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Long hyphenated surname – what to do when I begin publishing?
I have a hyphenated surname, namely Kinara-Williams. I intend to be published in the future when I graduate and during/after my PhD.
But Kinara-Williams seems like a mouthful to cite. After reading other threads, it appears pseudonyms are frowned upon in the scientific/academic community; so what do people usually do?
Just go with the preferred one?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

As other have commented, the length of your hyphenated surname is not problematic at all: keep it and don't worry.
Fun fact. Uh, well, it took me years to discover that Lennard-Jones was actually just one person and not two, and that the Hanbury-Brown-Twiss experiment was devised by two people and not three, Hanbury Brown (no hyphen) and Twiss. For  Jaynes-Cummings, instead, I tought they were two and they were actually two - amazing! But I would count this as a minor inconvenience, which actually taught me not to make assumptions on surnames (and, as suggested by E.P., this popular page discusses other false assumptions).

In the "Hanbury-Brown-Twiss" case, I'd argue you're not at fault: It was whoever introduced that abbreviation that unwisely connected the name parts in such a way that the information which ones denote one person and which ones denote two was lost.

Right, according to the AMS style guide (http://www.ams.org/publications/authors/AMS-StyleGuide-print.pdf), it should be "Hanbury Brown--Twiss" (where the '--' is LaTeX shorthand for an en-dash).

@ChristianClason Yep, but many books report it with the hyphen, and it was probably written as this on the blackboard when I was a student. Also the way I heard it pronounced at the time suggested a 3-people group.

Which stresses @O.R.Mapper's point (as I meant to do): The books and lecturers didn't care that you realized that these were two people, so it's their fault and not yours.

@ChristianClason Sorry, I phrased the sentence in the wrong way, but I wasn't contrasting yours and O. R. Mapper's remarks: I should've written "in fact" instead of "but" at the beginning.

@theonlygusti Yes, but not on my keyboard, and I am too lazy (and too much used to TeX shorthand by profession) to fiddle with unicode code points or copy and paste.
Massimo Ortolano: Sorry to have misread you, it seems we agree violently :)

The "double-barreled" last name without a hyphen (e.g., Hanbury Brown or Devan Watton) seems to be a uniquely British phenomenon. (I'm not counting prefixes like "Abdul" and "Abu" or "von" or "in 't" which don't really stand on their own.)

Thank you for your reply @MassimoOrtolano. I'm not surprised you made that mistake, given that many terms like 'Watson-Crick base pairing' are afloat.

@aeismail Double-barrelled surnames without a hyphen are nowhere near unique to Britain, unless you restrict your attention exclusively to English-speaking countries; for one, a majority of Spanish-speaking countries use two surnames. You're less likely to have seen them in the English-language scientific literature, which forces authors to hyphenate, drop a surname, or risk their (main) paternal surname getting mistaken by a middle initial, but it doesn't mean it isn't the case.

More generally, it's a good idea to be wary when making any of these assumptions about people's names in a culture-agnostic setting.

The Spanish tradition isn’t a double name—it’s two unique names from the father and mother. I was referring to a compound name passed down between generations, which isn’t the case in Spanish.

@aeismail You might be surprised - there's plenty of compound surnames in both Spain and Latin America (making for triple-barrelled full surnames, and in some cases quad-barrel names).

@E.P. Yes, I know that page, maybe I'll link it. In fact, some time ago, in a comment to another question I cannot find now, I made an example of a student in one of my classes who had surname "XXX" on his university ID just because he really did have just one name and the software used by the student office didn't accept this; so they put "XXX" as placeholder.

In Spain, Portugal and Iberoamerican countries this happens often, since two surnames are used (one for the father, one for the mother). A long name is not a problem. My reference manager is full of Sánchez-Martínez, Prats-Rodríguez, Jiménez-Muñoz, Gómez-Rodríguez and the like.
The main advice in this situation is be consistent in the usage of your name to avoid confusions and that your publications are considered as made by two different authors (e.g. Kinara and Kinara-Williams).
Then you have two options:

Use your complete name. This decreases the probability of being confounded with another researcher.
Use one of your names. In this case it may be preferable to use the less common, again to decrease the probability of confusion with another author.

These names are all misspelled, incidentally: Portugal and (as far as I know) Spain don’t hyphenate their compound surnames. But since journals and reference managers deal so terribly with non-hyphenated multi-word surnames, they adapt. Ridiculous.

Thanks for your reply @lodebari.
And that's an interesting occurrence @KonradRudolph!

@KonradRudolph That's only partially true. Most authors that introduce hyphens between their surnames (in my personal experience as a Spanish speaker) do so personally as a conscious decision, so calling them "misspelled" isn't quite there - it's just a conscious choice by the author to use a non-standard spelling. Moreover, in my experience, the primary pressure to adapt the spelling isn't from journals, it's from university bureaucrats and to avoid English-speaking academics who are prone to errors in citations.

@E.P. Right, that’s what I meant (hence “they adapt”). But you’re right, University systems are actually even worse at handling names correctly than journal publishing systems. A friend of mine was flat out told that his employer’s personnel management couldn’t deal with the umlaut in his name. — It’s a small, poor employer, unaccustomed to technology or international personnel; it’s called “University of Oxford”.

@KonradRudolph Indeed, it is most often a conscious choice. I usually use my first surname, but occasionally I have used both without a hyphen. The result is that when Google Academic and other tools reference those articles they consider my first surname as my second name. so, better use it.

Side comment:
If the hyphenated name is due to marriage, it is common to use the premarital name, especially if papers have been published before the name change. This has nothing to do with a name being too long, but rather to preserve an academic identity that has been established before the marriage.
Assuming you don't have a pre-hyphen identity you wish to hang on to, I wouldn't worry about it too much. I also have a hyphenated name and as far as I can tell, the only difference it makes is that my name is more likely to be abbreviated on posters, slides or SO usernames.

Like others said, be consistent. Both myself and my wife's names (which are different) are longer than yours and hyphenated and it's not a problem.


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How to review a revised paper I have already rejected?
I reviewed a manuscript submitted to a high-impact journal. The quality was low and I believed it could not reach the journal’s standards even by revision. I clearly recommended rejection.
Now I received the revised version for review. Two of three reviewers (myself included) had suggested to reject the original paper. The third reviewer suggested a major revision. Nonetheless, the editor had asked the authors to revise the manuscript (I never experienced this before).
Clearly, the editor is in favor of publishing this paper (for personal or professional reasons; I cannot judge). What should I do? I publish 80% of my works in this journal, and it is very important for me to avoid any conflict with the editor.

recommend rejection again as you did in the first time. Simply argue that, in your opinion, even after the new revisions the manuscript cannot make it to the high bar of the journal. The most you can do is exactly that: make a recommendation. If the editor, for whatever reason wanted to give a second chance to the authors, then good for them.

I don't think your conclusion that "Clearly, the editor is in favor of publishing the paper" is justified.  It's quite possible that the editor is trying to be fair to the authors by giving them a review of the paper.

I think you meant "Clearly, the editor is interested in learning if the revision addressed the concerns of the reviewers."

An editor who really was committed to publishing the paper would probably pick a new set of reviewers to replace those who had rejected the paper the first time around.

Too vague. It helps if you tell us why the quality was low, and what the recommended revisions were, and what revisions they actually made. If it's still unfixable IYO, why precisely?

Out of curiosity, does this journal offer pay-for-publish open access?

@BrianBorchers (5 comments up) I agree that it's not justified to conclude that the editor is committed to publishing the paper. But normally, two "reject" and one "major revision" reviews would cause the editor to reject the paper. It is clear that the editor believes some compensating factor exists. Whatever that factor may be, I think it's reasonable to say that it biases the editor somewhat in favor of publishing the paper. ("bias" here not necessarily indicating anything inappropriate)

When you recommended rejection, you presumably listed a series of issues that made it unacceptable.  On the revision, you go back and repeat the list of issues and simply say for each one, "The revision has/has not corrected this problem".  If you reach the end of your list and all the issues have been corrected and no new issues have been introduced in the revision, then you say the paper is now suitable for publication. If the issues have not all been corrected, then you say "The paper is still not suitable for publication because the issues I noted previously have not been corrected."

+1'd : Objectivity > Guessing other's motives. If the paper adressed fully the first review objections and did not introduce further issues by being updated, then it is publishable now. Profit for humanity. Thank you mr. reviewer for your hard work.

If you reach the end of your list and all the known issues have all been corrected, then you should probably check if the revision has introduced new problems that weren't there before...

If the reason for recommending rejection is that the research simply is not of sufficient interest to merit publication in the given journal, then I don't see how fixing specific issues would suffice.

