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Asking advisor to become co-author
I am a STEM PhD student in the UK, and my advisor had given me a semi-ambitious thesis problem a couple of years back. He helped me understand the problem, helped shoot down all my wrong ideas over countless meetings, and also gave me lots of intuition about what the solution should look like. However, he hadn't cracked the problem himself. We didn't really expect my thesis to contain a solution to this problem.
Over the past few weeks, I was able to crack the problem at least partially. Should I ask my advisor to be co-author? There are multiple aspects to consider:

Are PhD advisors generally "savvy" enough to ask to be included as co-authors when they feel they have contributed enough to a project? Is it possible that my advisor hasn't asked to be included as co-author because that's a weird question to ask one's student?
Will my advisor feel offended if I ask to include him as co-author?
Is it possible that my advisor will hate me if I don't ask to include him as co-author? My advisee style has always been to do just what my advisor asks, but is this the point where I should take initiative and try to give him credit for his work, even though he may not be asking for it?

It sounds as if you have a good close relationship. So just ask him.

@EthanBolker, you've been in the game more recently than I. Is it still true that advisors are co-authors of dissertations as seldom as it used to be? My experience was "never", actually. See my comment to the answer of  EarlGrey. Note that if I were the advisor in this case, my answer to the question would be "no: the work is yours".

@Buffy Not sure I've been in the game more recently, and never  had a doctoral student. I think advisor coauthorship was and is rare in mathematics, less rare in other sciences. In this case I think and hope the advisor would say "no, the work is yours".

Math is (mostly) different from other fields, but you may still find this useful: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/644/when-should-a-supervisor-be-an-author

I am reading this question as "should my advisor be co-author in a paper during my PhD thesis" because of the time frame you gave (2 years ago you started to pursue this PhD).
Am I right?

I myself (math, U.S.), do not expect to be a co-author on my PhD students' theses, nor on other papers they may write while I'm coaching/supervising them. I'm not going to ask, in any case.
I wouldn't be offended if a student asked me if I'd want to be a co-author, but I'd decline.
I'd certainly not "hate" any of my students for not asking about co-authorship, etc.
The fundamental goal of the advisor/advisee relationship, in my opinion, is to get the advisee off to a good start. And I think this of_course entails lots of coaching and advise. Recommendations about "what to do"...
But advice about what to do, or observations that "you'd need to do X", are much, much different from "doing X". It does often happen that saying what maybe must be done is vastly easier than doing it! :)

Note for future readers: Academic culture is very different depends on the field. If you are in engineering, it is very bad if you don't add your advisor as coauthor. If you are in medicine, it is very bad if anyone that contributed to the data acquisition and funding are not coauthors. Check your field culture.

@AnderBiguri, indeed. I probably should have emphasized the field-dependence more...

I'm flabbergasted by the idea that there are fields in which PhD advisor don't necessarily do enough to be co-authors on their students' papers. In physics and astronomy, an advisor that didn't contribute enough to justify co-authorship would be viewed as not doing their job as an advisor. Are PhD advisors in math really that hands off?

@Nobody in math, the culture is that you get coauhtorship if you have done at least half of the work (or a third, for 3 authors, etc). In math this often means writing half of the paper, proving half of the theorems etc. If the supervisor "guided" the research, that does not tend to be sufficient for coauthorship, as the bulk of the work was done by the student. I doubt most physics supervisors do half of the work themselves. I don't disagree with what you say, as an engineer working halfway with medical doctors and mathematicians, this is confusing. But it is how it is.

@Nobody, I myself am not-at-all "hands off". Ordinarily, I'd only suggest projects that  I have a pretty good idea should work, and also how to execute. My task is to teach/coach a novice to be able to do that thing themselves. If I just wanted to write something up I'd probably do it myself. :)  And, again, actual execution is typically more effort than perhaps "visualizing" the execution. :)

@AnderBiguri I guess you learn something new every day. That is very different from any of the several fields I've worked in, and at odds with the recommendations of other scientific organizations. (E.g., the AGU journals require only that all authors have "Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work"). In most other scientific fields leaving someone out because they contributed "only", say, 10% of the work would be considered straight-up plagiarism.

@Nobody In mathematics, often there is no other contribution than the paper itself. In engineering/physics, a paper is a way to present results of your research, in mathematics, the paper is (often) the totality of the research. If you prove some bounds of a PDE, there is no code, no experiment, no analysis, no interpretation. There is only the maths directly described in the paper. The nature of what is "research" also is very different in maths, so we (non mathematicians) are not used to it

@AnderBiguri If that is so, then what was the content of the OP's "countless meetings" with their advisor? Even completely theoretical research involves working out the consequences of propositions, comparing them to known results, etc. I suppose that you are subsuming these within "the paper itself", but if you do that, then you also have to acknowledge that each author's proportional contribution to the paper goes beyond their individual word count; it has to include the thought they put into developing the paper's arguments and conclusions.

@Nobody I don't have the answers, I tell you what I observe around me, as a engineer impostor in a maths department hehe. I agree with you that what you say its how I was taught and my "culture" in my field.

@AnderBiguri Fair enough. Apologies for turning it into an argument.

The traditional convention in math is that advisors do not coauthor their student’s thesis paper regardless of whether the advisors contribution would be enough for coauthorship in any other situation. Whether this is a good convention is debatable, but it’s absolutely the tradition in mathematics. Mathematics is very much an outlier on this point.

Given the contribution you describe, your advisor ought to be a co-author on the paper, and he might be a bit annoyed if you do not include him (or he might not care).  However, part of the job of your advisor is to give you his guidance on things like this to help ease you into academia.  Ideally your advisor would sit down with you and explain what he thinks the authorship of the paper should be, and why.  It is best to do this at that start of a project so that all parties are comfortable with the authorship arrangements, and then renegotiate if contributions change.  Given that you haven't already done this, I recommend you ask for a meeting with your advisor and ask him for guidance on the authorship of this paper, and some more general guidance on authorship.

tl;dr:

no, no general style apart from PhD advisors being too busy, sometimes they take something for granted, something they take the opposite of something for granted.

no, unless he is an unreasonable person (offending someone unreasonable should be put in the "merits and awards" section of a CV)

see 1). If he is taking for granted you will put him as co-author, because he contributed a lot, he will be way more than offended. He may denounce you for plagiarism and prevent you from getting your PhD.

An author is someone who has made significant and substantial contributions to a study.
It seems to me that you cracked the problem, only after a couple of years of meetings, during which:

he helped me understand the problem, helped shoot down all my wrong
ideas over countless meetings, and also gave me lots of intuition
about what the solution should look like.

You would have cracked the problem alone? most likely yes.
In how many years? probably more than two, counting the wrong ideas and the lots of intuition he gave you.
If you would write the complete path to the results, every single small steps[1] that brought you to the results you present, including a chapter for every idea you had and their dismissal from your advisor, as well as the discussion of each intuitions he gave, you would quickly realize how much he contributed.
So his contributions were fundamentals to the study, although they were not necessary.
Then go ahead, offer him co-authorship.
I would even say offer it indirectly, something like asking him if you can send him a very first draft of the paper. He may asks you (or not) about being co-author. Then when you send him the paper, casually mention "here attached the draft of our paper on xyz" and with him already listed as an author. If he deems not relevant to be co-author, he will state it, but surely he will not be offended[2].
[1] no, the audience does not really care, it is just a pure intellectual hypothese.
[2] if he feels like he did not contribute enough, he will clearly states that, he may not agree with your evaluation of his contributions, but no reasonable person can be offended because by that (at the draft stage, of course it is different at submission, where you need explict proof of every co-author agreeing in authoring the submitted paper).

There are more than a few math professors around here who will have good insight into this question from a math perspective. Other areas have other ethos', so beware.

