscious... :)

The chair asked for questions or comments.
Your title is about being prevented from answering a question, but the eminent Prof was correct in one thing. It was a statement, not a question.
The eminent Prof acted as if there's a right to make a comment without you responding to it. Since your response made the remark look obtuse (saying you should look at something you've already looked at), it seems likely that interrupting you was a ploy to avoid embarrassment.
It's really up to the chair whether you should respond to comments or not, but usually if the speaker thinks they have a useful response then they should make it. So typically the audience has no right to make comments without allowing a response.

So, any further response you make to the interruption should bear in mind that the Prof is quite likely only interrupting you to avoid looking silly:

You could treat it as a heckle. If you have a useful remark on the applicability (or otherwise) of X, then ignore the interruption and continue making it. An audience member raised X, you're talking about X: that's what the questions and comments part of your talk is supposed to be for. Remember it's not the eminent Prof that decides who's allowed to speak, it's the chair. So you can speak unless the chair interrupts.
If you're just defending yourself against an accusation of ignoring X when you didn't, then state that X was considered and move on to the next question/comment.
If you want to put down the eminent Prof (perhaps because you're at the end of your academic career anyway), then you could try some cutting remark before continuing: "This isn't an answer, it's a response to your comment", "Yes, but your comment is so wrong it risks misleading listeners", "Your mother", etc.
You could make the point in a much more friendly way, that you're determined to speak about X: "I agree with you, X is relevant and interesting because..." or "I thought the same thing, but it turns out X isn't applicable because..."

I've just realised that the eminent professor was quite possibly referring to an anecdote concerning Paul Dirac:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/review-the-strangest-man-by-graham-farmelo/article4289494/
Dirac's incident was the other way around. An audience member said that he didn't understand an equation given by Dirac in a lecture. Dirac gave no response, and when prompted to answer the question it was Dirac who said, "that was not a question, it was a comment".
Therefore, it's possible that your eminent professor intended to come across more funny and less controlling than he actually did. Still wouldn't excuse him trying to prevent you speaking, of course.

Thanks for mentioning the Dirac thing. That's interesting.

"Yes, and I'd like to respond to your comment by saying ...."
I'd avoid sarcasm, put-downs, or anything that could be described as a "good comeback."

Or "To answer the implied question: yes, I am aware of the 197X work, and [...]"

While I agree that in general, one should treat even uncivil people with all the civility you can muster, a snipe "that wasn't a question" is bullying and you have to stand up to bullies.  Tamely accepting their behavior encourages more of it in the future.

@Malvolio I think dismissing the bullying is generally enough - you only encourage the bullying if it accomplishes what the bully intended.

I would tell him to accept the consequences of his comments or keep them to himself. Then, reply to his comment. If he has a legitimate concern that hadn't occurred to me, I would thank him for his input and take it into consideration (these are awkward moments, but I always learn so much from them). If, however, he attacks my findings and I am truly certain his attack is unfounded, I would tell him why I think it's unfounded.
Academia is about discovering the truth; status should never get in the way of that. If academia weren't allowed to speak their mind, how would we ever discover the truth?
That said, I think everyone has their own opinion on how to deal with these situations where you're unreasonably backed into a corner by someone with higher status than yourself.

Since you had looked at X, a reply saying so is appropriate. There are two ways this could go:

you should look at X
in fact I have, and -
that wasn't a question, it was a comment
thankyou for your comment, which was founded on the invalid assumption I hadn't looked at X. [Grin. Adjust body language so you are no longer speaking to questioner but to entire audience.] Speaking of X, when I looked at it I found...

this approach takes the "it's my stage, buddy" position - you don't need permission from an audience member to do anything. It also puts the questioner down a peg, which might be a dangerous thing to do.
Alternatively:

you should look at X
in fact I have, and -
that wasn't a question, it was a comment
I see. Well, since I have looked at X, it turns out to be a rather nonconstructive comment. Do you have a question?

