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Paper publishing as a regular software engineer
I have a strange request - I am looking for ways to get started on publishing a few papers in a couple of years. Ideally looking to collaborate with researchers/professors to contribute to their work and ideally become co-author in some capacity. Is this a reasonable route ? If yes, where can I look for such opportunities ?
My background
I am a regular software engineer. I currently work at one of the FAANG's at a fairly senior role (IC7) and have 10+ years of experience working on large scale systems & databases. I am self taught and I do not have a research background so a bit confused on how to go about this.
Why am I doing this ?
I am starting a perilous journey working towards building a case for EB1-A visa, I already satisfy few of the criteria and looking to improve my profile over the next few years, it is a long shot but unfortunately this is as good as it gets for me to get a green card in a reasonable period.
Appreciate your help !

To be honest, that motivation (as opposed to an interest in some field) sounds much less reasonable than the plan to collaborate with established researchers. Regarding where to look, maybe this question can help. Also note that your employer may or may not be fine with your plan.

@Anyon can you explain what is wrong with the motivation?

@DanRomik While I can't speak for Anyon, the problem that I see with the motivation is that it is, according to the description in the question, completely extrinsic. I have some doubts whether this is a good foundation for doing research.

@JochenGlueck so what? Extrinsic motivation also caused Gauss to set aside pure math for a while in 1801 and work on computing the position of Ceres, recently discovered but then lost by astronomers. His solution enabled astronomers to find Ceres again, and propelled him to scientific superstardom. (See the book Men of Mathematics by E.T. Bell.) People do many great things out of extrinsic motivation. The cynic in me would say that even you and I are likely guilty of taking extrinsic rewards into account at some point in our careers. Isn't it hypocritical to fault OP for doing the same?

@DanRomik: Sure, extrinsic motivation is obviously relevant almost always in life. I can assure you that I do a lot of things, also as a mathematician, out of extrinsic motivation. The point in my comment was the word completely. If somebody wants to do research merely out of extrinsic motivation, I think this is unlikely (though not impossible) to work out well. If Gauss had had no intrinsic desire to do math and had worked on any math problems merely out of extrinsic motivation, I doubt that he would have ever obtained all the experience that he used to find the position of Ceres.

That said, I have to admit that it might be a bit unfair to claim that OP has no intrinsic motivation to do research. After all, I have no way to know whether this is the case - I just find it a bit worrisome that intrinsic motivation is not mentioned at all in the question.

(1) Do you really need to collaborate with "researchers/professors"? There are forums related to software engineering, complex systems, etc. that might let you publish with less ramp-up then getting involved in academic research. (2) Lots of great papers are published by the FAANGs every year.  Have you considered getting some of your time allocated to support such efforts? This seems more reasonable to me than doing a ton of research "in your spare time."

@DanRomik I think Jochen's comments sum it up well. The fact that the question only mentions an extrinsic reward is worrisome, especially for something presumably done in one's free time. Personally I would find it weird to be contacted by someone under such terms, but as your answer shows others would react differently. I also interpreted "few" in the question as at least 3, which is the minimum number of met criteria for that type of green card, in which case the reward would seem fairly minor as well. But I guess some use "few" to mean 2+, so the reward could be more substantial than that.

Given your career success and credentials, it certainly sounds like you possess a level of talent and professional competence that would make it possible for you to make useful contributions in research. So yes, it sounds absolutely like a reasonable idea. But you are correct that it is an unconventional place to start from. I think the main difficulty would be getting your feet in the door of academia and finding experienced researchers who would have use for your specific skills. I’m convinced that such people exist though.* The labor of a professional software engineer is worth — well, you probably know better than me how much it’s worth — and if you would offer it for free, I’m sure that would be appealing to some people.
Of course, you would also want to get involved in the writing of any publications that would follow from the work. Given your background, you might need a bit of help in that department, but probably only very little, and you should still be quite attractive to the right people as a collaborator.
In terms of where to look for opportunities, I don’t have very specific suggestions, but if you are in the Bay Area (as I’m guessing you may be), there are several world-famous universities around with great activities in computer science, so I’d suggest cold-emailing people at those departments and explaining your situation and interests. You can also probably find people in your current company who have a leg in the academic world and can offer you advice and maybe introductions to relevant people. By reaching out to random (but not completely randomly selected) people and a bit of networking, I think the chances of finding a project you can help with are pretty good.
* Actually I am such a person, although in an unusual sense that may not be exactly the sort of thing you had in mind. You can email me for details though.

Ideally looking to collaborate with researchers/professors to
contribute...

Let's be pragmatic: researchers are doing research, professors are research manager, they almost do not perform research, they keep the overview on the many small steps performed by PhDs/PostDocs, write the usual breakthrough papers summing up 2-5 years of research and getting lauded for that by popular press.
I say all this without downplaying their importance, on the contrary, to stress you have to get in touch with professors.
You have a senior technical role, you have no time to perform research but you can provide two very important things:

experience, since you easily keep the overview on plausibility/industrial feasibility/interest on a certain topic of your choice;
money;

The logical conclusion is: you can be co-author because of these two contributions you can bring. How? build a shortlist of professors dealing with topic you worked in the past 5 years, get the funds to pay for their research (i.e. for their PhD students), closely supervise their work, keep thinking about how their work can impact your work.
Since you have a personal interest/goal, explore the feasibility of starting your own small company (0 employees, privately funded by you, to get a very rough order of magnitude estimation keep in mind a PhD costs about 50k $/£/€ per year, senior PhDs are expected to publish 1 paper per year) and propose your small company as funding body for small research projects at your shortlisted professors. Set clear goals, like publications, in advance.
Either this way, or you manage to squeeze R&D money from your company to tackle a relevant problem you are facing now and solving it would provide you a clear commercial advantage against your competitors ...
Ps: side question: how much did you spend for the last car you bought? are you ready to spend the same money to increase your visa chances, while at the same time progressing our knowledge in a certain topic?


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Conflict of Interest regarding research question and company ownership
I suggested an interesting research question (exploratory data analysis) to my advisor and he really wants me to get started. However, I realized today in reading the agreement attached to the data enclave (with deidentified patient data or allegedly that), that there’s an obvious potential conflict of interest given that I founded a company sometime ago that focuses on a specific, but relevant patient population.
My advisor, to my knowledge, doesn’t know about this company. And this data set has millions. The other, non-government data set I’m considering has tens of thousands or thousands but may not have as immediate means of answering my research question, if it has them at all.
What should I tell my advisor?
I have this other research question that he liked that would not require the government dataset. Does it look wishy washy to say I want to return to that without saying exactly why? And this same COI would likely come up in the publication of any report I do with this lab group. (For context, I’m a first year MA student.)
I do have a third idea that I feel is as interesting and would not require me to access government data. So, should I pivot entirely and bring that up? I am almost certain that he would be interested in it based on what he’s mentioned in recent lab meetings. So, if I bring this up do I still add that the reason I am abandoning the other idea is a conflicting commercial interest?
He himself has disclosed a conflicting commercial interest in past work. But my preference is to keep that side of things as separate as humanly possible from academic work so there is no room for mishaps or cognitive dissonance. I also want separation because I don’t want to give the university ammunition to claim stake in anything on the entrepreneurial side.
Basically, I really need help in figuring out how to redirect him without sabotaging my academic/research future with him re letters of recommendation, etc?

This is not something you can ignore and hope it all works out. Please contact your compliance officer ASAP.

It’s curious that you are trying to do the ethical thing and avoid putting yourself in a compromising situation vis-a-vis the conflict of interest, but you’re going about it in a way that is itself ethically compromised, by hiding from your university the existence of your startup. And your stated rationale for this,

[…] so there is no room for mishaps or cognitive dissonance. I also want separation because I don’t want to give the university ammunition to claim stake in anything on the entrepreneurial side.

does not hold water. I’ll ignore the vague “mishaps and cognitive dissonance” part. As far as “ammunition”, the way to not give the university ammunition to claim stake in anything is by carefully reading all the relevant university policies, and making sure (including consulting a lawyer if necessary) that you are fully in compliance, for example with any requirement to disclose and/or get approved for any of your external activities, and that the university doesn’t have any basis to claim ownership of any part of your venture.
Once you have ascertained that, you will have nothing to hide, and no reason to have to bend over backwards looking for plausible-sounding (but disingenuous) explanations to give your advisor for why you want to avoid the project you already suggested to him.
To summarize, the obvious way forward is to tell the truth. If you feel like you have to hide things to avoid your advisor becoming suspicious of your motivations, to me that’s a sign that you’re doing something that’s quite possibly unethical — like founding a startup that your university can legally lay an ownership claim to but not disclosing its existence. If that is the case, my advice would be to drastically rethink your approach, since one way or another I expect that your behavior will come back to bite you in a very unpleasant way in the not-too-far-off future.

