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Is it a contribution if I prove the result in previous paper in my own way and provide small extension in the form of application of the results?
If I have an idea to extend an already published paper (P1) but the extension is very small and further I know how to prove the results of (P1) so my question is as follows. If I prove the results of P1 through my own way and has slight extension (in the form of application of the results) of P1 then is it worth writing that idea or should I avoid such thing?

Which field is this in?

@YemonChoi its in electrical engineering field. But does it depend on the field also?

The tag "research-misconduct" seems like a strange one for this question.  Could you explain why you've included it?

@PeteL.Clark Agreed. I removed the tag

It is often very difficult to answer "Is this paper worth writing?" in general terms.  Sorry to say, but it is very common that you don't know whether a paper is worth writing until you write it, and you don't know whether a paper is publishable until you submit it (sometimes more than once).
If I understood the situation properly, it's this: there is a paper in the literature by someone else that contains some mathematical-ish result: something that received a proof in the original publication.  You have (i) your own proof and (ii) a small extension of the result, and you are wondering whether it's worth writing up and trying to publish.  So the answer is: it might or might not be.  If you are a junior researcher -- by which I mean anyone who has a designated advisor or mentor -- then I strongly suggest that you talk to your advisor about this.  The question of what constitutes publishable work (and if so, where it can/should be published) is really a question about the sociology of your discipline, and a veteran researcher in your field will probably have better instincts about this than a newer researcher...and this can continue to be true even when the veteran researcher has equal or lesser insight into this particular project.
Probably though at some point you will just have to decide whether to push on with it or not.  That's really up to you.  The main downside is that you may spend time writing and trying to publish the paper and eventually learn that the paper is not publishable, or at least not publishable in the sort of journal you want to publish in.  There is also the chance that you could publish the paper and that others in the field may view your contribution as too minor to meet their own standards of publication, but in that situation I would expect them to mostly ignore the paper.  (There are other situations in academia where people count papers, and even a very minor publication will still count for that.  This is not a great situation, in my opinion, but it exists, and some people may in fact have large incentives to keep the publications coming.)
I think the right way to look at the decision is this: the question is not really whether to write up and publish versus not to write up and publish.  Rather, you will want to spend your time writing up and publishing something, and practically speaking there is a limit on the number of projects you can try to write up and publish at any given time.  (This varies based on the field and even the person.  For me (a mathematician), even if I start with a huge stack of manuscripts already on my desk with all the Theorem:... and Proof:...'s already written down in some mathematically satisfactory form, nevertheless I would struggle mightily to find the time to edit and submit more than 4-5 of them per year.)  So do you want to spend your time on this or something else?
I want to end by mentioning that a few months ago I submitted for publication a project that has the same rough description as the OP: in this note I give a new (though not completely new) proof of a recent theorem of M. Kapovich, and then I prove a stronger result in a special case.  There is no question that I view this as a very minor work.  Why did I decide to submit it for publication?  Well, first I found Kapovich's result very interesting so I had already decided to give an exposition of it in some notes of mine.  Writing up these results led directly to my (very minor) new contribution, so the amount of additional polishing I had to do in order to have something submittable was rather small.  Second, the paper concerns a mathematical subfield, complex manifolds, in which I absolutely do not possess a research-level knowledge....so I have no reputation to ruin.  Finally, I have enough other publications that I think no one is going to try to draw any conclusions about my research program or trajectory from this one paper.  Whether this was a good decision is not yet clear to me...
Added: Just this morning I received an email that the above note has been accepted!

The important factor for writing a successful paper is to have a new idea. If you have a novel idea that is related to a recently published work, you can write the paper in your own approach. First, you should describe your idea without directly refer to the recent paper, and after that, you would mention that paper.
But  if you can't add a new idea and just modify the results of the P1 work, you have a little chance for publishing the work on valuable journals.
I think that you can preserve your energy and times on writing a paper with a new idea with applied theme versus on time-consuming modification of the others' work.


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What should you do if you find a few sentences of verbatim plagiarism in the literature review of published PhD thesis?
I am a Ph.D. candidate. Here I have a question, and I really want to hear what you would suggest.
Recently I did some literature studies, and I read a researcher's Ph.D. dissertation. She is kinda a pioneer in my research area, therefore I read her dissertation really carefully. However, I found that in the literature review chapter of her dissertation, there are parts of verbatim plagiarism. They are not blatant paragraph-to-paragraph copy and paste. They are just around four or five sentences, which are directly copied from other journals.
Her dissertation is around 300 pages with 8 chapters. I would say this dissertation is a high-quality dissertation. Besides these two tiny parts that are susceptible to plagiarism, it is really perfect.
I just wonder: what would you guys do? From my side, I don't want to report this to anybody at all, because I believe this might just an innocent mistake or something like that. Honestly, these two parts of verbatim plagiarism may account even less than 0.0001% of that dissertation.

I would probably ignore it. Especially since it is "only" in the literature review, not the creative part. And especially if it is several years old.

This is extremely minor - I would let it go, especially since it really is in an unimportant part.

Actually one should even see those sentences in place. Also, at least in science, good sentences might be the natural ones. Independent of what one should do - I would do nothing - I think there is still space to argue if it is really plagiarism. "As found by X et al. verbatim here “ is basically quoting. The verbatim copied part alone would be more critical.

@CoderInNetwork It is easily fixed.

A few sentences copied out of the papers reviewed in the literature overview before the main text of the thesis? I'd be rather surprised if that doesn't happen all the time.

They are just around four or five sentences, which are directly copied from other journals.

This is not a mistake, it is plagiarism.  It doesn't matter that it is not in an important part of the dissertation.  It also does not matter how much of the dissertation is plagiarized.
However, in this case the misconduct apparently has nothing to do with you, so there is no need for you to do anything.

But would you report it if you were me? Do you think that the university will revoke her degree because of this?

We do not do surveys on this site.  The university would conduct an investigation.  It's hard to know if the investigation would lead to the degree being revoked.

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What to do when paper is under review in two journals, because first journal did not act on request to withdraw?
I want your opinion on this issue.
I submitted a paper to Journal A. It had been with the editor for two months without being sent to peer review. So, I sent a withdrawal email to the editor. I waited for few days to get an email back, but I thought it is already done since I informed them. Then, I sent the paper to Journal B. It was sent to peer review after two days of submission.
Recently, I checked the online submission system of journal A, and they did not withdraw the paper, they actually sent it to peer review four days ago (three months from submission to intitiang peer review, which is too long in my field); I noticed that they have a new editor. Now, the paper is under review in two journals, which I know it is misconduct, but I assumed that the paper was withdrawn because I sent an email requesting that.
What do you think I should do?

Perhaps waiting "only" 2 months was your error. Journals don't work as fast as you might like.

See https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/58985/72855

It didn't even pass the intial screening by the editor in two months. It was sent for review after three months. In my field, it is indeed long. This is the first time it took that long m

@Doctoralstudent There is a pandemic going on, which may have been a factor in the delay

This happened to me.  I only discovered Journal A had failed to withdraw when they sent me a rejection letter, a long time after Journal B had published it.

This isn't misconduct. It is a mistake

@SolarMike Two months without sending the paper for review seems rather slow, even e.g. for mathematics.

Contact the editor for Journal A immediately, sending a copy of the withdrawal request you sent previously, and ask them to complete the withdrawal because you have submitted it elsewhere after the original withdrawal. Be polite.
I would at the same time check whether there is any way to withdraw the paper through the online submission system, and do that as well. Your email may have been missed.
It might be worth giving Journal B a heads-up, too. I don't think you've done anything wrong here except perhaps for not following up with the withdrawal when you didn't get a response, and therefore making the situation clear is best for you.

This isn't misconduct: You submitted a paper, the journal failed to act,* and you withdrew. You then submitted the paper to another journal.
There was no dual-submission, no misconduct (on your part).
Nonetheless, you should notify the first journal that the paper was withdrawn. You should also notify the second journal that you previously withdraw from the first, yet the first journal proceeded without your knowledge nor consent, and you've now reminded them that you withdrew.
What you want to avoid is any accusation of misconduct.
*I don't personally think two months is an outrageous delay.

For an editor to send out a withdrawn paper for review is (if intentional) misconduct since it wastes reviewers' time.

@AnonymousPhysicist +1 Indeed, I meant on the OP's part. I've edited to clarify.

If the withdrawal requests are to be processed through the online submission only, it would be possible to argue that misconduct has occurred as submitting withdrawal requests via improper channel is equivalent to lack of submission. For the lack of better example, the email could go to spam folder of recipient or be blocked by internal email system. There are also security implications to consider? Could someone set up an email address and ask for random papers to be withdrawn? A sensible and efficient way to handle such requests would be via online system that supports authentication.

@Konrad Machines haven't been handed power and email communication is acceptable. (Just like email can be manipulated, a submission system can be too.)

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Which math departments in the U.S. have people known for their contributions to Lie-admissible algebras?
Which math departments in the U.S. have people known for their contributions to Lie-admissible algebras?
(I asked this question on Math SE, but it was voted off-topic there. I hope it's not too specialized of a question here.)

