text:
Should one continue their journey on the academic path if they love their field of study and research but are not proficient at it?
Suppose a student decides on a topic for their PhD that's interesting and enjoyable for them but they are not very good at it. For example, an experimentalist wanting to completely transition to be a computational researcher, starts with their computational research and enjoys the research. They are conversant with the tools available but they are technically mediocre in the fundamental knowledge of the tools even after taking the courses and working hard on improving themselves on the topic.
They will get their PhD and publish decent papers, but they lack the basic proficiency that others in their field readily possess. Others in similar academic position easily develop the codes that they find extremely difficult and time-consuming.
"For example, papers in my research field of additive manufacturing and machining are easy to produce. I can publish in 3-4 impact factor journals (computational materials science, surface and coatings tech, jour. of manufacturing processes). But I lack the deeper fundamental knowledge to make significant contributions to new code or algorithm development for better predictions. This skillset is possessed by almost everyone in my field, and is a requirement for producing good papers in top journals of my field (international journal of plasticity, journal of mechanics and physics of solids)."
Should they continue on the academic journey, like postdoc(s) after PhD, apply for tenure track position?

What do you think?

What do you mean by decent papers and lack the basic proficiency that others in their field readily possess? For the latter, do you mean only that others can write code?

@user2768 papers in my research field of additive manufacturing and machining are easy to produce. I can publish in 3-4 impact factor journals (computational materials science, surface and coatings tech, jour. of manufacturing processes). But I lack the deeper fundamental knowledge to make significant contributions to new code or algorithm development for better predictions. This skillset is possessed by almost everyone in my field, and is a requirement for producing good papers in top journals of my field (international journal of plasticity, journal of mechanics and physics of solids).

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11765/how-to-effectively-deal-with-imposter-syndrome-ive-somehow-convinced-everyone?

@AnonymousPhysicist it's not imposter syndrome if a person seriously lacks those skills or mental capacity to pickup the skills.

@rcive Leaving aside the assumptions that you're making about mental capacity: anybody who is publishing decent papers regularly is, by definition, proficient in the subject, and indeed is very good at it. You appear to be conflating "be one of the top ten world experts on the subject" with "proficient". This might be some relevant reading, albeit from a different field.

Not being able to do certain things is no reason to leave the field. Instead, the student could focus on what they can do, not on what they cannot do. In fact, it is often the people that "lack" the "advanced" knowledge who come up with creative ideas and new approaches that are different from everybody else.
And if it turns out that the student needs fancy new algorithms anyway: all the others are doing that already and it can take as little as a phone call to start a collaboration. Also, the "fancy algorithms" may be in fashion now, but nobody knows what happens in five or ten years.
Of course there is no reason for the student to stay in the field if it does not make them happy. Changing field or changing from academia to the private sector are not as hard as people often assume. There are plenty of interesting jobs outside of academia and it should not be seen as a failure to leave the academic world.


text:
Is a letter of recommendation from an employer useful, when the company has shut down?
I worked for a while with a company developing software, at which I also used mathematics (my field of undergraduate study) often. I was close with my employer until the company shut down, but we still keep in contact every so often.
When applying to master's programs, alongside the normal letters from my undergrad professors and research advisor, would a letter of recommendation from this employer hold any weight? I know he could write a very positive one, but it would be more concerned with work-effort, attitude, etc than anything academic.

I have not sat on admissions committees, but my common sense approach to this is that if the boss can enthuse about your stellar qualities, such as work ethic and attitude, and can say something about your having used lots of math on the job, such a letter would be a plus.  It would be even stronger if the former boss could add a few things such as communication skills, creativity, problem solving, follow-through -- maybe I'm forgetting something -- basically, the letter should convince the committee that you would be successful in their academic program.

Without commenting specifically on your specific comments, as a general rule I think it is quite difficult for people who have not sat on admissions committees to provide accurate advice about the process.

There are quite a few issues to be careful about when considering a recommendation letter from an employer. Some examples:

Make sure they understand the culture of academic recommendation letters. In industry, lots of the time recommendations are more-or-less a token statement that someone worked for you and didn't cause any issues. Academic recommendation letters are very different, so make sure they have an idea of what kind of letter to write.
What exactly is the background of your letter writer? This is a bigger issue with PhD (or research-based masters) recommendations, but if your recommender doesn't have the background or credentials to understand what it takes to become a successful researcher or academic, then it's unlikely that they will be able to speak intelligently about whether you have those traits.
How common are industry to graduate school moves in your field? In a field like mathematics or physics, my guess is that most candidates do not have significant work experience and any work experience is usually far removed from the subject material. In a field like that, the people evaluating your profile are more likely to discount an industry recommendation, especially if it comes from a non-PhD, non-researcher. On the other hand, fields like business or engineering have many more applicants from industry and are probably used to seeing those recommendation letters, so it is unlikely to put you at a significant disadvantage.
How well are your other bases covered and what are your alternatives? If you have recommendation letters that already focus on your undergraduate classes and research, then it may be more valuable to have a letter describing traits you exhibited in the workplace than another "he got an A in my class" letter.

In general, an employer's letter is never going to be as good as a great letter from an active researcher that you worked closely with. But most applicants don't have three of those on hand. Can a letter from an employer be useful? Definitely. Given the alternatives, is it the optimal decision for you? It's possible, but that depends on a lot of factors that you should probably spend some time thinking about.

I guess a question would be -- even if it's not particularly useful, is a good employer letter ever harmful?

@jaska It could be harmful if the employer praises attributes that they think are good for business but might be perceived poorly by the professors reading the application.

@jaska employer letters can be very harmful, for the reasons stated by jake above, and because they may give the impression that people are not serious about academic work. This is less of an issue in an MA program, where many people are not going to be doing scholarly work, but few programs are OK with being merely a credential. If the employer accidentally conveys that you are a "great programmer who will probably be running her own company soon" that could be a death blow to an application at some schools, because they want to train mathematicians, not CEOs.

I've been on math grad admissions committees before and our school gets a number of applicants from people who've been in the work force for some time.  For these applicants I generally look for 3 things: (1) academic background to date, (2) how far they are removed from academic math now, and (3) motivation to pursue grad studies.
(1) is about your abilities, preparation and your work ethic in the past.  This is something your former professors/research supervisors discuss and is reflected in your transcript/CV.
(2) is mostly about if you've forgotten too much advanced math to succeed in grad classes.  This is reflected in your CV/letters/statement, including how long you've been out, and your GRE score.
(3) is because motivation and work ethic are just as important as ability and preparation to succeed in grad school, and these may have changed quite a bit since you finished undergrad.  So I want to see evidence of this in letters from people who have had recent interaction with you, which might exclude your former professors.  Also, this should come through in your statement and may be supported by your CV as well.
Assuming your employer can address (3) and possibly (2) in a compelling way (e.g., by giving concrete examples rather than a pro forma generic statement), I would find one letter from an employer quite useful.  You should still be able to submit 3-4 additional academic letters, which should be sufficient to discuss your academic experiences, so I don't see this letter taking away anything from your application.

what happens if (3) is strong but (1) is weak? Also, as long as the application shows a solid ability of research, then forgetting some knowledge is a bad thing, right?

@Ooker if (1) is weak, then one should try for master's programs that admit students with a comparable level of preparation.  motivation isn't going to replace preparation.

@Ooker for your second question, i guess you mean "forgetting some knowledge is okay." certainly it's okay if you forget some things, but if you've been away from math for many years, there's a concern you've forgotten basic skills, like reading and writing proofs.  (for master's students we don't really care if they've shown an ability of research---none of our master's students do a thesis option though I think they technically can--this varies by country, culture, etc)

Yes sorry I had an absentminded. For the LOR, I mean, most of the time you only work for one advisor. Requiring three strong letters while you only closed to one is quite difficult.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How many reference letters requests is considered too many?
The problem with me is that I applied to 4 programs and I didn't get in in any of them. The last program which was almost guaranteed admission (because I already found a researcher willing to accept me); I emailed my undergrad thesis supervisor for, what I called at the time of the email "my last reference letter request ever to make". Unfortunately, I wasn't accepted to the program and now I'm applying again to a different school.
The problem is I feel so weird about emailing him again for another reference letter. Other than the generic email, how can I go about emailing him? I am sure he remembers me , but I don't know how to justify the amount of requests that I've sent him so far !
Any idea on how I should approach the issue?

I'd say that 4 is not that many. I am currently, probably, upwards of 20ish. Honestly, I lost count. I have very patient advisors/supervisors...

I'd agree, four is not that many. All the supervisor has to do is to keep a word document and then change possibly one or two details on it. As well, many places accept electronic replies.

When I was about to apply for grad school, I was advised to apply to a dozen or so places (maybe more). For various reasons I ended up not following that advice, but "feeling weird emailing my advisor" was not one of them (the advice came from one of the prospective letter-writers).