Your institution almost certainly has a policy regarding conflicts of interest that requires you to disclose potential conflicts and develop a management plan if conflicts exist.
Note that conflicts of interest refers to interests conflicting, not to bad behavior itself. In this case, that would be your financial interests involved in this company, and interests involving protection of research subjects, research integrity, etc. The action that is "best for" your personal finances might be different than the action that is "best for" research integrity: that means there is a conflict of interest.
The presence of a conflict of interest does not mean you have acted or will act in a way that benefits you privately or violates academic integrity, rather, it means that you do have interests that potentially conflict, and it's necessary to come up with a plan for managing those interests. The details of that plan will depend on the nature of the conflict and the possibilities for mitigation.
However, failure to disclose conflicts of interest is itself a major breach of ethics, is almost certainly against the policies of your institution, and could easily get you expelled or even create further legal consequences, possibly even criminal penalties (the details will depend on your specific jurisdiction, and aren't really on-topic here).
It's not up to you to separate these things on your own: you must disclose so that the decision of what is appropriate separation can be made by someone who is unbiased. You are incapable of doing this yourself. The goal is not merely to prevent research work from being tainted, but to remove any reasonable suspicion or speculation, a much higher bar.
You need to find out what the specific policies are at your institution and make sure you are in compliance immediately. Likely your advisor can help you with this and direct you to the appropriate actions, but it's not only their responsibility but yours, and it is very unlikely that you can resolve these potential conflicts by disclosing only to your advisor: the institution needs to know about it, too.

Thanks for clarifying the meaning of "conflict of interest" in your answer! I have noticed quite a few (thoroughly confused) answers based on the premise "conflict of interest = unethical behaviour" for other questions in this community.

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PhD supervisor with cases of scientific misconduct
I started my PhD with my present supervisor a couple of years back. Her profile looked interesting. However, suddenly her previous work started receiving comments on publicly available domains (pubpeer). It appears that almost 14 of her papers that came out of her lab are under scrutiny. Moreover, one of the papers has already received a retraction.
Though none of these papers have my name in them, my concern is that the profile of my supervisor could affect my career in the long run. Is it a wise idea to switch labs before it gets too late for me? In the worst case scenario, if I continue to work under her, how badly can this affect my profile?

What's "almost 14"? 13?

I don't have an answer to your very good question, but do want to say that a retraction is not the same as scientific misconduct.  If there is a case of misconduct I think it would change the nature of the question.

@GeorgeSavva That's an important point though OP already explicitly mentions misconduct.

My reading was that there were papers under investigation, one with a retraction, and that the OP had bundled this all under the heading 'misconduct'.  Some clarification would be helpful.

Can you please be a bit more specific about the nature of the scrutiny and potential reasons for retraction/misconduct allegations.  What is the bad thing that she might have done --- plagiarism? data falsification? embezzlement of reseearch funds?  The answer to this question make quite a bit of difference to the advice we can give.

Retractions don't necessarily mean misconduct... Honest mistakes happen all the time

Yes, there are 14 publications under scrutiny for image manipulation. There are cases where similar images are used in multiple publications. One of the papers has received retraction due to this reason.

Is it going to affect my profile if none of my work is under questioning; however, given the fact I worked under a supervisor whose work is questioned in the past. Is it a dead end for me?

This is a judgment call only you can make. You should think about more things than whether association with your advisor will taint your future.
Can you accurately evaluate the public criticism of her previous work? Do the complaints ring true to you? Do they seem more like professional jealousy? Will you be comfortable working with her?
If you are nearly done and the actual results in your thesis have been honestly attained and clearly not subject to any of the issues raised by the public scrutiny of your advisor's other work, then finish and move on.
If you are just beginning your own work and can imagine a better place to do it, perhaps at a loss of a year or two, then consider looking for such a place.

Science operates on a certain level of trust. While principles like transparency about data and detailed, replicable descriptions of methodology can help build reliability into science, you cannot bypass a need for trust because even there you must trust that the data presented are the real, unaltered data, and that the methodology was actually performed as stated. There are rarely enough resources available to check and re-check every claim made.
There are a few ways in which fraud can be revealed, though. Image manipulation is one example. Other examples are statistical (ir)regularities in data that suggest manipulation or fabrication, or p-values or test statistics that are impossible given certain structural aspects of the original data, like points on an integer scale.
Most other types of fabrication are impossible to extract from the published record, though. We all just have to trust. For me, that means that I would definitely extend suspicions of someone known to have a past record far beyond their known problem papers. I cannot comprehend the current hesitancy of journals and institutions when clear fraud is present in published papers, the sort raised on PubPeer and in particular by people like Elisabeth Bik who are dedicated to uncovering discoverable fraud.
The issues these folks raise are not issues of scientific controversy or accidental errors, but in most cases are clear evidence of intentional manipulation. That is, there is no plausible explanation besides fraud. Even if the motivation is claimed to approach innocence like "well, this is representative of what we saw under the microscope, I just did it to make a nicer picture for the journal" or "yeah but the main results of the paper are from a quantitative analysis so these images we photoshopped to show the result don't actually impact the results".
You'll have to decide what level of misconduct has occurred, if any, and act accordingly. If it were me, I'd be gathering up the available evidence and walking directly to my advisor's office and confronting them. At that point, I wouldn't be concerned with our relationship: if there are credible accusations that they cannot defend in a meeting, I would not feel comfortable having a professional relationship with them.
That said, I mentioned that journals and institutions have been hesitant, especially when involving powerful or notable people (e.g., Nobel prize winners and directors of large research programs). Punishments, when present, have often been silly, like brief (1-2 year) bans on research funding, or a stern warning along with some retractions. These punishments do not fit the offenses committed. I hope this will change in the future, but in the meantime, it sadly appears that a profitable academic strategy is to have one of these fraudsters promote your work within the community of people that for some reason still trust them. Maybe you'll get hired to work with their previous advisor who trained them to cheat, or with their former student who also benefited from some deceptively beautiful papers in fancy journals. I wouldn't feel comfortable with that, but I also recognize that blowing up your current PhD training to go elsewhere is going to cause you harm in the short term (if nothing else, by some lost time) and that your actions alone will not be sufficient to change the system overnight.

Image manipulation is not necessarily done to deceive; it may well have been done in a misguided attempt to communicate more clearly. And almost any scientific publication involves making decisions about which experimental results were sound and which were unsound, decisions which are usually made in good faith, but are often at least subjectively influenced by a desire to demonstrate the conclusions convincingly. As you say, it all depends on trust.

@MichaelKay I don't buy that explanation. If you don't explain clearly what you've done to your images, you have lied about your methodology and deceived your readers, whatever excuse you use to sleep better.

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Can I sue my advisor due to not giving me authorship
So long story short is that, while I was doing my masters I have worked with a PhD candidate on a paper. I basically developed half of the system and did all the experiments while I was doing my masters. During my masters they tried to publish the results at different venues, but did not get selected. After one year, the PhD candidate got accepted into a venue and did not give me any authorship, they are just mentioning me in the acknowledgement section.
It is frustrating to see that I am not getting the well earned credit that I deserve.
What are some actions that I can take?

sure.  but then what?  I hope you don’t expect your supervisor to write letters of reference for you…

@ZeroTheHero then justice is made, there will be a record about the actions of the coauthors, and it may help future students/collaborators.

@FranckDernoncourt if only you were right.  Most likely some confidentiality clause will prevent the public at large to learn the story, especially if this went to court.

Is venue a journal or a conference (perhaps with conference paper)?

How long did your master's last, given that during that, you (1) developed a system, (2) did all the experiments, (3) wrote up the results, and (4) submitted the results to several venues? This doesn't seem to add up.

Does the PhD candidate have an advisor who you know?

Is it really the same work ? Sometimes, a lot of work goes into developing something, then after a round of peer reviews, a major flaw is found, and everything is done again almost from scratch. It certainly happened to me a couple of times.

It's not fair for a supervisor to blackmail someone with reference letters and then use that to get away with behaviour which is immoral.  Other people can be used as a reference if necessary.

Was any of your work published as a pre-print or similar?

Did you try talking to them about it?

Did you contribute any writing or critical revision to the manuscript? If not, it's a stretch to expect authorship.

There's some very good answers to this question that also seem to apply to your case. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/182327/my-name-was-removed-from-a-paper-i-mostly-authored-what-should-i-do

@Tom Blackmailing means threatening someone before they do something undesirable. Stopping to voluntarily help someone who already sued you is just common sense.