You can try searching for "Lie admissible algebra" on MathSciNet and the arXiv.  There are a few papers each year that mention this topic, but it doesn't seem to be a major research area in its own right.  If you are thinking about topics for graduate school, this seems to me to be way too specific to narrow down to before choosing an advisor.  (I assume you aren't already working in this research area yourself: if you did, you'd have more information about who else is.)
As for math departments in the U.S., two of the authors of references in the article you linked to (Benkart and Osborn) are emeritus professors at Wisconsin, and Myung used to be at Northern Iowa but has since died.  You could try looking up the authors of papers on the topic that excite you, but this won't give you a wide range of schools in the U.S., especially now that Benkart and Osborn have retired.  Instead, I agree with Chris C that you'd be better off considering a broader area.

Thanks for the answer. And, yes, I heard Myung died. R.i.p.

This seems to be a highly specific area, so you might want to consider a little broader area (Lie algebras in general?) of study. In the process you can of course study these specific areas, but forcing yourself into a uncommon area of interest might make the job search later more challenging.
Though, this does not mean you have to go to a place that doesn't study Lie-admissible algebras. The best to find places that actively study the subject is to look up the most recent papers to see who the authors are and their associated university. This can give you a selection of universities where you'll find a potential adviser.

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What is letter of interest
I am going to apply for a postdoc position and one of the required documents is

letter of interest.

Is it the same with research statement?
The requested documents are cv, list of publications and thesis and recommendation letter.

Consider the list of application materials: CV, list of publications and your thesis give more-or-less objective information. Recommendation letter is an opportunity for someone else to speak of you.
What is missing is the information about why you want the position and are a good fit for it. You should include this information in the letter of interest.
I am more familiar with terms "cover letter" and "letter of motivation" and there might be subtle cultural or terminological issues at play concerning what precisely should and should not be included, so you should search for country-specific information using the correct language-specific queries. Also, the university website might have information for applicants, which you should read.

Is a letter you write which defines your interests. It might be written by yourself. The objective of a letter of interest is to see if the vacancy suits with your interest.
Why is anybody will require it? Because people works with more effort when you are interested on a theme. Universities, Companies, etc. will need it to check if your personal insterests match their interests. If they match, everybody will be happy.
"A letter of interest is a great way to get your foot in the door with a company you are interested in. Read below for advice on how to write a letter of interest, as well as sample letters of interest for a variety of circumstances."
Source

In this context, "letter of interest" should mean the same thing as "application letter."

You mean cover letter?


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Does it look good to have a paper without your PhD advisor as an author?
I am a senior PhD student in computer science. I have published several papers with my PhD advisor already.
Someone told me that, when applying for faculty positions, it looks good to have a peer-reviewed paper without your advisor listed as an author. I guess it implies that you can complete a solid project without someone holding your hand. Is this true?

Yes. But it also looks good to have a paper with your advisor and one with someb. else.

This varies from field to field. In some fields this is important, others less so.

I voted for "too broad" because it depends on your sub-field of research, local customs, and your career stage.  E.g. if you are already faculty you had better have some independent publications, but if you are still a PhD student that may or may not be appropriate.

In my field, it's almost a necessity.  In other fields, it's a deadly sin.

@JeffE "Deadly sin" - can you elaborate?

I second lighthousr keeper: can you elaborate @JeffE?

I have read several comments on this site suggesting that a student publishing without their advisor would be considered unethical.  As the argument goes: students are supposed to focus on their advisors' grant-funded projects, and the advisor should be a coauthor on any paper coming out of those projects.  See for example this answer.  Perhaps I should more accurately write "for some advisors it's a deadly sin."

The comments here seem to cover the ground pretty well. Having publications of any sort is a plus. Having lots of collaborations is a big plus and well serve you well in your future work, not just in applications.
But in some fields it is more or less necessary to have your advisor, and maybe others, on publications that arise from your dissertation work. In other fields that would be unusual.
However, don't obsess over this issue. Do the best work you can and publish the work as best you can with appropriate authorship for the work and for the field. After you finish the degree and become more independent of your advisor, you will probably write sole author papers. But if you have the opportunity for a sole author publication as a student, don't pass it up.
But don't neglect the synergistic power of collaboration in what you do.

Thanks for the comment. I should clarify, I have published several papers with my advisor as the last author. The paper in question started as a class project, and has progressed into a (hopefully!) publishable work with minimal input from my advisor.

This doesn't answer the question.  I have heard that in some fields collaborations are looked down upon.  Probably not for good reasons.

The field has been specified as computer science.

In computer science, authorship culture varies largely between different sub-fields (and confusingly, even between different departments).

If you only have papers with your PhD supervisor as a co-author, a selection commision may wonder about your academic independence; whether the underlying ideas are all yours or all have been fed to you by your advisor. Having a paper without you PhD supervisor (or other senior scientists) as co-authors, helps to alleviate these worries. That this is viewed as valuable can be seen from the fact that applications for ERC starting grants specifically ask the applicant to highlight publications without there PhD supervisor. However, there are other ways of addressing/prempting such worries. It is therefore not essential to have papers without your PhD supervisor. In fact, for freshly minted PhD I think this would be perfectly normal (although how normal depends on the field).
More generally, it is good to have mixture of different types of publications. Some with, some without your PhD supervisor; some first author, some not; some single author, some in collaborations. How (and if) these are valued differs greatly from field to field, but generally it does not hurt to have the variety.
Let me close by stressing, that all these considerations are secondary to having good, impactful papers. Having your supervisor on your paper can help with both.
(PS. In the comments someone mentioned that in some fields publishing without your supervisor is seen as a cardinal sin. I'm curious about the rational of that.)

The field has been specified as computer science. For the parenthetical note, maybe ask a different question unless it has already been asked.

Ceteris paribus, a paper in which you are the sole author is preferable to one in which you are merely a co-author.  However, you should bear in mind that your supervisor might be able to improve your paper, and so you will need to decide whether you want this assistance.  If you are able to publish a scholarly paper without your supervisor's input, and if you judge that the paper would not be improved by taking on your supervisor (or someone else) as a co-author, then that is certainly something that will look good.

Note, that having solely single author papers can also be seen as problematic.

I don't see why it would be, but okay.


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Is it immoral to advise PhD students in non-industry-relevant topics in middle-lower ranked universities?
Currently, the situation in academia is that graduating from a top PhD program is almost a requirement for landing an R1 tenure-track job. However, many of these graduates will not end up at similarly top-ranked schools for their job, and as such are at middle to lower ranked schools.
At these schools, their research is generally still along the lines of what they did in their PhD/postdoc, and PhD students as such follow them, doing this sort of research. But some research fields have little to no industry relevance— a PhD student working in such a field at a middle to lower ranked school would have bleak prospects for academia, and also related industry jobs.
These PhD students as such often have to switch fields to stuff like data science etc. (often through self-learning in online courses) which are unrelated to their original field of research, or end up on a string of postdocs endlessly searching for a job. Many may have been better off getting a job right after undergrad and slowly working their way up.
In such cases, is it immoral to advise these PhD students?

You seem to make a lot of assumptions. People have their own goals. Why do you want to steer them?

Are you asking specifically about STEM, or in general? I ask because the situation seems quite different for STEM (where students are funded and "industry" is a thing) vs. the humanities, and most people here will only be familiar with one or the other.

@cag51 I am speaking of STEM. It doesn't seem to me that industry prospects are that great in some subareas.

@Libor In many competitive fields, a good post-doc is not enough, and often you do not even get a good post-doc position. Also, you need some luck, too, that during your first 1-2 year postdoc contract 1) learn something new, 2) build a good network so you can get strong recommendations, 3) publish a few high profile papers.

I think the key here is informed consent. If a student is "tricked" into the job, that is obviously bad, but if you share your concern with your students, and they are still interested in doing a Ph.D. then it is their decision, too. I would also point out that if an advisor is conscious of the difficulties, actually if helps the students a lot, and even an adviser from low/mid-rank university can actively help the student to find jobs.

None of our particle physics PHDs, even the one's who just about got through (in the UK) ever seemed to have trouble e.g. finding a job in banking (both on the technical backend and directly related to trading). I think this question is based on a misunderstanding how hiring outside academia works.

If they signed up to do an academic research program, it would be immoral not to steer them away from that. Hopefully they entered the program with realistic expectations, but its not the programs job to advise them away from academia.

@Marianne013 Although there is a large pharmaceutical/biotech industry in the US, many chemists and biologists find it hard to get good jobs. Computational/more quantitative ones can switch to other fields, but pure lab researchers in some less prominent-in-industry areas may have difficulties from what I've been seeing. For example, there aren't many big neuro research departments in industry, but a glut of neuroscience phd's... Of course, these aren't problems for graduates from top programs, so I specified mid/lower tier...

@dan_1 the point is not that a neuro PhD will be able to find a job in an industral neuro research lab, but that they will be able to find a job at a bank/thinktank/consultancy/patent company/education and many many other places that use the transferable skills they learnt in their PhDs rather than the neuroscience skills.

