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If I accept a PhD offer but change my mind about attending, do I have an obligation to attend for some number of years before dropping out?
I know there's alot of questions on S.E. about dropping out of graduate school after having started.  My position is similar, but also different:
I was accepted into a prestigious university's program for a PhD in Computer Science earlier this year.  I am expecting to be fully funded for up to 5 years, the school and program are great and well known, etc.
This summer I have been working at this same school as a Research Associate, doing very similar work to the kind of work I understand that a PhD student would be doing in order to work towards their completion of their Thesis and I've come to realize several things:

Upon class signups I realized that I didn't have a particular yearning to take any of the graduate school's offered courses.  I've come to a late realization that I'm not looking forward to any future course work.
Having been working 60+ hour weeks since early May, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not capable/willing to work this many hours.  I would like a life outside of my work/schooling.
The geographic area in which the school is in (and by extension, I am living in) is not one I am used to.  I am finding it extremely difficult to adjust to these new living conditions (Large city, deep south, etc).
This is exacerbated by my perception of the fact that my graduate school is highly composed of work-oriented and often culturally different individuals that I am finding it extremely hard to relate to.  I'm discovering a lack of anyone willing to "hang out" outside of lab or classes.
Personal and family issues are calling me home most weekends, and the school is a bit further from family than I'd like.

That being said, I think all indications point towards me dropping out of the program as soon as my work contract is finished (just before the start of fall classes).  However, I would like to do this as gracefully as possible without burning any bridges, but am unsure of a few things.

Due to the April 15th resolution, am I obligated to spend any amount of time at this university as a graduate student? (I'm technically employed now, not a grad student). If so, how long?
If above obligation is not present, should I try and remain to attend classes for an amount of time before dropping out to make an effort for the graduate school?  I'm fairly certain at this point nothing short of a miracle change in many factors would be enough to change my mind about wanting to stay for a 3-5 year period.
If I choose to leave in either case, what is the best way to professionally explain the situation?  Who should I explain it to?  My graduate school does not assign advisors until the end of the first year, so there isn't a sole advisor to ask.

You should not be working 60+ hours. I hear a lot of people saying that they work that much. It may be country specific,but believe me, no one works that much around me, and still everyone gets their PhD at the end. do the usual 40 a week

The April 15 resolution is a commitment that you won't accept another PhD offer without the OK of the school whose offer you accepted:

However, an acceptance given or left in force after April 15 commits the student not to accept another offer without first obtaining a written release from the institution to which a commitment has been made.

and also a commitment not to accept an offer you don't expect to honor:

Acceptance of an offer of financial support* (such as a graduate scholarship, fellowship, traineeship, or assistantship) for the
  next academic year by a prospective or enrolled graduate student completes an agreement that both student and graduate
  school expect to honor.

It doesn't obligate you to go to grad school if you decided you don't want to, after all.
If you are really sure you don't want to do a PhD, the department will be much happier if you don't start (rather than starting and dropping out), so that they can offer your spot to someone else. In the first part of a PhD, the department is investing (time, money, teaching and supervision) in you with an expectation of future returns. You're not doing them any favors by letting them invest those resources in you when you don't plan to really use them.
You can politely inform the person responsible for the program (e.g. director of graduate studies) that you don't plan to attend after all.

Thank you very much for your advice.  I truly did believe that I wanted to attend graduate school at the time of accepting their offer but working at the Uni this summer has changed all of that.  I will be sure to contact the program director as soon as I know for certain that I am dropping it, knowing that they'd rather have the resources available for somebody else than preferring that I tried it before leaving.

I can't imagine the university wants a PhD student who doesn't want to be there.  Talk to them.  Research the primary source rather than casting around for opinions.  I'd have thought that would be second nature to anyone at PhD level!

There are a surprising number of questions here where the obvious answer is either "Ask your advisor" or "Ask the instructor for the course".

@PatriciaShanahan closely followed by the ones where the answer is "ask politely".

@PatriciaShanahan I find the same problem in the "Workplace" Stack Exchange. "How do I handle a coworker who does this action..." -> "Have you tried politely asking them not to?"

I would say you have an obligation to let them know as soon as possible that you have changed your mind and do not want to continue as a PhD student. PhD students cost their advisors and schools time and money, especially in the early years when they are not yet very skilled in research. To host a PhD student who does not finish their degree is demoralising and a waste of resources. To change your mind before starting is better for everyone involved. It will also look better on your CV.


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Is it advisable to apply to more than one PhD program?
Is it good to apply for more than one PhD program and accept ( the best case, obviously ) the most interesting/best paid/best outlooks one?

Sorry, we don't offer university recommendations here, so I've edited out that part of the question. I've also edited out your "background" section since it seems unnecessary for answering the question.

I would say that applying to just one program would be downright crazy.

@DavidKetcheson Last time I checked, I was not crazy.

@Sverre Don't be so sure.

@Sverre Clearly you haven't read Catch-22. (this comment is intended to be humorous)

@JeffE I said last time I checked :)

Yes it is common to send multiple PhD applications to multiple schools. I am doing this now, I would RECOMMEND it actually because getting into PhD programs is difficult.

Open positions usually get 200-800 applications for a single opening. So yes, it is difficult to get in.

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In a research statement for PhD admissions, should I start with the context, or directly with the idea for my research?
I'm applying for a PhD in engineering and I was asked by the advisor I have chosen to write down a short program (~10 pages) about the "research" I will conduct if I get into the PhD program.
The advisor provided ten choices where the future PhD program will lay. The topics are very large and well studied in the literature. Our "task" is to choose one of them, find out something "new" inside of this big sea and write it down. I did a lot of research on Scholar and downloaded more or less 20 free papers I found interesting. I collected data and results, thought a bit about the problem and found a ( maybe ) new application that fits my interests and past studies and I think it could bring some novelty in the field I'm applying.
Now my question is, which is the best way to format the proposal?

Should I start with the context of the research, point where previous studies went and what kind of results yielded and now focus on my brand new idea?
Should I skip 1) and start in medias res with the heart of the matter?

Now my question is, which is the best way to format the proposal?

Different writers could balance these issues in different ways.  The key is moderation: you have to give enough context to make your proposal understandable, but you also shouldn't go overboard (it's a terrible idea to start a research proposal by saying "Since the dawn of history, transportation has been one of humanity's greatest challenges. The wheel and axle were a great advance...").  If you never mention until page 5 that you even have new ideas, then readers may give up in disgust before reaching that point.  On the other hand, too little context can be just as bad, since the proposal will do you no good if it's not understandable.  Unfortunately, there's no universal rule to decide the right amount.
One strategy is to look at the introductions to the research papers you've found.  If your introduction is briefer or more abrupt, then it's not reasonable to expect anyone to follow it.  If anything, a research statement should generally be accessible to a broader audience, and that may mean somewhat more background and explanation.
It can also be useful to cycle between background and new material.  For example: brief introduction, brief description of your new idea, longer account of context, more details on new idea.
Given that you are writing this for a specific professor, it's worth asking him/her for more guidance.  If you phrase it too generally ("How do I do this?") it might give a poor impression, but I think it would be safe to ask a question that shows you are seriously working on it.  For example, "I'm thinking of organizing my proposal like this: [Insert one or two paragraphs about your topic and how you plan to arrange the proposal.] Does that sound like what you had in mind?  If not, I'd be happy to rethink the organization."

You might think that transportation example is grossly exaggerated; sadly, it's not. I once attended a student presentation for an electrical engineering project, in which the first 10 minutes (of 30 total) was dedicated to bios of Maxwell, Hertz, etc.

"Since the dawn of history, transportation has been one of humanity's greatest challenges. The wheel and axle were a great advance..." Hilarious!

Good one, thanks, but I was out of luck because I tried to ask the advisor guidance just like you pointed 2 weeks ago but she never replied and I have to ship documentation within 22/09. I'll do my best for sure, and your advices are really gold. :)

Indeed, choosing the right balance of deep background, more-contemporary context, and promotion of tentative new ideas is part of the "test" involved in peoples' appraisals of your proposal... incidentally testing your judgement about other peoples' contexts and professional criteria.
That is, do not belabor anything which an experienced professional would take for granted... the problem is that you may not know, with certainty, what that would be... or you may not know the audience you're addressing.
Do not, in any case, imitate the pedantic and long-winded tone of a textbook, no matter how much context you may imagine is appropriate.
Absolutely do get endorsement from your sponsor-professor before "going public", both because you don't want to (in effect) embarrass them, and because they should have a very good idea of "the audience" you're addressing.