I agree with all of this and add that it is (or at least was) very rare for an advisor to be a co-author of a pure math dissertation, even when it was warranted. The feeling was that even with help, the student generated the main insights and so should get credit. Advisors were often lavishly praised in acknowledgements. My experience is old (retired now) and things may have changed a bit, though I hope not. This is quite different from many other fields, even some theoretical ones. Work as co-authors on the next project after the dissertation is done.

@Buffy- To be clear, this is co-authorship for a research publication, and not a thesis.

When I was a PhD student, I assumed my advisor would coauthor a particular paper, and he said no, he hadn’t contributed enough to it. (This was in CS.)
I agree with those who said ask (for papers/articles, certainly not a thesis). Your advisor should not be offended if you do, and could be miffed if you don’t.
But, it’s not uniform, even in a discipline like engineering.

The normal thing is to ask them. Personally, I feel you might be entitled to a sole credit, but 99 out of 100 senior academics feel that they should be on the paper just for being your boss (having secured the funding, etc.).
If you really do not want them to be on the paper, you should take a deep breath and tell them.
If you are happy for them to be on the paper, just put their name on the draft you give them to read. If you hear nothing, then they are OK with that.

I am not the downvoter. But I still disagree with that 99 out of 100 statistic. Maybe that can be the norm in other sectors of science, this I don't know. In mathematics my experience is different. Honest advisors sign a paper only if they have actually worked on it, just like they would do with any collaborator, student or not.

In many of those fields, "securing the funding" isn't something to sneer at. They wrote a grant, which involves framing the problem, identifying possible solutions, and doing so in a way that's more compelling than ~6 other similar attempts (given current paylines). It's not like they just got a stack of unmarked $20 bills from the supply closet.


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Etiquette for reimbursement requests to advisor
My PhD advisor recently agreed to fund my research visit for a conference. What is the etiquette for submitting expense bills for reimbursement?
Should I submit bills for all the ubers taken, meals eaten, etc? Or should I mainly just ask for reimbursement for the flight and accommodation?
I am comfortable spending a couple of hundred dollars for meals and ubers, and don't want to come across as "cheap".

This completely depends on your institution, their policies, and where your supervisor is funding you from.

@Eletie- He's funding me from his grant.

What part of the world are you in?

@Roland ...and in many places, for meals it's an upper limit supported by receipts, not a flat rate.

Oh, and be sure you read the appropriate policy.  It's not always quite the same for students (including postgrads) and staff.  A common general starting point is that if it's necessary and supported by receipts (for some definition of receipts) you can and should claim - but nothing is that simple.

" don't want to come across as "cheap". " It may be culture dependent, however in the academic world in general you do not have to impress the others showing the bling bling ... keeping in mind this, please take comfortable accomodation and do not eat crap.

You should ask your advisor what does the grant cover. Some grants cover more than others. You certainly do not want to submit everything without asking first.

This. Students usually have a regular communication channel with their professor [citation needed]. I feel it's weird that some other answers are proposing just to send everything without asking, when we can easily ask them first what's covered. Even usually I believe there are documents describing this already.

@justhalf: There cannot be documents applicable to every grant. In my case NSF grants allow certain reimbursements and the University grants allow others. As for regular communication channel. I often use my grants to support other people's students. So e-mail is the only option for them. If the OP cannot contact the Professor, one can contact the secretary responsible for the reimbursement. The secretary knows for sure. But it is better to contact the Professor because only the Professor knows how much money he/she can give.

Sorry I wasn't clear. By document, I mean document in the grant that the professor has access to or know who has it, which can be referred to to the student to read. That's what I did. So it's a specific document in each case, but which I believe is accessible.

Most universities have some kind of online administrative system to handle reimbursement of work expenses.  Typically, this would involve you submitting a request into one of the online systems and attaching relevant receipts.  Things might be different if your supervisor is funding out of a grant, but there is usually still a system for this.  So in this situation, a good first step would be to email your supervisor to ask where/how you should submit your reimbursement request.
Usually reimbursement for work-related trips would include payment for the flights, accommodation, taxis/buses/etc., and meals.  Sometimes there is a per diem rate payable for meals and daily expenses in lieu of cost-reimbursement, to alleviate the need to keep receipts for small expenses.  Your supervisor should be able to give you guidance on the process and the items that are reimbursed.

You should find out what the rules are from your advisor/institution, get receipts for everything, and preferably avoid spending a penny of your own money. Conferences are work and should be paid for by the grant/institution; you are not being cheap by ensuring that you are not doing this out of your own pocket.
The important thing to do is to find out exactly what the rules are before you go so that you know the score rather than being surprised later or missing out on money you should have claimed back.

I second this. Get as much as possible paid directly by the university, flights, accommodation, transfers... That is the bulk done. You then need only worry about food.
It's a work trip. Work should pay for it.

Submit them all.  Your advisor is a grown-up and can figure out how to break the news if only some of your expenses can be reimbursed.

I'd say ask first. If some things aren't reimbursable, this just creates extra work, both for the OP to copy and submit receipts needlessly, and for the advisor to comb through the expenses and reject some of them. If only some expenses are covered, the advisor can just as easily break that news without doing the paperwork, but only if the OP asks.

@NuclearHoagie  How do you ask?  Do you say, I have some unspecified expenses and I don't know if they can be reimbursed?  Or do you think the advisor would prefer if you said, here they are with receipts, let me know if any are a problem.

Just ask if there are any types of non-reimbursable expenses you should be aware of, or if there's a written policy you can consult. Most expense reimbursements I've gone through are a bit more tedious than just handing over a pile of receipts. It also may help to know the rules beforehand in case you need an itemized receipt, or if you can't get an alcoholic beverage with a meal reimbursed, or anything else that might affect what you pay for, how you pay for it, or how you document it. Submitting only reimbursable expenses with correct documentation makes everyone's life easier.

@NuclearHoagie Can we assume a PhD candidate is smart enough to ask if there's a form for submitting expenses?

As long as you think that the costs are well justified and they are within the rules of your institution I would submit everything. Ideally, we joy attending conferences and meeting colleagues and it may not feel like work but ultimately it is part of our job and should be treated as such. If you worked for a company you would not ask twice but simply assume that your business trip is covered. The same should apply to academic conferences. At least this is what I tell my PhD students and I would reimburse everything without hesitation as long as they can justify it and it is within the official limits.

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Guide won't let me publish research that supersedes his own work
This is a follow-up from Patching things up with advisor? He has been avoiding me since I found a simple answer to a problem he thought would be challenging
I'm a math PhD student in the western world. Last year, I solved a question that my advisor hadn't solved himself. This led to conflict between us, in which we he would tell me things like "solving this problem won't get you a job", "you should consider industry", etc.
I applied for postdocs independently, without substantial support from him. He did write me a recommendation though. I managed to generate interest from some top people in my field, and got a postdoc I wanted.
I recently again got a result that supersedes his previous work. This is related to the above problem as well. There are minor flaws that can be ironed out easily. My advisor magnified those errors, told me that it is all completely wrong and far from a solution, and told me to forget about this problem and do something completely outside of my current expertise. When I asked him if I should publish my results when I managed to iron out the flaws, he told me I should completely forget about it for now. He then suggested five different things I should do instead of this problem.
The troubling part is that my advisor first blurted out a way to iron out the tiny flaws. Then he went back on his own comment and said that this strategy would never work, and I should forget about it.
I don't trust my advisor's judgement anymore.

Should I change advisors? This is the last semester of my PhD.

Should I not publish these results? They are important, but not enough for the very top journals. However, publishing them will obviously destroy ties with my advisor forever.

Should I completely change fields? This would reduce conflict with my advisor.

I'm assuming the post doc is for the future and that you haven't yet finished your doctorate. Is that correct?

