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How detailed should one be in writing the referee's report?
When writing a referee's report for an editor of a journal, does one always aim and  try to be as brief as possible, saying yes or no to the publication (giving a couple of sentences in support of one's decision regarding the reasons for recommending/rejecting the paper)? Is it ever appropriate for the referee to write about finer details of the work they are reporting on, in their report to the editor?
After doing a fair bit of research to figure out whether to recommend a paper for publication or not, it can still be a hard decision to make. Is it then appropriate to share the finer details with the editor or does one have to make the decision and write only in support of that decision?

See my answer to a similar question elsewhere.

A review is supposed to provide the view of a peer on the manuscript submitted for publication. An editor needs to take one or several, usually two, reviews to form the basis on deciding on the fate of the submitted manuscript and to form the basis for revisions by the authors. There are very few instances, I have yet to see one, where a paper is publishable as is. There is, however, no clear correlation between usefulness and length of a review.
The key is to provide feedback for improvements to ensure the manuscript becomes as good a contribution as possible. Some reviewers spend much time correcting language or other formal aspects of manuscripts. These sorts of comments are always welcome but the core issues are focussing on the science itself and the clarity with which it is disseminated.
So a shorter form of report contains the core scientific and clarity issues encountered and perhaps general comments on other shortcomings, a longer report details also the detailed issues. The size of the reports obviously depend on the quality of the manuscript but also on your expertise. Some times editors appoint reviewers to cover a narrower but vital aspect of the manuscript. The good review should be critical, fair and objective and provide both the editor and authors with suggestions for improvement. By necessity this will be more than just a few paragraphs of comments

When I write a report I try to be as detailed as possible in my response to the authors. This is important as they will need my comments to improve the manuscript, and if the comments are vague they will fail to do so. However, many of the journals I have experience with in my field (life sciences and bioinformatics) ask referees to avoid including comments regarding the suitability for publication in the letter to the authors. For that purpose they provide the score sheet that needs to be filled when submitting the report (at least for journals using electronic systems).
However, those score sheets cannot convey all the information about the impressions of the referee after reading the paper. Therefore, there is always a section with comments to the editors. In this section you should add any relevant information that is not clearly represented in the score sheet. Personally, I always try to add specific comments to the editors. For example, I may have complained in my report about the poor description of the statistical methods. Then I will let know the editor that that is, in my opinion, a mandatory change for the suitability of the manuscript for publication. Finally, when writing my comments to the editor, I try to be as brief as possible (but never just 'yes' or 'no'), so that I do not overwhelm the editor's likely busy inbox with unnecessary comments.
In summary, the comments to the editor should include any information that is not properly represented in the score sheet, cannot go into the response to the authors, and may be relevant for the editor in order to make an appropriate decision on the manuscript.

Regarding "Most journal's rules for refereeing require that no comments regarding the suitability for publication should be included in the letter to the authors"... This seems to be a quirk of your own field. In my area, mathematics, I always include a statement about suitability in the statement for the authors, and very few journals have any kind of score sheet, even if they use an online submission system.

@OswaldVeblen thanks for the feedback. You are right that probably is field dependent. Updated the answer.

@OswaldVeblen, BTW, it is interesting then to compare the differences between fields. In my field I guess the reason is to avoid having blatant contradictions between what the referees advise and what the editors want to do. Although most of the time it is clear anyway from the comments what the referees think... Maybe we should have a more open model like in Mathematics!

Reviewing is a "Golden Rule" situation: "Treat others as you would like to be treated."  The authors have (probably) invested a lot of time and effort in the paper, and being accepted or dismissed with a terse couple of sentences is neither helpful nor particularly respectful.  Even if the paper is terrible, the authors deserve a thorough explanation of why you think that it is terrible, so that they can understand the fairness of the decision---remember, many papers that you encounter will come from young authors or authors from institutions without a very strong scientific research culture, and your feedback is critical to helping them improve.
Furthermore, as a referee, your job is not to make the final judgement (even if you have a form that says "reject" or "accept"), but to provide the editor or program chair evidence in support of their decision.  I thus find the following template useful for organizing my reviews, to make sure that I convey the right information:

Start with a few sentences summarizing what you think the main idea and impact of the paper is.
Give a general feeling about whether you think the paper is ready for publication or not.
If not, explain what are the biggest general problems that have to be dealt with.
Major issues list: all significant scientific issues that have to be addressed before publication
Minor issues list: all the scientific side-issues, nitpicks, typos, nice-to-haves, etc.

The distinction between 3, 4, and 5 is one of triage and communication, and should be made very clear in a review.  #3 is the main reason for your judgement.  #4 is for all of the rest of the problems that impact the scientific content of the paper.  #5 is for all the little stuff: I always appreciate it when a reviewer reads carefully enough to provide nitpicks and notice typos, but it's also important that it be clear (to the editor, as well as the authors) that such minor problems are, in fact, not the basis of judgement.
A place that this distinction is particularly critical is regarding requests for additional experiments.  Many reviewers seem to feel that it is their job to assign "homework" for the authors, and this is seriously problematic.  You should only request new experiments if the work as presented will not stand scientifically without it.  If you have suggestions for experiments that you think would be cool or would strengthen the point, put them in "minor issues" and clearly label them as suggestions not required for publication.  It doesn't matter if you would have done it differently or if you think the new experiment wouldn't be too much work: your job is to evaluate whether the paper is scientifically sound, not to pretend that you are the authors' Ph.D. advisor.
Another important point, with regards to structure and grammar: remember that many papers you read will not be written in the authors' native language.  Difficult as it may be, it is critical to try to separate language and presentation problems from scientific problems.  I always remind myself that I would be writing much worse prose in the authors' native language.  Thus, my section #5 may often contain a comment like, "The paper has many problems with English grammar and needs attention from a proof-reader," but unless the problems are so bad that they impair my ability to understand the scientific meat, it stays as a "minor issue."
In addition to the textual feedback, there are often numerical or qualitative ratings to select. I view the textual feedback as the meat, and always prepare it first, especially since writing up the textual feedback often changes my opinions of what the numbers should be.  Moreover, numbers are not very informative, because different people interpret them differently: the text is the only opportunity you have to clearly communicate your reasons for liking or disliking a paper.
Finally, there is one case where all of this goes out the window: if I find that I am dealing with a plagiarized or multiply submitted paper, then the authors are wasting everybody's time and I have no problem giving a short and harsh rejection, e.g., "I didn't like this paper the last time we rejected it, and the authors haven't changed anything since then."

does one always aim and try to be as brief as possible, saying yes or no to the publication?

Each reviewer has his or her own style. Some deliver a very brief report, others provide rather long lists of questions and suggestions.
In general, you might not want to spend too much time writing a response if the paper is generally bad with evident blunders. If, instead, the paper is good but needs a number of amendments, you might be willing to write a detailed response giving advice on how to improve the paper.


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If you have broad interests, should you describe a narrow research topic in statement of purpose anyways?
All the advice for writing a Statement of Purpose (otherwise referred to as 'Personal Statement') for graduate (Masters) on the internet usually pins it down to narrowing down your interest to specific research topics. But what if one just wishes to dig deeper into a range of subjects without committing at the outset to research?
For example, I have broad interests in computer systems (which includes the OS, compilers, processor architecture and so forth). Specifically, I like writing low-level embedded software and am very interested in learning new ways of designing CPUs. I've written toy OSes and compilers and I like reading about CPU architectures. But none of that seems relevant to current research in the field.
Maybe, if I force myself to, I can come up with a narrow research topic or two but would it be too wrong to say that I want to go to graduate school just to learn more? (Of course, I could read papers on the internet forever but I feel directed learning would serve me better)
By my own admission, I am nowhere near to knowing the state-of-the-art in systems research. If I do try to make up a topic, I am afraid it might appear superfluous in my Statement. Should I try harder to find a research topic or am I better off writing what I actually feel?

More related to your interests rather than the question, have you thought about machine learning or neural networks? I'm more software than low-level coding, so I don't really know much about that field, but I am definitely sure there's topics out there for study.

Keep in mind that the statement of purpose isn't a thesis proposal.

Why not do both?
The value of a narrow statement is to show that you are capable of focus and thinking deeply about a subject.  In fact, if one makes it too narrow, then it can exclude you from projects you would like because people think you won't be interested.
So you might formulate your statement as follows:

Start by expressing your broad interests and the accomplishments that you have made in the past.  For a Masters, it's more important to illustrate that you were able to build complex things than that those thing were novel.  Your breadth will be good here.
Shift to looking toward the future.  Express your desire to be doing something novel and intellectually significant. Then say, "For example, one thought that I have considered ... " and give a narrow statement focused on something that you think would be new and significant.  Just make it clear that it is a possible direction rather than something that you are committed to.

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Why do people outside academia generally have PhDs?
I see that some people working outside academia have PhDs.
Why do people outside academia generally have PhDs?

Do they first do PhD, fail to find job in the academia, and then join industry?

Do they join industry and then see that a PhD is needed for career development and then do a PhD?

Both #1 and #2?

Any other reason?

