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Getting paid for work and research overlap in masters thesis collaboration
I'm a master student in Computer Science and currently writing my master's thesis in collaboration with a company. In our original agreement regarding compensation, the organisation and I agreed that the aspects of the work that was closely linked to my research would be free, whereas the work that had little to do with research would be compensated for. In the original agreement, however, we never agreed on what this compensation would be nor how big it would be (I know, this was silly of me) but there is documentation of this agreement.
The issue now is that the company hasn't really given me any data nor resources so I've had to do everything from scratch. In addition, they are quite demanding and also adamant to put the code that I produce in production once I have finished and I'm certain that they'll be able to achieve substantial growth using the module that I'm developing. All these factors have made me inclined to approach them and try to negotiate a deal now, before it gets too late and messier.
How should I go about this so that both I and the company are left happy?
Note: Where I am from all the IP rights relating to research is by law granted to the student, which means that I own all the code that I am producing whilst writing my thesis.

Depending on whether you have a contract with the company (or something that's basically an "oral contract"), the code you produce might belong to the company. Additionally, the university might still have some parts on the IP concerning the research.
Just as a food for thoughts as jurisdiction might differ wildly (and it might be more complex than "student owns all the IP")....

It would be wise to mention in which country/state this is.

I suspect that "student owns all the IP" really means that the university can make no claim on your work. But that is unlikely to also apply to an employer. If you are paid to do something they probably own what you produce. But, if they have given you nothing, you might have way to just step away, keeping all of your IP. That might be a better option than getting paid, actually.

The major key point here seems to be that these things were not nailed down before you started. This is a non-trivial part of your life. How you get paid and how much you get paid and who owns the software need to be clear before you start.

Thanks for you inputs! It was made clear from the beginning that I would own all code that is being produced whilst doing this project and this is also written in the contract. I am doing my degree in Scandinavia and have already checked with my university regarding the rules. It is clearly stated that students have the right to the conclusions of their thesis so I am good on that front

I was more so wondering whether it would be ethical for me to tell them that I require some form of financial compensation to put my code in production?


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A student answered exam question with a method she's working on her thesis. What should she do to keep the authorship her own?
My friend, a graduate student answered an exam question (in Data Mining field) with a method she's going to propose in her thesis, which has not been published yet as it is still unfinished. The (soon-to-be) thesis itself propose a single new method.
What caused her anxiety:

Her lecturer is currently on a research in data mining too and they are not in the same research group.
The exam question itself contained a statement like this, "Use whatever method you know of".

The point is that my friend is afraid that her lecturer may pick that method to incorporate or develop in his research while he wouldn't know that it is actually a part of his student's research. If that happened her thesis would be in jeopardy.
From my previous question in SE, I get that lecturers really rarely mine ideas from students' exams, but my friend is still worried because her thesis is basically proposing that one method.
What could my friend possibly do in this complicated situation and state of mind?

I am finding this scenario very hard to wrap my mind around.  I can't imagine an exam question for which a thesis proposal would be an appropriate response, I can't imagine a thesis the matter of which could be summarized in an exam situation, and I can't imagine an instructor who would take a student's exam solution as a basis for their work.  Could you perhaps start with explaining why the student feels that the instructor will make use of the student's exam solution as part of his work: is there any concrete reason?

I've added more explanations. Thank you for the pointers. :)

@PeteLClark Neither could I, but then http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/81731/can-i-make-an-exam-question-for-graduate-undergraduate-students-to-find-an-ide

This sounds like a classic "talk to your advisor" situation. The details sound too thorny for us to understand and address effectively, and I'm getting the impression that there are also cultural factors at play - this situation sounds completely bizarre and improbable from the perspective of any country I'm familiar with. The student should talk to her advisor about her concerns and ask for advice about how to proceed.

@86BCP2432T Yes, I asked that earlier. Originally this was a part of that question.

@DanRomik Thank you for the suggestion. My friend has not met the lecturer but she's gared up to finish the research as soon as possible to avoid the said situation.

Your friend's concern is pretty far-fetched.  Researchers aren't usually in the habit of mining student exams for research ideas.  Even if the professor was inspired by it, it's quite likely he would want to discuss it with the student anyway, and the thesis issue could be brought up at that time.
But if she is still worried, there's an extremely simple solution: just tell him about it.  Send a short email mentioning that the exam question turned out to be related to her thesis work, and that her answer is based on her research work so far; and that if it's something that interests him, she would be happy to meet and tell him more.  (But it would be a good idea to check with her advisor before that meeting, in case there is some information which is proprietary or confidential or otherwise should not be shared at all.)
Now he knows that it is part of her research, and the feared scenario is averted.

Even if the professor was inspired by it, it's quite likely he would want to discuss it with the student anyway I can tell you have never been to a university in an (ex-)communist country, my friend. Or even if you have been it was some defect in the Matrix.

In addition to @NateEldredge's answer:
Even if the lecturer would want to steal the idea that would hardly be practicable in this case:

the answer to the exam question is an excellent proof that she had the idea at latest at the date of the exam. And presumably independently of the lecturer (in case they'd claim to have had that same idea before - which does make sense for exam questions - see the answers to the OP's other question).
And the thesis topic and/or her ongoing work (and lab book / thesis drafts / whatever) would show that as well.

Slightly off topic but hopefully reassuring: My personal experience in "exposing" research ideas to other groups is not only that they do not steal your bright ideas but they even like to avoid doing your work: the typical answer I get is that this is extremely interesting and would I email them the paper once it is out, please?

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Can I make an exam question for graduate & undergraduate students to find an idea in making a breakthrough in my research?
This question comes in two parts.

If I am a lecturer in a field (say, Data Mining) and quite stuck in my research, am I allowed to make exam questions (for undergraduate & graduate students) related to my research hoping that some answers may give me ideas?
If I am allowed to do that and supposing that I did, what could I do if a student actually answers my question with a method (s)he is currently working on in his/her own research but has not published yet (which I don't have the means to know of)?

Should I give an announcement or some kind of encouragement to the students who actually give such an answer to finish their research as fast as they can so that I can cite their papers to avoid potential copyright infringements and plagiarism?

How would you want to grade such a question? And how would you make the answer sheet? Apart from being ethically doubtful,  I have a hard time seeing how this would work in practice, perhaps with the exception of philosophy.  Assigning it as a project might work,  and it will be much clearer who gets the credit for what.

Sounds godawful hard to grade to me.

Six weeks later, Dantzig received a visit from an excited professor Neyman, who was eager to tell him that the homework problems he had solved were two of the most famous unsolved problems in statistics

Regardless of whether or not (1) is a good idea, your discussion of (2) seems to imply that you would want to use any ideas that arose without crediting the student who came up with them. This would be highly unethical. Alternatively, if you were to work on a paper together with the student, then whether or not their methods are published becomes irrelevant.

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

Feynman assigned only one problem in his QED course: explain pulsars.

I think you can do it in a homework exercise, but only as a bonus question that is not part of the ordinarily graded questions.  Adding it to an exam is not fair, for reasons mentioned in other answers.  But rather than using it to find a breakthrough in your own research, use it to find hidden geniuses among the students.  Make it very clear that those questions are completely optional and harder than the main homework questions; you may or may not state that they are actually open problems.
There are historical examples of students who solved open problems in homework exercises.  For example, George Dantzig:

An event in Dantzig's life became the origin of a famous story in 1939 while he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. Near the beginning of a class for which Dantzig was late, professor Jerzy Neyman wrote two examples of famously unsolved statistics problems on the blackboard. When Dantzig arrived, he assumed that the two problems were a homework assignment and wrote them down. According to Dantzig, the problems "seemed to be a little harder than usual", but a few days later he handed in completed solutions for the two problems, still believing that they were an assignment that was overdue.
Six weeks later, Dantzig received a visit from an excited professor Neyman, who was eager to tell him that the homework problems he had solved were two of the most famous unsolved problems in statistics.

Of course, when you do against all odds find a hidden genius this way, you can offer to supervise him or her in writing a publication, which should land you co-authorship on the paper.

Why the downvote?

Why would this merit the asker getting co-authorship? I realise this is common in some disciplines, but it doesn't make the practice any more ethical.

@cfr Two parts: (1) asking/formulating the right question (a.k.a. the research idea), and (2) supervision in writing things up for publication.  Both are, in my opinion, sufficiently significant contributions to warrant co-authorship.  See also my comment on CaptainEmacs answer.

I think it depends a great deal on the details. In general, I'd say (2) is not. If it is really supervision, as opposed to actually doing some of the writing etc. (1) is a different matter and will depend on a lot of further factors, including whether the idea is an original one or not.

