text:
Examples of harmless mistakes (on purpose) in submitted papers
Some paper reviewers feel the pressure to criticize something in order to appear competent. Sometimes they feel this pressure due to huge blank form fields for criticism in the reviewing system. As a consequence, they sometimes criticize wrongfully. Fully recovering from wrongful criticism during review is sometimes possible, but not always. This hurts the research community.
A while ago a saw advice in a video to have harmless and rather obvious mistakes (typos, inconsistent notation) on purpose in the manuscript when submitting for peer review, in order to avoid the aforementioned problems. I don't recall the details, nor who gave that talk.
Are you aware of such videos/articles, or can give examples of specific "diversionary tactics"?
Note that I'm only asking about specific example tactics. If you want to discuss (dis)advantages of choosing to use them at all, please open another question, and I'll be happy to link to it.

Edit: This question isn't about the pros and cons (see above). Many answers so far are as if I asked about the pros and cons (which I didn't).
Also, I'm not saying "I plan to do this, try to stop me". I just want to find the information that exists about it.
Note that I mean harmless mistakes. Also, they are fixed before publishing even if not asked to.
A related technique from programming is called "a duck".
The psychological phenomenon is called "Parkinson's law of triviality".

And what if this tactic makes a reviewer to somehow miss an actual serious mistake in your paper?

Why bother to insert something that is practically guaranteed to already be present? And what if this addition makes the reviewer decide that the number of harmless mistakes is so big that it is not worth their time to do anything but send it back for proofreading?

It’s a waste of the revieer’s time and effort.

Is this really a question? This site is not really optimized for open-ended discussion.

A lot of careless errors indicate that there may be more serious problems waiting to come out. A well-written paper makes it easy/easier to read and to find problems or trust detailed arguments. A sloppy paper will earn extra distrust.

Do you have a link to the video? As presented in the question, it sounds like cheating the game

How is this a shopping question?

Beside unethical tactics, why do you automatically assume that your paper is garbage and you have to hide things? Or that most reviewers’ work is garbage and nitpicking? Maybe more constructive attitude would help...

None of the commenters except Allure seem to have read my question. I had written: "Note that I'm only asking about specific example tactics. If you want to discuss (dis)advantages of choosing to use them at all, please open another question, and I'll be happy to link to it."

As it is now (after edits), there is no question here (just a rant about what the question is NOT). I suggest rewriting this question so that it does ask what the pros and cons are (since you have another question about the techniques itself)

I've dealt with reviewers who will treat minor errors as major errors and recommend rejection on that basis alone, so offended are they at the typo you subjected them to.

@LvB - (1) Please don't significantly change the question after so much activity. (2) I suspect the reason your stated question—articles on/examples of diversionary tactics—was mostly ignored is because its based on the premise that such things should be used. The advice you're receiving is that you SHOULDN'T use them, and a discussion on the tactics themselves is not necessary.

@eykanal - What do you mean "discussion on the tactics is not necessary"? Is discussion about traditional Chinese medicine "not necessary" because many people say that it "shouln't be used"?

@LvB – Lets avoid analogy and stick with the current example. If you're doing research or academic work on this topic, then yes, you can discuss it "academically", simply to chronicle that it's something that happens. The current discussion reads much more like an applied discussion, though, which is why I say "not necessary". On a related note, an academic discussion would likely be off topic here as too specific to a single research area.

It seems to be problematic to ignore the fact that this practice is inadvisable and probably unethical.  If the question asked for specific examples of tactics used to cheat on exams, we wouldn't answer it.  This example is not as egregious as that....but I still don't see the point.  If you're just asking "Hey, I can't find a video I once saw," then this is not the site for that.  Perhaps you could explain why having this information would be helpful to you and potentially to other users of the site.

@Allure I didn't vote to close for shopping, but perhaps someone interpreted the question as the OP asking for a list of trivial mistakes they could make in order to distract reviewers from making substantive comments.

@LvB I don't think there is a related Meta post here, but I think it might be worthwhile for you to read the "frame challenge" meta from Interpersonal Skills https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2511/what-is-the-difference-between-not-answering-a-question-and-posting-a-frame-chal - IPS is very strict about answers answering the OP's specific question, but even there they have a policy to allow frame challenge. The answers you are getting are all frame challenges, as they should be.

@LvB You may want to read the guidelines for this site. The users are not bound to answer exactly what you want when they disagree with your philosophy. Boldfacing is insulting them.

I can recall, ca 1975, being told by an engineer at a big (and considered at the time highly respectable) company how, when preparing the design of an electrical device for Underwriter's Laboratory approval, he would always leave some obvious safety flaw for the UL examiners to find.  The guy was a bit of a jokester, but he seemed completely serious when he explained this.

This question has inadvertently sussed out a nice cross-section of reviewers and paper writers who give themselves away conspicuously. Delicious. This tactic is best used against a known adversary so you can tailor the content for them specifically.  Otherwise there are too many unknowns and it'll probably cause more trouble than telling pointy-headed people "you know you don't have to find something to complain about."

@LvB: Thanks for your question.  Since you're a new contributor, I might just make a suggestion about post-answer edits.  I notice that since the answers come in, you have added updates that include aspects of those answers in the question-post (e.g., identifying the 'duck technique').  This is generally not a good practice, since it gives the reader the incorrect impression that answers were merely repeating back to you information that you had already given.  If you want to update to add information that answers your question, best practice is to post an answer yourself (which is allowed).

@Allure It's not literally shopping. However, in its current form, the question is just asking for an unbounded list of examples of some phenomenon. As such, it's not really any different from the "What universities should I study subject X at?" questions that we do close as being "shopping". In any case, the actual close reasons used were "unclear what you're asking" and "too broad" so this is somewhat moot, now. (Perhaps there were multiple rounds of close voting.)

You're not the first one to come up with this idea.
In case it's not obvious, I recommend against doing this:

Having stupid mistakes in your submission makes you look stupid.
It wastes the reviewer's time.
It wastes the editor's time.
If all the mistakes get through the review process, it wastes the reader's time deciphering what you means, and also makes you look stupid again.

Just don't.

Exactly. Why try to game a system in which people are trying to help you.

I had a team lead who would send back legitimately good programs with a "fix suggestion" that made things worse unless you put in a bug for him to find. To be fair, he also admitted he was a bad team lead but he couldn't turn down the pay increase and constantly flip-flipped between apologizing for being a bad team lead one day to managing by fear (reminding a guy that he used to deliver pizza and could easily again) the next. I think your point stands, if people are genuinely trying to help, don't do it. But there are reasons to do it.

"If all the mistakes get through the review process" -- I think, the idea is that you'll fix mistake during review, asked or not

@Buffy "a system in which people are trying to help you"... a pretty naive view of peer review... and academia in general.

@user71659, why so hostile towards academia? Reviewers aren't normally paid and they spend time and effort to read your work and offer suggestions for improvement. True, they also serve as a gate to keep garbage out of the mainstream. Is any of that bad? Or do you think their main purpose is to attack you personally and keep your ideas down? Same question about teachers, I guess. Are they out to harm you personally? Sorry, I don't get it.

@Buffy It is very common in smaller fields that your paper ends up going to either a friend or a competitor, for which the competitor has a vested interest in harshly criticizing your work and pushing their own viewpoints, especially when it comes to high-impact journals and grants. The problem is it isn't "garbage" but almost all journals, and especially grants, consider novelty and significance, and that's inherently a personal opinion. Go search for the fight for publications in Cell, Nature, Science, and also NIH R01s. Simply, eat or be eaten.

@user71659, no, wrong on all counts. High Impact journals wouldn't stoop to such things and expect to retain any respect. If you think this happens at some journal don't submit there. Reviewers may be hard to find in small fields, but editors would weed out such  people very quickly. Yes, novelty and significance are important. Otherwise you just have the trade press. Lack of novelty and significance are completely foreign to importance in high impact journals. Your "personal opinion" is my "scientific breakthrough".

@Buffy Maybe things are different in math/CS, but all of the major physical and life science journal rely on the opinion of editors and they have inherent beliefs. And if you're talking about Cell/Nature/Science, close to 90% of their papers are rejected at the editor pre-review. What do you think happens? The editor reads the title, authors, abstract and decides. My field had a major fight in which a number of authors got together and wrote a letter pointing out that a particular Cell/Nature/Science topical editor accepted only papers from a small number of groups. This is the harsh reality.

+1. There is no need for a duck here

@corsiKa: If you knew in advance that your paper would be reviewed by someone with such an attitude, there would be a stronger argument that this was justified (still not enough, in my view).  But the whole point of academic peer review is that you normally don't know who will review your paper.

@aaaaaa correct.

This answer has nothing to do with my question. I wrote in the question: "Note that I'm only asking about specific example tactics. If you want to discuss (dis)advantages of choosing to use them at all, please open another question, and I'll be happy to link to it." @user4052054 thank you, you made the only comment that is relevant to my actual question.

@LvB - To reiterate my comment on the answer (wearing answerer hat, not moderator hat): discussion about specific tactics presupposes that such a discussion is worthwhile. My answer is trying to convey that such an approach is at best disrespectful to everyone's time and at worst a stain on your own reputation. Discussion about examples is not necessary; don't do this.

@eykanal My question is simply: Where can I find info about such techniques? Let me find that info. Let me hear out those who advocate them. Freedom of speech. Let me have an informed opinion. We don't even know what techniques exactly we are talking about. Besides, the comic you posted describes the harsh reality.

