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How economically efficient is the grant system?
I wonder if someone (or eventually some country, organisation, etc ...) already evaluated the costs of the system of grants.

It costs at least the salary of the researcher who writes and gets the grant
but also the salary of all the researchers who didn’t get it, and could have done something else than writing a proposal
plus the costs in administration (e.g. the National Contact Point(s) in Europe at several places in each country)
plus the cost of organising the referral (travels, meetings, ...)
plus the cost of the grant itself, of course.

On the positive side, of course the entire society benefits from a completed grant.
So my questions are:

Are there some studies about the economical efficiency of the grant system?
What are their conclusions?
How much does the granting costs?
Are there other system evaluated?

Partially related questions :

How much time do researchers spend on writing grants?
How to quantify the loss in productivity due to time spent on writing proposals

but this question is really about the economy of research and factual investigations about the system of grants, not about feeling from researchers.

I don't have answer about studies. But in my opinion, although I hate writting grant proposals, I think that the grant system is generally an efficient way of selecting where the money should be invested. For researchers, it may seems like a waste of time to write these proposals. However, writing a proposal is actually helpful to plan future research. Some funding agencies may ask for example to do a 5 year research plan. Doing this takes time, but it helps to plan future research

I think talking about economic efficiency makes only sense if you compare these costs to the costs/benefits of other alternatives. Just because something is expensive, it doesnt mean it is not efficient (esp if not clear compared to what). Also, as@Phil mentioned, there is no clear cut what is an actual cost and what is job done anyway (or a job should do)

@Greg Different countries have different ways of distributing research funds. Also, the same country has different systems at different times in history. A study could compare the "efficiency" of these systems whatever that means.

This is a very interesting question, and one that I have also often wondered about (I guess everybody who is in the H2020 circus wonders about this). However, you should probably define better what "efficiency" means for you, because it's not entirely clear to me.

@xLeitix You're entirely right of course, and it's the weakest point of the question. As far as I can see, this is the crucial point of most of the economical studies: how to define quantities we would like to compare ? After writing the question, I was thinking this is not such an obstacle, since research is a small community where almost everything is transparent (who get money, who publish articles/patent/..., what are the impact of the research, .... ) and so it seems to me to find a criterion for "efficiency" should not be that difficult. But I let economist do so :-)

@Phil I do not want to venture in the debate about what people prefers as a system, but clearly the grant system is not the only one. At the beginning of the 20-th century, the science academies where playing the most important role, not the teams of research as it is now. Also, the grant system is more and more popular in Europe (to cite one example I know) where it has been imposed only recently, so a comparison with previous system is definitely possible I believe.

(...) Note finally that most of the (european) countries have (at least) two ways of giving money to the research : one through the lab and institutions (to cite only the salary), one through grants. In any case I feel it's the job of a state/government to try to optimise the way it shares money, hence the origin of this question : how could governments know the best way of making research if there is no study about that ? Perhaps I should indeed define an other system in order to restrict the question. But definitely I asked the question because I do not really know how to answer it :-) !

@Phil: "writing a proposal is actually helpful to plan future research" - this may be a topic for a separate question, but as long as considerable amounts of effort and manpower are invested to make sure those research plans sound convincing and yet do not promise anything concrete and keep as many options open as possible, as no-one can possibly know what new impulses and ideas will emerge based on the results of the research over the next year (let alone over the next 5 years - in that timeframe, much of a department's staff will have been replaced), they might not be so generally "helpful".

@O.R.Mapper Of course, a lot of things can change over 5 years. However, for me it is useful to sit down and try to make some long term planning, even though I may not follow exactly the plan. It helps to put the research into perspective. Probably that some other researchers may disagree, but for me at least, it is very useful.

I know of one such study: Cost of the NSERC Science Grant Peer Review System Exceeds the Cost of Giving Every Qualified Researcher a Baseline Grant.
The authors examine the full costs of the process used by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and conclude that it would be more efficient to simply give a base amount to every researcher who meets the requirements to submit a proposal. The costs they consider include the time spent preparing and peer-reviewing grant proposals. In addition, the authors argue that the current system is ineffective, in that it rewards mediocrity and safe bets over curiosity and innovation.
The same journal later published a rebuttal (The Real Cost of the NSERC Peer Review is Less than 5% of a Proposed Baseline Grant) and a reply to the rebuttal (Indeed: Cost of the NSERC Science Grant Peer Review System Exceeds the Cost of Giving Every Qualified Researcher a Baseline Grant).

Thanks you really much for this link. It's unfortunately beyond a paywall. Do you know any way to access it ? Thank you again

For a broad analysis of economic and social efficiency of science and science funding (including "soft money" such as grants), see the book How Economics Shapes Science.


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What is this "mixed" citation style that includes both numbered references and author-date formats?
Once or twice I had encountered papers which used quite convenient citation styles, which combined numbered and parenthetical references. The list of references at the end of the paper is sorted alphabetically, as in Harvard referencing, but also all references are numbered, so it looks like this:
[1] AuthorA (2015) ...
[2] AuthorB (2000) ...
[3] AuthorC (2010) ...
In the text, one might use numbers to save space ("as shown in [2],..."), or parenthetical reference: "as shown by AuthorB (2000),...". And it's really convenient, since depending on the situation you might choose how to cite. I failed to find the name of such citation style -  is it at all standardized, or is it just the invention of those papers that I had encountered (as far as I remember, they were preprints from arXiv)?

Speaking about major citation styles that I've seen, I think that it could be the IEEE Citation Style, as your example matches the IEEE Style for electronic references (for non-electronic references, the in-text citation is the same, with the only difference, being related to reference list, is that the year is located at the end of the reference entry).
Alternatively, if it is not the IEEE Style, it might be either a publication-specific style, adopted by a particular journal or other publication outlet, or a hybrid style, manually developed by some authors.
Naturally, speaking about using LaTeX for biblographies, there are a couple of aspects that I'd like to mention. Firstly, according to Mori (2009), the citation style that you are curious about resembles the default reference formatting style for LaTeX. Secondly, if you use (or plan to use) LaTeX for producing your publications, the following sources, in addition to the paper by Mori, might be quite helpful for customizing bibliographic features to required or desired style: this guide by Patrick Daly (note that it describes a quite old version of natbib package - try to find a more up-to-date version or a similar detailed guide), this brief guide by Ki-Joo Kim and this excellent answer by Alan Munn.
References
Mori, L. F. (2009). Managing bibliographies with LaTeX. TUGboat, 30(1). Retrieved from https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb30-1/tb94mori.pdf

There are so many styles - my advice is always to choose a style (preferably the one that the journal specifies) and stick to it. Mixing styles makes for uncomfortable reading.

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Whether to accept co-authorship for conference presentation after making only a small contribution?
A collaborator sent me an abstract he's submitting to a conference, listing me as a co-author (middle position, implying not a major contribution).  It's for a conference presentation, not a manuscript, and it will not be published in e.g. a supplement or anything like that.
I've spent a fair bit of time with him discussing and planning the project, I'm listed as a co-PI on the grant, and I expect to provide important contributions later in the project, but at this point I haven't specifically contributed, in any hands-on way, to the exact work described in the abstract.
I thanked him, made some minor suggestions about the abstract, and suggested that he didn't need to include me as I hadn't contributed enough yet.  He replied saying that he was happy to include me.
The work is fine and I have no concerns or reservations about it.  We're roughly at equal career stages and neither of us is new, so neither of us is looking for extra prestige etc. If we cared about fine balances, I'm probably helping him more than he's helping me in the project, but I'm happy to do it. I have made significant contributions to the overall experimental design and planning, and it's not ridiculous to be an author, but it is for a smaller contribution than I consider authorship-worthy.
Should I continue to battle to be taken off the authorship?

Are you asking if you should be listed as author or what you need to do to be taken off as co-author?

@Ric the impression that I get is that OP is asking an etiquette question, how much should OP object to authorship when OP feels s/he hasn't contributed enough to deserve it.
Although for the record, it sounds like OP has contributed if s/he's co-PI on the grant :)

Yes, as @samanthapants says, it's a question of how hard I should insist on having my name removed.

@iayork Are conference presentations a big deal in your field? In many fields they don't really count for much. They are good for networking and getting feedback, but they don't contribute to academic evaluations. Of course in other fields, conferences are very important to academic evaluations.

Look at the problem from the other side. How would your collaborator feel about not including you?

My answer is based on experience in the field of applied mathematics.  I'm assuming (as stated in the question) that there is no written publication involved -- just a talk.
Don't worry about claiming unmerited credit
You have made some contribution.  Coauthorship on a conference presentation carries almost zero significance for purposes of evaluation.  It's not something you list on your CV, no matter how "early career" you are.  Usually, if you are not already well-known and the results are not earth-shattering, then nobody will even remember, five minutes after the talk, that you were a co-author.
When to insist on being removed
Obviously, coauthorship of the talk has some significance to you and to the presenter.  Since the presenter has already made it clear that he wishes to include you as coauthor, I would only insist on being taken off if:

The scientific work or the quality of the talk is so bad that you think it will reflect negatively on you; or
Your involvement is so minimal that you couldn't say anything interesting about the project (if asked by someone who attended the talk).