/@darijgrinberg how did you go about emailing your supervisor? I feel that I am emailing him literally the same email everytime :/

Why don't you keep the Original and send copies? If I were your supervisior I would be slightly annoyed, but if you are polite, he won't ruin your career. Don't make promises you can't keep ;) The same Email every time is not nice, even you have the same request. Use other words for same request (so one can see your effort).

@BitAccesser I can't send out copies of my own reference letters, they are submitted online by the referee. I did use other words and explained my situation and hopefully he will understand.

@Emma: As I said, I didn't end up following the advice, so the emailing flurry never happened. But yes, I'd email them, in case you are supposed to do that; I suspect some places do the emailing for you.

You haven't asked for too many.  Write to your supervisor, tell him what happened, and ask whether he will write "a few" more reference letters.  People will generally be willing to help you if they understand the reasons for your requests.  (Do not ask for "one more" or you could find yourself in the same situation again.)

It's also important to note that the first letter takes longer to write than any subsequent letters. I am usually happy to provide additional letters because I only need to tweak my original letter.

Supervisors know what they're getting themselves into when they have students, and that includes N reference letters where N can be arbitrarily large. They all had their own supervisors write them N' such letters, and they understand that this is how they can pay it forward. Good luck with your applications!

When my students ask me to write letters of reference to graduate programs, I ask them to provide me with a list of all the programs they intend to apply to, with deadlines.  I do tell them "it's OK if one or two gets added or dropped off as time goes on;  I just need to know when these letters will need to be submitted."  It helps that in my field, most of the application deadlines are spread out over a relatively narrow time frame (about 2 months, from December–February) and so my students are unlikely to add extra programs later in the "application season."  I definitely don't want an individual e-mail from a student for each program they apply to, if they can avoid it.
As to "how many is too many":  In my field, this list is typically in the range of 8–12 programs.  I once had a student who sent me a list of 20 programs spread across three or four different fields.  I will confess that I got a little annoyed by the number of letters I had to write in that case (especially because I had to change my letter around for each of the different field that the student was interested in.)  But I understood that it was part of my job, and I didn't let this annoyance affect the letter I wrote.

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


text:
Academic journals aimed at publishing work by high school students
I'm a sixth form student, and one day I would like to call myself an academic.
Do you know of any academic journals that are specifically for students, or would accept work from a student? I would be very much interested to hear about an organisation that does this.
Thanks.

That's an excellent question !

It may depend on the discipline, scope of research, etc. I know a few HS students who published during their (example here) but it was in a normal journal, with "older" collaborators.

Also, you may be rather interested in competitions for papers; e.g. the EU Contest for Young Scientist is very selective. For US, AFAIK, there is Intel Talent Search. You get a lot more (recognition, attention, money) than a publication! (In short, such competitions expect research-level things, but for high school students.)

Some related posts on MathOverflow:
What are some examples of journals that will accept undergraduate student research?,
Math journal for high school students?
Journals for undergraduates. Perhaps also this post on Math.SE: An article for some undergraduate journal.

I have never heard of an academic journal specifically meant for high school students. There might be magazines directed towards publishing projects of high school students, but I would not call these academic journals.
In regard to publishing, in principle if you have something that is of sufficient level to be published, you could just submit the paper to any journal. It would then be reviewed. The major hurdle would probably be that you do not work for a reputable institute or university. You could try and remedy this problem by looking for a supervisor who already works at an institute/university who would be willing to collaborate with you.
That said, realistically I do not know many 3rd year university students who have the level to write good and relevant academic papers. So, it might be a little far fetched to write an academic paper in high school. Than again, if you feel that your contribution is worthwhile, please feel free to ignore this advice.
Good luck!

The major hurdle would probably be that you do not work for a reputable institute or university. — This is field-dependent.  In many fields, nobody cares about your affiliation, as long as your work is good.

Would the "major hurdle" apply to journals that are supposedly single- or double-blinded?

Interesting answer, Paul. As the training or experience for writing up publishable papers isn't (presumably) in place until postgrad, how might students below that level learn more about the process of planning, producing and publishing their work?

@James I often had exercises to produce something that was intended to be in a style suitable for publication, but where it was highly doubtful it would be published (working on a known problem, no one is interested in my 'expert' review of something as a 3rd year undergrad, etc.) and the professors would grade and discuss it in that light.
Something doesn't have to appear in print to be approached and formatted in a way that build's skills.

Publishing in early career
If the research is good enough, it will get published.  The challenge is to do good-enough research as a sixth-form student. Actually, that's a challenge for any of us, at whatever stage we're at. The best example I know of, of young researchers getting published, is a paper in Biology Letters from a class of 8-10 year olds. The paper, Blackawton Bees, is a good bit of research and an entertaining read.

Principal finding ‘We discovered that bumble-bees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from. We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before.

Actually, never mind the rest of this answer for now. If you're reading this, whoever you are, and you haven't read the paper before, just go read it now - it's free to view for all. You'll thank me (so remember to come back here afterwards ;-).
Journals for students
As far as journals specifically for students: well, they all are, really. Pretty much all of us who are reading them, are reading them for study. God knows, they're almost always so dryly written that no one would read them for pleasure.
There are exceptions.  For easier reading, there's New Scientist and Scientific American; though the science sometimes suffers in the cause of circulation-friendly journalism, particularly for New Scientist.
More digestible science
And there are quite a lot of science blogs on the web, which make for more digestible reading of recent research. Unfortunately, there's also a much higher number of pseudo-science blogs on the web, that, unless you know a lot about the subject, are hard to distinguish from real science, but contain pure unadulterated nonsense.  For example, Real Climate is respectable science by respected scientists; Watts Up With That is unadulterated pseudo-science nonsense; but to the unwary, they are both climate science blogs. So, for finding new science blogs, reader beware. Even well-established science blogs sometimes go off the rails, when they stray outside their area of immediate expertise.

I'd love to see the peer reviewers' responses to this paper

I started one with that goal in mind back in high school (I'm in college now).  Although it definitely cannot compare to fully funded, top tier journals, we strive to provide a learning experience.  The journal is edited by 2 sets of people, professors and other students.  The professors are there to help teach both the author and the student reviewer about the journal process, and provide his or her experience when it comes to publishing and academic work.
You can check it out: The National High School Journal of Science

What subject are you interested in? In mathematics I know of College Mathematics Journal published by the MAA and despite its name, I think a good chunk of its material is accessible to high schoolers.

Yes, high-schoolers can read this journal.  But it does not publish original research, which the OP asks about.

As the others have suggested, this is pretty field-specific. The IEEE organization has two publications aimed at college-level students:

IEEE Potentials, a journal which discusses both research and careers. The articles are quite thorough and are written in the same form other IEEE journals, but assume less background.
IEEE Spectrum, a publication which is a cross between a journal and a magazine. There are in-depth articles on engineering topics, but also more light discussions of fun side projects. I strongly recommend this for any high school student interested in engineering.

These are both geared towards engineering with a focus on electrical engineering, although other subdisciplines are covered as well. Again, I strongly recommend both of these for any undergraduate or advanced high school student interesting in engineering.

Check out...

The National High School Journal of Science http://nhsjs.com
Journal of Emerging Investigators https://www.emerginginvestigators.org
Journal of Experimental Secondary Science http://jes2s.com
The Concord Review http://www.tcr.org
Journal of Young Investigators https://www.jyi.org
Journal of Student Research http://jofsr.com

See also...

Berkeley Undergraduate Journal https://buj.berkeley.edu

We could add to this list: The Young Researcher http://www.theyoungresearcher.com/

Specific answers depend on the field. There exist conferences that have special categories for students. For example, the European Space Agency offers logistical support for students' balloon and rockets experiments, and related conferences have dedicated categories for students of any level. Those conferences include proceedings, which means that it's possible to publish a proceedings paper. This is different from a peer-reviewed paper, and slightly less ambitious because it's not peer-reviewed; it is, however, checked for basic quality by the session convener.
An example of such a conference is the ESA PAC Symposium. As mentioned, this is a quite specific answer for a quite specific field. However, depending on the field you're interested in, perhaps such conferences exist for you too. You're best bet in this case would be to browse websites for relevant conferences and see if they have special student categories.

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


text:
Has the student responsibility for not cheating?
If a student is cheating, he can be caught or not caught.
If he is caught, it's not obvious what to do.
There are options with different strategies:

The students are themselves responsible for not cheating.
The teacher is responsible for preventing cheating.
The organisation is responsible for not cheating.

Options 2. and 3. are obviously acceptable and in use.
Option 1. is the one that is interesting. If that is used, it often leads to cheating in very high percentages, significantly more than in cases 2. and 3. is cheated.
The most interesting point is that in case 1., cheating is irrelevant for the teacher and the organisation. The teacher should explain the strategy, and the reasoning to do it in the course notes. And that is all for him.
The reasoning is that it is to the detriment of the student, and nobody else if the student cheats.
Is this strategy somewhere in use?
Should it be?
(I do not limit the question to the level of education, but there are levels - like before high school, where one can not obviously assign the responsibility  to the children. But it is still possible to work. In the case of PhD students, it is possible.)