@user71659 If anything, a reviewer working in the same area has a vested interest in getting other's papers on the  subject accepted, thereby getting indirect validation of the importance/relevance of his own research.

@LvB Everyone here is trying to inform your opinion. No one is going to deliver to you a video that they believe makes unethical and bad suggestions.

@HenningMakholm Not really. If somebody publishes a good part of what you're going to publish, the novelty and impact of your paper is decreased, making it harder to publish. Instead of ground-breaking, its now incremental. And high impact journals, as well as top-tier conferences, always have a limited number of slots per topic (as is general attention), so it is a zero-sum game. Based on comments, I suspect things are vastly different in mathematics than it is for physical and life sciences.

@LvB I understand your frustration, but once you submit your question you have to accept that your less important point is more important in others' view

@LvB Don't mix up your constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech with entitlement issues on the internet.

This is a terrible idea.  Just a couple of days ago, I reviewed a paper with a lot of confusing descriptions and elaborate mathematics.  It was not clear that the explanatory sections were going to be clear enough for me to be able to evaluate the mathematical material in a useful fashion, but ordinarily I would have given it a try.
However, the very first equation of the paper (which, dealing with introductory matters, was not particularly complicated) contained an obvious error.  I concluded that if the authors were that careless, it was not worth my time to try to pick through each and every poorly documented equation, trying to see if they were all valid.  The editor agreed and rejected the paper.
So including stupid mistakes like this will only call into question whether you have been careful enough in preparing the manuscript.  If it looks like the authors have been lazy or careless, there is little motivation for reviewers and editors to try to fix things for the authors.

This answer has nothing to do with my question. I wrote in the question: "Note that I'm only asking about specific example tactics. If you want to discuss (dis)advantages of choosing to use them at all, please open another question, and I'll be happy to link to it."

@LvB If you ask for different ways to commit suicide, other people always have a right to say that you shouldn't do it instead of simply listing those for you.

@Peaceful But if you ask for it on the appropriate site (e.g. Worldbuilding for fanciful techniques), then any answer telling you not to would quickly get closed as NAA, especially if the OP explicitly says he does not intend to do so.

This is a real life situation, so users can say don't do it. Arrogantly saying that that is not what I asked is quite insulting to people who invest their time and energy writing the answers.

I kind of think the main point this answer provides here is that it points out to the OP that people who think their manuscript is "great" may find that it's confusing to the reviewer, even without making harmless mistakes, and those harmless mistakes will compound the reviewer and perhaps even convince them the entirety of the paper was careless mistakes.

This interesting strategy has been identified in a programming context, where it has been dubbed "the duck technique" (see this post on the Coding Horror blog):

This started as a piece of Interplay corporate lore. It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to [project managers]) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn't, they weren't adding value.
The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen's animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the "actual" animation.
Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, "that looks great. Just one thing - get rid of the duck."

I have not heard of doing this in regard to the peer review process for journal publication, and in that context I would advise against it.  Perhaps others have had different experiences, but I have not observed any tendency for journal referees to ask for changes merely for the sake of appearing to add value.  Since most of these processes are blind review, the referee is not usually identified to the author, and there is little reason for referees to grandstand like this.

Worth noting that the duck wasn't an error. A closer analogy here would be deliberately including an outright bug in the software, which seems considerably more likely to backfire.

The duck was a thing included specifically to be targeted for removal, so it is analogous to the "errors" that the OP is talking about in his question.

It's certainly relevant here, I didn't intend to imply otherwise - but I do think it's worth being conscious of the limits of the analogy.

@Ben Just out of curiosity what percentage of your reviews have come back "Content and format are perfect, no improvements suggested"?

+1 for an amusing and informative answer that makes a clear distinction between programming culture and academic culture.

Note also that the duck technique came up in a well-defined corporate environment where people knew who would be reviewing their work, whereas in refereeing you generally can't anticipate who will be refereeing your work. These situations call for different behavior.

@darijgrinberg multiple comments (on other answers) point out that in some fields, you can be fairly sure of who will be asked to review your paper.

This tactic (which is by the way more of a joke than something that people actually do) is designed to deal with an archetypal incompetent manager who is incapable to understand the work they are given to review, yet unable to admit their incompetence and so are resorting to bike shedding to compensate.
Trying it on people who are actually competent will result in one of the outcomes:

they will not realize you're using the tactic on them and decide you're sloppier than you actually are
they will realize it and feel offended that you take them for someone who would hide their incompetence behind irrelevant changes

Neither improves the chances for your paper to be received well.

In case you feel the reviewer is either biased or psychologically set to validate his/her competence by unjustly criticizing your work as if implying that it was properly reviewed by an expert, it is actually possible to introduce something which should be edited out but I advise extreme caution. It should be very subtle and yet conspicuous enough. It should not cast any doubt on your own competence: perhaps, something superfluous or murky but well-known to the reviewer so that he/she will enjoy criticizing it. However if you don’t know the reviewer and his/her level of competence, it’s better to be extra cautious about such things.
A few words about typos and sloppiness in formatting: The reviewer will feel more justified to pile up his/her criticisms so much as to consider the paper to be low quality stuff or a mess. I saw it happen when excellent papers got almost scrapped for lack of clarity and accidental errata. So, typos, bad formatting and inconsistencies are no-go; such stuff will only detract from your paper. Only much more subtle strategy is viable and only when you know the reviewers are less competent or unjustly biased. As to diversionary tactics, such things should be specified and discussed with the experts in the area of your work. Using some primitive generic tactics (typos, notation inconsistency, etc.) will only draw criticism.
If some "criticizing" blanks or forms or any bureaucracy are pulled on you, you should seek advice of colleagues in your area. It's better not to leave anything to chance, and  discuss everything with the experts in your area. Finding out what forms/blanks or bureaucracy you are dealing with is crucial.
Your paper might be reviewed on general (non-expert in the area) principles just as if it were only reviewed by proofreaders or lay people. So making it more consistent, coherent, logical, clear, succinct, and free of spelling and formatting errors will be a big plus.
You should probably rely more on the guidelines that are used when reviewing papers in your area, rather then focusing on diversionary tactics. A lot of bad reviews are a result of carelessness (both on the part of the reviewer and on the part of the scientist), overzelousness and bureaucracy (or should I say strict "proofreader-like" guidelines for scientists), rather than malicious intent assuming the paper in question displays outstanding ideas and great substance. Please check some guidelines as How to Write a Good Scientific Paper: a Reviewer’s Checklist A Checklist for Editors, Reviewers, and Authors by Chris Mack or suchlike articles and guidelines. Their number in astonishing. Nowadays a lot of science is about сitation indexes; and a lot of reviews are about formal structure, clarity of reasoning, proper references, nice presentation of data, etc. used in the paper.
Please note that this is very generic advice. You may want to tailor it to your area of expertise with all the corresponding changes you deem necessary. Bottom line: I strongly advise against generic diversionary tactics. Tailor everything to your area of expertise. Unfortunately, if they don't want to publish it, they won't, even if it is a breakthrough. You might need extra recommendations and credentials. Please also note how much pseudoscience we have today, and some of it sneaks in respected publications! So a huge number of papers need to be weeded out.

Your bolded comment on formatting errors has a formatting error. Having satisfied my need to criticize something, I can now comfortably give a +1.

@LvB Sorry to hear that my advice was totally off. Actually, I was trying to suggest to employ diversionary tactics in line with your area, which should be subtle but conspicuous, and it should not cast doubt on your competence in the area. I meant avoiding seeking generic diversionary tactics as the worst plan possible. Sorry. I gave you specific tactics but it's not that specific -- you need to discuss it with colleagues in your area IMO.

@KenDraco Sorry, I had accidentally commented under the wrong answer. You're right. Subtle and conspicuous, not casting doubt on the authors' competence, non-generic/area-specific - makes sense. Thank you!

Let's set up a simple static game: assume that there are two kinds of reviewers, "Good R" and "Bad R". "Good R" are those that they know the subject well but even if they don't, they will try to honestly review the paper on merit. "Bad R" are those who will go for "wrongful criticism" in the logic laid out by the OP, and for "Superficial Criticism" if we submit a superficially sloppy paper. We consider two strategies, "Superficial Sloppiness" and "Tidy manuscript". In all we have four possible states.
I argue that the most preferred state is "Good R - Tidy manuscript". In such a case the paper will be reviewed on merit by an appropriate reviewer. Let's assign the numerical value/utility 4 to this outcome (the scale is ordinal).
Consider now the state "Good R- Superficial Sloppiness". As other answers indicated, we will most likely get a quick reject (and acquire a bad reputation in the eyes of a person that we shouldn't). This is the worst it could happen to our paper, in light of the fact that it was assigned to a Good Reviewer. We assign the value 1 to this state.
Let's move to the situation "Bad R - Wrongful Criticism". Supposedly this is the state that we want to avoid by the proposed tactic. I argue that this state is not worse than the state "Good R- Superficial Sloppiness", because "Good R- Superficial Sloppiness" is a bad state because we shoot our own feet really, while "Bad R - Wrongful Criticism" is an unfortunate but expected situation. So we assign the value 2 to this state.
Finally the state "Bad R - Superficial Criticism" is what we try to guarantee with this tactic. We certainly consider it as better than the previous one, but not as good as having a Good Reviewer assessing our tidy paper on merit. So we assign the value 3 to this state. The normal form of the game is therefore

There is no strictly or weakly dominant strategy here. But let's not go into mixed strategy equilibria. From our point of view, reviewers are chosen by nature (mother nature, not Nature the journal) with some probability, say p for the probability that we get a Bad Reviewer. Then the expected utility for each strategy is
V(Sprf Slop) = p x 3 + 1 x (1-p) =2p+1
V(Tidy Mnscr) = p x 2 + 4 x (1-p) =4-2p
It appears rational to chose the Superficial Sloppiness tactic iff
V(Sprf Slop) > V(Tidy Mnscr) =>  2p+1 > 4-2p => p > 3/4
In words, if you think that the chance that you will get a Bad Reviewer is higher then 3/4, then your expected utility will be indeed higher by applying such an embarrassing tactic.
Do 3 out of 4 reviewers belong to the Bad Reviewer category in your field?