It doesn't sound like either of these conditions apply, so my advice is to let it go.

Coauthorship on a conference presentation carries almost zero significance — ...except, as usual, in computer science, where conference papers are the primary venue for peer-reviewed research.

@JeffE I'll clarify -- the OP stated explicitly that there was no publication.  Even in applied math, a conference publication has some (albeit small) significance, and I would apply higher standards of contribution for coauthorship.  In CS, I believe that if there is no publication (unusual!) then it's still almost zero significance, right?

Right.  Without a publication, "coauthorship" in a talk is insignificant.

I am relatively new to science so my answer is from a perspective of a young scientist. It seems to me you contributed enough to be one of the authors so you certainly can be included. Sometimes a beginner can spend months working on something and accomplish less than an experienced scientist can contribute within a few minutes by a good comment or suggestion. Ultimately, it is the results that count, not the amount of time and effort spent.
If you also happen to be an expert in what the conference presentation is about, then you should be included as one of the authors. On top of acknowledging your contribution to the research, it tells everyone that there is another scientist out there who knows a lot about the particular subject. Other scientists and students can then contact you for advice, recommend you as a reviewer, or even choose you to be their PhD supervisor. So excluding yourself from authors may also seem a bit unethical as hiding your expertise from the world.

Besides ethics, another thing to consider in insisting on being taken off the author list is the "human factor". In general (or at least judging from my limited experience), refusing to be listed as co-author implies that you want to distance yourself (esp. in the context of a more collectivist culture), either because you find the research quality unacceptable to your standard, or because you do not wish to be academically associated with colleagues that have dubious reputations. Of course, as you explained in the question, this is not the real reason in this case. But the problem is, your collaborator offered you authorship because he felt that you had contributed enough (and judging from his reply he was not persuaded by your reason). Thus your refusal could very likely be interpreted as a gesture to distance yourself. If conferences are not a big deal in your field, this could be especially irritating to your collaborator (regardless of whether such feelings are justified) if you insist on what at most seems like a minor ethical breach.
In sum, you should consider the bigger cultural context, general practice in your field, your collaborator's personality, and your communication skill in making the decision.

This feels like a question of ethics rather than just etiquette, because based on etiquette it's somewhat expected that people offer co-authorship to those who in their eyes spend a significant amount of time and effort on the project, whereas you are asking whether it is ethical to not protest being a co-author when you do not feel you have contributed enough to deserve it.
Since it's subjective, you could also ask other people in your area whether they think it's reasonable for you to be a co-author. If they do, then since you also think you have contributed a fair bit of time and effort, then I don't think you have a moral obligation to get yourself removed from the authorship, despite it being less than what you feel deserves it.
After all, your main moral obligation is not to give a false impression due to appearing as a co-author, so if people generally have the correct impression then there is no ethical issue, in my opinion. Your viewpoint may differ, in which case you should just do whatever you think is right.
Note that if I were your collaborator in question, I would feel that anyone who contributed a non-trivial part deserves to be a co-author, but at the same time I would respect their wishes if they insist on not being named. That said, your collaborator may be different, or find it uncomfortable to exclude you, which you've to take into account as well.

Here is a simple perspective on the matter:
Co-authorship implies a contribution to the work, which doesn't necessarily mean adding actual data or making figures for the paper and so on. If your colleague feels that the discussion with you was productive and helped his process in understanding the problem and coming up with a solution, then I imagine he wants to list you as an author.
Most of the work towards a scientific publication happens in our head, so contributions to our thoughts need to be equally acknowledged and recognised as the more practical ones.
Although, at the end of the day, it really comes to the individual sensibility about authorship. If you feel like you shouldn't be in the list, it's fair for you to ask to be pulled from it.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Andrea

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What are reasonable alternatives to changing your name for academic publishing when you have a common surname?
I've recently embarked on my PhD studies (cancer, structural biology) and have yet to publish. Currently, there are some 200 papers in my name and several thousand under my surname. Because of this, I am considering switching my surname to an old, rare, surname in my family, which is only used by one active researcher.
My question is this: are there any reasonable alternatives that does not include legally changing my name? I personally don't mind changing it, but the old surname happens to be "noble", and may come off as quite pretentious. I would be able to change to another, less pretentious, surname, but in terms of rareness, no alternative comes close.
In short, what are my alternatives?

Do you have a middle name?

I do, but my name is unfortunately not unique even when using my full name "John. X Smith".

I use "Dave Clarke" as my name. Not the best choice, but it hasn't been too problematic. That said, try to do what you can to make your name distinct enough. Use the full middle name (not just X). Perhaps add Pope or Sir or Captain to the front of your name, or add a second middle name.

Captain John X. Smith it is.

I'm dying to know what the "old" surname is that's so pretentious. "Royal?"

Roland: ReseacherID looks very interesting. Thanks!
Aaron: it's not royal, but contains a "von"; Firstname von Surname. Thus pretentious.
Chris: Thanks for the heads up. Unfortunately this will be a decision I'll have to make before I can know for sure whether I'll stay in academia or not. I'm convinced I will at the moment, but like you say things can change.

Please tell me you'd be called Ludwig von Drake or Maria von Trapp. :) Seriously though,  there's nothing wrong with using a pen name (it worked ok for Eric Arthur Blair, Mary Ann Evans, Winston Churchill and Joanne  Rowling), although it may help avoid confusion if the pen name recognisably maps onto your usual name - as in the case of Rowling and Churchill. Make like Churchill and invent a middle initial: John Q Smith.

Well, I suppose I don't mind telling you. You can judge how suitable it would be in English: the surname is "von Otter". I think some of the pretentiousness is lost considering it basically translates as Eric "of the otter". Comes across as a tad silly, really. What do you think? OK in English?

Sorry - have to make this joke. You don't like your name so you choose an Otter one, eh? Don't worry - no English speaker will find it pretentious.

As a native of california, I wouldn't think of von Otter as pretentious (I was just reading a von Cramon last night and it never crossed my mind) however there is one other consideration. Given how often we refer to authors by just there last names (Smith says such and such) it might be more inconvenient to affect a last name than, say, an uncommon middle initial.

@Eric: depending on the implications in the country of origin of the name, and whether you care about them, you could just drop the "von" and be Eric Otter. A surname that's an English word is always occasionally going to provoke someone's imagination, and the otter is not the most revered among animals, but it's not ridiculous. You might not want to be "Eric Dungbeetle", but the worst you'll get over "Eric Otter", unless someone wants to be spiteful, is, "why did you choose Otter if it's not your real name? Oh, it's a family name, fair enough".

... so personally I don't think you need to rank how the name sounds to the English ear, among the practical problems to worry about.

Thanks again for good input - I'm a fan of this site already!
To be clear: von Otter is not something I'm choosing, per se. I am only allowed to switch to surnames already in my family, and based on rarity and pronounceability "von Otter" was the way to go.
Otter is another alternative, but I'm not sure the laws of my country will allow me to switch to a that name, seeing as I only have a claim on the "von Otter" variety. It's worth checking out, however. Thanks.

In general with multipart surnames (e.g. it's common in Spain to have two non-hypenated surnames) you some some influence on how they are presented.  You could probably adopt "von Otter" officially but use "Otter" professionally, at least in English-language media.

I don't think "von Otter" sounds at all pretentious in English. (I don't know what "Otter" means in your language, but in English, the word "otter" refers a small, cute wetlands mammal -- how pretentious does "von Kitten" sound to you?)

In my language it's just a misspelling (read: older spelling) of the word Otter. And it's not the Otter part that may come across as pretentious ;) Thanks for the English-perspective though!

Using "von" and similar is not that a great idea. Journals and databases are not always consistent how they handle it.

Do you speak from experience, Greg? I just ran through 7-8 articles in different journals from a relative with "von", all were consistent.

I also have a very common name (usually quoted along the lines of "Smith, J.") and despite the fact that I have worked and published with two different institutions there has never been a problem assigning all my papers to me  personally (ORCID and other system let you take your institution(s) into account). As long as there isn't a person with the same first and last name in your institution (and even then, it usually a couple of clicks to rectify the situation and I am speaking of someone who had to contend with a Joan/John Smith situation).
My university makes all researchers from post doc onwards keep a list of their publications on their official university homepage, so even google will associate my publications correctly. So if you come across a paper from my old affiliation you can get my current contact data from this.
And honestly most subfields are specialised enough that people roughly know that John Smith at institution A is working on a certain topic (because that's what your group does) and John Smith at institution B will probably not have published a particular paper. If people want to talk to your about your results, they will find you, even with a common name.

In terms of publishing papers, I'm not aware of any requirement to use your legal name. A common example would be those who continue to use their maiden name (where people change their name on marriage). A friend of mine did the reverse, and wrote her first paper under the name she would assume when she married shortly afterwards.
The trickier case is what will appear on your PhD. It may not matter much, but it would probably make life easier if that said the same as your papers. You'd have to talk to your university about their rules.

It's certainly an option. However, I've heard about potential problems when it comes to registering for events, and, as you point out, diplomas. The big question for me is whether or not I would then be registered under a "fake" (for lack of a better term) name on faculty websites etc.? I'm not sure what the rules are for a given institution. If not, there would be a cut-off between my faculty name and the name under which I publish, which probably won't be helpful.