Your question seems to be narrowly focused, overlooking the existence of a lot of mostly teaching positions (which require a Ph.D., at least in the U.S.) that are, in many cases, pursued by those not interested in "landing an R1 tenure-track job" (or at least who view these in the same way as someone with an annual income of $40,000 views $300,000+ houses on the market), but who nevertheless is interested in scholarship and/or service work in addition to teaching. FYI, I'm not necessarily talking about myself, but I certainly know quite a few people who fall into this category.

Part of climbing a mountain is to become an expert on how to climb mountains, not necessarily to get to a particularly peak.

Define "immoral". Not helpful to the PhD students in question? Or not helpful to the society as a whole (in the sense that advising such students might benefit the whole society less than spending your time advising other students or working on other topics)? These two do not necessarily coincide.

In principle, in a wealthy society it is expected that some people would choose to pursue things more out of curiosity and the desire to achieve non-monetary rewards than to improve their material conditions.

@Jake but how large is the population of that "some people"?

There are other reasons to do a PhD beside job prospects, see the answers from https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/103645/78796

While the question in the title is a good one, your post also makes some assumptions, in some cases dubious, which are really worth investigating first:

But some research fields have little to no industry relevance -- The truth is that almost all PhD research is highly esoteric and specialized, and unlikely to have any direct impact on industry. This is certainly true in my field (computer science), and probably true in many others to a greater or lesser extent. Why, then, do industry hiring managers even care that you got a PhD? Sometimes they don't, but often they value far more the qualities that having a PhD demonstrates, rather than the content of your research. For example: the ability to communicate well and sell ideas, the ability to solve technical problems, and the ability to dive deeply into learning what you do not understand -- these are fundamental skills gained during a PhD that are equally valuable in industry.
What I'm saying is: industry relevance of your PhD research is often not the top criteria for getting a good job; what matters far more is your general knowledge, technical skills, and communication and interpersonal skills.

These PhD students as such often have to switch fields to stuff like data science etc. Data science is a rare case where PhD research in data science appears to be valued in industry; most other PhD fields are not as valued in industry specifically, only generally. Do you suggest that all academics should just start doing data science? I think that would have some positives, but overall be a very sad world only motivated by money, rather than a true pursuit of scientific knowledge.

Many have been better off getting a job right after undergrad and slowly working their way up -- This is absolutely true, unfortunately. But do you also believe that the only good reason to get a PhD is to get a job in industry? That premise is absolutely false. What we can do and should do: raise awareness and encourage people to get a PhD for the right reasons, rather than the wrong ones. If you are thinking of spending 5+ years on a PhD, it should be because you truly want to do it, and you love the research you are doing for its own sake.

To answer your last question:

In such cases, is it immoral to advise these PhD students?

It is immoral to be dishonest: to make the PhD students believe that their research will have direct practical relevance if it does not, or to lead them to expect a particular job in industry when they graduate which may be beyond their expected skillset.
To be sure, some professors are guilty of such dishonesty and immorality.
But no, it is not immoral to advise students in a non-industry-relevant topic, if the expectations are clear and the expected topic is of mutual interest. In fact it is one of the most beautiful and compelling parts of science, that we do not need to be constrained by what is currently practical in industry.

"To be sure, some professors are guilty of such dishonesty and immorality." -- it is probably less blatant than that. A STEM professor in a academia typically has no direct knowledge about the skill sets needed to land a job in industry. At the same time, they might know that many of their students over the years have successfully landed jobs in industry. Add to that the effects of living in a world where the link between STEM and economic success is taken for granted, some professors might just assume that their students, if talented, can find an industry job if they want.

"they value far more the qualities that having a PhD demonstrates, rather than the content of your research" Absolutely true. There is actually a name for this: the Signalling Model of Education. I recommend everyone read "The Case Against Education" by Bryan Caplan.

While I agree that dishonesty is immoral (pretty much we all agree with that), there are a lot of gray area of what is "dishonest" and this is a problem. I learned over the years is no so much that these PhD types are dishonest more than they just don't know any better. Sounds like an excuse, but if you think about it, many of these PhD types have been in academia all their professional lives. They never worked in any real industry and sometimes that "dishonesty" comes from a place of ignorance and maybe even arrogance, but not definitely not with malicious intent.

Entirely true: there is no such thing as a PhD with no industry relevance. I know algebraic geometers who've landed very good industry jobs on the basis of their PhDs. To put it simply: industry likes people who can solve complex problems and communicate well, which is pretty close to being the point of a PhD.

This is a good answer (+1), but the conclusion seems to be missing something. I took the OP's concern not to be that advising students in non-industry relevant topics would make them less competitive in industry, but rather that the students would be unable to build careers in academia, due to the ranking of their school. There does seem to be some tension between "If you are thinking of spending 5+ years on a PhD, it should be because ... you love the research you are doing for its own sake" and being unable to continue it afterward.

A PhD is about learning to do research without supervision. It is not only about mastering a particular niche topic. Indeed, even the students that do become professors are likely to eventually move onto topics that they did not study during their PhD. So, even given a near-certainty that one will not be competitive for a faculty position, a PhD is not necessarily a bad investment.
On the other hand, I am unmoved by those who say "spending six years doing something you love is worth it, even if it doesn't lead to anything." Or "I will not be a complete person without a PhD." A PhD is just a qualification (and not the only qualification!) for a research job. So, a PhD may indeed be a bad investment for students without a realistic path toward some kind of job that will benefit from having a PhD.

In such cases, is it immoral to advise these PhD students?

Strictly speaking, morality is outside our area of expertise. It's one of those topics where everyone thinks they are an expert and few actually are. Still, I see two possible concerns here:

Informed consent. The (opportunity) cost of doing a PhD -- in years and dollars -- is much higher than most young students realize. Further, most students are not knowledgeable about industry and view it as roughly akin to the pits of Mordor. If students were more knowledge about industry and had identified a specific, fulfilling, well-paying alternate career path, they might have made different choices.
Societal cost. Many students are funded by tax dollars. These costs easily run into the six figures. If students do not use their PhD after graduation, one might ask whether that money could have better been directed toward fighting hunger or homelessness or disease or climate change.

Still, in STEM, I think we can say the answer is no. STEM students generally earn enough money to live on, and they learn skills that will be useful for a wide variety of careers. Further, the state of the academic job market is no secret. While we might be concerned that some students don't seem to be following an optimal or efficient career trajectory, such things are hard to judge -- everyone's goals are different, and "even the very wise cannot see all ends."

While I overall agree with your comment, a sentiment like "A PhD is about learning to do research without supervision." is not necessarily shared by everyone. It is a valid concern that many (especially in academia, but also in the industry) hire someone primarily for very specific technical skills (and for the papers proving it), and the candidate has little to no chance to prove herself/himself otherwise.

I don't know anybody who does research without supervision.

"morality is outside our area of expertise."  You should fix that.  Especially for morality that relates to your job.

I pay taxes from my job, but that doesn't make me an expert on the tax code. Similarly, trying to do our jobs ethically/morally doesn't make us experts on morality or ethics. But that was just a throwaway comment; I still took a stab at the question from an academic perspective.

"A PhD is about learning to do research without supervision." Not only this point is often forgotten, it is proactively hidden behind "PhD is learning how to publish papers and becaming an expert on a specific topic".
See infinite list of questions about paper authorships appearing on this site.

@DanielHatton I guess, it is very much dependent on the field.  In chemistry, many technical requirements skills / choice of field can be predicted 5-10 years ahead in spite there are many fashion fads. Also, it does matter if you want to retrain yourself from a relatively close subject/technique, or if you have never seen modern methods, because your lab/university is poorly equipped. When you start a job first impression (first weeks, months) can count a lot, and if you are seen as slow, has to learn everything, that can be a death spell. Fair? No. Common? Yes.

It's only immoral if you mislead them about their career opportunities post-graduation. You should help the student make an informed decision to do a PhD, and if they know what they're going into but choose to do it anyway, it's not yours to judge them for their decision. Refusing to supervise someone because you think they'd do better joining industry directly imposes your choices over theirs, and comes across as arrogant (the student would likely go to another university anyway).
If this concerns you, consider having a serious conversation with the student about their career goals before agreeing to supervise them. Make it clear that it isn't an "admissions interview" in the sense that you will supervise them if they want it, but you want to make sure they really want it because of the post-PhD career experience. That's important because "what do you want to do after the PhD?" can be stressful for the applicant to answer if they believe admission is on the line.
Talking points with the prospective student:

If they want to have an academic career, point out that it's hard, it's especially hard if a significant other / children is involved, it could require working on a "trendy" topic, etc.
If they want to have a career in industry, then construct the PhD project to accommodate that. It doesn't have to involve a topic with industrial applications, but it should involve transferable skills. For example, in recent job advertisements I've seen for PhD graduates, some key skills asked for are Python/C++, SQL, statistical data analysis (multivariate analysis, sampling methods, etc), and so on. The more of these skills can be included in the PhD, the better.
If they want to have a teaching-focused academic career, again try to get them the necessary experience: conducting classes, grading, maybe even helping with course design.

If you're really concerned, you could look over some job advertisements with the student (try searching for jobs that require 'phd in [your field]') and discuss how to acquire the core competencies asked for.

