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Why do academics write peer reviews?
I do not understand what good it does them. A professor said it gives an opportunity to read papers he would not read on his own. I am sure there is more to it but I do not see what they gain by participating in the peer review process. It takes time, it is not paid and not even publicly acknowledged. Why do they do it?

@JeffE all part of an implicit contract (but taxes). but peer-review is a lot of effort unlike holding the door

@user4231: Exactly: all part of an implicit contract.  Same for peer review.

publications are tricky and expensive. peer review allows someone familiar with that area to review the publication, much like an editor would, to facilitate good science. mostly they see if the proper experiments have been done to match the author's conclusions and interpretations from the given data. of course, there are patches to this system, and it relies on the honor code that the one submitting is providing legitimate data. if more experiments or controls are necessary, this will usually result from the peer review before handed to the editor in chief for publication.

Depending on the venue and the way reviews are handled organisationally and technically, "not even publicly acknowledged" is not always true. Sure, what and how you reviewed will remain secret, but there are conferences that publish the complete list of reviewers, and I know various researchers who, in addition to their sections papers, teaching, other talks list review activity on their personal websites as a part of their academic experience.

Review activity is community service.  You have to have all four (at least at my campus) -- teaching, research, campus service and community service.  All part of the deal.

I think academics are paid to perform peer review, in the same sense that they are paid to do research.  I don't have a boss telling me what to research and paying me when it's complete; rather, my university expects me to perform research that is judged significant by my peers.  In the same way, my university expects me to perform peer review.  In my annual reports to the university, I report my research outputs and I report the journals for which I have performed peer review.
You may argue that my continued employment and promotion depends more heavily on my research than on peer reviewing, but the same could be said when comparing any of my service or teaching duties.
The bottom line is, academia is a gift economy, and if you want to be part of the community, you're expected to do peer review.

If only major publishers agreed about the gift economy statement...

Sadly, most publishers don't work in academia.  (Ideally, they should work for academia, but in reality, it's the other way around.)

I don't think they are paid for reviewing.

I argue anyone reviewing the paper should be paid. Publishers are benefitting from someone else work and the hardworking writer and reviewers are not getting paid.

I can think of at least five reasons why doing peer reviews gives an advantage to yourself.

You get to read recent research results before everybody else.
It gives you a good opportunity to think really critically about a potentially interesting paper.
You can put it in your CV and it will show that you are a known expert in the fields of journals you review for.
You want to stay on good terms with the editor, who may judge your submission to the journal.
You want to get an editorial position with the journal, which is highly prestigious. For this one typically needs reviewing experience.

Regarding putting it on your CV, this was discussed here…

The other answers do a good job of laying out the practical benefits and the roles of curiosity and obligation.  However, I think there's an additional psychological factor: being asked to review a paper shows that the editor values your expertise, and that feels good.  This is a shallower reason, but I think it plays a substantial role in encouraging reviewers.
I can remember the first time an editor I didn't know personally asked me to serve as a referee.  It was really exciting, and I thought "Wow, this famous person has actually heard of me and is interested in my evaluation."  Of course it's not as exciting the hundredth time, but it still feels good to be a valued member of the research community, and I would be unhappy if the requests stopped coming.

Nobody mentioned quality yet.  One reason I like to review papers is because I can encourage authors to make better papers.
It sucks to read badly written papers.  By reviewing them, you can make the world a better place!

My colleague and I always seemed to get the sucky ones, the first ones out of a grad student or whatever . . .

oh i don't think that is just luck.  many papers suck - and in fact, most reviews suck too!  :)  but how to make it better, eg, clear advice on how to improve the paper with examples.

silvado gave a good list of “short term” answers, i.e. the reasons why one would accept a given review. Maybe I'll summarize the first two of them, because they are the ones that motivate me the most: curiosity.
Maybe curiosity killed the cat, and I'm sure it killed a bunch of scientists too, but for sure it is what makes most of us tick. Whenever I receive a request for review, even if I don't have much time for it, my first instinct is to read the abstract and think “hum, cool, how did they do it in detail?” or “I wonder if they thought about this and that” or “hey, I thought that was guaranteed not to work, how did they manage?”, or even “oh, I had never thought about that”). In all cases, it makes me want to accept.

Also, there's a long term component to it. Even though the commercial publication model is deadly sick, peer-review is a very good part of academic publication (and I mean “good” in the moral, ethical meaning). In days I am fed up with the system, I sometimes think peer-review is the only good part of academic publishing. So… by submitting papers for review, you opt in this whole peer-review system, and it becomes a moral duty to do your fair share of the reviewing work.
Don't get me wrong, you're not contractually obligated to do so. But, if you send papers for review and never accept to review any, your colleagues (and the editor) will see you as a free-rider of the system, and will resent it. And I would too.

But, if you send papers for review and never accept to review any, your colleagues (and the editor) will see you as a free-rider of the system, and will resent it. And I would too. - doesn't this assume that you are declining to review for the same editor multiple times? Is that likely?

Just to state something explicitly that was part of all the previous answers: Reviewing papers is part of being a good academic citizen.
Compared to other jobs, academia is not something you do, it's a system you enter. It's a community, an ecosystem of sorts, that provides benefits for those who are part of it, at the cost of some duties.
These duties, in academia, usually consist of publishing, teaching, supervising students, organizing and attending talks and conferences, doing some outreach, and, yes, refereeing publications, research plans, and grant proposals.
Of course, as in most communities and ecosystems, there will always be bad citizens who enjoy the benefits without the duties, and if their numbers grow too large, they end up destroying it. Fortunately though, most of us see being part of this community as a privilege and actually enjoy the extra work (see the other comments above), so that risk is, in my opinion, relatively small.
Finally, if you need an analogy, think of this site: You can ask questions and post answers. People usually do both, and actually more of the latter. You yourself invest your time in answering questions and, as an implicit trade, can rely on others to answer when the question is yours.

In addition to the other excellent posts here, I find that reading a manuscript in order to write a review is different than reading a published article just to see what is in there. When you write a review, it forces you to actually think about the manuscript, about its internal logic, about possible weak points. After all, it have heard it said that "the job of reviewers is to kill bad papers and to make good papers even better", and to make a good paper even better, you first need to understand it and think about the subject matter in a way that not even the authors did.
I find that I learn a lot more from papers I review than from other papers I consume.

(I'm adding another answer because this answer is based on a survey.)
See source, page 12.

40.8% of researchers say it's part of their job. (There's some variation across disciplines - roughly 50% of STEM researchers say this, while only 30% of clinical medicine researchers did.)
35.1% said they want to do their fair share of work. Since others review for them, they should review for others.
32.9% said they want to keep up-to-date with the latest research trends in their field.
32.9% said they want to ensure the quality & integrity of research published in their field.
17.5% said it's a voluntary service to their research community.
13.9% said it's to develop a personal reputation & career progression.
13.5% said it's to improve their own writing skills. Notably reviewers in clinical medicine cited this as the most common reason they review.
11.9% want to build relationships with journals and editors.

Interpret as you will.

Not mentioned yet: someone's got to do it. If you agree that peer review is necessary (most people would), then someone has to do the reviewing. That changes the question from "why write peer reviews?" to "am I more suited to reviewing this than most people?". If the answer to the latter question is "yes", then then I'd have to spend less time than someone less familiar with the topic, in which case it might as well be me.

This is an old question that has re-emerged, but I'll have a stab at a new answer...
For better or worse, publications are the 'currency' of modern academia. People look at how many papers you've published, and where you've published them, and make inferences about your professional status and calibre.
If peer review didn't happen, we would all effectively have a licence to print money. Everyone could have a new paper in Science or Nature every day - just write something down and submit it. Clearly, this would lead to rapid, catastrophic devaluation of the 'academic currency', to the detriment of everyone who had invested in it.
So, I suggest there is a quasi-economic imperative for academics to undertake peer review. It is in our interests to ensure that others are being held to the same standard that we have been held to.