Just for the record, at least in France the legal name does not change after marriage. Married people have the right to use the name of their spouse or a juxtaposition of the two names, but their "maiden" name officially stays their legal name. Many things happen that seem to indicate otherwise, but this is what French law says.

@Eric I don't think the registration for events is the biggest problems: conference organisers can be accommodating if you explain (possibly in advance by e-mail). The biggest problem would probably be border control if you have to travel and explain to the officer at the border that the the reason for visiting is that you're giving a talk at a conference, even though the name on your passport doesn't match any of the names in the programme, nor do any of the names on any articles or posters you've come with.

Adding/changing an pseudonymic middle name might be a decent middle ground (ha!). E.g., you could be Eric X.A. Smith on papers and Eric X. Smith on your passport, which might close enough to satisfy bureaucrats.

@BenoîtKloeckner what a fascinating thing, that's exactly the sort of information that I like finding out.

How do things work in practice for women publishing under their maiden name, at borders (passport/visa varies from conference registration) or submitting a thesis (thesis authorship varies from the contained papers)? That is, the problem of the dislocation between these may already be familiar enough to the relevant officials, that Eric may be unlikely to have these problems in fact (though of course officials may expect the dislocation to apply to women only).

The previous answers point out two things:

add/modify a middle name
use a pseudonym

I can agree to the first one, but the second seems more trouble than it is worth, as you yourself state. Further, I find modifying your name a bit of an extreme measure, i.e. "legally" changing your name, solely for the purpose of academic recognition.
I'd advise you to shift your view to other means of identification. All papers that I came across have some information regarding the institution of the authors and their emails. This info is also mostly freely available, even revenues that charge you for the paper usually allow free access to the abstract and author information. So, I don't really see a problem that someone wouldn't be able to contact you or find your website or your profile at your institution. Even with a large amount of redundancy, e.g. someone with the same name at the same institution, your email is still unique.
Consider also that a great amount of publications require a bio of the authors, mostly including a picture.
You mention citations, they are kept intentionally very concise, because they primarily point to the reference in the literature section of the paper. There is the full reference to be found and by following the above approach, everyone interested will be able to identify you.
The point being, aside from taking very drastic measures, you will not be able to guarantee that your name is/stays unique.
I suggest you stay with your present identity, the one which identified you throughout your life and which family, friends, and colleagues use to identify you and let the scientific community get acquainted with you as you are. I'm sure in time you'll see that it isn't such a big deal and your earned scientific renown won't suffer.

Many thanks for such a comprehensive answer. It's very possible that I am overestimating the benefit of changing my name and that I should, in fact, just abandon the idea.
That being said, allow me to play the role of devil's advocate:
In my field, I would likely need a minimum of two post-doc positions before starting my own group. This would mean that I'd be associated with several institutions and (most likely) go through several email-addresses. Reducing other means of identification.
Also, the "bio" in my field only consists of one's institution. I've never come across a picture.

I'll paste a relevant, earlier, comment to give you some further insight as to my thought process:
[...]However, I'm more worried about name recognition. In my lab, at least, we nearly exclusively refer to new publications as the latest "Smith paper", and also refer to other people's work by the surname of said person or the surname of the principal investigator in that group. To a lesser extent I'm also worried about citations (i.e., they won't cite my papers as "J. X. Smith", but often just "Smith 2003". Am I over-analyzing?

I use my gmail account precisely for that reason, until i get tenure. I had no trouble with that approach. Further, you infer the colloquial speech inside a field or lab. In that setting, all participants usually exactly know which "Smith paper" is referred to, who is this Smith, what is this "new paper", where is it published, etc. So, you run the risk of your papers being referred to as "the-guy-with-the-unique-name paper" (I'm joking of course :) ), you get the idea, but that doesn't change the acknowledgement of the community nor does it suggest its ignorance.

All good points. Thanks, I'll give it some more thought.

Consider also that a great amount of publications require a bio of the authors, mostly including a picture — In some fields.  Author biographies are almost completely unheard of in others.

Add a name instead of changing it
Using a different name than your legal name can bring all kind of difficulties, however, people often use a subset of their full legal name. While changing names legally can be a hassle, adding an extra first or middle name is much easier.
Assuming that your current name is, say, Eric J. Smith with a middlename already, amending your legal name to e.g. Eric Aardvark J. Smith would allow you to his would allow you to still use the sub-name Eric J. Smith in most normal situations, while having Eric Aardvark Smith (or Aardvark Smith for alphabetic ordering reasons) on your publications and academic business cards.  This has the advantage in case of any misunderstandings with 'non-matching names' an ID with the full name clearly resolves them.

"While changing names legally can be a hassle, adding an extra first or middle name is much easier." Which country?

Using a different name than your legal name can bring all kind of difficulties — It can? Like what?

I publish under a name that is not on my legal documentation (it's close but still different) and it has never caused me a problem.

@JeffE for example, getting reimbursement from bureaucratic institutions if paperwork shows "a different person" for the publication or conference, this is solvable but has caused an occasional headache for colleagues publishing under their maiden names.

@JeffE Border control too, that could prevent you from getting to the conference.

I would suggest that you take into account where your name would come in papers ordered alphabetically in your field.
At least one of the authors of this paper on the subject considered legally changing her name because it has such a notable effect on career outcomes in their field due to conventions about how names are ordered on scientific papers.
http://www.econ.nyu.edu/user/debraj/Misc/LastNames/Einav_Yariv.pdf

In 100 years, everybody in those fields will be named Aaron A. Aaronson …

@Wrzlprmft  Everyone willing to change their name for the sake of career at least. The data implies it works and if the social cost is low or you're planning to do it anyway it's rational to take into account the career effects of your choice.

In biomedicine and cancer research, names are typically ordered by contribution, not alphabetically. Unless I'm mistaken?

Heh.  Story of my life.

And, this effect is not nearly limited to Author lists of published papers.  There's a reason companies have names like "AAAA Exterminators" and "Aardvark Towing".

@Wrzlprmft ...except in fields where the last author also carries prestige and signals seniority.  ("Congratulations, Prof. Aaaaaaabarnathy, on your recent promotion to associate professor with indefinite tenure.  In anticipation of your request, we have taken the liberty of legally changing your name to  Zzzzzzzzymmerman.")

@RBarryYoung Because there's a serious problem with illegally parked aardvarks?

Of course. The only thing I remember about the ATLAS papers about Higgs and similar is that they are Aad et al. :)

Have you looked into using something like ORCID? It will not prevent people from talking about the "Smith paper", but at least it makes things easier to identify as yours, after the fact.
Also, nothing wrong with going with a "von so-and-so", but it seems like more trouble than it is worth....

If you are going to change your name (and I'm not convinced that you need to) why not change or add a middle name? There may be many John Smiths in cancer biology, but I imagine there are few John X. Smiths. Even the relatively poor disambiguation technologies in use at various bibliometric databases can handle middle initials with relative ease.

This is definitely one option. It would solve part of the problem, i.e. people willing to type my whole name in pubmed would find only my publications.
However, I'm more worried about name recognition. In my lab, at least, we nearly exclusively refer to new publications as the latest "Smith paper", and also refer to other people's work by the surname of said person or the surname of the principal investigator in that group. To a lesser extent I'm also worried about citations (i.e., they won't cite my papers as "J. X. Smith", but often just "Smith 2003".
Am I over-analyzing?

In other words, seeing as how there are several prominent researchers publishing under my surname, any reference to a "Smith paper" would probably be lost.
Granted, this is all secondary to my research and its quality, and very much so. Still, it may have an effect.

In my field at least, only one name is written out in full. Although I use my middle initial on papers, this doesn't always make it into citations. A more reliable variant would be to expand a middle name rather than the first, which some people do. This might confuse people a bit if that is not what you are usually called, but there are people who are known (widely) by a nickname, so it might still work out.

I have the same problem like yours since my mother tongue consists only of one-syllable words, each of them are extremely common.
Adding a hyphen between middle name and first name works for me. While it make significantly different in Google search results, nobody will care a hyphen. My university even allows me to use my name with the hyphen in my thesis so that it is consistent with my other papers.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


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Is it appropriate to submit co-authored paper when asked for a writing sample when applying for an academic job?
I'm a grad students on the academic job market (social sciences, US). Many postings ask for 1-2 writing samples. Is it ever appropriate to send in a paper that has a co-author? I do have other sole-authored products I can send in (book chapter, manuscript under review), but this is the only work that's been published in a well known journal in the field. (I was second author.) Would committees rather see co-authored published work or is there a large premium on sole authored writing samples?

A "writing sample" should actually be written by you to, say, 95%, shouldn't it?

Is that the unwritten rule? If so, it sounds like a 2nd authored paper would not be appropriate.

I'm just guessing from the term "writing sample".