All of the above, plus: 1. They decided during the PhD that they want to go to industry, 2. They took a PhD before joining industry, in the assumption that the PhD would increase their chances for a good position in industry (applies only to a few fields).

point 1. of @lighthousekeeper comment could be extended to people who decide they want to go to industry during a later career stage.

In the US: once upon a time, AT&T Bell Labs, IBM Research, GE Research, and other large companies had large R&D labs with lots of PhDs. Google and Microsoft employ many PhDs now, as do companies like Intel, Micron, and others. And then there is the entire DOE National Labs complex, employing thousands and thousands of PhDs engaged in research. If your view is that only academia values (and hires) PhDs, you should look around. Field dependent, but in STEM there are lots of jobs for PhDs in lots of places.

And don't forget all the pharmacology and biomedical companies...

In some places, having a PhD is viewed positively for politics (though sometimes these PhDs are questionable)

It is probably a mistake to think of those people as failures. I know several such people and all are extremely well qualified - and very productive and successful.
I'd guess that in the case of my friends and colleagues, they were simply offered interesting and lucrative positions when they were about to graduate and took them. Some of them do/did pretty much what I did (retired now) except for teaching. Lots of speaking, lots of travel, lots of deep thinking. They also earned just about twice what I did at similar career points.
I think it was Bill Joy who once called three of them "The Crown Jewels of Sun Microsystems" for their technical contributions to Java and other things.
However, at the current moment, jobs in academia are hard to find and both of your points certainly do happen.

It isn't "probably" a mistake - it is most definitively and unambiguously a mistake. There are many jobs requiring a PhD outside of academia.

I personally earned a PhD because I knew I wanted to be research scientist for a federal conservation agency.
Furthermore, I picked my graduate program because most of their alumni do not work as professors, something they proudly list on their website.
Here are some Any other reason? that are similar to those shared by Buffy in another answer:

We knew our dream jobs required a PhD.
We like doing research, but not teaching.
We like having a work-life balance (in my case, 40 hours a week).
We dislike the all-too-common petty academic politics and egos of academia (these problems exist outside of academia, but often are not as bad).
We have jobs that require specialize training only PhD programs provide.

Additionally, many (perhaps surprising to many people both inside and outside of the academy) have jobs that require specialized training that requires a PhD, especially for higher responsibility and pay positions.
Examples include:

Clinical phycologists who treat more advanced cases.
Biostatisticians who lead the teams/research groups.
"Researcher scientists" and similar roles who need to understand how to conduct research and conduct research. These jobs are in the private sector and public sector (e.g., government agencies).
Medical entomologists with the U.S. Navy require a graduate degree and I known several PhDs who have worked there as well as one or two MS-degree holders. The PhDs start off with higher rank. I'm not sure about their other benefits of their PhD.

For the skills, my friend who is a biostatistician noted to me once that one PhD (e.g., four years of post-undergrad study) is not the same as 2 masters (e.g., two two-year degrees).
The PhD generally have deeper skills and better problem-solving skills.
Lastly, the tone of your question's multiple-choice reasons implies people, such as me, are failures for not obtaining a tenure track or other job in "academia".
Please think about this if you ever apply for a non-academic position.

I personally started a PhD knowing I would not stay in academia afterwards, because the academic job market is insane (I did not even look).
Why do a PhD then?

The knowledge gained is directly useful to my job.
It might also enable a career transition.
I wanted to prove to myself that I'm smart enough to do a PhD.

You could also look at why employers hire PhDs (there are plenty of job advertisements that specifically require a PhD). I asked one employer that question. The industry was technical, but not related to academics. He said he tried hiring someone with a BSc for the position once, and he found he had to tell the person exactly what to do. Comparatively, he could describe the goal in general terms to a PhD, and expect the PhD to fill in the blanks.

If your field were mathematics, I'd say a good answer would be "Well, its mathematics."

That PhD cf BSc argument was also told to me as BSc cf HnD...

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What do PhD committees focus on when examining the CV of a graduate applying for a PhD?
In evaluating a Ph.D. candidate's application, what is the pivotal element that selection committees seek and immediately disregard the application if it's absent from the applicant's CV/Resume?

Why do you believe there is a "pivotal element" in a complex decision process? This applies to your previous question about post-docs as well. Or, any other application process, be it for a job or club membership or mortgage or ...

A "lack of university degree" is possibly the only answer, and I would not put my hand in the fire for it.

There is no single element that will kill your application. I have friends, professors in the Ivies and other R1s, who failed courses in their respective disciplines as undergrads, who got terrible GREs scores when applying to grad school, and who have no social skills to do well in an interview. You name one criterion, and I'll tell you an example of a successful PhD despite not meeting that criterion.
What makes a successful PhD student has been answered elsewhere, and the usual criteria grad schools use in admissions has been discussed ad nauseam.
Worry less about your chances of admission, and more about if grad school is the best way to your career goals, in the context of the current employment market for academics.

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What are the negative aspects of multiple PhDs outside of North America?
I have found that it is common in Poland to do multiple PhDs:

dr. hab. Piotr Sankowski, CEO @ IDEAS NCBR, Associate Professor @ UW, Warsaw, PL

Polish Academy of SciencePolish Academy of Science
Ph.D., PhysicsPh.D., Physics
2003 - 2009
University of WarsawUniversity of Warsaw
Ph.D., Computer SciencePh.D., Computer Science
2002 - 2005

dr. Jarosław Duda (Jarek Duda), Assistant professor @ Institute of Computer Science, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, PL

Jagiellonian University, Cracow,
PhD in Theoretical Physics (thesis)
2006-2012
Jagiellonian University, Cracow,
PhD in Theoretical Computer Science (thesis)
2004-2010

and, these people are very successful.
There are lots of posts in Academia.SE describing the negative aspects of doing multiple PhDs.

Is doing two PhDs a good path?
Is a second PhD ever necessary?
Why is having multiple PhDs frowned upon?

As far as I realize, most of the answerers are US-based.
What are the negative aspects of multiple PhDs outside of North America?

If you read the answers to the questions you linked, you will find that they do not generally say that multiple PhD's are bad for your career in the sense that a guy with two PhD's will have a harder time finding a job than a guy with one PhD. So it doesn't make much sense to ask whether it is "applicable only to North America", because no-one said it was applicable to North America in the first place. Rather, most of the answers to the questions you linked are along the lines that generally when people consider doing two PhD's it's based on a misunderstanding of what the point of a PhD is.

I think this is really a duplicate, but hesitate for the moment to vote it so as my vote would be decisive.

Does this answer your question? Is doing two PhDs a good path?

It's possible there's some interesting question buried in here, as both of the people you reference have substantial overlap in the time frame for their degrees. This suggests a different model for assigning degrees than the ones I am more familiar with that might apply to Poland or these specific institutions - it doesn't seem they did "2 PhDs" but rather got 2 degrees over their time studying. I don't think the right question to raise from it is the one asked here, though. Also, please consider using titles that actually represent the question asked, not just keywords.

I don't know anything about PhDs in Poland, and you didn't ask a question about PhDs in Poland, I'm just looking at the information in the links in your question.

I don't want to log into LinkedIn to read those profiles, but from the description in the answer, it's not apparent that these persons hold multiple PhDs.

Short answer: there are no negative aspects except for the waste of time.
You will not impress any academics by having two PhDs, in North America or anywhere else in the world. It shows either lack of focus, or that you switched fields. In the later case, the only PhD that counts is the one in the subject you are trying to get a job. A friend of mine had a tenure track position in one field, but wanted to work in another field. He did a second PhD and is now tenured at another department.
Non-academics might be impressed, but it seems to be a long route to gather extra attention at the cocktail party. Will it impress people in industry? I'd guess that the farther away they are from academia, the more impressed. But at the end it's about your skills.

This doesn't answer the question.

This answer would be strengthened if it referenced your experience or knowledge of academia outside of North America. If you are only speaking generally, your answer would better fit one of the more general questions that OP linked to.

As @BryanKrause mentions, if you go through the acknowledgments of one of the people's mentioned Ph.D. thesis, you will read right away that they solved one problem that led to two theses, one in physics and one in computer science. The problem is related to information theory which has applications in both statistical mechanics and computer science, so it makes sense that they got 2 PhDs out of it.


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How can I recover the lost time in my career?
I had clinical depression. Because of that, I lost 5 years of my life.
To put things in perspective - I am starting as a Ph.D. student this year, but my undergraduate classmates have already completed Ph.D. plus one postdoc.
If I want to become an academician, how can I recover this lost time?
Is increasing the impact factor a way forward? What else can I do?

Consider yourself in the same group as others starting their PhD this year, regardless of their age.  In my experience, trying to "speed up" your career is not a good idea.

In Australia, we evaluate researchers with respect to their opportunities.   This means if you obtained your PhD degree in your 80s, you are on the same level as a newly minted 20+ year old!

"my undergraduate classmates have already completed PhD plus one postdoc" probably, but I will bet that most of them have done something else.

As far as I can see, people of different ages and backgrounds join PhDs. Your cohort will not be a homogeneous lot

On a personal note: you didn't lose 5 years. It took 5 years to overcome a difficult condition many others don't have to face. It happened, it gave you a lot of experience (even if it may seem hard right now to find positive ones), and ultimately it made you who you are right now.