Even ignoring the elephant in the room (that I am unsure why you expect your students to have a reasonable shot to very quickly solve an issue that has apparently been stumping you for some time), this sounds like a pretty bad idea:

It does not sound ethical. Fundamentally, in an exam, you are expected to know the answer to the questions you ask. How are you going to evaluate different proposals? Does a student who writes a simplistic answer that won't work get more points than a student who recognises how difficult the issue is and consequently is unable to come up with a comprehensive solution (and writes nothing at all)?
It probably won't work. An exam is not a brainstorming exercise. Your students are under time pressure, and they will assume that there is a reasonably simple solution to the problem. They are not gonna throw crazy ideas that might just work at you, but instead they are going to waste a lot of precious exam time trying to find the "obvious" solution that you yourself have not yet found. An exam is not the right frame for creative problem solving.

+1 for "An exam is not the right frame for creative problem solving." If you want your students to give it a go, you can always add it as a bonus question to a homework sheet and/or discuss it in class.

As an added anecdote - I had an undergrad exam which I almost failed as I started getting denominators divisible by 13 and thus 'impossible' on exam without calculator. I redo the whole exercise. After the exam it turned out that it was intended result so I was just wasting my time.

I disagree that an exam is the wrong time for creative problem solving. At least in math many people can produce original work (but not research-level) during exam conditions just fine. Also if you only grade regurgitation proofs ou will only encourage this.

@Insulin69: Maybe they can, but maybe their attempt at producing original work will also end up taking way too much time. They will then want to know which approach they should have chosen to solve the problem within the available time. "Uh, no idea, I had hoped you tell me." is not an acceptable response by the examiner in that situation.

@O.R.Mapper Oh, I didn't know that. When I was an undergraduate I just did the work however I felt like it and didn't feel the need to blame the instructor (unless they refused to read my work). I know for a fact that at least 2 ivy league professsors have tried putting unproved theorems on exams for undergraduates but those schools had "thinkers".

"Fundamentally, in an exam, you are expected to know the answer to the questions you ask." Who expects that; is that a university policy? Why would all exams have to be similar? Open-ended questions without definite answers might be difficult to grade, but they seem to be quite normal as project assignments in some disciplines, so what fundamental reason is there not to have one in an exam (for example if you clearly say that you're not supposed to be able to provide a full answer)?

You will trap students who cannot leave a question until it is solved. Since dropping difficult question during exam time is a skill by capable examinees, you are going to shoot down some students with weaker self-management skills who otherwise would have passed.
Very nasty.
If you would like to implement the stealth approach, you could place that as a bonus question in coursework, to be solved only after everything else has been solved.
However, it is a complete taboo to even consider an actually successful proof by a student, not to be fully cited/quoted. Maybe you do not even deserve co-authorship (depending on how well developed/written the paper is at its submission). If you subject them to such a challenge, you would be nonetheless expected to coach the student towards publication even if you do not become co-author and just get an acknowledgement. That would be my take on the ethics of the case.

Whether or not one would deserve co-authorship would depend on the culture in the subfield.  A juvenile maths genius does not necessarily know how to communicate the result in a publishable form, and it would seem not necessarily unethical that supervising someone in how to write their first paper makes one a co-author.

@gerrit Absolutely. That's why I mentioned the well developed paper; Ramanujan's mentor Hardy clearly did deserve the co-authorship.

I'm very sorry about the question. It was very misleading. I've reworded it and added more explanation.

@WidiWidiyanto Lots of people spent time to answer your original question; all these answers have now been rendered obsolete. Please revert this question to the old form, and ask a new one, now reformulated with what you actually wanted to know. This way, the work of the community will not be wasted and perhaps there is someone who is interested in the question as originally asked.

@CaptainEmacs Thank you, for the suggestion. I'm really inexperienced with SE.

@CaptainEmacs I've reverted the question. Please vote to close.

At some point in the 80's an unsolved problem was given as an exam question to about 200 pupils during the preparation for the international mathematical olympiad. It was judged as a problem where a good idea could give a rather simple solution. More than 20 years later the problem was solved, and the solution required heavy machinery. On a lower level the same was done using bonus questions on homework sheets. I remember that one exercise in logic asked for a statement equivalent to P=NP, and one sheet in number theory for the Birch Swynnertion-Dyer conjecture. Needless to say, none of these were successful.
So what you propose has been done before, and it didn't work.

That does not seem to be OP's situation.

The answer remains the student's IP. The exam setter would be plagarising if they used it without having the student's permission (and probably co-authorship).

Permission isn't enough. Permission does not make use non-plagiarism. If it is plagiarised without permission, it is plagiarised with it. Plagiarism has nothing to do with IP.

I second the recommendation of using it as a homework question, time and pressure is less than in an exam.
However, if you were still considering posing it as an exam question, I would make it a bonus question, and make it clear that you are giving points not based on whether or not the question is solved 'correctly', since that is likely improbable on an exam, but the students' approach to the problem.
Weighing the value of the question even as a bonus is tricky. Too low of a value won't motivate students enough to solve the problem, and too high of a value will place unnecessary anxiety on students to attempt the problem.

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Can I publish a paper from a work group that I happened to work on it alone?
A few months ago, I was assigned a task by my lecturer to create a Decision Support System program in a group of three. The task itself was intended as the final assignment of the course. My group discussed for some minutes and in conclusion my idea was accepted because it's new as far as we know and could really help those who need it.
Unfortunately due to conflicting schedules throughout the last half of the semester I was forced to do it alone. One was on internship and the other guy seemed to be quite difficult to contact.
Well, I don't care how important they see this assignment, but looking at the deadline I thought I'd rather do it alone than abandoning the assignment. I know it was wrong and foolish, but I needed the grades. I could always teach my group members how to make programs like this one. I thought as long as I ensure they too experience something like what I did in this work, I guess I can let it slide for that single time (of course with a stern warning as a minimum bonus).
OK, so I made the program by myself back then. I asked my other friend about the matter. He was a graduate student and excel at this field to teach me whether my program was effective enough or not. He was surprised that I made the program alone and told me that he thought this work I've done might be eligible to submit as a scientific paper. I've pondered over it and I think he could be right.
As a side note this other friend I'm talking about is actually the one whose master's thesis inspired me to make this DSS.
Then here comes the problem. I want to publish this as my first scientific paper but if I included my groupmates' names it would be a problem. A big problem as they didn't do the work themselves. But at the same time I think it would be weird if I suddenly publish it under my name only.
As they too have their names written on the student's report (and I can't really change that), do I need to make some kind of an agreement letter that state they grant all the research materials to me?
PS:

Please notice that I'm asking about authorship. I've learned that it was foolish of me to write their names on the report.
I certainly need to ask my lecturer's opinion about the material, but my predicament above (or perhaps my guilty conscience) barred me from directly asking the lecturer.
I want to limit my question to authorship matter. Thank you. :)

Your premise that a program you wrote as an assignment for academic credit would be suitable to be published as a scientific paper sounds false to me, with a high level of certainty (I would say at least 99%, given the context you've provided). I would suggest seeking advice from the lecturer or other senior person and not just from a friend. If I am right and the work is unpublishable, I guess you won't need to worry about authorship then.

@DanRomik Yes, I certainly need a lecturer's help in this matter. But my foolish deed I explained above made me think again. As for the other friend I mentioned, I asked about hiss opinion mainly because he was a graduate student and having experience in publishing. In fact my DSS program was actually inspired by his Masters Thesis.

@DanRomik The program itself is a DSS, in which the idea of the content was new as far as I know. And after reading other people's theses, both graduate and undergraduate, I think this work is at the very least on par with the undergraduate ones.

A couple of points related to the comment by @DanRomik : 1. Your friend being a graduate student almost certainly does not mean he has experience in publishing (he might have published, but calling it experience would be a stretch). 2. Being on par with an undergraduate thesis puts a work very far away from being publishable as a scientific paper. 3. After looking at what a DSS is, I see nothing there that would usually be publishable unless you happened to come up with a very novel way to do some of the things, in which case the algorithm might be (I am not in CS though).

@TobiasKildetoft Yes, I do realize that. That's why as per Dan's suggestion I will ask my lecturer about the material. Even if my friend's response cannot be used as a valid basis for this matter, I think it will boost my confidence when asking the lecturer. As for the DSS, my program was not intended to make an algorithmic breakthrough in the field. It was an implementation of DSS that as far as I know hasn't existed yet and it was quite needed (I'm sorry, I can't get to the details). And thanks for the critiques. Those really made me think in a broader perspective. :)


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Mistake in published paper by others. Clarification needed
There is no work that is free of error and people make mistakes :) But that is not what I am after, I am seeing advise on how to go about asking for clarification.
Recently a paper was published in the field of civil engineering in a reputable journal. In that paper, there is a mistake/discrepancy between the written material and the equation stated. Basically, the text stipulates 1=True and 0=False; however, if you use the equation and plug the numbers, 1=False and 0=True.
To get more clarification on this, I emailed the corresponding author about 1month ago and still have not received a reply. I was thus wondering and seeking a advice on the following:

When/How often should I email/followup with the corresponding author
for further clarification?
Should I Email the journal editor, and if so after how long?