I'm confused. Is your advisor at fault? It's not clear from the wording of the question--it seems like it's the PhD candidate? Or is the PhD candidate your advisor?

Did they use data you measured, or did they just use a device you helped building?

Did the paper directly use content that you created (e.g. they reprinted a paragraph from your paper nearly verbatim, used some of your original charts/graphics, etc)?  If so, you might have a much stronger plagiarism or copyright infringement case to make than merely a claim of authorship.

You can sue anyone for any reason. But being able to sue is not the same as being able to win.
You are probably better off talking to your advisor and making your case for why you should be included as an author. You'll need to demonstrate you had sufficient involvement to warrant authorship. If you did "[develop] half of the system and did all the experiment", and can prove it, then this shouldn't be a problem.

@vsz if that’s the question, it’s off topic (here and anywhere really: they need to talk to a lawyer). If the question is really “the situation is X, I’m considering option A, are there any other options?”, that’s allowed here (and what this answer is targeted at)

@Tim The question "is it technically possible to sue?" is even more offtopic, so that would just make this answer worse. Plus, I think Franck Dernoncourt gives a perfectly reasonable answer that 'yes, it's sometimes successful, but it's probably not a good idea'

Can I sue my advisor due to not giving me authorship?

Yes, but uncommon. Such lawsuits are sometimes successful from a legal standpoint, e.g. see the quote below. However I'd recommend to first try to mediate with your co-authors' university and the journal where the article was published. Bridges may be burned in the process but if one was unfairly treated, defending oneself is a respectable option and not all bridges in life deserved to be taken.
From {1}:

Using courts to resolve on authorship credit on scientific papers is rare [54, 79]. The law is often neutral on questions of authorship, which is exacerbated by the lack of clarity about professional practices and ambiguous damages from denied authorship credit. Lawsuits are costly and lengthy [54]. In one case where an authorship dispute did go to court [79], the ruling favored the plaintiff who claimed first authorship, but the manuscript was apparently never published. No paper matching the description can be found in databases of scientific publications. Like the old joke, “The surgery was a success, but the patient died,” the plaintiff won the case, but science lost.

References:

{1} Faulkes, Z. Resolving authorship disputes by mediation and arbitration. Res Integr Peer Rev 3, 12 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-018-0057-z

"not all bridges in life deserved to be taken" - well said; +1 for this.

I don't know where you are located at, but let me give you a German perspective:
I would raise this to the professor of the phd student. In case this doesn't work the next step is the universities ombudsman for conflicts with university supervisors or the ombudsman for scientific integrity.
You should also check your legal options by taking advantage of the free legal counseling provided from the student union. Be careful not to make any false accusations about anybody involved, they might sue you for defamation.
As always: Some professors feel like their little research group is their kingdom. But there are actually a lot more checks and balances in place nowadays than many realize: An investigation of the universities ombudsman into this can get very embarrassing and even the threat that you consider involving the committee can make wonders.

Starting with legal action is almost always the wrong thing to do in a civil dispute. In many countries the mere fact that you didn't try to resolve the issue amicably will make your case fall apart in court, and even if there's no such requirement in your country, suing without a honest attempt to resolve the issue will work against you. In the worst case, the professor might counter-sue you for legal bullying.
You don't mention anywhere in your question that you have raised the point with the professor and/or your colleague PhD candidate. This is where you should start, and this first step ideally should not involve any third party, it should be a discussion between the co-authors.
If the professor refuses to put your name on the paper (hopefully explaining their reasoning to you), you might decide that you still disagree with them and get an independent third party involved.
If the paper is already published, it will be much more difficult to get your name on it now. It would have been much easier to do when the paper was prepared for submission. You say you worked on this paper, so you should have been aware when it was submitted.

You can sue anyone for any reason.  Whether you win or not, that's another issue/problem.
You would have to prove that you have some legally-enforceable agreement (or a reasonable expectation according to the law) that you would get authorship in general, and on this research in particular.
Chances are, you do not have that.
When we work as assistants in grad school, one of our jobs is to labor and provide support for work done by PhD students and researchers.
You might have developed half of the system and carried out all the experiments, but there's a very good chance that the original line of research was not yours.
I did similar kind of work under the supervision of PhD candidates and researchers. A lot of leg work done in setting up systems and even conducting all the experiments.
Nevertheless, the original lines of research were not mine, nor I was capable (at that time) to even think on how to formulate or express the problems that lead to the research.
If we don't have direct influence over the topic under investigation, we do not get authorship (and we shouldn't.)
I never got (nor asked) for authorship on things I did not initiate, regardless of how much support I gave. I only got authorship on research or topics that I had a job of leading.
The way I see it is that you are looking at your experience the wrong way (and in a very horrible way.)
What I did not get in authorship, I got in experience, hands-on experience under people more experienced than me. And that has served me through life far more than my name in some papers (which are not obsolete because of the inevitability of technical advances.)
This is truly a glass-half-full vs glass-half-empty situation, and  you need to decide what kind of professional you are or want to be. How you approach this will determine that (and your future job prospects.)
After all, sue your superiors, but don't expect job references over that burned bridge.
Please think and choose wisely.

Best bet would be to raise your case and ask advice with the necessary people at your university, present the case explaining as to why you merit co-authorship and write some letters if necessary.
Talk to your advisor and calmly explain why your contribution is that of a co-author, and that to relegate your contribution to the acknowledgments is very unfair.  Maybe write this up as a formal letter in writing if you feel you are likely to get emotional or confrontational when you speak to the advisor in person.
After that, you could message the editor and see if an erratum can be published for the article which is to state that you were mistakenly omitted as a co-author from the first version of the article.

I don't object this advice. Please consider, that trying to get or actually getting published an erratum might be poorly perceived by the supervisor and his team. This might lead to creating serious enemies in your field!

I don't follow.  Errata are issued on articles all the time.  The person was mistakenly not included and believe that their contribution absolutely merits contribution.  You can't just pussyfoot around and meekly be dropped from author lists of articles because you don't want ''to make enemies''.

Yes obviously, the erratum would be approved by all of the authors!

While it is frustrating, if you really want to build an academic career and a record of publications, concentrate on creating new results. Let this one go and learn from it for future collaborations. If you are involved in trouble, this will resonate in the community and might stick negatively to you. You should work towards being perceived as positive, productive, and trying to get things done. Suing or arguing over authorship after publication is the opposite.
As you are named in the acknowledges, you still might put it into your CV and list it as minor contributions to the paper. Once you have enough (co-)authored articles collected, you can drop the paper from your CV.
Most master students are not interested in publishing and are gone after they hand in their thesis. That does not make the actions from your supervisor right, it is just to give you some background.
If you are in a similar position to decide authorship, handle it better!

The advisor plagiarizing the student's work was the one "starting trouble."

@Alexis I don't want to belittle the advisor's wrong-doing. I adjusted my answer to "being involved in trouble" to make it more neutral.

The advisor has already "involved the student in trouble." Your advice seems to be: "accept being exploited." Would you mind if I were to plagiarize your most recent paper?

That is not plagiarized. Without doubt, it remains scientific misconduct.
But I think with the work on a master thesis level, OP would do himself no favor fighting to be co-author of the paper. That ship has sailed. He is acknowledged, that might be enough to put it on OP's resume the upcoming years. Once he is (co-)author of five+ papers, this early hit loses its effect. A fight might not go away in the relevant community.

You can't just let people get away with immoral behaviour because you don't want ''to make enemies''.  They need to learn how to behave.  Acknowledgments are mostly meaningless and just indicate good will.

Chose your battle wisely! Fighting over your first paper, is this the hill you want to die on? If it is a first class paper, might be worth it. If you leave academia, it does not hurt much. But otherwise, being right and getting forward with your carrier might contradict.


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Interview Presentation for Postdoc
I have been asked to give a small presentation as a part of the postdoc interview. The general guideline is that the presentation should foster ideas, roles and vision in the upcoming project. Basically, I have discussed the scientific ideas concerning the project, however what could I add to make it even more effective?

What about the roles and the vision?

Without knowing anything about the specifics, good general advice often given to me is 'Present it to your mum / partner / dog'.
Our top professor gave feedback on a talk recently saying that he has seen many talks that are too complicated that he couldn't follow. He has never seen one that he thought was too simple. If you aim to make your presentations understandable by a lay audience, you'll probably hit about the right level of complexity for experienced researchers.
The worst thing possible is that you make it too technical and the panel don't understand what you're talking about.