@tobias-kildetoft insufficient interest is not the reviewer's decision. It's the editor's decision, although of course the reviewer can make suggestions. If the editor has sent you the manuscript for re-evaluation, then you the reviewer have to assume that the editor has made their evaluation on interest already, has decided against your original suggestion, and wants to evaluate other aspects.  (I suppose a revision could remove sets of experiments and end up less interesting than the original, and you'd flag that, but as a change.)

I disagree. The importance and interest of the results are among the things I am asked to judge as a reviewer, and may well be the main deciding factor in my recommendation.

@TobiasKildetoft: It’s certainly part of what the editor is asking you to judge.  However, there are many legitimate reasons why an editor might make a different final decision.  E.g. you report “this is good work, but not quite up to the journal’s usual standard of notability”; but the editor knows that the journal is trying to increase its coverage of topic X, and so is willing to stretch their notability standard a little.  They’re not necessarily disregarding your judgement — if you’d said “this is far below the usual standard of notability”, they might have decided to reject.

This answer is clearly the right one. Don't make this personal. It isn't worth getting into a war with the editor over this, which would make it seem you are personally invested in this paper not being published. Just objectively review it again and state your reasons for your review. Our lab has had papers rejected after second review, that could happen here.

I don´t see the problem. Review it how you would review any other paper. If it is still (after the major revision) not up to the standards of the journal, recommend rejection.

You should review the paper from scratch.
One thing I wonder why nobody considered in the comments and answers is that the points raised in a rejection report are usually different from those in a report asking for a revision.

When you suggest rejection, you raise the points justifying why the
manuscript cannot be revised (otherwise, you should recommend
revision).
When you suggest revision, you list the modifications, which might be
suggestive or tiny corrections such as typoes. These are not normally
listed in the former case.

In the first report, you have probably argued why the manuscript is not suitable for publication. For whatever reason, the editor has felt that the manuscript can be revised. If you think the revised version is capable of being further revised to be publishable (from your answer, I assume the current version is not). Then, you should review it from scratch like a new submission. If you want to suggest a major revision, you should clearly mention the points, which can be modified in a further revision.
Since the authors have probably addressed your points. If you want to reject the manuscript again, you have to justify why the revised version is not acceptable.

the points raised in a rejection report are usually different from those in a report asking for a revision  Not in my experience. The editor makes the revise/reject decision, the most you can do is recommend, so you don't actually know what your review is going to be. I write them exactly same, and I think most of my colleagues do as well.

@iayork it doesn't matter what the editor decides. When you suggest rejection, this means that the manuscript cannot be revised. In this case, you list the major problems. But when recommending a revision, you mention any tiny mistake to make the manuscript publishable.

this is absolutely not true in my field.

@iayork what you say does not make sense logically. If the manuscript can be revised with the points you raised, then, why have you recommended rejection? Recommending rejection is like abandoning a sinking ship because she cannot be saved. If addressing your points is enough to save the manuscript, why abandoning the ship? By your logic, no manuscript should be rejected. We recommend rejection (in any discipline) when we believe the problems are fundamentals cannot be solved (we abandon the ship). In this case, we do not bother to list all tiny mistakes such as typos (or you do?!?).

I do a complete review for everything I get. Yes, I flag typos and make other comments even if I think it should be recommended. Why? Because (1) I don't make the decision, the editor does, and if I don't bother explaining my points then I'm denying the editor important information, and (2) the reason I review papers is to help the authors make a better paper. Even if the paper is rejected from this journal, hopefully my review will help them improve it and submit it elsewhere.

Interesting debate. Perhaps write it up as a sepetate question.

it is very important for me to avoid any conflict with the editor.
I think it works the other way around.

The editor chose you as a reviewer because you publish in the journal, and can therefore judge papers submitted.

not

The editor will be more likely to accept your papers because you are helpful to him by reviewing.

It is also a good idea to not start a war with the editor, though.

At least in my field, the reviewer's job is not to accept or reject the paper.  That is the editor's call.  Your job is to provide enough information to the editor to make this decision.
"It can't meet the journal's standards" is a subjective statement, and it is up to the editor to decide this anyway.
Write objective statements in your review. First of all, are the results correct? Does the analysis back up the paper's claims?  As for the less objective aspects, such as impact and significance, don't just state your opinion, but back it up.  Don't tell the editor what to decide.  Instead, help him decide.
I have seen reviews where the referee clearly didn't go through the paper in detail because they decided early that the paper is too insignificant to merit a proper review.  They gave a few unhelpful criticisms and recommended rejection. In reality they simply didn't get the point.  This is of course a somewhat extreme (but sadly not too uncommon) situation. Probably this is not what happened in your case.  Nevertheless try to avoid even the appearance of such an attitude.
After you have given your general assessment, provide whatever recommendation you feel is correct. But keep in mind that this is merely a recommendation, and it is the least important part of your review.

Existing answers suggest either review from scratch or going through your reasons for rejection point-by-point. You may need to do both.
There are two reasons for a reviewer seeing very serious problems with a paper. One is that there are real problems with the underlying research. The other is that the research was not conveyed clearly, and the reviewer had a basic misunderstanding.
The usual advice for authors who think they have the second case, reviewer not understanding the paper, is to rewrite to make the paper much clearer, and specifically to prevent the reviewer's misunderstanding. The assumption is that a reviewer not understanding a paper is a symptom of a very unclear paper.
Reading the revised paper as though it were a new paper may give you a different basic view of the research. If so, forget your prior objections and continue to process the paper as though it were new.
If reading the paper from scratch does not substantially change your view of the research, look at the reasons for which you rejected it and see if they have been handled. If not, continue to recommend rejection for the same reasons.

Treat the manuscript as if you've never seen it before. Re-evaluate the paper like you normally would and in the future avoid invitations from that editor, if at all possible.

@MartinBonner Agreed. Actually, I now think this is a very bad answer. It makes no sense to pretend you've not seen the paper before: why forget everything you ever knew was wrong (and also right) with it?

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Conditional acceptance then rejection – worthy of appeal?
We submited a manuscript to an Elsevier journal eight months ago – we basically got a clear straight-forward rejection:

Although the reviewers commented favourably on your manuscript, there were significant criticisms that preclude publications. These comments indicated that your manuscript has some serious weakness. We would be willing to reconsider the manuscript after it has undergone a major revision that takes into account the criticisms of the reviewers, with no assurance of acceptance

We spent about seven months, performing more experiments and answering all concerns raised and we resubmitted. We thought we received a conditional acceptance. Two reviewers replied that we addressed all their concerns, third reviewer however commented that the work cannot be possible (simply based on his/her belief) and went on to ask a few things that is not really relevant and suggested that we discuss a big bunch of stuff unrelated to our study in the discussion (i.e., add a lot of speculations).

The reviewers commented favorably on your manuscript, but had some worthwhile suggestions. I am pleased to accept your manuscript, based on your revising it according to the recommendations of the reviewers"

So we followed the third reviewer’s suggestions and amended accordingly. We did a couple more experiments, all supporting that our initital conclusions were correct. Then 2.5 weeks later, we got a rejection:

I regret to relate that your manuscript cannot be accepted for publications. In addition to the comments of the outside reviewer’s, the editors have considered whether merely editorial or technical corrections would result in a priority score sufficient for acceptance, by comparison to other manuscripts we currently receive.

No new reviewer comments were included. Prior to sending us the decision, the editor did contact us about declaring whether a western blot was cropped.
We were expecting that the journal would accept it, as it stated: “I am pleased to accept your MS”. I felt like that we received a conditional acceptance but now a rejection. So did I get a rejection because our western blot is cropped? If they really don’t like that, we can always re-run the gel and present non-cropped images (these images are not presented in the manuscript, but on the response to reviewers only). Is this the reason why our manuscript was rejected?
It is worthwhile to appeal? Or would I be wasting time? If we didn’t receive a high priority score, why did they indicated conditional acceptance in the second decision letter?
I would really like to hear some honest opinions, cause my own ones are likely to be biased influenced by my frustration and disappointment.

Before submitting a formal appeal, you could contact the editor with a question instead: Based on the earlier conditional acceptance of your paper (include a quotation with the specific wording), how is a rejection possible after you have implemented all recommendations? If the editor notices that he made a mistake, he might be motivated to fix it.

I believe you have misunderstood what the first "acceptance" meant (which could have been worded better to prevent this).
A journal generally has many editors and an editorial board.
The typical journal review structure has your paper go to a single editor, who decides if the paper passes first muster and assigns reviewers if so.  Once the review process is complete, that editor then decides if the paper is to be rejected, revised, or advanced to the full editorial board. Your "conditional acceptance" seems to be the first editor advancing the paper to the full editorial board.  The board then made the final decision to reject the paper.  Note that some journals (in some fields) can have a high rejection rate from the editorial board. So while that initial "acceptance" can feel like a victory you're not actually out of the woods yet.
I expect your chances for a successful appeal to be small.  The decision seems only slightly based on your paper and mostly on the technical details of how the journal selects publications.  They're unlikely to bend those to your benefit.