Cute analysis! Upvoted. I like that your model gives the mathematically honest answer that under certain circumstances (though usually not very realistic ones) OP’s strategy might actually be beneficial. By the way, I love game theory, but it’s worth pointing out that this isn’t really a game theory model, despite your use of game theoretic terminology and notation, since your “Mother Nature” is simply a source of randomness rather than an adversary trying to optimize some utility function. In other words, the model is a 1-person game, more commonly known as an “optimization problem”.

@DanRomik Thanks. Indeed this is a "game against nature" where we play against a probability distribution rather than another self-interested entity. But I would say that the expository tools of game theory are very useful and head-clearing even in such a setting,  especially when we have a few discrete outcomes.

Superficial criticism here, because I only know game theory superficially, but I guess this model hasn't thought about that the reviewers are social animal. In social psychology, an intention to do something MAY NOT mean they will do it.

This is not an exact match to your request, but is similar enough in spirit and relevant enough to your question to mention.
There's a very interesting and entertaining article by Karl Friston published in Neuroimage, called "Ten ironic rules for non-statistical reviewers". The point of the article is to give a generic 'slap on the wrist' to "common" review points by people who may or may not understand the statistical implications of their suggestions, and who may simply be making statistically-correct-sounding generic statements out of a need to seem useful / not-unknowledgeable, and err on the side of rejection.
It does so in the highly unusual format of starting off with a highly sarcastic and humorous introduction of why a reviewer is under "so much pressure to reject these days", given articles have increased in quality, and proceeds to offer ten tongue-in-cheek "rules" for them to try in order to ensure a malicious rejection even in the presence of good papers. It only enters non-sarcastic serious discussion as to why those rules are poor interpretations of statistics in the much-longer "appendix" of the paper, which is in fact the 'real' article.
So in a sense, this is the same thing as you're talking about, except seen from the reverse direction: instead of instructing authors on how to keep reviewers "busy" with trivialities, it is a tongue-in-cheek article instructing reviewers on how to focus on trivialities in the presence of an actually well-presented paper, in order to sound like they have critical influence over the outcome and / or to ensure a rejection / wasting of time for the author (i.e. heavily implying that this is a common-enough occurence to warrant such a sarcastic article).
(the original paper is paywalled, but a version of the pdf should be available to read for free online via a simple search engine search; it's a rather popular paper!)


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Is it a good practice to point out errors (politely) in a previously published paper in a review response
Is it a good practice to point out errors (politely) in a previously published paper (from which I have borrowed idea) if the reviewers explicitly asks to do so in a review response. I mean the reviewer has asked "why you have made this strong assumption, this was something weak in the published paper". In this situation, I think I have no option other than pointing out the errors for which I have enough mathematical evidence, I even asked the author of the published paper about that, he also agreed about that.

If you are building on the work of a previous paper, but the older paper contains a material error, you should not be waiting for a referee to ask about the discrepancy.  A discussion of the error should be included in the manuscript from the start.  It could run something like

The outline of our calculation is similar to that in [1].  However, it should be noted that [1] actually contains an error in the calculation of the r coefficient....

If your paper disagrees with the earlier literature that it relies on, readers trying to understand the details of your work are likely to be confused.  If a reader notices the discrepancy, they are probably most likely to think that you have made an error.  The referee who looked at your manuscript quite likely brought the discrepancy to your attention, and the right solution is the correct the record before you move on to your own new results.

I already wrote that in the paper when I initially submitted it. But, not directly told that there was error as I borrowed many techniques from the published paper.

I agree with the answer.  One should not have to be pushed by the referee into this.  Although one should take time to be as polite as possible in pointing out the mistake, both the general reader and you the author should (in some order) by prioritized over "saving face" for the author being cited.

@aaaaaa:  It seems that what you have done is likely to confuse many readers.  If you say you are using the techniques from the earlier paper, then do something different, what is somebody reading your paper likely to conclude?  You need to make an explicit, but polite, statement why you are doing something different:  because the original paper had a mistake.

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text:
Does the choice in education provider make a difference at interview time?
I am at a point where I am looking into all my options in my education. I am currently at a private university and am wondering if the location of where I am studying has any possible future ramifications. I would love to continue as far as I can go (PhD); however, I would like to know if I am safe to choose the institution freely or if there is a ranking I should be aware of.
Thank you kindly

What field are you in and what sort of careers are you looking at?

I am in the Bachelour of creative arts degree, and im looking at using games development process to increase production and design processes in other fields after i have finished my degree, the skills i need such as 3d and game engine programming are only attainable in this degree in my country

If you’re headed to industry, as long as the institution offers a solid education and you excel in your development you’ll be in good shape when the time comes. Make a point of being involved in several internships during your stay.

Thank you for that i have a few opportunities to jump into some work related positions to learn from the industry, just wanted to make sure that the upcoming masters degree before i sign on that I was making the right choice in institute, after all its the rest of my life that i have to make sure that i can achieve the goals i have set. sometimes that can be hindered by something silly like location or a choice i could overlook and deem as silly. I find its best to ask. Thank you for taking the time to respond. it is greatly appreciated!

See and consider other comments and answers you get. Mine was but one.

Will do Thank you :)

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How should one choose a journal when making their first attempt (ever) to be published?
I am looking for the best place to publish a paper that I am preparing. It will be my first, and there aren't many clear and concise sources of information as to who is to be sought for the research I have been doing.
My question is, what are factors to consider in the choosing of a journal when publishing for the first time?
Thank you in advance!

Do not accept advice on this from people who have not read you paper.

Do you have an advisor or mentor? Academia is a bit like a craft in that you will have it 10 times harder to make progress if you don't have an advisor or mentor.

Thank you both for the comments,  @AnonymousPhysicist That particular thought for a change did not cross my mind. I should have seen that thank you.

@lighthousekeeper Where would one find mentors on academia?

I think that @lighthousekeeper is speaking about an advisor at your university, assuming you are connected with one, perhaps as a student.

@Buffy I am indeed a student at a recognized university. I may have misunderstood the comment. my apologies.

Which journals do you read? Where do the references you cite come from? Where do your colleagues publish? This is very very subject-specific knowledge, but in any field there are a few key journals, varying in their specialised focus and in their reputation, and the experts know which they are because they use them.

Thank you Roger, I will keep that in mind, My specific industry is quite niche, as it is not mainstream work when it regards to my studies in the field. Thank you for the response!

It is really important to submit your research paper to a good quality journal. My suggestion is, submit your paper to DOAJ, WOS and Scopus indexed journal. Your paper may or may not get accepted in the first submission. But I am sure you will get a revision or feedback that will help you in develop your way of doing research.
Just make sure to submit your paper understanding the scope of the journal. If you submit to a journal that is out of scope. Without any feedback, the paper will get rejected.
There are numerous pay and publish, fast track journals, stay away from that.

Thank you Sulthan for making me aware of that, I will make a point to avoid the those. I want see my work published based on merit not currency.
I have bookmarked those journals for further investigation. Thank you.

The answer does not differ whether you are publishing for the first time or the hundredth time. You should publish in the journal most suited to your research. That is, don’t choose a “worse” journal simply because it is your first time.
If you are having trouble thinking of which journal is most suitable because it is your first time, here are a few suggestions:

Which journals do you read from?
Which journals do you cite?
Which journals do faculty in your field tend to publish in?
Read any guidelines for publishing on the journal’s website. Think about factors like how long your paper is compared to others published in that journal, for example.
Ask your advisor (presumably in your field) for advice.
Have a few choices in mind in case your paper is not suitable/gets rejected at your top choice, but only submit to one journal at a time.

Thank you Kevin for your kind response. I will keep that in mind when making my choice.

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text:
Is it acceptable to cite an article from a corporate website? Can Wikipedia be used to prove credibility?
I need relatively broad information on the functionality of a certain technology as part of the exposition to my seminar paper. As scholarly papers tend to focus on very specific questions, already taking the existence of my sought-for concepts for granted, and since suitable books don't seem available to me, I feel that I have to look for answers on a regular website.
For this, I've found a short article by a major corporation which happens to be the market leader of said technology. Is it acceptable to cite their web page in a seminar paper?
I understand that credibility of the used sources is a major concern. Given the fact they are market leader, I believe that credibility to be present. Do I need to name this company's status (e.g. "According to [company], market leader in [technology], ...") to validate the source? If so, would simply citing Wikipedia for this fact suffice, assuming their prevailing status on the market needs to be proven as well?