@Buffy- Yes, that is correct.

If it's easy to iron out the minor flaws, why don't you do that? Then, once these flaws are resolved, what does your advisor think?

@BryanKrause- I am worried that my advisor will shout at me for focusing on this, instead of the things he told me.

My suggestion, if you can manage it is: to finish your degree as soon, and as simply as you can, and move on. You don't need to publish the "new" results at the moment, and will need to consider whether he has any authorship claim to the work or only an acknowledgement. You don't need Euler's permission to extend his work (or anyone's).
Develop an independent career, and new collaborative opportunities. Let referees judge the quality of the paper you submit, rather than depending on someone who may prioritize their own career over yours.
Once you finish the degree, Changing fields is sub-optimal at this moment, but future studies may lead naturally to that, as it might for anyone.

Can I ask for insight on why he might be doing so? Is it because he simply dislikes me, or perhaps I am "eating" into his own work, and that is in some way dishonorable for his own student? Does he perhaps see me as a competitor for future grants?

Any of those are possible, but none necessary. There is some chance he is correct in fact and that you should be doing other things. But the advice is the same. Get done and then you can make your own choices.

Relatedly, consider getting advice from other local professors and/or students to get more opinions. We on this site have very limited context.

It's a difficult and unpleasant situation. Your current advisor's behavior is unusual, but I have seen this before (long time ago).
Here are my suggestions:
Postdocs (in math) normally start in August-September. Your dissertation defense is likely to be in May or during Summer. My suggestion is to start writing your paper (which supersedes your advisor's results) now. You do not need your advisor's permission to write one. I assume that you have enough results for your dissertation without that work. Writing takes time (including polishing the presentation). Since it is already February and you will be busy with finalizing your dissertation, chances are that you will not even finish writing before the Summer starts. After your thesis defense and after everything related to your degree is finalized, finish writing your paper, put it on the arXiv and send to a journal of your choice.
Caveat 1: arXiv requires an endorsement if you are not an established mathematician. However, given that you got your postdoc, chances are that you already have one or more papers posted, in which case you do not need an endorsement (which usually comes from your advisor). If this is your first arXiv submission, just submit to a journal and wait until your postdoc starts before putting the paper on the arXiv.
Caveat 2: If you are not 100% sure that your proofs are solid, after your defense send the paper to your postdoctoral advisor and ask for an input (before submitting the paper to arXiv or/and a journal).
After you have submitted the paper, email a copy to your current advisor, saying in in the email that you have managed to iron all the kinks in the proof, thanking for suggestions of future directions, all the help, etc. There is a chance that this will not help and you will have spoiled your relationship with PhD advisor forever. You still have your new postdoctoral advisor whom you will be asking for future recommendation letters (as well as other mathematicians in your area).
This situation is unpleasant but (I believe) it should not prevent you from publishing the results.

What happened to the PhD student in the case that you're referring to? Did they finally publish their result? Was there a fallout?

@RyanHendricks: That case was a bit different. The student was not in his last year, did not apply for a postdoc. Instead, the student applied to a different PhD program in math, switched to a different area (not too far, but sufficiently different). Now, the student is a full professor.

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Automatic publication list in group webpage
I manage my research group website, and whenever a member of the group publishes something/posts it on the arXiv, I'm supposed to add it to the list (along with DOI, URL, status, etc.). But it's hard to keep track of them consistently, and sometimes we just forget to do it.
I was wondering if there is a way to automatically fetch publications from a given list of authors, so that when something is published, the website updates automatically.
Does anyone know such tool? Even some API that I can use for my website is fine.

You might not like the results. People share names. People's names are represented differently at different sites. Give the members a simple way to let you know of an update.

@Buffy: in the age of ORCID, that sounds like it should be a non-problem. (I do emphasize "should".) But seriously, that sounds like something ORCID should already offer. Alternatively, link to each member's ORCID page. Then, of course you are at the mercy of ORCID being up to date. And if you rely on Google Scholar, same issue. If you use both, you need to filter out duplicates. In any case, have people review any auto-generated list, and give them an easy way to correct erroneous entries.

@StephanKolassa I don't think ORCID automatically indexes arXiv preprints.

Frankly, interfacing with an API sounds a lot harder than ... just keeping track? Even if your group is massive, a pub a week is like 10 minutes worth of work.

I say this because names are natural-language objects, and the mess of journals and preprint servers doesn't lend itself to a clean solution. When I visit a group's webpage that's where the manually curated list should be.

Most university group webpages I've seen have a lovely manually curated list of publications that was last updated roughly 5 years ago when everyone in the department was forced to redo their webpage by administration fiat.

@JonCuster The natural cycle for university webpages is to flipflop between "This list is difficult to maintain, let's extract it automatically from XYZ" and "The data in this list is garbage, let's manually maintain it."

@xLeitix At least they're consistent in it being an unfunded mandate with no support.

@AzorAhai-him- programming a couple of lines of code is not an hard task, especially because we're a CS group. I prefer spending some time working on something that will automate such annoying task for the rest of my career, rather than doing it by myself. Then obviously such an API must exist, and that's the problem pointed out by others.

I disagree with some of the concerns raised in the comments. The Institute of Applied Analysis at Ulm University has been using such an automated approach for quite some years and it works very well in my experience: link to their page

@NYG I'm a competent programmer as well, and left my comment based on that evaluation.

ORCID is the way to go, because for US federal sponsors, it's being integrated into systems like SciENcv, which is required for NSF proposals and the link can be used in NIH biosketches.  It can also help fill out forms for you automatically.  ORCID accepts data uploads as well, so you can output from Google Scholar directly and upload into ORCID.

@JochenGlueck That is not what OP asks, but a simpler version: it includes only Arxiv, not all journal publications. It is significantly easier to do that when you have a single source that already disambiguates authors with the same name.

@FedericoPoloni: "That is not what OP asks: it includes only Arxiv" Well, it is a pragmatic solution that solves two issues mentioned by the OP: it avoids annoying manual work and it avoids forgetting to include new articles. Of course, it only works if it's common in OP's group to post all preprints to arXiv. It also includes the DOI of the journal publication in case that the authors include it in arXiv. (Admittedly though, many authors - including myself - are sloppy about this.) Sure, the solution is not perfect, but looking for perfect software solutions rarely leads to good outcome.

Here's an example from my former lab.

@JochenGlueck This seems nice. Actually many journals support automatic update of the DOI to the arXiv upon publication

Your first stop should probably be your university library. Librarians at a research university in 2024 are very well aware of publication databases, different ways of interfacing with them, and what issues you will face (names vs ORCIDs, what metadata is and isn't available, etc.). Based on the little experience I have, you are probably underestimating the challenge, and a chat with the right person in your library would help manage your expectations a bit. In the end, most likely you will come to the conclusion that it's easier to manually maintain your records than deal with name clashes, missing entries, wrong / inconsistent metadata in different databases, de-duplication, publishing delays, etc.
Most importantly, your library will also know what your university already has in place in that regard. My university library, for example, already automatically extracts metadata for all papers (co-)authored by our staff from a dozen or more different places - and I suspect yours will too ("How many papers have our staff published in 2023?" is a common rectorate-level question the library needs to be able to answer). This data will almost certainly not be perfect, but you need to ask the question if you can realistically do better than them.

Thanks. I expect this task to be solved by some AI in the near future, since as many pointed out, it is all about working with natural language

@NYG I'm unsure. It's an area where people tend to get very upset about problems with data quality - if your AI misjudges your top paper as a workshop contribution people tend to be very displeased, similarly if the AI makes up a paper you never wrote. Even if that only happens (say) 2% of the time, it's the kind of thing where one time is already too many.