The relative value of co-authored versus solo authored articles varies from field to field, so you should really ask your advisor or some other trusted expert from within your field.
With that said, there is nothing in principle that should rule out submission of coauthored articles as writing samples. Obviously, articles where it is clear that you had a large contribution - e.g. articles where you are first author - are preferred. By submitting such an article in a job application package, you are tacitly implying that you took primary responsibility for the writing of the article (or possibly co-primary responsibility).
Here are some more concrete examples:

A solo-authored paper. Yes.
A first-authored paper with your advisor as second author. Yes.
A first-authored paper with several co-authors on a project of your devising and implementation. Probably.
A second-authored paper with another graduate student, the authors are in alphabetical order. Maybe, but it's not ideal.
A conference paper where you are 3rd out of 6 authors. Not appropriate.


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What are the chances for an H4 international masters student to get a teaching job at a US community college?
I have a B.E Civil Engineering and M.tech Environmental Engineering degree from India. Also I have 2 years of teaching experience in an Engineering college in India. Currently I am residing in US. Is it possible for me to get a teaching job in community colleges? How should I prepare myself to get a teaching job here?
To clarify: I have an H4 visa.

Do you already have legal authorization to work in the US?  Community colleges may be less willing to sponsor you for an employment visa.

No. I am in H4 visa now. Can you please suggest some options for me?

You clarified that you have an H4 visa. As you know, you are not normally permitted to work under an H4 visa. Even unpaid tutoring might be considered a violation of the H4 terms. So you would need to first change your visa status by either:

Applying for a green card
Getting your own H1B or other work visa

As far as getting your own H1, unless you are located in a place where there is an absolute dearth of available faculty, I think it highly unlikely that a community college will sponsor a work visa for you. The amount of paperwork that needs to be done is tremendous (the Department of Labor certification itself is an inch thick)-- as well as the filing costs and attorney's fees. They may also have no experience doing this, unlike the international scholar's office at a larger institution. Finally, many CC faculty are part-time so you may not even qualify for a H1B to begin with.
I would ask your spouse to apply for permanent residency for the both of you and then go on the job market once you have employment authorization.

If you are legally permitted to work in the U.S., this should be possible.  Please don't expect a lot, salary-wise.  But it can be a rewarding job.
Obviously, your previous teaching experience is a plus.  If your English is easy for U.S. students to understand, and you are patient about any communication challenges that might arise, that would be another plus.
If there is no full-time opening in your area at present, you could try teaching one or two classes as an adjunct.  This can help you get a foot in the door.


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When I reapply to universities which have previously rejected my applications, do I have to pay application fees again?
I applied to a few US universities last year and they rejected my application because of my low GRE scores. Now I want to reapply again to the same universities.  Can you explain the process to reapply?  My concern is about application fees.  Is it required to pay application fees for the second time?

I don't know, but it's very likely. Application fees are there to cover the cost of processing your application. That cost remains even if you are rejected.

Hi devika. You may apply for multiple universities at the same time.

If you haven't gotten improved GRE scores, then applying again is simply going to be a waste of your time and money.

I edited your question for grammar, punctuation, capitalization, etc.  Please check that it still matches what you want to ask.  I'd recommend that you take more care in writing your application essays than you did for this question!

I know this doesn't necessarily concern the answer to your question, but as @NateEldredge implied, you need to work harder on improving your language skills otherwise GRE scores will be the least of your worries. Wish you the best of luck.

Generally, there is nothing special about a reapplication; you apply just as if you were applying for the first time.  You will submit all the required materials again.  Of course, you will submit updated transcripts and scores, and you will probably have revised or rewritten your application essay, so you'll submit the updated version.  Letters of recommendation will also need to be resubmitted; you should ask your letter writers to update their letters to reflect whatever you have been doing in the last year.  And yes, you do have to pay another application fee.
Most institutions will give your new application a fresh look; the fact that you have previously applied and been rejected should not prejudice them against your current application.  (However, people are human, and if some of the same people are still on the admission committee, they may have some memories of the weaknesses they saw in your previous application.)
Of course, to have a better chance of acceptance this time, you should have made yourself a stronger applicant!  Hopefully you have better GRE scores and stronger letters of recommendation, and can report some additional helpful and relevant coursework or work experience in the year since your last application.

Based on what is mentioned clearly on most university admission pages, this is the correct answer. You are practically applying as if for the first time.

@AbbasJavanJafari Except... hopefully doing a better job.

I think some universities are cheaper to re-apply to, if they keep their applicants on file then there's less administration work to do in order to update and process the application. I got rejected the first time I applied to my chosen University based on academics, but I don't remember having to pay another fee when I re-applied with a portfolio (BFA degree).

In short? Yes.
Application fees cover the administrative costs of reviewing your application. Every time you apply to these schools, you will need to pay the fees.


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Visa requirement query for Indian postdoc applying in UK
I have completed a Ph.D. in India, which is my native country, and am applying for post doc positions in the UK.  However, due to strict visa rules, I am not sure if my application would be shortlisted. In these types of situations, my CV and application file have already been approved by the PI.
However, do universities generally sponsor non-EU candidates like me or  is it the responsibility of the PI to make the proper arrangements? How can I ensure that my job is not denied due to non-academic reasons like visa issues?

tl;dr: Read the job description.
Details: The job you're applying to is advertised publicly, and as a part of a job description it is normally explicitly stated whether or not the particular University is willing to sponsor the visa application for the non-EU candidates. If unsure, ask the contact person or/and their HR department.
If the university invites only those having a right to work in the UK to apply, there is nothing you can do about it — find another position to apply.
If the university is willing to sponsor the work visa for a candidate, there is nothing you (and your PI) need to worry about — the process will be handled by their HR department. Just make sure you meet Tier2 visa requirements.
Note that there are certain conditions for the University to apply for a Tier2 visa. Normally, the position should be advertised for at least 1 month. Also, the University should be a Tier2 sponsor (check the list).

I believe that if the PI accepted your application, he/she knows they can accept international applicants. You should just make sure this is the case by emailing the PI directly about this.
Once you get the offer, it is still not certain that you get the visa. The UKVI (UK visa and immigration) authority and the university giving you the so-called COS (certificate of sponsorship, which is a requirement to get the UK visa (Tier-2)) are two totally independent entities. This means that the UK university cannot guarantee you'll get the visa.
For most cases you should get the visa, however because of many factors, most prominently inefficiency and mistakes made by UKVI, your visa might get delayed.
It is also quite rare that the university will pay you for issuing the visa as far as I know.

I just want to ask to Dmitry's answer:

Beside Tier 2, Tier 5 is also an option for post doc (actually most post docs I know are in Tier 5). Compare to Tier 2, Tier 5 is much easier and faster to get, and it will cost the university less (if any). Moreover, only a limited number of Tier 2 visas will be issued per year. However, if you intend to apply for permernant residency, then the time in Tier 5 will not be counted, you need to stay 5 years under Tier 2.
Most university will not require you to have a working visa (Tier 1, 2, 5) to do a post-doc. Even if you already have one, you still apply to a new visa when changing the sponsor.
To know if the university will sponsor the visa, reading the job description is not enough. You need to ask the PI. My own experience: I once applied to a post doc which stated clearly in job description that applicants have to show proof of work permit in the UK on the interview day. I didn't have one, because I'm a Tier 4 student. But it turned out it was not necessary, and many applicants did interview via skype from their home country.


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Is it ethical for a professor to get a graduate student to complete a manuscript peer review that the professor has been assigned?
Is it ethical to a professor to accept a manuscript for review, and then have a graduate student referee it? What about assisting as a referee?
I understand that graduate students can be involved in the review process- this isn't my question. As far as the journal/editors are aware, the professor is the referee, but in actuality, the student is performing the review.
If an assigned referee would like a student to participate, how could this be done properly?

No, I think it is not ethical to "subcontract" referee reports without disclosing this to the editor.  It seems however to be a common practice in some fields.  I believe this has already come up on this site...

@PeteL.Clark Thanks for your comment. I had searched, but hadn't found any other questions. Sorry if this is a duplicate.

See e.g. http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5662/is-it-common-to-review-papers-assigned-to-your-supervisor

Is it ethical to a professor to accept a manuscript for review, and then have a graduate student referee it?

Though commonplace in some fields (or among some professors), the practice of passing the review to a student, without the agreement of the editor, is utterly unethical for at least two reasons:

The editor expects a review from that specific expert s/he required, not from a ghost one.
The work of the student would not be credited.

Moreover, in some cases, publishers ask to treat the manuscript as confidential, and in that case passing it to someone else can be considered as a breach of confidentiality.
The proper way to handle this passage is the following: the professor should write to the editor refusing the review and suggesting the student (or any other person) as a possible substitute, possibly outlining the credentials of this person to serve as reviewer. Then, the editor will decide what to do with this piece of information: either pass the review to the suggested reviewer or choose another reviewer.

I would consider manuscripts I received to referee as confidential whether or not this is mentioned anywhere explicitly by the editor.

This does seem to vary with the field - in some fields, it's an expected part of the process both for the review and for the grad student. I'd still play it safe and just check with the editor before delegating, and of course review their review.

@rpavlik: Is it really expected, or is it just something that people in certain circles get away with?  Have you ever seen or received explicit referee instructions sanctioning this action?

Well, I've been told it was expected (from a prof who also taught the responsible research course), and have also seen emails from editors/chairs. Now, I think it's primarily (only?) been conferences in my case, and while I'm not usually credited that I know of, the primary reviewer doesn't just take my review and pass it on, they moreso use it as a starting point. Haven't seen it in explicit instructions, though I think I would have been more comfortable with that.