What?? How on earth could it be anyone's responsibility but the student's to not cheat?

I have taught at a college (US meaning - post-secondary undergraduate education at a small institution without graduate programs) where the student body collectively is responsible for cheating.  The students are collectively responsible for finding cheating, and the students elect a group of students to decide on punishments if cheating has occurred.  Faculty leave the room during exams.

@AlexanderWoo. That is awesome.

"it is to the detriment of the student, and nobody else if the student cheats". So incompetent doctors hurt only themselves?

@TobiasKildetoft That is a very good Point! I think this case is handled bu a good final exam. So the very large amount of work time reduction by not reviewing graded tasks should be invested in part to have very good exams. So will not have bad doctors working in actual hospitals

@AlexanderWoo That is an awesome way to use strategy 1.!

@AlexanderWoo Please make this answer! Just paste it.

1,2,3 are not mutually exclusive.  The student is obviously responsible to not cheat.  The teacher and institution also have an obligation to create reasonable policies that discourage and deter cheating, as needed, but so as not to interfere with educational goals.  Just like in society in general, every individual has a responsibility to obey the law, but the state also has a responsibility to provide police.

AlexanderWoo's description would also apply, e.g., to my father's professional school in the 1960's. My understanding is it was fairly standard at that time.

@NateEldredge That's an answer, a good one. Paste it as answer, add some newlines, done.

When one lives in a country (in this case Spain) whose president has been recently and plausibly accused of plagiarizing part of his plainly low quality doctoral thesis (shortly after one of his ministers resigned for plagiarizing her master's thesis) and the leader of the principal opposition party has been accused of obtaining a master's degree despite attending no classes and doing no work (just to pick a few of many similar examples), it becomes difficult to believe that self-policing and making students responsable for cheating can possibly be effective.

@AlexanderWoo My undergraduate university (Rice) had a similar honor system.  I had more than one take-home closed-book limited-time final exam.

VTC: extremely unclear

I disagree with much of your premise.

It is the students responsibility not to cheat
It is the responsibility of the professor to detect cheating when possible
It is the responsibility of the institution to levy consequences for cheating

All of this is done to uphold the quality of the degree sought and the reputation of the institution.
Finally, cheating is not irrelevant even when undetected, because it erodes the reputation of both the degree and the institution. In the limit, you have unqualified students entering the workforce touting a ‘degree’ in nothing other than success in cheating.  Meanwhile students that did not cheat suffer the consequences of a degree from a school with declining reputation.
Edit: OP’s premise may be sound in a ‘game theory’ context, wherein the purpose of the game is to earn maximal points, but such an exercise dismisses the broader implications.

I missed the point of the reputation, thanks! But the core of the question is basically whether  the strategy works. And it works, by definition, if the final grades at the end are at least as good as traditional grades. I do not think that you disagree with anything. You just answer the question "Should the strategy be used?" with "No", and go on to explain your argument. (Actually, you say that your opinion is that you think the premise that the three strategies are separate is wrong. Now I get it. ) Good answer!

I’d only agree with your premise in the context of game theory. Yes, the quantifiable outcomes may be the same but the qualitative - the consequences as a whole and for the system - certainly question a cheating strategy.

It is not a cheating strategy! When it works, that implies that they cheated not more than before! And if it works, they have actually proven their responsibility, which is a major positive point on the qualitative side.

I guess I’m missing your point. My major criticism is that cheating, even when successful, is detrimental not just to the cheater, but to his/her peers and the institution.

One could say that what is normally "cheating" is then simply "not learning", and everybody is free to not learn. It works when they can handle the responsibility. The teacher hands out tasks, and they learn, or do not learn. They are basically forced to learn, and to handle that themselves.

No.  You are certainly free to not learn but you are not free to manipulate the assessment system to make it appear that you have learned. Cheating awards false credit.

I absolutely see your point. But we can see it like this: we do not even care who has learned what. We definitely care about the knowledge, which should be measured in the final exam. The assessment should  be strict - in the sense of precise. With no way to cheat. It is not important whether someone has learned. The result is important. For example, it could be the case, for some formal reason, that someone has already taken the course, and was even good at it. He can not lern, even if he tried - because he knows it already! Is that a problem? Absolutely not! The result is important!

Of course, it all depends on the location, I'd say. In some (most?) countries you can't choose what courses to take and some of them have little significance.

But we can see it like this: we do not even care who has learned what. — Accepting this premise undercuts the core purpose of academia. — For example, it could be the case, for some formal reason, that someone has already taken the course, and was even good at it. — Then that person has learned the material.  Whether they learned it in your class is immaterial; they have learned it.

If you mean to ask, are there places where the teacher and the institution can ignore the possibility/responsibility for preventing cheating, relying entirely on the honor/integrity/ethics of the students, the answer is a qualified yes.
There are places with formal honor codes that the student signs. The penalties for breaking it can be severe, hence the qualification. But it is mostly honored at those places and students are treated as honorable people, not as criminals in waiting.
However, even in such places, a professor would probably not want to dangle bait in front of students, reusing old exams without change, nor would the institution not want to have a system in place for handling student misconduct.
But even beyond that, some people teach in such a way that it is very difficult to do anything that would be considered cheating. You can, for example, deemphasize formal high pressure examinations. You can also encourage, even require, student collaboration. There are ways to determine student performance for which these practices don't interfere.
The job of education is to promote student learning, not grading.

" But it is mostly honored at those places". Having attended two such institutions, I respectfully disagree with this claim. As an instructor, my experience is that "student collaboration" is in and of itself not an effective obstacle to forms of cheating such as plagiarism and copying.

"The job of education is to promote student learning, not grading." Educational institutions acredit their graduates, whether we like it or not. It is important socially to know who is qualified to act professionally as an engineer, doctor, lawyer, etc. In this sense evaluation (grading) is important, even if disagreeable. While I value learning for its own sake, most of my students, and the institution in which I work, demand something else.

As Heitz points out, it's a fallacy to think these are mutually exclusive.
The student unquestionably has the responsibility not to cheat.
Also, the teacher and institution have the responsibility to create policies that discourage and deter cheating.  It is definitely a detriment to honest students, and to the reputation of the institution overall, if many students manage to graduate without actually fulfilling the educational objectives they claim.
However, this must be balanced with the responsibility to provide an appropriate educational program.  The precise way of striking this balance may vary depending on educational philosophy, local culture, and many other factors, and different teachers / institutions may decide to handle it differently.  There isn't a single right answer.
At some institutions, experience may show that very few specific anti-cheating measures are needed (e.g. take-home exams are successful) and that a general culture of honesty can be cultivated.  At others, there may be more restrictive measures (proctored exams, ID checks, etc).
In some cases, it may also happen that a particular assessment method which is vulnerable to cheating (graded homework, etc) may still be used because it provides a useful incentive to honest students, and encourages learning overall.

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


text:
Putting an affiliate professor in statement of purpose
I was just wondering if, when discussing professors who would be interesting to work with as PhD advisers in the statement of purpose, one can also mention a professor who is an affiliate of the department but primarily a professor in another department?

It may be difficult to have an affiliate professor as your sole adviser if he or she is not a professor housed in your main department. Administratively, it can be a challenge to have graduate students matriculated in one department but being advised by another.
However, if the professor is an affiliate of the department, he/she likely has someone who is full-time in your target department that they work with. You could say something such as

I am interested in working with Professors Carl McCauley [in main department] and Demelza Fordham [affiliate]. Their research on the decomposition of rubber aligns closely with the work I did on rubber composites while at the University of ZYX.

If you tie them into a professor in your target department, being associated with an affiliated professor can actually be a good thing. It will give you more diversity and networking opportunities.  It may also fulfill requirements for outside committee members on your dissertation committee.


text:
Will self funding a PhD hurt employment chances?
I am thinking of self funding a PhD in Applied Mathematics at either the University of Oxford or Cambridge. Would employers, both for academic (postdoc etc) and industry (research) jobs think less of a PhD holder if he or she is self funded?
E.g. Would they feel that because I failed to secure funding for their PhD, I am inferior to students who did? Although I am planning to self fund to UK schools, it would be nice to hear about views from across the pond (USA) as well.

Unless you're quite wealthy and able to drop a hundred thousand dollars without it being a big deal, unfunded Ph.D. programs are generally a terrible idea.  If no one is willing to pay you grad student wages now, what makes you think someone's going to be willing to pay you a higher salary at the next step?

Why not skip grad school and get a job in industry.  You can spend that money on a fancy sports car, etc.

Noah Snyder makes a very important point.  I agree with the answers below that nobody will hold self-funding against you later (they probably won't even know about it).  However, in mathematics, funding is the default and graduate admission without funding is a very bad sign (it means nobody has faith in you but they are willing to let you spend your own money if you want to try).  I would not recommend accepting any offer without funding unless you are certain you would not regret trying even if you were unable to get a job that uses your degree.