I would do a half-way thing: tell the members of your group that whenever they publish, they need to enter their publication into a centralized location. This can be a simple text file, with the relevant fields like author, journal, title etc, or it could be in bibtex format, or a spreadsheet, or a DB, whatever works for you. But this will be maintained manually, and it will be the responsibility of the authors to add their work there.
Next, you write a little script that parses that file and brings in any new publications. This means you don't need to rely on nobody else in the world ever having the same name as a member of your group, and while it is still a semi-manual process, this really isn't much work for anyone. Especially compared to actually getting the paper out. So you could include the step of adding the publication to the repository file as part of your group's publication process.
With this approach, you get most of the benefit of a full automated one (very little busywork for anyone, each person only needs to deal with their own publications and only once) without the drawbacks of the fully automated (more time to develop, error prone if relying on author names etc). Best of both worlds?

This is a very good idea. It will work particularly well if the staff has a personal interest in keeping the db up to date (which in turn friends on the reason of the list existing in the first place)

I have cobbled together a simple javascript solution to this quite some time ago that was mentioned above in a comment by @JochenGlueck. In its current form it is holding up surprisingly well. It is used to generate the preprint list of the Institute of Applied Analysis.
Originally I had tried to directly use arXiv public author identifiers and the myarticles widget. Turns out it is hard to convince people to create author identifiers or to use ORCID and such.
In order to use the script you need to adapt the variables authors (for arXiv identifiers), extra_authors (just the names in the format [SURNAME]_[INITIAL] without any spaces or special characters) and probably api_query_url (for the correct arXiv categories). Then you can include it into a website something like this:

Please wait while a list with our current arXiv preprints is generated...

This webpage requires JavaScript.

I suggest to not bother with author identifiers as long as the names of the authors work. Maintenance consists in keeping the list of names up to date. You might need to copy all the required javascript files to the same server to avoid troubles with the same-origin policy.

Do you then pull the journal-ref/published DOI from the arXiv page to update the webpage when papers are published? Then it seems one has to rely on group members updating those fields, which, while good practice, also seems hard to guarantee.

@Anyon Yes, it tries to pull the DOI from arXiv. So this only works if one of the authors bothers to update the information there. For mathematics one could detect (with reasonable precision) which preprints have appeared by cross-checking with zbMATH Open.

So if I understand correctly this script assumes that Surname_Initial identifies each author uniquely?

@FedericoPoloni One can also use [SURNAME]_[FIRSTNAME] if the initial is not sufficient. If this still doesn't work one can use proper arXiv author identifiers. Actually, I just made a minor update to the script since I noticed that my colleagues nowadays use more/other arXiv categories. Due to the additional categories there were two false hits in the list that I was able to get rid of by fully specifying two firstnames.

It's not an AI, at least, but I doubt one could trust it. It is open to both false positives and false negatives.

@Buffy If you need perfection, you can use the script locally, manually correct any errors and then upload a static file.

Some universities use research information management system software like Pure to keep track of their student and faculty contributions. These do scrape data from repositories like Arxiv, but usually require manual approval from the researcher (to prevent false attribution because someone has the same name or initials). This has the advantage of the researcher only having to update one database rather than several. Pure has an API that you could use to update your webpage, speak to IT about it if that's what your university uses.


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Excel in both teaching and research as a junior faculty member
I am working as a junior faculty member in a tenure-track position at the Economics department of a mid-sized university in Asia where I am expected to excel in both teaching and research. I have found that managing these dual responsibilities is quite challenging, particularly because my university has high expectations for research output and teaching quality. Additionally, I am required to serve on several committees and advise students, which further divides my time.
Given these competing demands, what are some comprehensive strategies that can help me effectively balance my research and teaching responsibilities while still fulfilling my service and advising obligations? Specifically, I am looking for advice on burden and time management techniques, ways to integrate teaching and research, and methods for maintaining a healthy work-life balance. How can I ensure that I am meeting the expectations for tenure without "burning out"? Unfortunately, my university cannot afford to invest in mental well being of its employees.

Is there a faculty member recognized as successful by the department you could discuss the situation with, a sort of reality check? My guess is excel at both probably means be successful at both, which would likely be quite different.

"Excel" in both teaching an research might be the ultimate goal, but you have to chose one over the other. Look left and right, good teacher have to neglect research, stellar researchers supervise less bachelor / master theses or reduce their effort in teaching. Decide what you want to achieve and try to keep an okay level in the other part.

I wouldn't use Excel, it's not very reproducible.

As part of my role as an academic editor and coach, I provide productivity coaching to faculty and PhD students in similar circumstances to yours. The majority of full-time and even part-time faculty deal with the kinds of stressors and demands that you mention. I'll share some of the strategies that have worked for my clients.
First, physical and mental health need to be prioritized routinely, because everything else depends on them. There needs to be a block for these on your daily and weekly schedules, and they need to become automatic habits that you rarely sacrifice. Treat them as nonnegotiable. The main components are sleep, exercise, nutrition, and at least one daily dose of enjoyable activities and relaxation. Some people might also consider a spiritual practice important.
A common human tendency is that we take care of whatever is salient and pressing in the present moment. This is hard-wired into the brain as a survival mechanism, but it doesn't work well for present-day careers because there are silent things lurking in the background that can make or break your career. A common problem is that teaching tends to get most of the time and attention because you don't have a choice about it: it must get done on schedule and it involves a commitment to others. Then research gets put on the back burner, even though research is essential for tenure. So it's critical to be aware of both short-term and long-term demands and have a system for managing them.
I use written life-management plans with my clients.  These should be divided into long-term plans (5 years or more), this year, this month, and today. If you rigorously derive each plan from the one before it, when you get up each day you will have a plan for the day that is automatically tied to your true long-term plan. So since research is of course on your 5-year plan, it will appear somewhere on your plan for this week.
Next, an accountability mechanism is needed, whether it's your private accountability or reporting to someone like a coach. This could be as simple as crossing things off your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly plans. But you also need to frequently revisit these plans to see where things stand and adjust your productivity strategies to meet target goals. Reporting to another person for accountability is very powerful, whether a friend, colleague, coach, or peer group. I’ve seen instant improvement in procrastinators when they elect to send me a daily or weekly report on their progress, especially when they also send me a plan at the beginning of the week.
Your weekly schedule is especially important. Set this up on Sunday evening. Ask yourself, “Where do I want to end up by the end of next week?” Commit to specific results by the end of the week, and reserve a block for each task on your schedule.
Personally, I create these schedules in Microsoft Word, print them out, and keep them in a 3-ring binder in a place that becomes a “command center” that I return to frequently throughout the day to see what’s next. There are numerous apps that can serve the same purpose.
Nothing in your post indicates that you’re a procrastinator. It sounds like you’re trying to squeeze extra hours out of your week after meeting the most urgent demands of your job. One way to do this is to track your time use for a few days and scrutinize the results to identify any activities or habits that are sapping your time and that you have control over. Some things to watch for include email, social media, commuting, and time lost transitioning from one activity to the next. Can you combine things like commuting and preparing for classes? Would research collaborations with colleagues allow for the burden of tasks to be shared? Can any teaching or research tasks be delegated to assistants? Are there any nonessential committees that you can let go of after a reasonable period of contributing? Are there department or university duties that you can just say no to? You may need to learn to turn down service requests that aren’t strictly required by your department. Try to put your time into the things that will have the greatest payoffs for your career: presenting at a conference would be a better choice than serving on the student residence committee. For parents, the availability of childcare and a spouse’s willingness to share parenting and household tasks are big factors in your available time, so try to negotiate those.
Regarding tenure, list the requirements and assign a deadline to each one. In the US, the requirements might be three published papers and one published book. Break down each large task into a series of smaller ones and assign a target date to each one. A book usually can’t be written in less than one year. Working with an editor on papers and books right from the initial planning stage will result in a better final product in less time.
The goal of these systems and planning is to end up with fairly large blocks of time that can be devoted to less pressing yet still critical tasks. For most scholars, the big challenge is research time. Smaller blocks of time can be carved out each day, often in the evening, but this isn’t ideal because by then you may be exhausted, especially if you’re a parent. Larger blocks can be created on weekends. Some people are able to arrange their teaching schedule to have entire midweek days for research. Even larger blocks can be created during vacations, during summer breaks, and by taking a longer leave from work or year-long sabbatical. Applying for grants to finance these leaves will help.
I want to stress again that regardless of the strategies and schedule you chose, you should never lose sight of yourself as a whole person and of the necessity of taking the best possible care of yourself as a whole organism. If you’re always stressed, exhausted, and discouraged, what’s the point of all the effort? There have to be large rewards at the end––the satisfaction of work you really enjoy, a feeling of being in control of your life, time for family, friends, and activities you enjoy outside your work, etc. Consider your happiness as essential for your career success, not as something you must postpone for later, “when I have more time.”