The presentation is supposed to be given to highly technical and professional people, not to lay audience. Your presentation should be full of technical knowledge and really impressive. It should reflect depth of your knowledge about the field and your potential.
Make the audience believe  that you are the best candidate for this project. You are not there to increase the knowledge of the audience but to get hired for a paid job.

I used to think this way when I was a PhD student. Now, I'd strongly advise against this line of thinking.


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Rejected by Editor-in-Chief based on 'incorrect grammar' 18 months after submission. Who to contact?
A colleague of mine working outside of Europe has encountered an absolute bizarre and, IMO, utterly unacceptable situation for the first time in their decades-long career as a chemical engineering researcher. I am myself stumped and do not know how to proceed and require some sound, honest advice.
A manuscript was submitted to a journal and was suddenly rejected following a tedious 18-month review process (this is not a Tier 1 journal either - a rather standard 'bread-and-butter' publication in our field). One might think the manuscript must have passed through several rounds of review in that time, but there was in fact only one round of (non-major) revisions. The timeline is:

Initial submission in 2021.
Two requests for reviewer suggestions from the handling editor.
Initial round of reviews in 2022 (this is 13 months after submission at this point).
Revisions submitted a month later. None of them were major.
A re-upload of a single Figure at a higher resolution requested after another month.
Following an inquiry about the status of our submission in another 4 months, we have received an entirely unexpected decision of “Rejection” this month.

There was zero explanation provided for a sudden editorial rejection 18 months after submission. As you can imagine, the science had also moved on in that time, and my colleague could well have submitted to another journal. Following an inquiry to the handling editor and the Editor-in-Chief for an elaboration (or, indeed, any clarification at all), we received the following (heavily paraphrased):

The manuscript is unfit to be published in Journal Name. The
language requires re-writing and the assistance of a language editor.
Many technical expressions are either grammatically erroneous or
completely non-sensical. The interpretation spectra is absolutely
unclear. The conclusions leaves much to be desired.

This was the only explanation provided. The question is practically begging to be asked: Why was none of this brought to the author's attention at any point during the 18-month process? Shouldn't language with such 'unacceptable quality of technical expression' be immediately rejected before even contending for peer review? I was absolutely baffled when I heard about this, and advised my colleague to file any complaint possible to prevent other authors from experiencing this in the future.
This journal belongs to the first publisher that probably comes to the mind of anyone in the chemical sciences. Who can we contact beyond the Editor-in-Chief to file an official complaint?

"Why was none of this brought to the author's attention at any point during the 18-month process? "
Why none of the authors decided to pull the plug after 8-10 months?

I have no idea and am not among the authors, but if I was to speculate it would be due to the invested time (and effort in finding reviewers). One generally waits for at least the first round of reviews, although 13 months is an astonishing amount of time.
Regardless, it is what it is. I don't really know how to answer your question, but am still after useful advice on the matter. The journal mishandled this submission massively.

The question on my mind is whether the language actually was unacceptable? Just because the reviewers were too lazy to point it out doesn't make the language acceptable.

@WolfgangBangerth Parts of the language distort and reduce the clarity of the manuscript. I would not call it unacceptable - it does require revision, but the issue here is the handling of this by the editors. If the language is unacceptable, it is their job to reject the manuscript on this basis, but at the very least (after 18 months!) they could invite the authors to re-submit and provide the briefest of apologies for sudden rejection after such a long time. Of course the authors will likely be submitting to another journal, but this mishandling MUST be reported. My question is, to who?

Were the reviewers perhaps not native speakers and not able to evaluate the felicity of the manuscript either? A resolution check could have been performed by someone who didn't read the manuscript.

I am sorry this happened to you. The "explanation" provided by the journal is phrased in such a generic way that can potentially apply to any paper. Given that your paper was under review for 18 months and no major issues were raised by the reviewers, such terse and tense response is unjustified and can be considered borderline unprofessional. It feels like a power trip from the journal team, and you are right to feel hurt by it.
I do not think there are effective ways to control such a behaviour, except naming and shaming the journal and the editor.

While there is no guarantee of a speedy trial in academia, your points are valid. You’ve been dragged along Only to be rejected. Regardless of if you truly need help with your writing/ language, etc, you are entitled to meaningful and timely feedback.
Contact the general editor and submit a polite grievance. You may get a new bunch of reviewers under expedited status.

Copying the general idea from a previous answer of mine:
Check with the journal to see if the decision actually is the one for the paper in question. Especially do this if it looks like the decision comments aren't relevant for the paper. What happened to this paper isn't as dramatic as what happened to the paper in the linked question, but it still seems very unlikely that a rational journal would act like this, so my gut feeling is that something went wrong, most likely human error. They could easily have confused your colleague's paper with someone else's.
If they didn't confuse the papers, then it seems to me that there were some confidential comments involved, in which case it's probably a good idea not to worry about given the missing information.


text:
Shall I review a paper for my advisor?
I am a research scholar who published a paper in an Elsevier journal recently.
My advisor had almost no contribution in the paper, but since it is mandatory to put the advisor’s name in the paper, I had to put it.
I was the first author and also the corresponding author.
Recently my advisor said he had got an article from the same journal related to my work and he wants me to review it as he does not have any knowledge in this field.
Shall I review it for my advisor or politely refuse my advisor that I wont do it?
I don’t understand why the journal contacted him and not me to review that paper though I was the corresponding author?
I feel very bad that even though it was my work the journals did not send me the paper for review.
What do journals usually look for when they send a paper for review?
UPDATE:
I did talk to my advisor that I would review the paper if he could mention my name to the Editor so that I get enlisted as a reviewer in their database.
But my advisor is not keen on saying that to the Editor.
He is arguing that this is how things work in academia.
He said that he also reviewed for his advisor but never asked anything in return like this.
When I published the paper he gave me the same explanation that in academia advisors dont work.
It is the duty of the scholars to do all the work and since he has read the draft once and I get my scholarship through him, he is entitled to get an authorship.

"What do journals usually look for when they send a paper for review?"  Most journals, and especially most Elsevier journals, will be desperate to find someone who will agree to review.  Editors may not spend more than a few seconds deciding who to invite.

The only point directly concerned is why your advisor accepted the paper for review and you should ask him. It can be the right opportunity to stress out the sad situation (as described, at least). Something like "hey come on... Not only you do nothing and publish but now you want to do nothing and review :))))

Regarding your edit, I think you need to respectfully communicate to your advisor that you should receive the credit for your reviewing work. You can point out examples of other junior researchers listed as reviewers in journals (they're usually public), and emphasize that getting a career in academia is so competitive today that you absolutely need to get credit for your work.

"why your advisor accepted the paper for review and you should ask him": most likely because he thought that OP would not argue and do it, as he himself did when he was a student. In any case I would not push it too hard, it is not worth risking annoying him over such a relatively "trivial" issue. The benefits of being officially the reviewer are (afaik) quite minimal.

That is why. The benefit is minimal. Never ear before accepting papers that can't be reviewed.

"He said that he also reviewed for his advisor but never asked anything in return like this."  Being listed in a reviewer database is not "getting something in return."  It's worthless.  What you should ask for is that your advisor has permission from the editor to show you the manuscript.

@EigenDavid It's not trivial.  Disclosing a confidential review assignment is serious misconduct.

One way to resolve this would be that your advisor refused to review the manuscript and suggests you as a possible reviewer. Then the editor can decide what to do. Do not overthink why your advisor was chosen first. He has been around for a longer time and is therefore more known to editors.
I would prefer this procedure to a simple 'yes' to the request  (which would be the easy and probably common approach) because it makes contributions transparent. You made a good start with making yourself the corresponding author of your own paper, so it would be consistent if you sticked to this path.

Addition after comment: The answer above makes most sense if you already know how to handle a paper review resulting in a high quality report. Should you require some general support on this, asking your advisor to do the review together and communicate this accordingly to the editor is a possible and viable alternative.

It's even better if your advisor asks the editor to allow you to review the paper together.

@Anonymous Physicist: True if you do not know how to review a manuscript already. I added this to the reply.

Normally the answer to such requests is yes. It is good experience. But the review may wind up being in the name of the advisor. He was contacted as a more senior academic, I think, and the editor didn't know of his lack of specific knowledge.
However, since the work is related to your own, it might be worth letting the editor know, directly or, preferably, through the advisor, that you have been asked to do this on his behalf. The editor can then act with full knowledge. The advisor would be wise, I think, to review anything you write and give you advice on it.
But journals look for both expertise (which you have) and to avoid conflicts of interest, which could possibly be an issue here. At a minimum, explore this with your advisor, pointing out the issues.
There is no reason to feel bad, especially if you are relatively unknown at this point in your career. The advisor may also have reviewed other things successfully for them in the past.