It is not unethical for PhD students to study things that will not lead to employment.  Learning and creating knowledge are inherent goods.  It is obligatory to inform students about career strategies and the fact that certain career strategies have very low chances of success.  E.g. copying your advisor's career path rarely works.
If your PhD students are doing productive work, your are obligated to pay them at least a living wage.  I think more PhD students are abused with low pay during their PhD as opposed to low pay post-PhD.
There is copious evidence that in some fields getting a PhD is correlated with earning more, but I have seen zero evidence that the relationship is causal.  It could be that all PhD students are sacrificing their future earnings.

In the UK, Biology PhDs make less than Biology masters.

@DanielHatton Personally, I would follow the advice of a social scientist with relevant expertise.  I'll guess regression, though.

In general I think that multiple regression is not reckoned to be a valid way of dealing with questions of causality (see the "Table 2 fallacy"), but I might be out of my depth.

It's true that regression does not prove causality, but it can disprove the obvious alternative hypotheses.  Generally speaking, conventional statistical and experimental methods only disprove things.

There are several careerist reasons to spend several years in a PhD program.
First of all, getting a PhD in some country is the most reliable way to immigrate to that country, for a lot of developed countries.
Second, having a PhD on your resume opens lots of immigration doors that are otherwise shut, even if you don't want to stay in the country where the PhD was based.
Third, the PhD salary may be much more than what you would earn in industry in your home country.
The fourth thing, which applies more to higher-ranked universities: during your PhD, you meet many competent people and do lots of networking, and this can help your career later -- especially if your undergrad was from a non-famous university.

When I went to grad school after two years doing technology consulting, I swore to myself that I would never work in industry again.  I did go to a top grad school, and I did eventually end up with the job I now have at an R2, but it was a close enough thing that I thought about my alternate plans when I was on the job market.  I decided that, if I didn't find an academic job, I would work as a peace activist.  I hope it's clear that peace activism doesn't make any money and most peace activists support themselves by working minimum wage jobs, part time so that they can devote time to peace activism.
I might add that, before I was tenured, my salary was less than my salary before grad school without taking inflation into account, and, if you take into account inflation, then my salary still is and always will be less than my salary before grad school.  But I am still reasonably comfortable financially and don't care.
I'm definitely in the minority, but there are others somewhat like me.  I would not have done a PhD on a topic that had a direct tie to industry, and whether a topic had applications or not was and still is irrelevant to me.  My view of pure mathematics is that it is an art.  Does one ask a novelist or composer if their work has applications?  (And do we tell people who have no realistic chance of becoming professional writers or musicians to stop studying writing or music?)
The PhD students I have had certainly understand they're not going to get a research-oriented job.  They've decided that spending a few years learning and doing math while making barely enough to survive is worth it to them.  I would not agree to work with a grad student who was delusional about their future prospects.

This is missing an explicit answer.

I think people are confused about one critical point. So, will try to clarify. The question was
Is it IMMORAL to advice PhD students...?
rather than
Is it UNETHICAL to advice PhD students...?
Most of the answers I read answer the question from an ETHICAL point of view. The rest try to tackle moral aspects. And there's the problem. If you go by the strict definition of the words, morals are personal views while ethics are instilled by a professional groups or organizations. For example, medical doctors and lawyers have "Code of Ethics" by which the abide by. Obviously, their code of ethics are different from one another.
Another problem is that ethics aren’t always moral and vice versa. For instance, there are people that have huge reservations with defense lawyers. They ask themselves "how could anyone defend such a monster?" Simply put, because that lawyer has an ETHICAL obligation to do so. And to do so to the best of his or her abilities.
The problem with a philosophical question such as this one, is that our morals are different. So, there will never be a straight answer for this question unless you specifically target a group of people you know share similar moral values to your and ask this question directly to them.

I think you are arguing a point contrary of what the OP is suggesting. The OP opened with "Currently, the situation in academia is that graduating from a top PhD program is almost a requirement for landing an R1 tenure-track job" - This is a fact. There is a HUGE difference in graduating with a PhD from MIT than with a PhD from "Hector Fontanez University". And because of that, research from MIT tend to be more relevant that research done by smaller schools. But this is not the point. The point is attributing malice to the intent to "advice" someone. You assume there's malice involved. I don't

@Trunk and you downvoted my answer because my definition of morality differs from yours. Where's the morality or ethics in that? Nothing I stated is factually false. Yet, that didn't stop you.

The distinction between moral and ethics would be acceptable if we were on Philosophy.SE, but these notions are often conflated in daily conversation. For example, Oxford dictionary define "unethical" as "not morally correct" (https://www.google.com/search?q=unethical&oq=unethical&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i273j0l5.6174j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8).The meaning of the question is quite clear.

@Trunk I knew it was you because the downvote corresponded with the timing of your comment. It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together. And, if you are implying that morality is objective, there is nothing to discuss here ("as you seem to imply that morality was an entirely subjective thing"). Morality is 100% subjective. Do you need an example? The Jehovah Witness religion deems blood transfusions sinful while most of the nation think it is immoral to deny a loved one this procedure to the point there have been cases taken to court. I can keep on quoting examples.

@Trunk And even when we agree in principle that something is wrong (immoral), we might not necessarily agree on how wrong something is. For example, stealing. I am sure that you and I can agree that stealing is wrong. But, do you think that taking a pen from work is stealing? You may say yes and I might say no or vice versa. Why? Because it is subjective. Do I need to continue proving this point to you?


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What is a 3 Year (Indian) Engg. Diploma equivalent to UK education standards(HNC, HND or other)?
Can anybody assist me in knowing what is a 3 year engg. diploma is equivalent according to UK education system or ECTS?
or
Is it equivalent to HND or HNC?

It usually depends on the awarding institution.

And how it is regarded by the institution applied TO...

it is equivalent to RQF Level 3 (BTECH NATIONAL DIPLOMA/EXTENDED DIPLOMA)


text:
Is "liberal arts" a unique feature of American higher education?
Liberal arts programs are very common in the US but not in Europe (correct me if I am wrong). As I see here in discussions, the environment of liberal arts colleges is different: for example, student-faculty relationships.
Have such historical liberal arts programs and schools changed the overall higher education in the US or are they just different types of programs.
Are the universities which are not focused on liberal arts influenced by the culture of liberal arts programs/schools?

What exactly do you mean by "liberal arts programs"? Indeed, the term may not be commonly used in Europe, but study programs in the humanities and social sciences certainly are common, so it may just be a matter of terminology.

@fkraiem as far as I know, liberal arts programs are not simply humanities and social sciences, they are general programs with a wide range of courses from science to sociology. They are not specialized programs, even in social sciences.

Aren't students in the US required to choose a major at some point? Yes, they are still required to take some courses outside their major, but that is true in Europe as well.

Part of the issue is that there are a few different things called "liberal arts".  The term can refer to a set of fields of study (humanities, social sciences, etc) though the composition of this set is not really well defined.  It also shows up in the phrase liberal arts college (LAC) which is a particular model for an institution of higher education, usually a small private institution.  Despite the names, which are more historical than anything, it is no longer necessarily true that LACs focus mainly on studies in the  "liberal arts"...

... and institutions which are not LACs usually also include "liberal arts" among their offerings.  Another notion which you may be conflating is the idea of general education, that all students should take some classes in a few core areas, not necessarily related to their major field of study.  Maybe this will help you clarify your question.

I graduated from a US university with a degree in mathematics, although less than half the courses I took were in mathematics. This is simply inconceivable in most (all?) European systems. The "liberal arts" idea is that a student of any subject should have basic knowledge of many subjects, and therefore must take courses in various areas, not necessarily related to his specialization. European degrees always (so far as I know) are focused on a particular area of study. Breadth might mean a math student is required to take some physics or computer science.

The question is vague.  To answer the first part, liberal arts are found in many countries.  http://liberalartsalliance.org/members

@fkraiem "liberal arts" is not synonymous with humanities or social sciences. It is indeed a concept that does not exist in European academia.

It's probably not unique, but practically yes the concept of a "liberal arts" college or education is specific to North America. Some European countries have a form of "liberal arts" curriculum at the high school level (e.g. the German or Swiss Gymnasium) where a broad spectrum of "classic" subjects are taught with the purpose of allowing students to join any university education.
But (continental) European universities generally have individual programs for math, philosophy, history, science, etc.
It's actually quite puzzling for people who attended university in Europe to hear their US-educated colleagues say "Yes, I majored in physics and medieval music".

I recently wrote an answer about things like small liberal arts colleges in Europe: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/187611/how-do-i-find-small-teaching-focused-universities-in-the-european-union/208989#208989

In a short, simple answer: no. Strictly speaking, liberal arts degrees are not unique to North America because one can earn them elsewhere.

Please consider expanding your answer rather than only posting a link.

Yes, link-only answers are discouraged because then the answer is only useful as long as the link survives. I've added a few words to expand on what I think your intended meaning is.