This is somewhat ruder and gives up the opportunity to talk about X, but might result in useful dialog should that be your aim.
Depending on the audience reaction to the rude questioner (and make no mistake, telling you what to read as though there was some sort of supervisor/student relationship, interrupting and correcting you, and not playing along with the unspoken rules of Q&A after a talk are all rude, and probably designed to show the commenter's superiority to you) you could also just roll your eyes or sigh and move on to another question as quickly as possible, optionally thanking the commenter first in a bored, polite voice. This is a good choice only if you can clearly tell that most of the audience doesn't see the commenter as superior to you or the comment as a "telling blow" on you.


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How to start an official email to a professor
I want to send an email to a professor to inform him that I want to accept the offer of PhD admission and Research assistantship. But I do not know how to start email. Is the following good? if not, would you please recommend better phrase.

Dear Professor,
I hope you are keeping well ....

You'd want to include at least a name after "Professor," I'd think!

How about this? "Hello Dr. Genius, I gratefully accept your offer of admission and research assistantship, and I look forward to working with you. Regards, user11259"

This should be the least hard thing about graduate school. They won't take it away based on one email, simple is good.

Congratulations on finding a PhD position :) When sending an acceptance e-mail to a professor, I would say the "general" rules of communicating with professors via e-mail apply.

Be polite, and extend thanks when appropriate, but don't overdo the social pleasantries.
The polite part basically holds for any e-mail and live correspondence.
I would say that "I hope you are keeping well" would be a bit unnecessary.
Be short and to the point. Respect the professors time.
Professors receive many e-mails a day, and are usually very busy. Saying what you want to say clearly not only shows respect for their time, but also makes it more likely that everything written will be carefully read.
Do at least a basic spellcheck.
Especially in the beginning of a communication. It doesn't cost much time and effort, but could leave a bad impression.
Do not attach big files unless explicitly asked for.
Anything larger than a few MB should not be sent unless asked for (e.g. sending all your credentials / application papers when first contacting somebody is bad), and especially not to somebody who you are not collaborating with at the moment.

Beyond this, there is not much else. I already feel like it's hard to call any of these rules, they're just guides based on common sense. Just say what you need to say. I put and extended the comment by @user11259 here as an example:

Hello Dr./Prof. Brain,
I gratefully accept your offer of admission and research assistantship, and I look forward to working with you.
(Please let me know about the next steps in the admission process I need to take.)
Sincerely,
user11259

This is very culture and person specific. My acceptance email was (translated from Dutch):

Harry:
Sure. When?
-- Maarten

I do not reccommend that as a general style, but it was the right response in my specific case, as in the Netherlands (academic) titles are less important than in other countries and I knew that Harry (my advisor) was even more extreme in his insistence on informal and brief/terse communication.

Almost everyone who interviews attempts to present themselves, their accomplishments, and their personal objectives politely and submissively to the interviewer.
Dear Professor,
I hope you are keeping well ....
Hello Dr./Prof. Brain,
I gratefully accept your offer of admission and research assistantship, and I look forward to working with you.
When you write "I hope you are keeping well" or "I gratefully accept," you are subordinating yourself to your "superior."
This attitude is not "academic," it is playing power politics or submitting to colonialism.
The first thing you must do is read everything you can get your hands on your professor has published. Then select any aspect of the professor's writing that jumps up at you. Find something Professor Brain has written, and ask her one or more questions about her assertions. SHE MUST RESPOND--SHE CANNOT HELP BUT RESPOND BECAUSE YOU ARE ACTIVATING THE KEYS TO HER PSYCHE.
When Professor Brain responds, find a term or concept she mentions; and ask Professor Brain to elaborate.
After you have had a continuing conversation with Professor Brain for several e-mail messages back and forth, you can discuss any procedural issues you like. But at that point in the discussion, you will have established where you stand, who you are, and how much you care. Do it properly, and YOU WILL BECOME THE SUPERIOR.