Unfortunately I'm going completely blind. I tried to send an email to my advisor but no reply until now. I will try to write down a "light" and a "focused" proposal, hoping they will appreciate and that one can bring actually novelty in that field. Thanks for your effort! :)

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Alternatives to IMRaD for journal papers
IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) seems to be the standard structure of scholarly journal papers.
Are there also alternative standardized paper formats that are known to obtain widespread acceptance among scholarly journals?
(Not counting minor IMRaD-modifications, such as the addition of a "concluding" section after the usual IMRAD-structure.)
The background to my question is the following: I teach academic writing to students from a variety of disciplines, mostly from chemistry, computer science, physics, engineering, but also social scientists and even a few from the humanities. It is quite a mix.  I use IMRaD, and while most students quickly embrace that structure, some students express their concern that IMRaD is not apt to their purposes; usually, by the end of the semester, they do acknowledge, however, that IMRaD eventually helped them. I am nevertheless wondering whether I can accomodate to such students in the future by allowing them to use a paper structure other than IMRaD, but the format should still be one that finds conventional use in the system of science.

@Wrzlprmft♦, thanks for the hint. I added the disciplines, though I wanted to stay discipline-agnostic to see the variety of possibilities.

What is IMRaD ?

@anpami  You can make this discipline-agnostic if you tell us what IMRaD stands for.  I can guess most of it, but what is the lower-case 'a' doing there?

Some papers do IRDM, does that work for what you're thinking of?

You could ask your students to point you to sample good/standard papers in their disciplines.

I will first list some alternatives I have encountered. I will leave it up to you whether they are true alternatives or just riffs on IMRaD and whether they are actually formalised structures:

Particularly in the life sciences journals request the structure Introduction – Results – Discussion – Methods, where the latter is kind of an appendix. However, this never works as labelled. At the very least, everything about the methods that is relevant to understand the paper is described in the results section, while the methods section contains mostly technical details.

Pure mathematics has Introduction – Definition(s) – Theorem/Lemma – Proof – Definition(s) – Theorem/Lemma – Proof – … (usually without conclusion or similar). This obviously cannot be translated to other fields.

Most simulation papers I know follow the structure Introduction – Model – First Results – Analysis Method – Result – Analysis Method – Result – … – Discussion/Conclusion, but I have never seen it formalised.

I don’t think that there is an alternative to IMRaD as you are looking for:
If you put the elements of IMRaD in any order, it’s obviously this one.
Any deviation from this has to happen on a lower level, such as:

Methods and results alternate, because the reader can only appreciate some methods after the first results.
A short preliminary discussion in the middle of the paper that motivates the second half.
Minor stuff is moved to the appendix.

While all of this may be very justified, it’s also individual and doesn’t lead to a short acronym that can be blindly applied by those who want this kind of thing.
With other words: If you want a rigid recipe that does not contain any conditional clauses or exceptions, it can only be IMRaD.
Now, of course a rigid recipe is the wrong thing to wish for in the first place:
There is no structure that is appropriate for every paper, even if we focus on a single field and exclude such things as method papers, case studies, etc.
Instead, I suggest that you teach IMRaD as a basic recipe that works for many papers and needs to be adapted for others.

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Page limit for IEEE JBHI (including reference or not)
On the page of IEEE JBHI (https://www.embs.org/jbhi/prepare-and-submit-your-manuscript/), it says:

PAGE CHARGES. Review papers that exceed ten (10) pages incur mandatory page charges. Regular papers that exceed eight (8) pages will incur mandatory overlength page charges. For papers that are 8 pages or fewer: only voluntary page charges ($110/page); 9–10 pages: mandatory page charges ($250/page for pages 9 and 10); 11 pages and beyond: $350/page.
PAGE LIMIT. The page limit is 12 pages for regular paper and 14 pages for review papers including supplementary material. The page limit must be implemented in both original submissions and revised papers.
MANDATORY PAGE CHARGES. The author(s) or his/her/their company or institution will be billed for all pages according to the Page Charge policy. For regular papers, the rate for pages 9 and 10 is $250 per page, and the rate for page 11 and beyond is $350 per page. Payment of these charges is not negotiable or voluntary. Further, submission by the author of his/her manuscript to this publication signifies acceptance of the requirement to pay mandatory pages charges. The Publisher holds the right to withhold publication of the current submission or any future submissions from the author(s) if this charge is not honored. To avoid incurring mandatory page charges, the author(s) are strongly advised to practice economy in the original manuscript submission and restraint in preparation of the final manuscript following peer review.

So, what is the page limit for a paper without any additional fee? I presume it's 8 pages, but is it with or without the reference or supplementary material section?

Why not drop a note to an editor? Let him or her know you’ve read the information above but are confused.

Thank you, I already sent an email with the queries.

Best of luck to you. And when you learn what you’ll learn, consider posting an update with that info.

This depends on whether you have a 'Review' or 'Regular' paper.  The page limit includes everything.

From the editor office,

Is the 8-page limit with or without the references and biography section?
The page limit includes the references. The biography section is not required.
Is it possible to include supplementary materials in the paper? If yes, will it be considered in the page limit?
It is possible. However supplementary material is added at the end of your manuscript (after the references section) and is included in the page limit.

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Does a chemistry degree disqualify me from getting into the quantum computing field?
I'm currently in my second year of chemistry bachelor, which I love for giving me interdisciplinary insight into the world around us. My favourite course is quantum mechanics and recently I became fascinated by the whole quantum computing research. However, when I find any summer school/scholarship/internship offer, the requirement is mostly cs/physics/maths/engineering degree:(
Should I change my degree to have any chances to go far? Because honestly I have a lot of both physics and mathematics courses during my degree and I'm learning Python on my own, so I don't feel like I'm far behind compared to other degrees. Do you think putting in the extra effort like online courses and learning to program can be enough alongside my chemistry degree (probably with physics or cs minor, haven't decided yet) or should I really consider changing my major?
edit: I'm from Poland but studying in the Netherlands

Just an anecdote: I studied chemistry and one of my fellow students is now into quantum computing. She arrived there via a PhD in theoretical chemistry.

Programming != theoretical computer science.

@astronat, programming per se isn't really any sort of "computer science". It is just a useful tool.

Presumably there’s a typo in “ Should I change my degree to have any chances to get high?”.  Chemistry would be ideal for this version of events…

@Snijderfrey thank you! that's comforting indeed

@astronat, you're right I might have oversimplified it but what I meant is that I'm not really aspiring to develop the code itself, but rather to be able to use it. in many requirements for internships i saw that just being familiar with python is enough (or Qiskit for example)

@ZeroTheHero what do you mean? that chemistry is ideal for this field of research? i wish it was but everywhere i see people with mostly physics degrees and that's also a requirement for master's degrees specifying in quantum anything (at least where i checked so far)

do you really mean “get high”?

ohmygod i my brain mixed English with my mother language of course i meant "go far" lmao otherwise chemistry would be ideal indeed

A Computer science degree is far more than "learning python". Besides doing research in Quantum Computing presumably requires adiverse set of skills of which programming is a small part

Being blunt: quantum computing is 60% theoretical physics, 20% maths, 20% engineering.
Chemistry alone will bring you nowhere. Chemistry with Python, as well. If you however start to dig into quantum computing applications to chemistry you will start to find a bottom-to-top way to quantum computing. Like James Clarke:
https://www.aaespeakers.com/keynote-speakers/james-clarke
But since you are a bachelor student, it is probably worthwhile to switch directly to topics closer to quantum computin, see for example:
https://www.allamericanspeakers.com/speakers/438384/Anne-Matsuura

Not blunt enough. If you are on the theory side of quantum computing, it could easily be 100% math and whatever portion of theoretical physics one wishes to think there is. But distance between quantum computing and OP's current knowledge set shouldn't straight-up lead to "no you best give up quantum computing". It just adds to the nuances implicit in the question. Maybe OP turns out to be a brilliant scholar in quantum computing and pursuing a career in that brings them lifetime fulfillment. That possibility can't be ignored.

@EarlGrey thanks a lot, especially seeing real people who 'made it' is really motivational

@Argyll that's true, but on the other hand, I heard some tech companies employ people to work on implementing the code more than the whole theory behind it, and maybe that's some reasonable direction for me. imma take my time to explore, huge thanks for the realistic perspective tho!

Seeing as you're in the Netherlands, have you looked into the "minor" in Quantum Science and Quantum Information at TU Delft: https://www.tudelft.nl/tnw/studeren/minoren-en-keuzevakken/quantum-science-and-quantum-information? (I'm not involved in it in any way; just found it by googling.)

@JW yes!! i already contacted the coordinator and he said that provided that i will successfully pass my quantum mechanics course i am eligible for that minor so I'm really looking forward to it:))

Sometimes a "CS/Physics/Engineering-degree"-requirement will mean that they just sort out everyone not having one of those; something they'll be willing to consider your argument for why you are actually qualified after all. It is hard to predict just how many more opportunities you'd have with a more fitting major.
Since you are still quite early in your degree, you should certainly consider changing major if you are confident that quantum computing is what you want to do.
Some questions to ponder for that:

How much time to graduation would you actually lose when changing now? (My guess would be just a year.)

What are the courses you'd take in the third year of your chemistry BSc? Are any of those relevant for quantum computing at all?