Almost all schools possess a form of LA training, even if they do not adapt the title. LA programs are generally rooted in the classics. Therefore, LA training could be nestled under the title of History, Litt, Classics… In the US, a classical edu. is quickly fading. There are only a handful of schools that offer them. Such as St. Johns, Chicago, SBC Undergrads, HMU… In general, the LA and Humanities have been in a decline (although there was a recent bump in applications). Your question about cultural impact: Every university you go to is impacted by the surrounding culture, and will shape the teaching. Since much of LA is rooted in classics, its helps bc the material is static, but ones approach can be entirely different from school to school.

"Almost all schools possess..." do you mean "schools in the US"?

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Is my mathematics "folklore" paper worth publishing?
I wrote a math paper a while ago which was initially mainly for my own attempt to understand a topic/theorem in algebraic geometry. The methods and results are kind of folklore (not well-documented in literature). Although the ideas presented in my write-up was sketched in a recent and well-known conference report, the details and the proof of the main theorem were not given. My write-up did the job to give a detailed treatment of the theory and gave a proof of the main theorem. So this is kind of something between expository and research (I think?).
Now I'm wondering if this paper is worth to be published?
P.S. The main result was also proved by someone using a different approach and got published in a good journal this year.

Important to clarify "mathematical folklore", not literally "proving folklore results", like "there is a ley line of unexplained deaths from Stonehenge to Giza". Be aware this is a HNQ so a vague title will attract lots of, ahem, contributions from other SE sites.

maybe title should be "formalizing results that have been suggested previously"

@aaaaasaysreinstateMonica Equally, does formalization advance science or does formalizing ideas progress science or similar

Why did the recent edit turn this into an explicit shopping question? I think that was unfair to the OP.

@Buffy Because it is. We've never been in the business of recommending publication venues. I deleted "folklore" to stop the HNQ clicks and because it doesn't seem any more relevant than if the title said "topography." I won't start an edit war, but this question is obviously off topic.

@AzorAhai-him- Drop If yes, which journal should I submit to? and the paper is surely on topic. Given that the question focuses on folklore, it seems this really isn't a shopping question. Plus, within a day, the question/answers have received 58 votes, not to mention numerous votes on comments.

@user2768 "Is this paper worth publishing" isn't an on-topic question either.

@AzorAhai-him- Discussion of publishing folklore is off-topic? How?

I vote to reopen. Personally, I don't consider answers opinion based. Regardless, this question has been viewed three thousand times since yesterday, there's clearly a lot of interest.

@user2768 It's a question about whether the contents of the paper that warrant publication.  That can only be decided by reading the paper. Hence, off-topic. None of the numbers you list have anything to do with topicality.

@AzorAhai-him- As my answer notes, the published work appears in "a good journal," we can infer that the folklore was worthy of formally establishing in science, so the question itself establishes that this particular folklore is publication worthy. Regardless, the spirit of the question can be answered, just look below. (As for topicality, do we really want to censor interesting questions? I guess we'll see if others vote to reopen.)

I removed the shopping sentence as off-topic.

I would definitely put it on the arxiv because it could help other people.
Whether it is publishable in a journal is a question which you should probably discuss with other experts in the field.

Even in the case of Arxiv, you should still discuss your submission with other experts in the field. In some cases, Arxiv may require explicit endorsement from such an expert.

I've got a very harsh threatening warning for less (upluaded a technical report - a standalone chapter form my dissertation, requsted for sharing by a colleague). They are very tetchy at arxiv. They told me that all uploads must be original research publishable in a journal and that I will be banned if I do that again. It got some reads and a recommendation at RG instead...

I think the proper action is to submit it to an "appropriate" journal. The editors and reviewers will decide whether it is "worth it" to publish, as they will see what you have written.
Having a proof of a conjecture is valuable, but the nature of the proof is much more valuable. If your method differs sufficiently from the published proof and if it has potential to provide new insights, then it is certainly worth publishing.
Sorry, but I can't recommend any specific journals.

I think my method does differ a lot from the published one. But what concerns me is that the idea that my method based on is folklore in the sense that it has been sketched in the conference report as mentioned, so the originality of my work might be discounted I think and might cause my paper less publishable.

Let the editor and reviewers decide that. It is their job to do so. I think there is no risk here. You will, of course, cite the earlier work. They will have complete information on which to make a decision.

This is not bad advice in theory. In practice, it could lead to unpleasant circumstances. From personal experience: Journal's A referee report was "this should be published in journal B". Journal's B referee's report was "this does not belong here". To make it worse, it took a year from the first submission to the second report.

@MartinArgerami, perhaps, but any submission could lead to that same result.

There are also some reputable (= not predatory) journals (but mostly with not very high impact factor), which are specialised also on publishing such results.
Exemplary (but not from your area), European Journal of Physics publishes, among others, "Original insights into the derivation of results. These should be of some general interest, consisting of more than corrections to textbooks." I can imagine that there are also mathematical journals which such a scope.

Folklore has no scientific basis.* The "recent and well-known conference report" does. You've taken that further by adding details and formally proving results. Congratulations, you've advanced science.
In parallel, "[t]he main result was also proved by someone using a different approach." You've been scooped. Some of your work's novelty has been lost.
Nonetheless, given that the published work appears in "a good journal," we can infer that the folklore (in this instance) was worthy of formally establishing in science. Whether an alternative approach is similarly worthy, we can't know for sure, only opinions can be offered. I suggest asking the journal's editor whether they'd consider publishing your alternative approach. E.g.,

Dear Prof X,
To my dismay, I discovered my work on ABC has been scooped by Prof Y et al. in their article (entitled "DEF"), published in volume N issue I of Journal Name, over which you preside.
Perhaps all isn't lost: Prof Y et al. use approach blah, whereas I use approach blah-blah. I wonder whether you'd consider publishing my work as an alternative approach (subject to peer-review, of course)?
If not, could you perhaps suggest an alternative venue?
Many thanks for your support,
Disheveled scoopee

* Details matter. Yet, folklore (and, more generally, story telling) omits, looses, or never possessed details. Folklore has no scientific basis. If folklore sufficed, we'd have no need for science. "Nevertheless," Paul Taylor notes, "if some younger person is so presumptuous as to write out a proper proof and attempt to publish it, they will get shot down in flames." A theorem, by definition, demands proof, without such it is but an idea, a conjecture at best. "The ossification of a caste system – in which one group has the general ideas and vision while another toils to realize that vision – is no way for a subject to flourish," remarks Clark Barwick. Maybe I'm naive, perhaps ivory towers unassailable. That'll tarnish science. Building upon complaisant folklore will lead to failure, there's no rigor.

@DanRomik I absolutely agree with the definition of folklore as a mathematical result [that] is an unpublished result with no clear originator, but which is well-circulated and believed to be true among the specialists. I'll tolerate the body of theorems, definitions, proofs, facts or techniques that circulate among mathematicians by word of mouth, but, for serious such results, word of mouth is insufficient, details matter. (That latter quote seems unsupported by the cited sources.) I'm clueless as to why you believe I know nothing about the matter. What exactly are you objecting to?

Comments are not for extended discussion; please continue this discussion in the chat.

@DanRomik I consider myself well-versed in mathematical folklore and the issues of publishing results in that arena: I've personally trodden the path, experienced the struggle. You've yet to highlight any specific lacking in my knowledge and seem to be merely gesturing. Do you have any concrete objections? You mention criticism expressed in the earlier comments, yet I see none. Perhaps you're confusing me with another user; I'd agree, from their comments, they don't seem knowledgeable. Community votes are divided, I've spit the vote, seven up, seven down. It seems I'm controversial.

@user2768 I just gave you a bit of feedback, I’ll leave it at that.

@DanRomik It wasn't in any way constructive, in my opinion. Hence, my questions, which you've ignored. I love discovering gaps in my knowledge. Unfortunately, you seem unwilling or unable to highlight deficiencies. You've now retracted your commentary. I wonder whether this is a case of mistaken identity.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
I failed an exam
So I had to sit some exams as part of a training course designed to introduce me to the theory I'll be studying on my PhD.
Sadly I had a feeling that I'd not done terribly well on one of them and that was confirmed earlier this weekend when I found I'd missed the passmark by 4 marks. As far as I know it's not essential to the project that I pass but I'm embarrassed to discuss it with my supervisor, especially since it'll be raised in my upcoming annual review.
Moreover, I'm worried it'll end up with me being fired

what is the question?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/167687/68109

@Our it's more of a discussion point about how I can feel better about failure.

@Roberto_1986, this isn't a "discussion" site.

@Buffy thank you for your valuable input to my situation. I asked for advice.


text:
What is the gender distribution of those who perform potentially hazardous scientific experiments?
It comes as known that some experimenters have died or suffered other ill effects because of consequences of their experiments, such as Marie Curie.  What is the distribution by gender/sex of those who perform potentially hazardous experiments in academia?  How does their compensation for their work in terms of salaries or other benefits compare to other academics who have less physically hazardous jobs?
I'd like research with supporting citations if available.

Do you mean experiments that are hazardous to the experimenter or to patients, subjects, and bystanders?

"Potentially hazardous" is quite vague as pretty much everything a person ever does carries some risk of injury.  Is there an accepted definition of this term, or one that you would like to propose?

@StrongBad To the experimenter.