When I asked the same question, the answer was "control and public relations". While the second one is obvious, the first is a little more subtle and evil. Having someone's else paper in advance it allows you to:

establish a "give and take" relationship with peers you want on your side. anonymity is easy to break, if you want to and know what is going on in other researchers' offices.
slow down the publication of a peer by dragging the review process or demanding additional science to be performed, especially if they are scooping you.
get a sniff of what's going on in someone's else plate, thus granting you a head start that might be useful if you want to attack the same field.
indirectly control the quality of a journal to reduce its score. In some universities, the current score is used to evaluate the paper production of a researcher to grant him funds. If you can have an effect on the overall quality of a journal, this will reduce the total score of a researcher's past effort, and give an edge to someone else to get more funds.

First, I would say that all of these actions are unethical. Secondly, option #4 looks actually pretty inefficient: you'd have to review a very large portion of a journal's content to be able to influence its overall bibliometric factors…

This was a sarcastic answer, right?

@pedro: unfortunately no. Downvote me as you want, but I personally witnessed this.

@F'x: if the journal is very small, it becomes more feasible.

I agree with your post. There are instances where the more fuzzy objectives are the grounds why some take on a review. In particular cases 2 and 4 are clearly unethical: Yes, but especially 2 is not uncommon and is an unfortunate part of our system.

I am quite appalled by the reasons for agreeing to review put forth here. I do not claim this never happens, or that such behaviour is always appropriately fought when observed, but I am baffled by the way it is presented here as a seemingly universally valid explanation to an Academia SE question about the behaviour of researchers, or possibly as a "motivation" for the OP. It's like someone asking "What are the benefits of agreeing to do teaching during my PhD?", and the answer is "You can coerce students into providing you with monetary or sexual favours."

Interesting answer.


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Steps to take from a paper to a patent?
My question relates to the following thread I posted some weeks ago:
How to publish a paper that does not seem to be within the scope of any journal?
I have written the paper mentioned in that thread, which I HAVE NOT PUBLISHED YET (see the history there; I was entertaining the idea of uploading it in Arxiv, but right now it seems more reasonable to me to keep calm and do not risk anything in any dumb move which might cost me dearly; there is always time to upload it or publish it later on).
The thing is: as of late I have received very positive feedback from some mathematicians and / or computer scientists which read the paper I sent them privately. The paper provides some very fruitful clues for further practical implementation which engineers or computer scientists might undertake. I myself could give them the indications to do it, at least at the beginning. It is not far-reaching to think that some application (algorithm, software  and the like) might derive from that. I would like to be legally as assured as it gets, so, the question is twofold, I guess:
Could I patent the basic findings from the paper, without waiting for the specific applications?
Should I necessarily be part of the application in order to economically profit from it, or does any other form suffice (say, the people taking up the task signing their intellectual dependence on the paper or the like?).
I would like to know how to proceed so that the transition is smooth and no one gets busted in the process (neither me nor the others).

How would you show it is "useful" without specific applications?

You can't patent "fruitful clues" or "basic findings".  From USPTO, "A complete description of the actual machine or other subject matter for which a patent is sought is required."  You should find and talk to the IP people at your facility about disclosure,  next steps and the assignment of the patent, which might be tied up in your employment agreement and school policy.

The paper talks about how to build a certain kind of notation, and gives some examples, but does not build it up in all the specific details.....The paper has been developed apart from my academic affiliation, so that should not be a problem, it is just a private finding if you wish.....

What you can and cannot claim in a patent is a highly debated area. You should really consult a legal expert.
If you're affiliated with a college or university, they probably have an office that handles these sorts of things. They'll guide you through the patent process and help cover some/all of the fees. You might not have any choice of working with them. Depending upon your contract, the school might own part of your work and have the legal option to attempt to monetize it first.
If you're not with an organization or you know that you're free from any legal obligations, you should get in touch with a patent lawyer. They can help you draft the patent, help look for prior work, and advise you on the intricacies of international IP.
You can try to patent it on your own, but I really advise against it. A lawyer will help you understand what parts of your work you can patent. They will also help to draft the patent in as broad a way as possible to allow you to claim as much as you can.

Which are th costs of the process (fees of the lawyer included)?

If you go through your school and they decide it's viable (and want a piece of it), they'll probably pay for the whole shabang.

This paper has nothing to do with my unis, present or past.....They have never made anything for me...

Does matter. If you were part of a University when you did the work, they may have a claim to it, regardless of the subject or when you worked on it. You'll have to check your contract.

The topic of this paper has nothing to do with the topic of any of my taught seminars nor of any of the research projects I was involved with. No uni has a claim on this, believe me. I do not want to tell you a long story; I basicallt bid them all adieu after getting fed up with the whole. Besided, I can prove it was written after finishing my ties to the institutions.....No problem there in that respect (other than the costs of the procedure....).

So you either pay a lawyer and for patenting hoping to be reimbursed in future or publish it elsewhere.

I'm sorry to say this Javier - but if it's worth anything and you did it while enrolled, that's enough. If you sent an e-mail regarding it via their mail servers, or wrote anything down on one of their computers, that's absolutely enough for them to claim partial ownership. It doesn't matter if they tried to stop you from doing it even - while you're at the uni, they own your ideas.

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Buying out of teaching duties vs. all duties using grant money
My university (in Europe) is currently reconsidering its policy regarding professors (assistant through full) buying out of certain duties using funds from research grants. The new proposal is that the grant money will only be used for buying out of all of the duties at once (research, teaching, administration, ... -- all of them). This is in contrast to, say, buying out of teaching alone or out of all duties but research selectively.
The proposal also includes a clause that the funds obtained by the university from researchers buying themselves out of duties, specifically the amount corresponding to the research duties, will be used for "other initiatives and priorities", i.e. not for supporting research directly.
I see some problems with this policy and wonder if my concerns are justified.

If one does not have a grant, one uses, say, 50% of one's time for research as stipulated by the job contract. One gets remunerated for all the work one does, including research (that seems a natural assumption to me). Under the proposed policy, if one has a grant and buys himself/herself out of all duties, one will still do research for 50% of the time as before, plus another 50% of the time because of the research grant.
What is the logic behind buying oneself out of the 50% of the job one will actually be doing anyway?
Perhaps this could be understandable if the funds were used by the university to employ another person to do all the duties of the original job position, including 50% research, but this is not the case according to the proposed policy. The grant money corresponding the 50% of the research work will not be used to fund another researcher but rather to fund other activities. This seems to partly defeat the purpose of the research grant: the money that is earmarked for research is taken by the university and spent on something else.
Even though one has to buy oneself out of all duties, the university still expects to have its name on the academic production from the grant. So even though the university is not supporting the professor financially, it still wants to receive the benefits that come with achievements in research.

I might be oversimplifying things as I am not very familiar with the system, but the elements indicated above seems problematic to me.
Questions: Does this policy proposal sound fine? Is such practice popular in other universities?

Actually, if the university provides an office and the services of other offices (admissions, internet, etc), then it isn't fair at all to say that the university isn't supporting the professor. This is often considered to be about half of the value of any grant. It can be even more if the university provides basic lab services.

@Buffy, that does make sense, to a degree. On the other hand, wouldn't it be "fair" for the professor to compensate by grant money any costs to the university incurred by him/her not doing his/her duties, but not beyond? Why should the university suddenly appropriate 50% of the professor's salary just because the professor managed to get grant funding? OK, perhaps it needs to provide office space for the new employee, then subtract that amount. But this does not look like close to 50% of the salary to me.

Wait, hang on... As a grant holder, one of your duties is to do research related to the grant. So what does "buying out of research duties" even mean? I can't imagine any grant agency allowing anyone to use grant money to buy out of using the grant for its intended purpose.

@JeffE, Well, you would be buying out of your regular research, not of that specific to the grant, I suppose. So if the grant-specific reseach is not in line with your regular research, the proposed policy makes sense. But since your grant-specific work does not coincide with any of your regular duties, you should simply be taking unpaid leave from the university for the time you are going to do the grant-specific work.

I'm not sure I understand the distinction between "regular research" and "grant-supported research".

@JeffE, not grant-supported but grant-specific, though it probably makes little difference here. What I meant is: it may happen that the research topic dictated by the grant is not in line with what is considered appropriate research given your job description. (Such a case has been discussed among the faculty members when considering the new policy proposal, so I mentioned it here for completeness.)

I am only familiar with a few institutions’ policies on this, but I agree that it is unusual and seems unfair to the departments (and misleading to grant makers) on its face.