In my true belief, this is just a simple mixup and a reply should be quick to generate. However, it is just dragging.
Edit: It was pointed that this maybe similar to What should you do if you spotted a non-trivial error in a highly cited paper? .
In my opinion, the error is so trivial and doesn't require a paper to be written to correct. The point is I want to know what the authors' meant. Is it 1=True OR 0=True and want to know the most effective way to reach out to them to obtain that clarification. Basically, I dont want to overshadow the previous person’s work or contradict what they originally wanted to portray in their work.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/85624/how-to-politely-point-out-a-basic-mistake-in-a-published-top-tier-journal-when-w

@AnonymousPhysicist I did read the latter link. The error in my personal opinion doesn't require a paper to be written to correct it. So I think as suggested I'll be using the work to publish something else and point of my finding professionally and decide which method to adopt.

It sounds to me like you're saying it's a simple mixup that anyone reading the paper can correct with no bearing on the paper's overall results.  If that's true, then you should just ignore it.  If you need the equation in your work, you can make the necessary correction and put in a footnote that there was a typo in the original.
I expect that, on average, I have more than one mistake of this kind per paper I have published.  I've had to make a correction with a footnote of one of them in a subsequent paper.

Making the correction in the footnote is a possibility. However, I dont want to overshadow the previous person’s work or contradict what they originally wanted to portray in their work. At this point I think its more of academic integrity in trying to obtain a proper simple answer to an obvious mistake.

In general it seems discourteous to nag the author, who may be discomfited by your discovery and may be seeking to check and correct. Nevertheless, it seems odd they have not acknowledged your communication so one more query about its receipt may be justified.
If you have not received satisfactory reply after a couple of months it would be reasonable to ask the editor, who may wish to issue a correction if the author (or independent referee) agrees that you are correct.
Apart from these two routes it is not really your business to do anything else.
If you are referencing the material in your own work, a simple reasoned statement that you have found otherwise would suffice.

I second this answer. Unfortunately, some scholars deem it a reasonable reaction to literally ignore serious emails from colleagues about their work. It would be nice to see what happens when the ghosting-author sees their editor being involved in the matter as a result of their apparent rude behaviour :)

I completely agree with the ignore email part. Really disappointing to see this being a trend in both academia/professional settings. It is disheartening when all you want is just to confirm a simple matter, but are forced to escalate it just because of academic-ghosting authors.

I try to not throw around words like "rude" and "ghosting" unless I am sure.  The authors might have an entirely legitimate reason why they have not been able to read or respond to your message.  Lots of people are dealing with issues and disruptions these days.  If they are deliberately ignoring the message then I agree that is bad, but I wouldn't assume that without evidence.

@NateEldredge I completely agree with you, but its not just these days. Its something I have noticed since I moved from industry back to academia about 6 years ago. I understand your point, but we all deal with issues. However, personally, I like to believe that there is a certain academic obligation/integrity. At then end of the day, without evidence, one just hopes it is not deliberate.

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The editor mixed up the reviews and rejected my paper based on the reviews of a different paper! Now they're denying everything. How to proceed?
I have heard lots of stories about rejection based on unfair reviews, etc. But this is a new one for me, and I wanted to seek the Academia SE's advice...
We recently submitted a paper (let's call it A). Paper A got reviewed (Major Comments) and we revised the manuscript and resubmitted (let's call it A.R1). Recently we got the review of the revision and it was "rejected". I can live with the rejection, but here is where things get messy and complicated... The attached review and rejection were based on a completely different paper with a completely different title and a completely different set of authors (let's call it paper B). So basically the rejection was based on the rejection of paper B that a reviewer had rejected.
Now comes the even weirder part, the review attached to A.R1 states that paper B is rejected. But Paper B was actually published in the same journal around the same time frame! So, it seems like B got an acceptance based on A.R1's reviews.
I am really mind-boggled by this incident. I did reach out politely to seek more information, but the associate editor was not any help and denied everything. How to proceed?
Field: Civil, Energy, Petroleum
EDIT - July 08, 2023:
Emailed the editor and the principal editors twice in the past 4 months without a response. Was finally able to get the Elsevier chat to contact the "Journal Manager".
side note: Its weird how Springer has an ethics complaints Email, but ElSevier does not.
EDIT - Dec 05, 2023
The Elsevier chat got back and confirmed that there was a mixup on the reviewers end that was not picked up by the Editor. Nevertheless, the manuscript is still rejected on the same grounds.

Agreed, that is the answer. I would also have another party read your email to the AE before sending to make sure it is very clear. Perhaps they were unhelpful because they were confused about the nature of the mistake.

@Dawn I dont think there was any confusion (at least in my opinion) as we were also able to talk to the person over the phone. Again, I genuinely believe it is an innocent mistake by the reviewer upload or the AE.

@ChristianHennig that would be my expectation too, I simple sorry, or even no sorry but atleast to send the correct review so we can address it and maybe if it is not fit for the Journal find some other Journal to publish. But the way its being waived off it really puzzling in all of this.

"completely paper" — did you mean "completely different paper"?

Re July update. Sorry it turned out like this. It is sad that some people are just not interested in doing their job responsibly, also owning up to their mistakes.

That looks like they clearly made a mistake. It's hard to believe that the associate editor when contacted wouldn't be of any help. I'd expect "sorry, this was the wrong review, here we send the right one", or "the reviewer may have mixed things up, we try to solicit another one". If the situation is as I get from what you write, next thing to do is contacting the main editor. Also trying once more to get something better out of the AE may be worthwhile.
A worthwhile addition from the comments by @Dawn:
"I would also have another party read your email to the AE before sending to make sure it is very clear. Perhaps they were unhelpful because they were confused about the nature of the mistake."
(Not sure whether this adds much to the answer of @Wolfgang Bangerth but I was asked to put it here so that is that.)

Accepted answer as it was first posted as a comment to the Question. But I agree, the most optimal answer would be a mix between this answer and @Wolfgang.

Editors, reviewers, editors-in-chief, and journal staff are all people, not machines. Mistakes happen. In a case where the evidence that a mistake happened is clear, lay out your case and go up the chain one step at a time until someone listens. If the associate editor in charge is too proud or scared to admit an error, then go to the editor-in-chief. If that person is too busy to be helpful, go to the journal admins, and from there to the publisher's publication board.

While I agree with you 100%, and I Genuinely! believe its an innocent mistake by the reviewer upload or the AE. Its the way the AE just waived it off, and not willing to provide the actual review for our paper that really just stands out in all of this.

@AlyAbdelaziz You pretty much have two options - escalate like Wolfgang says here to see if they change their mind, or use your bad experience with the journal to decide you don't think it's worth publishing your work there.

@AlyAbdelaziz A good strategy for many issues in life is to come up with a clear answer to what you want the outcome to be in an ideal world. If your goal is to keep a grudge with some editor somewhere, then that is your prerogative. But I think that your goal is actually to get the paper eventually published. In that case, it is worthwhile articulating what steps you want the journal to take, and then to think who you have to talk to to make them take these steps.

@Bryan Krause: Or both.

I think based on the AE feedback, it is entering a battle knowing you are on the loosing end with little to not much power. Again, its not really a grudge, more so why no transparency especially in a Q1 Journal. So I think the approach is to move elsewhere and avoid that Journal for future. Maybe send an Email to the Chief Editors and Elsevier, but again not waiting for a response and moving on.

@AlyAbdelaziz You're extrapolating from one editor who is bad at their job to the entire journal and publisher. That makes no sense to me. If you're not willing to talk to the next level up, you're not trying.

@WolfgangBangerth maybe I wasn't clear. We are sending out and Email to the Chief editor to request more clarification. I apologise if I wasn't clear.

OK, that's better. All I'm saying is that you have no evidence so far that " it is entering a battle knowing you are on the loosing end". One person didn't do a reasonable job. You don't know that the others are going to do the same.