While I agree that unacknowledged reviewing is unethical, I would like to offer a counter-point on how I have often seen review "subcontracting" done ethically.
In communities that acknowledge and support the practice of involving students / postdocs / etc. in reviewing, there is often actually an official means of an invited reviewer designating the person they "subcontract" the review to as a sub-reviewer.  This puts both the original and the secondary reviewer officially into the process and is fully transparent to the editor.
EasyChair is an example of a platform that supports this, and when I am acting as Program Chair of an EasyChair conference, I appreciate this feature greatly.  It means that I know which reviews have been done by a junior rather than the original PI, which also most definitely affects how I weight the judgement thereby expressed.

Does the sub-reviewer get official acknowledgement that s/he can see for her/imself?  (so the junior person knows s/he gets credit)

@Kimball I can't say for certain in general, but EasyChair tends to always email everybody involved unless they specifically opt out.

As an additional point, this sort of subcontracting can also be used as training for a PhD student, if done properly. (This is also mentioned in the link given in the comments of the question.)

The EasyChair situation seems to be complicated. Whenever I've reviewed for an EasyChair-organized conference, I've always been referred to as a "subreviewer", even though I was contacted directly by the PC member. EasyChair seems to believe that PC members, by default, do all reviewing themselves and anyone they ask to review a paper is a "subreviewer", rather than a "reviewer".

@DavidRicherby That seems very odd to me: I have done a lot of EasyChair conferences in one role or another, and have never seen this behavior.

Strange. I've reviewed for about ten, I guess, and have always been referred to as a "subreviewer".

@DavidRicherby Interesting: I guess our respective communities have different ways of organizing how they use EasyChair...

My EasyChair experience matches what @DavidRicherby described.  The PC members to whom a paper is assigned are called reviewers, and other people to whom the reviewers delegate the work are called sub-reviewers.

I disagree with the other voices here. Although it would seem unethical to suggest that a professor has reviewed a document which has only had a student overview, there are two points to make:

Peer review is about guarantees of quality, not about processes achieved
The graduate's review may not be the final review submitted by the professor

In any review-based system, no one can guarantee that any review is perfect; only the aggregate effect of many such reviews creating a resource of high quality. Thus the review process for a highly respected journal is much more stringent than that of an 'easier' one.
On the side of the reviewer, this is a responsibility-based role, not a procedural one; what is important is that the professor is willing to stake a measure of their reputation on the review; if the graduate knows more detail of the field and the professor trusts their judgement, it could be a more thorough review than the professor could provide. As long as the professor judges the reviewer to be competent, that is their responsibility.
Finally, having a student review a paper may well be only part of the process; give it to a couple of students, see if they come up with anything. If they don't understand it, or they discover flaws, then the professor can review the paper herself in that light. Just because the graduate student has reviewed a paper doesn't mean that the professor will just pass the review on without comment.
The key, though, is that the journal is only asking that the professor provides responsible and competent feedback, and signs off on the review. How the professor reaches that goal is up to them, and peers that provide poor reviews should be excluded from the review pool (and associated privileges) by the journal. There is no magic to a professor reading a paper, and their judged competence to do so is only based on the university's assignment of professorship and the academic's history of research. Everything builds on expectations and responsibilities, not on some procedure having been carried out; the procedure is only there to make those responsibilities explicit.

I agree. Reviews were passed to me both as a student and as a postdoc, and as long as the official reviewer also looks at the paper, I don't see it as a problem. It would have been good reviewing practice for a career in academia.

I have seen the following situation. Professor X is assigned to review a paper, which is also publicly available on the arXiv. Professor X assigns a student to read and present the paper in a seminar, and during the course of discussion between the student and Professor X, an error is found. Professor X then summarizes the error in his or her referee report and recommends rejection. This seems pretty kosher. The only negative I see is that X did not acknowledge the student's contribution in his or her letter. But since this would only be seen by one other person, the managing editor, I'm not sure how important this is.


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Whether to use numbers or abbreviated names as a citation style?
Many papers use numbered references (e.g.: [1], [2]). Is this considered a good style or even a rule or would it be acceptable to use abbreviated names of the authors and year of publication (e.g. [Smith09] for J. Smith, 2009)? I find the abbreviated name reference style a lot more informative as after a while of reading papers on a given topic it’s usually easy to identify the cited publication without the need to look at the full bibliography.  I have seen this style used in books and some editorials but it is not common.

Many Humanities journals use a numbered footnote citation style, e.g. Chicago.

Thank you for explanation. What confused me is that each journal defines it's own style and not each publisher. E.g. journals published by Springer on closely related research areas differ WRT system used.

The two systems are equally good but used in different communities/journals etc. You therefore need to check what is normally used in your field and when submitting manuscripts, of course, check what the specific journal uses. The fact that you say "most journals use" indicates you are in a field that uses numbered or Vancouver style (author-number) references. The author-date, or Harvard-system, is used by most journals in my field.

You don't get to choose
Although as a reader I vastly prefer the name-year system, as I don't have to look up most of the references, the advantages are rather irrelevant - in almost all cases, you don't get to choose, as you'll have to comply with the citation standard of the publication.
The journal, conference or thesis standard generelly will list the citation style required, and that's it.
In some fields one or the other style is more common, but in any case you may encounter a publication where a different style is required, so check first.

+1 for the very correct headline. (Even though I personally strongly prefer the number-only style, as I find it much easier to find entries in the bibliography when they are sorted by only one criterion (a number) rather than several nested criteria (name, possibly year, then possibly letter).)

It surely depends on the field we are talking about.
In medicine the number method now is the standard, probably because it improves overall readability of the text. Important references are often cited literally ("Smith et al. demonstrated that... [58]") and general statements by a collection of other researchers ("Many workgroups found...[23-27,57,89]).
Especially in books and reviews where the citations go in the hundreds You appreciate if the text is not clutterd by parentheses with long names but has only small-print numbers in exponential style.

The name/year system is much better, and you should use it whenever possible.  In particular, if you work in a field with preprints your preprints should use name/year or initial/year even if the journal will later force you to change it.  The reason is that name/year communicates relevant information, while number communicates no information at all.  Just giving numbered references means many readers won't know anything about who did what work.

In math/CS you mostly use [1,2] or [Lot02,Zai04]. You can choose (unlike what most other answers impose) either of them, note for instance that both amsplain and amsalpha exist and either of them can be used in AMS publications.
It's a matter of habits which style the authors choose. The alpha/amsalpha [Lot02] style is better in most cases. However, there are communities where a numerical style is strongly prefered, moreover with the bibliography sorted by the order of appearance, and with compression turned on, because they cite hundreds of articles. And well, you don't want your in-text citations look like [ABC00a,ABC00b,ABC00c,ABC00d,ACE00a,ACE00b,ABC01a,BC00a,BC00b,BC01,BC02], when it can be [1--11].

Maybe there are instances where you can choose, but it is not correct to claim that "you can [generally] choose". I am totally used to submission guidelines such as this one that very explicitly, and without leaving any choice, say: "The format of references is a numbered list at the end of the article, ordered alphabetically by first author, and referenced by numbers in brackets e.g. [1]."


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Can my PhD thesis supervisor be a reviewer for my paper?
I want to know whether my PhD thesis supervisor (with whom I have co-authored many papers) is allowed to be a reviewer for one of my journal submissions?

When you asked your PhD thesis supervisor, what did they say?

In many cases this would be inappropriate. PhD advisors are considered to have a permanent conflict-of-interest when it comes to their advisees.
Some conferences/journals relax this condition and allow for reviews from former collaborators if there has been no collaboration in the past 5-6 years (or some similar time window). You should check the rules around CoI for the particular journal if these are publicly available.
However: it is best to not have your PhD advisor listed as a potential reviewer. If the Associate Editor or Editor-in-Chief makes that call -- to have an advisor review the advisee's work -- it is a different matter but one should not rely on obtaining reviews from former advisors.

"Some conferences/journals relax this condition and allow for reviews from former collaborators if there has been no collaboration in the past 5-6 years." This is indeed true, but it's not clear to me if these statements include thesis advisors. I'd expect the requirement to be a bit more stringent for them over other collaborators.

I know a good handful of people who have so many collaborators that there would be nobody to review their paper, especially since the community is very small. In general, the criteria used here is: Not in permanent, contact, not sharing funding, not sharing university/lab, no strong past connections (which comprises advising).

The question is ultimately one for your advisor and the journal editor to answer, but it certainly does not seem like a best practice.  If for instance you are being asked to suggest possible reviewers, I think you should never suggest your thesis advisor.
I could perhaps imagine a situation in which your work is so difficult or technical that the thesis advisor needs to be consulted at some point in order to vouch for it or address its correctness.  However, I think this should be avoided if at all possible: as the tag indicates, this is a clear conflict of interest.
From the perspective of the thesis advisor: if I were asked to referee a paper by a current student I would automatically turn it down, giving this conflict of interest as the reason.  If I were asked to referee a paper of a former student I would write back to the editor informing them that they are my former student, ask them whether they really want me to referee the paper, and take it from there.