I'll also note that there are countries/educational systems where self-funding is strongly discouraged, and some where it is even almost prohibited (France is an example). And, as others have said: Don't do it. Really, don't. If you have that kind of money, put yourself through another year of studies and just get funded the regular way next year/semester.

@AnonymousMathematician:  Whether funding is the default is somewhat depended on the country.  In the US and Canada I know it is, but in the UK (which the OP is asking about) somewhat less so.

A scientist I know rejected a self-funded PhD applicant because he feared having a group with some paid and some unpaid people would harm the atmosphere.

Thanks for the input. A possible "plus" about self funding is that I don't have to delay my life for another year and don't have another 1 year gap on my CV. I was thinking about taking another year off (took a year off to get research experience) to try for funding again but was warned about having too many or too long a gap on my CV by some PhD students.

I had some questions which I wanted to ask in a comment, but it got a bit long, so I've written an answer.

Addition: I already have a masters and spent 1 additional year after my masters doing official internships + unofficial research for professors. This will hopefully result in 2 papers (one first authored) which might help for the next application cycle but that would entails an additional gap year.

I've been funding my graduate studies for two key reasons; I don't like being in debt, and I don't like being indebted.  Actually, I've paid my way through all of my college programs. In interviews & discussions the response I've gotten to this has been very positive.  I'm a comp-sci so your milage may vary but everyone I've talked to has been impressed by my decision to do it on my own, and I have experienced no ill effects. As for the 'who will hire you if' argument... I'm paying my way because of work experience & I do just fine, thank you very much :-)

Going into debt is a form of self-funding.  By not self-funding I mean the school is covering your tuition, fees, health care, and paying you a living wage in exchange for at most a light teaching load (in CS I'd expect very light teaching).  That said, if you're sufficiently in demand as a consultant that you can earn 50K/year working 15 hours a week, then by all means do that instead of teaching sections.

Update: I managed to secure full funding from a non-Oxbridge UK school, and from an ivy league school in the USA, so this is now a moot point. However, I still want to thank everyone for their helpful advice!

There's nothing on your CV that needs to indicate exactly how you were supported during your Ph.D. In fact, if you were self-funded, and managed to get an occasional fellowship or other form of support, that's a plus !
All a recruiting committee should (and does) care about post-PhD is the quality of your work (for faculty positions there are additional issues). No one cares about how you were paid to do that work.

Self-funding alone need not be visible in your applications and is unlikely to hurt in any case. That said, getting outside funding is likely to help and you should pursue it if you can.
First, it's not clear how any potential employer would know that you were self funded. Although it's normal to list fellowships or funding that you have received, it's just not normal (in my experience) to list the amount of money you received from a particular fellowship/grant unless it was a very public award.
That said, a list of grants, fellowships, and outside funding will help build a stronger CV. One thing many search committees are looking is a demonstrated ability to bring in grants and funding. Although that can be hard to discern in a graduate student/post-doc, the ability to apply for and get student fellowships can bring a little comfort. Being able to point out in your coverletter that you've thought about grants will inspire a little confidence in your application.
But the standard answer to questions of the form "does x matter for the job market" still applies. The quality of your work, your publications, your letters, and many other things will weigh much more heavily than the fact that you don't have fellowships that others do.

In theory I would say self-funding shouldn't hurt your employment chances, as there's not necessarily a reason to report how you were funded as a PhD student.
That being said, I have found that some people who have an external funding source not tied to a particular project/professor/etc. have two major problems:

It's not particularly urgent that you find a project to fund you, which means there's more time spend exploring, "finding yourself", concentrating on classes, etc. This is a double-edged sword - it can slow things down.
It's hard for any particular professor to "take ownership" of you - responsible for funding generally comes along with feeling responsible for other things as well, like your aforementioned progress. There's also less pressure to get involved in the early stages of grant writing, since you don't need to worry about it.

Those aren't necessarily reasons not to self-fund, but it's something to consider. None of those will impact employment chances, but they can effect your experience in ways that have downstream effects.

Your second point doesn't really apply in the UK, at least in the subjects I know about.  A student is admitted to do a PhD with a specific supervisor, and the funding doesn't as a rule come from the supervisor but from a research council (in a 'generic' way: the research council will fund a certain number of PhDs for each department) or the university.

@TaraB Agreed - it was intended as a general supplemental answer to some already excellent ones above.

First I have a couple of questions, and suggestions for ways to try to avoid self-funding your PhD:
Do you already have a Masters?  If not, it could be a better idea to self-fund a one-year research masters and then try for funding for a PhD after that.  That would not leave a 'gap' in your CV, except that probably it's actually too late already to apply for next year.
Have you actually applied anywhere else than Oxford and Cambridge for a PhD?  If not, that may be the reason you were unable to obtain funding.  There are a lot of other very good universities in the UK (which specific ones are the best will depend on your subject), and doing a PhD with funding at one of those would surely be better than doing one without funding at Oxford or Cambridge.
Or if you were not set on doing your PhD in the UK, you could also choose a country (for example the US or Canada) where PhD students are offered funding as a matter of course.
By the way, if you only applied to Oxford and Cambridge, then Noah Snyder's point, which I think is a good one, doesn't really apply, since it's not the case that you couldn't find anyone willing to fund you, it's just that you didn't try enough possibilities.
It may be possible to apply for funding again once you have already commenced your PhD.  I know a few people who self-funded their first year and managed to obtain funding for the rest (these were all in the UK).  At least one of them is now a lecturer.
In my opinion you should only try this if you can afford to fund the whole PhD (i.e. don't take out a loan for it!), and even then only if you are very passionate about your subject.
Now to my opinion on your actual question:
You needn't mention how your PhD was funded in job applications, but I suppose that in applications for academic jobs in the UK, employers might notice if no funding source is mentioned.  I highly doubt this would count against you at all,
as what is really important for your first job after your PhD is the work you have done in your PhD (although an ability to attract funding is highly valued in academia!).

Thanks for the advice. 1) I have a UK masters. 2) I applied to the USA but things are not looking good. 3) I'm not sure about the USA but in the UK finding funding after starting is close to impossible (very very few exceptions).

Ah, I should edit my answer to make clear that the examples I knew of of people finding funding after starting were all in the UK!  They were all in maths, however.  It might be different in other subjects.

I am surprised that is the case! I asked around Oxbridge faculty + PhD students, and they unanimously tell me its near impossible to find funding after starting (in the UK).

It's definitely not something you should go in expecting to be able to do, but if you do decide to self-fund your PhD, I definitely recommend still looking out for funding opportunities once you're in.

Within the UK, did you only apply to Oxford and Cambridge?

I applied to another UK university as well (still waiting to hear about funding). I couldn't apply to more schools in the UK because I was applying to more than 10 schools in the USA, and because the PhD courses in my field usually require us to find a supervisor and write a research proposal together which takes up a lot of time. (also was working as a research intern + went for surgery)

let us continue this discussion in chat


text:
Do non-academic extra curricular activities matter for grad school applications?
I just got into a PhD program and was asked to give a presentation to my juniors regarding grad school applications.
In my country (Asia region), people are fanatical about non-academic extra curricular activities that are totally not related to their topic (sports, debate team, run charities etc). E.g. A student with good grades and is the captain of the school's basket ball team can get picked for a mathematics PhD scholarship over the top mathematics student with zero non-academic activities. The belief is that scholars should be "all rounded".
I think the situation is different in the USA. I would like to encourage my juniors who have excellent academic records but without significant non-academic extra curricular activities to try for the USA because of this.
I understand there are scholarships like the Rhodes which do look at non-academic achievements. But is my general understanding of non-academic activities for USA PhD admissions correct?

In general. non-academic activities are not considered for admissions for schools and most fellowship programs in the US. The primary reason for this is that graduate programs are looking for people who will become excellent scholars and researchers (and sometimes even good teachers!). Success in sports and other highly non-academic activities is less likely to have significant influence in assessments of one's ability to do research, and therefore is not strongly considered.
However, there are exceptions. People can choose to fund activities however they choose, and can place whatever restrictions on the use of the money they donate. For instance, an alumnus could fund a fellowship for PhD students who play the tuba in a college marching band. While this doesn't happen often, it can be done. But typically admissions committees aren't concerned with such issues, and don't take them into account in making admissions decisions.

Success in sports...will have little standing on one's ability to do research — I'm not sure I agree.  Successful researchers, like successful athletes, are persistent, competitive, and a bit obsessive.  Those qualities aren't sufficient, of course, but they're arguably necessary.  See also Matt Might's example of a 100km hike in the Himalayas.  But yes, other factors are far more significant.

aeismail - Thanks for the answer. I edited what I thought was a sentence structure error. Also, @JeffE - thanks for the additional input, as always.