@NateEldredge I think I'd prefer to leave that definition as open as a I can, especially since I haven't thought through what a hazard is before, and I don't know what is appropriate to the concerns of experimenters.  However, if a definition is needed, I'll default to the Wikipedia entry on hazards for a definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard and emphasize, physical, biological, chemical, and radiation hazards.  The Wikipedia suggests the SMUG model as relevant for prioritizing hazards... though I have no idea if that's appropriate to the concerns of experimenters.

While I'm not aware of any research on employees exposed to safety risks in the academic workplace, there are statistics on actual workplace injuries in a variety of occupations, including scientific occupations.  If the incidence of injury is uniform across gender among those exposed to safety risks (I don't know if it is), then you can take this as a proxy for the gender distribution of those exposed to risk in the scientific workplace.
In particular, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics collects information on workplace injuries, which you can query at will.
According to their statistics, here are the numbers of nonfatal occupational injuries involving days away from work among employees whose occupation is classified as "Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations":

I was also interested in the ratio of the number of injuries to the number of thousands of people of each gender employed, again in "Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations":

Please visit the BLS website to learn more about how they collect these statistics and what they mean.
You can query their dataset yourself if you're interested in getting numbers specific to one area of science or another.

I'm curious what happened in 2012 ...

Academia is unusual (in some countries possibly unique) in that it typically does not need to offer additional reward for exposure to hazards.
That's because of academia's fairly unusual characteristics: the people who expose themselves to the hazards are very well-informed about them, and uniquely positioned to mitigate them. And academia is not a profession that the unskilled and economically vulnerable are forced into by hardship: instead, it is very often an active choice.
In addition, several countries, including Britain, have pay structures that do not, and have never needed to, incorporate risk as part of compensation.
So, in Britain at least, there is no "danger money" or other compensation for exposure to risk: the market doesn't require it, and employees are far more empowered than most to handle the risks.
In terms of exposure by gender, STEM fields continue to have a problem with entrenched sexism (predominantly inherited from the 20th century), being very male-dominated at the top levels, where the power and money concentrates. Even today, STEM is still majority male at the level of undergraduate admissions in many countries at many universities: in Canada, the USA, Britain and globally, men dominate STEM subjects. And the risk exposure concentrates in STEM subjects- no physical risks in maths; but science, technology, engineering are where the physical risks concentrate; and those that expose themselves to them, do so with knowledge of what they are doing, and the ability to mitigate those risks.

"In terms of exposure by gender, STEM fields continue to have a problem with entrenched sexism (predominantly inherited from the 20th century), being very male-dominated at the top levels, where the power and money concentrates...  but science, technology, engineering are where the physical risks concentrate"  How many of those people got there by doing experiments which exposed them to potential hazards?  How many of those people oversee experiments/experimenters who engage in potentially hazardous experiments which need safety precautions taken into account?

Since students have gotten brought up here, I will mention that since 1988 women have gotten the majority of bachelors, since 1994 women have gotten the majority of masters, and since 2008 women have gotten the majority of doctorates in biology in the U.S. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_325.20.asp Also, since you've suggested that disparity indicates discrimination with your reference to the "top levels", does that mean that universities in the U. S. are sexist against male students in biology? Additionally, do many colleges require a declaration of major upon admission?

Do dietetics and psychology fall under your definition of STEM fields?

"STEM fields continue to have a problem with entrenched sexism" - Utter nonsense. The only sexism that exists, exists because some people like to assume that just because there are less females in a particular field, it must be that field is full of sexist individuals. No one ever says nursing is a sexist field against men. How sexist is the construction industry or garbage collection? I don't see hordes of females lining up for those jobs.


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How to get priority acknowledged, when a paper in mathematics is a special case of your own paper, but it does not cite your work?
I am a researcher in Mathematics and I have recently found that it has been published a paper X whose main result is a (very) special case of a result of mine, which has been published more than an year ago. From the journal log, I can also see that paper X has been submitted after my paper has been published.
However, the author of the paper X was not aware of my previous result, indeed she did not cite my paper.
I am wondering if it would be possible to make the journal of paper X acknowledging my priority on the result, and in such a case how to do so.
I have often seen journals publishing short notes with the title "Acknowledgement of priority", in which it is explained that a published result was already proved by someone else, but I have no idea of how it works.
Thanks for help.
UPDATE: I wrote to the author of the paper and I have got no response.

I agree with @Dan Romik's answer.  I also want to say that in this set of circumstances, it does not really seem necessary to take any heroic actions in order to acknowledge priority: since the OP's paper was published more than a year earlier: okay, as the record lies, the OP has priority.
I agree that the OP should make sure that the community knows that s/he had the stronger result first, and that contacting the authors of the later paper is a good idea.  But I think the OP should do this with a winner's grace: this is going to be much more awkward and painful for the authors of the later paper.
I also want to mention that this kind of thing happens in mathematics all the time.  For instance, a few days ago I found out that the main result in a paper I published a few years ago appears, in much stronger form, in some "Lecture Notes" from 1974 (that were apparently never formally published: they are not listed on MathSciNet).  Well, gosh.  I haven't decided exactly what to do about this, but please be assured that I am not rubbing my hands greedily at the thought that my too-complicated-partial result has "priority" in some formal sense.
Added: Concerning the author's

I have often seen journals publishing short notes with the title "Acknowledgement of priority", in which it is explained that a published result was already proved by someone else, but I have no idea of how it works.

I did MathSciNet searches for "acknowledgement of priority" and "acknowledgment of priority" and got 62+25 hits.  When you remove double counting, false positives and papers analyzing priority disputes from long ago (e.g. Euler versus d'Alembert), you get about 70 genuine instances of the sort the OP describes.  Restricting to theoretical mathematics over the last 30 years, I found 9 genuine acknowledgments of priority.  Moreover, among the entire group of 70, only a few are written by someone other than the author of the original paper.
From this, I would suggest that "the way it works" is that the author herself must be moved to make an acknowledgment of priority, but that this is done only in a small minority of cases.  As I said, above, I am myself considering writing an acknowledgment of priority.  If I do so, then in view of the above numbers I will be a world expert on the subject, and I will add more details to this answer.

I downvoted your answer because in my opinion it does not say anything more than Dan Romik's answer.

@Margaaa: In fact you do not have sufficient reputation to downvote answers on this site.  But perhaps it's the thought that counts?  FYI, I did about 20 minutes of research on your question.

Sorry to disappoint, but since paper X has already been published, and assuming your result is not some earth-shattering discovery like, say, a proof of Goldbach's conjecture, where there is an obviously compelling public interest in having an accurate historical record, there is no way for you to make the journal take any action to acknowledge your priority. Your best hope is to email the authors of paper X, point out your earlier result, and hope that they will be motivated by professional integrity to acknowledge your priority whenever they give talks about their results, and possibly on their web pages. My experience suggests that this yields mixed results, but I have been on both sides of such communications, and on a few occasions when I've published results that turned out to have been published earlier by others, I've certainly acknowledged it in informal settings such as talks, and if I learned about it early enough when my paper was still a preprint, I would update it to add an acknowledgement.
As for updating an already published paper, that's something I haven't felt necessary to do (and I wouldn't expect most other authors to feel compelled to do either normally), both because there is no obvious mechanism for doing that, and since in the cases I'm referring to the results were not very important and/or the amount of overlap between my results and those that preceded them was not great. If there were ever a case like this involving a really important result, I would most assuredly go out of my way to make the historical record as clear as possible, since doing otherwise is ethically untenable.
Edit: as you pointed out in the OP and comments and other answers elaborated on, it seems to be possible to submit to journals a short note with a title along the lines of "Acknowledgement of priority concerning the paper `[...]'" in which an author can formally acknowledge that their already published result has been preceded by a result published earlier by someone else. This seems to be quite an uncommon thing to do, but can apparently be done. My advice is not to take the view that the author of paper X is required to publish such an acknowledgement (since doing this is clearly not a norm, otherwise I would have known about it and probably followed it myself on one or two occasions), but something they can voluntarily do if they choose to. You may want to consider asking them to publish an acknowledgement of priority when you email them, but I would only do this if the result was sufficiently important to be worth the trouble, otherwise you run the risk that the request will come across as petty and mildly offensive. Anyway, good luck!

I will e-mail the author of paper X as you have suggested. However, I am not going to accept you answer because you gave me no information about the "Acknowledgements of priority". My result is surely not "earth-shattering" but I see that many journals publish short notes of "Acknowledgements of priority" about average articles, so I do not think that it is a thing only for really important results.

@Margaaa I've never seen the sort of "acknowledgement of priority" that you are referring to so I can't comment about that idea with any authority, sorry.

just google: <"acknowledgement of priority" springer>, for example.

@Margaaa I too had never seen such before. Judging from the search results, these are a lot more common in probability theory and related areas than elsewhere, which may account for many mathematicians being unfamiliar with the concept.

It has happened to me twice that I published a result and then learned that someone else had published it earlier. In both cases, I published an acknowledgment of priority in the same journal that had published my paper.  From the other answers, I infer that I wasn't really obligated to do this, but I thought and I still think that it's the right thing to do.  At the very least, it helps maintain friendly relations in the community.