There's no need to act subordinate, but I don't see a problem with saying "I gratefully accept" or "I hope you are keeping well" (and I certainly don't see how either one could be considered submitting to colonialism).  What you describe comes across as attempted manipulation, and I see it as at best pointless and quite possibly counterproductive.

Not to forget useless... Academics usually take around a week to answer important emails, an exchange of pleasantries will be sent to the bottom of the pit of forgoteness.

I hope that is just trolling and not a serious answer...

I regret that I only have one downvote to give here.


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How did modern western post-secondary education become tied up with research and publications?
Teaching, research and (academic) publishing are three different pursuits. Our society and its institutions, particularly most universities, enforce links between these in various ways.
People who have great teaching skills can not get teaching positions (at universities) because they aren't good in doing research, and some potentially great researchers experience setbacks in their academic career because they are horrible at teaching, and both can be penalized by failing to or poorly publishing their results.
How did this happen? Who does is benefit? How does intertwining these three requirements benefit the general knowledge and the academic community?

Research and publishing look awfully intertwined to me.  Research which isn't disseminated isn't very useful, and without research, there isn't anything to publish.

Whether research and publishing go together depends on whether you are talking about popularization (writing to a mass audience) or technical reports (academic papers). For technical reports even in industry those are written by the people responsible for the research. Which type of publication are you asking about?

Until recently, my home institution insisted on their lecturers being research-active. The reason for this - as I understood it - was that all teaching at university level is to be informed by current research. The landscape has changed since then. Researchers are still expected to teach as part of their duties. However, there is now a new position available which the holder is not expected to do research, only teaching. Whether this is a good idea is a matter for debate.

@Sparr: what other industries are you talking about? Isn't the person who writes computer code usually the same person who writes the comments explaining what is going on? Maybe the person who writes the user manual is different, but that's  not always the case. And patents are written by lawyers, but in my experience it's always with considerable help from the inventors.

@PeterShor sadly most computer programmers don't write their own comments, but that's another matter. Most computer programmers don't write books or articles about their code. And that's still not on point, because at least that is still directly related. There really isn't any research or publication left to be done at the level of first year Calculus, regardless of whether the professor teaching it has something worth publishing in the field of Calculus in general.

@Sparr: You still haven't answered me which industries you're talking about where the dissemination is done by people who don't do the research. In my experience in industry, if you invent a better mousetrap, the world is not going to beat a path to your door. You have to convince people that you have something better first—that's dissemination. Are there any industries where you can invent something, and then have somebody else write the paper explaining how it works and convincing people that it is a better method?

@PeterShor from personal experience, most people designing new gadgets based on microcontrollers don't publish their findings. you seem to be making the assumption that all research is published at all, which is definitely not the case.

There are advantages to having the same people do teaching and research. One is that students are being taught by an active researcher in the field, someone who is presumably up to date on the state of the art. They can provide students with meaningful examples that relate to current real-world research problems. Interested students may even get opportunities to do some research, either through a course project or as an extra-curricular activity.
There are also advantages to researchers. In my experience, one of the best ways to really get to understand something is to teach it; it quickly becomes apparent what you know really well and what you don't know so well. Students can also push teachers to look at things a different way, and can help fuel the creativity of researchers. Of course, the researcher has to be careful not to steal a student's brilliant idea for themselves, but rather to include the student in the research process.
That said, I think your comments are valid, and there are some drawbacks to having teaching and research coupled so tightly. As you observed, some people are better at doing research, and some are better at teaching. Universities have found ways to deal with this, such as letting more research-focused professors not have to teach much, and letting good teaching professors teach more. Even so, I had some professors in my undergrad who weren't very good teachers, and I think the reason the university keeps them around is because they are good researchers.
Some universities are moving more toward the model you describe, hiring full-time lecturers to teach some (especially first- and second-year) courses. This is a contentious issue in academics, and you're certainly not the only person who thinks research and teaching should be decoupled.