I would agree with JeffE.  At my undergrad (a top 5 engineering school), of the best athletes on the cross-country team two graduated with 4.0s in engineering.  A few more had 3.98.  That's unheard of at this school.  One went to Stanford for grad school, one received the TBP award, and one made millions in entrepreneurship before he even graduated.  ...unfortunately, I on the other hand have done almost nothing noteworthy :(

Again, agreement with JeffE. A surprisingly high fraction of my students and collaborators have been world-class athletes. (Sadly, I am not in or near that category). I think that if if people have what it takes to be exceptional at one thing, they are more likely than average to have what it takes to be exceptional in another. This is not to say that we care about the typical extra-curriculars when doing grad admissions. Singing in an a cappella group or serving as social chair for your frat provides zero predictive signal regarding graduate success as best as I can tell.

In my country (Asia region), people are fanatical about non-academic extra curricular activities that are totally not related to their topic (sports, debate team, run charities etc). ... I think the situation is different in the USA.

Its not actually that different.  Universities are generally looking for engaged graduate students, so showing involvement outside of classes is generally a positive thing.  Extra-curriculars should be noted in any application.
Holding a leadership role in a student organization is seen as positive, and should be especially noted in any graduate school application.  This includes leadership positions in Fraternities or Sororities.  See below for the one exception to this rule.
Think carefully before listing religious, political or fan clubs
Be careful listing activities that involve either religion or politics.  Its a fact of life that some people are prejudice, and listing a republican, democratic, LGBT, or any other club that would imply a strong religious or social viewpoint opens you to attack.  Do not give someone on the admittance committee reason to hate you.
Also be careful listing fan club activities like your Quiddich team, or presidency of the Star Trek club.  These activities may make you appear immature to the admittance committee.


text:
Which is more beneficial prior to PhD: research experience or a second Masters degree?
I will be applying to do a PhD in Applied Mathematics, and have been advised by some professors to consider doing a second masters degree if I do not get in. I have also approached researchers about collaborating on projects with them to improve my profile, and is currently working on one.
I was wondering: if I fail to get into a PhD program, would it be more beneficial for my next application if I enroll in a second masters degree, or would it be better to continue doing research projects?
Edit: Both Suresh and JeffE gave good advice, but I have some points to add.

I am already actively doing research with the possibility of publication (will submit but peer review process is iffy).
Of course, if I am already doing research with well-known faculty collaborators who will write strong letters of recommendation, there is no need to go for a second masters. But would it be realistic to count on a second masters for the opportunity to work with well-known faculty? (IMHO finding supervisors is quite a crapshoot)

I suppose there are quite a few PhD applicants like me: did a masters, but did not excel. Should they try to get research experience with academic collaborators or go for second masters? (there might not be a right or clear cut answer)

a second masters degree in a different discipline ?

@Suresh : Are you asking about my intend? My first masters was in Mathematics and Computer Science. I suppose I would want to do my second masters in an area of applied mathematics (so it will be relevant), but it will unlikely to be also related to Computer Science.

I don't know of anyone getting two masters degrees in the same field (mathematics).  It makes more sense if the degrees are in different disciplines (say, business or music).

@JoelReyesNoche : Although it is certainly uncommon, it isn't rare to run into people who did 2 masters in similar but not identical topics (e.g. pure math, then math & comp sci) before starting their PhD in my UK university.

@Legendre Since you have some responses below that seem to answer your question, please consider marking one of them as ‘Accepted’.

@NobleP.Abraham - I didn't because both of them contain good points that answer my question. How should I pick?

@Legendre You can choose the one which you find most suitable to your situation. Another way is to choose the one with more votes; but here both answers have equal votes. Then another option is to start a bounty and seek more insightful answers.

@NobleP.Abraham Neither of them answers my question: both says a second MS allows me to approach researchers to work on projects. But I already doing that. I was asking if I should continue to approach researchers independently to do projects or do an MS to make it "official". Can I edit the question to reflect this?

Of course, if you feel an edit in the question would attract better answers, try it. Clearly mark the edit.

The question is framed oddly.  A master's degree without research experience will probably kill your chances for PhD admission, at least into the top programs.
Here's a better framing: Is a second master's degree the best way to get more research experience?  Unfortunately, the answer depends on your personal situation.  If you're already doing active research with a strong possibility of formal publication, with well-known faculty collaborators who will write you strong letters of recommendation, then a second MS is probably not necessary.  If that doesn't describe your current research environment, a second MS might be the best way to find such an environment.

Yes. Although there are some other rewards from doing a masters (grades from coursework, references etc), this is essentially a question about the best way to get more research experience. Thanks for the input!

I don't know anything about applied math Ph.D programs. But extrapolating from TCS programs, getting more research experience (and some concrete results) would definitely help. While a second MS doesn't help directly, it helps indirectly because

you don't have a gap in your resume
you automatically are placed in an environment where you can approach researchers to work on projects with them.

I am indeed worried about the gap in my resume caused by my current research activity. Thanks for the answer!

Is it possible to get a second MS in TCS after a first in US universities>

Why would you want to ?


text:
What do admissions like to see in online profiles?
I have a website for my academic profile. The content include academic CV, a little bit about the research I have done, a technical computing related hobby of mine etc.
I intend to state the URL for this website on my academic CV for PhD applications.
Questions

Would the admission committee view the online profile of an applicant when considering his/her application?
If so, what kind of information would the admission committee like to see on it?

(Edit) Additional Information
I am applying to applied mathematics departments in the USA.

Admissions committees are looking for strong evidence of research potential; that's what your web site should give.  At a minimum, your academic web site should have

Your academic CV
A list of publications and research projects, with download links.

You may want to include a copy of your research statement, but only if you don't tailor your statement to each department you apply to.
Keep it simple.  If your site looks too flashy, you may give the impression that you spend too much time fiddling with your web pages instead of doing research.  (Cough.)
Make sure everything that you post on your web site is polished and professional.  Proper spelling, grammar, notation, and technical language counts, just as it does in your research statement.
Finally, @aeismail is correct: Do not assume that admissions committees will look at your site; some will, some won't.  Your application must stand alone.  But if you mention any publications, independent projects, or other results in your statement, point the reader to your site.  Even if nobody actually visits your site, your willingness to display your work in public will work to your advantage.

I come across this "f your site looks too flashy, you may give the impression that you spend too much time fiddling with your web pages instead of doing research" sentiment a lot. What about if you run a blog, and make detailed/polished posts? Could that reflect negatively on you as not doing research? What is the blog has non-hidious theme and design?

There's a loooooong spectrum between "not hideous" and "too flashy", with "polished" somewhere in the middle.


text:
Should I add my old or new institute as affiliation?
If I did research while I was affiliated with institute X (collecting data from the patient's data of that institute) and now I left this for another one, which institute I should include when publishing?

I deleted the second question, as only one question per post is site policy. Concerning adding affiliation, see https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/161866/change-of-affiliation-after-acceptance-of-a-paper

also https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/78160/change-affilation-in-printed-publication/78162#78162

For the first question, you should always mention your current affiliation. It would be good for many, including, administrative reasons. It does not harm if you mention in your paper that you did your research or collect data somewhere else.
For the second question, it is not possible to make any modifications once it is published and available online. Recently, some publications have started shown some relaxations, so you better approach the editors if there is any possibility.


text:
Why are Management Information Systems journals publishing so few operations management interdisciplinary research works?
I am new to Management Information Systems (MIS) research. Before embarking upon my research journey, my prior education and work experience has been in logistics and operations management.
My first impression looking at Information Systems journals like MIS Quaterly, Journal of Information Technology, Journal of MIS, etc, is that they almost avoid publishing works related to operations management. Why is this the case?
I plan to carry out an interdisciplinary research between Operations Management (OM) and Information Systems. But given the fact that prominent IS journals dont publish OM works, I am starting to get worried. What should I do? Or am I looking at the entire situation from a wrong perspective?


text:
Citations error
I published a paper and I have it in my profile. While I can find other versions of that which have different citations. The problem is that some of the citations from other versions are not included in the main version. I tried to merge all the versions but the problem is that it hasn’t been corrected for my co-authors’ profile.
Would you provide me a solution to fix the citations correction permanently for my and other authors’ profile?
Bellow you can find the link of the main paper and other versions.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=zJP21xcAAAAJ&citation_for_view=zJP21xcAAAAJ:4TOpqqG69KYC

The shared URL is broken for public view

Based on Google's official FAQ, you can edit your own profile and ask your co-authors to do so on their sides. You can edit/merge articles in your own profile, however, it does not guarantee affecting the citation count.


text:
If one of your research partners stops working halfway but doesn't withdraw what should you do?
I am about to start a research project with two other people. I was wondering if there are any countermeasures if someone stops working halfway through but doesn't officially withdraw. Do I still have to give them credit? Or what would happen?

How, exactly, do you know that they have "stopped working"?  Did they say so?

If you're spending time wondering about what to do if your collaborators back out before you even begin work, perhaps you don't have the right collaborators.

If people participate in building half a house, you need to give them credit for participating in building the house. 2. Don't be miserly about giving credit.

This question doesn't meet site quality standards in my opinion because you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”. Do you have a "practical, answerable questions based on an actual problem that you face"?