Would you feel this way if you had had e.g. cancer for 5 years?

@RedSonja, Would you feel this way if you had had e.g. cancer for 5 years? --- I don't know. Coz, the human mind is a tricky thing. I knew a mother whose daughter had leukemia. She told her that "If you die, then I won't blame you. But, as long as you are alive, you can't slack on your studies.".

To answer just the title, "you can't".... but do the best you can!  It's hard to get a job as a professor, anyway.  Are you in a field where there are non-academic jobs in government, industry, etc?

You cannot recover lost time. The best you can do is dust yourself off and start where you are.

You are different from others, so your carrier will be different from a "typical one". Apart from that, no doors are closed for you. This is true for many people - foreigners, those coming from particular cultural/ethnic/religious background, people who had difficult circumstances for health or family reasons, etc. Another group to look at are those who decide to change their career and start from nearly zero  in a new field or even out of academia.

You seem to have the assumption that as an academic, you will be evaluated based on your scientific contributions put in perspective with your age, i.e., from birth. This is in many ways inaccurate.
For example, countries and their education systems vary greatly in when people typically start a PhD and how much time they take to complete it. What you may feel is a late time to start a PhD might be considered a very usual time in a country where it is common that some people work in industry for a few years before deciding to start a PhD, or waste years applying for a grant before starting their PhD. Academia varies a lot, so the "norm" is not as clear a concept as you'd think. In my small experience as a young academic, just in my discipline, I've both met people that were 5 years younger than I was when they completed their PhD, and people that were 3 years older.
Apart from the 40 years old age cap for Fields medalists, the only age limits I am aware of (from my small corner of academia) tend to be time limits "from PhD". For example, some grants can only be awarded to people that received their PhD in the last 4 years. Since your five year career gap did not occur after you received your PhD, none of those apply to you. Also, at least some of those grants actually are designed to take into account career gaps, like time taken off of your career for medical reason and maternity/paternity leave, which can sometimes be subtracted from the 4 years time limits.
This will also be true of your scientific contributions. They will mostly be judged not based on your age, but your 'age since PhD'.
So, as someone said in the comments, do not think in terms of age: you are part of the cohort of people starting a PhD this year. Then, general advice on how to succeed in academia applies. In particular, as many PhD students experience some amount of psychological distress during their PhD, keep your mental health a priority, and reach out if the conditions of a successful PhD are not there (this website contains quite a few stories of people that changed advisor or subject).

You can't recover the lost time. It is gone forever. But it doesn't restrict your future. Do what any beginning doctoral student needs to do. Pay attention, work hard, take a lot of notes, talk to a lot of people, especially professors.
Find a good advisor who can give good and timely advice. Work with them to find a good problem to attack. Onward.
Looking back isn't going to get you anywhere.
And if there are lingering effects from the depression, keep in touch with a professional so that it doesn't become an issue again.

Edited to add: When it comes time to evaluate your tenure application you will, perhaps, be a bit older than the average candidate. But you will be judged by people older still and the most influential might be very much older for which your age at that time is completely irrelevant. You will be judged on what you have accomplished, not your age.

Actually, there does exist a negative bias against people who are older than the average candidate. Worse, the statistics bear out this bias. I spent 20 years giving the "a tad too mature" candidate the benefit of the doubt, and got burned time and time again. In the end I gave in to conventional wisdom: "if they are X age and still have not achieved Y, there is probably something wrong with them." Crucify me for saying this, but the prejudice exists and often proves justified.

@Deipatrous stereotypes are often statistical inference (at the same time, laws and rules are just the concretization of social conventions and therefore ... you cannot fight racism or discrimination by law, but you must fight against racism and discrimination even when there are laws in place)

@Deipatrous, I doubt that age alone is a factor for reasonable people. Time since earning the degree might be relevant. That implies low productivity, whereas age alone does not.

Here are my advises that could be helpful for you:

Don't look back, don't overthink about these things. You are lucky and strong ... at least to start your PhD research.
Focus on the next step. A PhD study is a big project and you will need to prepare for that and devote your time, money and energy. Keep in mind that you have to be very hard-worker and patient, otherwise you'll learn that along the way :-)
Don't take the example of your classmates that finished their PhD as a bad example, instead you should make that as a motivation (if they had done that, I also can do). And don't think it's easy path, you should ask your classmates about their sacrifices ... {Successful PhD study ---> costs a lot of blood, sweat and tears}, but at the end you'll be proud.
Yourself is your first enemy. If you listen to your demotivating thoughts, you will never do anything in this life.
and finally, don't look for the perfectionism in your research ... do it first then make it perfect

I wish a good luck to you "our future Dr."

Publishing high-impact papers may expedite your rise up the academic ladder (then again, it may not, since we live in a strange world and heads of department hold inordinate amounts of unchecked power*); all else being equal, one does better as one's papers are higher-impact. So in that sense, yes, good idea.
What is strange is that you should think that "high impact" is the answer to "making up for lost time" - as if you would not consider high impact as a priority or a smart thing to aim for if you had remained "on schedule" and not lost so much time.
From a strictly logical point of view, your question "is high impact the remedy for lost time?" is on a par with "is doubling my IQ the remedy for lost time?" In both cases the tentative answer is something like: yeah, it probably cannot hurt, but it seems odd to think that this might be the answer to that.
The time people spend post-docking is highly variable, and even among roughly  equal quality people in the same field one can get tenure years earlier than the other. So if luck runs your way, you could easily make up the lost time during the post-doc phase. The best you can do in any case is just, merely, your best.
There is one respect in which "high impact" as an aim or priority can be counter-productive. This happens when academics "safe up" results and findings in hopes of all their loose ends somehow aggregating into a Nature/Science/PNAS paper, rather than being published bit by bit in the decent journals on the tiers below. It is unusual and probably counterproductive for a PhD student to develop this particular neurosis, but I thought I should warn you anyway.
*) Yes, you may find yourself out on your ear after publishing in Nature and PNAS, just because your HoD felt belittled.

I think the perspective is different. Do you drive cars? From the way you write it sounds like your car's transmission has been stuck for a while, but it sounds like you've come out of it well strengthened. It's all about soft skills. It's never about dates on resumes but about your ability “someday” when you are pH.D to offer a competitive advantage to those who will read your resume. How many college graduates have skills that don't stand out?


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Do I have to list incomplete degrees on my CV when applying for a PhD in Poland?
I already have an MSc from outside the EU. But, I also have an incomplete CS degree from Poland which I dropped out of.
Polish Ph.D. schools ask for a CV, not "all the transcript from all the attended programs" as they ask in North America.
Therefore, can I skip the information regarding my incomplete degree program(s)?
What is the regulation on this in Poland?

It depends. If they are asking in the requisite "in possession of Master degree or equivalent" you still need to prove you have such a title. If they ask as a requisite "close to obtaining Master degree or similar" you have to explain why you are close to obtaining a master degree or similar.

Europe is a continent, not a country, laws vary a lot.

you are asking about law: therefore it is a good idea to ask explicitly about german and austrian law. In general: your CV will present what you did and it is the window you provide others to see your professional life. What do you want to show? Why? those are personal answers, beyond law: keep in mind that in your CV you may even decide to write down criminal experiences, which depending on the country you are based may as well be something like "working for the local minority political party" ...

This is a duplicate.  https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=omit+degree

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13100/should-one-list-incomplete-degrees-on-a-cv

@EarlGrey There are laws governing this in the EU?

Austria is a neighbor of Poland? Did I miss something?

@AzorAhai There's certainly consequences one can face for omissions or mistakes in the CV - which consequences these are depends on the law (regarding fraud etc.), but there's certainly not a law specifically on that.

@user151413 Perhaps something to Czech on a map. But I don't think countries need to border each other to be considered "neighbors"; my neighborhood consists of houses besides just the ones nextdoor.

@BryanKrause From that point of view, pretty much all european countries are neighbors. Also removes the need to learn any geography :)

I think there are many ways to approach this particular situation.
Firstly, I don't necessarily think that the fact that you dropped out of a degree program will be perceive negatively.  Personally I always feel most confident about applications when I feel like I have been completely open about my experiences and skills.  There is likely a very good reason why you dropped out of your degree program that will not reflect poorly upon you, especially considering you have already attained an MSc degree which demonstrates you are intelligent and capable of completing projects and meeting deadlines. I also think that including the fact that you withdrew from a degree program could be seen positively.  First of all, you likely gained valuable experience during that year, both professionally and in an educational sense. Even though you many not have completed the program you still gained a years worth of knowledge.  Additionally, the fact that you withdrew from the program indicates that you either: 1) recognized that program was not a good fit for your interests or skillset; or 2) recognized that you didn't have the time, resources, etc... to fully commit to the degree at that point.  I think both of these situations reflect positively on you as someone who can make good decisions and adapt to changing circumstances. I would recommend including the information about the degree program in you CV.  You could write something like:
Computer Science Program
University of ???
(1 year - 2019-2020)
In this way you clearly state the dates you were part of this program and do not state that you completed a full degree.  This is an excellent way to showcase that you have some CS skills and be honest about your educational background.  If the committee is interested in why you left the program you can always provide more information later but I doubt it will come up as a red flag during your CV review and will likely look better than you having a year missing from your CV history.
If you really don't want to include the information about the CS program on your CV I don't think it is unethical to exclude it from your CV as long as they do not specify anywhere on the application posting that you must include all educational institutions attended. If the CS degree is completely irrelevant to the work you are planning to do now it is acceptable to remove that information from your CV.  Often times people will pursue unrelated education and career paths for a few years that are not relevant to include on a CV for their new chosen profession.  For example, if you worked in tourism for several years but now work as a biologist is is likely not relevant to include work and education experiences from tourism related past experiences.  It would be advisable to remove those unrelated experiences from your CV.  If you feel the year in the CS degree program is completely irrelevant to your current application I believe it is perfectly acceptable to remove it from your CV.  However, if this leaves a gap in your CV the admissions committee may ask about the year gap and you can simply explain that you pursued a unrelated CS degree during that time.
I hope this is helpful.  Personally I wouldn't worry too much about excluding the CS degree, I think this is a useful skill even though you didn't complete the entire program but either way I doubt it will be a big issue for the admissions committee.