Does the journal where paper X is published accept letters / short notes? If so, you could write a note showing how Proposition T in paper X is a special case of Theorem Y in your paper (assuming it's not completely trivial) and maybe a generalization. Keep it professional though -- it should be a service to the reader providing new insight over the theorems, not a dispute over "scientific priority" which readers may find petty. These things happen all the time in research, there's no need to make a big scene.

I checked and it does not publish short notes

Both of you made independent discoveries. Yours turns out to be more general. There is not much to this issue, since the timing of the publications does not really matter, given that they were independently done.
There is not much to worry. Ideally, people will cite both results when needed. You only need to make sure to advertise your result on conferences and forthcoming publications.


text:
Can my supervisor use my code in his paper without acknowledging me?
A student performed a thorough review of the available algorithms in the literature and constructed several coding implementations that were shown to be far more effective than previous implementations known to the supervisor for the last decade. The fundamentals of these implementations, which already existed in the literature, were complemented with a major adaptation.
The supervisor used these implementations to perform a simulation that formed one piece of key evidence for the validity of his paper. The student was not in the author list, not in the acknowledgments section and his works are not cited. In fact, the vanilla algorithm presented in the draft was insufficient to perform the required calculations.
For the sake of posing a question, let's take these claims as true and ask:
- How should the student approach this matter?

"Can" he?  Yes.  If you want to see whether you can object, arrange to see the department chair (or whoever is just above your supervisor).

It is not very wise to post this under your true identity. Perhaps you should anonymize your post?

The student should think about how much interested is his/her adviser in contribute to the student future, and keep his eyes open to prevent himself from this kind of practices

A lot of questions here are left unanswered.
Are you a student?  A staff programmer?  Do you have a work-for-hire agreement with the university?  Is it just your implementation, or is it your original synthesis of several algorithms?  Is the synthesis something that is novel & not obvious and do you think it constitutes a significant intellectual contribution?  Have you previously published about this synthesis and if so is that cited?  How core is the use of these algorithms to the main results of the paper?
It might be reasonable to point out to your advisor how it would be helpful to your career (ability to get a great job after leaving, etc.) if your contributions are recognized in the papers that use them, at least in the acknowledgements section.  It may be that for whatever reason the supervisor hasn't thought of this (or doesn't remember when writing it up close to the deadline) but may be very willing to do so.
If you are a student and the supervisor is your academic advisor, you may also ask questions/have a conversation about what authorship means in your field and what the expectations are for what contributions warrant authorship in your collaborations.  Part of an academic advisor's role is to teach their students about these sorts of things.
If you don't feel comfortable with a direct conversation or with the results of one, go to your program director and see what their perspective might be.

After recent edits the question seems quite a bit clearer.


text:
How should a graduate student email a professor from another country in order to get feedback on their work?
I'm trying to contact with a professor from another country to ask him to see my work and send me a feedback. But I don't know what is better to say that, someone told me that I must "sell myself" and tell that Prof. how   awesome I'm and someone told me that just be abbreviated and be direct to the subject. I don't know which one of them is correct, I think about that and  I'm getting confused; for the first opinion, I think that professor meets many people who are more awesome than me, and he is done of looking for awesome people, instead he is looking on awesome work. And for the second opinion, I think I will make that professor feels in a negative way.
As  academics what do you think is the best way for a fresh graduate(Bachelor holder) to contact with a professor who I don't know personally?

First and foremost, be honest. Second, plan a short proposal along with your research interests.

The answers will be similar to this question

Most professors, particularly well-known ones, get tons of such requests. And silently drop them into their recycle bin. They are busy people, with too much on their plates already, to go reviewing stuff that doesn't do them any good (reviewing a paper for a conference/journal, or a thesis, is part of their work, and not to be avoided; this is just work for nothing).
Get somebody in your environment to check over your work, they will tell you if it is any good, help you polish it and present it to where it will be looked at.

+1 Informal feedback requests will most likely not be honoured; academics will concentrate on giving feedback as reviewers, or to their supervisees. You can try to organise a visit or similar, if your topic is close enough to the prof's and contact him/her with such a proposal.

Read some papers of that professor, choose one, or two, which you liked the most, and in the first sentence of your e-mail write: "I read your publication in xy about xy and it was very interesting/exciting/ I enjoyed it...I am working on similar problems and I would like to..."
But I am in doubt that he will just read your papers and send you feedback. Why would he do that? If you don't have plans for some cooperation (ideas, common paper, funding, fellowship, travel grants) it is hard to find what he would get from you.


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How to assist your home university in evaluating whether classes taken when studying abroad should allow transfer of credit?
I am going to be studying for 1 semester in Japan for my computer science degree. This 1 semester will earn me my degree as well as my required internship.
I was already accepted into TU and am in the process of my transfer credits but my advisor at TU is concerned that some of the classes I took here, in the US, don't touch on everything they do over in TU.
How should you compare two courses to help an advisor determine if the courses are similar enough to transfer credits?

The comparison is the job of whoever confirms the credit transfer. Ask them what documents they need from you.

Dig up the syllabi (syllabuses!) or ask the professors if they still have copies.

which is more important? the learning or the certification of the learning?

Submit the course (or module-) descriptions for the examination department/office.
The target university needs a basis for their decisions to make.
A description of the course containing information about the topic (a syllabus), learning goals and skills taught, the workload and the examination conditions, will help to decide whether a course fits into your major or not and if it can be granted with transfer credits and so on.


text:
Can I publish open access articles on my personal website?
I have written a couple of articles for a print journal which I found, at the time of publication, were available online for free as Open Access. This was around two years ago. Can I also publish them on my personal website?
I also have pre-prints of a couple of other published papers [for a different journal]. I uploaded these to Researchgate. Can I put these on my site as well without incurring the journal's disgruntlement?

Did you transfer the copyright on any of these papers to the respective publishers?

You need to read your agreement with the journal.

Check the agreement you signed with the publisher.  If you transferred the copyright and they don't explicitly allow this, then the answer is no.
Another easy way to check is using Sherpa Romeo.  For instance, you can see here that the journal SINUM does allow the author to post the published version on a personal website.  Meanwhile, you can see here that JCP allows posting (on a personal site) of the accepted version, but not the published version.


text:
Postdoc position not specifying about required recommendation letters
As I'm approaching to the end of my PhD, I recently applied for a postdoc position. Before applying, I contacted the scientist offering the position, sending my resume and some publications which are of interest for the position. He encouraged me to apply as my experience would be important for his project and he also scheduled an interview at the end of this month, saying that he's making a decision in April.
However, he didn't ask me for recommendation letters, he just told me to apply online just to make my application official. The online form only requires a resume, any other document is optional.
Neither him nor the position advertisement specyfied any information about recommendation letters (e.g., the minimum number, or whether I should upload them online or just provide the emails of my references).
Is this common in research (the position is in the USA)? Should I ask him more info now or wait untill the interview?

While it seems unusual, I'm going to guess that he knows what he wants and needs. I wouldn't send things that aren't asked for in this case, as you seem to have already made it over the line. An accidental statement in a letter might actually hurt you, but I don't see how you can be "more" accepted than accepted.
If asked, send them of course. But you will likely learn more at the interview.
Depending on his funding, he may have wide latitude in who to hire and how to do it.

"An accidental statement in a letter might actually hurt you"                                                   I agree, that's what I'm concerned of as well.

On that note, everytime I talk my supervisor (I already talked about him in another question...) about some position, he always wants to talk to the employer "to find a project that is of interest for both the parties". Since he wouldn't be funding my postdoc, I don't believe that he has the right to do so. Hence, I'm concerned that this may hurt me as well (even more than an "accidental" statement in a letter). If asked for references, wouldn't it be wise if I cut him out and only involve my other advisors?

Just put a section with the names and contact info of a few references at the end of your resume. It is certainly quite common for jobs in the US to not ask for reference letters up front. They may want/need them eventually before the offer can be made. Or they may want to personally call your references to ask about you, and will worry about that at the last minute.
If the school is in a state with at-will employment, and treats postdocs as staff, they can lay you off anytime with two weeks notice. Hence the PI is more free to do pretty much what they want in hiring, including not bother with references (aside from rules about requiring proof of the PhD and such). Other schools handle postdocs with specialized contracts and have a lot more institutionalized hiring system with more paperwork and formality.

It's not a school but a lab, and I'll be hired as staff.

I agree with Buffy that it seems unusual, and I think it's quite likely that you'd be asked to provide references or recommendation letters at some point in the process. If your letter writers have already written letters for you, you can probably just apply and relax. If not, I'd suggest asking the scientist ahead of time if they'd be needed, and if so, in what quantity. That way you avoid risking having to scramble for letter writers, or risking giving your letter writers short deadlines.


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Colloquial term for relationship between postdoc and phd with same advisor
Colloquially, two phds from the same advisor are referred to as academic brothers/sisters, i.e. if i am a phd student with advisor X and someone else is a phd student with advisor X then we are academic siblings. In this framework, how would one describe the relationship of a postdoc to a phd, both having the same advisor?

Why not just "colleagues"?