While this is a frustrating part of collaboration (aka grown up group projects) it isn't something you can prevent. If someone contributes early on and then drops off the grid you still have to acknowledge their contribution - they must be given credit for their work. That may mean they still retain some middle authorship or it may mean only a thank you in the acknowledgements. This would depend on the specific circumstances.
The best way to mitigate the chances of this happening are to set expectations for contribution early and assign achievable, discrete goals for every member of the team.
Past that it's just luck of the draw, at least until you can really control who you work with.

This is quite discipline specific; here's a mathematician's perspective.
The social contract and the rule of thumb that I've often heard cited and that I abide by is that if a person contributed 10% of the work on the paper, they deserve authorship. For a two-author paper, this means one person might end up doing 90% of the work, and I personally find it helpful to make peace with this possibility before entering a collaboration (your mileage may vary, of course). I've not been in a project that's nearly as skewed as 90:10, but I've been in situations where it was 70:30 or 30:70 (in my subjective judgement). In the end, it tends to even out over a sufficiently long period of time.
It's unfortunate when one author stops contributing halfway through, but assuming that they made significant contributions until this point they should be given credit (as a naïve approximation, half the contribution for half of the time is one quarter of the total work, which is fair for coauthorship). This situation may or may not be their fault, and it's best to give people the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. In either case, maintaining good relationships in the community tends to be more important than upgrading co-authorship to solo authorship on a specific paper (the same point applies even more strongly to papers with more than two coauthors).
The best countermeasure is to avoid collaboration with colleagues that you've had negative experiences with. It's also helpful to talk about expectations ahead of time, especially when there is significant uncertainty involved and if the publication is particularly important for one of the participants. (For instance, if me and a colleague come up with an idea for a paper and we're fairly sure it will work out, he's uncertain whether he'll have the time to work on it in near future and I need to get the paper on arXiv before April to include it in my CV when applying for a job, we might tentatively agree to work on it together with the contingency that if he doesn't make significant contribution by February I'll do the remainder of the work and publish it alone.) Finally, you don't have to rely just on your own experience, you can also ask others about their history of working with a specific person. Coauthors who ended up doing more than their fair share of work tend to be at least mildly annoyed and happy to talk. Just make sure these conversations don't turn hostile!

Academics is a repeated game.
Having a non-performing co-author, if there are already three authors, comes at almost no cost to anyone.
Just put their name as co-author and never work with them again.
Prior to submission, all co-authors should approve the manuscript to be submitted.
If an author is being unresponsive, is fine to send an email a week or so before submission saying, "Please review this manuscript and make sure you agree with all statements made. Please alert me to any typos or other errors. If you do not respond by dd.mm.yyyy, we will assume you are no longer interested in co-authorship and you will be thanked in the Acknowledgements." Send a follow-up message three days later.
(By the way, our Departmental musical group is called "The Non-Contributing Co-Authors". More than once I have knocked people off of short lists or declined writing them an evaluation letter because they were non-contributing co-authors. Justice is often served in the long game, and not in individual papers.)

While you need not over worry about it, nonetheless, what a splendid research approach; carrying out a risk analysis and ensuring risk mitigation. The threat factor, you've identified, is valid and 'common'.
Having the 'right' collaborators in the first instance is golden. Ensure your circles are of the right type.
Ordinarily, being part of a research project ought to attract co-authorship, however, this is not (shouldn't be) cast in stone. There're other expectations of writing up and especially reading (or signing off) the final manuscript.
Beyond these, as you rightly identified, co-authors might not pull their weight and put the research projects at risk.
[Remediation/Contingency]

engage and have clear expectations from the onset; including authorship, communication strategy, conflict management...
address delays, incommunicado, below par contributions collegiately yet firmly and outcome oriented
do not shy away from quick phone calls, quick chat/SMS, friendly reminder/nudging
ditto: initiate/call for project risk/crisis meeting
where and when need be, set clear specific deadlines
...
do what is academically necessary to get the research project going/completed

Couples of previous questions to pay attention to and factor into your risk analysis and treatment

What can I do if my coauthor takes a long-time/unreliable to finalize/submit a paper?
Former advisor/coauthor not answering emails
How to politely and diplomatically ask one "half-senior“ coauthor to contribute more?
How to handle a coauthor who is very late in finalizing a research paper?
Coauthor always postpones working on article
How should I confront an under-performing coauthor?
How to treat an under-performing coauthor?
Coauthor wrote a small part of the paper then ghosted us
Unresponsive coauthor
Non-responsive co-author
What can I do if one coauthor tries to prevent a journal paper from being published?
How to submit errata when a coauthor disagrees

Not losing sight of
How to politely ask a co-author to remove his/her name from my manuscript?
and
Coauthor used large part from common paper almost verbatim in another paper
All the best and may you have like-minded positive collaborators.

What do you mean by "countermeasure"? I know you don't mean to threaten any potentially lazy coauthors :) Truth is you can't make someone do the work you want them to do, but if they provided even an iota of intellectual propriety they should be considered according to the journal's authorship criteria - which are very detailed.
Since the submission process goes between named authors and the journal, I'm sure lots of collaborators "fall off" either due to malice or otherwise - but that gets hairy if the offended non-author discovers the paper and takes issue with the editor. A bad reputation is just the beginning in that case.
I do stats. I've had several uncomfortable discussions about not gaining authorship upon doing a final analysis because the prior statistician did several times more work than I, although it was all for nought because the team had no well defined hypothesis or understanding of the data. But Lancet is Lancet, JSON is JSON, etc. etc. There are many papers where one author contributes heavily at the front end and very little to the final manuscript. In another example, I stressed the importance of predetermining the entire content of the paper, and I wrote my section, performed all analyses and provided very little additional work even when it was requested. I did this to enforce a bit of data integrity toward the design. Many content experts naturally posit more and more hypotheses as they see more and more results, but we know it turns into a fishing expedition and the result is confusing and not meaningful. My strategy was good in this case, the paper was exceptionally focused. The team however despised my approach and felt probably similar to your concerned scenario. By giving less, I was confident I gave them more.
So at a minimum you can a. Share the authorship guidelines from the target journal and b. solicit some acknowledgement of the work expectations for authorship, but it's far easier and more political to give credit where it's not due than it is to withdraw credit from where it might be due.

A good collaboration should result in a whole that is worth more than the sum of its parts, such as when experiment and computation combine into a coherent description of a phenomenon.
Such a collaboration creates a powerful disincentive for your collaborator to "defect", in that if they leave the collaboration, they lose a very nice piece of work that would otherwise help their career. Additionally, most people simply enjoy the feeling of having helped someone else. You should know these are powerful motivators -- after all, I'm sure those are the reasons you want to collaborate with them!
So the most efficient thing to do is to let these motivators have their way, and to smoothen the collaboration with clear, consistent communication. Be sure that you both know what to do, and that you both know that you both know. (An indisputable paper trail happens to be very important for claiming priority should a collaboration go wrong.)
Of course, some collaborations will nonetheless fail because of unfortunate circumstances (pandemics and the like), but there's nothing either you or your collaborators can do about those besides being resilient and planning well.


text:
Status "Reviewed by all reviewers" hasn't changed in 20 days
On the journal website my research papers' status is “Reviewed by all reviewers”. It has been almost 20 days without a change in status. Should I mail the editor/the journal? What should I write?

Too early do do anything, I think. Patience is advised.

@Buffy thank you very much sir …

The following will give you a sense about what happens with your paper. It is a long process: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/55665/75368

20 days is not unusual. The paper is maybe with an associate editor who is not paid, potentially travelling, or has 100 other things on their plate to do before, including a backlog of papers. Of course in an ideal world they would be faster, but...

There are different scenarios that would explain this, many of which would not benefit from contacting the editor. First, you should be aware that your average journal is run on the academic side by volunteers, who have a job and who have other obligations. Second, editorial systems are mainly for the benefits of the editor, helping to insure that papers do not get forgotten. Here is what is possible:

There is a glitch in the website, caused maybe by a reviewer begging out after the invitation window closed. Your paper is still waiting for reviews.
The associate editor was too successful finding reviewers and instead of two / three, there are three / four reviewers and the editorial system cannot handle this case.
Someone put in the wrong information into the editorial system.
The reviews do not agree and the associate editor is looking for another reviewer or is reading the paper herself /himself.
The associate editor is busy the last three weeks or was busy when the reviews came in. In this case, the editor will eventually prod the associate editor.
The associate editor made a recommendation to the editor, who was busy the last two weeks and could / would not act on it.

If after three months instead of weeks, nothing has changed, it is appropriate to contact the staff, expressing the fear that something in the process has gone wrong.
A lot of editors try to keep the time-to-decision low, sometimes by imposing unrealistic expectations on the associate editors.


text:
What should someone do if they find a similar working paper to their thesis after graduation?
What should a student do if they find a similar unpublished working paper (say at a recent conference) after they have already defended the thesis and graduated? Suppose that the other group has been working on the paper for quite some time and presented it on different occasions, but the student only found out after graduation. Would it be a huge problem?