If you are ever unsure about anything you need to share, I highly recommend reaching out to the admissions people or the professor you are applying to work with themselves, it is better to ask "too many" questions than get in trouble for accidental academic fraud!


text:
What is the difference between 3years, 4 years, and 5years PhDs?
My question excludes the USA and similar systems (e.g. Canada, Singapore, South Korea, China, etc), and the UK and similar systems (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, etc).
I found that:

Some countries offer 3years PhDs, e.g., Germany, Austria, etc.
Some countries offer 4years PhDs, e.g., Russia, Poland, Estonia, etc.
Some countries offer 5years PhDs, e.g., Israel.

What is the basic difference?

The basic difference is the amount of time you have available, or at least, funded. Even than, if you exceed the limit there is often a way to get some extra funding. So it is more a difference in guaranteed funding than in actual funding. Other than that, you have a large range of countries, so there are obviously lots and lots of other differences.

The number of years refers only to the number of years you get funded. In practice, in my experience in many countries people almost always take a bit longer than the length of the contract, i.e. 3 year PhDs often take 4 years, whereas 4 year PhDs often take 5. If your supervisor or anyone else has funding, they can extend your contract. Otherwise, you might need to finish while living on unemployment benefits.


text:
Why is research at highly productive research institutions better than those at not-so-highly productive research institutions?
As of time of writing, the University of Oxford is top of the Times Higher Education world university ranking list, while the University of Southampton is 118th. (Nothing special about the THE, Oxford, or the University of Southampton - I'm just picking examples.)
Because a university's research is usually a major factor in these rankings, an immediate implication of this is that as a whole, Oxford's research is "better" than Southampton's. Why is it better? I can think of some explanations:

Professors at Oxford are smarter than those at Southampton. Obviously the smarter you are, the better your research.
Professors at Oxford are more motivated than those at Southampton. Maybe they work 24/7 while those at Southampton work 9-to-5.
Professors at Oxford have more resources than those at Southampton. For example perhaps they have more + bigger grants they can apply for, and with more money, they can hire more students + conduct experiments using equipment their counterparts at Southampton don't have.
Professors at Oxford are luckier than those at Southampton. They "just happened" to pick topics that later led to massive advances and Nobel prizes, which made them academic superstars. Oxford then gave them very attractive job offers to lure them there. Now it's a rich-get-richer situation - once you are famous, other people read + cite you more too.

Are any of these explanations accurate? Are there other factors I've not thought of?

To me, you are missing an even more relevant question: why you or someone else should really care whether a certain university is ranked #5 or #105. Obviously, any university with a decent rank is decent (in a certain way), so my question is what are the implications of these ranks for you or anyone else.

@rg_software perhaps pose that as a different question, and I'll write an answer (it's too long for a comment).

The rich get richer.

Being a former UoS postdoc ... the aerodynamics and flight mechanics was very good in Southampton and I would be very surprised if Oxford was anywhere close. Perhsps Cambridge or Imperial, but did not hear that much about Oxford.

OK on this engineering rating Oxford is  #2 and UoS only #4. Still I think you could find a different example... https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings?s=Electrical%20%26%20Electronic%20Engineering

@rg_software you always manage to fool some young naive prospective students with it.

Is it, though ?

Simple answer: depends on your field, which is the most relevant aspect, IMO.  One must be quite skeptic regarding the metrics behind those rankings.  The University of Alberta is is certainly far better than those cited in geostatistics field.  The same applies to Colorado School of Mines when it comes to geology and mining egineering.  Stanford tops those in Computer Science and so on...

Don't forget that there are large outliers on either side, and there are likely sub-fields in which a group at the University of Southampton is unparalleled worldwide.

@rg_software In addition to what mathreadler says, not only can you fool students with it, but employers too.  Some, perhaps many employers will, consciously or subconsciously, rank a candidate with experience at Oxford higher than one with experience at Southampton, whether that is fair or not.

Those rankings are widely thought to be highly suspect. The short answer to "why is university x higher in these rankings" is "university x scores more highly on the measures that the rankings use". And there's a strong liklihood of "University x is better at gaming the rankings to increase its score". But that's not necessarily a good guide to how "good" the university is at a given thing.

@Flyto are you saying that research at Oxford is not, in general, better than at Southampton?

@allure I am saying that to measure this you first need to define "better", and that rankings are usually not a great way to judge.

See my answer to a related question

@Flyto use your judgment then as an academic. Where is the best research in your field conducted? Do you see a relation between where that is and where the top universities of the world by THE ranking are? Unless you can genuinely answer "no" to this question - and I'd be surprised - whether or not the rankings are suspect is irrelevant.

@allure you're suggesting that concerns over the methodology of the rankings should be disregarded if there's a single anecdotal agreement? Of course there is going to be some correlation - apart from anything else, if THE and others produced rankings that put the institutions that do the best work at the bottom, they'd be laughed at - but that doesn't mean that rankings are a safe guide to anything other than "which university scores highest on the metrics that the rankings use". Valuing metrics too highly tends to give perverse results.

@Flyto if by "single anecdotal agreement" you're referring to your own field, then I'll expand that by saying that I expect the same relation to show when averaged over all fields. The fact that there's some correlation is good enough. I'm genuinely not interested in responses that question the validity of rankings because they're simply irrelevant to the question. Will probably start a thread in meta about this, because it looks like this question isn't salvageable.

If you ignore the rankings problem, then you have your answer, and it has 70 upvotes. The rich get richer.

@Kimball it is probably true, but it does not mean that money manages to attract skilled researchers more than it manages to attract well dressed opportunists who are not particularly good at research.

This is a very interesting sort of question. Unsurprisingly, it's surely not the case that people in one region are naturally smarter than those in another. Once we  believe that, it is possible to see how the generally-pretty-uniform-brains of people are "steered" in different ways in different cultures.
E.g., in the so-called anglosphere, there is a bit more encouragement to "make progress", as opposed to "adhere to orthodox canons".  For those of us in western europe or north america, this principle is completely   unsurprising... but, suprisingly (to us here?), this idea is not universal.
In the U.S., for example, in mathematics, the top universities actively try to "collect" the most creative (by a somewhat orthodox criterion) people. Those unis with good endowments can afford to throw lots of money at this goal. There you are.
But, duh, there are many very good people who are not swept up in status-game issues, e.g., if they're more interested in spending their days doing the thing rather than promoting themselves...
Nevertheless, it does tend to be true that the most innovative ideas are most circulating at high-end places. By my observation, this is only distantly connected to funding or status per-se, but, over the long term, does depend on the local status-culture at the place. This can be populist or not, depending. Some math faculties can, as a group, be amazingly Luddite. People are people...
In mathematics, at least, it is not easy to come up with worthwhile new ideas. In the face of bureacratic pressure to "do new stuff all the time", one way out is to "solve problems" endlessly (which ought to be mostly a spin-off of improved technique, but don't tell the admins...)
Then, after filtering out lots of noise, we do sometimes find that the "elite" places have people who have contributed genuinely new ideas (regardless of PR noise about it, and regardless of many other things... whose idiocy does not subtract from the worth of the thing being ridiculously hyped) may be more concentrated in "elite" places. Partly for good reasons, partly for silly. And don't believe the "press releases"? :)
EDIT: under the principle that comments are ephemeral, I wish to add something of @ElizbethHenning's comment and my affirmation, so that these further qualifications will not get lost: to copy my comment on her comment... Yes, indeed, as @ElizabethHenning comments, it does seem to have been that there's a stereotype of what an "outstanding research person" is, and in science, technology, math, engineering that stereotype is traditionally white, male, and with certain mannerisms...
And this does also fit with other remarks about self-referential-ness: a metric can (supposedly) legitimize itself by basically echo-ing the outcomes of other, prior beliefs (whether explicitly in metrics, or otherwise). That is, if a metric does not find the traditionally-top universities at the top, it's not going to be given much credence.
The true effect is that there is _enormous_inertia_ in belief systems, and these belief systems are essentially institutionalized, in the sense that institutions behave as though stereotypes were facts.
The misogyny, sexism, etc, that occur in STEM fields in the U.S. is all the more stunning because many or even most of the people exercising it do not realize that they are, indeed, channeling belief systems that ... if identified explicitly to them... they would mostly find reprehensible, and silly.
It's the old question "what does a mathematician look like?"... We can all fill in the blanks.
Turns out that the "romantic" mythologizing about "killer instinct" and various other pseudo-macho stuff may not have much to do with actual mathematics... but, gosh, then how we would we [sic] prove our macho-ness?
Too large a topic... but/and it does have a significant impact on issues about rankings, status, funding, and so on.