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What are the different acceptance scores for AAAI'24?
What are the different options of the reviewers for "OVERALL EVALUATION" for the 38th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Association for the Advancement of Artificial)?
I think the answer https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49478/119679

Strong Accept (+3)
Accept (+2)
Weak Accept (+1)
Borderline (0)
Weak Reject (-1)
Reject (-2)
Strong Reject (-3)

to What are the different acceptance levels in peer review? is not valid anymore? Also What is the meaning of signs and numbers appearing in scoring system of AAAI? is outdated.
Last year there was also the new option "borderline accept" (https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/qlt4cz/d_aaai_2022_paper_reviews/)

The options at AAAI'24 are:

Strong Accept: Technically flawless paper with groundbreaking impact on at least one area of AI or excellent impact on multiple areas of AI, with flawless quality, reproducibility, resources, and no unaddressed ethical considerations.
Accept: Technically solid paper, with high impact on at least one sub-area of AI or modest-to-high impact on more than one area of AI, with good to excellent quality, reproducibility, and if applicable, resources, and no unaddressed ethical considerations.
Weak accept: Technically solid paper where reasons to accept, e.g., good novelty, outweigh reasons to reject, e.g., fair quality.
Weak Reject: Technically solid paper where reasons to reject, e.g., poor novelty, outweigh reasons to accept, e.g. good quality.
Reject: For instance, a paper with poor quality, limited impact, poor reproducibility, mostly unaddressed ethical considerations.
Strong Reject: For instance, a paper with trivial results, limited novelty, poor impact, or unaddressed ethical considerations.


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Are the peer-reviewers of papers submitted to a conference that took a place in location X from X too?
Generally speaking, are the papers submitted to a conference (Scientific conference, say) that took place in region/country X reviewed by peer-reviewers in region/country X?

No, the reviewers could easily be from other countries and may, or even may not, be attending the conference.

Definitely not necessary and also impractical. Conferences have different chairs and different sessions. Each is controlled by a different person. There are multiple layers to it. In general, reviewers are spread all across the world. And same reviewers do their job across multiple years.


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Will the admission committee try to get in touch with the referees who wrote the recommendation letters? [Graduate admission]
I am currently in an institution wherein most of the academic body in my department (Electrical Engineering) have a rather poor (and that's putting mildly) mastery of English.
My concern is if I miraculously manage to get a letter of recommendation from one of them, will the admission committee try to get in touch with him/her for further inquiries? Because I don't think (It is certain) they will manage a detailed and meaningful discussion (which is what I think the committee wants) without some external help, which I highly doubt they'll even bother to seek.
So, to reiterate the question, does the committee generally try to reach the referees? What would you advice someone in a position like mine to do?
Thanks for reading.

I would guess the committee, after receiving a letter of recommendation, hardly ever gets in touch with the recommender.

Thanks, this has most definitely given me some hope.

Don't discount the possibility that (someone on) the admission committee can communicate with your recommenders in their preferred language.  They might have trouble finding a Kituba speaker, but if they want to talk to your recommender in Russian or Chinese, they will have no trouble finding someone who can do so.

That sounds like a very valid fear and if I found myself in your situation, I would ask my referees to let me know if they were contacted. If they asked why, I'd tell them I had doubts about the admissions committee's ability to understand…

About 3 contacts per 10 reference.

I have written many letters of reference.
I have also been contacted, over the phone, by HR or admissions who wish to discuss the candidates, just to expand on experience or whatever.
So, if they wish to contact the people who you put as referees, then they will do so.

This isn't something you need to worry about. It is unlikely that they will do so, but possible. If they do, the language issue will not reflect badly on you. The people are peers and will understand that language can be an issue and will compensate for it. If your letter writers are positive about you in writing, it will be clear to the caller that they are positive about you when speaking.

You have not stated where you are applying to. I can imagine that practices vary by geography.
However, in 25+ years of industry, academic, and related work, primarily in North America, I have found that it is exceedingly rare for hiring or admissions committees to reach out to providers of written references (this is in contrast to a habit in industry of asking applicants for the contact information of references to speak with by phone instead of asking for written references).
I recall only 3 cases where I have been a bystander or participant to such a reachout. In two cases it was to confirm the reference provided was valid in the first place, and in one case to factually confirm a presumed typo that made one sentence in the reference letter have an anomalously negative tone.
Normal admissions or even jobs committees do not have the time to seek a supplementary "deep and meaningful" discussion about applicants. In addition, there would likely be concerns about procedural fairness in who and how would lead such a discussion, who would participate, and the possibility of bias if one person was reporting the outcome of a discussion to the committee. (As someone who has also hired in the private sector, I think those concerns are overblown, but so be it.)
Finally, it's not applicable in your situation I presume, but I would add that of course for senior, prestigious posts (deans, named professorships, etc.) there is sometimes back-channel discussion with people familiar with a candidate who may or may not be providers of formal reference letters, but that is in the context of a committee forming its own dossier about 1-2 leading candidates, a different story.

Currently, in the U.S., in mathematics, I think to contact some applicants' references but not others' would be viewed as inappropriate, unfair, etc. Applicants should be on a level playing field, with "level" in a very strong sense of fairness and equity.

So “level” also means each application is written to the same standard? That is often why referees are contacted.

@SolarMike, for me, the "standard to which an app'n is written" is part of what I assess. I'm not going to try to repair or improve any application, otherwise, why not try to improve all?

Or contact for further information about something that is particularly relevant... at least that was why I have been contacted in the past by those HR or recruiters that knew what to ask about.


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Unit Symbols for Equations
This question falls in the general category of another question from 5.5 years ago with the addition of the explicit request from the reviewer.
A comment from a reviewer requested that units of all physical quantities must be clarified (e.g., N, N/m, etc...). eg, F = m * a. Assuming based on the review, it would be m is mass in kg and a is acceleration in m/s^2 and F is force in N.
Now I see a few issues and wanted advise:

The equations are not empirical, hence it can be any unit for mass and acceleration.
If I use units in terms of fundamental dimensions (as per the link) I do not satisfy the requirements of the reviewer.
Personally, I have not come across any data historically that has units associated to equations in a manuscript.

Hence, I am seeking advise as to, either:

How to reply politely to the reviewer.
An IEEE or any other journal guide to author that explicitly states how to make such connection for the units in the equations.

Manuscript Field : Civil Engineering / Computational
UPDATE:
Going with the suggestion below (and accepted answer) we wrote to the editor about it, and clarified that we will use units in fundamental dimensions for all equations. The editor and reviewer were both satisficed and the paper was accepted.
Looking back, I just think it was a misunderstanding of the how the comment was written plus the fact that one equation parameter had a unit missing.
Thank you for the help and suggestions.

To be clear, now you have something like "F = m * a, where m is the mass and a is the acceleration" and the reviewer would prefer either "F = m * a, where m is the mass given in kg, and a is the acceleration given in m/s"? Or would perhaps a statement like "All equations are expressed in the SI system of units" suffice?

@Anyon Based on the comment, he is looking for the actual units. Meaning "F = m * a, where m is the mass given in kg, and a is the acceleration given in m/s"

Does the equation happen to have exponential or logarithmic terms?

The question you linked is not "unanswered" -- it just doesn't have an accepted answer.

@nanoman noted, and text updated.

I don't think the reviewer wants you to add units in an equation such as F = m * a. Most likely it's a misunderstanding. Maybe you forgot units somewhere when giving values, or maybe you have a dimensionless value somewhere and the reviewer didn't notice that it was dimensionless and thought that you forgot units for this value. Double-check your paper, and explicitly state when a value is dimensionless.

I've seen papers unnecessarily specify units, e.g. in a legend at the end.  While such specifications may've been extraneous, I'd guess that they might help promote accessibility.

Before considering a reply, I would first try to work out if the reviewer has misunderstood something about your paper/calculations which have resulted in them asking this question. If this is possible, then addressing this source of confusion could answer the reviewer's comment.
Otherwise, you could respond with stating any consistent system of units can be used. You could also specify the units in a general way such as: where m is in units of mass, a is in units of acceleration, and F is in units of force. I can imagine there could be situations where this may not be obvious. For example people sometimes use "moment of inertia" and "second moment of area" (m^4) interchangeably but this could be confused with the "mass moment of inertia" (kg m^2) which is also sometimes called just "moment of inertia".
If there are any specific values given in the paper, perhaps in an example, then make sure these have units.
In my opinion it's not reasonable to ask for specific units to be provided for expressions that are dimensionally consistent and I wouldn't do so.
I'm not aware of any style guide which addresses this specific case.

Correct, it was raised as a question for one equation. And that equation has been explicitly clarified and addressed in the reply to reviews.
We hope that such explanation is what he was looking for.

Some engineering papers assume a specific background set of units, and then omit all units from numeric constants.  Thus (for example) one might say that an object falling with negligible air resistance obeys the law

with the implicit assumption that t is measured in seconds, h in meters (down), and you don't worry about checking that all the units cancel out when you substitute for a specific moment.  This convention is particularly useful if the equations include a large number of empirical constants, and your audience is sufficiently geographically restricted to use only one unit system.  (From your item (1), maybe you already know this?)
From in your question I think you do not want to use this sort of convention, but your manuscript does not sufficiently clarify that you do not want to do so.  If so, a sentence like

All constants in this paper have units marked explicitly.

or

All constants in this paper without marked units are dimensionless.

ought to suffice.

Nitpick:  ∆h = (1/2) * 9.8 t^2.  (Unless you're on a planet where gravity is twice that of Earth.)