Would you be doing an MSc or a PhD after the Bachelor? What are the requirements to get into those? Once you have the "right" postgraduate degree, a not-quite-right undergraduate degree wouldn't really matter anymore.

How sure are you that quantum computing is your "one true love"?

The writer here is from the UK, so I'll assume it is good advice there. It is also good advice for the US. In the US, you might not lose any time at all, though "second year" has a different meaning here.

i can choose courses that seem to be relevant - advanced quantum mechanics, solid state physics, computational chemistry, but i still have a feeling that it's considered inferior to physics. and regarding 3) that's also a main problem, the requirements in most of the European master's i checked are indeed BSc in physics:(

I'm not sure at all! i wouldn't be honestly surprised if after few years my interests shifted in a slightly different direction. but what I'm sure of is that studying most of the purely chemical subjects currently is a suffering for me and i can't imagine dedicating my life to such research, especially after facing the reality of 'publish or perish'. my intuition tells me to shift more into something more interdisciplinary and my dream is to work in a company like IBM Research or similar

@Aurum0114 Getting a minor in physics would be the easiest way to get officially qualified. It would also ensure you have the required knowledge to understand quantum computing because often to get a minor you would have to take a certain selection of courses.  It sounds like you are already far on your way to get a minor in physics. Your study advisor could also help you with this.

@AccidentalTaylorExpansion yes I actually talked to my study advisor just today and came to the conclusion that doing a second BSc in computing science sounds like the best scenario - I will have even better qualifications to go into the quantum computing sector (especially bc I will do a minor in quantum physics in my 3rd chemistry year) but in case I change my mind and maybe don't even want to occupy myself with research, I would be able to find a good IT job wherever in the world. I'd sacrifice three years more, but I would get the freedom and flexibility in the future that I really want:)

of course then followed by the master's, but then I would have some more insight into whether I want to specialize in quantum computing, just chemistry, or maybe just something related to computing science

If you are from chemistry then the details will be with your chemistry degree.
If you do a lot of biochem or organic chem, then you will be lacking in background, and you may struggle.  On the other hand, if you do a lot of physical chemistry or quantum chemistry, then you will have an easier time of it.

i focus on physical and quantum chemistry! and i feel like in case of lacking background I can catch up where i need on my own. the thing is - i won't don't really have a proof of that on my CV, so the main issue is to get employed in the first place

presumably your  transcript and a good statement of purpose will “prove” your interest and will help you get some internship-type research experience. But to be clear: with an undergraduate degree in chemistry you will start well behind others.

thanks for your insight!

When you see a requirement that's fairly broad like "cs/physics/maths/engineering", that's already an indication that the requirement is not very precise. Another way to express that rough area would be "STEM" (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math).
This means they'll be looking at the similarity between your degree and the needed skills. Chemical Engineering will be better than Civil Engineering, and both will be better than Medieval History.

Why chemical engineering would be better than civil engineering?

@EarlGrey: typical math & physics requirements in both degrees. You rarely see the "Quantum Physics for Civil Engineers" course in syllabi.

I am not sure I am following you. Quantum mechanics for a civil engineer and for a chemical engineer have the same utility: 0.
However, I can imagine that some departments are boosting their portfolio by including these contraptions.
This does not negate that students in these fields can achieve good marks and can be competent in the quantum mechanics field.
Then there is quantum computing. Quantum mechanics is related to quantum computing as much as linear algebra is related to being able to design an efficient compiler. Yes, sure, it is necessary knowledge, but absolutely insufficient.

There are a few relevant questions here:

How will your future grad school applications be treated if your eventual degree is chemistry

How do you get to know better that quantum computing as a field will be where you can best pursue your career

How do you prepare yourself better for pursuing a career in quantum computing

I am going to talk about the last one.
I'll organize the things you can do into 2 categories: research & study.
You should try to find research internship in quantum computing. Various countries have their own scholarship system for undergrad participating in research where the funding contribution requirement from the PI is minimal. Look those up. Often, even if you study in Netherland, there is no restriction for you to apply to, say, a Canadian department via NSERC's scholarship program.
Your eventual goal (while in undergrad) should be to have publication(s) before the end of undergrad or come close to it. If you are one of the authors of a good quality paper, I would hazard to guess that your degree title won't be a problem with any admission committee. (Do check with ppl with actual admission committee experience. I don't.)
With that, as you search for research groups that interest you, you can ask what background a specific research group would need from you for you to do an undergrad project with them. Between the PI and the department, they will also be able to tell you how you can be competitive in getting the scholarship and the placement.
Typically, good overall grade at your current program is required. And then there will be other things. So, keep your grades good. Drop courses you strongly dislike early to avoid tanking your grade, for example. Those other things likely include courses relevant to the research topic you will propose with the PI. That's why your course load should likely be different from a typical chemistry major. A side-effect is: if you missed some chemistry courses that another student would have at the same year at your institute, it won't be noticed.
If and when you do interact with researchers in this manner, do specifically ask what review paper or conference presentation or other introductory materials they would recommend for you to understand the related areas for quantum computing -- in order for you to guide your study before switching degree/institution. For example, obviously theoretical computer science is related. Theoretical computer science, however, is a large and diverse field. Studying theoretical computer science topics broadly will get you nowhere in terms of pursuing a career in quantum computing (other than getting you smarter, which I suppose could be limitless in itself; but let's not be pedantic here.)
The second half about mentioning that you would like guidance before switching degree/institution leads to the next point I will comment.
Switching degree/institution for an intellectual pursuit is admirable. Hopefully people will relate to that. They will also hopefully understand its gravity and therefore understand why you would need their guidance in the first place -- as opposed to from your own institute and your own degree program.
The gravity part should be understood by yourself as well.
How do you know quantum computing is for you? How do you know more whether you will be successful in quantum computing?
I'll leave that to yourself and others. I think getting to know more about quantum computing and the contributing disciplines will help. So let's talk about those.
I would suggest you start taking some math courses: linear algebra and real analysis. Linear algebra courses can often be matrix algebra in reality. You need exposure to the theory side of linear algebra.
As with any other subjects, you can potentially take a more applied course and supplement with your own study to gain exposure to the theory side. And you can ask subject-specific questions separately. e.g. "which textbooks are good if I want to understand the theories behind linear algebra with an eye on applications to quantum mechanics and quantum computing". And then people may answer: Friedberg, Hoffmann. etc.
You should also try to take quantum theory courses. Your introductory quantum mechanics course likely focused on hydrogen atoms and the solution to Schrodinger's equation with harmonic potential. You should ask separate questions on what "quantum theory" would entail. But say, why should Schrodinger's equation even be valid in the first place and why does it have the form it does? Maybe a quantum theory course would cover materials necessary to answer such questions.
I would also suggest taking some lab courses in physics. Many things in that umbrella can help actually. You should ask a separate question as usual.
Some computer science courses may help. Same with information theory. Statistics. The list can go on. The issues with these subjects though is that I would expect the relevant courses for you have tons of pre-requisite that are not relevant for you. That's why I don't recommend them. You can also ask a separate question like "what computer science courses should I take to help pursue a career in quantum computing" etc.
Note that thus far I have not mentioned anything about alternative degree. One quick tip first: keep an eye out for degree programs at your institute that have requirements that are close to the courses that you eventually shortlist for yourself. That could be how you find the degree to switch into.
Other than the above tip, my advise is actually: you do not have to switch degree before you start to prepare. You can first prepare and explore before you eventually switch degree or even institute.
You prepare by knowing more about quantum computing and gaining hard skills/knowledge that are foundational to quantum computing. The eventual goal (in undergrad) for you should be to get research scholarships and be a part of a research publication.
The emphasis on plural here is intentional. Research can be hard. It can take you a few internship to be productive eventually.
So start prepping early!
I guess, that's a good ender.

huge thanks! i'm already taking courses more in the math/physics direction as well as an online course about quantum computers! obviously, I'm still not sure if that's 'my thing' so as you advised I'll just try to investigate the field as much as I can on my own and then see what are my chances:) in case i don't get anywhere i think taking a second bachelor's in computer science might be a good idea, right? along with some self-studying on the side, i would not only know more about which master's degree i really want to pursue, but also have even better qualifications for  quantum computing

If you have a background in computational chemistry you are qualified to work in the field of quantum information (the software side of quantum computing).
If you have a background in physical chemistry experiment you are qualified to work in the field of quantum computing hardware.  There are further subspecialties, such as nanofabrication and optics.
A background in organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, etc. will be of no use to you.  If you just have a general chemistry bachelors degree, I would suggest getting a more specialized bachelors degree.
A standard degree in physics, computer science, math, or engineering is also not very relevant to quantum computing.  It's a very specialized business.