I'd suspect that the school's plan is either to move away from funding research themselves, or to at least make their own funding require a competitive proposal process in the future.

In my experience in the US, buying out one course of 2+2 teaching load (turning the 2+2 load into a 2+1 load)  often costs 25% of one's annual salary.  Thus this isn't unusual in practice.  If you're going to be replaced by someone who has the same teaching load and salary as you, then that would be a reasonable charge to cover the cost of replacing your teaching.  On the other hand, they might well replace you with a part-time adjunct who will teach the course for less than half of that.

A university doesn't "obtain" funds through buyout -- rather, it frees up salary money that it would otherwise have to spend if the research funds were not in place.
What a university is allowed to do with such funds likely has to do with where the money came from.  In many cases, such funds will be unencumbered, and they can do whatever they want with them.
There are certain kinds of funds that might need to be used to support research, like (in theory) indirect funds from a granting agency.  "Support research" can have broad meaning, such as pay library staff, or keep the rooms where research goes on heated.
I'm not sure I understand the whole situation, the way you've expressed it, but it seems like it gives the university more freedom to creatively release people from responsibilities, and it doesn't set up any alarms for me.

Thank you for your insight. I guess my own concern (being an assoc. prof.) is that this seems "unfair", compared to my impression of the common practice in other places where professors can selectively buy out of teaching but are not forced to buying out of research at the same time. Perhaps my impression is wrong (it is certainly superficial), hence my post.

@RichardHardy Is this 'research' time that you are buying out of time supported from some general university funds? I wonder if from an administrative standpoint they are thinking of that time as sort of indirect compensation for teaching or doing other university work, and they want to allow well-funded people to buy out all their time but don't want others to pick and choose only the most time-consuming activities for buyout.

@BryanKrause, the professor just gets a salary and has a set of duties, the main ones being research, teaching and administration. The salary is not explicitly split into the corresponding bits (you would not find such a split in the employment contract), but my understanding is that all of the duties are considered as duties (research is thus just one of them). There is no other compensation or funding aside from the salary that a professor is getting, unless he/she has a grant (or a few). Not sure if I answered your question.

@RichardHardy Well if in the current system you can buy out your teaching alone, that means the salary must be split into corresponding bits in some way: the amount corresponding to teaching would be the fraction you have to buy out if you wanted to only buy out your teaching. What I meant is that the way the university sees it, if everyone buys out their teaching they need to hire more professors and pay them to teach+the other support. If they only save 30% per professor on the buyouts, they are stuck with another (70% minus grants) to fund.

@BryanKrause, I guess this is roughly so. The salary is known, the duties are specified in percent, e.g. 50% research, 40% teaching and 10% administration. Then a "fair" system in my understanding would require the grantee to pay as much of grant money to the university as is needed to cover for the substitute teacher (when buying out of the teaching part), even if that is more than 40% of the professor salary.

That's not fair to the funding agency, which already pays salary, benefits,  and indirects -- so "fair" is relative.

@RichardHardy Right...or at least some approximation of that. Which seems like it might be roughly what your institution is proposing, by making an 'all-or-none' buyout policy. Not going to weigh in on whether that's truly fair or not; my institution's (US) policy is salary+fringe for your teaching % only. I think here the discussion is more typically about teaching loads vs peer institutions; faculty tend to complain if their expected teaching loads (and therefore possible buyout costs) are greater. A policy requiring buyouts to cover all salary time might be poorly competitive for talent.

@BryanKrause, could you expand on salary+fringe for teaching % only? Does that mean your salary is paid for teaching alone, and then you do research in your free time as you please (from the salary perspective)?

@ScottSeidman, let me see if I got you right. If the funding agency want its money to go for research, then the new policy is indeed unfair to the agency. A different policy, one where the professor would not be spending grant money on buying out his/her own research time, would be fairer. It would allow buying out more of non-research (e.g. teaching) time and thus free up more time for research. The university would not gain anything financially (besides the indirect effect of research results), but the researcher would gain more time for research, and more research would be done.

@RichardHardy No, it's just that each course counts for some % of your salary. To buy it out, you pay the salary plus fringe benefits cost (all your non-salary compensation...in the US a large chunk of that is the portion the university pays for healthcare). The rest of your salary comes from other department slush (mostly indirect funds from grants for my dept) and salary directly from grants. People with more involved administrative positions (research directors and the like that do a lot of compliance work) have a bigger fraction of their salary covered directly by dept funds.

@RichardHardy. I think you're complicating this.  A grant award is a contract with the funding agency.  The agency pays for a percentage of time, and the investigator spends that time on the project.  Period.  Any other arrangements are between the investigators and their employers. If the employers cannot provide the investigator's hours to the project, they had no business signing the contract.  The institution is obligated.

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Convincing evidence of an assistant professor's research independence
I am back to the university that I got my PhD, as an assistant professor now. My mentor is now the department head (but not when I was a PhD student). Given that we are working on similar subjects, I will always send all of my work that relevant to him and will have him as a co-author. Even if the work could be done without him, he is still experienced and may have useful comments. I am afraid this would be considered as not independent, and affecting my tenure applications. What could be the evidence to show I am independent?
My field is health-related, so that usually there are collaboration works.

Well, if you stopped sending everything to him for one

Also helps if the chair is a reviewer, or better yet, an editor, on some journal you wish to publish. So you can suggest not having him as author would make publication there easier ;)

@gabe interesting suggestions!

@AzorAhai-him-  I mean all works that are relevant to him, I have some directions that he did not do, but only could count as <10% of my work.

To show independence while still collaborating with your mentor, make sure some of your publications have you as the sole author or with other co-authors besides your mentor. Engage in projects or grants where you are the principal investigator. Present your own research at conferences or in seminars without your mentor. Lastly, involve yourself in new collaborations outside your mentor's influence. These steps helped me demonstrate my ability to lead and conduct research independently, highlighting my contributions to the field on my own merits, which is crucial for your tenure application in a health-related field.

I think that your current problem is that you are not fully independent. Why?

still working on research directly related to your former advisor
still publishing with your former advisor and likely benefiting from the perception of work coming from a senior faculty (as opposed to making your own independent mark on the field)
as someone who has worked in departments where the chair had active early career faculty who were group alumni hired, there was always an unwritten rule that the young faculty was "protected", if your advisor remains chair or moves up in admin, you will be fine through tenure, but you don't want to give fodder to any opposition when its time for tenure.

None of these things mean that you lack competency, or any other negative connotation, but unfortunately they do make you not fully independent. You need to carve your own path.
I began publishing/collaborating with my advisor (different University) about 11 years after graduating and establishing myself independently.... and the nature of the collaboration was more my former advisor moving into a research area that was adjacent to my independent work.

Exactly. OP seems to be overly focused on showing independence when they should be focusing on being independent. If you are genuinely independent people will be able to tell that you are. If you are not independent, trying to "show independence" is basically trying to mislead people into thinking that you are something that you are not.

You have clearly earned the high opinion your thesis advisor has of since you have been hired as his colleague by a department where he is now chair.
Do discuss your work with him. That would be natural and collegial since you are in the same field. Although you seem to think it a sign of respect, there's no need to list him as a coauthor on all your papers, even when his remarks have been helpful. In fact I think that would be wrong.  Coauthorship should be reserved for papers that are truly joint work. Acknowledge any help those conversations provide is sufficient.
In time as you mature your interests may (perhaps even should) diverge from his. Your independence will grow.

I always ask before adding someone to the author list of a paper. Being an author means taking responsibility for everything in the paper, and someone who's only offered some useful comments probably won't want to do that! Since the OP seems to trust their mentor a lot, they can probably trust his judgment of whether he's done enough work on a paper to be included as an author.

The best evidence to show that you are an independent researcher is to publish top-tier academic papers as single author, and secure research funding as principal investigator.
A good criteria that you are convincingly independent is that your tenure is denied because "although the candidate has a good number of papers as a single author, there is lack of evidence of productive research collaborations". This is a joke, of course, but ultimately in academia you can never convince everyone, and maybe convincing everyone of everything is not the right goal.

Single papers functionally don't exist in many fields

I assume he meant first author? Although field-dependent, number of last author papers is much more convincing of independence in my opinion, since they indicate that 1) the researcher has money to support a lab group and 2) the lab group is being productive with that money.