This is terrible advice.  Most journals consider it serious misconduct for the assigned reviewer to show the paper to another person without the editor's permission.  You are recommending the advisor commit misconduct and that the student inadvertently tell the editor about the misconduct.

@AnonymousPhysicist, I think the practice of passing around such papers is pretty common. Maybe even ubiquitous in research seminars. But telling the editor that your advisor wants you to do this doesn't necessarily imply that you have seen the paper. But let me revise it a bit.

@AnonymousPhysicist: That may be field-dependent.  In my field (logic, pure maths/theoretical CS), showing the manuscript discreetly to a close colleague for a review-related purpose like this is very common, and I’ve never heard anyone suggest they were unhappy with it.

Although I agree on Buffy's and PLL's take, it is not because something is common in academia that it is not misconduct (e.g. the "free" authorship). Most of the time every thing goes well, but no-one would want to see its idea/results published before because your reviewer shared your paper too lightly.

I would suggest to review the paper, it's a very good experience. Tell your supervisor to warn the journal editor that he refused to review the paper and you will do the work.

Others have given good advice regarding how you should respond to the review.  But to add a little regarding your concerns:

I don’t understand why the journal contacted him and not me to review that paper though I was the corresponding author? I feel very bad that even though it was my work the journals did not send me the paper for review. What do journals usually look for when they send a paper for review?

You really don’t need to feel bad: it doesn’t imply anything about how they rate your contribution to your paper.  At least in fields I know (in pure math & theoretical CS), editors usually invite potential referees based on what they know by about them overall, not based on any particular piece of previous work, and not based on expertise alone.
The main factors are typically more like: the editor is confident that your advisor has a good chance of having the expertise to do the review himself, or in case he doesn’t, being able to recommend someone who does; also, that he has the experience to judge whether he’s got the right expertise, and (ideally) the reliability to respond promptly.  On the one hand, your advisor is obviously more likely to have accrued the experience-based parts of this, and for the editor to know that he has.  (I.e. not that the editor thinks you don’t have the experience, just that they don’t know whether you have it.)   On the other hand, the editor may well simply have thought of your advisor first, and not considered you at all, by chance and/or because they’re more familiar with your advisor’s work/reputation.  Assigning referees isn’t the sort of crucial task where you exhaustively list all possibilities and carefully pick the best; you just look for someone suitably qualified for the review.

Having published a few things with Elsevier journals I can tell you that you often need to suggest reviewers. Your supervisor is the big cheese, so he gets put on that list.
Don't be upset about the authorship, some journals make you describe contributions to stop this, but it is very common practice, and there are comics about how much work different contributors did, depending on order and field.
I'm guessing your very much at the beginning of your career, so I would advise you to not take the order of authorship too seriously, just as the review request. Once you get a name in the field you will be contacted, should you stay in academia. Then you'll also long back for the days you weren't contacted.

TL;DR: Doing the review for your supervisor is as mandatory as making him an author of your paper. For the editor, it practically matters only that your supervisor commands the expertise required for the review.
This is kind of circular, but let’s start here:

My advisor had almost no contribution in the paper, but since it is mandatory to put the advisor’s name in the paper, I had to put it.

While I cannot say whether your advisor deserved authorship of your specific paper, it is not globally mandatory to make your advisor an author of your paper¹. Unfortunately, this is often ignored due to the power advisors have over their advisees, making it mandatory locally (i.e., for advisees of a specific advisor).
Now, the fact that you consider it mandatory strongly suggests that it is as mandatory for you to review papers for your advisor and get no credit for it. Only somebody very familiar with your advisor can tell you more on this.

¹ In fact, making somebody an author just because they are officially your advisor goes against academic authorship ethics.

I don’t understand why the journal contacted him and not me to review that paper though I was the corresponding author?

The editor probably asked your advisor to review on basis of the following:

He has expertise in the respective subfield as evidenced by being the last (senior) author on a paper in that subfield.²
He has seniority in academia and thus is an experienced peer-reviewer (possibly evidenced by previous peer reviews for the same journal/publisher), a skilled scientific writer, has a broad knowledge of literature, and can judge the impact of research.

While I wrote the above as facts, the editor can most often only assume these things – they were obviously wrong about the first point in your case.
However, they have to make such assumptions if they want to find any reviewers at all.³
Assuming that this is your first peer review, what should ideally happen in this situation is that you perform the review with your supervisor (or some other experienced peer reviewer) guiding you through the process. There are several mechanisms to register your part in this such as your supervisor officially taking you on board as a reviewer (e.g., APS journals allow this) or your supervisor redirecting the review to you (rejecting and suggesting you as an alternative reviewer).
And now we are closing the loop:
Often this is done unofficially and advisees just perform “mandatory” reviews for their advisor – without getting what little recognition there is for peer-reviewing (and possibly compromising the strict confidentiality of the review).
Editors are aware of all this and may belong to the advisor-takes-it-all school of advising themselves.
And if your advisor does not belong to that school, he can still officially redirect the review to you.
From this point of view, the editor needs not even care whether your advisor actually has the expertise listed above; your advisor only needs to command⁴ this expertise – which he evidently does.
There is another practical aspect to this: Most advisees who published a paper a few years ago have now left academia. While this does not disqualify them to review, they may not care anymore. Advisors on the other hand tend to stay and know the people who can perform the review instead. For example, if your work has been taken over by another advisee who has not published yet, your advisor may perform the review together with your successor.
On the other hand, this way of handling things is detrimental to grooming new reviewers (and knowing that you did).

² The interpretation and importance of corresponding authorship varies across fields, countries, funding agencies, etc. Depending on what applies to the journal’s field, the editor may not even have noticed.
³ Things may be a bit more complicated, as the editor may personally know your advisor, the authors of the paper may have suggested your advisor as a reviewer for the same reasons, etc.
⁴ Along the classic saying: “An undergraduate student knows things; a graduate student knows where something is written; a professor knows somebody who knows.


text:
Journal changed the ordering of the authors. What to do now?
I am facing a very difficult situation. I sent a paper for peer-review in a SCOPUS indexed journal. My supervisor though did not contribute anything rather than reading my draft insisted that I put his name in the manuscript. I had put his name as the second author as otherwise he would stop my funding. Now my paper has been  accepted and published online. To my ignorance the journal has re-arranged the author names in alphabetical order making the name of my advisor to appear first.
In our university, it is mandatory for authors to be listed in the order of their contribution. Also it was me who did all the hard work. My advisor had no idea about the reviews sent by the reviewer.
Though I had clearly made myself the first author and my advisor as the second author in the TeX file I had submitted for publication, the journal has changed it.
The journal did not send me the page-proof before publishing it online. They just changed the author ordering in the TeX file I had sent and published it as it is.
They put my paper in "RECENTLY ACCEPTED" section with no DOI and no VOLUME NUMBER but it is posted online and is accessible.
What shall I do now? I mailed the journal. They are not replying, it's 2 days already.
Can someone please help. Shall I withdraw the paper from the journal?

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

Sounds like your supervisor contacted the journal and requested the change in the order.

For the record, I don't know what happened but you're describing unethical behavior by your advisor, even if that behavior somewhat common and complaining might be counterproductive (especially for your immediate issue).

This has happened to me. I contacted the editorial office. They corrected the issue on the print version of the paper (also online) AND they published an Errata acknowledging their mistake.

@PatrickT Why blame the supervisor? There is nothing in the question that suggests the supervisor contacted the journal, and it is well known that some journals always put the authors in alphabetical order.

It seems like someone is already breaking university rules if the supervisor is listed as an author without a contribution. This is a big no-no in pure math.

After accepted you have a few days to submit a final proof. Change it there.

If the journal's styleguide requires listing the authors in alphabetical order, convincing them to make a change, even--or especially--a one-off one for you is going to be difficult. The university's policy, dumb as it may be, will also be hard to change quickly. As a result, I think neither is likely to be useful for a paper that is already in press.
If your principal concern is your CV, I think you can safely assume that people in alpha-order fields know the convention, and your contribution won't be ignored. This is especially true if author list is solely a professor and a trainee (student, postdoc, etc). If you work in fields where this is less common, you might want to indicate to note that "authors listed in alphabetical order" somewhere in your publication section.
However, suppose you need a "formal" indication of lead authorship, (e.g., to meet a graduation requirement). Could you compromise with a footnote? It's not uncommon to have a footnote indicating that several authors contributed equally; it would be perhaps be a little odd, but not totally impossible, to use one to denote a "lead author." Some fields already use corresponding author to indicate the the largest contribution from the senior authors; you could potentially overload that as well.