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Age vs career in natural science
Due to my country's education (we finish high school later than other countries), a year off, doing master's degree, I am finding myself in my first year of PhD in States   being 26 years old, possibly graduating when I am 30. I have recently become very anxious about my age, since scientific career has been always my goal, I feel like I am too old and behind everyone else. In Europe, where I am from, I have been told that age does not matter as much, and what matters is papers/scientific output, especially since the end of PhD, in support of me pursuing the doctoral degree in USA, where it takes longer. I am doing my PhD at one of the top tier schools in a very prolific group, where I am surrounded by people that got their PhD when they were 25...
In addition I know from experience of me and others that in my field (physics) women are heavily biased against at all stages. Also, my field requires completion of usually 2 post-docs before applying for positions, which would take around 5 years.
I am looking for some input on this and how realistic  my chances of staying in academia are, how much age matters when hiring for post-docs/faculty positions (in Europe) and how to cope with age related anxiety in academia.

This ground has been covered pretty thoroughly in the [tag:age] tag.

I am asking for advice about European job market, with USA-long PhD done later than most peers, and also about coping.

@caitlyn If the question you want answered isn't covered by the prior questions, please ask a new one that focuses on the aspect that isn't covered.  It will also be most likely to get a good answer if you ask each sub-question in its own focused question (e.g., one for the USA-Europe transfer, and a different one about coping).

ok thank you! should I delete this one?

@caitlyn No need: StackExchange typically preserves duplicates because they are often different phrasing of the question that still help to direct people who are searching for an answer.

Probably, age at graduation is not the most important factor for a career in academia. But assuming it was, then according to your estimate (30), you should be rather competitive.

For the 2003 doctorate recipients, the median total time from
  baccalaureate to doctorate was 10.1 years, while the median registered
  time was 7.5 years and the median age at doctorate was 33.3 years.

Time to Degree of U.S. Research Doctorate Recipients
(Being 33 and just about to submit my thesis, I'm right on target.) Also notice that with your pre-PhD degree, you are already looking back at a  a few years of scientific education that your US peers lack, if they start grad school with a bachelors degree. Academic employers know this.
Maybe this is not a full answer to your question, but at least a consolation. Don't panic.

Watch out.  I think that 10.1 years/age 33.3 is so high because of the humanities.  Ph.D. in science and engineering is usually much less.

@GEdgar "Doctorate recipients in the S&E fields typically earn their degrees while in their early 30s; the median for all 2003 doctorate recipients in the S&E fields was 31.8 years old. In comparison, age at doctorate was 34.6 years in the humanities, 37.2 years in health, 43.5 years in education, and 37.5 years in the professional/other fields category."

In the US it is illegal to discriminate in hiring based on age (or on gender).  So if your Ph.D. is superb, then you are in no trouble.

I want to go back to Europe after PhD. Also in my field people require 2 post-docs, which adds another ~5 years...


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Is it "okay" to submit to a workshop without proceedings while in review for publication?
I'm fully aware that in academia one should never submit the same paper to two journals etc. However, would it be okay to submit a paper to a journal and the workshop track of a conference that doesn't have proceedings (i.e. won't publish the paper) at the same time?
I'd really like to get my research into the workshop track in order to get it noticed and more easily obtain funding for this really interesting conference. It's within the field of computer science (CS).

Yes.  What field?

Computer Science (CS)

CS and "workshop track of a conference that doesn't have proceedings" do not seem very compatible. Two questions: a)Are you sure this is a good conference b) Are you sure you will be funded for attending a workshop with no proceedings for a work already under submission? The most probable answer to both questions is NO.

@Alexandros ICLR 2016 is an example of a good CS conference with a workshop track without proceedings. I don't see why I wouldn't get funded. After all, getting funding for travels is about getting the research "out there", which it would at a good conference.

Short answer:  okay, and a quite good idea, for the reasons and with few limits, see below.

in academia one should never submit the same paper to two journals

If only noone had done that...
So I suppose that you have a journal paper under review (your title). And the  workshop asks for a contribution. I doubt you will directly send the paper under review to the workshop committee. So you will write something "else" for the workshop, possibly a shortened version.
Recently, I read a chronic in IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter (see below for the full quote). In the 1950s, apparently, you could present a paper to the associated workshop/conference (only) when it was accepted or published before in the journal. This has the advantage the audience could read the paper in detail before the talk, and allow nicer discussions.
Recently, some IEEE conferences (ICASSP, ICIP, GlobalSIP) have begun the accept "submissions", after the official deadlines, from papers already accepted in IEEE Signal Processing Letters (which has the same 5-page same format as the conference). The paper, once accepted, is presented at the conference, but it is not in the abstract book: of course, it is already "being published" by the journal.
These examples show that limiting the clutter of unfinished works, submitted too early and several times at conferences, was and still is possible. Indeed, if one writes a conference paper, after presenting it, it is sometimes difficult to find the energy to write the full paper.
So this sounds perfectly fine to me. The main thing to care about is ownership: as the preprint (submitted) is still yours, and as long as it does not infringe the workshop rules.
I believe though it is honest, and useful, to mention in your workshop absract, that the extended version of the work is "under submission", "under revision" in a journal (you can mention the name or not), or accepted with the date of acceptance.

IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter, Vol. 61, No. 2, June 2011 (pdf), in the The Historian’s Column:

It is worth noting in Fano’s letter that the number of sessions was
  six (6!) and all of them were in series. Each paper was presented for
  about 20 minutes with 10 minutes left for discussion which was
  invariably lively and had to be stopped by the chair person to make
  sure that the schedule was kept in time. But consider this: The papers
  were FIRST published in the Transactions and THEN they were presented
  at the Symposium!! That is a total reversal of what we do today. The
  distinct advantage of this arrangement was that the audience had the
  benefit of studying the papers carefully ahead of time, which enabled
  an in-depth discussion after the presentation. Not a bad idea!

Just to make it clear. The journal and workshop are not associated in any way. Would that still make your answer valid?


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Not citing code libraries used for paper
I'm submitting a paper to a CS conference, where I've just got the feedback from my professor. He wants to delete the few lines citing the implementation libraries such as sk-learn as well as more specialized libraries (3 in total). He feels that the lines don't fit in (which I kinda agree with) and that they make it look more like I just "plug n' played" without doing real research. On the other hand, I feel that the authors of these libraries should get some recognition for their hard work.
What is the general feeling towards not citing the libraries used? Would you advise me to discuss this with my professor or just delete the citations?
-- Edit --
It should be noted that the contribution is substantial and I definitely deem it good enough to be published. I just haven't done that much coding of new methods, but instead found interesting insights on important datasets using known methods.

It should be noted that the contribution is substantial and I definitely deem it good enough to be published. I just haven't done that much coding of new methods, but instead found interesting insights on important datasets using known methods.

instead of adding a comment to your own question to clarify, if would be better to edit the original question. Comments may not stay around long-term.

How about mentioning these libraries in "materials and methods", along with other information about how to reproduce your findings?

In the specific case of sk-learn, failing to cite their paper published in the Journal of Machine Learning Research would be an error (see http://scikit-learn.org/stable/about.html#citing-scikit-learn) that would be pointed out at least on my referee report.

@mmh: If mentioning that library is just a technical detail rather than crucial to the concept, why should sk-learn be mentioned if other equally used libraries aren't? Because the programmers ask for being cited, and because they make it temptingly convenient to add the citation? I'd consider this on the verge of a gift citation, which is quite unethical.

I agree with Captain Emacs that important contributions from others should be made visible -- for ethical reasons and to make it easier for others to reproduce your research. However, it is very reasonable to restrict this to libraries which are "critical" in the sense that your work strongly depends on them, you cannot find easy replacements (i.e. it is not bread-and-butter stuff like an FFT), and they are not universally available on each and every system (no need to list the contents of /usr/lib).

I think it is important to underline that "your work" is probably not the implementation that uses a particular library, but the underlying concept presented as a contribution.

I agree that full transparency is key. I submitted a bioinformatics paper for a program that used jQuery. One reviewer complained that the code could not be run offline as given —I didn't include jQuery as I did not want any legal issues, but I did not bother mentioning jQuery as I thought it obvious. Had I been explicit it would not have been rejected.

You have to clarify to yourself whether you "plug n'played" or did a real contribution. Hiding the contribution of others because it diminishes your own to a level where it's questionable were not only unethical in itself, it also would have the smell of plagiarism (because one would insinuate that one did all the work in the paper which is not cited by oneself).
You are very correct to be concerned about that. If your work is sufficiently good/substantial to be published, it is sufficiently good/substantial even if all external tools used are mentioned. That being said, you could, in the paper, make clear what your contribution is and why it is nontrivial.

There is a special place in hell for people who do not appropriately cite the resources they have used for their research -- whether it be publications by others, or software that others have spent their careers writing. Not citing others whose work you build on deprives them of their due recognition in the community, promotions, pay raises, and everything else we strive for as scientists.
The criterion should be: If you had built a theoretical framework that critically depends on another publication, then you would cite the latter. If you built a software for your research that critically depends on other people's libraries, then you should cite it as well. On the other hand, if you use someone's function to compute a checksum for some algorithm sending data across the internet, and the paper has nothing to do with the specifics of the communication (and everything would also run if you did not have a checksum to begin with), then there is no need to cite the author of that function.