Of course one is always able to say colleagues, in fact it was even applicable to the case with two phd students sharing an advisor. However, it's not what I am asking; I want a term of endearment which fits into this familial framework. We could just say peers even, but it's not useful with respect to answering the question.

Such might exist in some languages/cultures, but I've never heard anything in English.

It's a very common colloquialism used to refer to two people who share an advisor for their phd. Such people are called academic siblings.

@TonyS.F. - not sure about ‘very common’ - I’ve only been a PhD for 30 years now and I really can’t recall having heard the term before in the US.

Nearly 50 for me and nothing rings a bell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_genealogy
Common enough to warrant its own wikipedia entry, an entire page specifically for theoretical physics, and an entire database for mathematicians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_genealogy_of_theoretical_physicists
https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/

My question for you: why it matters for you to call a colleague or peer or whatever as "academic sibling"? I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but It looks really weird. For example, if I want to talk to another student of my adviser: call him/her "academic sibling"?! For example: Hey "academic sibling", What's up today?! Come on, it's really weird... I prefer to call him/her with his first name or if our relationship is formal with his/her last name...

Yes, there are genealogy projects (I'm in one of them) but they don't really relate to your question.

@TonyS.F. - I knew the math folks were keen on connections, had not heard of the theoretical physics folks, but for those not in those disciplines, it is not very common at all. Yet again, Academia is not monolithic.

(This seems like a reasonable question to me. The term is also common in computer science.) But I don't know of any such terminology for postdocs.

@AloneProgrammer: You don't use it as a term of address; you wouldn't say things like "Hey, academic sibling, what's up" to their face.  But people do say things like "I'm working on a paper with Y; she's my academic aunt".

@NateEldredge Still, it looks weird... really "academic aunt"?! Maybe it's just weird for me cause I never heard it before...

The analogy between doctoral adviser and parent might be extended to an analogy between postdoc supervisor and step-parent, which would make the relationship you're asking about step-brother or step-sister. But I've never heard such an extension of the analogy, and I wouldn't advocate it beyond the comment that it seems less illogical than other options.

I don't think there is any specific word for this.
In my experience, the "family" analogy (sibling, grandparent, uncle, etc) is only ever used for relationships defined in terms of the PhD advisor/student relationship.  I've never heard anything similar used for advisor/postdoc or any other type of academic relationship.
I think you just have to spell it out.  "He and I both worked with X; I was X's student and he was her postdoc."

Agreed, but note that some people use terms like 'uncle' and 'cousin' term a bit loosely, seemingly more based on "interaction distance" than on a direct analogy with family trees.

Given how badly can end up the relationships between advisers and students, I suggest to tread very carefully with such analogies.

@MassimoOrtolano ...because family relationships never end that badly. (Cough.)


text:
A high quality contribution but an annoying error is present in my published article
I have recently published a journal article in the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (IEEE TGRS). I can confirm that my contribution in the journal article is really of high quality and has promising results. Even my (very reputable) university congratulated me for my contribution during my PhD defense last year.
A few days ago, I discovered an error in my article. This error is really very annoying to me. In my article, I wrote:

The database contains 200 images. We removed "23 images of type X", "32 images of type Y" and "12 images of type Z", and so as a result, we use 128 images.

And I mentioned "128" all the time in all my experiments.
That fact is that all my results are really based on the number "128". But if you look back, the total should be 200 - 67  = 133  not 128. So I missed to say in the journal that we have also removed "5 images of type A". In this case the total will really be 128 as I mentioned in all my experiments.
All my results are correct and are really based on the number 128. But any reader can say "the total number of images must be 200 - 67 = 133 not 128, so how the author got 128!".
This is really awkward for me because I did this work in a very reputable university and I really wanted that everything to be perfect. I am really sad and I feel the failure and a bit like "Perhaps I don't deserve to be at this university".  What do you suggest me? should I contact the editor? Is it better to publish the correction online via ArXiv or HAL?

Does this have any relation to the conclusions of the paper?  If not, I think it's not worth thinking about.

@AnonymousPhysicist No this does not change anything in the conclusion or the results, but it is really a very annoying error to me since all my results are based on the number 128. So any ready can start asking a lot of questions about that.

"I can confirm that my contribution in the journal article is really of high quality and has promising results. Even my (very reputable)" might win the award for most self aggrandizing statement on this site, that's quite and accomplishment you should be very...?

I expect even if anybody was obsessive enough to check the arithmetic, they would probably assume "200 images" meant "approximately 200 images" and just carry on reading. Unless your paper actually contains all 200 images, in the final analysis, who cares whether there were 128 or 133? (Apart from yourself, of course)

To me, the bigger issue wouldn't be the discrepancy in the number of images, but the fact that there might be an exclusion criteria ("type A") that wasn't mentioned at all. Depending on what that criteria was, how non-obvious it was, and how significantly it differed from types X, Y & Z, it may be worth it to publish an erratum simply to inform people hoping to replicate/extend your work that there's something additional they need to consider when selecting images. It would be that, rather than a numeric discrepancy, which would motivate my decision.

The enemy of good is better.

@R.M. great comment. Yes It is important to remove the images of type A from the database. But I think if someone needs to apply my work, he/she will probably discover that I forgot to say that and that is why I obtained 128 instead of 133. But yes I am afraid that someone repeats the same error in the future.

" Perhaps I don't deserve to be at this university". What do ". Come on! You even makes me think that's true :))

Does the TGRS have a standard for publishing errata? That would be the course to follow.

Not enough for an answer, but just a remark: I think you matured in the past 2 years, and that reflects in the way you look at the outer form. The informal language will appeal more to younger people, like your younger self. It's not actually bad; it's less conformant. Think of it as a genuine expression of who you were back then. (Yes, sometimes it's somewhat embarrassing to see a picture of one's younger self, admitted ;-). )

@Peter-ReinstateMonica Yes I feel way more better now in writing than two years ago. Today, I feel not comfortable with informal syntax and I regret that I loved informal things during my PhD two years ago.

It is probably best to do all of that. Contact the editor and ask if a correction can be published (letters to editor, ...). Put out a corrected version somewhere visible.
But also, don't obsess over it. Perfection is rarely attainable in an imperfect world with imperfect humans.
The sort of error you mention is very common, actually. Once you write something it is difficult for you to read it as incorrect. Often your mind "reads" what you think is supposed to be on the page rather than what is actually there. It is notoriously difficult for people to proofread their own work.
Ideally, the review process should have caught the inconsistency, but since it wasn't caught, others glossed over it also as immaterial to what your arguments are.

Thank you for your answer. I will contact the editor to see whether he accepts or not. Do you think IEEE TGRS can accept to update their published articles?

@Christina They won't likely update the article itself (because of the typesetting involved) but they are very likely to publish what is variously called a "correction" or "corrigendum", a very small statement by you (just a sentence or two) correcting the error, which will be linked to from the article page. That correction will get its own DOI and so on. This is routine practice and nothing to worry about. Still worth doing though, not because of the discrepancy in the numbers, but as R.M. notes in another comment, effectively this arises from an otherwise unmentioned exclusion criterion.

@MichaelMacAskill Thank you for your comment. In fact I have contacted the editor but still didn't hear anything from him. I am afraid that he will not respond to my emails.

If you've done your part (due diligence) then don't worry about it.

Well said. I am atrociously bad at proofreading my own work even though I'm a decent proofreader for other people.

Do as Einstein did: publish a correction, he did so several times.

@DohnJoe I will become crazy one day because of my errors. And I think that is why Einstein was crazy:p

Crazy is good, for a certain value of crazy.

@Buffy lol exactly! btw the editor didn't find my error serious and so didn't accept a correction.

Since the asker said the in comments that the error is not related to the conclusions or results of the paper, the proper thing is to find something more important to work on.  Unimportant errors do not need correction.  Almost all papers have them.

Unfortunately I am a picky person and I will try my best to correct this error :(

Also, unfortunately, it reflects badly on you if someone else publishes a correction. Best that it comes from you. And novices can be misled even by minor errors, though not in the present case, of course.

@Buffy and Roland, Thank you for your comments. Do you think my error is really minor? what about if someone is reading my paper and starts asking a lot of questions about how I got 128? This is really awkward :-( I really feel now the failure.

Well, certainly not a failure. Yes, pretty inconsequential. It seems obvious from your description that you just left out a bit of explanation, rather than something that falsified a result. Relax. Have a culturally appropriate beverage of choice.

@Buffy Thank you. Yes I will do tonight!! Cheers.

Hmmm. The beverage? Pour me one too.

Agreed with the above. This is clearly a careless mistake and not something that affects the science. If you want to be sure, you could email the editor to highlight it, and see whether they want to do anything about it.

@Flyto  I also agree with you. The editor informed me that this is a minor error and does not require a correction.

Eternal rule of professional book proof-readers: no matter how hard one tries, an error will always remain.
...and this comes from Literature and Fiction. Factor in the added complexity of scientific writing...
...In short, do obsess over going the extra mile to deliver and proofread a paper to perfection. But don't obsess over the error that will stare you with a smirk after, in the published document.
Admittedly it takes some effort and practice to adopt this mindset.