Nice explanation of pros and cons. Let me just add that when I was giving (private, 1-to-1) lectures, I couldn't ever make myself take up a subject about which I didn't know at least slightly more than I was required to teach. And I always appreciated more the lecturers that could back up their class material with real-life and current examples. That said, I agree that forcing equal amounts of teaching and research on everybody is bad: people should be allowed to focus on their strong skills. But I still think at least a bit of each should be done.

Let me add another, very practical advantage for someone doing reasearch to be involved in teaching as well: it allows you to identify the really good students (those that you want to join your group) early.

We miss out on people who would make great teachers because they aren't good at doing research, and some potentially great researchers are left out of academic research because they are horrible at teaching

Dubious.  The labour market is so flooded that institutions above the barrier can for "on-going" positions select who they like within the wage's established differentials.  For bulk teaching, most Universities are reliant on casual staff who they sweat with the hope of an on-going position.  So this statement is, outside of markets with limited labour supply, junk.
As far as the oversupply of labour, the Employers have a very good reason to offer more candidatures for PhD than the required number of future jobs plus a friction load for losses to industry practice.  They're "deskilling."
They're also changing the nature of the commodity on offer (check word limits, class sizes, expectations of self-activity over a 30 year scale for undergraduates); and, of course, attempting mechanisation.  From what I've seen mechanisation isn't increasing worker productivity, but, rather is more important in breaking down work cultures.

How did this happen?

Proletarianisation, commodification, and capitalism.  Ford & Taylor, my friends, Ford & Taylor.
You could suggest that it happened in countries without strong Academic industrial organisation (The United States, for example) due to particularism.  But actually we can see the broad effects of this universally across "varieties of captialism" to greater or lesser extents.  That it happens in undergraduate teaching and in research, with their different world markets, is indicative that it isn't just particular systems.

Who does it benefit?

It directly benefits the bourgeoisie, as capital flight into newly commodified areas results in a period of primary accumulation, and as secondary accumulation takes off it often has a higher rate of profit.  Basically, there's superprofits in Tertiary Education.
It also benefits consumers.  Tertiary education is largely a required commodity to consume, see for example Australia's rate of tertiary education uptake.  The more important question is why consumption is over biased (given the knowable workforce demands from employers) towards Higher rather than Further or Vocational tertiary education?  Here I'd suggest that many, if not most, jobs don't require tertiary education to perform, and instead employers are getting labour discipline benefits.  Consumers still gain some measure of benefit from the enjoyment of education, and the possibility of subversively exercising education in their employment anyway.  Also, with the massification of higher education many more consumers get to enjoy this commodity in its dissipated "University" form rather than through Workers Educational Associations, Trade Union newspapers, or Party Education.  (Personally, comparing the level of discourse in 1940s TU newspapers to contemporary bits of the internet where equivalent age bands try to discuss serious matters, I'll go with the "non-traditional" education system here for superiority.)
Research culture is a side effect of the commodification of undergraduate teaching.  In 1987 when Australia commodified undergraduate education (HECS), it also began the audit of research (The "Publications" return portion of the current HERDC report).  It has taken 25 years, and changes in the control over production in departments, but effectively HERDC points act as a method of realising research activity, in a similar way that the "Effective Full Time Student Unit" realises as a commodity teaching.
As far as the teaching / research nexus: using publicly available data I'm pretty sure that even in research intensive universities, all research outside of grant funded substantive positions is done as "overtime."  Going back to the labour supply and generation of PhDs: the employer inculcates in apprentices the idea that 60 hour weeks are normal, and that the employer should have exclusive use of the employee for teaching and service for the "normal" working week.  The natural form of resistance and sabotage to this would be to not publish.  The results of not publishing is the guaranteed absence of an on-going position.
Sources: Vestes/AUR; Trade Unionism; long term wage/price series; managerialism & audit culture; Braverman on deskilling & proletarianisation

The body of the question asks, "How did this happen? Who does is benefit? How does intertwining these three requirements benefit the general knowledge and the academic community?" about contemporary hiring practices.