Thank you for your comment. Appreciate the feedback. The editor-in-chief did email me that morning "In reviewing xxxx, it has been noted that figure S2 has been cropped.  Please note the cropping with line drawn on the figure and indicate in the legend that the line indicates that the figure was cropped.   Please resubmit the paper with this change." - we simply just declared that we cropped the images.

Tests samples were run in Well 1 and 2 and positive controls happened to be in well 8. So we combined the lanes digitally. We didn't thought this was a problem, because the purpose of these experiments show that the points raised by the 3rd reviewer is not accurate (as it is negative results and will not appear in the final MS). ------ so it bugs me a lot and can't stop to wonder, if we did the gel all in parallel, would our MS get accepted.

If an Associate Editor gave us conditional acceptance. Why would the full editorial board reject us?

I think this answer depicts the situation correctly, but it should put more blame on the editor for communicating the preliminary decision so badly. The word "acceptance" should never be used if the paper can still be rejected by the editorial board.

so i guess from the above comments, its not worthy to send an appeal : (

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What style of reference is the below?

I was asked by an editor to write a reference like this. What kinda reference style is this?

Could you link to the journal where you got this from?

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What is "double blind" reviewing?
I have been visiting some journal websites and I found that
some of them state that they use a double blind review process.
What does it mean?

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Should I use the book that is recommended by the professor?
My physics professor's course is BASED on a book, so he recommends buying one particular book. The book is good, but there are many other, better books.
Would it be a good idea to buy books other than what the professor recommended?
Note: I can't buy both, because those books are expensive!

This translates to, "my prof is equivalent to a book set. Shoul I buy those books or just let him suprise me?"

Buy whatever book you choose, BUT be prepared to have to search for things and not have the same examples to work on. Annoying when trying to find your own errors.

Borrow both books from the library, if available. Check for yourself, which book is more useful for you. Usually the notes from the lectures should give you the most of what you need to know for the exam. If the lecture is based on a book, I would prefer this book, since then I wouldn't need to search much which takes most of the time.

@M. Roch that's a good answer, why not post it as such?

Are you sure the book you have in mind is better than the professor's recommendation? If so, you can show the book to her and see if you can change her opinion.
The downside of not using the course book is that you may have it harder finding what the professor is teaching in the book. This is especially troublesome if she is assigning homework problems directly from the book. Occasionally there might even be a difference in what the two books say, and the professor might default to the course book.
Something else you might be able to do is buy the course book, then borrow the new book from your university's library. You probably can't do it the other way, because course books are usually in high demand and the library won't be able to lend the book to you long-term.

You would probably just be making additional work for yourself by using a different book, even if it is superior. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do one thing or another, just be prepared for the extra work that might be implied. This might be especially true for exam preparation.
Some professors will ask students to read a section of the text before a lecture so that they are prepared for what will be said. Usually this would be by chapter/section rather than by named topic.
But, if you have the option to speak to the professor you could ask him this question, mentioning the other proposed book(s) and getting his advice. Perhaps he will tell you why it is ok or not ok. Perhaps there is some feature of the suggest book that he will be especially dependent on for the course.


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Claiming that the model is the first model of its kind
I read somewhere in this Stack Exchange that it's best to not make strong statements (such as stating the previous method is completely wrong) etc. In my paper, I thought that stating this the model I am presenting is the first model for this type of device would bolster the chances of publication. It is true that there hasn’t been any model for this type of device, at least not to my knowledge and extensive search.
But is claiming that this is the first model too strong a statement? Is this looked down upon in academic publications?

If you must use that type of language, at the very least preface it with "to the best of our knowledge".

Also, keep in mind that your journal may ban that sort of language, though this will vary case-by-case. For example, American Physical Society journals forbid this.

It could be.. i actually searched for the word "first" in the journal publications. Out of 7 publication 1 of them did state something "it was the first time" ..

But you may want to put the milder formulation into the cover letter, regardless of whether it is permitted in the actual text of the paper.

@TheVee.. Will do...

If you write that you are the first, but you are not, the reviewers will let you know.

In 1988, in their paper Quantum Hall effect devices as circuit elements, Ricketts and Kemeny presented a first circuit model for quantum Hall effect devices [1].
Here is how the model is presented in the abstract:

The electrical behaviour of a quantum Hall effect device is described
  in terms of an equivalent circuit. This circuit is able to model the
  principal electrical characteristics of an ungated Hall bridge device.

In the Introduction:

In this paper we describe the behaviour of a QHE
  device in terms of an equivalent circuit.

And in the Conclusions:

An equivalent circuit has been presented that can represent the DC
  electrical behaviour of a Hall bridge device under QHE conditions.

This is just a random example, but I think that it aptly shows the right way to present a first model: review what is known about that device and its behaviour, so that it becomes evident that, to your knowledge, there isn't any model of that kind currently available; tell the reader what kind of model you are going to describe and what phenomena it can model.
Then, let the reader decide if it's really a first one.
[1] B. W. Ricketts and P. C. Kemeny, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys., 21, 483, 1988.

Good points.  If the reader discovers that it is indeed a first, then it is an "Eureka" moment.  If he simply reads about it in the first paragraph, then it is "Wow, this guy is pretty egotistical", even though it is the same paper...

Thank you. I combined your approach of stating the current literature and combined it with a weaker statement "To the best of our knowledge...". I presented the "To the best of our knowledge.." statement towards in the conclusions rather than at the beginning, just so the reader has time to read and see whether it is indeed the first model so far.

You can say, "to the best of our knowledge after reviewing the literature, this is the first model of its type."

In my (engineering) subfield, the disclaimer "after reviewing the literature" is assumed, and thus is best to omit.

Thanks.. I used this statement without the "after reviewing the literature" in the conclusions section rather than at the beginning of the paper..

"after reviewing the literature" is redundant -- how else would you come to the belief that this is the first model?

@DavidRicherby - natural languages are redundant.

@Davor So? The redundancy comes from the concept that the writer is expressing, not the language that they chose to express it in.

@DavidRicherby - so complaining about redundancy is pointless, because it's normal.

@Davor No, because this isn't the normal kind of redundancy, as I already explained.

... belatedly, I can't help commenting "this is the normal complaint about redundancy"? :) Mercifully, whenever a discussion gets to this point, there's not real problem left, apart from semantics. :)

Instead of saying "this is the first model", ask yourself the following questions:

Why is this model useful?
What is the limitation of not having such a model?

I assume you have valid reasons for both questions, otherwise this model should not be published at all. Then say something like:
Previous work on analysing this device failed to provide a sound guarantee on some property for lack of a formal model... To address this problem, we present a model for this device, which allows us to express the property A....
The novelty is clear, if it is the case, without saying it is the first.

A model is a thing that is used to describe and predict the behaviour of a system.  If it is worth creating then there is a thing that it aims to describe which has value and which others would find useful.  It therefore stands to reason that others have done work in the field where this model would have utility and it should also stand to reason that their efforts in making other types of progress in this field have been frustrated by the lack of a model of this sort.
What is far better is to summarize efforts in the field to date - it's fine to include citations of work which are beyond the scope of the model itself and rather focus on the types of work that would use, or could use, the model you are presenting.  Include citations that demonstrate the state of the art and it should be clear that the methods currently in use by others leave a gap in descriptive, predictive, or functional capability that could be serviced by the model you are presenting.
By telling the story this way, you not only make it clear that you are presenting something novel, you also frame the context in a way that demonstrates why it is important.  This also keeps the focus on the topic itself rather than on irrelevancy and trivia.  "I'm first!" is a side effect - let others make that observation and focus on the work.

As the other answers here attest, it's not universally looked down upon, but there are better ways to say it.
For example, instead of simply saying that it's the first of its kind, explicitly contrast it with the other popular models. This lets the reader know that your model is different while you tell them why they should care about this fact.

That’s a good point. This is one of the reasons why I am wondering whether using the word first is appropriate or not.
It seems to me that all papers have to be the first of its kind, even though it builds upon another paper, you can claim to be the first person to do that.
So it begs the question of how much differentiated you have to be from the previous studies to be able to use the word “first”?
Or perhaps I am overthinking this.  For now, I am just going with the “To the best of our knowledge, strategy”, otherwise I will have to rewrite some sections again..