You say he feels "... that they make it look more like I just "plug n' played" without doing real research. "
Well, which one is it? Did you do real research or didn't you? If you did do real research then citing the libraries is perfectly fine. And it is important, because I might read next month that there are some serious bugs in a library making it output incorrect results, and then I would correctly know that your research may be based on incorrect results - that's bad luck for you, but obviously in the interest of science.
Or you didn't do real research. In that case if not mentioning the libraries changes peoples view of your work, then using the libraries and not citing them is very, very close to plagiarism.
Either way, I strongly believe that you should cite which specialised code related to the subject and written by others you are using, just like you would cite a research paper that suggests the methods implemented by these libraries, if you did the programming work yourself based on the paper.


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Why is research assistantship decoupled from masters/phd program?
I have just been offered a spot in a 2-year full-time masters program at a university in the US. It is very research-focused with a requirement of only a few courses. In the admissions letter they also offer me a full research assistantship (RA) for up to 12 months and say that graduate students typically receive RA support for 2 years contingent on satisfactory performance. The work from the RA is integrated into the graduate course of study. It is somewhat confusing to me why the RA and the Masters program are kept separate as it seems like almost all students would also be a RA. I have two questions related to this:

What are the benefits of this separation from the university's point of view - Is it mainly the ability to kick out students with bad performance?
I may be able to acquire substantial external funding. The offer letter states that the stipend that I receive as a RA would only supplement any external funding to a specified level, meaning that my overall salary would remain unchanged. However, if I get substantial funding this could perhaps allow me to not have a RA/TA position for 3-12 months. Would this be of any use to me? For instance, could I perhaps not have an RA position over the summer to allow me to get some time off?

Edit: This is a prestigious university and my sense is that the department/research group does have good enough finances to provide funding for both years.
2. Edit: The funding is unconditional in the sense that it is simply awarded towards the masters degree without any specific requirements. It is a tradition in my home country to award young students with scholarships to assist them in taking education elsewhere. The organizations providing the scholarships then hope that these students return to their home country after their studies abroad (which many do).

It may be that the locus of the decision on RA funding and admission to the program are separate (e.g. a PI determines whether you get RA funding but a departmental committee determines whether you get admitted to the program.)

At my school, all budgeting is on a year-by-year basis, so even if we know that a grant will have money in future years, we only make one-year contracts for GA stipends. Our faculty also only have one-year contracts; having tenure means you are guaranteed another contract next year, but it does not mean that you have a multi-year contract.  The key thing I would take from their statement is that they normally fund for two years.

This is very difficult to answer authoritatively because each program is different but here are some reasons:

As @Brian Borchers noted, sometimes the admissions and RA funding committees are separate. At some universities, admissions is handled by the department while the RA funding has to be petitioned from the graduate school.
At some places, the lack of funding in the 2+ year is a weeding mechanism. Weaker students aren't offered funding, so they are disappeared (or they pay full fare which is even better than disappearing).
University or department finances may be such that they are not permitted to make a 2 year commitment. They hope that funding will continue but they are being cautious.
They may hope that rather than a university RA position, you will be switched to an external grant funded RA position. They can make a stronger case for funding "unfunded" students this way.
Something else.

The best thing for you to do is to talk to the director of graduate studies AS WELL AS to current graduate students in the program. People on the internet can't tell you which scenario it might be.

Thanks for the detailed answer! This is a somewhat prestigious university and my sense is that the department/research group does have good finances so this removes some of the different reasons. Do you have any answer to my second question?

Note that there is no correlation between prestige and insecurity over financing. Even departments in the top R1s in the USA are having their budgets slashes, TA/RA positions minimized, and asked to consider consolidation.  p.s. Re: 2nd question.  You should ask one question per "question." I'd split the second question into its own post.

The university funding bodies have their own conditions on the use of the money. Id est, it is probably tied to certain projects, it can only be used for certain expenses, and so on. Plus, each professor would get a certain number of students, and you may not get to work with Prof. Smith, the coolest guy in the department.
If you bring your own funding, your possibilities grow. Your supervisor only needs time for you, as opposed to both time and money. Your funding would have different rules, but hopefully it would allow you to work on a topic of your interest (why would you apply for it otherwise).
Also, the conditions may be more beneficial, for example, you may have more travel funds available to you.
Why would you want to skip the university's RA altogether? I can think of two cases: their stipend means you have to work on something you don't like, or that the combined workload of both your grant and the university's is too much.

Please see my updated question. My funding does not have any rules, but there's not enough for the entire program.

@pir it doesn't change what I said: if you are OK with the conditions of your stipend, you get two salaries; and if you don't like them, you can avoid them for a few months.

Ah, I think you missed an important point. The stipend from the university will only supplement external funding to the specified level, meaning that I will never be able to increase my salary.

@pir I don't thing it changes anything. If your country grant pays you enough, you can live on it for a few months without having to do what the stipend requires of you. Having your own funding gives you more freedom of choosing how to spend it.

Ok. So you would think that it wouldn't be an issue to simply take a leave from the RA position or quit it a few months before finishing the degree?

@pir that is definitely a possibility. Is it a good idea? Maybe, maybe not; it depends on the details and the culture of your department: ask your supervisor.

By offering an RA-ship you are being given something additional, which is in the package. You can't avoid it. This additional will also determine the length of your annual contract which is tentatively considered as two years long.
After graduation, you would have gained two separate things MS degree and RA experience.


text:
Is it appropriate to report mistakes in an engineering paper which makes unsupported claims?
I was given a paper to build off of for engineering research. The paper was published in a high impact journal but happens to be written very sloppily in the following sense.

The proof of a central result of the paper cites a source which does not have the results that they claim. I found the correct paper which has results that do prove what they claim for their specific case (after writing the proof myself), but the way they wrote their proof heavily suggests that they thought the incorrect paper they cited proved their result. The proof I wrote from the paper I found is drastically different and requires conditions mentioned nowhere in their proof.

They make the claim that their problem can be converted to a linear program. The linear program is very complicated (it involves quadruple and double sums, and a lot of variables), which I believe led the reviewer to be lazy and avoid seriously scrutinizing it. At first I was unsure as to whether there were gaps in my knowledge regarding the setup of the linear program, but after speaking with my advisor he also agreed that as written the linear program does not make sense. I attempted to look later in the paper in the hopes that they rewrote the linear program for their examples but it was not used.

My advisor and I tried looking through their arXiv version in the hopes that maybe the mistake wasn't made there. The linear program they wrote in their arXiv version had even more inconsistencies.

I tried reading through papers that cite this paper (of which there are 70), and everyone either cites their arguments as true or cites the paper because of its contribution.

There is no explanation for the linear program as their "proof" just claims "these equations characterize the variables in the linear program."

Is this worth contacting the journal over? What can be done in this situation?

What outcome would you like to achieve?

At the end of the day, I just want to understand if the result is actually true.

By 'report', do you mean 'report to the authors', the journal editor, or the community?

"At the end of the day, I just want to understand if the result is actually true." I am not sure that reporting mistakes or contacting the journal will help your understanding. Also, inconsistencies are not always mistakes, it could just be that, inconsistencies...

This does sound serious enough that some sort of correction or at least awareness of issues should be in the literature. I don't know where that line is, but this sounds well over it. That said, I would also see what your advisor thinks of this. And before I contact the journal, I would contact the authors. This is a courtesy that some people appreciate.

+1 First contact the authors.  Not the journal, not the editors.

I appreciate the courtesy of communication with the authors; However, the authors may be less likely than journal editors to give the issue the attention it warrants, or to issue a retraction or correction where needed, This is especially true in the case of potential manipulation of results, as appears may be the case here given the clear inconsistencies. In any case the authors would be invited to respond, and it must be considered whether a neutral arbiter is best suited to handle the question.

@Eric If the authors don't respond, or respond poorly, then one goes to the editors. I didn't say to only contact the authors. This is a courtesy to them, not anything that gives them a veto.
(Also, I don't think there's potentially manipulation of results given OP's description. It sounds much more like extreme sloppiness.)

@JoshuaZ Understood and agreed. However, should the need arise to raise a report to the editors, this becomes more difficult to do confidentially after having contacted the authors directly. If an open exchange is clearly the goal, then by all means, contact the authors and have that conversation. But where unclear, this can become fraught as noted, and the editors may be better equipped to make that determination fairly and without risk.  In the end, I would defer to guidance from the COPE as noted below. Great discussion though, and by no means "one-size fits all".

There is also the option of publishing a comment with the journal, if the paper is reasonably recent.
Here are two detailed HowTos from quality journals, Nature and PRL.
https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/matters-arising
https://journals.aps.org/prl/authors/comments-physical-review-letters
Both journals encourage contacting the authors beforehand.