@MichaelSeifert: It's been a long time since I did kinematics.... (fixed)


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Students who want to take higher courses early
I'm a first-year undergraduate student (studying Pure Mathematics) at a university that has a mediocre mathematics department, in a country where there are no really good math departments compared to other countries abroad (as an example, there are only 2 known professors in my country that work on research in Algebraic Geometry)
Through what I've studied on my own, currently I have completed everything up to mid 3rd year courses at my university and I shall within the next 6 months/1 year have learned the content offered in all undergraduate honors (fourth year) courses and some graduate-level courses.
I however feel that the courses offered by my university's mathematics department are not at all challenging for me, and that is quite frustrating. I currently achieve 100% on every paper I write and I do not attend any lectures. Instead I opt to study on my own.
I spoke to the head of our university's mathematics department, explained my situation, and asked if I could be granted permission to take higher courses, and his response was essentially 'Who are you to ask me such a question?'
The difficult part is that there is almost nobody whom I can talk to about mathematics that I'm studying. It feels as if I'm working in complete isolation. The only people I can really talk to are some of the Masters and PhD students, who are perhaps the sole reason I even go to university to study.
I feel that this lack of competitiveness and being forced to go through courses that have content which I've already studied on my own is hindering my development. What's more, my university's math faculty does not have any official undergraduate research program, nor do faculty members interact much with undergrads (apart from lecturers taking questions from students of their courses).
I feel stuck, frustrated and depressed as if I'm being held back. In the US I've heard that it's fairly common for students to take courses at higher levels as they choose to do so, but alas I'm not in the US and don't have this option at any of the institutions in my country.
So in my situation, is there any advice one can give me? Also if there are any students who've been in the same situation as I find myself in, I'd be highly interested to hear how you managed to stay motivated and competitive.

(As a side note, I would like to mention that I learned what I learned not to complete courses but out of a genuine interest in what I was learning, it just happened to be that what I learned were the courses offered by my university.)
Also I do plan to move abroad for my graduate studies, if I receive a scholarship to do so, however if I don't, I won't have the necessary finances to pursue this.
My main problem is on how to stay competitive and motivated, and pushing myself in an environment that is not challenging nor conducive to research or to those who want to progress faster than the normally accepted rate.

You've left out important information:  why are you studying math?  Anyway, it seems likely the solution is to move to a more suitable institution.

Well I'm studying math to become a mathematician. In South Africa (the country I'm from as per the prev. comment), there are no really stand out institutions, especially not for Pure Mathematics, for Applied Mathematics however there are certain institutions which stand out more than others.

You make it sound like there are some possible courses of interest at your university, even if the environment is not ideal, but you struck out asking the head of the department. Have you tried asking through another professor? Either someone who teaches a course you are interested in, or a professor you have already completed a course with? Particularly someone you have taken a course with may be a good person to enlist because they know your capabilities.

Dear @Proven hopefully you have solved your problem in the mean time, if not read on. I was in a very similar situation just 2 years ago. The best solution is to move to a different institution, but some other things can be done as well. Please feel free to send me an email at afdago AT hotmail.com and I will try to help you.

You may consider:

Transferring to another South African school that would be of a similar level but more flexible about the upper level classes.
See if you can find a way to go abroad.
Stay where you are but try to get into those higher level classes.
3a. Try to get permission directly from the instructor.  Maybe you won't get credit for the class -- but if you are permitted to sit it (audit) the class, that's progress.  A good way to start working on this would be to visit the instructor's office hours with a couple of good questions that will show your aptitude, level of knowledge, and communication skills.  After getting to know the instructor in this way, you could then ask for permission to attend his or her class.
3b. Try going above your department head.

I personally favor method 3b as the preferred approach -- if it works.
Now, what to do about your feeling of isolation?  Here are some ideas for you to consider:

Do some tutoring/mentoring/teaching.  This can be rewarding and can help you break your isolation.
Take some classes in fields where one might be able to apply some tools of applied math or statistics.
Get started with one or more interdisciplinary projects with folks in other departments.
Interact with mathematicians in other countries with email, letters, etc.  Here's one way to get started with this: read some papers you're interested in.  Write to an author of one of the papers, to say that you read the paper with interest; say what you found most interesting; ask something.  You could mention that you would be very glad to be able to correspond with grad students.  Then see if a correspondence relationship develops.

Thanks for your answer and advice. The only problem with 3b is that I run the risk of damaging my relationship with the head of my university's math department. This becomes a problem as I plan to move abroad to do my graduate studies, and scholarship applications would require recommendation letters from faculty members or the head of the mathematics department, who I think would hesitate to do so if I go with this option.

@Proven - That sounds like an excellent reason to cross 3b off the list.  Glad to hear you are taking such things into account.

I'm also an undergraduate at a South African university, in my second year though. I'm in a pretty similar situation to yourself but I've managed to have some limited success with what you're trying to do.
I did manage to get permission to take some higher level courses this year but what I think was much more valuable is that I started doing a unofficial reading course with a professor. Essentially I just asked if I could and they were willing. While there might not be many explicit opportunities for undergrads I suspect that some of your professors might be quite happy to help informally, just begin asking.
That said you should probably still keep trying to take higher level courses. Perhaps try asking different people as another commentator mentioned but don't ruin any relationships.
Staying motivated and competitive has been a struggle. Being forced to take loads of courses covering work you already know sucks but it seems like one just has to endure. At this point I view courses as just something I have to do to get a degree and learning mathematics as a more or less separate activity I do because I want to.
One advantage is that you now have plenty of time to learn all the math that interests you instead of just the boring stuff they shove in the curriculum.
It also helps to feel you're at least a little competitive internationally so try to hold yourself to international standards, for example I always try to work through my years Cambridge exams at the end of the year to gauge how I'm doing.
Otherwise if your university has a math club, join that, take the SATMO and try to find professors you can talk to.
Also if it helps, there are students who have managed to get somewhere. I know of one student who went to Princeton and one who went to Cambridge from my university, yours should be similar, so there is hope.

It's great to hear from another fellow South African student, but quite sad that we both find ourselves in this similar position. I wholly agree with everything that you've said. I'm curious, were you credited for the higher-level courses or just permitted to sit in?

Initially I sat in on a class and took all the tests but wasnt officially registered for it. The arrangement was that I would then be given those marks next year when I was officially allowed to take the class. Since then another professor has helped out a bit and made arrangements for me to officially take some classes and waive some prerequisites.

That's good to hear! It's great to see some progress is being made in your case. Again, purely out of curiosity, which areas of math are you most interested in?

A lot of it, but I'd say mainly Analysis and differential geometry. For example I'm quite enjoying Riemann surfaces right now.

Same with me, mainly at the moment though I'm quite enjoying Analysis and General/Algebraic Topology. I'll be working through Spivak's books on Differential Geometry once finals are complete (in another week's time), and if you're still studying Differential Geometry at that time, perhaps we could exchange email addresses and discuss problems and solutions iff it is mutually beneficial to both of us?

Awfully sorry about the long wait, I've been away without Internet. That sounds like a great idea and I definitely would be interested.

I also apologize for the late reply, please join this chat room here : http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/50236/exchanging-email-addresses and we can exchange email addresses there


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Writing a Book Chapter and Adjusting One's Scholarly Tone (Writing Style)
I'm turning my master's dissertation into a book chapter and I'm worried about my scholarly tone. When I read other articles they don't sound like the way I have written my dissertation and I'll be using a lot of it in my article. Is there a specific way to write my article? I've been searching a lot about this and watching videos on Youtube, but I can't find any practical advice other than normal tips such as avoiding generlaisations, unnecessary jargon, etc.
To sum up, is this normal or is there a way to make my writing sound more like what we usually read in journal articles?

If all articles you read sound greatly different from your style, then it does seem likely that your style is not very scholarly. But it is hard for us to say anything when we don't know how your style is different. Maybe you could put an example of your writing here. Also see other questions on this site, e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/178065/

I'm a bit confused now because in another posted question you indicate that you want to turn your dissertation into a journal article. Which is it---book chapter or journal article?

What contribution is being made by your dissertation advisor to edit your writing style?

Hello Eggy, it's a book chapter. It was a misunderstanding on my part sorry.

Thanks Toby for the link. Will check it out.

Hello Jeffrey, I haven't been able to reach my dissertation advisor. I contacted her a while back just to say hi but haven't gotten a response, so felt quite reluctant to send her an email asking for help. That's also why I'm scouring the internet trying to look for advice on how to write it.
As a matter of fact, the feedback I got from the examination board at my uni said that my dissertation was professionally written, well-argued, and very engaging to read. While I was taking out parts from it, I just felt it would be very different from how articles are written. That's why I was asking.