Could you ask the professor who is teaching the seminar?  I think it's their decision.

Very related: Are there instances where citing Wikipedia is allowed?

I agree with the answers posted here so far, but I want to add a few points.
You can realistically use any source in your paper, but it depends on how you use it. If you want to write about what X company says about a particular topic, then using that particular web article seems appropriate. If you want to write something informative about a particular product that X company happens to use, then citing that article (written by X company) is a less than ideal choice. As @Buffy mentioned, the company has a vested interest in portraying the product in a certain way, but as @Richard Erickson mentioned, this article (or Wikipedia) can be a good initial stepping stone.
Articles that you use for information need to be peer reviewed in order to have a high level of credibility. Not having access to books is not a valid excuse; universities have a plethora of resources for this exact circumstance. I recommend Inter Library Loan (ILL) for hard to get books and journal articles. Your professor may have suggestions on where to start.
tl;dr:

you can use anything as a source (even Wikipedia), but it depends on how it’s used
peer reviewed sources are best for research credibility
you can find obscure resources using your university’s library privileges
consult with your professor

Let me advise caution. In part it depends on what you expect the future of your paper to be. If it is to be published, then using volatile and un-reviewed sources can be a mistake. In the context of a course paper, not intended for publication it may be ok, but for tactical reasons (keeping your professor happy) if nothing else, don't depend exclusively on such sources. The problem is that the source may disappear before the publication that cites it.
The problems in the two examples you cite are that the company has a vested interest in what it says and isn't an independent voice. And wikipedia, while it may be reliable on many things, especially in STEM areas, is volatile and might change at any moment. Neither is it reviewed in any real sense and so misinformation does creep in.
Also, any web resource is subject to change outside your control and the articles you cite may disappear tomorrow. Such citations should always come with a date on which the article was read/downloaded as a partial check. And, your acceptance of their credibility is just opinion. It is a weak foundation unless it is backed up by facts or by others.
But, in general, you want reliable sources and preferably you want sources that don't benefit from what is said. But if you are clear about that, and also use more stable and reliable sources to support your arguments then you may be ok for a course paper. And you might actually be ok for a more long-lasting publication if you don't just accept what you have found online as truth. In particular, critiquing online claims is a perfectly valid use.

@Roland, Wayback works for most, but not all, resources.

@Roland In particular, many corporate web sites explicitly disallow the kind of indexing that Wayback requires.

Personally, I would use Wikipedia as a starting place and see who they cite. I would read the article and use the reference as starting place for my own literature search.
Academics will sometimes cite Wikipedia, but tend to be the exception rather than the rule. For example, Andrew Gelman cited Wikipedia for tutorials and noted:

We use Wikipedia here not as an authoritative source but rather as a reflection of a general consensus. My views on induction, deduction, and Bayesian inference are not in agreement with this consensus, and so it is my duty to explain, first, why my views are right and the consensus wrong, and, second, if the consensus is so clearly wrong, how could so many intelligent people hold to it.

In the above case, Gelman wrote one of the major Bayesian textbooks and can get away with citing Wikipedia in his specific context.
As for the cooperate page, I would only use their website as a primary source (e.g., Acme Company uses shiny new technology to make widgets). I might cite reports for companies, but I would cite those as reports and not webpages. For example, Bell Labs published reports. Also, sometimes companies publish reports that lay the foundation their technology (e.g., The PageRank Citation Ranking).

I'll address the Wikipedia portion of the question specifically:

Do I need to name this company's status (e.g. "According to [company], market leader in [technology], ...") to validate the source? If so, would simply citing Wikipedia for this fact suffice, assuming their prevailing status on the market needs to be proven as well?

Since Wikipedia content can be changed at any moment, any citation to a Wikipedia article needs to refer to a specific revision of the article. And of course, that revision might just reflect one person's view, and that one person might or might not have a conflict of interest, which might or might not be discernible to the reader.
If you want to use Wikipedia to justify something like this, you'll need more than just the article. You might find that a statement like "company A is a leader in industry B" has footnotes; if so, look at those footnotes and see if one or more of them is worthy of citation. (A news article from a well-respected publication, that actually says that? Yes. Somebody's LinkedIn profile? No.) Or, by visiting the Wikipedia article's talk page, you might find that several Wikipedia editors have discussed the point, and decided that it belongs in the article for various reasons. Or, again by looking at the talk page, you might find that the article went through one of Wikipedia's formal peer review processes (like "featured article" or "good article") and that the statement withstood challenges in that discussion.
In any of those cases, the thing to cite is not the Wikipedia article itself, but the stuff that justifies the statement in the Wikipedia article. That is, the news publication used as a footnote, or the discussion on Wikipedia's talk page, or the Wikipedia review page.
Disclaimer and statement of expertise: I have been a Wikipedia editor since 2006, I run a business advising companies on Wikipedia engagement, and I designed the Wikimedia Foundation's first program to engage university professors in assigning Wikipedia writing to their students.


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What is the best way to express my condolence to a professor?
I am a Ph.D student at the university. Every student has a favourite professor same as mine. I really care about and our student-teacher relationship growing stronger day by day. My professor really cares about my professional/academic growth.
But a few days sooner I heard that the professor has been gone for an extended period of time.I am very confused and don't have any idea how to contact my professor.
Mistakenly I used google and I realized that my professor loses his loved once.
I feel really ashamed to break my professor privacy. I know that express condolence is the best way to support your close one who is under deep pain.
I am more worried about to disrespect our teacher-student relationship.
I am really confused. Can anyone guide me any positive way to handle this situation?

Is this what you googeled something one could reasonably come across without "stalking"? (E.g. was it in TV news or rather in a forum about the professor's secret hobby?)

I voted to close as duplicate despite the fact that "express a condolence" is different than "ask a question", since the answer to both is basically "treat the professor like a person, rather than an authority figure"

Why you think you have to treat a professor differently here in this situation than any other person??? Also, I think it not good at all to think in professional environments in "relationships", respect of course, which you broke by googling and realized yourself. Learn from this. PhD student are to my knowledge grown up adults with an academic title, same is a professor.

@Heutl but you make fallacy by establishiing a norm/difference/rule for something that has no difference by law (working contracts etc., in Germany every employer has the same power and not more than a professor). Posting such "prof" questions on academia.se is highly unproductive I fear and doesn't serve anybody, rather increases this not by law existing dependency. Apart from this condolence is not really a power issue, I voted to close

If you found this information online then it’s hardly an invasion of privacy (unless of course you hacked his email or something). I wouldn’t worry about that.
If there is a public announcement (an obituary) of a religious service (eg a wake or a shiv’a), you can probably attend as these things are usually open to the public for exactly people like you- distant relatives or acquaintances who wish to comfort the grieving family. For example, if they’re Jewish, it’s customary to bring some simple baked goods (say, cookies) since the family is hosting a seven-day event. I’m not familiar with grieving customs in other religions but that should be easy enough to find out. In these situations your professor would most likely greatly appreciate your presence and the gesture.
If there’s no public announcement then wait for the professor to come back to the university and try to catch them in person to offer your condolences. Again, the gesture would be greatly appreciated I believe.
My condolences...

What is the best way to express my condolence to a professor?

You can say, my condolences for your loss. That said, you needn't say anything; it depends on your relationship with the professor.

I know that express[ing] condolence is the best way to [offer] support

You need to consider whether your support will be helpful; support isn't necessary from everyone (indeed it may become burdensome).

If there's no public announcement, then I don't think that you have violated the professor’s privacy.
I have just assumed it, but I am not sure. Since he hasn't told you anything that means he wouldn't like to talk with you about this. You need to respect his decision. Maybe my answer hurts you but you need to realize this truth. Moreover, your moral duty is to show your sustenance because he lost his trust on you once. Show your sympathy in a sorrowful way.


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Why is getting your PhD in Iran invalid for obtaining a post-doc position in the US?
My friend earned her PhD in Tehran Iran, I assume from the primary university. She received many awards and published several articles in Condensed-Matter/Cosmology. However when she applied to several post-doc positions in the United States, she was denied, not because of her experience, but because her PhD was earned in Iran. I do not understand why this would cause a problem in the United States. She was forced into a situation to either chose to be admitted as a graduate student and earn her PhD again, or simply stay in Iran. She is currently admitted as a graduate student in the US.

Why is getting your PhD in Iran invalid for obtaining a post-doc position in the US?
Is there away around this problem? Can she bounce off from her graduate position?

@shane She say to me it was because a university told her that her degree from Iran was invalid.

I know of no blanket policy stating that PhDs from Iran are "invalid", so I think your friend has misunderstood the issue.  There are some postdocs which are funded by the US government to increase US science capabilities, and therefore are limited to US citizens and/or people who got their PhDs from US universities.  There are other possible reasons why she didn't get hired, and I am not sure how we will read minds to guess what they were.

@shane: That's 53 pages, can you give us a hint as to where we should look to find something specifically relevant to this question?

@shane Thank you so much for providing this article.

There was an article about University of Massachusetts some time ago that cited a 2012 sanction law that basically said "restricts Iranian citizens seeking to prepare for a career in that country’s energy or nuclear science sectors," but I can't be sure that's the case.

I personally know people who had an Iranian PhD and got a post-doc position in the USA (at University of Maryland).

what field? what univ in US? I know people with PhD from Iran working in US on post doc.