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What do I do if I don't have anyone to write my letters of recommendation for undergraduate research programs?
I'm currently a second year student in maths and I want to apply to some REUs but I haven't made any remarkable relationships with my profs or anyone in the department. As well, I've just been an average student, just As and Bs, so I don't have anything exceptional to show for my attendance in my profs' classes. Thus, if anyone has any advice on what I can do for LORs, I'd appreciate it.
Additional info: I am doing research in my university, just not in maths, it's in pedagogy, but my supervisors don't know what's going on in my classes. I also have emailed this great prof I had last year once this year and have asked her for an LOR already, but I don't know how wiling she will be to give me another one since it's been a couple of months since we've last talked.

Instead of suggesting an edit to this post to add a "Thanks" paragraph in the body of the question, please merge your accounts so that you'll take ownership of that post. Then you should "thank" those who answered by voting up those you found useful and potentially accepting one. You will also be able to leave a comment on the question and/or answers letting others know how it turned out.

Please clarify what you mean by she will be to give me another one. Did she write an LoR for you for something else already?

Just go talk directly to people who might be interested in working with you. They won't be far away, anyway. You have to build up a reputation to get LoRs, and given your current status you just won't have it.

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What do I do if no one admits me to a PhD position?
I am from a relatively unknown university in an European country. I am one of the best performing students in my department and have won academic prizes and published several papers, which pretty much no one else does here before the PhD level.
I will be applying to good universities in other countries. However, I am worried that no one will admit me. If such thing would happen, how should I proceed to get a PhD at a widely recognized university?
I have thought to enroll on some summer courses organized by the universities I am applying to, to get in contact with people from there. What else could I try to do? Participating to conferences might be option as well, but it is difficult to get to talk to the people I would like to work with.
To be more precise, the awards are really large (4x my monthly salary), and the publications in mid-tier venues (impact factors in 2-3 range).

You may be overthinking this - your CV sounds strong, so just try and see how it goes.

@Bitwise I second.

Do you have a MSc degree? Most PhD programs in Europe, require a MSc degree to enter.

Yes, I will get a master's degree soon.

It looks more like you'll end up with the opposite problem of having to decide which of the many PhD position that you'll be offered, you should accept.

Taken literally, your question seems to be "Suppose I don't get admitted to a PhD program.  Then how do I get admitted to a PhD program?" Do you see why this is hard to answer?

I think that everyone who is applying for PhD programs should consider their backup options. Admissions are not a guaranteed thing (unless you have a truly exceptional record), and even if you get in many people decide that a PhD is not right for them partway through. Identifying a backup plan is an important insurance policy to have.
This is especially important if you are applying during your last year of undergrad. If your applications don't go as well as you hoped, finding a job or other opportunity starting in April can be an impossible task.
If you are sure that you would still want to get a PhD even after a disappointing application round, make sure to research 1- to 2-year opportunities that can strengthen your resume. Research jobs, RA positions, masters programs, some industry positions, etc. are all things to look at, though availability may depend on your field and situation. If possible, you should also ask your adviser if they know of any opportunities or can put you in contact with anyone who might.
Depending on the culture/positions, I would even consider applying to some along-side graduate school applications if you are unsure how they will go. I worked at a PhD stepping-stone-type job for a couple of years before applying, and we regularly interviewed applicants who were also applying to PhD programs. Many places won't be so understanding, so be careful with this, but we were fine with that situation.

I should think that your CV, with the information you give, will attract attention and should earn you a couple of interviews. Having papers at your stage is a bonus.
I think you should just go and apply for positions. Or else, if you have someone in mind you would like to work with, you could send a (personalised!) email stating in brief your background (including achievements, and attached a full CV) and that and why you want to work with him.
In short: I think your resume, as described, is clearly better than par for the course and I recommend, go for it without too much worry.

When talking to a Prof, make sure you select ones that are close to what you would like to do as a PhD and indicate that and why you are interested in their topics. The best CV will not help you if they perceive you as disinterested or inattentive to what they want to do.

I know of many international students with the same issue. They're very bright and have a great academic resume, but most of the professors at top US Universities haven't heard of their schools. Because of this it's hard for an admissions committee to accurately judge how good they really are.
What often happens is that they end up enrolling in a Master's program at a good school, get top marks, and maybe do a spot of research while they're there. Afterwards they can use that to springboard into a good PhD program.

That can be true, but the OP mentions numerous publications. If so, those (particularly the journal or conference in which they were published) should shed much more light on the potential quality of researcher than the name of a school and would probably be enough to pass the eye test

Based on what you have said, I would tend to agree with some of the other commentators that you shouldn't have too many problems securing a position. However, if you do have some challenges with getting accepted for a PhD program at a top university it will probably be due to uncertainty about about (i) the credentials you have and thus your working ability, and (ii) your ability to work with a given supervisor, or team.
To provide more certainty about these abilities you could:

Consider doing a masters or short course at the institution you want to attend, or one of a similar level. This helps as it can provide an accepted signal of quality (e.g., "I was ranked no.1 in my cohort within [relevant course], in [respected university]"). If doing this you should try to do projects/classes with a sample of suitable supervisors as doing so will make it a lot easier to convince them that you are a reasonable person that they could work with than could be determined via email/skype (as is the case now).
Consider finding a professor in your area to work on a paper with. This could be a foreign professor that you would like to work under (e.g., one who is abroad), or one who is local but who has international contacts in places you want to go (e.g., has co-authored with academics at these institutions) and is known and respected internationally. If you work with a foreign professor and it goes well, they are much more likely to want to supervise you and invest the effort in supporting your application (and you will probably get in on that basis). If you work with the well connected local professor, your work with them will be a strong signal for the potential supervisors in their network, that (i) you are good worker, and (ii) that you are someone who is easy work with. Plus you can get a recommendation if you are lucky, and that could carry considerable weight.
Find some reason to be in an area with good universities (e.g., do an English course in Boston), then arrange a meeting with the supervisors who you are interested in working with. This will give you a chance to convince them that you are genuine, and for them to get a sense of whether they can work with you. In my experience face to face meeting are much more likely to spark a desire to collaborate (e.g, within a supervisor student relationship) than email/skype exchanges.


text:
What is the minimum score for the GRE subject exam in mathematics?
Unfortunately, the admission website of a university I am interested in applying to does not list the minimum score required on the GRE math subject exam.
Does anyone know the minimum score requirement for this exam when applying to graduate schools to study mathematics?

For #1, I suspect the admission committee does not want to be constrained by setting a minimum score. There are many other things that can suggest success in graduate school besides the GRE math subject score, and by establishing a minimum score they might miss out on a Ramanujan (to give an extreme example).

There is no definite minimum GRE score (other than the smallest possible score on the test) for any program, unless that program explicitly has adopted one. If they don't mention it on their website, you could try calling or emailing their graduate coordinator and asking them.
In all, here are the main possibilities, and the reality varies by institution:
Case A) There is no minimum, and they consider all applications.
Case B) There is a minimum, and they will tell you.
Case C) There is a minimum, but it is a secret.
Case D) There is no formal minimum, but there is a de facto minimum in that they almost never (or never) actually accept someone below a score of X, even though they technically say there is no minimum. In the end, this is the same as Case C above.
In practice, the most selective institutions will occasionally mention "averages" like 80% percentile or 90% percentile - but without a standard deviation that's not really very informative. It is also the case that many people view GRE scores differently depending on your country of origin, so it is not necessarily meaningful or helpful to know anything like averages.
In the end, the advice for the GRE is: do as well as you can without harming some other aspects of your application (don't let your grades slide just to study for the GRE), and as always try to have the best overall application packet to maximize your chances.

As another anecdotal evidence point: Average percentiles indeed are not very informative. When I applied at a certain university, my score was over 20% below the average percentile, so I was thinking of not even applying. But in the end, I still got accepted.

@air It's hard to remember, especially during stressful times like preparing for grad school applications, that average of accepted means literally half of all the people got a lower score than the number given (assuming average was calculated properly). And of course that assumes all candidates scores are treated similarly, which isn't true either. One person on an admissions committee told me flat out they are only really concerned about a low GRE score if the GPA was also low - making the average even less meaningful.