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Can a paper be presented by two presenters in a conference
I am a beginner in research papers and doesn't know much about registration and presenting.
Can two authors register for the same conference and present the paper (together)?

Registration and presentation of a paper are two somewhat separate issues. Normally, presenters at a conference must register, but there is no rule that says only one author of a paper can register for a given conference.
In general, however, papers normally have only one presenter, as the logistics of a conference normally work against having multiple speakers for a single presentation. (The presentation time is not that long, transferring a microphone between speakers, ensuring proper "flow" of the talk across the change in presenters, and so on, all tend to work against the idea of multiple presenters for a given paper.)

so does this mean that the person who registers is the only one who can present the paper.

Normally, you can't present the paper without being registered for the conference. However, any registered author of the paper can normally present the paper. (As I said, more than one author of a paper can register for the same conference!)

I have presented with a colleague at a conference, although I do agree that it is rare. In our case, we both worked on significantly different aspects of the paper, and it made sense for each of us to describe our contributions individually.

As @aeismail said, registration and presentation are two separate things. I don't have a vast conference experience, but from what I've observed/done until now:
Registration
Registration is more about attending the conference.
Most conferences require at least one author of a paper to register for a "full" fee/participation.
To explain, I've seen reduced fees for students or options to win a free/reduced stay sponsored by the conference (this usually requires a motivation letter or things like that). So, the conference usually requires one registration at full price, and then other authors can register and attend at a reduced fee if they're eligible. Reduced fees (about 10-20%) for members of various organizations (e.g. IEEE members) still count as full fees.
Presentations
It's very uncommon to see two people presenting. And it's substantially harder for them -- for the reasons @aeismail said; it's hard to get the dynamic right and you will potentially loose a lot of time on the switches.
However, it can be done: I did it. Just as in @ChrisGregg comment, I had a truly collaborative paper with a colleague: we joined our substantially different work in a single application, and knew only the basics about the other ones contribution, so we decided to present our own contributions each.
It required more work and preparation than any other oral presentation (conference or otherwise) I ever did. We had to really know what we were doing, we both needed to know each others slides and their contents well. We had to practice being really good at presenting our own parts, and then practice presenting together, especially the switches. The switches had to be fast and natural. We actually switched two times I think (person A - person B - person A) (or even three times, not sure?). But every presenter's part had to be a whole "chapter" all in it self. There's much less room for improvisation (even the tiny ones within one slide can confuse the other person). The flow of the presentation is also more constricted -- what is the most natural way to present a work might require way to many switches. So, you have to ensure a minimal number of switches while still keeping the presentation flow natural and concise. And, I did feel kind of out-of-place just hovering around waiting for the switch while my colleague was presenting.

I've seen a few two-person presentations, and am convinced that in such cases, two heads are not better than one.  I have yet to see a single instance where splitting a talk between two people enhanced any aspect of a talk.

@debray I actually haven't seen any of them (except mine). I'm not sure how good my double-presentation was, but I know we had to put a lot of effort in to it to get it to a level we were comfortable with before presenting before the audience. I'm just saying, it can be done.

I recently did it and slightly regretted it. I prepared the slides and the presentation and a co-author asked me an hour before the talk if he could present the first part (he had been practising the night before) since he wanted some face-time. He did a good job but the split involved me starting on the most technical slide of the talk, which was really difficult for a "cold start". Eventually I warmed up but I really left that first slide behind me. (It went fine and was probably good from the author perspective, but not from the audience's. With practice it would have been easier.)

I and Misha Sodin did exactly that on the last IMC meeting (though it wasn't a single paper but a survey of a series of related papers) and nobody had any problem with that. We just felt that 50 minutes is a bit too little to tell everything we wanted in an understandable way and split the presentation into two parts. Of course, nobody wants to listen to the same talk twice, but if your paper can be split into two more or less independent parts (making some cross-references is OK as long as you avoid vicious circles and state clearly what you refer to), then I see no problem whatsoever with you presenting one part and your co-author another one. Just make sure that people who go to only one of these talks still have a chance to understand something.