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Reapplying to a previously accepted Ph.D. program, will this be considered rude?
I looked online and saw one question that was similar, but it seemed like this question was for undergraduate admissions. Another similar question here on academia.stackexchange addressed differing the Ph.D. admission to reapply elsewhere, but my understanding of deferral, based on discussion with faculty and graduate students, is that you are still committed to that school but are just taking a year off before you begin the program. Also, I have concerns with the possible issues highlighted by aeismail that may arise from deferring as an attempt to apply to other schools. In that respect, my question is a slightly different in that it involves actually rejecting a school's offer.
I am currently in a situation where it looks like I got rejected from my first choice Ph.D. program, but got interviews at some of my later choice programs.
I believe my chances for my first choice Ph.D. program will be higher in the next upcoming application cycle due to a number of additional research experience and presentations.
In other words, my situations is as follows;

I wish to go to Uni A, but got rejected.
I received interviews by Uni B & C,
I believe I will have a better shot at Uni A the next cycle,
I reject offers (assuming I receive them) from Uni B & C for this cycle,
I reapply to Uni A, B, & C the next cycle,
I will attend B or C if I get rejected from A once again,

Although reapplying to Uni A wouldn't be uncommon, would it be considered rude to reject offers from B & C and then reapply the next cycle? And how might one approach this so that it's not blatantly obvious that I rejected the offer because I wanted to go to Uni A and I am reapplying with the intention that they are, more or less, 'safety' options? I would imagine that I could mention that my current research interests do not line up and this could be a reason for rejecting the current cycle, but I was curious as to how others may perceive this.
*I would still be very happy to go to Uni B or C and work with their faculty, it's more so that I believe I would later regret not having reapplied to Uni A when my application will be much stronger.

What reason will you give B/C for refusing their offer? If they will really put an eye on you in the first round, when you reject them, they will probably prefer another, equally qualified candidate for the second. It might not matter if you are well above the cut-off, but if you are not, you may not get a repeat chance.

It is possible you don't need to reapply to B and C. Here was my experience:

Applied to uni A and B, got offers from both
Accepted offer from B. Rejected offer from A.
Attended B for one year, decided to transfer/start over at A
Contacted uni A. They were happy to accept me based on the previous application. I didn't even have to reapply, they simply considered it deferred matriculation.

I don't know how typical this is, but it may be something to discreetly look into. Maybe you know an administrator or faculty member at B or C that could give you the inside scoop.

As far as I know transfer between grad school is pretty rare unless there's some pretty compelling reasons for doing so.

I wasn't suggesting the OP transfer. Only suggesting he/she might not need to apply twice to the same program.  However, I personally know three other people who transferred between grad schools, so at least in my field, it is not very rare.


text:
Becoming professor and showing autonomy - when to exclude supervising professor from co-authorship
Following common scenario:
You wrote a proposal for a larger several million € research project with several university partners after your PhD, the project got funded and you are the project manager, the professor is project leader and official applicant and principal investigator mainly visiting the regular meetings of the research alliance but not doing the micromanagement of employees, Phd students etc. He also encouraged the project leader to go for tenure, write a habilitation thesis etc.
The problem I see: A researcher seeking tenure has to show autonomy, especially postdocs should leave their Phd supervisor for 1-2 years and join other research groups or industry before coming back to the old group and leading a subgroup. This is not written into stone, but advantageous facing a committee deciding professorship and many professors did go similar way.
In germany now the junior professorship exists with and without tenure after the professorship. But also the habilitation is still common to work for a professor.
But how can you sell your autonomy? Should you negotiate hardly with your professor to publish some work on your own with him as a coauthor (who did neither conceive the experiments, in best case only review the publications internally before submission). Do you highlight you have to compete with junior professors later facing committees and need this autonomy in publications, also technically you are not the principal investigator, but do 95% of work to get money and conduct the project?
It's a delicate question to discuss this with your professor which you owe more or less for your PhD, but who also made profit from your work. Ethically, I know my professor has not many good reasons to be a co-author doing not much more then visiting meetings and reviewing the publications. Technically this is the common case, but due to junior professorships I think the situation changed a lot in comparision to 10 years ago when habilitation was the common and only way to become professor working until then for an already tenured professor.
EDIT: this is experimental sciences. So you are often dependent on expensive lab equipment of your supervising professor. Maybe an idea then is also to work more on theoretical papers, then authoring alone should be acceptable/negotiateable with professor?

I don't understand "the professor is project leader..." Which professor. The "you" in the description or that person's original advisor? Make it a bit clearer.

Probably field-specific, but in my experiences in German academia, I do not find at all that the level of autonomy of young researchers is mostly determined by formal titles (juniorprofessor / post-doc etc). Instead, it mostly depends on the understanding of the senior professor in the group. I have seen late PhD candidates and early post-docs publishing independently, and junior professors being hired as a kind of "glorified post-doc".

@Buffy project leader/PI is normally the person officially applying for funding, ín my case idea, proposal, arranging the research partners has been done by me, my professors appreciates this of course and I will manage the project, research, PhD work, but technically he is responsible. This is not uncommon here, for a funding of several millions a fresh PhD graduate cannot be the experienced project leader, strategically it's better if the professor applies and you work for him. This the common case in germany, PhD students/graduates write proposal, professor gets funding :-)

Have you stayed at the same place after completing the degree? So the "professor" was previously your advisor and is now your boss? Or are there two people here? You said "which you owe more or less for your PhD".

@Buffy I though implicitly clear, I didn't change place. Additional note, normaly it's common to become a professor only at a university you have not been postdoc most of the time in Germany. The case PhD, postdoc, professor at same place is nearly not existing, at least no one never heard of it in Germany. But for seeking professorship at another university I'm currently at I need to show autonomy after PhD, the question is how, I cannot leave the project is my idea and needs my expertise.

Assuming that I understand it now, I do have a suggestion. Given the norms in your field, in which the PI is (I think) a co-author of every paper and who controls the grant and the research, you can't really distinguish yourself without help. But if others speak to your qualities more than you do, it might be enough - or even better. That would be the case in the US, anyway. Especially if that other is your PI and former advisor. You are, after all, his academic descendant.
Suppose you are looking for a position elsewhere. Suppose your professor writes the letter that says you wrote the grant and were the lead investigator for much of what grew out of the grant. Not your words, but theirs. That is pretty strong.
That may be easier to negotiate than trying to write as sole author, acknowledging the professor. Such might be possible, depending on personalities and norms, but maybe not.
At the opposite extreme is excluding your professor unilaterally. I'm guessing that would be breaking norms in your field and place. It is also a terrible way to move forward if you become alienated from that professor. They are not going to be there for you either in career moves or research opportunities.
In any case, it would be useful to have a conversation (or series of conversations) with your professor about this very question. "How can I distinguish myself here sufficiently so that I can move to an independent position? Can you help me do that? What should we do to enable it?" If the professor is honorable, and you don't suggest otherwise, you should get the help you need. And the professor, knowing the entire story may have options for you that none of us here can conceive of.

Thanks. I will of course talk with him, I asked here to sound out how much I can/should negotiate with him. Of courese I would expect he mentions the project related responsibility and work in a letter, additionally I have the other two professors of the research affiliation. But an option would maybe also to co-authro all project relevant stuff with my professor and to work part-time on a very different new topic with other collaborators, publish here without him, still using his lab, for new PhD students I would have to acquire funding then as a PI myself, but I have 4 years to do so.

Junior professors have a similar situation, they get their position for  6 years and maybe 1 or a half additionally, but the rest they have to acquire by funding. They do have their own lab space though, but this is no big advantage if you don't need much.

"Given the norms in your field, in which the PI is (I think) a co-author of every paper and who controls the grant and the research, you can't really distinguish yourself without help." It is important to point out, that this "norm" is considered as academic misconduct by DFG: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/19396/11808

For both sakes, reaching a Habilitation or being attested "Habilitation equivalence" by a hire committee (either one is mandatory to become a full professor in Germany), you need to show that you have moved on. Papers that do not list your PhD supervisor as a coauthor are considered a strong indicator for this.
However, this does not mean that you need to ban you former supervisor completely. If you have a few reasonably good papers after your PhD without them (say: one out of four to six, ideally also in a field/topic that differs from the one you addressed in you PhD), you should be fine. No hiring committee would expect total independence in you situation.
So, yes, it is a delicate question to discuss with your professor. But nevertheless, you should discuss it openly. A honorable prior supervisor will be able to deal with this. And of course, on the papers that do not list them as coauthor, you can still thank them in the acknowledgements.


text:
Do citation counts explode like news in social networks and when did this start?
From facebook/youtube it is known that if a video/post gets a distinct amount of likes, at some point the overall like number of this video is going to explode due to a network and avalanche effect.
I was recently wondering while thinking about bibliographic metrics like h-index, how much  such effects apply in 21st academic publishing and also up to which decade (before internet existed, before strong networks in internet existed) this effect might also retroactive have pushed for instance publications of the 95-00 more than 90-95 years, also the real impact actually was not much higher. Probably this effect can be identified in time by looking when number of worldwide citations exploded, although the number of researchers just grew steadily.
Is the bibliopgraphic science investigating such questions? Any books or review papers I could read. I'm especially wondering which open source data sources there are to tackle such questions, if there are. Best I could google is this:
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/bibliometrix/vignettes/bibliometrix-vignette.html
I'm asking as I'm wondering which citation count is actually necessary in some fields to see if a paper really had an impact on the community, didn't penetrate it, was mediocre. This will depend on community size and field. But I'm wondering how to estimate it, kind of Fermi-problem.