In view of the comments and answers, linuxfreebird, could you perhaps give a more precise account of the official reason why your friend's applications to do postdocs in the USA were turned down?

Just like Beijing, London, and New York, there are several universities in Tehran, some rated more highly than others.

In Australia at least, some universities have an autonomous sanction on Iran.

I think the answer is simple: your premise is false. There are no rules/regulations forbidding an Iranian earned PhD from being a postdoc in the US.
It might be hard to get a postdoc in the US for anyone whose academic background, and PhD earning institution, is not perceived as highly ranked.

Note: I have answered this a year and a half ago. Things may have changed since then through the presidential ban against Iranians entering the US. I have no specific knowledge of the current situation with respect to Iranian students.

Does there exist publicly available data that illustrates that recently colleges have accepted Iranians for Post-Doc positions in the US?

@linuxfreebird I personally know one Iranian who was accepted as a post-doc at University of Maryland, his PhD was from Iran.  This was in 2010 or 2011 or so.

@linuxfreebird You can just look at the universities' policies recognizing foreign credits and degrees. It usually comes down to the specific accrediting body and/or university, but I've never heard of it being on the national level.

@linuxfreebird i know at least one in person...

As with the other people answering this question, I don't think your friend's problem is that her PhD is "invalid". I've worked with a number of Iranian researchers and graduate students, and it's never been brought up that Iranian PhDs are looked at as any way "lesser" or invalid compared to any other degree.
Which leaves one of two possibilities:

Her PhD is invalid, not because she is Iranian, but because of some element of the PhD itself, her institution, etc. Without knowing more, of course, we can't really come up with a reason why this is. There are some American PhDs which are invalid, but that doesn't imply that they all are.
Regardless of how well respected her degree is, an Iranian student may still fall in the "More trouble than they are worth" pile, either due to immigration issues, perceived political instability ("Every time you go home for break, there's a risk you won't be able to get back), or funding issues. This isn't universally true for all universities, but may be true for a particular admissions/hiring committee.

+1: I think this answer is a bit more helpful than Dilworth's

Perhaps it's more helpful, but I don't think it is a correct answer. No reasonable university will consider an Iranian student/postdoc "less valid" because of "immigration troubles". The facts are that there are many Iranian scholars within the US.

@Dilworth Note that this is a postdoc position, so there's a great deal more weight on a random PIs opinion. That it might happen rarely would still mean there are many Iranian scholars - something I note in my answer.

If it happens rarely (and I would doubt even this) then it has no consequence to us all. It might happen also that some PI doesn't like Germans and would decide to decline to hire any German. I doubt that this deserve a question and answers on this website.

@Dilworth Something doesn't have to be "of no consequence to us all" to rate an answer. Indeed, I'd suggest your own answer, "Your premise is just wrong", is also a "then this is of no consequence to us all" answer.

Sorry, I can't follow your arguments/grammar.

@Dilworth The answer explicitly disagrees with the OP's contention that the postdoc is "less valid" because of "immigration troubles" -- it lays out two possibilities which both seem possible to me. Note that "there exist many Iranian postdocs" does not contradict "some places may feel it is not worth the potential trouble with visas and work permits". This is not comparable to a PI not liking Germans; this is about logistical concerns

@Dilworth Perhaps you could expand on your answer by giving more support (in the form of links or personal experience) to your claim, which is probably true FWIW, that "there are no rules/regulations forbidding an Iranian earned PhD from being a postdoc in the US."

I have first hand experience in recruitment, and have worked in different universities. Never had I witnessed political concerns against Iranians. I have no statistical data about Iranians being recruited, but I have common sense, experience and knowledge of enough places that, I can deduce there is no such discrimination. Of course, there may be some isolated institutions that do not hire Iranians. I claim that because these are only anecdotal and isolated places, effectively it is very similar to a PI personally disliking Germans, for instance: in both cases a negligible minority will suffer

I am going to differ from Dilworth's answer a little bit. While I would not say that a degree from Iran is invalid for study in the US, being an Iranian citizen in the current political climate of 2016 poses some significant hurdles for study in many other countries around the world. Applicants from Iran face heightened scrutiny and substantial delays when applying for visas; in some disciplines, such as nuclear engineering, it may be even impossible. Moreover, the process will very iikely impose additional paperwork and other bureaucratic burdens on the hiring faculty member and institutions. Consequently, many faculty choose to deal with these obstacles by simply excluding all Iranian candidates from consideration.

In addition, certain federal research centres like the National Institute for Standard and Technology (NIST) cannot host Iranian researchers.

many faculty choose to... not that we get too many applicants from Iran, but we get a few, and we have never even discussed such a "policy."

Actually, there are thousands of Iranians studying for a PhD degree in the US (who had their first degree from Iran; usually in good universities like Sharif, etc.). So I don't see the political problems argument you've alluded to as having a strong backing. The point of my answer is simple: it is not a political/regulatory reason that makes Iranian PhD's unsuccessful in the US academic market. It is the perception of these degrees as not highly ranked, or not respected enough, or not considered as mainstream enough in the US (irrespective of the veracity of this perception).

Strangely, while I agree overall with the responses to the answer, I actually agree with most of the answer itself -- in fact the only part I disagree with is the final sentence.

In many fields (perhaps most), finding a successful postdoc position, like finding a faculty position, is a networking thing.  People will take postdocs from groups that they know and like, and will not risk taking people that their immediate community can't vouch for.  It's not a policy, just small, fairly closed communities that draw from within, not from outside
If I were an Iranian predoc hoping for a US postdoc experience, I would make serious efforts to attend international conferences that US colleagues participate in, trying to arrange collaborations and similar experiences.

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text:
Do the disciplines of my PhD thesis and of my MA thesis have to be identical?
I graduated in history, with a specialization in cultural studies. Now I want to pursue a PhD in literature. Is this possible? What are the potential obstacles and how can I avoid them?

Do you mean (a) you have graduated with an MA in cultural studies, (b) with an MA thesis on a historical topic, (c) and now you want to pursue a PhD in cultural studies with a literature topic, e.g. changing only subfields within your discipline? Or do you want to change disciplines entirely, e.g. from cultural studies to history?

I want to change disciplines entirely. Thnx

I've edited your question accordingly. Please double-check.

It's on point, thnx a million!

I think there is no such requirement to stay in the same field anywhere, unless you want to work with the same advisor who has narrow interests. In general, you can work on anything you like as long as you can find an advisor who will support and help you and you meet entry requirements for the doctorate. It is good to still be a bit of a generalist at the MS level, but doctoral studies will pretty much force you into a narrow field. There are some exceptions, of course.
Since you are staying in the humanities, there shouldn't be a lot of problems, provided you've studied in the US, at least. You probably have sufficient background in most of the required topics. You might need a course or two that a lit major might have taken as an undergrad, but I suspect it isn't extensive. Again, in the US, these are probably open to grad students.
Outside the US it might be a different story, and I can't speak to that. It would depend on the entry requirements and finding an advisor.

After OP's comment, I don't think this answer applies.

@henning, updated.


text:
E-Mailing a Professor about interest in his research group during application for a master and before admission (in Germany)
I hold a Bachelor in physics and I am applying for a master program in Germany. There is a research group by a professor, with topics very close to what I'd like to study and furthermore work on. On the group's site it is posted that there are open master-phd positions.
Should I email the professor, expressing my willingness to study and possibly work in the future under his group if I am not yet admitted to the program?
My email would contain some basic information about my choices of classes, bachelor thesis, personal studies after my bachelor and interests in the research group.

If needed I can provide a link of the group and the university I am applying to; I just don't know if it's ok in relation with the stack exchange policy

It is usually the case that the information you intend to include in your email about your studies would be asked for in the application, so preemptively providing that would be unnecessary.
It may be useful to email mentioning your interest in the research group, and ask any questions about the research you may have.

Thank you for your answer. When you write: "... and any questions about the research you have", you mean answering possible question about what I have studied or mention something?

I mean if you have any questions about the research the group does. For instance, if you have questions about applications of the research, available laboratory facilities, or field-specific questions, this might be a good time to ask.

Emails with too vague requests are more likely to be ignored. In Germany, admissions to Master programs are usually handled centrally and specific professors do not have influence on your particular application. For doctoral student admissions, it is the opposite: you normally contact the professor directly and they decide whether they want to take you. In this case, having done some (good) research work at the department will increase your chances.
If your Master program includes a mandatory or optional research internship (which is not uncommon), applying for such an internship at the professor's department is (in my experience) one of the best ways to get in touch with them. The same goes for a Master's Thesis, though that will of course happen later.
If such an internship is not a standard thing at your university, you can always take initiative and ask someone at the department about your options to do research in the group. I would suggest to do this once you are there, so that meetings in person are an option. Professors are known to be busy, so it might be a good idea to contact one of the doctoral students/teaching assistants for this. If it is someone that you already know from a course, even better.
In summary, wait until you are there, and try to include specific requests in your email to increase your chances of success.

Thank you for your answer. I am indeed now in Germany studying, and I will consider your analysis above.


text:
Finishing a PhD that I started abroad, in the USA?
I studied in Europe some times ago but didn't finish my PhD dissertation. Recently I finished it and I published in a math journal. I never studied in the USA, but I have been living and working there. Is it possible to finish this PhD with the same results that I have found, or I have to start all over again?

Contact your supervisor or find a new one prepared to take you and the dissertation on.

Why not finish it where you started?