A problem to whom? What is exactly your concern?

A problem to the novelty of my thesis...? I am worried that since they have presented their work elsewhere, theoretically speaking they are the first who came up with the idea, and my thesis could be regarded as a 'copy cat'.

If you already graduated and they merely presented but haven’t published yet, aren’t you the first to have published?

Yes I am the first to have published. However I am not sure if presentation at conferences would count as informal publications? In fact I am more concerned about my reputation rather than actual publication in this case.

Be nice and send them a copy of your thesis

There is nothing you should do. You demonstrated that you can do independent research by coming up with creative work and defending it to a committee. The fact that others were doing the same at the same time does not invalidate your achievements: It may be that you will find it hard to publish the results in your PhD thesis given that there is now another publication, but the point of a PhD thesis is generally to demonstrate the ability to do independent research, and the latter is not affected by others having done the same.
If you are concerned about who was first: Unless you (i) came up with a theory at the level of General Relativity, or (ii) discovered something that can be patented and is likely to bring in millions of dollars in revenue, nobody actually cares about these sorts of things. To historians, it will be clear that you and the other group have been working on these things at the same time, and lawyers will not care unless there is a substantial commercial impact of your work.

Or (iii) you become a politician and some people are looking for all possible ways to discredit you.

@wimi No, there is no suggestion that OP copied or plagiarized. The work was just done concurrently.

Now, it would not be a huge problem.
It is common for research teams to work on the same problem without knowing of each others' work and sometimes come to very similar solutions and conclusions. If the thesis was accepted and published before the conference presentation, then you have the priority. If you unknowingly re-discovered some else's result, then usually nothing happens, so sometimes an academic committee investigates whether there was plagiarism. In your case, this is impossible since you could not possibly know about an unpublished result by someone else.
The polite way to handle this is to send a copy of your thesis to the other team and say that you were thinking alike. If the other team agrees that you published this first, then they might want to cite your thesis.
If you are not planning to work in academia, then the whole matter is of little import since the vast majority of employers does not care about your publications and priorities, unless this is a research institute. If your current employer wants you to get a patent on your discovery, then things become complicated.

Cite their work in future papers you send out for publication, if appropriate, just as you would with any other relevant work you're aware of at the time you send out the manuscript (incl. any revised manuscripts).
As others have suggested, consider sending them a copy of your thesis, which they could cite in their own future publications.  This would be especially helpful to the advancement of the science if you've made advances on parts of the problem they might have been getting stuck on, or if your independent works constitute independent validations of the same observed principles.
Don't worry about the past publications when you weren't aware of the other group's work. It's not reasonable to expect every researcher to be aware of every unpublished working paper even if directly on topic and even if previously presented.
Independent simultaneous invention/discovery is common, because multiple groups have access to the same memetic/conceptual building blocks and tools at approximately the same time.  See some of Steven Johnson's work, like Where Good Ideas Come From (trailer here), for more on this.
Even if it were previously published work that many people in your field were familiar with, the most serious likely impact would be earning an (in that case appropriate) reputation for not doing sufficiently thorough literature review and/or not being sufficiently well connected as part of the research community on this topic. Such a reputation might make funders a bit more hesitant to give you grant money (if they think it's more likely to go to reinventing the wheel than granting the same resources to someone else) but it's neither reasonably expected nor efficient to have you and every other researcher aware of every unpublished working paper with ideas being discussed among colleagues for possible improvement.
See also linked "related" questions on the right.


text:
To apply for a CS PhD, is it a good idea to first get into a master’s program but a less competitive track to enter a top school?
I am applying for CS graduate school in the US this fall. I have a moderate 3.6 GPA in a public ivy university that is about top 60 nationwide. I do not have much research experience (I regretted starting late!) but recently I joined a research lab to have some experience for application. I am overall less competitive than those GPA 3.8, 3.9 folks who stand out academically. As a result I expect to be hard to get into some top MSCS programs like MIT, Stanford, CMU, etc. Even less top tier program like Cornell and UCSD are challenging.
After careful research, I found out connections to some great professors and research resources are crucial to PhD application. As a result, getting into a high-ranked master school is crucial. I came up with the following strategy:
Apply for some renowned/top cs programs but less competitive tracks like Information Science even course-based one. Then I am a member of the university/department and eligible to reach out to the professors and labs to join. Put effort on the research and earn a strong LoR.
Could this work?

I suspect that your record implies you will be successful in application to many very good doctoral programs without spending time (wasting time?) getting a masters first. Maybe not CMU or MIT, but anywhere in the top 60 or so US universities. Faculty at your own institution can give you good advice on your chances at similar universities.
Research experience is seldom necessary for those with only bachelors degrees. The program is designed to give you that experience. The first couple of years of a doctoral program isn't much different from a masters program in any case, and one might be awarded along the way.
And, decisions are seldom made on the basis of GPA alone. Get good letters of recommendation, honestly predicting your success. And, if the upper division course grades are better, the 3.6 overall isn't actually bad.
And, if you wan't to study CS, don't lower your sights if that is how you perceive other programs. Think long term about the career.

Note that some very top programs are very competitive not just because they are very good, but, also, some of them are quite small. And they get a lot of applications.
Also note that if you apply to only very similar schools then getting rejected by one might imply getting rejected by others, as they have similar criteria. Cast a broad net.

Getting into a program Top 50 School with a professor whose research interest and directions aligns with me, and has a good lab working culture is fine, not necessary a top dream program(but I still wish I can!)


text:
Is there a celebrity culture in academia and should we discourage it?
I work in STEM, and in recent years I have been troubled by this trend in academia where certain individuals are elevated to the status of celebrities. Their appearances alone draw crowds in the hundreds and their "latest" interviews are almost taken as edicts directly from God and are debated endlessly. They are sometimes literally referred to as "Heroes" or "God (fathers)".
Sure, there has always been certain academicians (especially authors or professors) who are popular, and I think we should acknowledge them. But I don't understand the point of celebrating certain individual just because of what he or she is doing, or what this person has done or achieved in the past. The whole point of academia is cross-examination, and no person has absolute say in anything. I think people have lost sight of that. Plus, I don't believe in the "self-made" researcher.
What really prompted me to write this is when I discovered a serious error in a widely cited paper by a very prominent scientist (who has published books, been on TED talks, etc.). How can the paper be so widely cited given such a glaring and serious error? I am also troubled by some recent "non-sense" work from the same author. But this is just one example out of many (countless). I have seen people citing the work of a famous person despite the content or quality of the work, and then doubling it down by defending the indefensible. This also connects to the well-known debate over the meaningfulness of citation count.
But am I just imagining all of this? Perhaps the power in academia is more diffused as compared to what I have been exposed to and these so-called "Gods" of academia are more frequently challenged than what I know of. And ultimately, if this celebrity culture exists, then should we discourage it?

humans like role models and many to be governed by someone they look up to, this will never change. Yet, the point of academia is to undermine subjective factors as much as possible and in books about philsophy of science (Popper, Kuhn,...) you can read about this. Always keep in mind, it's hard to disprove one of Einstein's theories, yet on many of them he was the most skeptical person. I also recommend recent book "Lost in Math" by Sabine Hossenfelder that shows that heros or "schools of thinking" can lead to unscientific paths.

Some are well-worth looking up to though, and not just for academic reasons : Stephen Hawking comes to mind...

I modified the following quote of OP's post only slightly and now it perfectly sums up another hot topic: "I have seen people citing the work of a high impact factor journal despite the content or quality of the work, and then doubling it down by defending the indefensible. This also connects to the well-known debate over the meaningfulness of citation count."

in recent years --- Of possible interest is The Visible Scientists by Rae Goodell (1977), based on her 1975 Ph.D. dissertation at Stanford University. Incidentally, I've cited this book previously in a thread very similar to this one (might not have been in Academia, but it was definitely in Stack Exchange and within the last couple of years), but I can't find it now.

@Monkia "Neil degrace Tyson" Is that an unfortunate typo or a misspelled personal attack?

Academia is an extremely primitive and immature system in many ways, driven disproportionately by emotion and status over merit or egalitarianism. You will be reminded of a lot of academic social behavior if you read about the social behavior of the other primates.
However it is a unfair to suggest that people are simply acting as smitten teenagers swooning over big-shots because they have their own academic reality show. It is a social system which is behaving rationally in rewarding those who move it forward (or some new direction which at the time seems to be forward). Papers are almost a sideshow (written by underpaid postdocs), and citation count is merely a proxy metric for this. But impact, that which citation count tries to measure, is a very real and valuable thing; how well you can attract lots of funding to a research direction, as well as attract lots of other researchers into that direction, determines how important your career is to the system. And, in the absence of other sources of information, makes for a decent predictor for how important your work is currently and will be in the future.

in particle physics this impact of famous scientiests maybe drove the whole community into a deadend asking now to build the next even bigger >10b $ accelerator, although the last one didn't bring up any interesting data to progress with theories. Single scholars act rationally, hundreds or group thinking socially connected often not. And it turns out a lot of the interdependencies in the current academic social system (publish or perish to gain fame) are rather detrimental to its progress.I would claim the less socially connected academic system before internet was more innovative than todays

@MichaelSchmidt I'd argue the behavior is rational, just not according to the rules and goals you'd like. For example in favoring money over truth, or favoring safe short-term benefits over potentially much larger, but risky, long-term benefits.