This seems like a naive view of citations. They aren't "likes" or even recommendations to read a paper. They reference things that actually support and form a background for a new work.
So, if citations suddenly explode within a field, and people are working honestly and not just gaming the system, then that field must be pretty hot with a lot of actual research going on.
And gaming the system outside a small working community is pretty hard since a lot of people need to cooperate.
But some fields are indeed hot for a while, with a lot of research, hence citations. But then they cool. Some future discovery may heat them up again and the cycle repeats. An a fresh discovery can often lead to new ways of looking at a problem and that, alone, will generate new ideas and new papers and new citations.
But a small citation count doesn't necessarily mean that a paper is unimportant. It may be incredibly important, but only to a small set of researchers. On the other hand, a less seminal paper might have a high count if it appears in a popular field.
And a there are a lot of people who aren't drawn to popular fields, thinking they will be just a face in the mob.
But research in general is hard. Facebook requires little actual intellectual effort. A paper in Nature requires quite a lot.
“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” ~~Albert Einstein

I didn't compare academic publishing with facebook, but the technical mechanisms behind both social networks are probably very similar nowadays with papers, blogs, academic news sites etc interwoven... And this might have implications I'm trying to pose and question. You probably heard of citation cartels and you mention gaming of the system too. Even of academia.se you have strong avalance effects, for answers that seem important, but that are sometimes only very popular among the voters. If this sometimes becomes more and more often is rather my question and maybe there are bibliograpic

Let's exclude niche and small research communities, I'm talking about the big questions/communities, condensed matter physics, quantum computing etc. where papers undergo avalanching to citation counts of 2000-3000 at some point. But where does this start?

Do you really want to count "citations" in blogs and news sites as the equivalent of references in scientific papers? The frequently mentioned "Russian" troll farms can run up citation counts pretty fast, I'd guess.

No but blogs and news sites add upp up to a paper/topic becoming popular. Somehow I have the impression you doubt the avalance effect exists in academic publishing, so you think a paper that was cited 2000-3000 times was cited for importance always? I want to know how big the bubble behind this might be, when does the populariy of a paper overcome its importance, is there are measure, e.g. very fast increase of citation count. Important research penetrates a field slowly as other groups have to reproduce results etc. in experimental fields. A paper might just be popular, without significance

When, for example, the Higgs Boson gets confirmed the paper causes a  stir in the popular press. A lot of people will say "Hmmm, interesting." But how many people seeing that papular account actually go and read the paper? Understand it in detail? A dozen? So, is the paper "popular"? How many could even give its title the next day? How many actual researchers get on a plane to CERN? There is hardly ever an "avalanche" in research in such cases. Some, yes, and occasionally, yes, but not generally.

I think that's the ideal, but in reality, at least from what I've seen in my field, is that there is definitely an avalanche effect of sorts due to the way many authors write introductions. They are often too lengthy and too general. Authors will simply cite 5 to 10 papers which are not necessarily related to the problem they're tackling but rather serve as a general introduction to the field. These papers are generally highly cited and often not particularly groundbreaking.

@Vibex There’s also papers on things like research methodologies that rack up tens of thousands of citations thanks to researchers going “I’m gonna use this guy’s methodology in my paper”


text:
Interviewing in July - would start date necessarily be September?
I applied for a position with the application deadline of April 30 and was contacted for an interview last week. My interview is in mid-July. Can they reasonably expect a candidate to start in September if they make a decision quickly? If so, would it be appropriate to ask for teaching release for the fall semester? Not sure if asking for a january 2016 start-date would be a deal-breaker from their perspective when they are moving so quickly. Thanks in advance.
Edit: this is in Canada.

What country? I get the impression that universities in the UK can and do move this quickly.

Just a note that it is certainly possible for things to move this fast: The position I have now had a deadline of April 30th and a possible starting date of July 1st (though they were fortunately flexible on the starting date).

This may depend to some extent on hiring norms in your field/country.
I would assume that if they are interviewing people in July, it is because they really need someone to start teaching in the fall.  (Otherwise they would wait another year and hire for next fall, when there would be more candidates available; I would assume that by this time of year, many people are off the market.)  As such, I wouldn't think they'd be likely to go for a deferred start date, or a complete release from fall teaching.  A modest teaching reduction is conceivable; you may be able to tell during the interview whether this would seem to be in line with their needs (e.g. if there is one particular class that they really need someone to teach).
The size of the department may also give some indication - a large department is more likely to have some flexibility than a small one.
You might be able to negotiate for classes that require less advance preparation (e.g. introductory courses instead of advanced).  You might also be able to get more money for relocation, on the grounds that you're moving on short notice.
But my gut feeling is that you should be prepared to show up and start teaching in September.

It might, it might not. It might mean they are desperate to find someone to teach, but it might also mean they are desperate to fill the position before the university takes it away. For example, the current thinking is that my university is going to impose a hiring freeze any day now. We are currently running a number of searches. As long as candidates are willing to sign a contract, we don't care when they start. In some ways, it would be better if they delayed the start date.
After you have an offer. Then you can ask when they want you to start. At that point asking for a delayed start and/or teaching release is reasonable (at least for US tenure track positions at R1 universities).

Thank you. Typically posts I see have a desired start date, so in this case it was a mystery. Good advice - i won't ask unitl I have an offer.

If they have interviews in mid-July, they will make decisions in late July at the earliest. Give a week or two to negotiate the details and sign a contract. You're then in a position where a candidate doesn't even have sufficient time to give their two-weeks' notice as is common in the US (with much more time required in other countries if you want to quit your job). You also have to find a place to live and actually move.
This will be no news to your new department. They understand these timeline issues, and I cannot see anything wrong in asking them for their timelines. In particular, I cannot come up with any reason why such a question could possibly be construed in any negative way: after all, it shows that you are serious and are thinking through the practicalities of making the commitment to move. This is better than having a candidate who never seems to care about these issues, possibly because they have no intention of accepting the offer anyway and only wants to use it for negotiations at home.
In other words: Ask whatever questions you have when you're there. They invited you, so they at least think about wanting you to come. They will be more than happy to talk you through the things that aren't clear to you, and they will likely also listen to issues that will present hurdles to you (such as giving your current employer the legally required minimal time for terminating your employment, moving in time, getting ready for classes while moving, etc). None of these questions should catch them off guard.

There is no reason they cannot make a decision within a day of the last interview. Many post doc supervisors would be fine without much/any notice if the post doc was leaving for a TT position. I would not ask at the interview as it makes it sound like the start date matters. I would much rather have the offer in hand and then try and negotiate a later start date or generous moving allowance.

Thanks both - I will take a cautious approach. My sense is that I may learn this over the course of the 2-day campus visit. They were not flexible at all about the dates for that, either!


text:
My h-index is very low and I want to increase it
Nowadays universities judge faculty based on their h-index, to be promoted from assistant to associate or to be hired as associate in some universities you need at least a h-index of 10. I am struggling to increase mine, I have tried all the tips I found online, shared my papers on social media such as Research Gate and Linked In.
How can I increase my h-index otherwise?

Answers in comments and side discussions have been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

Hint: Check your H index with and without self citations. Some hiring comittees are smart enough to know the difference, and many of your possible competitors might not look as good as you thought they do.

It's very similar to gaining reputation on SE. Looks like you have started! ;-)

Write papers that people will want to cite. In particular:

When you come up with a new concept/technique, write a good explanatory section, so that people will refer to your paper for in depth explanation.
Make something useful, like a piece of software or a benchmark that people working in your field can use. Write a paper that people using your work can cite. For example, the introductory page of PonyGE2 contains a "how to cite PonyGE2" text.
When you make something people can cite, make it easy to cite it. Include snippets for BibTex and other citation systems that people can easily copy-paste. (BibTex in particular is unpleasant to do entirely by hand; so take that work off your readers' hands.)
Use good titles for your paper, good abstracts and pay attention to the keywords. These things matter a lot for whether people will find and decide to read your paper, and that's necessary to get them to cite it.
Collaborate with a lot of different people in your field. If you write something good with X, chances are X and X's colleagues are going to be citing that paper later on. Also, people looking at X's papers also get to see your paper.
Collaborate with famous people in your field. They probably got famous by being good at it (so learn from the best!), and they get published in the more prestigious journals. That's good for increasing your citation odds.
Write about interesting things that other people will want to follow up on.
Supervise good students, teach them well, and co-author their publications sometimes the student exceeds the master, but the master also gets a boost from the student's success.