Anytime a reader finds errors or unfounded assertions that affect the findings of the paper, I would encourage them to contact the editors. Especially in an age of Generative AI, this vigilance is more important than ever to ensure that bad science and unfounded assertions are not perpetuated. This is precisely the purpose of scholarly review, both pre- and post-publication. The [Committee on Publication Ethics][1][2][3] has some great information in this regard.
There should be contact information for the editorial team on the journal website, or at a minimum some indication of leadership and their institutional affiliations. You can submit your findings to the editors, and they can investigate further if they deem it warranted, and potentially contact the authors for their response. Then they can choose whether and how best to correct the record, by inviting an author reply or by issuing a correctional statement (corrigendum) or retraction. Any legitimate journal editor would handle such a report fairly and the investigation confidentially and respectfully to all parties, and they would most likely welcome the effort to maintain their standards.
It sounds like you have done some due diligence and can support your report with objective evidence. That should be sufficient to make a detailed report or just a post-publication critique. How the journal handles this will be indicative of the quality of the journal itself.
[1]: Committee on Publication Ethics. (2023). Dealing with concerns about the integrity of published research. https://doi.org/10.24318/9cdeTy2t
[2]: Committee on Publication Ethics. (2024). Correction, retraction, or expression of concern? https://publicationethics.org/case/when-correction-retraction-and-expression-concern-could-be-considered
[3]: Committee on Publication Ethics. (n.d.) Handling of formally submitted post-publication critiques. https://doi.org/10.24318/o1VgCAih

I would advise against this. This is an unnecessary and adversarial first step. This does not sound like a case of fraud or misconduct, but rather an oversight/sloppy mistake. Contacting the authors first and allowing them an opportunity to rectify the situation whether it be issuing a correction, or explaining to the OP why they feel it is correct is the course of action that embodies good faith. Much of the functioning of the academic community relies on good faith practices. Your option is the equivalent of a student not liking their grade and immediately escalating to the Dean or Provost.

I disagree that this need be adversarial in any sense. The critique could be made with the assumption of good faith, and the editors could look into the matter, also with the assumption of good faith, giving the author the opportunity to explain, correct, retract or even let stand. What you describe is exactly what the editor would do. The only difference is the potential for preservation of anonymity in the process (should that be required) to ensure objective evaluation and consideration, just as we have with peer review, in most cases, and with letters to the editor and author replies.


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Journal editor does not appear to pursue report of self-plagiarism
This is a follow-up to an earlier question about a case of blatant self-plagiarism, following which I contacted the editor of the concerned journal.
The editor did not acknowledge my initial report. It took a polite follow-up email about a month later before I got an answer saying that they were looking into the report and that they would let me know what they found. Since it is a blatant case, I expected that the investigation would be over pretty quickly. After I hadn't heard anything for about another month, I sent another polite email to ask about the status of the investigation. Another month has passed since then and still there has been no reply.
I get the impression that the editor does not appear to pursue this case. Of course I know that the editor must be very busy, but I do not think it is unreasonable to expect something to have happened more than 3 months after the initial report.
I tried to get in touch with the managing editor of the journal, but was told that the publisher will not provide the contact information. To put it mildly, I find this all very discouraging. I expected that reports of self-plagiarism would be taken more seriously despite the offence not being as serious as plagiarism or fabrication.
What should I do next?

In your previous question, you said I came across an article by X and Y that is a nearly 100% self-plagiarised from an article by X several years earlier. Which journal did you send the e-mail to? The journal that published the first article or the journal that published the second article?

This post refers to the journal that published the first article. The second article was retracted.

You say that the later of the two papers was retracted by the journal that published it.  What problem do you see with the first paper that the author later self plagiairized from?

The first paper contains a significant amount that was copied from an even earlier paper.  So paper 2 (now retracted) was a copy of paper 1 which in turn was a copy of paper 0, so to speak.

One other option is to go public (as jakebeal mentions in his answer to your previous question). I would suggest a step in between in which you would send another email to the editor stating that you are disappointed with the lack of progress as well as with the editor ignoring you, and letting them know that such unprofessionalism lets you with no other options but to let the public know.
Should they again fail to act and depending on your time/effort you are willing to invest, take the next step. My next step would be informing the institution of the self-plagiarizing individual about the whole situation. If you again hit a brick wall, you still have a nice story (self plagiarization and cover up by journal and institution) for some journalist, blog, higher institution, etc. (I guess you'll know best who to inform)


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When does a PhD student officially stop being a PhD student?
When does a PhD student officially stop being a PhD student? To be more specific, are you no longer a PhD student when:

you have submitted your PhD (and thus stopped working on it),
been approved for the degree, or
graduated?

I have looked on the Internet and on Stack Exchange and I cannot find a clear answer to this question. On Academia Stack Exchange, one question asks something similar but from such a different perspective that it provides no help. While I know I can ask some administrative body in the university (and have), I remain sufficiently confused about the general consensus on this matter that I would appreciate answers from experts here.
I have a personal interest in knowing the answer to this question as I am involved in a society which is only open to current students and unsure as to when I will become ineligible.

Are you asking about "PhD student" or just "student"?

I went with PhD student as PhD students go through a different completion process to undergraduate students. Do you think I should pose this as a more general question about the student to non-student transition?

I'm not sure what "officially a student" could mean other than that the part of the institution which is responsible for determining student status -- usually, the registrar -- says that you are officially a student.  If that's what you mean, the answer is what the registrar tells you.  Seems disappointing, but what else?  (But I will say that option (i) cannot be right: if your thesis is not accepted, you will need to work on it again.  You are still a student on Saturdays too...)

See also when can you call yourself doctor

@David: Not necessarily.  Some institutions only graduate students once a year, so people can spend some months having earned a PhD but not received it.  Are they officially students at that time?  Ask the institution.  In fact, now that I think about it, I skipped my PhD graduation so in some sense I never graduated.  Some silly sense, of course, but still...

@DavidKetcheson Once you have completed all requirements to be eligible to graduate, you become a graduand, not a student. At graduation you become a graduate.

In the vast majority of societies, renewal is annual and for their convenience they only care about your status at renewal.

@DavidKetcheson It is still not correct. I technically stopped being affiliated with the university when I handed in my dissertation (or possibly at the deadline for this which was a few days later), as this was the end-date on my contract. I did not complete my degree until I defended my dissertation about 2 months later.

Are you competing in University Challenge?

Out of curiosity (and to help future generations of confused people), what did your university administration tell you when you asked them about this?

" In fact, now that I think about it, I skipped my PhD graduation so in some sense I never graduated." as I understand it at least at my university if you don't attend graduation and don't deffer it you are considered to have "graduated in absentia".

Traditionally, the dean of the university will confer degrees during the commencement ceremony to the graduating class. In spirit, this would be when you cease being student and become Ph.D.. Being said, you can remain enrolled in most institutions under non-degree seeking status if your enrollment status as student stands to expire.

@PeteL.Clark Yeah, the institution I attended only has 2 commencement ceremonies per year now. I actually defended a couple of weeks after the spring commencement, so I technically 'graduated' (and received my diploma in the mail) at the end of the summer semester, but walked across the stage in the fall commencement, around 7 months after my defense.

@DavidKetcheson: My university has an explicit "conferred date" for the degree, which coincides with the graduation ceremony. So, here, you haven't technically graduated until the ceremony (whether you attended it or not), even if you have fulfilled all the requisites.

As I say in the comments and djechlin says in his answer, one's official student status is entirely determined by the institution in which the student is enrolled.  You can ask them at any given time whether you are a student, and they'll tell you.  If you want to know when you will lose your student status assuming that you complete all the requirements and paperwork for the PhD, they should be able to tell you that.  This won't have any cosmic significance though: in practice, you are probably asking them about how the computers in the registrar's office deal with the boundaries between one semester, the next and/or the intervening summer.
In terms of your intended need -- i.e., continued membership in a society -- I suspect that you may be taking the "official student status" more seriously than others will and thereby worrying yourself needlessly.  I can't think of any society that wouldn't take the student's own word as to the completion of their own student status, even allowing a reasonable grace period.  For instance, there are professional societies in my field (mathematics) which students can join for special rates (sometimes free).  In these cases membership is determined annually and the renewal process takes place shortly after a given academic year is underway.  So if you get your PhD in, say, June, then you get to keep the student benefits until, say, September or October.
A big exception to the above is immigration issues.  For that: yes, ask the university for the precise date at which your student status expires!

+1, but "entirely determined by the institution" -- I'm sure in Germany at least there are relevant national/state laws as well.

@ChrisH I think it is implied that the institution determines their criteria within the boundaries the laws and regulations of their countries (and the question is not regionally tagged). I'm sure Pete didn't mean to put academic institutions above government laws.