In order to be identified as creative enough to be worth throwing money at, it helps a lot to be male and either white or not too Asian.

At places like Oxbridge, there's also the tourist cycle: it's a brand that people buy into -- you know Inspector Morse, Brideshead, A Dance To The Music Of Time, etc. I think that makes a genuine difference not in the final "sales" play-off of concrete offers but in the initial "marketing" of drawing up a long list. I know we're supposed to think of academics hiding in a barrel until they can derive their thoughts and behaviours from first-order logic and a profit-and-loss ledger borrowed from Locke, but I don't think that's always very realistic.

Yes, indeed, as @ElizabethHenning comments, it does seem to have been that there's a stereotype of what an "outstanding research person" is, and in science, technology, math, engineering that stereotype is traditionally white, male, and with certain mannerisms...

@CoffeeBliss, I only have first-hand experience with U.S. and to some extent Canada and Western Europe... so I hesitate to offer opinions on other situations.

This answer makes assertion after assertion. Not only are these assertions not backed up by anything -- in reality, many of these assertions are completely contradicted by the available evidence.
Not only are "white males" not overrepresented compared to many other ethnic groups (e.g. Jews, East Asians, Indians), the research on stereotype accuracy also shows that stereotypes are not just something people's heads, but most studies find that they correlate with reality. Not only that, stereotypes are followed by reality, reality is not constructed by stereotypes.

Your question is a bit circular. The "best" universities are at the top of the list because it's a list of the "best" universities -- however that is defined. :)
What makes a "top" university is largely a rich-get-richer feedback loop: The "best" universities attract the "best" researchers, which makes them the "best" universities. The "best" researchers get the most funding, which helps them do the "best" research. The "best" universities get the most money, which helps them spend more on research.
That explains why older universities tend to have higher rankings. They have had a long time to gradually build up that feedback loop. However, external factors have a big impact -- availability of funding and university management is important, as is the desirability of the location/country. Countries like the UK and US have a lot of good universities because they are attractive places to live and their government provides adequate research funding and, importantly, this has consistently been the case for decades or centuries.
One important point you are missing from your list: Some professors are teaching six courses per year -- they have no time for research. Other professors are only teaching one course per year -- they have plenty of time for research.

I was asking about research though. What makes these "best" researchers better than the rest? Are they smarter/luckier/have access to more resources etc?

This is the best possible answer, since it addresses the circularity of the question. Without the circularity, the question would essentially ask "what constitutes excellent research?" or "what is required for excellent research?", which are also interesting questions, but probably too broad.

@Allure What makes these "best" researchers better than the rest? A combination of creativity, ingenuity, hard work, dedication, culture, luck, inspiration, favorable sociability etc. etc. Which is more or less the same answer to the question What makes achievement X better than achievement Y in any field of human activity, be it pottery, row boating, cooking, novel writing or DNA sampling.

@henning no this answer misses the question. Assuming you are an academic, you'll have some idea where the best research in your field is performed. If you next compare where that is versus where the top universities in the world are, you should see a positive correlation. The question asks why there is a correlation. There is no circularity. I've already edited out the mention of Zhejiang University because it made people give answers that aren't relevant to the question; perhaps I should edit this out too.

@Allure if that is what you are interested in, I would suggest to delete the prominent reference (especially in the title) to the "top universities" and focus on determinants of highly productive research institutions in general.

@henning done, see if it helps.

@henning by the way I don't like the wording - it implies that these highly productive research institutions produce more research than the not-so-highly productive institutions, which as far as I know is not necessarily true. They produce better research, but not necessarily more of it. If you or anyone can think of a better way to phrase it, please go ahead and edit.

@Allure perhaps "why do certain institutions produce better research than others"?

This is a classic way of completely avoiding the question -- by just dismissing it as socially constructed and arbitrarily defined. You could answer any question involving human beings that way, but it doesn't provide any insight.

@Allure if your question is about individual researchers, rather than universities, you should have made that clear.

In the specific case of Oxford and Cambridge, they get more money per undergraduate than other unis in the UK. This means they can afford more staff, and therefore each staff member must do less teaching and therefore has more time for research.

@Thomas the question's about the research at the universities, not the universities themselves. If you can make the question clearer in this regard, please edit the question because I can't see how to do it.

The top two answers on this question would beg to disagree with the third paragraph: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/46239/why-do-russian-and-israeli-universities-score-low-in-various-world-rankings

@DavidMulder I don’t see any disagreement.

@IanSudbery that doesn't actually follow, since Oxford and Cambridge also have much more teaching time per undergraduate than other universities. Academics I know at Oxford and Cambridge seem to do significantly more teaching than those I know at other institutions. Admittedly that may be discipline-specific to some extent (I am a mathematician).

To add to the old university effect, there's also a survivor bias. Older universities are in fact "universities from long ago that did well". Old universities that didn't make it are no longer universities.

@Jasper as far as I know, in what is now the UK there was only one university from long ago that didn't make it, and it failed for rather different reasons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Northampton_(13th_century) .

@EspeciallyLime At least when I was there in STEM subjects, most supervisions (that is the extra teaching that happens at Oxbridge,  but not other Unis) were taken by Grad students and Postdocs.

@IanSudbery That's true, but even a fraction of all supervisions (I'd estimate 1/4 of mine were with permanent academics) still represents a huge amount of teaching time per student, easily more contact time than lecturing in total because the classes are so much smaller.

The fact remains that for the people I know, permanent staff at Oxbridge spend less time teaching than at other Unis, yet students get more teaching.

An important factor is that "top" universities get more students applying, so they can be more selective about who they admit. Having talented students pushes up standards in general for a university. They are more interesting to teach, so teaching there is more attractive for lecturers, and they ask better questions.

I fully agree, but this is a specific case of @Thomas's more general answer.

This. Thomas' answer for my taste emphasises too much the padding - the core driver of excellence are the people. The rest then can generate a "protective bubble" which helps attracting funding, building a brand etc.

It has already been mentioned that what makes the ‘best’ universities consistently ‘best’ is essentially a positive feedback loop building on a lot of time to build up that feedback. For example, Oxford was founded in the 11th, the LMU in the 15th (moved to Munich in the early 19th), the TUM in the late 19th, Harvard in the 17th, Berkeley in the late 19th and the Japanese Imperial universities in the late 19th/early 20th century. Contrary to that, Southampton wasn’t made a full university until after World War II. However, I feel it wasn’t addressed adequately how the feedback started and how it progressed.
In the olden days, there were relatively few universities and it did not matter much where you were: if your ideas were good, you would be noticed. Universities were considered prestige projects by the heads of state and funded accordingly. Research happened where it happened.
Over time, a few places were considered ‘better’ than others by a combination of factors that all boiled down to pure chance: exceptionally generous funding, an exceptionally liberal science policy or an exceptionally bright professor giving a university a good reputation. Once this process had begun, more researchers would be interested in joining a given place because they also hoped for generous funding, a liberal environment or that the merits of an exceptionally bright professor would shine upon them. This would mean that the universities would be able to be slightly more selective in whom to accept as a professor.
Fast forward a few decades and the reputation of certain institutions had started to grow. A slightly larger pool of candidates which allows the university to be more selective in which professors to hire results in the better, brighter or more distinguished professors being hired. These would then in turn deliver more valuable research, adding to the university’s reputation and increasing the number of people who desired to work there. As soon as publication metrics and external funding started getting really important, this feedback strongly accelerated and left the others behind.
Finally, students would also choose a desirable university rather than just going for the one near home. Originally, this would likely have been the oldest institutions with decades or centuries of tradition but more recently if given the possibility they  would want to choose the institute with the best research profile. So again, the ‘best’ universities get a larger pool to choose from, can be more selective in whom they admit and thus have a higher chance of picking the brighter students who would advance research more.

It is important to note that all of these metrics—while often stated as ‘best university’—should actually better be considered subject or even topic-specific. For example, among German universities one of the go-to places for natural product chemistry would probably be the LUH in Hannover—a university that would usually only be considered also running when it comes to overall research or even overall chemistry.

I think a moderate impact comes from a university in the anglosphere.  It is the language of publishing.
Also students tend to want to come to the anglosphere, not the converse.  Thus there is a brain drain in one direction.  You might think this is just from the research prestige itself but I disagree.  E.g. many students want to immigrate to the anglosphere even if they leave research.  This is probably not just a language effect but also the culture, business climate, freedom, etc.

This may be a fair point in general, but it doesn't seem applicable to the case cited in the question.  Oxford and Southampton are both in England.

He had a Chinese university before last edit.  2.  Also, he asked for other factors (already had a good list) and I added another factor.