"BibTex in particular is unpleasant to do entirely by hand" - just use doi2bib.org

@yar Or Google Scholar.

Writing surveys is an option, if there aren't already dozens on the topic.

@yar or Zotero or Mendeley. They can all export citations. I don't think "making it easy to cite" is gonna make a difference. The collaborate suggestions are the best ones. H-index doesn't care about author contribution. If you are on the paper it counts for your index! SO just get on lots of papers!

In addition to writing papers that others will want to cite, another important factor is simply the number of publications that you have- if you look at the profiles of researchers who have h-index numbers of 30 or more, they typically have total publication counts of 100 or more with a highly skewed distribution of the number of citations.
Another issue is that citation counts build up over time.  In some disciplines, papers published 20 or more years ago are still being heavily cited, while in other disciplines papers are typically only cited for a couple of years before they become out-dated.  If you're in a discipline where the citations come in over a very long time, then it can take decades for your H-index to build up.

This is a known weakness of H-index: what constitutes a good score differs noticeably by (sub)field.

The most sustainable and rewarding "tip" is to do good work which is interesting to your peers, and present it well. All other approaches are merely tactics that will only get you so-and-so far. I still include some of them in this answer, since they might be useful to increase your h-index to 10 in a given timeframe.
Self-cite. While a citation record that mainly consists of self-citations might raise some questions, it's an accepted way to get started with building up your record.
Cite other people. Cite active researchers in your field broadly, so they notice you and cite you back. Don't shy away from including multiple references to the same group of authors, so they notice you even more.
Find a "gold-mine" topic. There are some topics that are more amenable for extensions and follow-up papers then others. Once you have such a topic, each new paper allows you to ethically cite and discuss all previous papers in the same line of research.
Spin-off publications. In some fields, it's OK to apply a tactic which is known as "salami publications" in other fields: Publish separate papers which are closely related to another work, for example, a tool or a dataset developed in the context of the work.
An important point is to not overdo it with these tactics. For example, in a book recently published in my field, each chapter contains a reference list with a significant (n>10) number of self-citations. At a certain institute, each PhD thesis contains a separate "Further reading" biography with dozens of references to the institute's papers. I would surely bring such cases up if I was involved in a relevant hiring committee and the topic of research metrics came up.

@Roland Indeed, h-index without self-citations is even mandatory to specify for some funding programs (like Marie Curie). However, for the vast majority of job applications, it's not, and there's no convenient tool that calculates this number for you like Google Scholar does. I don't remember big discussions about self-citations in hiring committees I was involved in.

Are you saying funding programs require you to report an h-index, or if you do you need to report it without self-citations?  And in what fields do people the h-index for hiring discussions?  I haven't seen it in math.

@Kimball The application process for Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (one of the most prestigious grants for young researchers in Europe) requires the applicant to specify their h-index excluding self-citations. I have seen the h-index being considered for hiring decisions in computer science.

@Roland: Those are (common) bad practices indeed, but they're simply symptoms of "publish or perish". :-/

Obsession with the h-index, in particular among young researchers, is an extremely unfortunate and destructive aspect of the current environment in academia. My suggestion: Don't look it up for the next five years.
Look at the positives: You may end up writing interesting, novel papers that get you recognized, hired and/or promoted.
The down-side: Maybe you neglect to write large numbers of papers on fashionable subjects that can drive up your h-index, some idiotic hiring or promotion committee will punish you for it, and you miss out on that great job.
But then again: Maybe you do write large numbers of papers of fashionable subjects, but they fail to drive up your h, or that hiring committee actually has some sense, and considers your work to be boring me-too work, and you still don't get the great job at FancyU.
In what situation would you rather be?
Yours
Thomas (h=xx)

I have become a bit cynical from what I have observed over the past years in my university. Tactics to boost your H-index:

Force your graduation students to publish their work with you as co-author (or better, promote yourself to first author as supervising is hard work). Numbers count.

Be co-author as often as you can! Promise to lead a follow-up publication but never live up to your promises. People will buy it over and over again. Some of your colleague researchers will manage to be cited successfully and you will benefit from their success.

In the incidental situation where you are first author, invite a co-author with a high H-index. Your work may actually get accepted.

When reviewing papers (anonymously), force the authors to cite your important work even if it is not relevant for their research.

Supervise as many PhD students as is allowed and be their co-author

Participate in (literature) review papers. Once accepted these are often cited frequently.

My advice: Find a faculty elsewhere. You are more than your H-index. Own your research and publications. Be proud of your work.

The H-index is largely a function of how many large projects you are involved in. Without having a large number of co-authors who all write papers, it is impossible to be competitive. If you write a brilliant paper that earns you the Nobel Prize, your h-index will only increase by one. In the meantime, I know one telescope group where everyone who has ever worked on the telescope is automatically added to all future papers produced from the telescope observations. Those will see their h-index steadily increase without effort.
Unfortunately, Google Scholar considers the h-index to be the only measure of scholarly success. AdsAbs also offers normalized citations as a measure, where the number of citations is divided by the number of authors on a paper. If your normalized citation count is high, you could use this as an argument. And don't write a paper that you expect to get fewer than ten citations.

What, and throw away the results of a completed work, just because you know it will never increase your H index?

This is needlessly negative. H-index never goes down for having a little-cited paper so there is no harm in writing an obscure paper.

Also, some important papers don't get cited a lot directly (for example, because everyone is citing a follow-up publication), but that doesn't mean they weren't important. H-index isn't perfect, it isn't and it probably never will be the only impact metric. Don't fall into the trap of "writing towards the test".

@ObscureOwl re: "no harm:" there is a significant time cost to writing that paper, that authors might be able to spend writing a paper which is more useful to the greater scientific community.  I'm not saying "don't write them" but I don't think "no harm" is really accurate.

It's better to write one significant paper than two insignificant papers.

@NorbertS That is a pointless generalisation. "Significance" is not a yes/no property.

Consider what gets cited the most - reviews.
If you want to increase your h-index, then in many areas reviews are the way forward. Often reviews are invited, but you solicit the invitation.

Actually, I suspect that reviews are one of the worst ways to improve your H-index. It means spending a lot of time on one paper that might get hundreds of citations, when for the purposes of an H-index you'd probably be better off writing three simple papers that get a handful of citations each. Of course, this is one reason the H-index is so silly.

We are discussing H-indices at the ca. 10 level. Increasing this in a timely fashion requires quite a lot of citations, well above the average for most journals. An average research paper in, say, Angewandte Chemie (IF = 15, much of which comes from their reviews) would require many years to garner ca. 10 citations, whereas a review there would typically pass this in ca. 6 months.
Remember, IF is the average number of citations in two years, and most papers are barely cited. A strategy of 3 research papers vice a review only works if you have reasonable research in a reasonable journal.


text:
Existing hypothesis, same country, but different years and setting – is it plagiarism?
I am working on a master-thesis research paper. Recently, I have chosen a research topic and found a related survey dataset to work with. However, just now, I have found out that other authors did the same work for the same country, but used a different survey and for years earlier. Now, I am confused about what to do. If I would carry on the research, would it be considered as a plagiarism, even though I will use another survey for later years, and work in a different setting?

What part of this would be plagiarism?

Reproducing a published study is good science. It isn't plagiarism as long as you properly cite the earlier work and don't copy from it.
It is especially good science if you have any doubts about the conclusions of the earlier study or about its applicability in new circumstances.
But, to be published yourself, you will need to be clear about why you are doing this and what, if anything, is new and different in your study as compared to the old. That isn't an ethical issue, but just the fact that publishers want to publish the new and novel.
If your methodology is the same, you need to say that and cite the original. If you have made changes you need to carefully explain them along with the reasons for the changes. If your conclusions are different you need to analyze why that is and explain it.
But it can be good science. There is quite a lot of published science that isn't good. Often and especially if it was done by someone with an agenda beyond seeking the truth.

The answer of Wrzlprmft gives a good explanation of plagiarism and how to avoid it.