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Is it appropriate to contact a journal about grammatically erroneous editing?
Recently, I submitted a paper to a maths journal (which is a decent journal with a solid editorial board). It was eventually accepted after making some revisions suggested by the referees, at which point I uploaded my final submission. This final submission was then edited by a copy editor at the journal; as well as the usual cosmetic changes in ensuring that my papered adhered to the cosmetic style of the journal, the copy editor also made several grammatical changes. I then was given an opportunity to read through this edited version and suggest any final corrections before my paper is uploaded to the journal's website.
This, of course, is all fairly standard practice. However, many of the grammatical changes made by the copy editor were incorrect. Of course, I noted this in my comments, so I hope these changes will be reverted before the paper is published.

It is appropriate for me to take further action in notifying the journal (e.g. a member of the editorial board) that a copy editor is repeatedly introducing errors?

This of course seems a little petty. On the other hand, these same grammatical errors occur repeatedly throughout papers in this journal (at least in recent papers published online), and I'm sure that I'm not the only reader who finds these mistakes irritating.

In case anyone is curious about the errors, the most common mistake is that the copy editor repeatedly replaced with a comma my usage of a semicolon before an independent clause, especially such a clause in the imperative mood: an example would be something like "This can be proved via the method of Gauss, see [1]". Other such comma splices were introduced - all by replacing semicolons with commas.
Additional grammatical mistakes were introduced that were clearly incorrect: for example, I perhaps overuse the phrase "Note that", and this was pruned on a couple of occasions by the copy editor, but in more than one case, the rest of the sentence wasn't edited to ensure that it still made sense.

If this was your paper, and the grammatical change was consistent, what would a neutral third party think? For me personally, I don't understand why punctuation are inside of quotations. "Like this." It makes more sense to me to have it "like this". If I start to program with punctuation (especially commas) inside of quotes, I am gonna have a bad time.

Just for reference, what is an example of a sentence that becomes incorrect if you remove "note that"?

I appreciate the irritation, and I used to care more about these things when I was at a similar career stage; but these days I am reminded more and more about the story about Besicovitch's English

Moreover, if you say that "these same grammatical errors occur repeatedly throughout papers in this journal (at least in recent papers published online)", then this sounds like a matter of house style. You may feel that they are in error, and you may be right, but browsing through both Fowler and various entries on Language Log suggests that more things are merely foklore codifications than one might have first thought. (From a handful of dealings with the copy-editors used by the AMS, they really don't like semicolons.) Therefore ...

... while I would not say it is inappropriate for you to notify a member of the editorial board, I would gently suggest it is not the best use of your energies or time - although I believe you are well within your rights to insist on final author approval or corrections to what the sub-editors have done.

@FedericoPolino: I had written "Note in this case that...", and the copy editor replaced this with "In this case that...", so that the whole sentence became a dependent clause.

@YemonChoi: While it may be house style, I have not seen these grammatical errors in other journals under the same publishing house. Comma splices are a common grammatical mistake, but it seems extremely strange for me for these to be actively inserted into a manuscript by a copy editor, instead of removed.

I also ought to mention that many semicolons in my paper were not replaced with commas, so this was not a consistent change.

@Yemon Choi: You mean this? ---- (from p. 193 of this paper) Speaking Russian at home, Besicovitch's command of English remained stationary from his early days in Cambridge. For him the definite article was superfluous. A story is told that during one of his lectures an undergraduate tittered at some distortion of English idiom. "Gentlemen", said Besicovitch, "there are fifty million Englishmen speak English you speak; there are five hundred million Russians speak English I speak." There was no further tittering.

No.  Pity the poor underpaid copyeditor and just make your corrections.

Your main goal is to get your paper published correctly, without comma splices and other grammatical errors. Whether complaining to an editor or the publisher will help to prevent introduction of these errors into other papers is not at all clear to me. The use of a comma before "see [1]" is unfortunately so common that I see no hope of globally correcting that error. With other errors, like removing "note" while keeping the associated "that", you might have a better chance. Even so, you surely have better ways to use your time (prove a theorem, play with children, sleep in).

@DaveLRenfro I'm not sure which is more appalling—Besicovitch's mangling of English or of demographics.

I can't give you a yes / no answer, but I can say what's likely to happen if you choose to complain.
If you choose to complain to the publisher: chances are they'll ask for some examples of poor copyediting and form their own opinion. If they agree with you, they might change the copyeditor (if it's outsourced) or provide him or her with the negative review and pointers (if it's an in-house employee). If they don't agree with you then probably nothing will happen other than giving you a vague "we are aware of the issue" response.
If you choose to complain to a member of the editorial board then:

It's possible the editor will say "this is none of my business, approach the publisher", or forward to the publisher "I received this complaint, what do you think" (in which case, see the second paragraph).
It's also possible (but in my opinion less likely) that the editor will take things seriously, in which case he or she will contact the publisher. Again, see second paragraph, except this time the publisher is also dealing with an unhappy editorial board member and so would be more inclined to make changes.

Finally if you choose to just make your corrections then your corrections get implemented and everyone just moves on to the next paper.
Having said all that, I gotta say, I don't see any difference between "This can be proved via the method of Gauss, see [1]" and "This can be proved via the method of Gauss; see [1]". Both simply say that the reader can find the proof in reference 1. It looks to me like an unnecessary correction, but it isn't per se wrong. I checked with another editor and he found both OK too. If you can confidently say that one of them is wrong, you have a level of English mastery that most other native speakers aren't even aware of.

Copyediting isn't only about meaning; it's about getting the details, like punctuation, right. Copyeditors aren't "most other native speakers." They're supposed to master English mechanics. Entire chapters have been written about commas versus semicolons, and the poster is correct in this case.

Publishers typically have a house "style" to which they adhere. Therefore, minor corrections that otherwise do not change the meaning are likely not an issue.
However, if the edit were to change the meaning of a part of your article, or represents an unintended error, then you should definitely protest. I have only once had to make a complaint to a publisher, but that was because they introduced significant errors in the mathematics in my paper, completely changing the meaning of the paper. In such cases, you should definitely notify someone about the problem, because they are significant enough to warrant a corrigendum if they weren't fixed at the proof stage.

"In this case that..." is clearly incorrect. The copyeditor is correct in thinking that "Note that" is usually superfluous. I'm guessing that here the copyeditor was simply sloppy.
Regarding your Gauss example, I think both the comma and semicolon are incorrect. "See [1]" is a parenthetical remark and a citation, so it should be in parentheses, no?
But you're right, the comma before "see" is quite incorrect. As you say, in English a comma can't separate two independent clauses.
At least 90% of copyediting is bound by clear rules. Perhaps 5% of changes are optional, and the remaining 5% are left to the editor's discretion because no style manual covers the question. I've never encountered a house style that broke hard-and-fast rules of the English language, so this doesn't seem like a problem with house style but rather the copyeditor's competence.
I think it would be appropriate to contact the journal about this problem. The copyeditor is paid to do a task competently. If that's not what's happening, the journal should know about it. I wouldn't want my article to be published in worse shape than when I submitted it. That will reflect poorly on you, not the copyeditor.


text:
Where to locate the "harder to read" text for a paper describing a new method?
I developed new methods to measure characteristic values for globally critical issues. These new methods are described in detail in a patent application I filed last year. The patent application is hard to read even for scientists. I now want to publish the most important of these new methods in a series of shorter and (where possible) simpler papers. The main function is to "market" the science, such that it gets a lot of traction, creates cooperation and can be implemented ASAP.
For one of these methods, the "harder to read" section (with some formulas) cannot be reduced to less than about 11 pages without becoming un-understandable. For many journals that is already too long. The option I have in mind is to include the entire "harder to read" section under "supplementary materials", only accessible online and to write a much shorter "main text" for the printed paper section. The advantage would be that the main text would be much easier to read, resulting in many more people actually reading it (my objective).
The issue with this approach is that the reader would need to believe that what I say in the shorter "main text" is correct, since only reading the "supplementary materials" would explain it.
Is this the best approach?
I would appreciate it to get recommendations on how to best do this.
Thanks for your help.
Hans B.

The supplementary material approach is pretty standard and makes sense to me.

Your suggestion seems eminently sensible. There are a few journals that are willing to include important technical clarification and explanations in appendices, but the additional material tends to be limited to two or three pages. Online publication of supplementary material seems ideal.
You comment that one of your concerns is that

the reader would need to believe that what I say in the shorter "main
text" is correct, since only reading the "supplementary materials"
would explain

but I don't think that is quite correct. The reader only has to be persuaded that it is worth their while to read the supplementary material. I'm reminded of the the advice of Leslie Lamport (the creator of the LaTeX macro package) about giving a paper at a mathematics conference. To quote from point 1 of the linked text,

Don't give your paper; the audience can't take it.  If someone
can understand in thirty minutes what it took you weeks to
develop, then you're in the wrong business.