You seem to be in a Math department, and are having a problem that is going to effect everyone in that department.  I suggest you speak to the chair of the department.
There are journals in mathematics, good ones, that insist on an alphabetical order of authors.  This is also the standard in most of pure mathematics.  If you have your facts correct, your university has policy that will make it very hard for anyone in pure mathematics to publish.  Applied math is a bit different but this still will be a problem.
As an example, the journal Results in Mathematics explicitly requires alphabetical author order.

Out of interest, which journals do you know that insist on alphabetical order?  I agree it’s standard in all fields of mathematics I know; but I also know plenty of papers which are exceptions to the rule, for one reason or another, and I don’t remember ever seeing it as a hard rule in journal policies.

@PLL I was going to say Inventiones mathematicae, but they do not seem to have this as a rule.  There are instances of this journal switching to alphabetical order without asking.  Perhaps someone knows of a journal with this as a formal rule.

I think this issue is much better addressed to the copyeditor.

@PLL Results in Mathematics has this as a published rule.  https://www.springer.com/journal/25/submission-guidelines#Instructions%20for%20Authors_Authorship%20principles

@PLL Alphabetic order "is standard in all fields of mathematics" is kind of a stretch. In numerics and applied math, this is simply not true.

So, has anyone ever measured correlation of early-order-alphabet lastname vs h-factor, in pure maths? Seems a sure career tip is to join said dept, and change name to 'Aaron' or 'Aarowitz'.

@smci don't let Aady Aardvark get ahead of you. Change your name to Aaaaa Aaaaa.

@smci There is no wonder Aad and Aabout chose their names' romanization they did for the ATLAS colaboration papers.

@smci Since alphabetical order is standard in pure math, (almost) nobody cares about any metric where the author order matters.

@smci Not sure about h-factors in pure maths, but this paper indicates it might be affecting career outcomes in economics (which also uses alphabetical order).

ok after the clarification in the comments I'll post it as an answer. Like I said, the "The journal did not send me the page-proof before publishing it online" part seems very odd. Some journals do put early "just accepted" versions of the accepted papers online, and only then send the proofs to the authors. The fact that there is no DOI yet is in line with this too. Please check the e-mail where the editor informs you about the paper acceptance: there might be something about the page proof coming soon. When returning the proof, you can raise the issue about the order of authors.

In my experience many journals post a draft before the proof process by default.

tl;dr:
1. Your supervisor will know what to do.
2. For the long run, change the rule.

In our university, it is mandatory for authors to be listed in the order of their contribution.

This is highly unlikely, as it is not the university which decides on publication order conventions. I would suspect this is at most a guideline or default suggested order.
It's also not very useful to ask us. I mean, mathematicians, theoretical computer scientists etc. from your university have published in the past, despite this clash in author ordering rules, right? Well, do what they usually do. Your supervisor will know the appropriate course of action, for sure.

Generally, the whole ordering-by-contribution business is unfortunate IMHO; and at least in Math and a few other fields it is not the norm and will not simply be accepted/ignored. So, if this kind of rule snuck into the university's regulations - you should ask your supervisor to initiate formal procedures in the university senate or governing body to repeal this rule. Or better yet, ask your advisor to have the math department collectively initiate such a procedure, so that it's not associated with an individual researcher.

This is likely too late for the OP, but in communicating to the university that an alphabetical order of authors is the norm in mathematics, it may help to refer to a statement by the AMS to that effect.

Two days is insufficient for a response (in this instance), you should wait.
Publications are immutable, so correction is perhaps unlikely. You could push forwards on breach of contract grounds. Argue that the publisher has not fulfilled the contract and a correction is necessary.
You likely can't withdraw, once published.
Another solution: Do nothing.
EDIT: It's unclear whether the work is published. If it isn't, just update the camera-ready version.

So what is the way out for me?

@Math_Freak Wait, argue, do nothing, whichever you prefer.

I have never been in this situation before, whats the best way to handle this?

@Math_Freak Doing nothing is great for a better life

@dodd The question has been edited, and I've updated my answer.

Where shall I update? what is a camera-ready version

@dodd I've not seen your answer, I only meant to flag my edit in light of the question changing

@Math_Freak Search this forum for a post on the publication process, it should have everything you need.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
Strategy to avoid duplication when my paper is under-review
I am a Research Scholar in Mathematics in my initial days.
I  wrote an article and submitted it to a good journal recently.
I am confused with the following inquiry of mine:
If my article gets accepted then there is no worry.
But suppose my article gets rejected and in the meantime when my article was in peer-review, someone else does the same research as mine and submits his/her research to some lower ranked journal which unfortunately gets accepted.
My query is what will happen to my article. Since an article  similar to mine has been accepted, if I try to resubmit it to another journal after the rejection, will the Editors consider my article as duplicate even if I started the work before.
Will the Editor of the journal  allow me to resubmit my paper if I show them all the details that  I was the one who started this work first but since it got rejected from a higher ranked journal, I am submitting it to his/her journal now.
Or
Will my article be considered duplicate of the one which got published recently in a lower ranked journal?
I am confused.What shall I do in this kind of situation. I guess these sort of things happen to every researcher. How does one get to deal with this?
Another query of mine which is related to the same problem
Even if I put my article on the arXiv and if someone does the same research as mine, is it possible that he/she may say that he/she does not read arXiv articles and hence his/her work is not plagiarized.
Someone please help me out. I am puzzled on how to deal with these two issues.

It's not productive to worry about it.

@AnonymousPhysicist; sorry I dont get your point

Also why the downvotes??

There is no action you can take that is worth the effort.  Spend your time improving your research instead.

I downvoted your question as not useful.

@AnonymousPhysicist; so posting to arXiv as suggested is not a worthy option according to youu

I do not post to ArXiv for the purpose of establishing priority.  I post there to make it easier to find my work.  I do that after the paper is published so that I don't have to update it with bibliographic data.  This leaves me with more time to post on Stack Exchange.

Sadly, priority is established by whoever is first to publish, not by when the work has been conducted (since this is normally not really traceable). However, depending on the discipline, there are normally multiple ways to handle this problem:

Posting a preprint: probably the easiest way to show that your work has existed before it appears in a peer-reviewed journal is to send a preprint to a preprint server, such as arXiv. How "useful" this is for establishing priority depends a bit on the discipline, but at least your work is out there and you have a fairly solid argument to convince people that you at least did not copy from whoever published before you (if it comes to that).
Multiple discoveries: in many disciplines, it's simply not true that once a paper on a specific idea has been published no further similar work can be accepted. Frankly, in an experimental discipline, as long as there are not a handful of similar experiments with results pointing in a similar direction a theory isn't really accepted anyway, so the second, third, or even tenth study may still provide sufficient value to be considered even at strong journals. I think in math things are different (but if you are in math you would probably post a preprint).
"Being vocal": it goes against the instinct of some people, but in my experience a good strategy to fight against losing priority is to tell as many people as you can what you are working on. If you already give talks at conferences about your preliminary results, tell your collaborators, publish partial results, or blog about it, the word what you are working on is out there long before your paper actually appears. This has two effects. (1) It detracts people from working on your topic in parallel (or, if they already are, seek collaboration). Your competitors fear the same thing you fear (and, if they are just getting started, they may feel that you are way ahead of them). (2) Even if somebody beats you to publication, the community is well aware that you and your competitor just worked in parallel on the same topic (see also "multiple discoveries").

As a sidenote, I am tempted to agree with @AnonymousPhysicist - spending lots of effort not to get scooped is almost certainly less useful than using this time to progress in the actual research. That's why I mostly follow the "being vocal" strategy in my answer - because it only consists of things I want to do anyway (telling people about my work).

I have not till date given any talk about my work in any conference. So I am confused what's the best way to deal with my problem

why to submit to arxiv.org, it moderates papers and they are published after several hours. alternatively paper can be published in a free hosting (like static file hosting, php-mysql hosting, maybe even services like dropbox are usable), or in the author's institution's server and then save that file in archive.org or archive.li ? or even publish that paper in txt format in a public paste service in forever mode? or even publish that paper as a facebook post, or in other such site, that saves post date?

@qdinar Because the scientific community trusts arXiv's timestamps. If you post it on your blog and later say "but my blog was online weeks before that paper" this will carry a lot less weight.

@xLetix i said, and save in archive org/li.