That is very true. Based on random posts I had read on gradcafe, I actually assumed that I had to be above that average, since internationals are "required" to have better scores than domestic applicants. Apparently, that is also not necessarily the case. But the whole process is so opaque, and combined with the stress; I was really miserable until I received the first offer and I guess most people feel that way.

Let me be straightforward. If your GRE math-sub is not higher than 90%, then don't send it, because it will not give you much extra credits. Students in my undergrad usually get 95+%, the median (of students that I know) is like 96~97% (sample size: around 10). I come from a country whose students are notorious for being good at exams and math, so don't feel too frustrated if you cant get 95%. I think 90%+ is good enough.

I think this "answer" is dangerously inaccurate advice for math grad applications in the U.S., and (with the comment) verges on a simple rant.

@paulgarrett Whatever you say. THIS IS THE FACT. I say it agin: No need to send GRE sub math if you don't get 90%+.

Many programs explicitly require both the general and Math specific scores, or the application will not be considered whatsoever. The recommendation to send it if you don't get above 90% actually means that the student may not be considered whatsoever due to an incomplete file, even if that program regularly accepts lower scores. Answers on this question show considerable variance in scores: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13678/what-is-the-median-math-gre-subject-score-for-admission-to-a-group-2-or-3-phd-pr so lower scores could still gain admission - but only if sent.


text:
If I previously failed to follow up with professors, are they likely to remember this and hold it against me if I ask them for advice again?
I'm going into my third year of university, and the past year (my second year) was a very bad time for me. I was admittedly overzealous, and quickly exhausted myself with my research work, overloading with courses, and my campus job.
Between all this, I also was taking a course that required me to seek the advice of a professor, for which I talked to about three professors in my department. While these professors were happy to meet with me and talk with me, however, I didn't really follow up with them as well as they asked (i.e. I didn't show them the final product, because I ended up not doing so well in the course).
I'm wondering if I seek the advice of these profs again, how high is the chance that these profs will even give me the time of day?

A sincere apology, and explanation of how your past circumstances were problematic but they've changed now (they have, right? You're not overcommitted, and that's how you know things will be different this time?), goes a long way toward repairing the damage. No normal professor wants to "punish" you for overcommitting and failing to deliver in the past; they just want to know that you value their time and energy and aren't going to waste it.

You should not fear this. Faculty are very interested in students who will learn, do, and advance. However, you must "do" in order for them to believe you.  In university/college, things are earned and not given.
Be at ease with faculty.  Speak with them.
This is school. School is a place for learning. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness; It is expected; It is rewarded.
I have been college faculty (part-time) for a few years.  I know that sometimes student (or anyone) might have a bad day, week, or quarter/semester.  If they are nice, committed, honest, and willing to do something to prove themselves, I'm willing to give them another chance.  (But chances are limited.)
In some cases faculty just plain forget students. Faculty might have a regular FT job external to university (even full time faculty sometimes have FT jobs).  They might have 40 students in each of 5 classes each quarter/semester.  Too many to keep track of.
Faculty might also suggest a student followup with them, but they don't expect it.  For example, you ask for help on a paper, and a different prof gives you help and says "Let me know what grade you get."  They likely will not hold it against you.


text:
How are years of experience counted for determining level on salary scale for a Netherlands postdoc?
I am going to start a postdoc at a Dutch university. This is my second postdoc, and my contract says I am on salary scale 10, level 8. I am assuming that they counted 5 years of PhD and 3 years of my first postdoc to arrive at the level 8.
However, I took more than 5 years (actually closer a decade) to finish my PhD. Also, I had a couple of short-term bridging postdocs over a year, before starting my first postdoc. Do these years not figure in the determination of level on the salary scale?
If there is anyone familiar with Dutch universities' salary scale, I would appreciate any feedback. I wanted to ask here before contacting the university, so as to not sound demanding to them.

The level is normally calculated as 5 + years of experience as postdoc. How long it took you to finish your PhD is not relevant.

@Niko can you please post your answer as an answer?

Your scale is pretty good and fair. Don't bring it up to them.

I'm post-doc'ing at CWI now; it's not a university but I'm sure it's the same pay scale - I'm also on scale 10. What I can tell you is:

Your slot/rank on the scale is, AFAICT and as @Niko suggests, equal to SOME_CONSTANT + calculated years of experience after the conclusion of your PhD. It doesn't matter what happened before you concluded your PhD. However, I got started on level 9, having only 3 years of calculated experience. So I can't verify that SOME_CONSTANT = 5. Or maybe it's an NWO-vs-universities thing.
The calculation of the number of years of experience is to some extent negotiable. In my case, I got my 3 years in industry after my PhD counted as 3 years of experience; and it was not clear from the get-go that this would indeed be the case.

Finally, I've not actually read it, but perhaps the collective employment agreement for Dutch universities has the official wording on this matter. (I've linked to the 2015-2016 version but I don't think this point has changed.)

SOME_CONSTANT is NOT always 5. I was also in same situation: 4 years PhD + 2 years PostDoc before going to NL for a 2nd PostDoc and I got initially 10-6 scale. I think SOME_CONSTANT = 5 if #_YEARS_OF_PHD >= 5 otherwise is equal to the # years of PhD. That OP got 10-8 scale is pretty good.

The first thing to note is that in the Netherlands the step in which you enter the scale is a fully negotiable thing. There are guidelines based on experience, but unlike for example in Germany, these guidelines are not set in stone rules. Ultimately, your (negotiated) offer is determining the step. This also means, that you trying the negotiate your step will not be viewed negatively.
Now what would be a fair step to ask for? Lets consider the step that a post-doc  who has been continuously been employed at the university would be in. The basic principles are that you would advance one step each year, and that when taking a position in a higher payscale, your pay should not decrease.
PhD students in the Netherlands are paid in scale "P". The last step of scale "P" is equivalent in pay to step 2 in scale 10. So a postdoc hired freshly out of their PhD is expected to get step 3 in scale 10. After 3 years, you would be in step 6.
Since you are being offer step 8, that seems more than reasonable and fair.
Of course, there are other arguments you could be bringing to the table. For example, it is not unreasonable to suggest that they should at least match your the pay in your previous position if that was higher.

My PI, while hiring me was flexible on this. I was assistant professor for 3 years before coming to PostDoc (I know, I know, long story :D) and they calculated it for my favor.
Surprisingly though I got my degree on August, at the moment of hiring (July) I had 3 years of experience and from this my scale was calculated. Sadly, I went to next level not in August (after a month) but after 12 months in the Next July :/


text:
Academic Writing: Numbered points in text etiquette
I am writing a computing conference paper, it's for a high quality conference, and my friend and I have a mini dispute. The loser pays for drinks, so no pressure!
Which of the following is better/appropriate/there is no difference?

The loser will: 1. get laughed at, 2. pay for drinks and 3. have to run outside naked.

vs

The loser will: 1) get laughed at, 2) pay for drinks and 3) have to run outside naked.

In all seriousness though, is one more formal/acceptable than the other?
Also, I think I remember that maybe a ";" should be used instead of the ",".
Thanks for reading!

May this be the most serious problem you encounter with coauthors!

Specially when there's a free drink at stake!

You can also consider: i) get laughed at; ii) pay for drinks; and iii) have to run outside naked.

@MassimoOrtolano, why do you suggest a semicolon when a comma will suffice?

Would not CS experts frown upon closing parentheses that have no opening counterparts?

I just voted to close based on the question being opinion-based. But what if that's the answer? Perhaps a question for meta.

They're both acceptable, nobody except very careful English fanatics are likely to care, but the latter is preferable. Reasons:

Periods are more "final". They indicate the end of the sentence. That implies that you should instead use capital letters if you stick with periods:

The loser will: 1. Get laughed at, 2. Pay for drinks and 3. Have to run outside naked.

Because periods indicate the end of the sentence, one doesn't expect to see multiple periods in a single sentence. Using ) avoids this problem.

As for whether or not to use a semicolon, again it's up to you, but the comma is fine here. That's because the three things listed are all pretty related, short phrases, and on an equal footing. Semicolons are better when a sentence is complex or has other punctuation symbols. Example of something where I'd prefer the semicolon:

This new year, I resolve to: 1) cook 100 breakfasts for my wife - she deserves it; 2) set tests such that 50% of the class fails to shake my reputation as an academic Santa Claus; and 3) run for president.