Your aim in your journal paper should be to present your ideas in a sufficiently persuasive and compelling way that your reader will desperately want to read the supplementary material. It's a real challenge to write this way, but it can certainly be done.

Thanks for your recommendation. Leslie Lamport's text was worth printing!


text:
I want to make a PhD thesis but my qualifications are bad .. do I have any chance
This is my question:
I want to do a thesis but my qualifications are bad so I do not know if I will be able to find a thesis advisor.
What can I do? Are there universities who do not care about qualifications if you have some ideas?
I can propose some ideas for thesis (in .pdf) but do not know if they will be enough.

In what country and in what field is this in? You say your qualifications are low, but what are they anyway? Do not post your thesis ideas, that's not what your question is about.

Qualifications (are at least considered to) demonstrate academic ability. Why would a university want to take on a student who demonstrated "bad" levels of academic ability? I made this exact same point the last time you asked this question (as far as I can see, it's since been deleted). If you believe that you do in fact have academic ability then you need to find some way to demonstrate it

See also http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38237/how-does-the-admissions-process-work-for-ph-d-programs-in-the-us-particularly

my country is spain :D but if i have to go abroad it does ot matter , qualification mean 1.5 o 4 (biggest , and 1 the lowest)

What makes you believe that you will do better in a PhD? I think that will inform your considerations.

If you got less-than-average results in you Bachelor/Master program, you should seriously consider not to do a PhD. While you might find an advisor if you try and look long enough (at a small or unimportant university), it is not unlikely that you eventually fail to finish your PhD and just wasted some years.
If you have problems in understanding difficult concepts in physics (which is often the reason for bad marks), then it may be not the best idea to enter an environment where people expect you to learn a lot of material from different sources without much help from anybody.
I saw somebody dropping out of a PhD program after 7 years, which is not really desirable.

In addition to the second paragraph, another reason for getting bad marks in any subject is not putting a sufficient and sustained amount of effort in to the work. It goes without saying this isn't going to help when trying to complete a PhD.

i have some ideas can i present my ideas to the advisor to convince him/her ? or this won't work .. i mean i have some ideas are not revolutionary but i think they may be interesting

@JoseJavierGarcia Of course you can try to do that. But you should think hard if you really want to do a PhD. It requires deep scientific understanding and a lot of self discipline.

do not your advisor helps you ? with the calculations or similar ?

@JoseJavierGarcia The point is that successfully completing a PhD requires much more than ideas. It also takes a foundation in the subject, ability to learn more about a specialized area from papers etc., and largely self-driven sustained effort. You need to find some way, other than lower degree grades, to demonstrate you have a reasonable chance of succeeding.

@JoseJavierGarcia There are actually advisors that help you with the topic or some calculations. But most PhD students I met vastly overestimate the help they will get. To get 2 hours of time every two month or so would be a positive example, but I also saw cases in which the advisor provided a vague topic and then you can meet him again when you're done.

Supervisors might help with calculations at the limits of what a good MSc student can be expected to know; but not at the limits of a weak one. Otherwise, the supervisor could do the work on their own. What's the point for them to do double work: do the calculation themselves and also drag someone else behind? I expect my students to know how to do the standard computations after around 2-3 months into the PhD, and the more advanced computations after 1 year.


text:
Will experience in related fields help me get into my "dream" graduate program as a non-traditional student with some failures in my past?
If wanting to end up in a specific graduate program at one university, but having had failures along early paths, like college dropouts, mediocre to good GPA and GRE, having become an adult/unconventional student, how can one still end up in the specific program of dreams? Would it help to collect experiences in neighbouring fields if the direct, focused approach fails? When should one just give up the dream of getting into a specific program, or even the whole field of studies?
Let's take scientific, non-engineering astronomy as example. If wanting to be admitted to a Master's and/or PhD program at a specific R1 level university, how would it be seen if having a thorough vocational industry education in optics manufacturing, an internship in electronics, astronomy as a hobby with serious nightly observing programs and submitted results, a half finished college degree in physics and a full degree in geology? Does a patchwork such as in this example have any advantage if having the bad luck of not having been able to succeed in first college attempts and thus being 10 to 15 years older than a typical college student?

The answer probably depends on if the specific R1 is top 10 or top 100.

This is highly dependent on circumstances. Is your most recent degree recent, or have you been out of academia for years? Do you have the necessary prerequisite coursework for your field of study, and if so, how long ago did you take it? Are there professors who can give you a strong letter of recommendation now, or do you have no current relationships with any potential recommenders? These, and similar details, matter much more for graduate admissions than age (as per the other questions in the [tag:age] tag) or early failures.

When I started my PhD (R1 school in engineering), I shared my office with an older gentleman who was 12 years older than me, had an average GPA, been a structural engineer for 10-15 years or so, married with kids and extensive industry experience. He applied for 3 years in a row to the same university and only that university because he lived in that town and did not want to relocate (his kids were at school, his wife had a job too) and every time he would get rejected. At his fourth trail, he was accepted. He said that he was going to keep applying as much as needed! As far as I know, nothing has changed in his application from the third to the fourth year. The professor who agreed to support him has just got a project and needed somebody with technical experience (it was construction/material related).
I would say that getting to know the right people does not hurt! Maybe visit the department, introduce yourself and have short meeting with some professors. I noticed that many professors hold much respect for established industry people who want to go back to school. Although some feel it maybe a little risky as well. But, you never know if you do not ask or try. I do not think it is impossible, but maybe you would need to do some extra work to convince/explain your story/timing for such a decision.
I can also think of a scenario were if you work at a company that has an R&D department, maybe a collaboration between the company and school can open up a spot for you in a program. In this scenario, the company can provide the school with a proposal, pay fees and (raw) materials and the school can allocate the lab, equipment and an advisor to supervise you. You can work on such a project and get a degree at the end of the day. However, I'm not sure if this applicable to your case or if this something that happens often.

More to the point than acceptability of your patchwork and unconventional background is how do you propose to address missing course requirements e.g., two semesters of quantum, thermal physics, etc (that you presumably did not take in the course of your geology program)? How would prepare you for the entrance exams upon acceptance, given that you haven't never had some of the subjects you will be tested on? Most important of all, what kind of research do you want to do and what special skills do you have to do it? What are you bringing to the equation?

It was just an example. But we could have taken biochemisty as well. I thought that it might be of an advantage if having some degree plus some additional knowledge of some other studies, eventhough this might be not finished. I thought that having this knowledge might give an advantage over other regular students despite being considerably older. Am I wrong? Or how is reality?


text:
Impact of private home research in graduate application
Assuming non-excellent and only good credentials when leaving college, can you increase the chances (how much?) of admission to a public R1 university by doing low-budget but unique research projects at home, like cultivating and study microorganisms under supervised conditions, contributing to the knowledge about asteroids by doing photometry and positional measurements, or building a small telescope array and observe Jupiter? Would projects like that help against other application competitors who have better marks from their college? What influence does life experience have in the process?

Is this independent research in the same field as the program you're applying to?

I'm not gonna apply for some time to come. But in some universities a graduate program might cover both subfields with respective working groups, while other universities only offer one and not the other. So my question is more whether any independent research experience is an advantage as it shows commitment, setting up an experiment, and probably organising professional support in case of needed high-end analysis in a local institute, like mass spectroscopy.


text:
I suspect an author of a paper I'm reading was listed improperly - what to do?
I was reading a paper. And the list of authors looks suspicious. Three of the authors are at some random place I haven't heard of and the fourth author is a well-known professor at a top university. The paper itself is not very good.
I suspect the well-known author may have been listed to improve the paper's chances of acceptance. (Most reviews in my field are only single blind.)
Of course, it is possible that nothing is wrong - I can't be sure.
Is there anything I can or should do?

Are you suggesting that the impressive-sounding author was listed without his/her consent? Or that he/she agreed to be listed despite not having contributed anything to help some "random" researchers get their paper accepted?

You might check the well-known professor's web site to see whether the paper is mentioned there.

If you're really suspicious, you could simply e-mail the well-known professor, attach the paper, and ask him about it. If you're worried about offending him, you could mask it by asking him a genuine question about the paper.

@SteveHeim If the paper is bad, how do you ask a genuine question about it?

Without reading the paper, I don't know. Asking for clarifications on something perhaps? Why such-and-such statement is made?

Along similar lines to @AndreasBlass's suggestion, you could see if any of the well-known professor's other papers cite this one.

If the paper is correct from mathematical/theoretical point of view there is no problem to be addressed. Concerning the case of authorship is professor's business, presuming he has agreed with it and is aware. I know many professors who submit small papers to low quality journals simply because of the grant request, because the grant is given only and only if a number of papers is the output.

Can? Yes - the comments already give you some hints: Look at the prof's website, try asking him a question about the paper.
Should? Probably not. If there is really something going on, then it would the business of the professor, not yours. If you proceed as above and ask him something, and there is really something fishy, he can decide by himself if something needs to be done.