Plagiarism is selling somebody else’s idea as your own. Therefore as long as you properly cite the other paper, you are in no danger of committing plagiarism. The worst that can happen is that you are reproducing an existing study¹ instead of doing something novel. Whether this is a problem, is for you and your supervisor to decide, as you know the differences in detail.
On top, suppose you hadn’t found out about the other study: In this case you would not have committed plagiarism since you cannot possibly use the ideas of others without knowing them. Had you published your paper in this case, you would perhaps² be guilty of sloppy literature research, but not of plagiarism. However, the evidence may (incorrectly) point to you being a plagiarist and thus you still want to avoid this situation.

¹ which scientists almost universally agree on being done too rarely.
² if the other paper is sufficiently easy to find

Probably not.  However, it is not possible to be certain without reading both studies.


text:
I have been pigeonholed, how can I solve it?
I can program, write papers and research. I'm better at research, but due to the lack of programmers I've been assigned programming tasks in my current institution. Additionally, I have little evidence to support that claim in my CV, I am "good" now (and I have strong personal evidence), but I don't have a long track of publications to prove it (because, to be honest, I wasn't good before).
How can I prosper in research if my CV and the interests of my superiors point me in the opposite direction? Is there any escape?
PD: I was a PhD student in another institution, I'm close to finishing my PhD but I don't get any spare time from my current programming obligations in the new institution, where I am a postdoc.

Please can you include in the question, a statement about whether you're a student, a technical assistant, a contract programmer, a post-doc researcher, or whatever? And please also include what your supervisor / line-manager said about your question above, when you asked them.

@EnergyNumbers I have added details about what I am. I didn't ask my supervisor and I don't know how to approach this topic, but I can foresee a poker face and a change in the conversation topic by previous questions. They have a lack of programmers and they are not going to assign to program to someone who can't do the job or that they appreciate more (because they are their own PhD students and now postdocs, it's emotionally logical, I'd say)

Thanks for that, it helps. Has your PhD transferred to the new institution? Is your PhD supervisor the same person as your post-doc line-manager? And how long have you been employed as a post-doc programmer?

It is (sincerely) a mind-expanding experience to be on this site and see how other parts of academia operate.  Up until now I would have thought "I am a postdoc" and "I am close to finishing my PhD" were strictly contradictory.  I don't disbelieve you, but could you (or someone else, if this is a common thing) perhaps add a few word of explanation?

@PeteL.Clark I think that, even in mathematics, some institutions are a bit flexible about the meaning of "postdoc".  Positions that are called postdoc positions are sometimes offered to people who have not quite finished their Ph.D.  There's usually a requirement that they finish it reasonably quickly, say in the first year of the postdoc appointment.

@Andreas: Since many institutions only formally award degrees at very specific times (sometimes as rarely as once a year), it is reasonably common for someone to start a postdoc with some kind of statement saying they've satisfied all the requirements for a PhD but will not officially receive it until such and such a date.  I have also heard about what you describe -- mostly for tenure track jobs -- but I've never been able to understand it.  With hundreds of applicants for every available position, why do you hire someone who doesn't have the degree they need to have to keep the position?!?

Also, in the current case one would have to think that the OP has been at his current job for at least a semester, and the point of the question is that they seem -- at best! -- indifferent to whether he completes his thesis work.  Does this not seem a little strange to you?

@EnergyNumbers the PhD has not been transferred, I continue being a PhD student in my old institution. The thesis is written and the only thing that remains is the defense, but I need to satisfy some requirements about publications (yes, I was doing terribly bad at that) before being able to do so.

@PeteL.Clark I've been here for about one semester, I am technically a postdoc here and having a PhD was supposed to be a requirement for the position, yet not a strong one. This position depends on public funding, due to this when I entered here there was an official note stating that I have a PhD and I have been awarded the position. I find this more confusing than mind-expanding, if you get any clear picture of this please share it with me. People here seem to be indifferent to my thesis, and they will eventually (every 3 months) ask about "how is that going?", it looks like courtesy to me.

"[W]hen I entered here there was an official note stating that I have a PhD and I have been awarded the position." What, there is an official note saying that you have a degree that you don't actually have?!?  That sounds potentially very distressing: in some places, your accepting such a position could be interpreted as lying about your qualifications, which could be grounds for your dismissal.  Of course it may not come to that, but still: not understanding the conditions of your employment sounds very stressful.  What does your supervisor say about this??  Are you employed in the US?

@PeteL.Clark I've never seen that note again, so it may no longer exist, I was also not notified about it, I found it on Google (checking if there was something) and there it was, now it isn't. I didn't pay more attention to it. It may still exist somewhere, but certainly there is no document where I state such a thing, so I think I should be safe. To be honest, this is the least of my concerns. I'm not in the US.

@Trylks: Outside of America I don't have any sense of how these regulations work.  So let's get back on topic: you are a postdoc who is concerned that he does not have enough time to do research, including the research he needs to do to get his PhD!  At best, that's okay with your employers for the present.  It sounds bad for you and especially for your future...which is the whole point of your question, as I understand it.  A "How's that going?" from your employers every few months is not at all helpful.  You should (I think; what else?) find out their expectations quite explicitly.

It is clear from your recent questions that you feel exploited in your lab, and it is good that you want to do something about it.
However, first things first. What is your agreement with your current mentor / lab head / whoever? Essentially, what is your "job"? If you have been specifically hired to "help out with the programming", or something like that, it will be difficult to convince whoever is paying your salary that you now actually would like to do something different. Not impossible, but maybe also not easy.
On the other hand, if you have actually been hired to do research, but now end up being more of a scientific programmer because that's what the lab currently needs, it is time for a good one-on-one meeting with your lab head. You wrote in a comment that you do not foresee this going well, but I really see no way how you can change your situation without talking about it very explicitly to your lab head. It should be easy to see for most sane persons that not only your lab has needs, but you and your career have needs as well (and working as a scientific programmer can easily be a dead end for an academic career - no first-authored publications, no faculty job). Try to make a plan for a suitable compromise between you helping out the lab with your programming skills, will still being able to progress your own career. Should your lab head really not be willing to compromise at all, it may be time to move on.
Possible compromises could include:

Hiring an actual scientific programmer, perhaps with funding that you help acquiring
You training some of the junior staff to do their own programming
You helping others in their programming problems, but ultimately let them do the majority of it themselves
You supervising some undergrad or master students that can help out with programming tasks
etc.

that they appreciate more (because they are their own PhD students and now postdocs, it's emotionally logical, I'd say)

That's not logical, that's BS. A lab where people "coming from the outside" are valued less than those that "have always been there" is a terrible, toxic environment.

The specific statement was: "Although design and implementation is the main focus of the position,
the candidate will have the possibility to conduct research within our research group". I find it not completely true: I can't make design decisions, I'm finding a bit hard to get any actual research done and when I do it (in my spare time), I'm also finding hard to get proper (not very diluted) attribution for the research I get to do.

Two disclaimers: I'm highlighting the conflict in my questions (because that's what worries me) and I'm not sure about how bad the situation is, it could be better, it could be worse. Diagnosis takes time, I'm trying to be prepared. There will be an important meeting next week and I'd like to have a clear picture about what is going on (and what can happen next). BTW: thanks a lot.


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Do postdocs have reasonable chances to acquire non-federal funding in the US?
This article argues that the portion of federal funding is decreasing more and more in the US while funding by corporate and philantropical sources is increasing within the last decade.

I'm wondering if this shift/drift, which looks quite significant in the chart to me, means a much worse likelihood of success for postdocs trying to acquire funding, due to the fact that most postdocs have no reputation/infrastructure (offices, labs, staff,...) and are unlikely to be chosen/visible by/to corporate/philantropical sources.
Is the situation as I imagine it myself or did maybe postdocs never had high likelihood of federal funding in the US (which would be very different to europe) and the competition is not increasing drastically with less federal funding. I would like to see some numbers/statistics, no common sense/experience arguing. I hope there are maybe also statistics how much funding assistant, associate, full professors acquire and how this has changed over time.
EDIT: Independently from the discussion in the comments about postdoc/assistant professor definition, to me the answer/insight is if the drift from federal to corporate/philantropical funding is siginificantly reducing the chances of PhD's, assistant professors to acquire funding and most of the non-federal funding goes to universities/full professors? Any statistics/experience would be interesting here to me.

I’m not sure if post-docs, as individuals, ever had a large share of any of that funding. Usually post-doc funding comes as parts of larger grants. Sure, there are some programs for post-doc fellowships, but those have never been all that large.

@JonCuster Ok, which sounds very different to europe where you can get funded for some years with own staff as a PI after having a PhD. But I also suspect for assistand/associate professors in the US this shift is quite "perceptible" and making them more dependent...

Who are you defining as a post-doc? The people I think of as post-docs in the US are people who have jobs as post-docs. It doesn't make much sense to think about what funding they have access to (unless you consider fellowships specifically, which are different), because they have their position and are a post-doc specifically because that funding exists. There's no such thing as a post-doc without an office/lab because they are indeed hired to a position in an office/lab or sometimes as an instructor/lecturer.