While I agree with the pragmatism of this advice, it makes me so sad that the only sensible way to find the time to do the job is to be talking about weekends and vacations as times to work. Many people are not capable of sustaining that pace with limited breaks, and I increasingly believe that academia selects not for good teachers or researchers (though or course many are) but simply for those capable of sustained long hours.

This is impossible to answer without knowing the actual expectations of your university and department. They don't expect 48 hour days and 10 day weeks. "Excel" is poorly defined. Many universities are explicit about the expected balance of effort between teaching, research, and service. I suspect yours is something like 60/30/10, given your description. At a research university it would be more like 30/60/10, though these are just approximate.
I suggest that you have a conversation with one or more of your immediate colleagues who have been successful in this and see what they have to say about how they managed it. They will know the "real" expectations.
Note also, that in a tenure track position, it is your more senior colleagues in the department that you need to convince, not some international audience. Those colleagues will be the ones deciding on your tenure (most cases).
But, one thing I can suggest is to do a lot of collaborating, both locally and more widely. To teach a new course, see if a colleague will share their teaching notes with you to get started. Likewise, collaboration in research can be a good source of ideas as well as a point in your favor when it comes to tenure decisions.
And, if your university (as many are) is willing to give you some release time or give you reduced (or simpler) teaching loads, take advantage of that in the early years.

Thank you for the detailed answer, and I am not sure 60/30/10 or other way around. I never came across this in my contract or discussion. I think this is more like 50/50. What do you mean by service? Administrative tasks?

It is rarely put in contracts, but should be known to senior people and administrators. Service can mean many things, including admin tasks and committee membership. It can also mean service to the community - giving talks and such. At many universities, the details are negotiated annually, usually with the department head. Even the balance between the three elements might be negotiable for a new hire. Talk to a recently tenured colleague.

@user23644521 your contract (or somewhere within it) will state your FTE or full time equivalent, which is 1.0 (whatever that means for your standard work week). The 60/30/10 means that your split of full time equivalent is 60% research, 30% teaching, and 10% service. This +/- 5% is the usual assistant professor split for a US tenure track faculty at a PhD granting institution. Unfortunately, even though FTE usually is based around a 40 hour work week, I found my tenure track time to require about 70 hours, because teaching and service was heavy, and research ate into my free time afterwards.

A sensible university will have an expectation like 60/30/10 or 30/60/10 where 100 corresponds to roughly 40 hours per week. Unfortunately that doesn't prevent universities from stating expectation that would correspond to something like 80/80/40 and then let their faculty struggle with that.

I agree with Buffy answered. I just want to add few more points that may or maybe applicable in your case. Since, you did not mention your country or department you are teaching in, the case is often different in STEM and non-STEM departments. The nature of teaching and research varies in both of them. Collaboration and maintaining good connection with your peers is also a key to releasing work related stress. If your university does not offer perks for mental well being, it is perfectly fine as Asian universities do not have enough budget for such things compared to American or European universities. You can join some inexpensive program in your local area or online. It is at least better than having nothing.

I am sorry, what is STEM?

STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

Thank you, No, I am not from STEM. I am in the Economics department, which I think it is not STEM.

The expectations of your department and institution are local features that are known and understood by your experienced colleagues, who all came up in the same professional environment as the one you are in, with its particular demands, and succeeded. You could hugely benefit from having mentors and friends from that pool of people who can give you good advice about various professional "life hacks" that will help you to succeed and thrive in your current position.
Here we can give general advice, but the nature of this type of advice is that it is very generic. You can watch a hundred TED talks and YouTube videos telling you how to be productive and successful (while staying mentally healthy and physically fit, taking two months off each year to go on off-the-grid wilderness outings, and enjoying social and romantic success that is the envy of everyone you know). Some of this advice is very good and you should heed it, but much of it will simply not be applicable to your particular situation. So, like I said, for the best advice, find mentors with the relevant local expertise. Good luck!

Specifically, I am looking for advice on burden and time management
techniques, ways to integrate teaching and research, and methods for
maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

Well... Eggy gave some very productive advice and tools/methods (where you have to figure out a system and approach that works for you - and this will depend on your personal circumstances and preferences).
What might help (and helped me) in addition, is admitting to yourself that this is it in academia: This struggle will always remain, and the burden won't get lighter. You will (with experience) just become a little bit better day by day with handling it. So you need to indeed build a system that allows you to manage this juggling exercise. Some days and weeks will be better than others - and as long as you stick to the long-term and shorter-term plans (if not to the letter), you are doing OK.
I guess I'm trying to say: find some peace of mind in admitting that this is it - you are riding a never ending wave and need to find the joy in surfing it (the good thing about getting tenure is that from that moment onwards nobody is going to be able to take the surf board away from you any more).

I think you're right. I almost said this in my answer, but I decided that many careers and most of modern life are a struggle for inner and outer balance and peace. I think the real challenge is not to "get everything done," but to simplify life such that we have a sense of fulfilling our real mission and satisfaction and happiness. The acceptance you allude to is important. You remind me of Robin Williams in the film "As Good As It Gets." He's sitting in his psychiatrist's waiting room and he looks at the other depressed patients and says, "What if this is as good as it gets?" ;-)

Ouch, I always found that film rather depressing and I am in fact a rather upbeat person (which is why the acceptance feels 'freeing' rather than 'succumbing to the facts of life'. You made me laugh, still :-)

Woops, I meant to say Jack Nicholson, not Robin WIlliams. And he was freed, remember.

If possible, you can gear towards supervision. Perhaps some research tasks can be offloaded to students? This benefits all parties involved (students get a good CV, you do not need to do tedious tasks).
I have had some success with this, where several student projects ended up also as joint papers.


text:
Planning for grad school
I am a second year under-graduate student in mathematics. My school (3 years under-grad) has a great history of sending its under-graduates to top graduate level math programs of the US universities. However, I do not know to what extent top universities expect an under-graduate to have done graduate level courses.
The math courses I will have done in my under-grad are: Calculus I-II-III, Analysis I, Analysis II, Linear Algebra I, Linear Algebra II, Complex Analysis, Real Analysis, Intro to Algebra, Discrete Math, Introductory PDE, Stochastic Processes. I do not know if I will have done Topology and Number Theory as they are not offered in a regular basis.
So, my question to those who are studying or working in graduate level math departments is: Are there any specific (number or name of) graduate level courses that a student should have done to be accepted in top math schools for PhD? I know that many things other than the transcript would be considered by admission committee. But just looking at the transcript of an undergraduate, which graduate level math courses would the committee like to see in applicant's transcript?