Are you referring to a multi-author edited book? If so, the book's editor should have given you instructions for writing your chapter, including clarification of the book's audience and the desired content and stye. All the chapters in the book don't have to sound the same, since they're written by different authors, but it's also probably true that one chapter shouldn't stand out as radically different from all the others.
You ask, "Is there a way to make my writing sound more like what we usually read in journal articles?" But you say you're writing a book chapter, not a journal article. A book may have a broader audience than a journal, but it's hard to say that without knowing the topic of the book and of your chapter. Perhaps you'd like to say what that is?
Are you sure that "what we usually read in journal articles" is good writing? How do you recognize good writing? All good writing is clear, whether scholarly or not. I'm not sure that what we usually read in journal articles is something to emulate. As an academic editor, I know I've hit my target when a book reviewer says, "I recommend publishing this book because the style is simple, clear, and not weighed down by jargon that leaves readers scratching their heads."
Finally, if you were invited to write a book chapter based on the editor having read your dissertation, that indicates that the editor has faith in you, so have faith in yourself. Give it your best shot and ask the editor to give you feedback for making improvements.
I'd be happy to help you offline, but I don't think StackExchange has any mechanism for connecting users.

but I don't think StackExchange has any mechanism for connecting users. You can go to chat where the discussion is less public (though still visible to anyone who bothers to visit the chat room) to start with.

@fedja I would gladly help the OP directly by reviewing the chapter. That would require an exchange of email addresses that could compromise privacy.

If you don't care much about your privacy (judging from what you've said about yourself, you are a semi-public figure already :-) ), you can leave your e-mail address and wait for the OP to contact you. Otherwise, yeah, there is a problem...

Yeah . . . in fact I do care about my privacy and want to respect the poster's privacy.


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Should I put 0 with decimal points (e.g., 0.00) in a figure for visual consistency?
I have a question about the visual consistency on the figure axes. Let's say I have a figure and on its x axis the following values are displayed:
-0.50 -0.40 -0.30 -0.20 -0.10 0 0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50

Is it better to have 0 written as 0.00 here for visual consistency? Or is it redundant or even wrong to do so?

where is the figure going? many organizations/publications have style guides.

It seems like the trailing zero in all of the other points is more redundant than 0.0 or 0.00 would be, but it might be defensible if you have a number that is usually expressed in a 2-decimal format.

@RichardErickson, the figure is not going anywhere :) , I was just curious whether there was a correct and preferred way to do it.

I would include the number of significant figures in the label, be internally consistent within your document, and match any style guides (for example, a university of a thesis or dissertation or a journal's style guide for an article).

Well-spaced tick marks on a figure axis are (presumed to be) infinitely precise and perfectly accurate in their value. The digit limits you choose to use to display the number at each tick is a matter of the convention defined by the receiving audience, by the conventions required to convey the exact accurate value at each tick, and by your conventions for aesthetics in reading the figure.
Be cautious in cases where computer programs make seeming semi-intelligent choices for the number of ticks you might want on an axis as their first priority rather than choosing well-defined tick increments. Such a choice often leads to tick values marked at irrational number settings. Because irrational numbers require an infinite number of digits to report with perfect accuracy, they are certainly to be avoided as tick values on a figure.

If the zero results from a measurement and has two decimal point accuracy then yes, it should be written as 0.00. If it is precisely zero then things seem inconsistent in your measuring system. So, is 0.000001 a possible value, though beyond the capabilities of your system, or are the other values like 0.10 merely nominal, rather than approximate measurements?
Consistency is good in any case.

0.00 does not imply an experimental measurement, the values are the values displayed on the x axis, I guess the ticks are the correct word for them?


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What ratio of PhD graduates in CS fields ultimately get tenured professors?
What ratio of PhD graduates in CS fields ultimately end up as tenured professors? I understand that the answer highly depends on one's field of study. I would be grateful for answers in fields like Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence (nowadays it's better to consider AI and general CS separately), Theoretical Computer Science, Statistics, etc. How would you rank the difficulty in getting tenured among STEM fields? Also, please include sources of information if possible.

That is a very broad ask, no? Also likely to vary greatly across subfield, country, and whatnot.

Where do you imagine this dataset would come from?  The best chance would be an alumni association, but would they reveal such a statistic to the public?  I am an administrator at a prominent R1, and we don't track these things -- it's actually a problem for grant applications that ask things like "where did your students end up".  At proposal time, we just take a list of the lab's alums and go through LinkedIn to find these people.  Tenure is also not obvious from the title of the job; "Associate Professor" might be tenured or not.

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin You do track these things - by surveying your alumni, looking people up on LinkedIn. My former grad program does the same, I still get regular emails from them whenever they're updating their training grant.

@BryanKrause, it's not as organized as you think.  If you are talking about a hospital that does T32s all the time, they may track that centrally.  I work at a top engineering school, and these documents go into a proposal application and are never used again.  It's the way our administrative offices are split.  We just get through an application -- we don't think about creating a database.  We also do not have access to alumni data.  That data is also very incomplete -- the alumni office is the first to say their database does not include all alumni.

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin I never said it was organized, it's just that you both said it wasn't tracked and also described how you track it in the same breath. The issue for OP's question is that it's less likely that people are aggregating this across institutions and also that it can be sliced so many different ways. It's the sort of thing a professional org may track, though, at least through surveys.

@BryanKrause--tracking for a single PI for a single grant application is nothing like a systematic analysis of a department, school, or university, let alone the entire country. "Tracking" is not what we do; we fill out a best guess to ensure we don't get a return without review for the paperwork at hand and no more. It's not an actual dataset; it's just a grant application requirement, and we do our best to show we tried. We literally start over again the next time depending on new requirements. If the proposal requirement is for the last 5 years, that is all we look up-not enough for tenure.

It is kind of late to make a change, but do you mean actually earning tenure (after a probationary period) or just getting a "tenurable" position: one eligible for tenure?

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin I'm talking about a department level, not a single PI. But...you're describing an actual dataset, yes, created because of a grant application requirement. This is what data are like.

This was originally asked for STEM in general, so I will add some data for physics. The American Institute of Physics tracks lots of data on physics and astronomy programs. The place to start is their Statistical Research Reports page. They regularly survey all degree-granting physics departments in the US. Latest reports are for the 2021-2022 academic year. Of the 745 identified departments in one report, 209 offer a PhD, and graduated a total of 2015 PhDs, the first time the total exceeded 2000. Of those PhDs, nearly half are non-US citizens.
Their State of the Workforce page considers 755 physics departments (different number from above!), of which 684 responded to their survey. Out of some 10,200 full-time equivalent faculty overall, 6350 were in PhD granting departments. (As an aside, that means about 1 professor in 3 graduates a new PhD each year).
Of the physics faculty, across all departments, 64% are tenured, 14% are tenure track, and 21% are non-tenured. PhD granting departments have the lowest percentage of non-tenured positions.
From the AIP report on newly hired faculty one find that there were an estimated 460 new faculty hires into all departments, of which only 40% were tenure or tenure track positions. The report on faculty overall above indicates that PhD-granting departments had roughly 65% of their new hires in tenure or tenure track positions. The report also notes that some 21% of positions were filled by people getting their PhD outside of the US. (The American Physical Society notes that 45% of physics PhDs are awarded to temporary residents.)
So, lets wrap up here.
~2000 PhDs graduated in the US.
~180 tenure or tenure track hires in the US (40% of 460).
~140 of those hires are US-granted PhDs.
So about a 7% chance for a US-granted PhD graduate ending up in a tenure track position in general, and about 4% chance of a tenure track position in a PhD granting department.
Yes, this ignores the process between fresh PhD and being hired as a professor. The percentage of graduate students being hired as tenure track faculty is quite small.

One small problem with all such numbers is that many of the recent doctorates are international students. But the "tenure" numbers (or actually "tenure eligible") are US only. So, it is a bit higher, but harder to measure. Good that you separate out the fact that a lot of new PhDs don't end up in research-first institutions.

@Buffy - as noted, 21% of positions were filled with non-US-granted PhDs. Whether the US-granted PhD students are US citizens, Permanent Residents, or temporary residents is not particularly relevant to the overall pipeline numbers. Of those 2000 PhDs, roughly 45% are temporary residents (from https://www.aps.org/learning-center/statistics/education). But they can become PR and eventually citizens if hired by a US institution.

I'm surprised that the number of physics departments is so small compared to the fact that the US has about 6000 colleges and universities. Given the US system, I'd think most would teach physics at some level. Do you have any ideas about that?

@Buffy - I think it comes down to actually awarding a degree in Physics, vs teaching physics courses. My state has 6 state universities, and 3 offer a degree in physics. The others have departments of 'physical sciences' or 'natural sciences' which teach (intro) physics but don't offer degrees in physics.