@BryanKrause minimum definition in germany: Everyone with PhD hired by university or public research-institution, but no tenure. I think even Jun-Prof. in germany are counted as post-docs, as long no tenure. Not sure about US assistant professors, afaik still under evaluation for tenure (?)

@MichaelSchmidt Your post is tagged US; I don't think anyone would call assistant professors "post docs" here in the US, although in mathematics in particular, which is overrepresented at Academia.SE I would say, they have a bit of a peculiar system where indeed an assistant professor in math might be thought of more like a post-doc.

@BryanKrause isn't the vast majority of postdocs in the US like in europe without a assistant professor position, but still allowed to submit funding proposals as PI?

Remember that the US had a serious recession starting in about 2008, from which we recovered slowly. There were serious attempts not to solve the crisis for political reasons. I'll guess that accounts for the drop off at about that time.

I'd say that the European and US definitions are generally not compatible. A US assistant professor is not considered a post-doc in any way. And, there are a variety of grant programs specifically for new professors from a wide range of funding sources.

@MichaelSchmidt - Post-docs generally are not considered as a PI on a proposal (except post-doc specific fellowships). It is an inherently temporary position as a stepping stone to a permanent position.

@JonCuster I know and this is IMO not different to europe, that's exactly the point of this question to understand if the necessary money you need for such a temporary position is harder to acquire. Federal funding in germany has the point to get a PhD graduate his own funding at a chair of a professor (the prof will not be PI). And in US you also don't become assistant professor shortly after earning your PhD, isn't it?

@MichaelSchmidt I'd say a post-doc in the US is more like a "more independent graduate student" than a "less independent assistant professor" - like graduate students, there are opportunities for independent funding, but independent funding is not the norm (independent meaning not coming through a more senior professor-track PI).

@BryanKrause so you say in US, before you are full professor, there is no real chance to acquire funding as a PI for a 3-5 year project?! Weird, standard in germany, the DFG (analog NSF) offers you to apply for such projects with a PhD, a professor/chair hosting your project is not more than a mentor in the best case, I have seen projects up to 2 mn € volume granted to postdocs themselves being not even within tenure-track. Funny, then non-federal funding is maybe the only source to independent postdocs/PI (which don't rely on a senior prof) and increasing. Also an answer, but hard to believe.

The entry level tenure-track professor position in the US is an "assistant professor" who applies for grants as a PI. Their source of initial funding depends on field; in my field, it is common that these professors are given startup funds which typically come from university research slush funds (aka, the 'overhead' costs they charge on top of grants) one way or another. Federal granting agencies like NIH also often have easier path routes for early career faculty. They could also collaborate on existing grants, or may be applying for funds at the same time they are hired.

An "associate professor" has tenure, typically ~5 years after starting as an assistant professor. A "full professor" has been in a professor-level position for a long time, maybe 15-20 years.

Universities can grant PI status to non-tenure track faculty and they can apply for the same grants as professors, but they need to show they have the skills and resources to be a PI on the project...which are roughly the same overlapping qualifications to be a tenure track professor.

@BryanKrause  Sounds then like only PhDs who were offered assistant professor position carry on with academic career, this disturbs me, because in germany PhD who don't get tenure-track offered can and do often still come up with a very good research idea and acquire funding and get professorship offered after a successful managing of that project. But we also don't have here 50-100% overheads, in general 20%. Last question, what is roughly the ratio of PhDs to assistant professors in US academia? How long PhDs try to become assistant prof after PhD graduation before movin industry?

I think tenure track in Germany is a lot harder to get than in the US, though I might be wrong. The way US treats tenure is that if you are deserving of a long-term role in academia you are deserving of a shot at tenure; there is a very limited non-tenure pipeline (which, incidentally, is the one I am on :) ). The % of overhead means nothing, really. Money is fungible.

PhD to professor ratio is massively dependent on field. My field is new and used to be growing massively; almost everyone who got a PhD in my field 30 years ago is now a professor. Otherwise, the ratio is approximately 1 student for each professor will become a professor. I.e., natural replacement.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


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What practicable alternative do I have to not fly around the globe to present a poster/pollute environment?
Popularizing your research and results is an important part of a non-tenured researcher, which alreday and often starts after graduating with a bachelor and proceeds up to being a postdoc for many years. While I don't question organization of conferences at all, observing that sometimes several researcher from one group fly to a conference, many only to present a poster sometimes, made me think, if there are alternatives to personally choose and practice as I'm also interested in the Azimuth project. I also remember from mail contacts with other researchers some of their signatures asking the recipient kindly "to not print out this mail" and increase its ecological footprint, as digitalization sadly increases paper consumption (tragic "fun" fact).
So my question is, what practicable best option/alternative do I have:

asking colleague of my group with talk to hang up my poster/present it/point to mail/phone for interested viewers
directly mail-spam attendees of the conference (looking up program) I know from papers in my field before conference with a PDF version of my poster, not paying conference fee (which look to me often also rather like a business model also among important and renonwed conferences fostering so many predatory conferences I get notice in my spam folder, likely being financed in very costly conference venues by many "poster-boys")
not care about my ecological footprint because researchers are no role-models and just a very small number of the international air traffic. As said, I don't question talks and invited talks held in front of several dozen peers.
only present posters for few years to make my community aware of myself or only at nearby locations.
engage in online conferences (which seem totally unpopular, not in practice in my field of condensed matter physics, being no niche and staging dozens of conferences even in single subfields like magnetism, materials...)
...

I know, there will be some disadvantages. Actually, the last idea originating from a discussion at a poster on the other side of the globe made me writing a granted research proposal which will finance my post-doc position and a PhD-student. But I think it would have been just a matter of more time and didn't need a flight around the world.
EDIT: I'm really looking for practicable tips one can apply now instead of waiting until the organization of conferences will hypothetically significantly change like in this related question. It's highest voted answer is funny, but has been disproven for decades as the environmental pollution steadily increases and unfortunately human kind and environment have a "time limit" :-)

@FuzzyLeapfrog Thanks, I oversaw this. But, IMO the linked question is rather hypothetical and doesn't offer many practicable tips. Also, the top answer stating "scientific/technological progress is decreasing environmental pollution" is very questionable/unproven, as it is increasing for decades and a strongly discussed topic also among researchers due to not reaching climate goals. Especially, I wonder why in fields like CS so many conferences/conference papers are necessary and practiced, when this subfield should maybe be able to first come up with alternatives (online venues,...)?

I actually think posters are higher gain than talks since you get more interaction.  I know you are concerned about the kerosene burn but I would still urge you to get out and about.  People are a social bunch.  Assuming you are producing hard when at home, doing a trip is a nice reward.

One practical thing is to combine trips.  I have done international travel where I did a couple conferences back to back, so there was only one cross ocean trip.  Also, make sure to get some time aside from the conference before/after to network a little professionally or to enjoy self for a day or two, or have the girlfriend fly out for an "after" vacation.  At least that way the kerosene burn is leveraged to support more time.

If you want to build a strong career and be noticed internationally, then you probably have little choice but to attend international conferences in the present situation.
Longer term, however, you can try to work toward a world of virtual conferences rather than ones requiring physical presence, though these have tradeoffs. But the current and future communication technologies will make them more practical as time goes on.
But, there are other things to consider than just the carbon-cost of air travel. First, the plane will fly anyway even if you aren't on it. Collective political action can work toward a world with less air travel, of course, but an individual has little real effect. The carbon cost of air travel is amortized over a large number of people, of course, and if they don't fly they still don't have zero carbon usage. Depending on your normal activities and travel (to work, say) needs, a week long conference across the pond may not cost you much in carbon, if there is little travel at the conference site and things are centralized.
But if you do travel, there are things you can do to better utilize the benefits of the costs you incur. Making arrangements before you go to work with international colleagues for a few days before or after the conference helps amortize the cost over a larger set of activities, chaining the cost/benefit ratio.
You can, of course, think globally about your carbon usage and find other ways to reduce your footprint so that, even as an individual, you have a minimal negative impact.
Also, communication technologies aren't carbon-free. The trade-off computations are very complex, in fact. I just read a report that says that streaming movies, for example, has a higher carbon footprint that pressing and distributing DVDs due to the energy required by servers (a continuous cost) vs the pressing/distribution cost (discrete).
Our climate issues are a result of bad choices by society as a whole, making better solutions difficult or impossible to employ by individuals. An individual has little effect, especially if they are conscious of the problems and take steps to limit personal use where possible, but also to demand better overall solutions of governments and other large institutions.

What is an occean but a multitude of drops