I am a professor in a top ten math dept. in the US.  I have sat on admissions committees for many years, and talked to colleagues at other top tier institutions about admissions.
First: admissions is not done by a "bureacracy", or "officers".  It is done by some subset of the math dept. faculty, who read the applications, including the letters, the GRE scores, the transcripts, and the essay, and then rank order them.
Second: To get to a top institution, high GRE scores are essential.  These don't guarantee admission by any means, but if someone can't get high scores on this exam, it calls into question their understanding of all the basic undergrad math they've learnt.   It's true that different schools (and different faculty members, even at a given school) place different weights on this exam, but doing well on it is something you have some control over in the admissions process (by preparing well), so it makes sense to do so.
Your GPA in your math courses is also very important.  Presumably you are doing your best in your courses, and getting as high a GPA as possible.  So there is no real magic to this; you just have to work hard at learning math.
Third: Assuming that your GPA and GRE scores put you in the ball-park of being a credible candidate for admission, people will read your letters carefully.  So you want to get letter writers who can write about your achievements and abilities in as much detail as possible.
Fourth: No-one expects undergrads to have done real research; REU experience certainly helps, but one main reason for this is that it provides a way to meet professors who may get to know you quite well, and so can (hopefully) write a strong letter for you.
Fifth: Graduate courses certainly help, if your grade in them is good and meaningful.  It is often the case that undergrads in grad courses will be given somewhat inflated grades out of sympathy on the part of the instructor.  This makes sense from the point of view of not destroying someone's GPA because they took a challenging class, but an admissions committee will look for evidence that the undergrad really did master the material in the grad classes they have taken.  One way to show this is to have the instructor of the graduate class write a (hopefully positive) letter.
Again, different schools have different expectations about what incoming students will know.  At the absolute top places (Harvard, Princeton) essentially all the incoming students will know essentially all the material in basic graduate courses (measure theory and functional analysis, basic algebraic topology, basic commutative algebra, and so on).  At other places this is not the case, but most incoming students at most top schools will be familiar with a reasonable percentage of what would be regarded as basic graduate math.
Sixth:
In terms of preparation for grad school, writing a senior thesis is great.  It teaches you about a topic in much more depth than you would normally investigate it, normally leads to learning some grad level math, and also again builds a closer connection with a professor (your advisor) who can then hopefully write a good letter for you.   And at a more fundamental level, since mathematicians spend most of their time writing about mathematics, this is pretty good preparation for that.
As far as applications to grad school go (rather than as preparation for succeeding in graduate school, where as I've said it's great), my sense is that the real pay-off for writing a senior thesis is the letter from the advisor.
Since this is a bit harder to quantify than entries on a transcript, often students are advised to take grad classes rather than write a senior thesis (if this option exists).  I can see why this advice is given, but I do think writing a senior thesis (if you put your heart into it) is an invaluable mathematical experience.
A related option is to do independent study on a topic with a faculty member. Again, from the pragmatic point of view this doesn't do much for your transcript, but the benefits for your mathematical education are similar to those of writing a senior thesis, if you have a good advisor and take the independent study seriously.
Finally: Remember that there are lots graduate schools in mathematics.  What I've written above more-or-less reflects admissions experience at top ten institutions, but obviously there are many more very good math programs out there, and they are not all as competitive as the top ten.
So overall, the most sensible thing to do is to work on learning as much math as you can as well as you can, and interacting with your professors enough that they know what you're learning and can write about it.  I think the only things that are really worth thinking about in terms of "gaming" the admissions process are attending an REU or doing independent study or writing a senior thesis, something that gives you a chance to interact with a professor, and a specific topic, in more depth; and making sure you study well for the GRE before you take it.

This agrees with my experiences as a spectator of the admissions process / math grad student.

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text:
How to overcome "No Research Experience" in CS Ph.D applications
I am a 4th year computer engineering undergraduate student who will apply for Ph.D. programs this winter/spring, for the next fall semester. I have decided to become an academic 2 years ago, and head of department said "keep your gpa high and you will be fine". Well, I have increased my gpa, from 2.5 to 3.5 but now I see that I need research experience to be admitted to good programs. ( I can't afford masters program)
I thought I didn't need a research experience, yet while I was thinking that, I see that undergraduate students all over the world were doing research. I admit I was naive to think so but I was guided that way. So few months ago I am trying to learn about admission process and I see many people over the internet with tons of research experience and even papers waiting to be published, or already published. And the most important part of SOP is research experience.
And guess what? There is no lab at my university. And not a single instructor that does research in the field I want. It is a very small department (5 full time assistant professors).
So obviously, I cannot get into a top or very good program with these conditions, and they have every right to decline me. But I believe it is my right to get into a good valid program that matches my interests. I shouldn't take the whole responsiblity of non existent opportunities that other students had in other universities.
I would like to know, from experienced people, about what I should do to get into a Ph.D. program without direct proof of research capabilities. No lab work, no research, nada. Just reading many papers in the field I am interested in for last few months, and high motivation.
Or is it a point where I should say "That's life and never fair" and have plan B and plan C?
Thank you

What do you mean you can't afford a Master's program? I was accepted as a Master's student with a TA and then converted to PhD after 1 year (without completing my Master's) within the same university.

@AustinHenley Well, most department (that fit my interests) websites state that there are limited positions and there are no guarantees for master student funding.

Did you do an extended piece of work as part of your UG degree? I'm thinking here of an honours project, or similar. Or does your degree comprise only taught courses?

If you have no research experience, how do you know you want to do a Ph.D ? I'm not asking this because I doubt your motives, but because answering this question yourself will help you explain in your SoP why you want to do a Ph.D in the absence of research experience.

@Nicholas I am currently doing a very extended senior project which is highly (about %80) related to my interests. I will definitely mention this but it has paper implementation rather than research.

@Suresh I think this is a deep question. How does anyone know anything? But I want to do Ph.D. because I want to be a scientist, contribute to this interesting field, do science just for the sake of doing science, have very deep knowledge, live in an academic environment, teach and inspire students. But I doubt these increase my chances.

From our end, we'd like to know what things you can present to us that increase your chances of being successful in a grad program. What you describe is enthusiasm and motivation, which is great. Can you also describe some areas of interest ?

@Suresh Surely, thank you for your interest. I want to do research in computer graphics field. To be more specific, deformable objects like clothing. Collision detection within a cloth itself is very expensive so I would love to work on that, taking air and other objects into account as well. Basically, I want to make CPU and GPU wise expensive simulations more realistic and less expensive. Liquid simulations and solid deformable objects are just fine too.

now expand that :)

@Suresh Hah! Expand and put it into SOP, considering 550 characters are not enough here? That would actually be nice. Thank you :) Seems like the best I can do.

Why do you "believe it is my right to get into a good valid program that matches my interests"? What if there are more students than positions?  If I saw such a statement from someone applying to my program, I'd reject him/her for attitude.  I think it's more reasonable to "hope" or "wish" for admission than assert a right to it.

@espertus Because I think the life is unnecessarily tough, due to the system. I believe it is everyone's right to live a life in the direction they want, as long as they are successful. Of course I didn't write anything like this in my applications, I am just expressing my opinions here.

If you need research experience for a program, then you need research experience and there's not much you can do about it besides gaining that experience. Even if you did gain entry into such a program, you will lack the research skills of your peers. You'll be starting off on the back foot.
A PhD is a long-term commitment to poorly paid slave labour. What if you find out you don't even like research, 1 year in? I would strongly advise the "try before you buy" approach. Get a Master's degree or a postgraduate diploma, that has a reasonable research component.
A good PhD program will want you to prove that you have the commitment and research skills to pull it off. Once you can do that, you have a good chance for admission. If research experience is a requirement, then you can't just shrug it off.

A PhD is a long-term commitment to poorly paid slave labour. — You are being abused. Don't walk. Run.