To add another perspective: Academia is evolving towards a more complex social system also much more than it has already been in the early and mid 20th century. This is partly caused by the social linking of researchers due to the internet, but also because ground-breaking discoveries single scholars like Einstein, Perelman.. made with less collaboration/help are not possible anymore, when the big problems to solve are cancer, AI,...
Here science becomes political, as you need some leaders to move into distinct directions and start approaches needing thousands of researchers to tackle the problem. In particle physics, as you can read in the book "Lost in Math" by Sabine Hossenfelder, many are helpless if the whole community moved into a dead end and nothing really new is anymore discovered but also no new approaches are developed or directions started among research groups. There, maybe a social group pressure is now at work and this is the apprehension she describes and supports with many notes and interviews in her community.
You can read about how schools of thinking/scholars and paradigms are build up and fade away studying philsophy of science (Thomas Kuhn wrote a lot on it).
The Schön scandal is a singular and small case on a lower level and time scale, but these social processes work also on much larger scales among thousands of researchers and over decades in a community. If the internet strenghtens the social binding in academia or increases independence of scholars I'm not able to judge. Likely both. The good thing is scholars like Mrs. Hossenfelder have a chance to reach other scholars with their concerns and decrease such scales. The internet makes everything evolving faster. When there are not two opinions/approaches to an unsolved complex problem in academia, something is going wrong, when so much people work in it and there is no progress over decades...

Perelman's proof of geometrization was in 2003, hardly ancient history. Individual scholars can and regularly do make groundbreaking discoveries in pure maths. I understand it's a lot harder in the sciences and I'm pointing this out because you specifically used Perelman as an example of what was not happening any more.

@SolveIt Perelman had to leave academia to make this discovery. Some mathematicians even tried to claim his work as theirs he said in the aftermath to gain more fame/impact. If you think about the perelman case, it was not really positive for academia and its status. It's a tough question if savants like einstein/perelman are still attracted to academia to make ground-breaking discovery or end in fields like particle physics which are maybe in a deadend, most of the brightest minds in academia end in physics & math. The work of Peter Scholze is not understood by his former professors he says


text:
Fellow graduate student discusses problems but gives no credit afterwards
I am currently doing research and I know a fellow graduate student who is very intellectually curious. Let's call him/her C. However, I feel that C has a very consistent habit for not crediting people who have discussed problems with him. We work in the same lab/department, so we cannot avoid each other.
C would (very frequently, may I add) try to get people to discuss his own research problems with him, and after he has been provided tips, references or full-blown solution to his problems, he would simply take credit for them as if it was his own. Present them as if he came up with the idea. Write them and publish them as papers as if he came up with the idea. He would of course laugh about it afterwards, and talk very jovially about his accomplishments, and in the past I would have laughed along with him, because I have adopted the mindset that perhaps it is good to help out my fellow colleague. I shared my ideas generously, and promptly responded to any request.
C's habit came to my attention several month ago when another graduate student told me, that after spending a significant amount of time discussing a problem with C, C provided a solution to that problem, but nearly all the heavy lifting was done through that discussion.
Then it just happened, C talked to me about a problem a year ago, I provided him with what I thought would be a good way of tackle the problem. I just saw his publication, which was uploaded online last week, in which the paper utilizes some material drawn from what we had discussed.
This incident has left a bitter taste in my mouth, because I feel as if I had been used or exploited. Looking back, outside of accelerating C's own research career, I feel that C has no real connection with any of his fellow graduate students. While the other students would talk about everyday life topics, current events, family, etc., C would only ask us questions about his own research.
In doing so, C's behavior in some sense has cheapened my graduate school experience, and left me jaded at the fact that to in order become a top researcher, it seems that you need to exploit other people's time and intellectual energy as much as possible for your own gain. The more you do it, the more successful you will become.
It reminded me of my undergraduate days, when fellow students would try to pick your brains about everything you knew about a subject, but gives nothing in return. You have any study material out, they line up to see what you are reading. "Nosy", as some would describe this type of behavior. It just feels that my patience and kindness has being routinely exploited by people who just don't really care about other people.

How do senior researchers deal with this type of behavior? Of course,
  research cannot go on without communication, and we all have taken
  credit for things that are not purely our own intellectual
  contribution. However, I think the person's consistent willingness to
  exploit other people's time and intellectual energy has crossed the
  line for me. I wonder if I am over-reacting.

How do senior researchers deal with this type of behavior? — We don’t collaborate with jerks.

I think a large part of the answer depends on how significant those contributions are. If it's mostly on the level of "that sounds like it could be solved with a genetic algorithm" then I am not sure what recognition you expect, aside from maybe a short statement in the acknowledgements. If you sit with the author multiple times for hours and work on the problem it is a different story.

Put differently - I usually don't expect recognition for the level of advice that I would be more than happy to give any grad student who starts talking to me at a conference. However, it would also be wrong to say that I spend any time or "intellectual energy" on it in that case.

Invest as much as you get out of it. Do you enjoy the conversations? Do you learn something new? Do you like the person? "Do you get credit?" is only one of the questions you should ask.

What you describe doesn't sound particularly unreasonable or problematic to me.  Researchers discuss things with each other all the time, and of course the results of such discussions often show up in published research.  That's what you ought to expect when you have a technical discussion with someone.  In fact it's the best case - your contribution was useful and advanced science.
You ought to have been acknowledged in the paper, but the standard thing would be to have a brief section at the end, with something like "The author would like to thank House Ninja for helpful discussions."  If this was omitted, I would guess it's most likely due to C's unfamiliarity with publishing practice - he is a grad student after all.  You could have a brief word with him about this, or ask his supervisor to mention it to him.  But it isn't reasonable to expect that the paper will contain a detailed catalog of which specific idea was due to whom.  People don't keep track of things like that.  And you shouldn't expect this sort of credit to advance your career in any tangible way - it's a mere courtesy.  Such an acknowledgement wouldn't make your interaction any more or less "exploitative".
If you were expecting to become a co-author on the paper, then you should have said so explicitly at the time of the conversation: "This is really interesting to me.  Would you like to work on a paper together?"  Of course, in that case, you should expect to contribute a dramatically greater amount of work than just sharing ideas.
So I think what you gained from the discussion was about the most that you could expect - you made a contribution that helped to advance the state of the art.  You can decide if that feels like a sufficient reward for the time you spent.  If not, then maybe in future you want to spend less of your time having such discussions.
But I wouldn't see this as exploitation.  Researchers talk to each other to get ideas.  That's the point of research.  Maybe someday C will be able to share some interesting ideas with you.

While the other students would talk about everyday life topics, current events, family, etc., C would only ask us questions about his own research.

So, C happens to be more interested in his work than in mundane topics.  I don't think that's a problem.  You'll meet a lot more such people if you stay in science.  Maybe he wouldn't be an interesting guest at a party, but it doesn't mean he's exploiting you.

With people who are like "black holes" (ie all goes in, nothing returned), I just respond in the discussion with "oh that sounds challenging" or "how do you plan to get round that" : once bitten, twice shy...


text:
What is the difference between pursuing Academia in STEM and the rest of fields?
everyone. A lot of times I read that there are many differences in academic and graduate life between STEM and the rest (Humanities, Social Sciences, Management, etc). I've even read many people advising not to earn a PhD in Humanities and Social Sciences since getting into a TT position is very hard and there aren't many alternative careers. What do you believe is the difference?
UPDATE: I'm talking about career prospects after completing the PhD.

I think you mix up two things here: what is the graduate life like for given fields, ad what are the career prospects/ value of a PhD in those field. Maybe you can improve your question by focusing on one.

I'm voting to close as too broad, but I want to note this because it is somewhat of an answer in itself.  Mathematics basically works like literature or philosophy, but engineering and medicine are quite different.  Similarly, accounting looks very different from classics.

Thank you, I just updated the question to clarify that I'm talking about career prospects and the value of a PhD and not about life as a graduate student.

The question is still too broad. In addition to the specific fields (and don't forget the sub-fields and sub-sub-fields, and the sub-sub-sub-fields, etc.) It also depends on your skill set and interests: if you are a brilliant historian but a horrible mathematician, then trying to get a PhD in Maths will not help your career... There are also regional differences in the value of a PhD.

If you consider doing a PhD it often helps not to think of a PhD as "the highest level of education" but as "vocational training for researchers". This is not meant to be derogatory (here in Germany vocational training has more positive connotation than in many other countries), but to describe what will actually happen:you'll receive training to become a researcher. Is that what you want to do with the rest of your (working) life? If yes, what is it that you want to research?