I've occasionally seen a situation where, in a conference session divided into short talks (say 20 minutes), two co-authors will speak back-to-back on the same paper (though each focuses on different aspects).  This obviously needs the consent and cooperation of the organizers to get consecutive time slots.  The talks normally have titles like:

Integrability in quantum category theory I: Applications to the derivation of isometries
Integrability in quantum category theory II: Connections to an example of Banach

to make it clear that they are closely related.

I've seen the same thing, except with the talks not necessarily being back-to-back, or even in the logical order.  I assume this was because the speakers didn't get their acts together to discuss their plans with the organizers far enough ahead of time.

At some meetings, it's hard to coordinate, particularly if you can't specify which session you'd like to contribute to (as is the case for APS meetings).

I've been one of the speakers in the "not necessarily ... logical order" situation that @MarkMeckes mentioned. I started my talk with something like "This talk is the background for the one [name of collaborator] just gave." It got some laughs, and no disaster ensued.


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Difficult to provide recommendation letters for PhD as I don't want to nudge professors for every application
I am at the final semester of my Master's. I am trying to apply for a PhD in various universities. However mostly I fail to provide letters of recommendations. My academic history and experience are adequate for pursuing a PhD. I don't want to nudge professors for every application. It's kind of deciding my future single-handedly.
Why is it so necessary to provide a letter of recommendation? Is it possible to get accepted into a PhD program without letters of recommendation?

I don't totally understand what question you're asking. Are you asking whether it's possible to get accepted to PhD programs without recommendations? Or are you asking why many departments require letters of recommendation for PhD applicants in the first place?

References will be desired for many jobs in the future as well... Where do you plan on applying (US, Europe, China, ...) and to start when?

Thank you for taking the time to put your suggestions. My question is both why it is necessary and if it's possible to get accepted with out recommendation. Reading all the comments made me realize the importance of the recommendation and that it's normal to request professors to write recommendations.

At good programs, there are a lot more applicants with "adequate academic history and experience" than there are seats in the incoming class. So that alone isn't enough for admission.

This isn't an answer, but on a tangent: How many PhDs are you applying to? This is probably a bit country- and field-dependant, but IME if you have selected maybe <10 posts that would be perfectly suited to you (and vice versa) and are crafting customised applications to each, then it's OK to ask for references for each. It's part of professors' jobs.
If you are taking a scattergun approach of sending the same application to every PhD opportunity you find - and some people do do this - then please stop. Nobody wants to write a hundred letters of recommendation, and you won't be successful.

Nudge Your Professors
First, I'm answering the question you need answered:  Nudge your professors.  Writing letters of recommendation is part of your professors' jobs.
Don't misunderstand me:  They're not obligated to write letters for any one particular student.  But it is, in general, their job to write appropriate letters for students they think are deserving.
But they will not do this-- and will have no way of knowing you want them to do this-- until you ask.  And I am sorry to say, it may take some effort on your part, because professors have a lot of other things to do, and can be easily distracted.  You may need to do more than nudge them, you may need to herd them like cats.
Because Grades Aren't Everything
Now, here's the answer to the question you did ask:  Grades aren't everything.  I knew a kid when I was getting my undergrad who came from a wealthy family and was systematically gaming the rules to get himself a perfect transcript.  He found some loophole in the system whereby he would withdraw from a class if he thought he wasn't going to get an A, and his family was willing to eat the tuition, sometimes multiple times.
That is an extreme outlying example, but I strongly suspect he would not be able to get a good letter of recommendation, even thought he looked great on paper.
Letters of recommendation cover the intangibles of a student's profile-- work ethic, character, honesty, etc.  Since you, as a prospective PhD student are applying for something like a job, and are going to be asking people to make large investments of time in training you, they are interested in those intangibles
That's the way it is.  Same for industry jobs and government jobs.