I've been asked to referee papers by my former Ph.D. students, and I did what you suggest.  I wrote to the editors to make sure they're aware of the situation, and then I refereed the paper iff they still wanted me to.

@AndreasBlass and the result?

@Ooker Both results have occurred.  "Go ahead and referee it" was the more common, but at least one editor decided to find another referee.

It's sometimes said that the purpose of a reviewer is to stop the author publishing something which will make them look foolish. If you see reviewing as collaboration, rather than conflict, then I see no problem with a phd supervisor wishing to protect the reputation of their ex-student by improving their paper.

@JeremyMiles this is an excellent point, but as more and more journals count on the reviewer to assess the importance of the work, this is where the thesis advisor may have the strongest bias. A responsible scientist will hopefully always be impartial with regards to correctness, but it's hard to be impartial when "importance" is so subjective already.

I've also been asked to referee papers by my former students.  I just said no.

If the journal has asked you to suggest potential or preferred reviewers, you should not ideally include the name of your PhD supervisor. However, if yours is a niche field, and your choice of preferred reviewers is limited, then you could perhaps include his name, adding a note disclosing the potential conflict of interest and stating that you added his name due to a lack of other options.
However, if the journal editor invites your supervisor to review your paper, then it's up to them to decide. Usually in such cases, the referee discloses the conflict of interest, as mentioned in the last part of Pete L. Clark's answer.


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How to correct a fundamental error in a series of papers made by a colleague of your adviser?
I am a PhD student in mathematics. I recently found a fundamental error in a method used in a series of papers. My adviser confirmed that. One of those wrong papers was authored by a researcher who had several works with my adviser. I found that this error can be fixed using an approach which I found in some old works. So I started to write an article about this. I am just asking if I should tell my adviser to contact him and inform him about this error. Or contact all the authors of those papers. Or just continue writing my paper and cite their works explaining how their approach is wrong.

Talk to your adviser as soon as possible. I'm a bit surprised that in your previous interactions your adviser did not already tell you whether and how he planned to contact the author(s) of the fallacious papers -- especially given that at least one was your adviser's collaborator.
Here is my advice (it comes from a pure mathematician, if that is relevant to you):

Spend up to one work day writing up a careful description of the error.  If a result is false, give a counterexample.  If you can give one specific, easy to verify counterexample, start with that.  Then if you have a further sense of the "terrain of counterexamples" -- e.g. if you know the result is never true, or you know that it is true precisely under some additional hypothesis, then include that.

The point of this is that in many cases what we perceive to be errors in mathematical work stem from misunderstandings between the reader and the author, including different use of the same terminology.  I would say that approximately half of all the errors I think I see in my colleagues' work turn out to have such innocent explanations.  Another big percentage of suspected errors stem from misunderstandings of the part of the reader: it is one thing if you come across a result that contradicts another result you have already written up.  However, if you are just reading then the odds are fair that the cognitive dissonance in your mind is not actually caused by a mistake in the paper: for instance when I read other people's work, I try to do so with an eye towards its relationships to my own work and my own problems.  As a proud student of the "Richard P. Feynman school of situational genius" I heartily endorse this approach, but sometimes it turns out that what I think is an error is due to an entanglement of "my situation" and the author's.  Finally, when an error has actually been made, there is usually (very understandable) psychological resistance on the part of the author.  This is why it helps to arrive with individual, crisp counterexamples.

If the theorem is correct but the proof is faulty, the situation may be more nebulous.

Everyone has different standards of what constitutes an acceptable proof.  Moreover, mathematicians are still human beings, and the percentage of inessential slipups we make in the course of our written work is non-negligible.  Most people do not appreciate their expository flaws and bone-headed but unimportant mistakes being taken as evidence that their proofs are incorrect.  In fact, where possible, when you claim that someone's proof is faulty it is an honorable thing to give them a chance to correct it.
In this case you speak of a "fundamental error", which I guess means that it is worse than the relatively innocuous mistakes described above.  Do you mean though that the theorems are still true, and you know this because you know how to prove them?  If so:

Spend up to two or three work days writing up as much as possible of what you feel is a correct proof.  If you can only give a sketch, so be it, but try to include all the ideas which convince you that your argument is correct.  Your target audience includes people who are deeply committed to and knowledgeable in this particular area: you can write accordingly.

I would meet with your advisor as soon as you have written each document.  (If you can write both in one day, great.)  Then the question becomes obvious and unavoidable: what should you do with these documents?  If he can vouch for their accuracy, I think you will certainly want to contact the author of the flawed paper, but whether to do this yourself or through your adviser is something you should ask him about.
Why do I place time limitations on these tasks?  It is because of the following important observation, which in my understanding is somewhat peculiar to mathematics:

Even if the author's proof is wrong and yours is right, your corrected proof may or may not be publishable.

There are too many nuances here for me to go over them all, but just one quick thing: you say that you fixed the result using material from old works.  Because of this, it is possible (perhaps; I don't know the situation) that the authors and/or the editors in question will still regard the mistake as a "slip up" (even if you do not).  A math paper which does not contain "new results", "new ideas" or "new techniques" may be very hard to publish...let me readily admit that this practice is not entirely fair or wise, but it most certainly is extant.  So you don't want to spend substantial work time on what may end up being a corrigendum written by the author but identifying you as the provider of both the problem and the solution.
Good luck.

Thank you very much for all the details you provided. The theorem in question is a "To good to be true theorem". The first time I saw it I said "No way". I checked the proof and it was a beautiful proof, I said to myself "Why no one in the past didn't have this idea ?". It was very simple. But I still couldn't believe it. So after detailed examinations, I found that the theorem uses a Lemma but the conditions to use the Lemma are not all satisfied. I think the counterexample is difficult to find. What I did is proving the theorem by a different approach with additional assumptions.

@user165633: Thanks for the additional details.  It sounds like both the counterexample and the partial fix are of real value.  I would recommend that you follow my advice (especially the part about talking to your adviser).  Honestly, this does sound like a good situation for you to get a publication out of it...but you should still proceed carefully and not spend too much time writing it up until you learn how this will be received.

I think it is important for you to write it up for your own benefit, as well as the benefit of future researchers.  The potential political situation associated with this should be explored as well. http://mathoverflow.net/questions/31337/how-do-i-fix-someones-published-error has some advice, one key part of which is to talk to more than one senior person who is familiar with the authors and the situation.  It is important to fix things, but it is also important to pay due respect and care to whom and what came before.  Talk to more than one person about how to proceed.

I think it's really important to make sure that your refutation is ironclad. So, it does make sense to write it up carefully and show to the parties concerned.

@user165633: Assuming that you do have both a clear demonstration of the problem and at least a sketch of a correct proof, there's also the possibility that the original author might be willing to co-author a paper about it with you. In many ways, that would be the ideal scenario for you, and it's one more reason to get in touch with the author sooner rather than later.

I'd also strongly encourage you to try to find a counterexample, even (or especially) if it's difficult. If you can't find one for the full theorem (and if so, that's interesting in itself), at least try to find one where the incorrectly applied lemma fails, even if the final result still holds. Also, since you say you have a new proof with additional assumptions, try to construct an example of what happens if those assumptions don't hold. Does the full theorem fail (great, you have your counterexample) or does it still hold (which means your new proof might not be as general as it could be)?


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Which citation style is the most concise and has the least impact on word count?
I'm writing a research proposal with a small maximum word count. References are included in this word count. Fortunately, the citation style is not specified.
I was wondering if there is any (widely accepted) citation style that will generally produce the shortest citations. As far as I've found, MLA seems to be the shortest as it switches author names to "et al." when there's four or more authors, whereas other citation styles that I've looked at only switch with a higher number of authors. Is there any style that would consistently produce shorter citations?

You could number your references, which is typical in the IEEE format.

Actually, now MLA switches to et al. after the first one. That said, places that ask for MLA papers generally don't have ultra strict word or page limits like in the sciences.

As @Adam Bosen commented, you will be hard-pressed to find a more compact in-text citation format than IEEE.  A single citation is written [1] and several citations [2-5].
The bibliography is then listed in numeric order.

Presumably, superscript numbers would be shorter (i.e., no brackets). And by citation style, you also need to think about referencing format.

Accepting this answer as it gave me the shorted bibliography of the mentioned citation styles.

Coming back to this question when writing a grant with very strict word limit, I discovered that the most concise citation AND bibliography style must be the Science (without titles).
Example:

1.R. Hisakata, S. Nishida, A. Johnston, Curr. Biol. 26, 1911–1915 (2016).

You can find the citation-style-language csl file in the official csl styles github repository, that you can download and use in Zotero, Mendeley, RefWorks, etc.
If you're an EndNote person, see the style file in the most popular answer to this ResearchGate question

Vancouver is fairly short. See this guide. It is particularly common in medicine.
In terms of in-text citations, it is short.

It uses numbers as citations.
There are variations. But the shortest is to put the numbers as superscripts without parentheses. You can also include ranges like 1-5 for five references.