Perhaps I went overboard on the metaphor. It's poorly paid, longer-than-usual hours, and depending on your (funding) situation you could be working on whatever your supervisor wants. I was just trying to make the point that that's why you have to enjoy research to succeed in your PhD (and I do). Because the pay and prestige certainly aren't commensurate with your qualifications.

The idea of finding a graduate certificate that has a research component sounds like a valuable idea for bridging the gap. A lot of people go all the way through an MA/MS/MEd, without much serious research. Interesting.

I met someone in one of the top 10 US CS PhD programs who got in with no research experience.  This person said they focused really really hard on the subject GRE and got a very high score (much higher than mine, and I got into the same program, albeit with some modest undergrad research).  So it can be done.  A masters with a focus on research as others suggested might be less of a gamble though.

The subject GRE in computer science was discontinued in 2013.

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Academics in China - promoted via connections
My friend has told me his own story. He's a researcher and he's trying to publish his paper. His supervisor is a Chinese researcher, but they're working in the states. My friend has written all the code and contributed to everything for the project (including writing the paper). However, his supervisor is insisting to add three professors to the authors' contribution. In the contribution, it's clear my friend is merely a software developer while the other authors contribute the ideas, paper and case studies.
My friend isn't very happy because merely implementing an algorithm would not be a good career path for him. More importantly, those three professors did absolutely nothing, but they did indirectly provide funding for the project.
My friend is a fresh PHD graduate. His supervisor is an average post-doc, he's building his own career path as well. The supervisor told my friend it's normal to add unrelated names, something he'd been doing quite lot in China. In fact, he said everything about research in China is about connection. The more high-ranked names you add, the more likely those professors will "pay back" and find someway to promote you or land you a job/project later. He claims that's exactly why nobody cared Tu Yoyyou, before she won the Nobel prize. She was always a brilliant researcher but she didn't know how to use connections to make a better career path for herself.
My friend was further told that he would have a brilliant research career if he allowed himself be a software developer for this project. The professors wouldn't be happy if their names weren't on it. He was told it wouldn't be wise for him to being "blacklisted": it's not what you can do to make you a good researcher, it's about whom you know that distinguish yourself from other researchers.
His supervisor has written the authors' contributors for the three professors and is about to send the paper to a journal.
Question:
Is this normal in the Western world and what should he do?

His supervisor is really a postdoc?  That's unusual.  My experience has always been that PhD students are supervised (directly or indirectly) by a tenured or tenure-track faculty member.  Is there not someone more senior overseeing both the student and the postdoc?  I'd suggest talking to that person.

Also, can you explain what an "author's contribution" is?  Are you talking about a section of the paper in which the contributions of each of the authors are described?  Finally, what field is this?  In some fields, providing money is understood as being sufficient for authorship, in others it isn't.

@NateEldredge It's explicitly written in the guideline that providing money wouldn't be intelligent contribution. It's university guideline. I work in the same place so I know.

@NateEldredge Sorry, they both have a phd and both post-docs. But his supervisor has few years of experience and is therefore the team leader.

@NateEldredge Yes. The section of the paper in which the contributions are described.

This happens too in the western world, even among top US institutions. It shouldn't, though.

I know academia in China and Germany. In both countries this kind of things happen a lot, although in China is is supposedly worse than Germany. Academia is as far as I know much more a game of personal relationships than merits. Sadly.

I am a postdoc in China, and have been here since almost 2 years. I am looking forwards to leaving mainly because I cannot cope with their cultural ways at work, e.g. how the local academia works. The supervisor mentioned in this question does speak the truth about gift authorships in Chinese science, thus firstly let me acknowledge his sincere contribution and advice. As another answer states clearly, ultimately such decision lies in the hands of the true first author and his/her advisor. However there is the conflict of standards over international ethics and clan-specific ethics.
Typically what happens is exactly this: a young researcher gets stuck in a moral dilemma with collaborators and is advised to either abide or walk out. The problem is, too often morally questionable standards are not announced before a project starts and abusers rely on the lateness of the dilemma to push for a win-win situation. Adding to the problem, Mainland Chinese people are culturally prone to speak through contextualised subtle insinuations, leaving a lot of margin for belated misunderstanding when dealing with other cultures.
Surely by this point a decision was already taken on this specific conflict, but I will leave here the main advice to others in potentially similar situation. Gift authorship from my experience seems widespread in Chinese academia. Engaging in scientific collaboration with Mainland China academics is therefore prone to lead to conflicts over ICMJE and similar guidelines on authorships and other aspects. This is not to say gift authorship doesn't take place elsewhere as well, however the local approach tends to be more straightforward and intense than elsewhere (i.e. absolute zero intellectual contribution; numerous added names; openly offended if denied).
As I believe supporting parasitic academics rapidly leads to bad quality science and somewhat kills the original meaning in the career for most people involved, I refrain from providing gift authorships as best as possible while always reciting the international guidelines. I hereby recommend other serious colleagues to do and preach the same, even if some conflict ensues.

I think that what you have mentioned is relatively common in China. This view is partially based on my experiences and what I have learned from others but also backed up (a little) by some research. Overall research suggests that networks may be more important in China than in the western world. The concept of guanxi is frequently referenced to explain this. Similarly, based on measures of culture, such as those outlined by Hofstede, China and the west are quite different in terms of power distance and individualism. Specifically, Chinese culture has been argued to lead to Chinese people being (relative to Americans) (i) more clearly divided into social hierarchies (e.g., peoples status has a bigger influence in social setting) and (ii) more focused on working toward group success rather than their own individual success.
From your friend's supervisor's perspective, it makes perfect sense to leverage his network through this form of reciprocity. Basically, he does something for these professors, wins their favour and then expects that they will eventually do something for him in return.As they hold more power then him, they may potentially be able to open doors that otherwise would have remained closed (for example through recommendation letters, or personal influences). Indeed, many of these professors may have acquired their position partially due to their own networks, and similar practices in the past.
I think your friend should accept that this is the way that things will work if he continues to work with this group of researchers. If he is too principled and reliant on autonomy to tolerate this then he will need to leave and work with someone else. On the other hand, if he can tolerate this for a while, he may very well end up being the beneficiary of similar behavior in the future.

It seems that you are advocating that the researcher should violate ethical standards on authorship to which he is bound (both from his institution and from widely accepted international canons). If so, I think that you ought to carefully explain why you believe this is justified, as well as describing the risks involved and why the benefits outweigh them.

Hi Nate, thanks for the comment and suggestion. I didn't intend to advocate any particular course of action - just to summarize the potential outcomes. I think that the researcher's decision should be based on their own evaluations of the risks and benefits of these options.

I think your question summarizes the cultural background well.  However, it fails to explain that gift authorship is misconduct, no matter what the authors' culture says about it.  My understanding is that the question is about authorship in western journals, which require the use of western authorship standards.  Please revise your answer.

@PeterSlattery : I do not agree with the statement "Overall research suggests that networks may be more important in China than in the western world". Do you have any reference to back this? I have seen several times (western) people publishing papers and getting grant just because of "Network". University are having "Networking courses" for PhD and Postdocs. Just because we gave it a fancy name doesn't make it different!!

Yes, I do. Here is one. "According to Hofstede's (1991) study, students in Hong Kong, who are predominantly ethnic Chinese, tend to have a higher power distance attitude and are more inclined to collectivism. In this context, power distance is defined as the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally (Hofstede, 1991)."

Quote taken from  Cho, Vincent, T. C. E. Cheng, and Humphry Hung. "Continued usage of technology versus situational factors: an empirical analysis." Journal of Engineering and Technology Management 26.4 (2009): 264-284.
Original book referenced: Hofstede, 1991, Cultures and Organizations, McGraw-Hill, NY

While I do see the point of your answer in the career-wise scale, as others mentioned gift authorship is misconduct and has been rapidly degrading the academic ambiance for everyone else. I am a postdoc in China and will add my answer to this thread.