Yes, but they might hire and tenure some people with physics doctorates. And most US colleges and universities aren't state universities. Anyway, I'm just pointing out how difficult this question is to answer.

@Buffy - https://aip.brightspotcdn.com/35/5f/acbbf12b8902759003439fbf921e/phyrost22-0.pdf lists the departments they considered, so you could look (by state) for ones you think should be "Physics" departments. I would hazard a guess that many places teaching intro physics but without a degree program will rely heavily on non-tenured instructors. Now, I looked at 2 of the 3 - one has an actual tenured physics PhD teaching physics, the other had a PhD chemist teaching the physics courses and nobody on faculty with a physics degree.

I do think this answer would fit better if posted as an answer to the more general question. (OP narrowed down this one when I pointed out that the other existed, and had virtually the same title as the original version of this question.)

@Anyon - seems reasonable, but I'm queasy about copy/pasting an answer into another question, and that question is some 10 years old now. Thoughts?

For Computer Science, we can use the 2023 Taulbee survey
Caveats: North America only, 176 responding departments (out of 314 asked), some extrapolation required.
In the 2022-2023 academic year, 2105 doctorates were awarded (page 2). Meanwhile, there were 501 vacancies for tenure-track professors, of which 384 filled (page 36). Tenure-track professors convert into tenured professors at a 64.2% success rate, so about 247 professors are tenured per year.
This gives the ratio you've asked about at 11.73%.
You might also be interested in this article.

At least in my neck of the woods, people don’t directly go to tenure track after graduation. I would also expect the 2020-2024 numbers to not be smooth. So comparing numbers for the same year probably isn’t reliable.

@MisterMiyagi Yes, you could make a more accurate estimate by adding the number of PhDs awarded over the preceding 10 years (say), and compare that to the number of hires over the same period.

@MisterMiyagi, it is very common in the US for computer science grads to go into tenure-track positions and skip the postdoc.  I do appreciate that CRA breaks it out by field; it has actually created a shortage in postdocs, specifically in AI and HCI (which I hire for), and that shows up in these numbers here.


text:
What is the optimal way to publish the first scientific article?
I am a doctoral student (economics) and I'm about to finish my first scientific article.
Unfortunately I have no experience in publishing.
Can someone explain to me how best to publish this article?
I have some questions to which I am looking for an answer.
A) How do I search for the journals and how do I contact them or submit my article?
B) How do I recognize good journals and is it realistic that I can publish without any scientific reputation in a good journal?
C) Should I have the article professionally checked beforehand? (I am not a native English speaker)
D) How long does a normal process take from the first contact to the publication?
E) What are the advantages and disadvantages of an open-acess publication? I see this positively, because I want to share my results with as many people as possible.
F) What costs will I normally have to pay?
A kind of checklist for publishing would also be good. I think there are many more points I have not thought about.
I hope that someone can help me with his experience. Also I am grateful for further hints about things I have not considered.
Many thanks in advance!

Some of these might be very field specific, have you talked to your doctoral advisor?

This is something you need to discuss with your advisor.

This is very problematic. He can barely spend any time with me and usually puts it off

I'm a doctoral student as well with a few articles under my belt. Here's my take on your questions, but first let me say that I would expect your advisor(s) to be able to answer those better than me, and they should have a voice in the process as they are likely to be your co-authors.
A-B) You should aim to publish your articles in journals that are on-topic. You can find good, on-topic journals by inspecting your references, since what you reference should be typically good, on-topic articles. The submission process varies but is usually well-explained on the journal website
C) It depends on your level of proficiency in English, but I'd say to ask your advisor to review it and trust his/her judgment of it.
D) Usually a review cycle takes anywhere from 1 to 4 months. A polished manuscript can take only one review cycle, most articles will take 2 or more. My articles have taken between 9 and 12 months from submission to acceptance.
E) Open-access is nice, but will almost always cost you a fair bit of money (in elsevier journals it's around 2000$ i reckon). What i advise is to submit the pre-print to arxiv (which anyone can access) when you submit to the journal, so you get both exposure.
F) Normally in 'closed-access' journals the publication will be free except for over-page fees (when your article is too long) or to have the article in color in the paper version. Over-page fees are a few hundred $ per page usually
My general advice is to take your time to find the right journal, and don't aim for super high impact factors. It's better to find the perfect (but small) audience for your paper than a lot of people who aren't interested in it. Give it to a lot of people in your research group to read and get feedback. Any criticism you address before submission will shorten the time to publication a lot.
Finally, consider if a journal is the right type of publication. In a lot of fields, conference papers/proceedings are a strong way to show your work and do networking.
Good luck in your research!

Many thanks for your helpful answers!

And how do I send my article to the Journal? Do I send the article by e-mail or do the journals have some kind of electronic mailbox where I can upload the article?

All journals have their own submission process, which is way more extensive than a simple email (usually done through a custom submission portal). Usually it involves submitting the manuscript, a cover letter, proposing reviewers, selecting keywords, declaring funding/ethics, etc. It should be explained in the 'submission guidelines' or 'authors information' section on the journal website.


text:
How to deal with working papers when quoting?
I am a doctoral student and therefore have only little experience in publishing.
Now I ask myself how I should deal with working papers of other researchers in my articles.
I have read some interesting working papers and would like to quote them in my article. However, I am not sure if I should do so. Since these working papers have never been published and reviewed in a journal, I do not know if citing them is useful or even allowed.
On the other hand there are interesting results in these articles, which I would like to mention.
So I would like to ask how I can best deal with working papers when citing.
Can I easily include and quote them in my text?
Or should I better not do so, because I would like to submit my own article later in a respected journal?

You can cite any manuscript, public or private, be it a work-in-progress, technical report, or  peer-reviewed publication. Relevant results should be cited and, when building upon them, they must be.


text:
How much damage could a 'C' in Abstract Algebra Course cause? and How to minimize the effect?
I'm an undergraduate math major student in my junior year. I've taken Abstract Algebra 1 last fall. I got  a C in that class (I got 65%). In most of my previous courses I got A's, and in some courses I got B's. I know that such a grade would cause much damage to my application (I intend  for graduate programs that I intend to apply for next winter, while being in my senior year).  I want to point out some things regarding my situation:

In my college, we can not re-take a passed course no matter what, that is, I can not re-take the course (I wished if I got F in that class so that I can re-take it and get a better grade, but I passed it with 65 point from 100). So I can not re-take it and it will be in my final transcript which will be sent to the programs I'm applying for.
This semester, I'm taking Abstract Algebra II and I'm aiming to get as high grade as I could, I wonder if doing so would minimize the damage of this C.
My GPA was 3.8 of 5 (~88%) before my fall semester, now it's 3.6 (86%), in a great part due to this C.

My question is: how much damage such a grade would cause? What are the best ways to minimize those damages? Do I have any chances to get admitted to good school with this C in my transcript? What about top schools like Berekely etc? Do I even have a chance?
Regarding the possible duplicate: Although the answer in the proposed question is great, I think that my question may have more specific answer since it is directed towards a specific field namely, mathematics. So, an emphasize on reference letters, research experience  or motivation letters may be more significant and crucial in math more than in other disciplines. Hence, I believe a more specific and tailored answer can be provided to my question rather than a general answer for bad grades.
Some (Clarifying but un-important) remarks:
Some people may think that I'm not good enough and this was the reason I got C in that class but I want to point some facts regarding that:

In my university, this course is not a challenging course, so it's normally easy to pass it with a good grade because the material and the treatment is not advanced or demanding. I got A's in the most demanding courses in my department. Regarding getting a C, this was due to several factors: First of all, I faced some problems in the two days before the exam, I went to the final exam without any sleep for a period of nearly 30-35 hours and I was very tired, I was sleeping in the exam and fully exhausted mentally. I faced some psychological problems for most time in this fall semester which had bad effect on my grades in general, but specially, the situation was catastropic in the algebra course. This C is not due to my lack of knowledge: in fact, I've mastered the topics in the course since High School (It's a Group Theory course - I went through most of Dummit and Foote doing almost all of the exercises in my high school years). It was due to an urgent problems at the time.
I'm not a bad student, as an indication for that: in the same semester, I've attended two graduate courses, one in Module Theory and the second in Forcing (set theory) and both of the professors considered me as one of the best students in the class although I was the only undergraduate. Sadly, we can not take graduate courses for credit in my uni, so my attendance was not official, I was attending because I wanted to learn the stuff. Also, I've attended a graduate course in Algebraic Logic in my sophomore year, and same impressions were made by the professor. In my sophomore year, I was meeting some professors regularly to guide me to self-study Category theory and Commutative Algebra.
My GPA is currently the HIGHEST GPA among my fellows in the same program, which may indicate that such a C is not normal for me.
Some people may ask, why did you take this course if you already know the material? Answer: in my college, most courses are mandatory, so I must take them even if I've mastered the content. This course is one of those mandatorycourses.