Many thanks! One quickie though, you said "the latter is preferable" but then you used the first example. I prefer using the full stops, but are you saying that English fanatics would prefer using brackets?

@abdnChap Well they're both OK. The sentence I used had capital letters instead (Get laughed at, Pay for drinks) to go with the full stops. Without the capital letters, yes, English fanatics are likely to prefer brackets. PS, sorry about the drinks!

@Allure: The semicolon is mandated to separate items in a list when you have internal punctuation.

Semicolons don't seem necessary in Allure's example. They would be necessary if internal punctuation included commas. @aeismail does your use of "internal punctuation" include hyphens?

@user2768 Dashes but not hyphens.

@aeismail Dash, indeeed ;-) But, why? An internal comma can be confused with a breaking comma (my terminology is probably incorrect, but I hope you can follow), so in that case, the breaking comma should be replaced by a semicolon. But, an internal dash cannot be confused with a breaking comma...

@user2768 It’s to remove any ambiguity. I’d rewrite to eliminate dashes, myself.

You will want to check your style guide. For APA Style

In running text, a series of items is designated by letters in parentheses: (a) first item, (b) second item, and (c) third item.

These lists are often called run in seriation. See also In text listing style - how to use? Any downsides?

When numbering text inline, I think using parantheses to indicate that the number is not a part of the running text, is the best practice. Because the text might contain some other numbers.
For instance,

The sum of positive even numbers up to 3 is 2, 2. The sum of positive odd numbers up to 3 is 4, 3. The sum of all numbers up to 3 is 6.

confusing.

1) The sum of positive even numbers up to 3 is 2, 2) The sum of positive odd numbers up to 3 is 4, 3) The sum of all numbers up to 3 is 6.

also not very clear.

(1) The sum of positive even numbers up to 3 is 2, (2) The sum of positive odd numbers up to 3 is 4, (3) The sum of all numbers up to 3 is 6.

Now, it is understanable.
However, my personal favorite is what @corey979 suggested. Using lowercase Roman numbers.

(i) The sum of positive even numbers up to 3 is 2, (ii) the sum of positive odd numbers up to 3 is 4, (iii) the sum of all numbers up to 3 is 6.


text:
Is it possible to contribute to academic research after retirement from the industry?
Currently, I have a master’s of science in mathematics and a potential plan to couple my qualifications with a masters of science in analytics. I am actually nowhere close to being retired in the industry. But thinking way beyond the scope of the near future, I am curious if there is any possibility for someone who officially is retired from the industry to contribute to academic research? If so, how should a recent graduate prepare himself to make this a possibility.
Ideally, I would like to contribute to research in machine learning after completing a rewarding career as a data scientist. I have been continually expanding my knowledge by reading mathematical references on the train ride to work each day.

The only problem you might face is that some journals won't consider submissions if you don't have an official academic affiliation (including a valid academic email address). That said, nothing prevents you from publishing online in any venue that does not screen submissions on academic affiliation: if your work is good and a relevant contribution to a field, it will be recognized as such and cited, no matter where it is published (as long as it is in a somewhat known journal or pre-print repository).

I've seen a full-blown academic paper with a prison as author's address. It was an infamous convict in campus shooting, who was however capable of doing research even after being convicted. Now, it that works out...

@OlegLobachev DOI, or it didn't happen. ;-)

A non-negligible amount of people start a PhD after retirement from industry. Depending on where you are in the world, if there are coursework requirements, having a master's may exempt you, so this can give you a fairly unrestrictive but very beneficial environment to do research in. If furthermore you have a comfortable retirement package and don't need funding you will be a very attractive candidate.

I've seen a number of professors contribute to their field after getting the title "professor emeritus".
One example would be with  Terrence C. Mills who is still producing material on applied time series analysis dispite of being a retired professor.
Based on this it seems that academics can still make contributions to their field regardless of the fact that they are retired.

Would it matter if you have a Ph.D. or not? I know that there are some publications that don't have an education requirement, but am I severely limited in this respect due to the lack of Ph.D.?


text:
Citing a link that was removed?
I run a small blog about both the academic and professional aspects of my industry as I both teach a course at the university I am attending as well as work in the industry full time. The blog answers viewer questions and has even made some changes to core industry values which has boosted productivity and efficiency in some schools, and jobs.
One of my posts answered a question that required extensive research and would be unbelievable without my sources. This post is almost a year old and the link that was most important to my reasoning and proof of concept is not longer active.
I am faced with two choices:

Remove the post all together because most of the credibility was in that link.
Leave the post up without the proper accreditation to my research.

This is one of my most popular posts that effects both the academic and professional aspects of my industry and I have no way of contacting the original owner of the website that was removed.

Could you say a little bit more about what this "source" was and what kind of information it contained?  The link really had no information whatsoever that pointed to a specific person that you could track down?  If not, I'm wondering in what sense it was reliable in the first place.

You may be able to track them down via a whois lookup.

If you cannot find any other material that supports your post, then you must consider the possibility that you have staked your reputation on analysis rooted in an urban legend.  You can't believe everything you read online.  You might want to consider not removal but retraction and an apology to your readers who trusted you to properly vet your sources.

Be honest with your readers.  Put in a prologue explaining the situation.

Get a link from the wayback machine; try to contact the author(s) for clarification or permission to host the content yourself.

@BenVoigt While I agree that honesty is a good strategy (saying the link has now disappeared is probably the best), your suggestion of apologising to the readers is taking a very aggressive stance against the OP, which nothing in the post suggests is justified. The site may have been taken down for perfectly innocent reasons. I must say I found your insinuation against the OP surprising and, while not impossible, a pure worst case assumption. Too often, discussions of unfashionable/undesirable topics does not find many replicators on the web and only reemerge after renewed interest.

@BenVoigt You can't believe everything you read online. — This is true, but the word "online" is redundant.  Most people read refereed journal papers online.

If the page was up for a while, you can probably obtain a copy via the Internet Archive.  Once you've got that cached version, you can host it yourself, with appropriate attribution (i.e., the fact that the original source is missing, its original location and authorship, time that the snapshot was taken by the Internet Archive, etc.)
This could be a problem from a copyright perspective, but if the original material truly is abandoned, then you've got nothing to worry about.  If the owner does contact you, then either they'll likely be willing to post a copy (or its equivalent) again, obviating your need to host your own copy.  Only in the rather unlikely case they both want the material taken down and are unwilling to repost it themselves will you lose the source.

The problem of redistributing someone else's copyrighted work is moral as well as legal.  In effect they have retracted their statements, publicly acting as if the author still makes those statements is problematic at best.  Of course, this highlights the problem with relying on unpublished unreviewed sources.

@BenVoigt I would agree with you if it were the case that the original source actually gave some indication that the original material was retracted.  With internet sources, however, retraction is far less likely than simply having a page vanish (or move to an unfindable location) through neglect.  Thus, I would hold that it is reasonable to presume neglect (especially when the original author is difficult or impossible to contact) unless there is information that would cause one to believe otherwise.

Once you've got that cached version, you can host it yourself — Or you can just, you know, link to the copy on the Internet Archive.  (But I recommend caching your own private copy, in case the Archived version disappears.)

In effect they have retracted their statements — Sorry, ain't no such thing.  They said it.

In addition to the Wayback Machine mentioned by Jake (or other mirrors), you could try to have a look at the WHOIS history to find the original owner's contact information. You might also be interested in having a look at how Wikipedia deals with dead links. To prevent future occurrences of this issue, you could automatically mirror all pages your website points to or use some mirroring services such as perma.cc (FYI What percentage of links posted in published articles are dead?).


text:
Is it possible to change email on published paper?
My paper was published two weeks ago. I have just noticed that I have provided the wrong email. Is it possible to change the email after the paper was published?

Don't ask here, ask the publisher.

You can ask this question directly to the editor.

If it is published then I do not think there is any way to change any part of your paper, your email included. Changes in published papers are generally called "Corrigendum"

If "published" mean in paper form, PsySp is right.  But if only in on-line form, when you ask the editor, he may say that the new email can be added to it.