Everything else being kept the same, more prestigious research institute have better access to novel information/trend/fashion/politics which allows you to go for the low hanging fruits faster, if this is your sport. This is a variation of one of the comments on the rich getting richer, if you define success at research by collection of low hanging fruits.
It is also typically where important meetings involving funding are taking place, which may be of relevance to your work should you be into that sport.
Having worked in both types of places, there are also drawbacks, in terms of excessive competition/ high level of noise/ etc.

How do more prestigious institutes have better access? Do more prestigious institutes go after low hanging fruits?

@user2768 1)because they are better connected: more prestige, more visitor, more gossip etc.. 2) they don't necessary, but its easier to do if you want to do this and you are the first to see the fruit. But of course you can be in a high prestige institute and aim for the top fruit too :-)

The amount of endowment/grants/economic abilities of a school also affects the rankings because if a school gets more grants, that means they may complete more research. For example, there are more than 5-10 professors in very top universities who bring grants to the school and do research with that grant. This automatically affects the quality and quantity of the research. I also agree with previous answers that the language of publishing is English. Technically, if a university is in an English-speaking country, it has more chance to be ranked higher. Moreover, the citation score is one of the most important ranking criteria in THE or QS ranking systems. So, if there is more quality research, there is a high probability that they will be cited more.

The question has been edited to name two universities in England.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


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Publishing several research papers in the same journal
In some cases a specific journal is one of the most important and relevant places for a research topic. So, is this normal and acceptable (for a pre-Ph.D. researcher) to have several papers published in that journal? I once heard from a professor that it may affect the CV in a destructive way.
If I have several papers published in the same journal, will people think that my papers were published not because they were good, but because I was somehow able to bypass the peer review process?

@henning, For example, it may pessimistically be said that there are probably some relationship or connection with the editorial board or something else that affected the reviewing process!

People will only wonder whether you bypassed peer-review if they already suspect the journal has shoddy review practices.  But if people already suspect that a journal has shoddy review practices, you should not publish anything in that journal.

@JeffE, Some believe in magic!!

It would depend on the journal, of course. There should be no negative effect if it is a high quality, respected journal such as one associated with a professional society. A predatory journal would be a different matter of course. But the several papers in the same high quality journal have been reviewed by a fairly large number of independent reviewers.
Whether the editors would continue to accept papers from the same person is up to them, of course.

I don't think anyone would conclude that something fishy must be going on, just from the fact that you published multiple times in the same journal -- if it has peer-review.
However, since you mention the impact on the CV, where you decide to publish signals where your expertise lies. Among different journals with similar prestige, you may want to decide based on which audiences you want to address and where you see your specialty.


text:
Does one have the right or just the privilege to extend the PhD study period due to parental leave?
Assuming somebody is employed as a PhD student, I found several references to PhD study period and parental leave, but the wording is rather weak.

The study period may only be extended if there are special reasons for it. Such grounds may be due to illness, leave for military service, work for trade unions and student organizations or parental leave. Ordinance (2010:1064). [automatically translated, highlights mine]

Notice may instead of must.
The Regulations for doctoral studies at Umeå University states:

5.4.  Parental    leave
● Parental leave shall always be reported to the employer in accordance with applicable law and agreements.
● When
  parental leave is cited as a special reason for extension of a
  doctoral studentship or term of a doctoral grant, the period of
  parental leave is counted from the day it is validated.
The Dean makes the decisions on these matters.
  [highlights mine]

Notice that the Dean has the final word.
The PhD Student FAQ from the Stockholm University Student Union uses stronger wording:

This means that you have the right to get prolongation for the time that you are on parental leave so that you don’t lose out of any time for your research.

Can anybody point me to a regulation, a legal precedent or anything similar clarifying whether prolongation of PhD study period is a right or a privilege?

Interesting question. I am almost certain that it is a right, especially given the generally very beneficial Swedish laws in this area (and it is at least my understanding that it is a right in Denmark which tends to have slightly less beneficial rules, though only slightly).

Anecdotally: I had two PhD student colleagues who took parental leave during their PhD studies.  Both were extended.  This was as Luleå University of Technology.  However, I don't know to what degree this extension was their legal right or university policy.  It may well be that all universities share this policy and that in absence of a conflict, the legal right has not been tested in court.

"Can anybody point me to a regulation, a legal precedent or anything similar clarifying whether prolongation of PhD study period is a right or a privilege?" I assume you specifically mean "for Sweden", correct? Legal procedures almost certainly differ elsewhere in the world. Most importantly, I am not sure whether the concept of a "study period" within which you need to have finished even exists in many countries, making this a bit of a mood point.

How are you funded? Is the student an employee of the university? Or a student but has outside funding?

Assume the PhD student is an employee of the university. (However, I would be curious as to what applies to PhD students on stipend.)

The word 'may' does not preclude refusal. It means, it is possible to extend.
In academia, in general, if there is good reason for extension of PhD, it is always allowed. Pregnancy is a good ground for extension and it would be very rare for a student to be penalised for getting pregnant.

This answer does not sound very certain. Also, it might as well be the father that wishes to take parental leave, rather than the mother.

True, but this wording is exactly why it is unclear whether prolongation is a right or privilege.

This does not really answer the question, rather further explains the uncertainty.

In academia, in general, if there is good reason for extension of PhD, it is always allowed. — This is not even approximately true.

Let me clarify:

There is a dearth of women in STEM. In order to promote a more women-friendly academic environment, progressive Universities allow for suspension of PhD in case of : maternity, serious & certified illness,

Maternity is almost always a right of women, not a privilege that men can consider case by case or deny it.

A search for 'Suspend PhD maternity' brings up policies of Universities and almost all ranked Universities allow suspension of PhD course.

Further, an analysis of laws and court verdicts have universally upheld women rights to maternity leave.

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


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Does it make sense to accept an early career identity in academic publishing?
There are multiple academic competitions developed for young researchers. Some of them make perfect sense to me, e.g. a prize for the best poster at a conference. But there are cases when special competitions for young researchers are organized by academic journals. Here is an example from my field. Since such a competition is primarily aimed at PhD candidates and even recently promoted PhDs, and this is the level when publications are routinely required from the researchers, isn't it a strange idea to compete as a "young researcher" rather than just submit your paper in a usual way? Could it have negative consequences to label you paper as something "amateur"?
In the mentioned above case 31 papers competed for 1 award that assumed publication in the journal later on. Isn't ~3% success rate insane for a second tier journal?
Some journals even develop a special paper guidance for young researchers and introduce a position of Early Career Editor.
Are there good reasons for special publication tracks for young researchers? Do I miss something in my skeptical position?

... which should mean nothing for a proper editorial processing of your paper

In addition to awarding the Young Author Prize, the jury decided to request the Population editorial board to review the other finalists’ articles for possible publication. The other candidates in the first selection will be sent referee evaluations and juror comments to assist them in future submissions.

This makes it seem like the “finalists” were papers good enough for publication. It would be interesting to know how many of the finalists actually ended up getting published. Although 1/31 is low, 6/31 is much less stringent and I think that might be the number you should be looking at.
Acceptance rates wildly vary by field, but it’s not implausible to me that only 6 of the 31 submissions warranted publication. Submissions by recent grads tend to not be as good, so the acceptance rate amongst recent PhDs should be lower than the average acceptance rate overall.
There’s also nothing that I see that says you can’t submit it both ways. All in all, I don’t find this particularly unreasonable. I’m not sure what added benefit there is, unless you win/are a finalist and can put it on your CV, but it doesn’t seem particularly amiss to me.
Tracks for young researchers often have more support than other tracks. For example, your link mentions that every submitted paper gets peer-review feedback, which isn’t going to be the case for a general submission. I’ve been to conferences with similar set-ups, where all submissions in the “young professional” bin get more attention and more feedback than general submissions. The value of feedback like that is hard to overstate. I don’t feel like it degrades your work to call it done by a young professional. My first paper was presented at a conference for undergraduates, and my resume still has that line on it. It is a matter of fact that that work was done by an undergraduate. The purpose of these kinds of events is to provide better feedback and better access than you would get from the usual venue, and I haven’t seen any analyses that say that they’re ineffective. My personal experience with them has been entirely positive.

Thanks for your answer. I guess, my question is much broader than this particular case. I feel it's generally a better strategy not to put the "done by a young researcher" label on your paper

@ikashnitsky I’ve added another paragraph to my answer to address that, but the tl;dr is that it’s a matter of fact that the work was done by a young researcher. It’s not degrading to say so.


text:
Does saying ''I don't know" often decrease my authority as teaching assistant?
I worked as a TA for several courses. Some courses fall into the domain in which my research also happens. But some other courses are not at all familiar to me.
My Institute conducts tutorial classes with an objective of addressing students doubts in that course. Only TAs attend to this class. It is of the duration atleast couple of hours.
Students start asking the questions, that are difficult for whole class (because of the reason that they communicate among themselves the solutions of questions).
For the courses that are not familiar to me, it becomes difficult to answer the questions asked by them. Students expect the answer instantly on the board and it is a norm also.
In-order to face the situation honestly, I need to tell I don't know for the questions they ask. I feel it is okay to tell my ignorance for some questions since I am not a professor or expert in that course.
If I start saying it honestly for all questions that are difficult for me, then I feel that there will be an increased disrespect on me among students circle.
Is it true that the respect for the TA decreases the more often frequency they reply "I don't know"?
Note:  Attending the professor classes as TA or spending more time on the course is not solving my issue since students are asking questions that are very difficult as they collect questions from several online materials that demands more in-depth knowledge. And professor asks to conduct the classes properly. Some TAs intentionally avoid tutorials to avoid this issue. So please refrain from the answers that provide solutions to the question of: how to handle this

@JonCuster Because I dont want to escape from TA work. Or deceive students by saying try yourself etc.,

"I don't know" is bad. "I don't know, but I'll find out and get back to you next class" is much better. "Let me figure that out and get back to you" is also ok, if a bit of a cop-out.