I think the current answers are not worded strongly enough.
Going along with this is VERY HARMFUL.

Giving a gift in expectation of return makes your friend dependent of these people, whose motivation is already under question.
It is rare to point fingers to unsavory scientific practices in public, but people have eyes and ears. Getting associated with a clique that elevates the connections over honest science will tarnish your friend's reputation.
Going along gives a little bit more power to the group of people who abuse power. Nobody benefits in the long term.

It is strange that your friend's supervisor has been working in the US for a while, but is unaware of the ethical standards expected there. Clearly, what the supervisor wants to do, is a case of gift authorship, which is unethical. The ICMJE recommends that authorship can be granted only if a person has made substantial intellectual contributions to the work, drafted or revised it for intellectual content, given their final approval for publication, agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work, and be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. Any other form of contribution should not be considered as authorship. To quote from the ICMJE guidelines: "Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support...." Your friend should not give his approval on the manuscript. He should explain to the supervisor that this is considered unethical and could even lead to a retraction of the published paper. If this does not work, your friend should try to talk to someone in a higher position of authority.

Sadly, the ethical standards are, in multiple cases, not enforced.

Many labs in the US are ethnically homogenous, e.g. all-Chinese labs. This leads to a work environment biased towards alien standards

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text:
What to reply to your former supervisor that wrote that your paper "isn't worth much" before submission to a journal?
I am a recent Ph.D. graduate in computer science.
In the last few months, I wrote a paper about an aspect of my thesis, with the collaboration of my former supervisor. We found a call for papers for a "special section" of an important journal, that is a section focused on the data set we are exploiting. The submission deadline was set to the end of November 2014, but surprisingly we just discovered that it has been post-poned to the end of March 2015, a four month delay.
I did not know if it was better to send this paper to this "special section" or to the "normal track" of the journal, so I asked here on Academia.
User Geoff Hutchison suggested to me to contact the editorial board and ask them if I could have all the original time schedules. That means to have all the notification and re-submission dates as they were not post-poned, except the final publication date.
It seemed reasonable to me, so I wrote to my former supervisor (who is also the co-author of the paper, even if his contribution to the project and the paper is only around ~5%).
He replied to me in a very ill-mannered, thwarted and angry way, stating that "writing this request to the editors may cause a lot of problems", that I am "not able to understand how lucky we are for the existence of this special section", "having the paper accepted in this special section may be the best thing that could ever happen to our our paper", that I "should focus on how to improve the paper, instead of inventing new ways to create problems", and I should "understand that the paper isn't worth much".
What to reply back to this "gentleman"?
The paper is mine, comes from the doctoral thesis of mine, from an idea that I had, and was written entirely by me. My former supervisor just reviewed and corrected it.
I am not going tolerate this disrespectful behavior, and cannot stand having a co-author that considers my paper "not worth much".
[EDIT]: Thanks to all for your contributions. I'm asking to you all some suggestions on how to manage this situation: should I trust someone that is the co-author of my paper and thinks that the paper "isn't worth much"? In my opinion, this statement is in contrast with actually being a co-author of the paper.
How to let him know that I did not like his ill-mannered way to reply back to me, without damaging my perspective paper submission?

The SE advice was: "Personally, I'd submit early, indicate in the submission letter (and online forms) that the article is for the special section and be done with it." Where did you get this: "...have all the notification and re-submission dates as they were not post-poned, except the final publication date."

Personally, I don't think it is a problem that one of the co-authors doesn't think highly of a paper. It is often the case that some papers are big breakthroughs and some are just a tiny advancement. The supervisor said it isn't worth much, not that it isn't worth anything. And that's just his professional opinion of the paper - it is not a personal criticism. How is that disrespectful?

I see nothing ill-mannered, thwarted, or angry in what you quoted. You might want to give yourself some cool-off time.

Voting to close, as this is really more of a rant than a question.

"understand that the paper isn't worth much" might have been worded better, but to be honest, it would probably be a fair assessment to say that 99% of this community's research is not worth much in that we're not curing cancer or finding the Higgs Boson. Lesser comparative worth does not indicate "worthless", it just indicates how much time you should dedicate to it. How much more you get out of the special section, to your ex-supervisor, is probably suspect.

@Compass Even most papers on curing cancer aren't worth much, since they're just a small part of a big tapestry of research.

In the last months, I wrote a paper about an aspect of my thesis, with
  the collaboration of my former supervisor.

That means that the paper is not 100% yours. Do not add or remove co-authors on the basis if you like them or hate their guts.

Having the paper accepted in this special section may be the best
  thing that could ever happen to our our paper

Sounds like excellent advice. Special issues are more focused, have shorter response rates and usually easier acceptance for more focused papers.

Writing this request to the editors may cause a lot of problems"

Also excellent advice. You want to contact the editors to do the review of your paper sooner just for you? This is simply stupid.

should focus on how to improve the paper, instead of inventing new
  ways to create problems

You have four months to improve the paper. Are you sure that it cannot be improved? Are you afraid that your competitors might publish sooner? If yes, submitting to the journal now, will not save you anyway. Could you not upload on arxiv? You should also discuss this with your advisor.
Conclusively, cool down. As a PHD graduate and not a student anymore, you must behave always as a professional. Perhaps your paper is not that great (perhaps it is). That is not an insult - it is the sincere scientific opinion of one of your more senior peers (who contributed to your success). Do not burn bridges with your supervisor, just because he expressed his honest opinion (even if you do not agree with that).

It's hard to tell what your former supervisor is thinking from just the few out-of-context fragments you give.  I think, however, that they may have some good points and that you may be reading it as much more disrespectful and confrontational than it actually is.
From what you have written, it sounds like what's really gotten you angry is the "isn't worth much" statement.  The unfortunate truth, however, is that with extremely rare exceptions, most individual scientific papers aren't worth much on their own.  Since you are quite early in your career, each paper may seem very important to you---and a few high-impact papers can make a big difference in getting postings.  In many cases, however, both impact and career are built more cumulatively from a collection of good but not world-shaking publications.
It's not possible to judge for certain without knowing your particular research, but your former supervisor may simply be giving you an honest assessment of the likely impact of this particular piece of work.  This likely doesn't say anything bad about you or the work, but is just pulling back from the hyper-focus of a dissertation towards the bigger picture.  The same goes for the other comments you highlight.
If it were me in your shoes, I would not be likely to read this as a set of insults to a former disciple, but rather as your former supervisor beginning to talk to you more as a peer and collaborator.


text:
How to get the address of a journal's editorial department and use it in a cover letter
I am writing a cover letter for submitting a manuscript to Computers & Graphics (Elsevier) journal. I saw a template for a cover letter of a different journal (AJPS), which goes as:

December 26, 2007
  Editorial Department of Asian Journal Pharmaceutical Sciences
  Shenyang Pharmaceutical University
  No.103, Wenhua Road, Shengyang 110016, China

I am not sure where to get the address for CAG journal from. It’s not mentioned anywhere on the journal website.

If you are submitting electronically, you do not need to include their physical address. If you still need it, contact the journal (they should have an email address or telephone number listed in their contact information) and ask them.

@AndrésE.Caicedo You could turn that comment into an answer.

@AndrésE.Caicedo thanks a lot, it seems physical address is not required

On the bottom of  Computer & Graphics,
Click  "Editorial Office" button.
You get their e-mail address, if that's what you're looking for.
If you want their physical address, click "About Us" button on the bottom, you get Elsevier address.

Well I was actually looking for physical address (being unsure if there is a need to enter one), though it appears asking them would be a better idea. So thanks a lot!

@n.gaurav Answer edited to include physical address of Elsevier address.