In terms of the actual references, Vancouver is also quite terse:

It uses journal abbreviations, so the length of each citation is often shorter
It doesn't require dois
End page numbers often omit the leading number e.g., 258-60 would indicate 258 to 260
It omits full stops after author initials
It omits comma between author surname and initial

It is worth noting that many of these features will reduce character counts and page counts but not word counts. E.g., using "J" rather than "Journal" in the journal name will not remove a word. Thus, the benefits of these tweaks in terms of giving you space to add additional content will depend on whether your constraints are defined relative to word count or page count.
As an aside, I think the ease with which you can include heaps of references using Vancouver is a major reason why medical journals have higher impact factors.

This option is hard to beat when the bibliography is also counting towards your word/page count (e.g. in a grant application).
https://anton.cromba.ch/2016/02/07/a-minimal-citation-stylefor-grant-proposals/
Just in case the above page ever goes down, you can download the raw CSL from here, save it on your computer, and load it into Zotero/Mendeley.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
What percentage of applicants on a wait list for masters program generally get accepted?
My application has been put on the wait list at my top choice institution (unfunded masters, about 10% acceptance rate). The Department said they may not be able to let me know the final decision until after April 15 (which I understand). However, I need to know the decision before April 15 to respond to other offers. In order to determine my chance, I have the following questions:

While this may vary depending  on the programs, is there a general percentage of applications out of the entire pool being put on wait list? If not what factors determine this?
Are wait listed applicants ranked? if not, how do programs determine which one to accept off wait lists?
Should I let them know that they are my top choice and if accepted I will almost surely attend?

The answers to your questions depend on the university/department, but are all reasonable questions to ask. It would be perfectly reasonable to send an email along the lines of

Thank you for letting me know about the wait listing decision. I understand how competitive the admissions process is. I wanted to let you know that XXX is my top choice and if offered a place I would accept it immediately. As I have also received an offer from YYY that I need to respond to by April 15, would you mind if I checked on my status closer to the deadline?

This will hopefully open a dialog and they might say something like "given your place on the wait list it is unlikely we will know anything prior to the deadline" or "given your place in the wait list the picture should be a lot clearer closer to the deadline.

If you want to play it mean, you will accept the second best offer on April 14th. But you will not give up on your first choice. If your waitlist subsequently clears and you get a confirmed place, then you will have to withdraw with regret from your other offer.
Some people would suggest it is ethically unsound to accept firm offers in the knowledge that you may later renounce them. I don't really agree but that is your decision.

You should ask a question about if it is ethically unsound to accept and then later renounce. I am not sure how I feel about it.

If you are interested, go ahead and ask it ;)

I'd also be interested in seeing the answer. Of course, I also think @StrongBad's answer is a better compromise that avoids having to decide whether to take a course that is ethically dubious at best.

@StrongBad Thank you for your suggestion. So by asking if it is ethical to accept and then later renounce, I am letting the Department know that I may take that course of action. Will that make me less a moral character to them? My second choice is also an unfunded masters program, so I'd not feel as horrible as to accept a Ph.D. offer and then later renounce it.

@user90593 NO! That comment was not directed at you. It was a suggestion to ask about the ethics of it on AC.SE. I would not ask the department about it. Sorry for the confusion.

@StrongBad Thanks! I thought it was a quite odd to ask that.

This choice affects the student for the rest of her life. Certainly for the first few years of her programme and likely the career choices made immediately afterwards. Oppositely, it is very annoying (paperwork, re-advertising, emotionally) when a student withdraws unexpectedly, but at worse the faculty and the staff will forget it completely after 12 months.
Now, the department is playing a game by setting the acceptance deadline earlier than the competitors. Make no mistake, it is not by accident. I have no problem with an applicant playing the game as well as the institutions do.

But this is my opinion, and I do not seek to present it as any more than ambiguous. So my answer is put there so that the obvious does not escape the ambitious student looking to do best for herself.


text:
Publish the paper without letting know one of authors?
I and one of my peers prepared a journal paper out of his master thesis. We submitted it first to one of the well-known conferences of the field and it got accepted and we let the other coauthors know (including his professor, who is a prominent researcher in his field). They seemed to be very satisfied.
Later we decided to extend the paper and I submitted it to a journal. I was not aware that he had not told the others about the submission. The paper was accepted by the journal. This time my peer refuses to make his professor aware.
Now I wonder about proceeding with the publication? Is it ethical? What are the consequences if I finalize the publication, for me?

I am not sure I got things right, but it seems this needs to be said: all authors of a publication must agree before submission to submit.

my mistake was accepting the responsibility of corresponding

Arno is right 100%
Violation of journal's rule can lead ultimately to retraction of the already published paper. For example, if one of co-authors later complain.
You can check various stories behind the retractions:  http://retractionwatch.com/

Thank you, so the consequence is what you mentioned. I probably suspend the process until I receive consent letters.

One must not submit a paper for publication without the consent of all coauthors. In my experience, most submission systems will point this out explicitly, but it remains true regardless of such notice.
It seems that for the first submission to a conference, your coauthors retroactively consented (maybe grudgingly, maybe happily). Nevertheless, you should have asked before -- not just informed, by the way.
You then committed the same infraction again, and submitted to a journal without everyones prior consent. Going ahead with the publication without your coauthors consent would be even worse (drastically so!) than the mere submission, so this is not an option. Your professor coauthor would almost certainly find out.
The appropriate step for damage control is to contact all coauthors immediately, apologize profoundly for your mistake, and ask them whether they want to go ahead with the publication. If everyone agrees, go ahead (and never do this again). If someone disagrees, you need to withdraw your submission and apologize to the editor (and indirectly referees) for wasting their time.

+1 for advice. No question, my submission of the work was wrong and must personally contact other authors rather than accepting verbal promise of my peer, but at least I am trying to ask the right thing to do  while it does not affect me.

As mentioned before by others, all authors must agree when submitting. And if it's a renown journal like you said, they will most likely send an email to each author to confirm they agree with the publication before it goes under press.

In theory, all authors should contribute to a paper being written. If you intend to write one, the best is to warn potential contributors beforehand, and ask them  before about agreement and contribution. In continuing work, preparing the paper with a few workers can be understood, as long as the others are warned about the future submission.
Otherwise, adding co-authors without prior information is unethical, as they have no option to withdraw or participate. Only acknowledgement and citation do require prior consent.


text:
Should co-first authors be listed in alphabetical order?
The field of research is the biological sciences.
Graduate student B worked on the project for 2 years: he did experiments to gather genome-wide data and analyzed part of that data. He defined the direction and feasibility of the project, and developed the methodology; if it were not to him, there wouldn't be a paper.
Post-doc A picked up the project for 1 year after graduate student B left the lab, analyzed the data, wrote the paper, contributed 4 key figures (exactly half of the figures) and at least half of the scientific conclusions.
It was agreed upon that A and B would be co-first authors, but currently they are listed as B, A, et al.
Do you think A would be entitled to feel some kind of injustice at not having his name listed in alphabetical order? Is there a consensus that co-first authors should be in alphabetical order and is the editor likely to point this out?
[edit] Additional information:
In this field, you can specify 'co-first authors' at the time of submission, and it is written as such under the author's list on the final publication as "X an Y have contributed equally to this work". Which of course is a big source of conflict.
Thanks :)

If the authors of a paper are listed as Bravo, Alpha, Charlie.... then what does it mean to assert that Alpha is a "first author"?  If you list someone as unalphabetically second, then that doesn't that imply precisely that they are not a first author?

Yes, this is precisely why A is feeling left out. Because it means his contribution as a co-first is not properly acknowledged, and he is expecting the scientific community will see right through this.

Expecting the scientific community to see through this suggests that there is some other possible way to view this.  But to me it sounds strictly contradictory: does B in fact feel that listing the authors as B,A,C,... is compatible with the agreement that A is a co-first author?  Why??

B isn't participating in writing the manuscript at all and has no clue what is going on at the moment. He is just contacted from time to time to make sure about this or that or where some files are on the hard drive. Advisor agreed to co-first authorship but then listed the authors as such in the draft. A is hesitant to speak out. My speculation is that advisor wants to "stay loyal" to B because he was there before A and spent the "most time" on the project.

Thank you. The whole affair does sound suspicious to me. 'A' should try to talk to the advisor.

I don't see any way to view this other than as a misunderstanding or miscommunication.  (Not necessarily an innocuous misunderstanding: perhaps someone is trying to pull a fast one of some sort.)
I am a mathematician, so maybe I am especially sensitive to logical issues, but I can't think of a situation in which someone tells me something that sounds like a logical contradiction in which I wouldn't just say, "I'm sorry: I must be confused because that sounds contradictory.  Could you please explain it again?"
My only guess at the resolution of the contradiction is that someone is in fact trying to change their mind about the ordering of the authors.  I know little about the conventions and nuances of author ordering (because in pure mathematics the order is almost always strictly alphabetical), but I do think I understand the meanings of all the terms involved, so I can only imagine that if you submit a paper to a journal saying "by Bravo, Alpha, Charlie....Please note that Bravo and Alpha are co-first authors" then the editors will respond by calling attention to the contradiction.  What else?

When talking about Grad Student B, you said

if it were not to him, there wouldn't be a paper.