My adviser is retired!

Some retired professors are still able and willing to finish up with their students. It depends on both the person and the university, however.

And when your advisor first told you he was retiring, and you asked him whether he would continue advising you—and if not, how to complete your PhD—how did he respond?  (You did ask, didn't you?)

There are some US universities whose requirements are (a) pass the qualifying examinations and (b) write a dissertation acceptable to the faculty. You need to find such a place by searching and talking to people. You need to find a supervisor who is happy with your work and may accept it as is or with some additional work. But you probably also need to pass a set of qualifiers in several math areas. This may be easy for you or not.
But finding the supervisor who thinks this is a good idea is the main step. Best will be someone interested in becoming a collaborator and who has a definite interest in what you have already done.
But there will be more than paperwork involved.

I disagree with the other answers. Virtually all reputable US graduate schools have a residency requirement. Further, they will have little interest in a "pass-through" candidate who feels that they have already earned a PhD elsewhere and wants to obtain it as quickly as possible.
Your best bet is to follow up with your old program / contacts. Even retired professors might be willing to work with you. Perhaps someone knows someone who will take a special interest in you. With a professor on your side, rules can be bended or special arrangements made.
If that is a strict no-go, then you would essentially have to start over at a new institution. You could shop for an institution that will minimize the additional work you will need to do, but I would still expect it to take multiple years.

If your completed work is not enough for a PhD dissertation in a US program, it's likely that you would need to take at least some exams and fulfill other requirements like any other student in a math PhD program in the US. But if your work is (1) enough for a PhD and (2) really exceptional, it is possible that some programs would grant the PhD with a minimum of additional requirements. The only way to know is to ask.


text:
How to impress a professor the most? By showing how smart you are or by being a pleasant coworker?
I am a young grad student, also having the luck to be collaborating a bit with a (rather) big shot. Of course, it would be nice if he gets a good impression of me for the future, as he could probably be an excellent reference when it comes to finding jobs later. But probably, the same discussion applies to any senior researcher you're working with.
Now, the first logical thing would be to work very hard thinking outside the box on problems, using creative, a bit unconformistic approaches in order to try proving that my intelligence and deep understanding of the topic are beyond average.
The other thing is just nicely executing the suggestions by him and the other collaborators, being an efficient, obedient employee outside the spotlights, such that his 'factory runs smoothly'.
On the one hand, the second possibility does not seem to really allow distinguishing myself; on the other hand; the first possibility may come across as a bit annoying by trying too hard to impress;also it is apparently often a good idea to play a bit dumber than you really are
('Never outshine the master') .
To be clear, I'm quite sure I'm in the end still far weaker than him, but I can spend more time thinking on the same problems.
A concrete example: if he suggest something and I've thought of that myself before, should I tell so?

There is not a single type of person in the world, and this is not limited to professors - senior or not. What is pleasant to some is irritating to others. Everyone generally likes you to do good work that is useful and valuable to them, but they vary in their personal style, preference for social distance, degree of expected independence, defensiveness, etc. If one single thing worked for everyone, life sure would be a lot simpler - but that just isn't the way people are.

Probably being creative and thinking outside the box to_solve_problems will be more "impressive" than trying to be ostentatiously "creative" to "impress". The latter may result in your looking like a fool, instead.

The unhelpful but honest answer is that a professor is most impressed by how closely you conform to whatever he imagines a "good student" to be.

Most people, but especially experienced professors, will detect attempts to prove "that my intelligence and deep understanding of the topic are beyond average.", and be unimpressed. As @paulgarrett suggests, you would be better off applying your best efforts to solving problems.

Never Outshine The Master The master isn't perfect, you should outshine them, it is just unlikely you'll be doing it too often.

Neither.  Don't show off, and don't play dumb.  Just do good work.

These are not mutually exclusive, actually. The correct aphorism should be "Never outshine the master if he is a jerk".
I've seldom been happier than when one of my students goes on to surpass me. I know of a few and I suspect there are others. Cool.
Don't be arrogant, though. Wisdom and arrogance aren't especially compatible.
The movie "Good Will Hunting" is an object lesson of a professor who can't handle the presence of a brilliant student.
But if students don't outshine their "masters" then humanity never advances. If it weren't common at places like MIT and Cambridge for students to go beyond their doctoral advisors then scholarship could never go forward, only backward.
So, do good work, help others, be fair, explain carefully, take advice, accept honest criticism, do better work. Ask for help when you need it, but do due diligence first in your study.
And, say "hi" to people and show an interest, volunteer a bit of time and effort occasionally. And, do even better work.
My personal secret, though I didn't recognize it at the time, was: ask a lot of questions - good questions. Listen to the answers.

And after you finish your degree and move on to a fantastic job and are building a great career, don't forget to go back and thank your old mentor, in person, for starting you on the path.

As noted, these are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, someone coming up with their own ideas and showing a deep insight into the topic often is what makes "the factory run smoothly" because I don't have to spoonfeed them Step N+1 in their project at every meeting.

if he suggest something and I've thought of that myself before, should
  I tell so?

Do you have thoughts on it? "I thought of that myself" isn't impressive, and isn't helpful. "Yeah, I thought about that recently, and have been tooling around with an implementation of it. What do you think about $Thing" is.
So should you be smart or be a pleasant co-worker?
The answer is "Yes."

Indeed. I think that novices too often think that "the system", and "old people", is/are so naive that they can easily be gamed... by novices!?!?! Better to be aware that the old people are just like you but with decades more experience... so maybe not so easy to "game"? "Doing the work, and very well" is the best way.

I don't see a trade-off between the two strategies, so the answer is: both. However, my hunch is that you are too concerned with making an impression. This can become awkward or even annoying. Try to focus on the work you're doing, and don't worry about brownie points. If your work is good, it should be acknowledged, and your present insecurity will dissipate.


text:
Is highlighting important references a good idea?
My thesis has around 100 references. What do you think if I highlight most important references (for example with bold text)? does it add more value to the work?

What field is your thesis in? Have you seen this done before in other theses? In my field, this would be very odd.

Computer Science. Well, I also never seen it done in other thesis.

Generally, this is not something you do in your thesis, and should be solved in the text (as mentioned in the comment of NMJD).
But it's not completely strange, the entire series of Current Opinion in XXX journals have marked references:

• of special interest
•• of outstanding interest

They're also marked in the text like:

[40••]

But keep in mind that only reviews are published in these journals, and those are  generally not comparable with a thesis.

Additionally, the bibliography contains a short blurb describing why these references are flagged, like This is the first prospective study investigating whether hair cortisol and experimental cortisol stress reactivity measured prior to trauma predict development of PTSD symptoms."  I always find these indicators incredibly helpful and wonder why more journals don't include them.

Your thesis should have an introduction.  You can highlight the most important references by mentioning them in the introduction and explaining why they are important.

This is done not only in almost every thesis but also in almost every paper I have read.

@Woeitg I think what Alexander Woo means is something of the form: "The central challenge has been well-described by Smith et al. [cite]: there is simply not enough priority given to the blah blah blah...." -- or -- "The problem of [issue] has been deeply studied by Smith et al [cite]. To briefly summarize: [blahblahblah]"

Good point - and if your citations use numeric coding and are sorted in order of citation, that also means they are listed first in your citations, making them the most likely candidates for further research.

You're probably thinking by analogy with the indices of some books, which boldface the pages that cover the concept in detail. So, for example, an entry might read "Widget 17, 25–28, 34, 41, 50", meaning that widgets are discussed in detail on pages 25–28 and 50, and also mentioned on some other pages. People look at the index because they've just picked up the book and they want to find information about a specific topic; they look at the index and then start reading. The boldface guides them to the most important things to read.
The references section works in exactly the opposite way. People who are already reading the book (thesis, paper, ...) consult the references to find out more information about some topic. Since they were already reading the book, you've already had the opportunity to guide them to the most important references first by writing text that does that.  ("Widgets were introduced by Einstein [14] and the theory was fully worked out by Woeitg [73]; see also [12, 44, 56–58].") Further, the information that a reader seeks is often spread across the whole references section, as in the example I just gave. You'd have to check seven different entries to see which were the important ones. So I don't think that would add much information. In addition, people don't read the references section: they just refer to it, so they won't expect to find extra information hidden in there.
Having said that, boldfacing the actual citation would add information, in a concise way. I've never seen it done but "We now discuss widgets [12, 14, 44, 56–58, 73]" does seem to have exactly the benefits of boldfacing in indexes.

Yes, I think that last paragraph is a great suggestion. And a thesis gives you more flexibility to try out something like that than does a journal paper, in which you will need to conform to the house style.

If you are not forced to order your references e.g. alphabetically or in citation order, you can simply sort them by what you consider importance (and state so). Then it's rather clear that few-digit references are more important than many-digit ones.

The disadvantage is of course that you have to rank them, which may have unwanted side-effects of hurt feelings etc...

Anything other than alphabetical order makes it impossible to determine quickly if a particular paper is cited, so please don't do that.

@DavidRicherby Aside from a hopefully digital distribution where full-text search is possible (and the potential ambiguity of "first" author to sort by) it really depends on the amount of citations and the publication format. But I am not claiming sorting by some subjective rank is actually better, I merely provide an alternative solution...

Agreed about just suggesting an alternative. But how is first author ambiguous? The first author is the one who is listed first, which is to say the closest to the top of the first page and, if there are multiple authors equally close to the top, the one whose name appears farthest to the left (or right in a language written right-to-left).