@qdinar "I used a specific tech to prove a time stamp" is only more reliable than your word of honour if I confirm the tech is reliable.  In practice, that makes it as reliable as your word if you use an obscure tech (like archive.li).  Meanwhile, if I use arXiv, they trust arXiv, so my claim is stronger than my word of honour.  Being able to prove something in a court of law is not the goal, the goal is making your claim obviously true.


text:
Should I ask about the status of my PhD application?
I applied for admission for a PhD at a university in the US in mid December.  After contacting a potential advisor, he told me that he is interested in my CV. However, I didn't get any response about the status of my application. So, should I send an email to the professor asking him about the decision of my application or should I contact the university directly?

Can you explain what you mean by "status of application"? You mention that you have been offered admission. So, what is this application about?

M.F., if I misinterpreted what you are asking, please edit your question and do a "rollback."

It's usually the university that handled admissions. Your professor may not have any clue which stage your application is in. So your best bet is contacting the university graduate research department, and asking for timeframes around outcome.

In the US, graduate admissions are normally handled at the department level, not by the university.   The professor may still not know the status of your application, but they will know how to ask.

We are speaking of different jurisdictions then. I guess the asker would have the intellect to understand that it's whoever managing the admissions. The university would anyway refer him to the department.

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


text:
How to find the right balance between details and the main ideas?
I am a young PhD-student who just started doing real research in mathematics. Of course, this starts with learning stuff which has already been investigated. If I try to understand for instance a paper someone wrote, I find it difficult to focus on the main aspects and ideas of the paper. Most of the time, I get stuck on some elementary details, which I had not thought about until I read them in that paper. Convincing myself that this detail is true is a matter of a few minutes, but the time adds up, so I end up losing quite a lot of time trying to understand details not directly related to the problem, but occurring in the solution of the problem. But if I skip this detail, I have the feeling that I did not really understand what the author is doing in the paper. On the other side, if I think about every detail, I lose my focus on the main aspects of the topic, which is not great either.
Conversely, if I work on my own problems, I tend to get stuck on minor details as well. Unfortunately, my advisor is not a good help in this regard.
My question is therefore the following, which can be also asked in other areas of research, not only in mathematics:
How does one find the right balance between focussing on the main aspects of a topic and the details, both in actual research and in trying to understand works of other people?

In mathematics, being able to read papers is a skill on its own, and learning how to do it properly is part of “mathematical maturity."  Most everyone runs into this sort of problem at first, and with practice, you get better at seeing the forest through the trees.
One concrete strategy is to skip the small steps and to assume the details in them are true.  You can verify those details after you understand the main ideas.  Of course, you still need the skill of telling apart the small details from the important ideas.  Same goes for research -- you can make a big plan of attack and assume the details will work out later, and then if the big plan succeeds, you can go back and do the detailed calculations carefully.  Here, what is needed is intuition about what "should be true if worked out."  But such intuitions take time and practice to develop.

I think your concern is very reasonable, especially in the context of the usual paranoia-inducing undergrad and beginning graduate curriculum, where, somehow, every detail matters as much as every other, and any gaffe or gap is as "wrong" as any other. In real life, of course, things are nothing like that.
Similarly, analogous to real life, or... in real life, the point is to get to the end, whatever debts or doubts are incurred on the way, and often to meet some schedule, whether internally or externally imposed. Indeed, quite often one finds that the whole conclusion is not sufficiently interesting (as far as can be ascertained on this pass...) to look at or worry about the details. So much the better, then, to have not invested time in them.
As @LevReyzin already noted, being able to sift out the critical details (especially on just one pass or so) is a skill that is acquired, and is very important to professional function. In particular, the palpable fact that novices are not good at this is completely unsurprising, and is perhaps their chief difficulty. The problem cannot be quickly solved, not by willpower nor by "tricks"... although noting times and dates can help you track your own intransigence. :)
I do seriously recommend analogies to very practical things, like going to the grocery to get food. Sure, there are details that come up along the way, some things that may be hard to understand, present other issues, or add to your to-do list, but things have to reach a substantial thresh-hold to actually prevent "getting food". True, lack of transportation, for example, may provide a direct obstacle, but many public issues that are substantial in their own right do not, in fact, fatally obstruct getting groceries... So it would be an error to allow such things to do so.
To believe that this is a reasonable analogy requires believing certain things about (most) mathematical papers, namely, that most of it is "just the usual"... so the fact that it appears anomalous or disturbing or ineffable to a novice _means_nothing_. The default assumption should be that 90% or more of a paper is completely routine... whether or not one can personally vouch for this.
Yes, making notes of what one hasn't understood, at least as a to-do-when-there's-time list, is useful. But one does not make progress as a professional by "waiting" until one has understood all the background... if only because such an "understanding" is often misguided or even erroneous if one has not seen the things _in_use_. Thus, it is all the more important to "skip ahead"... to understand the things one is skipping.

As Lev said, as you get more experienced, this will resolve naturally.  However, I have a couple of ideas for you to speed things up a bit.

When you attend a talk someone is giving about his research, you
can't stop and smell the roses.  The presenter is plowing ahead, and
you can't go back to the previous slide and think carefully about how
that equation was derived.  If you have not had this experience
often, then please attend some more talks, to give yourself this
experience of letting things wash over you.
Once you are feeling more comfortable with this type of experience,
you can use it as a mental image for what you want some of your
paper-reading experiences to be like.
Of course, not all your paper-reading experiences need to be like
this.
Join, or organize, a journal club for students, where each week
someone presents a paper he read and liked.  As you are preparing for
your turn, you'll want to skim through a nice stack of articles to
narrow the field.  When you've got a short list, then you can read
for more detail, in preparation for making your final choice, and for
preparing your presentation.
There's a technique from psychology you can try if you're still
having trouble:  Pick up a paper you are interested in reading.  On a
page of a notebook, write today's date on the first line.  Start
reading.  When you get to the first equation that's not immediately
obvious to you, write down a number between 0 and 7 to the right of
the date, on the same line.  0 means you have NO urge to verify that
equation for your own satisfaction.  7 means you have the MAXIMUM
urge to verify.  Now keep reading, without verifying.  After an
interval, write down your new measure of your urge.  Keep reading.
Keep taking your "pulse" every so often.  You might see your number
increase initially, and then start to decline.  You may stop
measuring when it has stabilized at zero.
If continuing to read the paper is very painful, you can set it aside
and do something else, such as listen to music.
You can aim to do this exercise once or twice a day.  Probably after
one or two weeks you'll find that you're able to choose when you
want to verify a step and when you are okay with skimming that bit,
reading ahead, and possibly coming back later to verify.

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


text:
Transitioning from Master's to PhD in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics: Is it Easy to Secure a Position in Germany?
I'm currently working on my master's thesis in theoretical and mathematical physics, and I recently spoke with my former post-doc supervisor from my bachelor's thesis. They mentioned that getting a PhD position is relatively easy in Germany, as PhD students are often considered cheap labor. They suggested that if I market myself correctly, it shouldn't be a problem to continue working with the same research group.
I'm curious to know if this is generally the case. Can anyone share their experiences with transitioning from a master's program to a PhD program, particularly in the field of theoretical and mathematical physics? Are there any specific strategies or advice for marketing oneself to potential PhD supervisors or research groups?

One factor is that in Germany PhD students (at universities) are usually employees with teaching load or attached to a specific project with the hope of the work aligning with the goal of a dissertation. Therefore you certainly can end up as cheap labor for a professor, while doing thesis work in your free time.

I disagree with what that postdoc told you. Securing a PhD position is not easy anywhere in the world, including Germany, especially in theoretical and mathematical physics.
In order to reach out to professors or group leaders in your areas of research, you can send them brief emails giving a brief summary of your research background and interests. You can also provide a link to your Master's thesis and/or research publications. Express your interest in working with them. And you can offer to give a talk based on your research. Good luck!

Since you asked for experiences, I'll share my observations:

They mentioned that getting a PhD position is relatively easy in
Germany, as PhD students are often considered cheap labor.