@hanugm: From your writing style. However, you should absolutely write this fact (that it is about India) into your question -- otherwise, the default assumption here is that you are from the US and the US has a very open culture when it comes to questions (which may not apply for you).

@user111388 What do you mean by very open culture?

@hanugm: When I read the posts in this forum, my impression is that in the US, everyone is allowed to ask any question related to the course and everyone is happy about questions, students get questions all the time, nobody must be ashamed for bad questions etc. This is very different in my country, for example. For what it's worth, where I am, it would be strange if a course has, say, more than 5 participants and the prof would ask someone for their name.

Are you a graduate student? Why are you a TA for a course you don't know anything at all about? Why do you not know enough about the course (attend the lectures, read the book, ...)?

@JonCuster TA allocation is done by university itself, not necessarily based on my research domain. Not a graduate student. I know more than students, but not at the level to handle such classes.

Interesting, definitely different from my US experience. I guess the question then becomes, if this is correct, what are the actual expectations of the students (which I presume you know from being one)?

I find it unlikely that there is a linear correlation. In my experience, saying "I don't know" a couple of times per semester (or "I need to think more about this") doesn't make students give me worse reviews, but if I said it on every other question they would probably assume I have no business teaching that course.

You might need to study a bit. When I was a student I TA'd a general physiology course. The animal section was all stuff I knew pretty solidly, with a couple refreshers needed in topics I don't touch as much. The plant section on the other hand was totally new, I had never taken a plant physiology course, so I had to study and learn the material ahead of and with the students, and make good teaching notes. Still had to give some "I don't knows" for things outside the course scope but I made sure to at a minimum be able to explain anything that would be assessed.

An occasional "don't know" is ok. If it is regular, you should prepare better. If that is not possible, can you codevelop the solution with the class? That's also a possibility which I recommend. If that is not possible, then you should understand where your students get their questions from and try to prepare for them being asked.

The effect, on students' respect, of saying "I don't know" today will depend very much on whether you return to that question in the next class meeting and give a good answer.

An occasional "I don't know (but I'll find out later, unless we can figure it out now)" is actually good, even if in fact you do know..

Is it a true phenomenon that the respect on TA decreases with an increased frequency of I don't know replies?

Certainly not in the sense of "you have 5 'I don't know' per semester, and then you lose the student's respect. It really depends on what questions you do answer, how you answer them, and what kind of questions you are unable to answer.

If you normally provide good, instructive answers to questions with the occasional "I don't know" mixed in, no reasonable person will lose respect for you - especially if you commit to finding the answer to the questions you are unable to answer, and then follow through.
That said, it depends on what the questions you aren't able to answer are. If those are questions that could in a very similar scope also be on the exam, not knowing the answer (and not being able to derive it in reasonable time) will indeed not reflect well on you. If that is the case, preparing better for teaching the course (or teaching courses closer to your field of research) is really the only way forward. Otherwise, the students have all rights to be annoyed - what could they learn from a teacher who doesn't sufficiently master the course themselves?

I worked as a TA for several courses. Some courses fall into the domain in which my research also happens. But some other courses are not at all familiar to me.

Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but that's really not the student's problem. The students should have an expectation that their teacher is qualified to teach the course, whether it's in their area of research or not. You should not expect leniency from the students because you are teaching a course outside of your field of research.

Also: "I don't know, but we can use the following strategies to try to find out..."

Great answer. I would like to add that admitting you don't know is much better than giving a wrong answer. That should be obvious but I have seen it happen fairly often that teachers "make up" answers that turn out to be simply incorrect.

Upon further reflection, I should say - and this is completely anecdotal - that from giving talks and keynotes in India I also had the impression that saying "I can't really answer that" carries a lot more stigma there than in Europe or the US. It would be very interesting to have an answer from somebody teaching in India.

A good university teacher does not play the role of an authority.  In most cases, universities do not teach facts.  They teach skills.  They teach knowledge creation.  They teach problem solving.  If you are an authority in the classroom, then you are not teaching those things effectively.  Instead, you are teaching students to rely on you for answers.
So, yes, you should say when you do not know.  It should decrease your authority.  And that is a good thing.  Do explain why you do not know, and how you would find out the answer.  Or even better, guide students to finding the answer on their own.
Students should respect people even if they are not TAs or even if they know nothing.  If your students are not respectful you should teach them respectful behaviour.

To your last paragraph: maybe you are confusing respect and respect? Eg I had a prof who made it clear that he knew not much about what he taught and had no interest in teaching well. We respected him as a human being (of course), but not as an instructor.

Also, I don't think a TA should teach respectful behaviour to students. This can be very dangerous for the TA and should, if necessary, probably handled by the (tenured) prof.

Most (if not even all) teachers, lecturers and professors got asked some difficult questions which they couldn't answer. I will divide my answer into several points as follows:

It is always good to prepare well for the lecture and in contrast to you, I don't think it does not help. When you give a lecture or a tutorial you know all the details and questions should arise automatically. A lecturer can expect the questions before giving the lecture and a good lecturer must have answers before entering the class. Of course, it is not possible to cover all possible questions but an important portion.
Teaching new courses is very common due to so many reasons (e.g. to substitute a professor who left for another position, etc). It is also normal to spend more time to understand the topic. The lecturer should just be honest with the students: "I am teaching this lecture for the first time and I will do my best to provide high-quality lectures". The students would try to find questions which of course help you to understand the topic your are teaching. They could also complain to the faculty that you are not expert (I don't think this would affect you since you said the faculty assigned the course to you with the fact that you are not expert).
In any case and under any circumstance, the lecturer must be honest and tell the students that (s)he does not have the answer and that (s)he will search for it and provide asap.
Authority is not a dimension is the relationship-space of teacher-students. Instead, respect is an essential one which can be gained only by honesty and hard work.
As already mentioned, the students deserve to learn and if you find that you cannot ensure a certain quality of lectures (for a reason or another), it is better to inform the faculty by yourself and the students as well. If the faculty cannot ensure another lecturer and if the students find that the course is manageable under these conditions, the they will understand and support you.

Just for clarification, especially about 4 and 5: are you discribing how ideal students/institutions should be or is this your experience in India?


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Does dedicating to god undermine my aspiration on research in-front of review panel?
I need to submit and present well documented research reports of mine to a panel of experts. It is well known that there is a custom of including dedication page to any significant reports.
I want to include the statements like

Dedicated to god <-name->

My colleagues are cautioning me to not include such statements due to multiple reasons. The key reasons include: panel mates may be atheists and hence may not receive it properly, it is not encouraged for a research aspirant to mention god related statements in academic matters etc.,
I am interested to know the validity of the second reason: is it true that dedicating my report to god can be taken as a pit to my research aspiration?

What does "as a pit to" mean?

as a negative indication/mark @AzorAhai

I had not realized that a dedication page was a 'normal part of any significant report' - I guess I haven't done a significant report ever. So, no, I don't think you should, because it is not needed or normal in my field and society.

@JonCuster I does not mean that it is mandatory. I mean that it is allowed in general sense.

Unless your report is to a religious group, what is the point? Do other groups do it? Again, I have never had a dedication page on anything except my PhD thesis.

Your colleagues know the local situation, and it might be best to defer to them. But I think that atheists are not the problem but rather strong, dogmatic, proponents of some other religious tradition. I have no issue with it, but urge caution.

@JonCuster The only reason is the personal belief. I personally saw very few people doing it.

Surely it should be "God".

@SolarMike Not for everyone.

Generally, I don't think that dedications are common. In engineering, for instance, you never see a dedication except in a textbook (not common though) and PhD thesis.
Besides that, no scientific reviewer should be impacted by a dedication. There are always black sheep, who won't like it or even have a problem with it.
As reviewers or a panel are always a bit of a draw of luck, I would stay on the safe side and not put this in (any sciences/engineering).
If you are so faithful and personally committed to dedicate this work to "God" from a personal point, that's what matters. It's not necessary to state it.
But that's a decision you have to make.