@DavidRicherby I remember having read a question here about first author and author order etc. But that's actually before publication, afterwards there is of course one author mentioned first...

Yeah, there are infinite discussions about who should be first author. I'm glad I work in an alphabetical field.

Ranking every one of the citations is going to be much harder than flagging a few as "particularly important" and unless this is very prominently mentioned, I'm not sure anyone would pick up on this scheme on their own. Therefore, it may not be the best idea.

@Matt "not the be best idea" might be an understatement - it was however a proposed answer missing, so I added it... I also prefer the accepted answer of marking.


text:
Can one or two emoticons be used in a PhD Thesis?
I have a very dumb :-) question:
Are emoticons (if rarely placed - one or two times) in a PhD thesis considered unorthodox?
I have an introduction where I give an apt example and appended some small footnote where I make fun of the author (that's me) and I was so laughing when writing this I almost liked to put a smiley at the end of the footnote.
The reader of this question should note, that the thesis is already enough serious such that a smiley might be surely a relieve for the reader maybe :-)?
What is the general thought about this?
Update:
After all these enlightening, entertaining and thoroughly funny thoughts, I decided to go with a humorous footnote but of course without a smiley. :-P

Maybe, maybe, in the acknowledgements, which is a less formal part of the text. In the text itself, big no no

I don't get what that :-) is supposed to tell me in your first phrase.

I have never seen emoticons in the chapters of some thesis but people use sometimes emoticons on the "acknlowledgment" part of their thesis, which is by default a less formal part.

Your thesis will definitely win the award of "Most likely to not be read beyond the introduction."

Humorous footnotes existed well before some (probably well-meaning) soul burdened us with 'emoticons' and 'emoji'.

Is the subject of your thesis emoticons?  If so, use as many as you want.  Otherwise don't use them at all.

I wouldn't recommend it—humor can be included in a research paper or other formal document without resorting to emoticons. An example is the limerick in the ISO C++ standard at §14.7.3/7, which remarkably is normative text: When writing a specialization, be careful about its location; or to make it compile will be such a trial as to kindle its self-immolation.

Check out http://www.theliberatedmathematician.com/math/ for some inspiration.  I really love this.

Don't do it.  A rare bit of humour or witticism is probably fine, provided it is tasteful, sufficiently clever, and, to a certain degree, subtle. I've seen my share of it in papers, texts, etc, and when it's done correctly it serves to make the reading more engaging.  Adding an emoticon should not be necessary - if you really feel it is then I would seriously reconsider whether the preceding humour is actually appropriate.  A good comedian does not laugh at their own jokes - humour needs to convey itself on its own merits.

That said, if you're adding humour - be absolutely certain to get at least a few people to read it first for feedback.  Sometimes an objective eye can save you from doing something foolish!

Emoticons can be very good when used in informal pieces of writing. If you consider your PhD thesis to be an informal piece of writing and wish your readers to consider it so as well then I'd say emoticons would be appropriate. Best of luck.

Is your research on the social implications of the use of emoticons ;-)?

To be honest I wish some abstracts contained emoticons. For example, something like "In this paper we show that our method proves the Riemann Hypothesis and Fermat Last Theorem, as well as squaring the circle" would sound much better with a "(:D)" at the end... But none of the situations I can think of could really be a thesis.

If object of the work is emoticons, then obviously emoticons can be displayed as a content (like with strong language); 2. If icons in general are appropriate (e.g. some dense diagram already overloaded with text), then emoticons can be appropriate too, for example, for marking "happy path" vs "failure path".

I'm sorry, but even the emoticons in your question were annoying.

Although this is a dumb question, +1 for asking it and avoiding a mistake.

Following what @jlovegren said, it's likely that no one other than yourself will thoroughly read your dissertation, including your advisor. At least from my experience in science, it's actually been said out loud by professors that "no one will read it." ... Go for it.

I will make it public together with open source code on github. so in this case I better leave it out :)

The answer to this question depends on whether you'd like to be taken seriously once you've earnt your PhD.

I would even avoid any kind of humor in the thesis, let alone emoticons. I find it in bad taste. Science is not literature, it's a text for study, and different people have different kinds of humor. Also, scientific humor tends to be really not funny.

I highly value humor and love to entertain whenever I can. In formal writing, I would encourage you to go ahead and write something that you think would be funny. Then reread it. Then reread it again. Read it aloud. Read it silently. Read it again tomorrow while you edit it. And read it again. And again. And again. Imagine reading it out loud to the people with the least sense of humor you know. Imagine reading it to a person with a furrowed brow, in a bad mood, who is trying to find anything they can to rip apart what you have laid down, to find a reason to cast it aside as useless junk.
Then read it 10 more times, as any good writer must inevitably do. Now imagine reading it again in 10 years (if you are lucky and what you've done turns out to be of use).
Personally, I have found that after the 20+ time I've read something, it isn't even funny to me anymore - and I think I'm hilarious! But even the best jokes I've ever told never landed 100% of time, or to 100% of the audience - and in formal writing I don't even know who the audience is - they might speak my language as a 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) language.
Being stubborn, I like to write humor into anything I make. But after the 20th read through I realize it just isn't funny any more, even to me - and if that's how a reader would feel who doesn't get or appreciate the joke, it just isn't worth it any more to me to include it. I'm basically writing a technical instruction manual, and there's a reason those things aren't really funny - you are supposed to read them and refer back to them repeatedly, and jokes get old fast.
If I really like a joke, I'll save it for when I can make it in person, in a talk or in a presentation, when I can personally hear the laughs (or gauge the room and know to skip it entirely). Or I'll be funny on a website like this so I can wallow in a mass of glorious unicorn points.
But in formal writing like a thesis or important research paper? Well, you decide after you've read it for the 30th time if it is still worth inclusion, or if that emoticon makes you smile - or if you want to poke it in its tiny little semi-colon eye.

Wow. Speaking of people in a bad mood, no offense but it sounds like you're in a bit of one yourself just now. But anyway, +1 for poke it in its tiny little semicolon eye. That's so curmudgeonly it's actually kind of funny.

@DanRomik Haha, maybe I should have included something to show I wasn't actually upset ;) But now, based on context, I'm not sure how to convey that isn't a sarcastic smiley. Maybe :>) no I think that's a snowman. @;0 wait no that's not right either. Oh well ¯_(ツ)_/¯

One glorious unicorn point to you for being funny while delivering the appropriate message!

+1 for "...or if you want to poke it in its tiny little semi-colon eye".

A emoticon is an informal communication tool. You can use humour in talks to great effect, as you have to hammer home the message, and sometimes a snappy saying saves the day and captures the essence of your message in a single sentence. But in writing, unless you really, really, really know what you are doing, you should use plain old english, anything else is double plus unsmart.

That's actually just a colon.

@Nelson "Poke it in it's tiny little colon eye" would not sound right, though. ;)

I think some dry humour, if well thought out, can have a pretty legitimate place in technical writing. (I consider this paper a classic, for example.) I don't see this extending through to emoticons, though.

-1 "Or I'll be funny on a website like this so I can wallow in a mass of glorious unicorn points." - Have read through all your previous posts and yet to find evidence of this. ;-) :-p (stay calm, no downvote actually cast, it's a joke!)

It seems it might depend on where in the thesis  the emoticon comes. Somewhere in a heartfelt acknowledgement is very different than a footnote in the introduction.

I now imagine reading poking something in it's colon eye, when you don't speak english well apart from range of english words describing anatomy, particularily digestive system.

Many writers make very effective use of humor in their writing, and this extends to technical and scientific writing as well. Donald Knuth is one author I can think of who does this extremely well, which is one of the many things that makes his books memorable and enjoyable to read. So I think there is definitely room for some small self-deprecating remarks in a PhD thesis, if this is done in good taste and in (great) moderation so that it doesn't distract from the main, serious (unless your thesis is about humor or comedy ;-)) content.
With that said, I am going to challenge you to make funny jokes in your thesis without using emoticons. If you think about it, the emoticons don't really add anything other than clarifying that you are making a joke, and in that sense they are a kind of humorous crutch. A truly good comic writer would never use one, since it simply won't be needed. So why don't you try to write humor like a pro and show that you take your jokes as seriously as the rest of your thesis? ;-)
(yes, I know I didn't follow my own advice, but I guess I like self-referential humor too much to be able to resist the temptation...)

good discussion as well!

I was thinking about Don Knuth as well, but thinking about it even his tongue-in-cheek papers (first one that comes to mind) don't contain jokes per se. He might make a point in a funny way, but it is always on topic and furthers the understanding of the reader. Although to be fair I haven't looked into TAoCP in a while, I might misremember.

@Voo good point and you are correct about Knuth, but obviously no one is suggesting to include some kind of random, unrelated "three whatevers walk into a bar" jokes in a paper/thesis. Indeed I agree the joke has to be on topic and be used as a way to make a point related to the subject being discussed, or at least have some loose connection to it. I thought that goes without saying, but maybe it doesn't, so you're completely right to point it out.

@Dan My point is a bit more subtle, let me try again: The way I feel about Knuth's text, the funny bits aren't additions or superfluous just because there's an opportunity to include them there. If Knuth is funny, it still feels like he's furthering the readers understanding or expanding an argument - something that he'd do anyhow, he's just doing it in an entertaining manner. This for me is important: If you can only be funny by adding a superfluous sentence or paragraph, your thesis is probably better off without. The genius of Knuth is that he manages that.