Is there a procedure for flagging extenuating circumstances at your institution? At my university, students are able to submit a form (with suitable evidence, eg a doctor's note) explaining why they may need to resubmit or resit coursework or exams. This may help regarding your 1st remark.

I stopped worrying about GPAs and C's after my first year as an undergrad :) Over the long run, it might not affect you that much. Grad school is more for research (ie publications etc) than for getting high grades. Admission committees know that! + they know that many undergrads miss up few courses here and there. PS, 1. Very low "CGPA" will hurt more way more than one or two C's, 2. Every country/school is different!, 3. Check out answers to similar questions posted here !

There are many questions similar to yours. For example, Will one 'C' grade due to health issues ruin my chances of admission into a top grad school?. After you get to that question, please pay attention to those linked question on the right hand side.

Worrying is a waste of time. You seem to have a solid record. If you are attempting a prestigious graduate program, you could attempt to do something exceptional.

@Insulin69, Which things would be considered exceptional? I mean, can you provide examples for what you mean because that is not obvious for me.

@FawzyHegab I don't know. You could work on an undergraduate thesis that betrays a depth of understanding unlike that required of your courses. Also I think REUs work. Graduate level courses are nice.

It depends in my opinion. I would expect the committee to be skeptical when they see a C, especially when there are other applicants with (nearly) perfect GPA.
There are some ways to make this looks better. One way is to get a A in the coming algebra course. Also you can describe the situation in your personal statement. Another way is to get some good recommendation letters and research experience.


text:
Graduate Program Director Congratulating Me on Failing Comprehensive
This was a few years ago now. My PhD program had two exams. The first I passed with high marks the second I failed.
I did not really know who to talk with about this. It is common in my program for people taking their exams to fail on the first attempt. However, the nature of the way this news was conveyed by the graduate program director and other passive aggressive tenancies by another closely related senior member, really shook my confidence.
Unfortunately, I did not recover and ended up switching departments and programs, which has cost me time and money. I won't blame my failures on this professor, though I believe he seems to have abused his power in order to act out a personal vendetta.
Here is the email:

Dear XXXXX,
I just received the results of the XXXX comprehensive exam
  in XXXX.  I will follow up with a more formal
  letter shortly, but I wanted you to  know the basic results as soon as
  possible.
I'm pleased to relay that you received a Fail.
This is disappointing news.  With my formal memo, I will be sending
  feedback on individual questions to assist you with further study.
Best regards,

So here is my question:

Is there anything to be done about this? Or is it better to keep my head down and not complain?

What exactly do you mean when you say none of them looked like yours? Was the difference only in the I'm pleased to relay that you received a Fail. sentence or was the whole letter different.

I am afraid they did not share with me the direct letter. But they responded with adamant frustration upon seeing my letter.

This seems like a severe overreaction on your side for something that was most likely a copy&paste error. Let it go.

Of the various problems you mention, the most serious is the failure to provide additional preparation time, if you have a relevant disability.  Many universities have some sort of “Accessibility Office” or similar (e.g. this), who should be able to back you up, or at least provide a good explanation why you weren’t judged as eligible for accommodations.  The professor “jeering” is serious if it really was jeering — but I’m concerned you may have misunderstood something there, like you seem to with this copy-paste error.

Let it go. If this had happened last week I would say maybe mention this to your department chair. But after a few years, and given the tenuousness of your claim (as pointed out by others, this could well be an innocent copy-paste error)? You have no recourse, legal or otherwise. Do your best to forget about it and move on.

@PLL I am willing to believe that I might have been mistaken about how this letter was composed. However, to make some sweeping statement about my ability to judge any situation seems pretty out of line.

@fsmart You are getting honest feedback here from people - and it seems like they are almost completely in agreement from the information you have shared. PLL was not at all rude and made no sweeping statement, they only pointed out that if you already had a reaction that many here judge as a misunderstanding, that misunderstanding could lead to further misunderstanding. This is a very real thing that has nothing to do with value judgments about you, but a common result of poor or miscommunication between people in both professional and personal contexts.

Like Raghu says, this clearly sounds like a case of mistaken copy/paste. However, I have a few other things for you to contemplate.
1) Since you are in a PhD program then you need to realize that you've entered into a fairly small professional world. The only appropriate way to respond to interpersonal problems such as this is to talk it over with the person(s) involved. Jumping straight to legal action or public shaming is a sure-fire way to destroy your professional reputation end your career before it starts. In general, pursing "pay-back" is never an appropriate response in a professional setting.
Even if your actions don't spread beyond your graduate department, these are the people who are going to vouch for you in front of the larger community when it comes time to assemble a dissertation committee and ask for future letters of recommendation. Destroying these relationships is what is known as "burning bridges"
2) This is tangentially related, but maybe you need to hear it. (Advice is free, amirite?) Anyone pursuing a PhD needs to learn early how to deal with criticism, because you will be given a lot of criticism. Committees are going to criticize your portfolio and thesis. Reviewers are going to criticize your papers. Partners and co-workers are going to disagree with you in public and in meetings.
It appears as though you've taken an honest mistake and then turned it into a personal insult. Then you've decided you need to retaliate based on that perceived slight, all without talking to the person involved. You should take a moment to reflect on your personal disposition and whether you're really OK with being criticized for the rest of your career. Of course, criticism does not mean subjecting yourself to personal insults.
However, if this person really intended to hurt you, the only professional response is to grin and bear it while bringing it up with the relevant supervisory bodies.
3) Which brings me to the next point, which is that most graduate programs have a designated person (or committee) who exists to mediate conflicts between graduate students and their advisers or other authority figures in the department. (For example, in my graduate department this person was just the director of graduate admission.)
If you really feel as though there is a personal conflict here, the first step (as always) is to discuss it with the person involved. If you feel you cannot talk to this person yourself, the alternative is to go to this trusted mediator and ask them to inquire about the situation for you. Then, if it turns out that there is a personal conflict that you cannot resolve yourself, the next step is to turn to this mediator or other supervisory individual and seek redress there.
4) Lastly, you need to realize that nobody has guaranteed you the right to be liked by everyone you work with. This does not mean you need to subject yourself to their snide comments or insults (they are expected to be professional as are you). However, if a genuine conflict exists and it is unresolvable then there is not a lot you can do other than to agree to disagree and move on with your life. This is true whether the conflict is between you and a co-worker, supervisor, or subordinate.
Again, in no case is it professionally appropriate to seek "pay-back".

More likely than not, he didn't even prepare the letter himself—a secretary wrote the letter, and he signed it.

No one writes these letters "by hand," but rather cuts-and-pastes names to avoid writing the same thing dozens of times. It seems extremely likely to me that this person copied a standard "I'm pleased to relay ...", used to tell students they passed, into the letter telling you you failed, and then didn't notice this. There isn't anything else in the letter that seems at all disagreeable. Seeking legal recourse, etc., without even finding out whether this is a typo seems like a severe over-reaction.

Agreed, that was exactly my reaction.

I contacted several other students who had also failed the comprehensive and none of them received such a notice.

@fsmart: I'd say that strengthens the assumption that there is at least one manual step in preparing the letters where mistakes can happen as described in this answer.

I think that both humans and bureaucratic/electronic systems need feedback. Most humans are emphatic and curious, they try to learn about the results of their actions and learn from them. Some systems, although originally built by humans, are not any more monitored. Sometimes they run well, but sometimes they cause damages which may remain completely unnoticed among those who could make a change and nobody fixes these systems. Pointing attention to malfunctioning parts of our systems is a key point in improving our society, also acknowledging positives can be very helpful.
Summary: do give feedback.
In my opinion the only question here is who to send the feedback to.

Write directly to the professor who sent the email that hurt you? If he is an honest man who had the good intention to give an early notification, just it went wrong he will feel bad learning that he hurt you, and he will probably be more careful in the future. He may talk to the programmer if it was a program that mass mailed the results to the students. I believe that if your professor was accidentally hurting your emotions he will value a gentle, non-blaming feedback that his  went wrong. - Rarely professors have bad characters, and showing him that you were hurt may make him happy and will bring no benefit.
If you have good reasons to believe that the professor had bad intentions you can send your feedback to a higher level, send a formal complaint etc. Keeping a malicious professor in an important position is a system error, too. Your letter may get ignored, but it also may be the last straw that will start an investigation into his practices.
If you think that the system is malfunctioning, and an answer like "we will take appropriate action, but we can not give you information about the outcome" means the shredder you could contact many other students asking their experiences with this professor. You might convince yourself that he must have made a mistake, but you might end up with sufficient evidence to improve a malfunctioning system or to get rid of the rotten apple.

Having recommended to take action I'm not recommending any kind of revenge. For a good exaple you may want to study the life of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi .

Has the downvoter thoughts to share?