The key reasons include: panel mates may be atheists and hence may not receive it properly,

I agree with this statement.
There is a thing in psychology called in-group versus out-group categorization. One such grouping is religion.  So, when you put a dedication like this on the page, you are saying many things, but one of them is "I am a member of <religious group>".  If the reader is also a member of said group, he will read it and think (consciously or unconsciously), "he is one of us!"  But if he is a member of a different religious group (and count "atheist" as just another group here), he will read it and think "he is not one of us, he is one of them!". Now, if the reviewer is professional, he will try to not let this thought bias him positively or negative towards the work.  However, such biases are much harder to ignore than we would like to think.  See for example https://diversity.ucsf.edu/resources/unconscious-bias (this focuses on race, but many of the topics transfer to religion).  So I would not do it unless I was absolutely sure that all the reviewers were members of the same religion.


text:
How to explain a physics mechanism that I study from other paper in my report while avoiding plagiarism?
As I understand about writing a research project report or master thesis report, it must be complete, self-sufficient. The readers can understand the report/book by reading it thoroughly without the need to consult other sources.
I can think these two ways:

just stated that "the complete mechanism is discussed in [1]."
But this options make the report not self-sufficient.

paraphrase and cite the original source
This is what I am doing.
But I worry that the paraphrase is so similar to the original writing because what I am trying to explain is a physics mechanism which I think it is hard to explain it in another way, especially the structure of the explanation.

I really appreciate any suggestion.

Can this mechanism be summarized in an equation?

Your option 1 is very common in articles as well as thesis cause there is not much space to discuss every piece of details of a mechanism from scratch so you cannot argue about these kind of referring such as: "For complete description of mechanism readers are referred to [1] ".

@BryanKrause, no equation in the original source for this mechanism.

@AloneProgrammer,
how about the completeness of a report?
Even though I know it cannot be 100% complete since it is not possible to paraphrase all the reference we use. I also worry if the supervisor think I am to lazy to think other way. other consequence is it make the report thinner.
Yes, I need to fulfill a minimum number of pages. sorry if someone feels offended by this reason.

You can quote (within reason) and/or paraphrase quite freely as long as you cite the source. For some things there are only a very limited number of ways to state something accurately so "using the same words" is not an absolute prohibition in certain fields. There are scales of measurement here. But in those situations in which you need the exact words (such as, perhaps, definitions), quote and cite.
Plagiarism is when you try to represent another's work as your own. You aren't doing that here. Copyright infringement is when you copy another's words without permission or other justification. Normally, academics expect that short phrases may be quoted from their work. For longer passages, however, it is wise to seek permission from the copyright holder, of course.
However, there may be another way in some circumstances. Sometimes it is possible to take older work and summarize it in a way that loses almost nothing. Rephrasing work in a simpler form may help both you and your reader to understand it better than the original sources. It isn't always possible, but may be worth the effort. This takes insight, which is worth cultivating.

Distinguishing plagiarism from copyright infringement is a very good point. Plagiarism is unethical, while copyright infringement may not be, given how copyright law diverges from ethical and scientific purposes.

You should ask your supervisor.
It's hard for us to know how deeply you need to describe this mechanism for your manuscript to be "complete." I think most likely you are misinterpreting the requirement for a thesis to be complete/self-sufficient with an unnecessary level of detail from already published work.
In some ways, citing previous work does make something complete because the reader can go to that source for more information, all you need to do is properly convey what the general idea is (summary) and where to find the information (citation). In some contexts, reproducing the identical language from that prior work may be appropriate with proper citation: sometimes there is just really one way to write something (such as an equation or terminology; you would not be serving anyone in your field anything if you switch some variable conventions around or if you substitute synonyms into a brief phrase  in an attempt to not "plagiarize").


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How is undergraduate Indian percentage converted to US 4.0 GPA by graduate schools?
I am applying for Fall, 2015 in PhD programs (Computer science).
The admissions page of many universities I saw, demand an undergrad GPA of at least 3.0 and graduate GPA of at least 3.5
Now, I excelled in the two masters degrees I have (MBA, MS).
But I was an average student in undergrad. Average in India means that I scored around 68% in my undergrad years (I.T.)
If you ask me, I think this conversion thing is crazy. Many colleges in India grade/score very stringently, since the minimum percentage required to graduate is 50%. So, if I were an average student at an elite college in India, my CGPA/ Percentage would be 7.0 or 70%. Using this conversion table, my GPA on a 4 point scale would be 2.3.
In the US, however, you need a min. GPA of 2.75 to graduate. A GPA below 3 is considered to be a shocker, while a GPA between 3 and 3.5 would be considered below average. It'll never work; it's like comparing Apples with Oranges.
Am I missing something here? Any thoughts on how universities make this conversion?
Also, should I be using WES to ensure a "fair" reflection of my performance.

That topic does not talk specifically about Indian percentage to US GPA conversion. How the 'universities' do it. It is superficial at best.

Welcome to Academia.SE. Even if you don't find your exact answer in that question; you can find some useful information (most of which answering yours) between the answers to that question.

@EnthusiasticStudent Exactly. In fact, there is a question there were posdef commented The moral of the story is, whenever you send/submit a transcript/GPA always attach some form of a diploma supplement, so that they can judge the grades accordingly which is quite appropriate to answer this question.


text:
Is it difficult to get into graduate school for applied math with a computer science degree?
I'm a computer science student in my third year of undergrad. I've been taking math classes on the side and will have finished most of the applied math major by the time I graduate.
I'm wondering how difficult it would be to get into graduate school for applied math with a computer science undergrad degree. I could possibly switch over to the applied math major if that would make graduate school admissions easier, but I'm wondering if it would also be fairly possible with a computer science undergrad.

Will you be seeking a doctorate or just a MS?

There's no reason why you couldn't get into an applied math graduate program with a CS bachelor's degree.  Some parts of some applied mathematics programs are called computer science in other programs (and vice versa).  Many applied mathematics students come from engineering, physics, CS, and other undergraduate programs.

I did this myself (a long time ago, in the 1980's.) I completed the requirements for a BS in Mathematics and a BS in Computer Science, but I took the Computer Science degree because it was more employable.  A few years later after I'd had some experience in software development positions, I decided to go back to graduate school in applied mathematics.  I was accepted to every graduate program that I applied to.
Some key things to do:

Make sure in your application cover letter/statement of purpose to explain that you have taken a lot of mathematics at the undergraduate level.  This will help if the reader of the application doesn't bother to read your transcript and see the mathematics course work.
Get a good score on the GRE subject test in mathematics as well as on the GRE general tests.
Get letters of recommendation from your former mathematics professors, particularly professors in applied mathematics.
Connect your background in computer science to applied mathematics.  You're in a good position to specialize in numerical computing as a graduate student.


text:
Is there any online tool where students can register for tasks/assignments?
I'm teaching architecture and I want my students to select a building that they will work with from a list. When a building is selected by one student, it should no longer be an option for the others (first come - first serve).
Is there an online tool where a list can be created and students can select their object of interest, preferably without going through a whole registration process?
Our student-platform unfortunately does not offer this functionality.
Any suggestions?
Tool could be in English or German.

I found the tool "Doodle" (doodle.com) where a poll can be set up with different options to fit my needs. With this tool, appointments can also be arranged.
Here's a link to an example I set up: select architect


text:
Font size of text within image/graph for MS Thesis
Can somebody suggest what should be the optimal font size of text like axis ticks, axis label, legend etc. ?

Your university probably has a style guide for theses. Follow it.

No info for text within images.

Ask your advisor or any other professor in your department who has had students that wrote a thesis.

Your institution's thesis template may specify this - some do and some don't.
If not then it's really up to you.  Typically, you want it to be smaller than your main text so that it doesn't stand out inappropriately much.  Beyond that, it's a  balance for efficacy of communication: larger sizes are more legible, but smaller sizes can help avoid visual clutter.  Remember also that many of your readers may be older or have imperfect vision and have a hard time with smaller fonts.

Try to use the same font as what you use for image captions. Then it should be easy to read and it does not stand out in comparison with the rest of the document.
For example, if your text is 12pt Times and image captions are 11pt Times, then all text in your images is 11pt Times. If both text and image captions are 12pt Times, then all text in your images is also 12pt Times.
(In exceptional cases you can try to save space by using a slightly smaller font.)


text:
Applying to masters program to further explore my interests, should I mention specific areas of interest in statement of purpose?
I am currently revising my statement of purpose for several applied math master program. I wounder if I should mention some specific area of interests or specific name of faculty? The problem with me is that my undergraduate is rather "theoretical" , that I haven't taken many applied math courses and the purpose of my master is to further explore my interests. But the lack of specific interest on SOP seems a little bit odd for me.

Short answer: be honest and concrete.
It's not typically expected that you have very specific, highly focused interests for masters programs in mathematics.  For a masters, you won't get too specialized anyway (at least assuming you're not doing a thesis).  Read the application directions carefully to see if the schools are looking for anything in particular, but what I look for in SOPs is a sense of the applicant's goals, background, motivation, seriousness and maturity.  (And maybe other things in special cases.)
You should try to explain your goals as clearly as you can, but be honest about it.  So you don't need to say something specific like you want to do KAM theory for Hamiltonian PDEs, but if you can give specific examples of things that made you want to study applied math, that would be good.  If you can list specific topics in applied math that you would like to learn about, also good.  It's also not a bad idea to get an feeling for the strengths of the departments you're applying to and say why you're interested in them (e.g., strong in xxx, but you don't need to mention specific faculty, unless you're honestly really interested in workin with them).
See also here and here for other points of view.