(My God, it's been thirty years and I still remember that kid's name.  Not the details of the scheme, but I definitely remember him.  The faculty saw through him like glass.)

So you can check that kid career. I am quite sure the kid had a wonderful career (you know, locked social elevator and the closer to the apex of managment position in big western companies the easier are the tasks you have to do, merge-save-fire-sell-cash your big bonus).
Life is unfair ... and this tells us that career is not everything ;)

I could, but I won't.  Feels a little stalker-like.

"I don't want to nudge professors for every application"
I would recommend you to reverse your attitude towards this. Please don't be shy to ask your professors for reference letters — because writing such letters is an important part of their work.
When I taught at a university, it was a normal routine for me to compose, every year, reference letters for a bunch of students, and send these letters to wherever they say. Now a research scientist, I write reference letters for young colleagues. This is a part of our life in science. This is normal. I assure you that your professors take it the same way.

@user1149748 Yes. Well said. +1

I kindly advise you to have 3 -4 professors from your department whom you've interacted with in regular classes or lab projects. Explain yourself to them and let them know that you'll be trying out different universities. Ask for their commitment to see you through the admission process by sending letters on time at all times. When you get such a commitment, then you'll be free to try as many university admissions as you can afford.
I clearly understand your side of the story, the reason being; that I applied in as many universities as I could and I sent as many cold emails as I could to different professors.
Sometimes our department professors were so engaged with different works, conferences, paper publications, and their Lab students. Getting him/her to write a recommendation letter for you and send it in time, is hard. If you're not from his/her lab, this is even harder.  You find yourself in a position to constantly remind and keep asking whether they sent the letter or not yet. This is nudging, given the fact that we always accord Maximum respect to our professors. We can't frequent their offices for such reasons (it sounds ok to frequent but he/she will be fed up with these frequent visits and at the end he/she might throw in some attitudes). Now, extend this situation to a student who has applied to various universities and the same 'HARD Professor' has to send in a letter to each of the universities where you applied. If it was hard for him/her to send to One, what about these many universities to which you're applying? In most cases, most PhD students are not admitted in their first admission attempt, which means that we are likely to submit more than one admission, which means more letters from these "Hard Professors". In my case, I had easier Professors that I could approach but they declined to help me out, saying that they did not have a closer working relationship with me so their letters could not be a good reflection of me. This is frustrating that's why I can fully understand your situation.
Therefore, getting your 3-4 professors by your side seems a better solution. It helped me out, it has helped some of my friends in a similar situation, this is why I hope that it will help you too.


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How long should you wait after submitting a revise and resubmit before you should contact the journal?
It's been six weeks since I have sent paper for a second review after I received revise&resubmit decision from the first round. Is this a typical time period or should I send a query to the journal?
Currently the paper is under the status "with editor" for a couple of days after it has been "under review". The journal is in the field of telecommunications.

I've had a major revision turned around in 3 weeks, and a minor revision turned around in 3 months. Anything is possible.

The time for the second go-around is often the same as for the first go-around. So, if the journal allows reviewers 3 months for a review, you have to expect this much (at least) also for the review of the revision.

Shouldn't it be much shorter because reviewers are already familiar with the paper?

Maybe. But that doesn't mean that they will move it up on their priority list.

I know it is a field-specific question, but as a general rule, how long it takes after the status is Decision in process?

It means that the reviewers have written their reports and the editor needs to make a decision. For me this typically takes 2-3 days, but others handle things in batch. I would think that if an editor takes 2-3 weeks, then that is fair.

I suppose that the time needed doesn't mean anything about the outcome?

Correct. It only indicates (i) how much other work the editor has, (ii) her style of working, e.g. working in LIFO order, FIFO order, or in batches of related work that accumulates over a couple of weeks.

And is there any radical difference befween status "with editor" and "decision in process" (after second review)?

I have no idea. This may be specific to the online system a journal uses.