You could do the following things in this situation. But, it depends on (1) whether it is a journal paper or a conference paper?, (2) whether it is already published as offprint?

Politely ask the publisher about it (as it is a mistake done on your part). (credit: @Dirk)
E-mail the editor of the journal (if journal paper) and request to publish an Erratum on your behalf. (credit: @PsySp)
Publish an erratum on your personal web page or blog.

That said, option 4 is "don't bother", and this is highly suggested. Readers are well aware that emails provided on papers are often obsolete or sort-of wrong (authors wary of spam provide addresses they barely ever check). As long as you have a website with a correct email address, no one will get it wrong.


text:
What to write for subject when contacting potential supervisor?
I am trying to contact a potential supervisor about doing a master’s by research. I have already wrote my email by I am unsure about what to write for the subject box of the email. Different people have advised me on different things and I am unsure what do. Does anyone know what is a good subject line?

Different people have advised me on different things and I am unsure what do. -- Academia SE users are 'people' as well. Don't complicate your life by taking infinitely many suggestions. Write something sensible so that the Professor would click to read.

When I was applying for PhD, I used "prospective graduate student" as a subject line, which was quite sufficient. If your potential supervisor accepts students for different programs, you can specify the degree you are seeking (Master's) in the subject line.
The rest of the information (your background, interests, etc.) should be in the email body.
Good luck :)

If applying to a specific open position, it would be nice to indicate its exact reference code.

It's an email subject line. Don't over-think it. Any variation on "Master's by research" would be perfectly fine.


text:
Proposing a research project when contacting potential supervisors before master’s admission?
Is it okay to propose a project, with a brief introduction to what you want to do as your master’s thesis project when contacting potential supervisors?
Specifically, I am interested in the work someone has done, and I have a similar project that I’d want to work on. Can I propose that in the introductory e-mail? Or should I say something like: “I have a project in mind related to the work you have done and I’d like to get your opinion and hopefully conduct my research under your supervision.”
What if, for whatever reason (except that my proposed project is silly), the professor rejects me and/or doesn’t even reply given the time constraints faculty members are bound to?
I mean, I wouldn’t blame them if they later read it and found that the project was cool enough and contacted me. And since I’d have already enrolled or taken admission in any other university, or maybe I got a job or whatever the situation would be then, they might wanna start working on it themselves, which is fair, since I did plant the idea in their head.
What would you do?
Location: Canada
Type: International Student
Program: Electrical and Computer Engineering (M.A.Sc.)
Note: I am aware my project might be a long-shot bound-to-fail thing, but I am assuming here that the project the student wants to pitch is feasible.

Your assessment of the situation is accurate: Faculty members usually have very little time to spend on your e-mail and likely do not like to wade through a project proposal just to assess your introductory email. However, your proposed project could be a decisive asset – be it only by showing your commitment.
With that in mind, you can write a short email declaring your interest and mentioning your project in one sentence, like you suggested. However, add something along the lines of:

If you wish to know more, please find a sketch of the project appended.

(… and append your project). This way, the addressee can read what is essential in a minute, and if they decide that they wish to know more about your proposal, the information is already at hand.

"However, your proposed project could be a decisive asset – be it only by showing your commitment."
I was wondering about this, and hence I asked the question.
Anyway, I think you made a good point. If they want to, they can, since the information would be there.Thank you, Sir, for your help.


text:
Forget middle intial in reference list – did I commit plagiarism?
In my reference list, I forgot to add the middle name of the author and instead put “Bell, R.” instead of “Bell, R. J.”

This sounds pretty mild to me. Three or four years ago I came across a paper in arXiv (it was also under review at some journal at the time) in which a paper I co-authored with a couple of other people was listed as if I was the only author. I sent an email mentioning this, and all was fine. Or so I thought. A few months ago I happened to see the official published version of the paper, and although the bibliography entry was corrected, at the place where my co-authored paper is discussed, only my name is mentioned . . .

Plagiarism is intentionally taking someone else's work or idea, and claiming it as your own. This is merely an error on your reference list - as long as the work you are referencing can still be found from the other information in the reference, this shouldn't be a problem.


text:
What are the chances of a paper being accepted after
I got minor revision in the first round of review. The main concern of the reviewer was to add the details in methods section and some amendments in the text. I re-submitted the paper after incorporating these changes in the manuscript (I work in Biology field). But the status of the paper is showing  "under review" again. Does it mean the manuscript will go through peer review again? what are the chances of the paper being accepted? Please help..

There is no conceivable way for anyone to answer this given we know nothing about the papers content, the journal you're applying to or the field you're in. It's under review again, meaning they're looking at your revisions to evaluate if they want to publish it.

like what @Eppicurt said, it's hard to tell without knowing the details, but if after the first round of review, the verdict is "minor revision", and you've done what the reviewers suggested, then I would say it has a good chance of being accepted (this is from my own experience both as author and reviewer, but NOT in biology field), worst case you probably have to revise again. In either case, I won't worry about the "under review" status.

Whether or not the manuscript is going through peer review again depends on the editorial manager system the journal is using. If the status goes something like "submitted to journal" -> "editor assigned" -> "under review", then yes, it means your paper is going through peer review again. If it goes "submitted to journal" -> "under review" (i.e. it doesn't tell you that an editor has been assigned), then there's no way to tell until you receive a decision. A quick decision implies it didn't go through peer review again; a slow one and / or reviewer comments indicates it did.
There's no way to be sure if the the paper is likely to be accepted without knowing more about the paper's content & the review. However, based on your description, chances are good it'll be accepted eventually. If the corrections are minor and you've performed them, there's no reason for rejection.


text:
How to find out the average duration of the peer-review process for a given journal?
I have a mathematics paper ready for publishing, but I can't decide to which journal should I publish it.
The main thing based on which I want to publish the paper to a specific journal is its short period of peer-review process (because I need to publish it as soon as possible).
Suppose I have a list of journals I want to publish the paper. How should I know the average period of peer-review process for each of them?

n.b. I think this answer is more relevant outside of mathematics, which is the OP's field ...
Although @Thomas's answer is correct that most journals to which you could submit your paper will be sharing the same reviewer pool, there can be big differences between journals in how efficiently their editorial processes run and, importantly, how much they pressure authors to return reviews quickly.

You can look on a journal's web page to see if they give any metrics, or emphasize speed: for example, Nature Communications says in their Aims and Scope section:

We are committed to providing an efficient service for both authors and readers. Our team of independent editors make rapid and fair publication decisions.

Obviously that doesn't give you anything hard and fast, but it does at least tell you that they prioritize speed.

As I've mentioned in a previous question about rapid peer review, SciRev is a web site that is attempting to gather and collate journal-specific information about the peer review process, including processing times. (Unfortunately it hasn't reached a tipping point of popularity yet, so it may not actually provide much useful information.)
someone has done an analysis of publication delays based on data from PubMed (Zenodo repository here). The linked blog post has a dynamic graphic window that lets you select specific journals, but some caveats:

the data are a bit out of date by now (up to 2015)
PubMed has good coverage only for biomedical and related journals
not all journals post the necessary metadata (submission and acceptance dates)
resetting due to "reject and resubmit" can skew the values

The other point I made in my previous answer about rapid peer review is that depending on your situation, it might not be as important as you think to have your paper published; in many cases, submission to a reputable journal counts for almost as much as publication - it indicates to potential admissions committees, employers, etc. that your work is actually ready for prime time (as opposed to "in prep", which can mean anything from "I've got a good idea" to "submitting tomorrow"). Depending on journal policies etc. within your field, you could also consider posting your paper to a pre-print service such as ArXiv - another way of convincing people that your work is for real.
The best way to figure out the true importance of rapid publication for your situation is probably to talk to a senior colleague in your field who knows your situation.

I wish SciRev to succeed. It will incredibly change the way we publish. And  the behavior of some editors and journals.

This is more of a comment, but it needs to be said:
The length of the peer review process depends on the reviewers. If the reviewers are slow, there is little the journal can do about it beyond some reminder emails.
Ultimately, all the journals will be asking the same set of people to review your paper. So don't expect that one journal will really be much faster than another.
Conferences can present a faster publication route because they have a schedule to keep. However, reviewing speed often comes at the cost of quality.