This depends strongly on your subfield, as the amount of PhD positions also depends on the funding available to supervisors. I know people who struggled to find a place since they were determined to specifically pursue a niche theoretical topic in basic research, while others, who were either more flexible or in a "trendier" field, had a much easier time.
That being said, a good PhD student is cheap labor. This can create a win-win situation: it's in the supervisor's interest to find good students for their group (or their friends/collaborators groups) and in the student's interest to get a PhD position. I would say that it's not uncommon for supervisors to intentionally try to cultivate some masters students for their upcoming PhD vacancies, and/or introduce them to other supervisors in the field if they don't have the funding to support them. Some supervisors have a reputation for doing this more than others; in my experience, they see it as a form of mentorship.
I wouldn't be so cynical as to say that this would require any specific marketing. Treat your master thesis work like a part-time version of the job you want to have: be professional, put in a solid effort and show enthusiasm for your chosen field. Tell your supervisor early on that you're considering doing a PhD, and opt in to related opportunities (like giving a poster presentation). Talk to the other group members: both to find out what working there is really like, and to show that you're academically sociable and can take the initiative in talking about your work with others.
If your experience is anything like the ones I'm familiar with, if the master project is going well and your supervisor has funding, you can expect a few unsubtle hints. Otherwise, a lot of supervisors will want to discuss "the future" with you once you're nearing graduation. If they don't bring it up independently, you can just ask them for a meeting. In either case, tell your supervisor explicitly that you want to do a PhD and ask for their help in finding a position.
tl;dr Yes, these groups often "promote from within" but don't overthink it, just focus on doing good work.

I would rather write this post of mine in the comments, but I can't because I don't have the required reputation for it. So I elaborate my statement further, trying to answer your question.
I think that the question should say whether it is easier than in some specific other country. It may come easy to some, but not to others. In the Czech Republic, it is also said that teachers like Ph.D. students, because they are a cheap workforce, but above all, this may not be the reason that applicants have an easier time. In Germany, as in the Czech Republic, it is the ratio of accepted and registered doctoral students for a certain field or for a certain supervisor. Mostly, workplaces or individual academics set quotas for themselves and rarely exceed them.
After researching the German system for Ph.D. students, I found out that in Germany a Ph.D. student often reports to a supervisor who has a project. In other words, the supervisor must secure funding for the doctoral student. If I compare it with the Czech Republic, where the funding of doctoral students is not addressed, or the doctoral student receives a prescribed amount to which the workplace is contributed by the state, but which is often insufficient and the doctoral student would need additional funding, then I would say that it is not easier in Germany. Because that principle suggests that better students are selected for funded projects.
However, as I indicated above, it really comes down to what the quota is and how many students apply for the Ph.D. This does not mean that the quotas have to be met if the quality of the applicants is poor, or that they cannot be slightly exceeded, but they will be approximately respected due to other reasons. Sometimes individual schools publish the statistics of those who applied and were accepted. If not, you can try to ask for it at the study department (or another similar workplace), or find a doctoral group on the Internet and ask them to get at least some information.
Finally, I should state that you can always increase your chances by doing better than average during your master's studies. If you will have activities related to research beyond the scope of your studies, you will be asked to rework your master's thesis into a paper, etc., your chances for admission to Ph.D. studies increase.

Having completed a PhD in Germany recently and having bounced around a few institutions in the progress, I’d like to give my two cents that PhD programs here are really not as selective as you make them out to be. Quite often, there’s not enough interest in the positions being offered that the criteria for picking a PhD student is “a sufficiently motivated bachelors or masters student asked me for a project”, so supervisors are often overjoyed if a productive masters student wants to continue in their group


text:
How to add ISSN in arxiv submission?
The preprint version of my article has been already published in arXiv. Now I want to add the ISSN of the journal that published my publication. Unfortunately, they don't provide any doi. Could you please explain how to add ISSN to an arXiv preprint? Is it like -> Edit journal ref -> Report number:?

Yes, click on "replace" and update the information. You may need to reupload the files, though.

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

The arXiv user support team replied this:

There is no present metadata element for an ISBN (though this may be
included within the new data model, which would be instituted in the
coming years), and further, there is no standard location to indicate
such. DOI and Journal-ref should be reported in those fields, and an
ISBN number could be part of a Journal-ref if the complete workshop is
issuing page numbers and DOI.

Yes, the journal ref seems the right tool for the job, from the description on https://arxiv.org/help/jref . But I'd say the journal name is enough (as they suggest on the page I linked) and the ISSN provides little additional information.
Have you tried adding one with the memnu entries you stated in your question? Does it work?

Thanks for the kind reply. I did not try those steps, as my collaborators are reputed professors. I wanted to be sure at first. And the arxiv community told us that for a single paper, we can not add the ISSN number. Only the organizers can do that for their complete submission.


text:
Should I switch labs to work on a topic that interests me more or stay with great current PI?
I am doing research now as a sophomore majoring in molecular biology and biochem. I am in a lab and my current PI is awesome and she is so supportive. However, I do not like the science practiced in her lab and can not see myself writing an undergrad thesis about it after 2 years. I am basically not interested in the topic the lab is researching. Should I stay in the lab or look for another lab with an "okay " PI, but with a topic that interests me in the same field?
I am planning to apply to PhD program after graduation.

Why do you want to do a PhD if you don't like science?

I did not say that I do not like molecular biology. I just do not like what the lab I am in is researching.

Got it, so I guess when you wrote "I do not like science" you meant to write "I don't like the specific science in this lab". But also, it sounds like this is your only experience doing science, as opposed to reading about it. So, even with the correction in language, how do you know there is science you do like if you haven't done it yet?

Since you are asking the question you already realize that there are tradeoffs. I suggest that you speak (personally) with each of the PIs giving your concerns. It might be that the "great" PI can suggest something you like.
I also suggest that you investigate, if possible, perhaps by asking, what has been the future of students mentored by each of them. A department chair might also be a good source of information on this. If on or the other has a better record of advancing students then that might be an important factor.
Two additional points. First is that any undergraduate research experience is valuable for doctoral admissions since it is relatively rare, though maybe not in your field. Second is that you aren't locked in to a particular research direction by what you do as an undergraduate. That would be especially true in the US, but perhaps less so in some parts of Europe.
It is good to be able to do something you really like, but at your stage there might be other, longer term, considerations. At the end of the day, however, you need to be comfortable with yourself and your decision. The "easy" path may not be the best path.

Search for the project you would like to work and find the PIs that work already in that or would be interested to assist you.
Doing something you don't find interesting and then applying also for PhD will lead you into various problems eventually (mental/health issues, burnout etc).
First understand what "the job" is in the lab and then either you do it or you search for something else.
By "lab" I don't mean only that particular lab, but the wet-lab work that researchers do in your field.

You need to care about your subject/topic - your fascination for the topic will get you through the hard times (and there will always be hard times during a PhD).
At the very least - discuss this with your PI. Nobody wants to start a PhD (whether as candidate or as supervisor) when there isn't 100% commitment to the whole package.

This may be an unpopular position but as an sophomore eyeing a PhD you should worry about other things more than liking your topic. Your primary focus should be gaining skills and experiences that make you marketable and prepare you for graduate school. Sure liking the topic helps but what good is liking the topic if the lab you are in is not adequately funded, run by a jerk or you are not provided opportunities to learn, present and write? You say your current PI is very supportive but does that mean she provides these opportunities? If so, it would be foolish to jump ship, especially if you plan to stay in molecular biology or biochem. Learn and become proficient at every technique you can. Write up everything you do and PRESENT EVERY WHERE YOU GET THE CHANCE. If you do that you will be competitive for any PhD program and can worry about liking your topic then. As a researcher and/or graduate student you will routinely do things you do not like but are necessary to advance you toward your goal. You have to widen your perspective beyond what you immediately like or are drawn to.


text:
How do i search for Mentors outside of my academic sphere?
I recently discovered a YouTuber who offers advice regarding the journey of pursuing a PhD. This content creator recommended seeking a mentor beyond the academic sphere to address challenges associated with your Ph.D. effectively. This leads me to wonder: Is being formally assigned a mentor possible? If it is indeed possible, where should I begin my search for such a mentoring relationship?

Would you please explain what you mean by "beyond the academic sphere" ? Outside your institute ?

I would attach the link here, i hope that is okay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoMgRqBkBIU&t=268s
The point comes up around 3:45, where it is pretty much straightforward, go out and ask someone to mentor me. I would like to ask, If i do so, would I really be accepted as a mentee?

I think a fundamental problem here is what you imagine "formally assigned a mentor" could mean. This really doesn't make sense outside of specific academic or other settings, where a senior person is over-seeing you. It has no operational sense "in the larger world"... Can you clarify?

@kc_nul You need to be able to explain your question clearly here, not through a video hosted on some other site. We want questions and answers here to be broadly useful, and outside links might die and it's not a good path to people finding that this question is relevant to them unless the question is described fully here.

I believe if you are looking for just having a life advice from a person who has done it, there are ample opportunities. A cold call might not be a great idea. Usually, you can talk to someone during an event at the university, find them in some Common hobbies you pursue (sports, toastmaster, cultural organization) or attend some university organized meet and greets. If you just want to meet someone quarterly and have a sanity check, you can easily find a mentor in such gatherings