If that's not a good definition of "most important contributor", I don't know what is. B should be the first author. If you want to make sure that A gets due credit, and the journal in question allows this, I would suggest adding a footnote specifying who did what (I typically ask my undergrads to do this when they write joint term papers).

I actually think that is not a good definition of "most important contributor" because it can apply to more than one coauthor.  In fact, in my field (mathematics), many people feel that "if not for me there wouldn't be a paper" is what it takes for one's contribution to merit coauthorship at all.  This standard applies to most or all of my collaborative work with non-student-coauthors.

But +1 for the suggestion to actually explain what people did: I find this to be a remarkably direct solution to these issues of "author signification", practice it myself when relevant, and wonder why it is not more common.

Very nice suggestion! Actually, A explained the contributions succinctly in the Acknowledgments section, as should be common practice, but the advisor suggested deleting it because the journal doesn't "require" it (by the way I would be very surprised if a journal doesn't "allow" it).

Actually, I would say that this is precisely what alerted A and made him start to feel that his contribution may not be properly acknowledged.

Should co-first authors be listed in alphabetical order?

How is being co-first authors supposed to work in general? I come from a field where authors are typically ordered by contribution, but, by definition, there has to be exactly one first author. Being the first author of a paper is not some honorary title that can be split - it is simply the first gal/guy on the author list. Hence, by convention in my field, this is also the gal/guy that the authors have agreed upon has contributed most to the paper and should receive most recognition.
What is important here is that just because "A" is the second author of the paper, it does not imply that he did not do anything substantial. It merely means that the authors have agreed that her/his intellectual and technical contribution was at least a tiny bit less central to the paper as "B"s.

Do you think A would be entitled to feel some kind of injustice at not having his name listed in alphabetical order? Is there a consensus that co-first authors should be in alphabetical order and is the editor likely to point this out?

No, "A" has no right to require alphabetical ordering. The editor will not care, because how would he even know that "B" was supposed to be a co-first author?
The more important question here is whether "A" has a right to feel injustice because she/he in fact believes that her/his contribution was in fact larger than "B"s, hence, that "A" should be the first author. This is a question that we cannot answer. Note that the number of figures contributed per author does not seem extremely important. Likewise, who ultimately submits the paper is not the deciding factor. That "B" has spent multiple years working on the project sounds like she/he had in fact a lot of impact on the work, though (assuming that she/he did in fact not just idle around and procrastinate, which we cannot tell of course).

The editor will not care, because how would he even know that "B" was supposed to be a co-first author? >>In my field, you can specify 'co-first authors' at the time of submission, and it is written as such under the author's list on the final publication as "X an Y have contributed equally to this work". Which of course is a big source of conflict.

I've been in a similar situation. Getting offended won't help anything. Alphabetical order is just as arbitrary as random order.
But on your personal CV and website, feel free to list yourself first if you are indeed a co-primary author.

NO, your CV needs to list authors the way they are on the paper. You are free, and should, however, denote the co-first authorship.

Changing the order of authors on your CV is a major no-no. Many scientists I know would disqualify a candidate who did this, even with a co-equal list.


text:
Choosing between MS Word, PDF, and latex formats when submitting a manuscript for publication when all are allowed?
I've been working on an article, and for ease of collaboration among co-authors and advisers I have used Google Docs thus far, so I'll likely need to do at least a little post-formatting once in .doc format. In addition, I use linux and LibreOffice when I have to, and I generally dislike using MS products.
I'm now preparing the article to submit and the journal I am considering accepts a wide range of file formats: .doc, .docx, .rtf, & .pdf (with .tex files after acceptance).
I feel inclined to put things in LaTeX since I am well-versed and like the idea of having finer control of the appearance of things, but it will certainly take a bit more time and I am ignorant of the layout process journals use when preparing an article.
Is there any real benefit of using LaTeX or another format when submitting an article to a journal (in this case PLOS One)?

A side note: if you don't know it already, should you decide to convert the document to LaTeX, you may consider the usage of pandoc.

As per automatically typesetting and ease of use is concerned, I would go with LaTeX. (given that you are comfortable handling the syntax, as mentioned you already are)

My two cents ...send rtf or pdf or latex ... do not send docx ... I have a Mac, have not purchased Microsoft Word for many versions, and equations in docx files sometimes come out wrong in the default Mac readers for docx.

@DSVA This was kind of my thought. If I just dump my google doc, and upload my figures that is certainly faster if the LaTeX I make is just scrapped anyhow. The one benefit I see, besides Julius's point about pre-print sharing, is I can be sure my LaTeX generating tables/equations fit visually with the text.

TL;DR: Two considerations may speak for Word: possible differences between submission and publication requirements, and ease of collaboration and review.

The answers so far have sung the praises of LaTeX, and with good reason, but here is a caveat. You should try and determine whether the publication has a different requirement for the final version than the submission, just in case.
This happened to me with IEEE Computer last year. I have an article appearing in the July issue. When it was submitted about a year ago, I used LaTeX (despite some of my coauthors being unfamiliar with it), but when the magazine accepted it, they required me to convert it to Word!  I found a tool to help with this but it was still a lot of extra effort.
I imagine this requirement arose because the magazine uses a professional editor to revise it prior to publication.  Most publications are in journals rather than magazines and therefore aren't faced with this. (Or perhaps some journals do this too.). But because your question hit close to home and there will be some for whom this is applicable, I'm mentioning here.
Putting aside the question of whether a Word might actually be required, another point is the ease of collaboration and review.  In this case, the OP has chosen to use Google Docs to edit, which certainly makes tracking changes and comments easy. Sending around Word has that effect too, whereas LaTeX requires a lot of hacks (macros to include or omit comments, latexdiff to markup changes, etc.) it's not like you're done as soon as you submit: you may quite likely have revisions to deal with.
Bottom line: while I find it easier to prepare initially in LaTeX, if you need to move from Docs to either Word or LaTeX, it seems likely it's easier to switch to Word and continue the submission cycle from there.

I appreciate the anecdote. Given my lack of experience in this arena, it is these experiences I hope to learn about.

I use git to track changes in latex, and it works pretty well most of the time... The only requirement is to NOT write entire paragraphs in a single line.

Anything that can let you store a snapshot is useful,  since then you can run latexdiff. The issue in my case was the requirement to convert.

That all depends on the journal you're submitting to. Quite some journals that accept Latex, also provide a template to use. With a template available and knowledge of Latex, it should be fairly easy to convert the GoogleDoc to Latex if you download as HTML and then use eg Pandoc to convert to Latex (explained here).
But people who are not comfortable with Latex, are likely better of using another option. Converting from GoogleDocs to .doc or .docx generally also requires an in-between step using PDF, and will generally give some layout issues, but when a paper is bound to be submitted it's not really the time to learn Latex.

Thanks for the great answer. I've currently selected Fred's, as it pertained more specifically to what I was curious about, but all input here has been helpful to me.

It depends a bit on the journal, but after acceptance most journals do the entire formatting from scratch. They may give you LaTeX templates, but that's just to give you an idea of what it will look like in the end and how many pages your paper will consist of.
There may be a big benefit to producing it in LaTeX though, but this depends a bit on the field you're in. In most STEM fields it is considered more professional than Word, so if you're considering sharing it as a preprint with colleagues this might be a factor that you want to weigh.

I hadn't thought about preprint sharing, and good to know about the formatting, despite using the template. That was pretty much what I was wondering about.

Still, most journals have limits on page counts for different types of submissions and/or charge you extra fees when you're over some specified length. When you use their (Latex) template it gives you a good idea of what your page count is and whether that falls within their purview.


text:
How are mathematics conference presentations usually done and what to expect from the question and answer component?
I'll be presenting at my first conference in 2 days, and I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing, to be blunt. I was the second author in a paper that recently got published. So I more or less have an idea of what I need to discuss. I'm limited to at most 15 slides but what I'm dreading the most is the question and answer section. Can anyone tell me how these presentations are usually done and/or give hints? (I'm a grad student in math, by the way)

Some good advice here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/advice.html (scroll down)

I'm not sure I really understand what you want to know.  Have you never seen a conference talk? (If you haven't, you can watch some here.)  Perhaps you're going to different conferences from me.  The question and answer part is usually 2 minutes at the end of the talk; occasionally no one has a question, but often to be polite people will ask for a clarification of some point or ask about a connection to something they free-associated about during your talk.  You should do your best to answer, but people will understand if you say "Gee, I hadn't thought about it that way" or "Let's discuss that during the break."  Generally people are eager to get to lunch/coffee break and won't draw it out too long.

Ask your advisor for a chance to practice by giving your talk in front of your own research group.  Or arrange to give it in front of other grad students, possibly through your local student chapter of SIAM.  Make sure your "practice" audience knows that you expect them to ask questions.
The length limit is given in terms of time, not slides.  Practice your talk and make sure to finish on time.  And follow the advice given here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/advice.html.
When the questions come, relax.  You can't go wrong as long as you don't try to talk about things you don't know.  It's perfectly acceptable to say you don't know.  If there are no questions, it usually means nobody understood anything useful from your talk.
Giving good talks is a vital career skill - yes, even in math!  At the conference, pay attention to talks that you enjoy and how they are delivered.  Improving your presentation skills will be a lifelong, valuable effort.