"If the reviewers are slow, there is little the journal can do about it beyond some reminder emails." I'm going to disagree with this one. You can replace reviewers or more firmly remind them. In this manner, the editors have a huge impact on how quickly something gets published. In my field (stats), JSS and the R Journal are very similar journals (except that JSS has higher reputation), yet R Journal papers usually get published in months, while JSS in years. I'm pretty sure this because the editors of JSS are overwhelmed, not the reviewers.

+1 to this. For some submissions the pool of capable reviewers is very scarce, indeed. Having been the culprit of a delay in both roles (as the editor, luckily in the past only, and as a reviewer) I would like to add that the timing of the submission may also play a role. If both the editor and the reviewers are inconvenienced by their actual work duties, there is not much you can do. Keep in mind that both editing and reviewing are voluntary tasks and take a back seat if something urgent comes up.

Many papers in many journal have submission dates and acceptance dates right at the top of the article pdf.  In the example depicted, this info is right below the author info. The publication dats at the top.
.
This won't give you an average, but a fairly quick sampling of your target journals should provide you with "typical" information.  As an aside, you're probably most interested in the acceptance dates, the point at which you can list a paper as "In Press" on your CV.

Unless the journal makes the data public, there's no way to tell. That's because the information needed isn't publicly available.
The speed of the peer review process depends on a few things:

How efficient the editors are. For example if you submit today, do they also invite reviewers today? (That would be really fast.)
How quick the peer reviewers are. If I invite reviewers today, when can I expect a review? This usually isn't within the ability of the editors to control unfortunately. Editors can prod reviewers, but cannot force them, and this is therefore a big question mark.
How quick the authors are at revising. Again this is going to depend on the authors. If they're busy they might delay resubmission; alternatively if the revisions requested are major they might also need time. Either way this is another big question mark.

When you say you want to know the average period of the "peer review process", it's not clear what you're actually looking for.

If you want to know the average period when it's the editor's turn to act (e.g. between submission to first invitation of reviewers, between reviews complete to decision) then you really have to ask the editors since they're the only one who'll know. You cannot tell this time from the outside; the information needed isn't publicly available.
If you want to know the average period between submission and decision, then you could in principle do it by looking at the previous 1,000 papers published in the journal and checking the given submission & accepted date (or published date if available). However the number you get necessarily involve the two big unknowns above (time taken by reviewers & authors). The numbers are unreliable as a result. You have big confounding variables that's going to affect all journals, not just the one you're trying to measure.

In any case the variance in the peer review times is very large. If the average is 30 days, you could still easily get a decision after 90 days.
Honestly, I would not worry about this because it's just not something you can get good data on, and it's not clear how the data is going to help you anyway. It's like attempting to predict whether a coin flip is going to end up heads or tails, and someone offers to tell you what the results of the previous 100 trials were: sure you can get the data, but it's not helpful in predicting what the next trial's results are going to be.

I may be completely wrong but I think, based upon the nature of our research topic, we first should select the appropriate right fit journal and then should start the research paper writing process. This will help our ideas, writing process, references , writing style , level of detail s we need to integrate etc aligned well ahead of the time.


text:
Google scholar: Search papers by all the authors with particular label
Is it possible to use google scholar to search all the papers by a list of authors who has a particular label.
Example: all the papers by the authors with label:power_electronics

have you tried?

@solarmike, of course I did-but no success. Searching articles with query “author:label:Power_electronics” didn’t give any results

So, why not try the label and the last two years for example, unless you know and have a list of all the authors who published in that field...

Surprisingly, it returns some results. But articles are off topic and are not really from the targeted authors. It even includes articles whereany author doesn’t have scholar profile.

I suggest you talk to a university librarian.

I've used Google Scholar extensively, and I don't think you can carry out that type of search. The search options in Google Scholar's researcher profile service, and in the document search engine are different. The only option I can think of is that you extract the author IDs of authors that appear when you make the "label:power_electronics" search, and then use some software to extract the document lists from each profile, such as in the following example: https://twitter.com/Protohedgehog/status/999023873235537920

Thanks @alberto, however, even label:power_electronics doesn’t seems to be working for article search - the returned results (when we specify a time range) are not really relevant. it seems that “label” is relevant only for author searches - not sure though. I can obviously try “power electronics” as the search keyword for the purpose of literature search. Will give a try with your suggested approach.

label:power_electronics will only work to find authors with a Google Scholar profile, not in the document search engine. What I suggested was that you extract the IDs from each of the authors returned by the query, and then use those R functions (or some similar ones), to extract the document list of each of those authors

Got it. Please add this as the answer (for the future readers )

If want to see papers by the authors you know, you can do it like so: "<keyword>" + <author> + <author> ...

Search query example
Explanation

"<keyword>"
double-quotes to get an exact match

"<keyword>" + "<keyword>" + "..."
filter papers by a multiple keywords

"<keyword>" + "<keyword>" + "<author>"
filter papers by a multiple keywords and author

All of these examples seem to be working with specific date ranges and note that with every next page, results will be more irrelevant which you already wrote in the comments above.

Also, you can achieve it programmatically using Python and Google Scholar Organic Results API from SerpApi that can help you to parse data from all available pages.
It's a paid API with a free plan that handles all the hard lifting so the end-user only needs to think about what type of data to get.
Code and example in the online IDE:
import os, json
from serpapi import GoogleSearch
from urllib.parse import urlsplit, parse_qsl

params = {
    # os.getenv(): https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.getenv
    "api_key": os.getenv("API_KEY"),  # Your SerpApi API key
    "engine": "google_scholar",
    "q": '"minecraft learning"',      # search query
    "hl": "en",                       # language
    # "as_ylo": "2017",               # from 2017
    # "as_yhi": "2021",               # to 2021
    "start": "0"                      # first page
    }

search = GoogleSearch(params)

organic_results_data = []

loop_is_true = True
while loop_is_true:
    results = search.get_dict()

    print(f"Currently extracting page №{results.get('serpapi_pagination', {}).get('current')}..")

    for result in results["organic_results"]:
        position = result["position"]
        title = result["title"]
        publication_info_summary = result["publication_info"]["summary"]
        result_id = result["result_id"]
        link = result.get("link")
        result_type = result.get("type")
        snippet = result.get("snippet")

        organic_results_data.append({
            "page_number": results.get("serpapi_pagination", {}).get("current"),
            "position": position + 1,
            "result_type": result_type,
            "title": title,
            "link": link,
            "result_id": result_id,
            "publication_info_summary": publication_info_summary,
            "snippet": snippet,
            })

        if "next" in results.get("serpapi_pagination", {}):
            search.params_dict.update(dict(parse_qsl(urlsplit(results["serpapi_pagination"]["next"]).query)))
        else:
            loop_is_true = False

print(json.dumps(organic_results_data, indent=2, ensure_ascii=False))

Part of the output:
[
  {
    "page_number": 1,
    "position": 1,
    "result_type": null,
    "title": "A deep hierarchical approach to lifelong learning in minecraft",
    "link": "https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/10744",
    "result_id": "a_Er9i3hDtUJ",
    "publication_info_summary": "C Tessler, S Givony, T Zahavy, D Mankowitz… - Proceedings of the …, 2017 - ojs.aaai.org",
    "snippet": "We propose a lifelong learning system that has the ability to reuse and transfer knowledge from one task to another while efficiently retaining the previously learned knowledge-base. …"
  }, ... other results
  {
    "page_number": 8,
    "position": 1,
    "result_type": "Pdf",
    "title": "A EFICIÊNCIA DA COMUNICAÇÃO RADIOFÔNICA PELA ORIENTAÇÃO DA FONOAUDIOLOGIA. 30",
    "link": "https://www.academia.edu/download/56944676/_ARTES__AMBIENTES_MIDIATICOS__EDUCACAO_E_PLATAFORMAS.pdf#page=77",
    "result_id": "kBAYMW4EwNQJ",
    "publication_info_summary": "TG da SILVA - ARTES, AMBIENTES MIDIÁTICOS, EDUCAÇÃO E … - academia.edu",
    "snippet": "Por meio dos conhecimentos e das devidas habilidades proporcionadas pela fonoaudiologia é possível identificar quais devem ser as performances vocais mais adequadas para …"
  }
]

Disclaimer, I work for SerpApi.