@Voo well I thought I understood your intent before your last comment, and still do. I agree with everything you've said. And it sounds like we can also agree that Knuth is a master at this sort of "scientific writing humor" and would be very difficult indeed to emulate.

Feynman was also a bit unorthodox in his papers, but I'd argue that takes a lot of practice and skills to get in the level where you can successfully do this. Unlikely a good idea for phd candidates (or even recent phd graduates)...

Another answer that is over-generalizing the types of emoticons. Not all emoticons are for 'humor' or meant to be 'cute' as others said. They are used to express emotion in the context of the sentence it's used in.

@NiCk I was referring to the specific usage of emoticons mentioned by OP in connection with "making fun", "laughing" and "smiley", so clearly a humor context is implied. I have no doubt that Shakespeare, were he alive today, would become a master at expressing deep and complex emotions using emoticons, so in that sense I partially agree with you, but that is not the issue at hand. Furthermore, while it's true emoticons can be used to express emotions, they are a rather "cheap" or lazy way of doing so. Language, when used effectively, is a much better tool IMO and as such should be preferred.

A few points:

There are ways to deal with it using just text. For instance, I would consider something like this in the acknowledgement acceptable:

And thanks to my significant other, who has been my biggest supporter. And thanks for cooking me ramen every night (smile).

Yet, the above technique and the emoticon are very similar to those Please Applaud lights in live filming studios or those embedded laughing sound tracks in comedies—very forced on. Good writers can make readers laugh without resorting to using pictures or explicit hints on how readers should feel. That kind of masterful techniques are probably what we should learn, rather than slamming an emoticon there.

Making jokes on oneself is fine, but making jokes on another author in an archived document deserves more care. Show your joke or joke-like statement to a few people with different backgrounds (age, seniority in academia, sex, race/ethnicity, etc.) just to test the water. Sometimes jokes that we ourselves consider as funny can appear rude, tasteless or downright insulting. Be careful and if you’re not sure, take the joke part out. You’ll have plenty of writing occasions to demonstrate your talents.

+1 for the laughing sound track analogy - very apt, and your point 2 is similar to the point I was making in my answer that truly good comics don't need things like emoticons.

To me, if your example text in point 1 were included in the acknowledgement section of a thesis it would simply indicate the author couldn't work out how to communicate the humor without labeling it "humor."  I see that's what you're saying in your second point, but I'd hardly call it "acceptable;" more like "barely tolerable" (for a scholarly paper).

I like the suggestion of using (smile) instead of an emoticon like :^).

Unless your dissertation is an examination of the use of emoticons in modern electronic communications, you should not use them at all.
The dissertation is not the place to be cute. . . it should be a serious piece of scholarship.  The author's ability to conform to the established norms of scholarly writing is as important as the actual substance of the work.
Bottom line:  Don't do it.

Emoticons are a way of expressing emotions, not just expressing cuteness or humor.

Please enlighten me on how a sad emoticon equates to something remotely 'cute'. There is a stigma that is attached to emoticons. Emoticons are to express emotion, which could mean anything, not just to represent 'cuteness', or 'humor'.

(From a Comp Sci / Math perspective:)
Considering how it's unlikely you should even be refering to yourself in the first person in your dissertation at all, I don't see how you would get to a situation in which you would want/need to use an emoticon. Even an ellipsis (...) should not be used lightly, I would say.
Of course, my view does not apply:

In the acknowledgements section, which might well be written in the first person (although I wouldn't use emoticons there either).
In academic fields where research may be presented through a personal account, a narrative. I understand these exist (?) and those might have other rules than the one I'm used to.

As a one-liner: You're describing, not telling. No emoticons.

I did a physics PhD and I wrote the whole thing in the first person. The examiners did question that practise, but my justification was that I wished to distinguish clearly the work I did from the work that other members of my team did. I also find constructions such as "the author did x,y,z, and then he found that ..." to be circumlocutious. However I would agree that emoticons are to be avoided everywhere.

@Calchas: In math, neither of those styles would be appropriate. It's customary to pretend it is the reader which is doing the work together with the author as a guide. So you would write: "Let us consider X. If we take Y and apply Z, it becomes apparent that... etc etc. we have thus established that W."

"we" and "us" is first person

@Calchas: But it's the first person of the reader, not the author. Or rather, not of the author as a real person.

I feel we are drifting into technicalities here, but the pronouns "I", "we", "us", et c. are all first person. If instead the text said "The author expects that the reader will find the material of considerable interest", that would be third person in the grammatical sense. I certainly agree with you that most technical works avoid the singular first person ["I", "me"], but I decided on balance I would breach that convention for my own reasons.

@Calchas: Edited my answer to better split hairs.

Technically speaking, $f:(\mathbb{R}:\mathbb{R}) \to \mathbb{R}$ is a perfectly legitimate occurrence of the emoticon :( in a math thesis. :)

@FedericoPoloni interesting, so we can have unhappy math emoticons but not smileys...? :(

For objective purposes, yes; for subjective purposes, no.
If your object of study involves it, then obviously it should be used but remains as your object. As an expression of your own subject-position, then no.
That's not because anyone will read the dissertation that carefully though if you go the academic route for tenure review they do look at it again quite often.
But above all, you should not do it for your own sake. After my thesis defense, the chair of the department told me something somewhat uncanny: "Congratulations. This is with you forever. You could ;leave your spouse and be single again but you are forever now a phd". That was admittedly strange but the point is that it is yours in the archives forever. Do you think you would like an emoticon years from now? Very hard to say.

Emoticons provide value. They convey emotion/intent when the text itself is ambiguous. For example, at the beginning of an e-mail:

Hey Joe,

and,

Hey Joe :D

The first example is ambiguous (depending on the reader). It might imply urgency, displeasure, frustration, and of course just an informal 'hello'.
The latter, with the emoticon, rules out a lot of those negative connotations and solidifies it as a friendly greeting only.
Since the intent of all text falls somewhere on an ambiguity spectrum, some people like to over-do-it on the emoticons. Personally, in informal text like on IRC, i like to prefix all messages with an emoticon because I dont have the time nor inclination to think about how my text could be intepreted by the 1500+ participants. Bam, emoticon, my intentions are clear.
But let me be clear here - the text itself COULD have been less ambiguous from the start. The e-mail could have been written "Hello Joe", "Oi Joe", and just "Joe." The emoticon is only useful because the text was written lazily or in haste.
This is why there is such a split in popular opinion about the use of emoticons. Old school scientists will see them as unnecessary and the mark of a lazy, informal, perhaps childish mind. Others will realise that emoticons aid communication and is likely to become the predominant form of written communication in the future - for better or worse.
Should you use emoticons in your thesis?
Science is generally behind-the-times with modern culture, and emoticons are no exception. While emoticons will probably be present in more and more academic papers going forward - particularly as accessibility to non-scientists becomes the norm - its up to you if you want to be the one "pushing new frontiers in scientific culture"  - or as others will certainly see it - the canary in the coal mine marking the end of well-thought-out prose.

From a practical point of view is it worth the risk?
At my university there is a style manual to follow so that all theses are equally ugly regardless of department.  You have to have the thesis printed on a nonstandard paper size on special weight paper at the campus print shop as if it were ready to be bound.  A editor with no knowledge of the field reviews the thesis and accepts or rejects it based on the rules in the style manual.  They are checking for spelling, grammar, margins, font, etc...  Turnaround time is measured in weeks.
It doesn't really matter if your committee finds it hilarious.  If the editor rejects it you may miss a deadline and delay your graduation.

There is a far better than 99% chance that nobody outside your committee will ever read your dissertation. It's probably 50-50 that even your advisers read the thing in its entirety at any point (This likely depends on your particular field, of course). So you could probably slip anything you like in there without serious repercussions.
That said, your dissertation is not the place to be cute. My personal rule would be:
You are the author. You are the single greatest authority in the entire world as to what belongs and what does not belong in your work. If you truly feel that what you are suggesting aligns with what you are attempting to accomplish with your work, than by all means include it. If you are not sure/confident that it belongs, it may be wiser to leave it out.

This might be true in your field. I occasionally read people's Ph.D. or M.Sc. theses/dissertations.

But would you say that substantially more than 1% of the total universe of dissertations get read by others? I'm certainly open to the possibility than I'm way off on that estimate. But in my experience, dissertations that offer something interesting to their particular field get turned into published papers before anyone reads them. Dissertations that don't offer anything interesting sit unopened on library shelves for many years and are eventually purged.

Yes, I would say that. You're massively over-generalizing.

(Note to the OP: THIS is a situation where an emoticon might arguably be justified)... @einpoklum :P

If it's well written, your thesis might actually be read as a reference and the emoticon may be noticed. If it's not well written, then you may be able to hide your emoticon, but it wouldn't matter, as your problem would be defending the thesis in the first place.

Frankly once the thesis is written and published it doesn't matter what other people find you've written in it.

@Calchas: They might not be bothered by the emoticon, but it certainly does matter what other people find you've written in it. Well, to the extent that others' opinions of your writings matter at all.

That said, your dissertation is not the place to be cute. Not all emoticons are used for 'cuteness', though. That's quite a over generalization.

I often read the "related work" section of a dissertation as a starting point for finding important papers in some area.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні