text:
Was I right to insist I be listed as a co-author if my contribution was to be included?
I've done most of my research during my Mathematics PhD with a single collaborator who is not my advisor. He has definitely served as a mentor and has been something of an unofficial advisor - even though he is at another institution. I started working with him at a period when things were not working out with my advisor and I needed someone to do research with. He can be demanding and our relationship has been something of a stressor - but overall he was good to work with. As time has gone on, the dynamic has shifted towards one where I am making the primary intellectual contributions and he is tagging along.
Last week he told me that he was resubmitting a paper he wrote with a different co-author. He said that for one of the responses it would be useful to use a technique I developed and had shared with him in an Overleaf a year ago and asked whether I'd be willing to write that up for him.
I assumed that by writing this section, I would be added as a co-author to the paper.
The section contained some ideas that I developed which I was hoping to save for future work. Overall this was a pretty small contribution and I wouldn't say this technique is the most important thing I developed during my PhD.
Nevertheless, I was distressed to find that I was only put in the acknowledgements. I raised the issue with him over email and he became genuinely furious. We had a very tense conversation over the phone. Among other things, he repeatedly raised the idea that I am not appropriately "respecting the lines of authority" and that I should essentially just be quiet and accept his judgement on this matter.
He’d probably say that he feels I’m not appreciating the time he’s put in to my collaboration with him, that he has vouched for me in the past, that he adapted and amended the ideas I shared, and that he had suggested the line of work that led to these ideas.
About those last two points  while it is true that these ideas I had developed came out of my thoughts on a paper he suggested I read, I personally don’t feel that is enough to justify taking credit for those ideas. He presented a very slight generalization of the ideas I gave and a slightly edited version of the proof I wrote which took about two weeks to formulate when I came up with it last year.
I’m very distressed. While I don’t consider this set of ideas to be crucial to my PhD work, I was very proud of them. But at the same time, perhaps I don’t understand how things work in academia and I should “respect the lines of authority” – to use his phrase.
I asked that he remove my contributions from the paper. He obliged but indicated that this was the end of our professional relationship, that I should be more grateful to him for his efforts in our collaboration, and that I need to learn humility.
Am I sounding unreasonable? Is this just how things work? I would hate to be inappropriate and I appreciate that he’s been a good collaborator but I also feel I should stand up for my academic integrity.
He seemed to have a lot of bottled anger and I wonder if he is annoyed that I'm leaving academia after he's put time in to mentor me with the hopes I'd be a productive collaborator. In our call he went on for some time about how "ridiculous" it was that I was taking time off of research to focus on getting a job in industry.
He's taking his sabbatical to work at this research institute - so I'm wondering if he's also annoyed that I'm not helping him further his career by making the most of this research year.

‘ he went on for some time about how "ridiculous" it was that I was taking time off of research to focus on getting a job in industry.’ Sounds a bit unhinged to me.

What country is this? “[r]espect the lines of authority” is BS anywhere, but how deep a pile might depend on how much the local academic culture cares about hierarchies.

https://fastdecals.com/shop/images/detailed/30/cartman-respect-ma-authoritah-decal-sicker-06_southparkFC-1.webp

Your collaborator's behaviour is completely inappropriate and could be classed as misconduct. You did nothing wrong. If you're an author then you must be listed as an author, and if you wrote a section of the paper then you are an author. There isn't any possible ambiguity about it.

Whether you're right or wrong, reading your post does make me wonder whether you made your point in a manner which was less than optimal considering your different positions and history.

The culture around coauthorship in mathematics is typically very generous. Regardless of the outcome here, I find his attitude unusual.

What “respect the lines of authority” really means is "I refuse to discuss this, go away".  Totally inappropriate behaviour and could possibly be classed as bullying.

When you do get a job in industry, I believe you'll look back at this and think clearly: "wow, that guys was way out of line."

In general, the rule for who should be an author on a paper is whether they have made a "significant contribution" to the paper. From what you've written here, it sounds like your former collaborator wanted to use an unpublished technique you came up with, and even had you write-up that technique. It is entirely reasonable, based on this description of events, to want authorship on the paper this technique is first presented in. (If you had previously published the technique, it would perhaps be more appropriate for that publication to be cited rather than adding you as an author, but that is a different debate.)
What he has done for you/the paper doesn't matter for the question of whether YOU should be an author. It doesn't matter if he put a lot of time and effort into mentoring you, if he pointed out the paper you read that inspired the idea for your technique, etc. Those have nothing to do with whether YOU should be an author on a paper. All that matters for that question is what YOU have contributed to the paper.

appreciate that he’s been a good collaborator

Good collaborators don't play authorship games with grad students. (Or anyone else, for that matter.)

I honestly don't understand this. Granted, I come from a different field (biology) and we only have your side of the story, but from what I read, you actually wrote a section of the paper. Your words are included in the paper. That is precisely the definition of "author".
This is beyond the normal academic squabbling of whether or not your contribution was significant; you have actually written a section of the paper yourself, so you authored that section and since that section is part of the paper, you authored part of the paper and should therefore be included in the list of people named as authors.
Unless this "section" was only a couple of words buried in supplementary data, you are an author under any definition of the term I can think of. As for respecting the lines of authority, that feels like pure nonsense. You are a grad student, you are not a child. You are a working adult and this was your work. What authority? This person is a collaborator, so isn't even your supervisor. There is no authority here.
So no, unless there is much more to it that you aren't sharing (or aren't aware of), you're fine and their behavior is not OK.

It may be that the "mentor" realizes they are at high risk for an accusation of academic misconduct and their lashing out is intended to discourage reporting that behavior (or a less controlled behavioral vomit of their fears).

This is all true but I would say there is no need to add the qualifier "Unless the section was buried in supplementary data" because I don't see any reason to distinguish between the main text and supplementary material when it comes to authorship. They are both part of the publication.

Oh, sure, @qdread, I am just saying that maaaaayyybe if it was "a couple of words", then it might be OK not to be an author. having it in supmat just makes it a little easier to say it isn't part of it, but the main point is that I could understand not giving authorship only if the authored text was really, really small.

I agree that someone who does the work and writes it up should probably be an author. I disagree with the implication that simply writing any part of the paper warrants authorship - an academic writing consultant or editor, for example, should likely not be an author. Drafting the work is just one of the multiple usual criteria for authorship. An academic author is generally not defined as "anyone who wrote part of the paper". OP should be an author because of their contributions, not just for what they wrote.

@NuclearHoagie yes, you can be an author without having written anything. However, if you have "written a section" of the paper, I can't imagine how you could not be an author.  Editors aren't writers, they edit and adapt someone else's work. In any case, this isn't about editors or writing consultants, so I don't really see how they're relevant.

@terdon I think the distinction NuclearHoagie is making is an important one. The context provided in this answer makes it clear to me that you're referring to someone writing a whole section, but some may take the line 'your words are included in the paper. That is precisely the definition of "author"' at face value and think "I wrote a few sentences to clarify a point in the background section and I should thus be an author."

@WhatTheDuck I mean, OK, I guess some people might, but I don't really see why I should cater to folks who don't read the entirety of what really is a pretty short answer. If they just glance at a partial phrase and form an opinion, there's not much I can do.

@terdon Many users here do not read/speak English as their first language, so there's nothing wrong with clarifying these points in the comments. As I said, while I, personally, understood exactly what you were saying, there is a non-zero chance that some first year student will see "your words are included in the paper" not as you emphasizing how ridiculous it is that the collaborator here would even think there's an argument to exclude msm from the author list, but as a statement implying that "if you wrote [any] words that appear in the paper, you are an author."

I would disagree that writing a section of the text should automatically imply authorship, especially if this text was edited later by others. Text is a rather insignificant part of research, and nowadays even AI can write text. What is much more important is the idea behind, data, methodology, and so on. If this was a novel or newspaper article, text would be the central contribution.

The authorship criteria changes from field to field. In my pure math experience, proving a proposition which takes 1 page out of 30 doesn't grant the authorship but a gratitude in the acknowledgment section. I know that in other fields you can hang out in the same lab as your PI, conduct experiment and be a coauthor without writing up much.

Can everyone please stop discussing whether or not the general idea of having written text is enough? Please take it to char or comment on the OP. I am not making any general points here and the barrage of comments is getting tiresome.

First of all: the entire situation seems quite a mess; more about this towards the end of this answer.
Yet, given the somewhat limited information in the original post, I'm surprised by the very clear stance that some of the other answers take on the situation.
Contributions and authorship in mathematics
It is certainly not true that contributing a technique or insight or result or proof is always considered to warrant co-authorship in mathematics. One can frequently read passages in math papers that say something like "We are grateful to John Doe for providing us with a proof of Theorem 3.5" or "We are indepted to Jane Doe for communicating Counterexample 4.3 to us (private communication)".
Like WhatTheDuck says in their answer, the crucial question is how "significant" OP's contribution was. But in contrast to WhatTheDuck I find it impossible to determine this from the information given in the question. The main reason why I find this impossible is that significance is highly context-dependent. It's very easy to imagine two different papers A and B of similar quality und relevance and a theorem which would be a very significant contribution in paper A but only a nice-to-have in paper B.
One thing to keep in mind here is that authors are listed alphabetically in papers in (pure) mathematics. There is no concept of a "first author" or "main author".
So if, say, mathematician A develops a deep and lengthy theory in a paper and mathematician B proves a theorem for the paper which provides some additional context but which is in no way essential for the theory, then adding B as a co-author would strongly misrepresent the contributions of A and B. In this case it is very common that A is the sole author and only thanks B somewhere in the paper.
From the description in the question it seems impossible to say how significant OP's contribution was in the context of this paper. So I don't think we can judge whether OP was right to insist on being a co-author.
Two more comments:

Whether OP has written the section themselve is irrelevant for the question (although I find it quite weird that the colleague explicitly asked OP to do the writing).
(By the way, most likely it will actually be quite difficult - even for the OP and their colleague - to clearly determine how much of the section was written by the OP, since the colleague apparently made some adjustments. Moreover, it's not even clear what precisely "writing" means in the context of writing a paper.)

Even knowing the degree of novelty of the techique developed by the OP would not suffice to judge how significant OP's contribution was. It is absolutely possible to use a highly novel and innovative technique to make a contribution to a paper which adds, for this paper, only minor or peripheral insights.
(The technique might of course still be of very significant use in another paper.)

All this said, let me stress again that I'm not saying that OP doesn't deserve authorship in this situation. I'm merely saying that, given the information in the question, it is impossible to judge whether or how much OP deserves to be an author in this situation.
Social aspects
Much more worrisome than the authorship question at hand, is, from my perspective, how the situation evolved at a social level. Person A believing that they should be a co-author while person B disagrees is one thing - but going from there to a full-grown argument, summoning "lines of authority" and the like is something very different.
General advice
I think we can't say whether OP was right to insist to be listed as a co-author. I'm also not sure we can give good advice regarding OP's relationship with their colleague, as their seems to be a lot of frustration involved (possibly on both sides) and we don't know much about the background.
Yet, there is one generic piece of advice which works, in my experience, quite well when it comes to authorship in mathematics (and a lot of mathematicians seems to follow it, be it consciously or only intuitively):

Put the bar of what constitutes a "significant contribution" quite high when it comes to the question whether you should be a co-author somewhere.

Put the bar much lower when it comes to the question whether someone else should be a co-author of one of your papers.

When mathematicians interact who follow those guidelines, it regularly comes to situations where someone suggests to "remove my name from the paper because I have not contributed enough to be an author" or where someone says "I think you should be a co-author of this paper" and the other person replies "probably not". Obviously, those disagreements are much easier and much more pleasant to resolve than the one described by in the question.

It might be appropriate in this situation for the section written by the OP to be included with the original paper as an Appendix, to which the OP would be one of the authors (or even the sole author), without the OP being an author of the paper itself.

I agree that ultimately the authorship issue is a bit blurry, but the truth is I'm far more distressed about the social aspect of the situation. When he and I talked on the phone, he seemed to be far angrier that I was not obeying his authority than that I was uncomfortable with his using my material in the paper. A few of the particular things that really distressed me were "I spent time on you on the assumption you would work nonstop on math problems. I want these problems solved. And now you're doing this job search and I'll have to start all over again with someone else"

Some context might be helpful. My collaborator -M -has a co-author on this paper- T. I have a joint paper with M and T.  I was confused about this issue yesterday partly because T has not even read that joint paper. He was involved in the early discussions and will be involved in follow ups. That paper consisted entirely of work I did. M wrote about a third of the exposition but I developed the results, wrote all the proofs, and implemented all the numerics. In that case I felt that was okay because they'd had the initial idea and I was just lucky enough to have all the crucial insights.

(This will be my last comment - I apologize for the extended add on.) Ultimately, this is somewhat less about the authorship and more about the power dynamics. My title is perhaps emphatic. I didn't truly insist I be listed as an author. I raised that I would not have agreed to have the material incorporated had I known I would not be listed as an author. He said yesterday "I am the authority figure, you should be accepting my judgement on this matter." I felt it was inappropriate for him to wield  his position of authority in the discussion of whether or not I deserved credit.

@msm This is indeed an unsettling dynamic. Where has the anger come from? Well I certainly can't say because I am not that person, but I can tell you that your particular situation is not a great scenario. You were essentially using this person as an advisor. However, he can never claim you as a pupil, not in terms of justifiable time to his University, or as any measurable product of his career. A couple of papers here and there, really are quite meaningless once you get to a certain point, and the value becomes your legacy in academia. So you are leaving academia, and his time was wasted...

@msm continued... Is this reason to get angry? Certainly not, that was always going to be the most likely scenario since few people make it to academia, so any anger and frustration in that regard is of his making. We are all responsible for our own emotions. What can you do? Probably nothing, but for others reading this I would really advise against this scenario of severing ties with your advisor only to work with someone else at another institution unofficially.

While it's true that you will occasionally see things like your Doe examples in math papers, in these cases J. Doe will have freely offered the suggestion for inclusion in the paper with no expectation of authorship. OP's case is quite different: their contribution was requested.

@EspeciallyLime: Well, it depends. I remember some occasions where I was able to helped other mathematicians with a specific problem upon their request and the solution made it into an article without me becoming a co-author. It really depends on how significant the contribution is for the substance of the paper.

@msm I think it is useful to consider how things would play out if OP's contribution didn't warrant authorship, but everybody was professional. Authorship is best resolved before the work is done. OP probably should have asked when his work was requested, but the collaborator is more senior and bears responsibility for not setting correct expectations. If misunderstanding arises later, the collaborator should have started discussion, explaining the norms for authorship clearly and ideally (being responsible for the misunderstanding) offer concessions/compensation - even if just symbolic.

Well, I suppose people have different views but I wouldn't consider it reasonable to ask someone to work on a problem for inclusion in my paper unless I thought it was significant.

I am working in physics, where papers typically have 10+ coauthors and adding one more is usually not a big deal. A single author's contribution can be 5% or even less. In our field, someone who wrote some part of the text and contributed some ideas would be definitely considered a co-author. However, in mathematics things are usually different and papers typically have just one or very few authors. When I see a paper that has 2 authors, I would assume their contributions are comparable or at least 2:1 but not 10:1. Say, if a scholar named Smith proves an important theorem, he wants it to become famous as the Smith theorem and not as the Smith et al. theorem. Therefore, keeping that in mind, if I am about to write a single-author paper, I would rather do all the work myself or at least make it clear to someone I ask for help with writing well in advance that they are not going to make it on the author list. In your case it is hard to form an opinion without knowing how many authors there were in total and what were the proportions of their intellectual contributions.

Speaking as a mathematician: the level of contribution OP described should unambiguously result in authorship, even if there was only one other author. This is both the ethical answer and the answer that lines up with the culture of the field.

Yes, it's less than ideal to have a two-author paper where one author's contributions greatly outweigh the other's, but that is less bad than passing off someone else's work as one's own. The professor crossed a bright red line here.

I certainly agree with your arguments, but without hearing from the other side and not knowing how important that contribution was, I don't think a fair judgement is possible. Contributions below a certain level certainly should be reserved for the acknowledgments. I can also think of a situation when the author already had the same ideas that were "shared" with him by the student and was in the process of writing them up. The fact that they were not in a formal student-advisor relationship complicates things somewhat.

I really like Jochen Glueck's answer who is a mathematician but his opinion is different from yours.

"Physics, where papers typically have 10+ coauthors" - this depends on subfield. For instance, my PhD subfield was combustion physics; I do not remember ever seeing a paper with 10+ authors, and I could confirm that memory today (method: take a quick look at the latest issue of a good journal in that niche, result: most papers between 4 and 6 authors, the maximum at 8).

@user1149748: "it's less than ideal to have a two-author paper where one author's contributions greatly outweigh the other's, but that is less bad than passing off someone else's work as one's own." This is a false dichotomy, though. The canonical action in such a situation is to mention the other person's contributions in the acknowledgements, so no one's worked is passed off as somebody else's work. Regarding the red line that you say the authors crossed: apparently they sent the manuscript to the OP before they resubmitted it, so I don't see any bright red line being crossed. [...]

[...] (But as I said in my answer, we cannot know though whether their suggestion to only mention OP in the acknowledgements was appropriate, as this depends on a lot of context information that we don't have. And in any case, the colleague's behaviour later on indeed seems completely out-of-line.)

@JochenGlueck If the contribution were something quite simple, then an acknowledgement might be appropriate, but I'm assuming if that were the case, there'd have been no need for the professor to ask OP to write it up formally. I guess that assumption could be wrong--since this professor is clearly unreasonable, and unreasonable people do surprising things--but I've never heard of someone writing pages of a paper that they weren't an author of. OP uses the word "section" so it doesn't sound like just a paragraph or something.

But yes, ultimately we have only one side of the story and therefore can't speak in absolutes.


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Are scientific conferences important for a PhD-student?
I'm a PhD-Student in economics in my second year. But so far I have not attended a single scientific conference or similar. First, I wonder how such a conference works. Do you present your latest research papers there or do you discuss other things there as well?
Furthermore, I would like to ask for an opinion of how important participation in conferences can be for a scientific career. Can you do without them or are they indispensable for a PhD-student?
I would also like to know how to get to participate? Does the chair or my professor organize the participation in conferences?
Or should I apply for conferences myself? And what is the best way to find conferences that correspond to my field of research?
I would be very happy if someone could answer my questions and tell me about their own experiences. Many thanks in advance!

Exactly how academic conferences work varies hugely from subject to subject. Have you tried asking your advisor, or talking to other PhD students in your research group?

So far not yet. But I intend to. As far as I know, neither my supervisor nor anyone else from the chair has attended a conference in the last 2 years.

To the question in the title, the answer is yes, but only typically at a later stage of the PhD. The exact timeline varies by field because in some fields students are already publishing early, but a general rule is that conferences are valuable after you have published at least one good publication in the area of the particular conference, and less valuable earlier.
A PhD roughly involves two stages: the first stage is getting matched with an advisor, learning about an area and about one's interests, and progressing along in a project in order to get a good publication. At this stage, attendance at a conference can be fun and interesting, but is typically not that critical. More useful for early PhD students is attendance at summer schools, literature reading groups, and more self-knowledge type of events.
Conferences are not the best for self-knowledge, but much more designed for professional networking and for learning about other cutting edge research in a field where the attendees are already experts. Once you feel you are confident as a researcher in the area and can talk to others in the field without feeling out of place, that is when you get the most value out of conferences. Ask yourself these questions:

If I were watching a talk that was about something I didn't understand, would I be able to ask a meaningful question of the presenter after the talk?

Do I understand the basics of some of the topics that are hot at this conference? Would I be able to discern talks that are related to my interests from those that aren't?

Do I know some of the names of professors working in my area? Would I be able to recognize names and would I feel comfortable introducing myself to those people to chat with them about research?

If the answer to some of these questions is Yes, then attending a conference is good. If the answer to all of them is No, then a conference is likely not the most effective use of your time.

Furthermore, I would like to ask for an opinion of how important participation in conferences can be for a scientific career. Can you do without them or are they indispensable for a PhD-student?

The answer is different for a scientific career and for a PhD student. For the former, conferences are typically very important. They aren't strictly indispensible, but if you don't go to conferences you would have to find some other way of networking effectively and it would be much more challenging. For the latter, PhD students often don't need to attend conferences early on. They are helpful later on, but depending on the level of growth, it could be fine to skip conferences entirely and only attend them later in one's career (e.g. after starting a postdoc).

I would also like to know how to get to participate? Does the chair or my professor organize the participation in conferences? Or should I apply for conferences myself?

You will have to ask your professor about this: you will need funding for travel to attend, so your professor may say that you should only attend once you have a good conference paper to present.

And what is the best way to find conferences that correspond to my field of research?

The best way is to ask your professor and fellow PhD students what are the conferences that people typically attend. Good luck!

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Graduate admission for mature Computer Science school teacher
The mother of my friend is a senior computer science high school teacher in India. She did a masters in Information Technology around 25 years ago in India and wants to restart her education. She want's to pursue a (preferably funded) PhD in CS from a decent university in North America or Europe.
Would her 20 years long experience as a CS teacher be of help ?
Since her Bachelors is not in CS (in another STEM field) would this adversely impact her chances ?
And finally how much will her age (40s) impact her application ?

I would rewrite the question to focus on just one aspect. Here you are asking 3 different questions, plus (potentially) another one in the title (if it is read as a question). You could focus on just how much age will affect. Or you could make it more broad: "What are some considerations for a mature school teacher when applying for graduate programs?"

I would guess that in the US, if she is willing to start a program that will take 5 to 7 years, she would have a chance for admission. It is an unusual case, but she has learned much, I think, of what a CS undergrad learns here. There will probably be a few missing pieces, such as theory, but that might be made up with the required coursework that is normally done. I'll have to guess that the IT masters won't be of a lot of use, unless it is quite different from what happens here. And things have changed a lot in IT in 25 years. So the length of a doctoral program would depend a lot on what knowledge she can demonstrate.
Age shouldn't be an issue. Funding might be, but she is also probably a great candidate to be a TA for the beginning courses. The biggest problem might be visa and coronavirus issues, of course.
But she can only know if she makes some applications and, perhaps, explores her options with a professor or two.

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What department level internal accountability standards can be developed for improving problem advisors
My dissertation has just been approved and I can not be more relieved. I am not relieved because of impostor syndrome or because the work load was too high. I am relieved that I never have to meaningfully interact with my advisor again unless I decide to. I can go into industry, and none of my future success requires further actions or approval from my advisor who is so prone to inaction and the inability to effectively communicate.
I am in a highly theoretical STEM field, where the individual research interests of professors are so distinct it is difficult to get good guidance from other committee members. Additionally, the barrier to entry is quite high and it is not common to complete publications in this field without heavy guidance.
During my PhD studies, I developed severe anxiety regarding meeting deadlines and the ability to control my own success. It was very frequent that meetings would be canceled at the last moment. My advisor was full of excuses, and as legitimate as they may be, did not offer sincere apologies. There are long periods where I make attempts for communication, by email, messaging, and phone call, with little or no response. There are empty promises of reading my work or doing a small task by a certain date, which are not met and when not met not addressed with an apology or request for more time, but rather a slew of excuses of being laden with administrative and personal affairs.
I have had many mental breakdowns during my PhD. These stem from politely pushing him to take action, and repeatedly being ignored or given false promises of completing said action. The inability for my polite actions to result in him taking necessary action for my success is the root of these breakdowns and anxiety. At times I have shared these ailments with my advisor, however this hasn't changed his behavior, perhaps superficially for a short amount of time, but the pattern reemerges shortly after.
I am free now, but it is my true belief that inaction and inability to effectively communicate, especially when aware of a student's declining mental health, is abusive. This realization was gradual, I perhaps only realized I felt this way 4 years in. I did not speak out because I was afraid that it would waste my years of work. Once I have degree in hand, I will no longer afraid of speaking out (I am not afraid of not having his reference, I am not confident in his ability to write a good reference in a timely manner, and I have other references.). I have talked to other students in my research group, and we all share some notion of this decline in mental health. I want my actions to help them, and I understand that these feelings may not be completely localized to this one advisor and may be a more common phenomena in academia.
I do not want to defame. My feeling is my advisor is experiencing mental health decline himself. I do think that professors, as people of power, have the responsibility to be good advisors and not directly cause mental health decline. I want to reach out to the department, but I do not know how to effectively incite change. I do not want to complain. I want to create change. First I want to create change for my former peers who are suffering the inaction of my advisor. If successful, a general method is preferred that can be applied in various departments. I want to start by inciting reform to increase the accountability of problem professors to communicate regularly and allow students to control their success to a larger degree.
I have thought about writing letters to the department chair and graduate student general advisor, and I think that is the first step. I was wondering if any of you have suggestions, or have had success creating localized reform within a department before. This will certainly not be easy, however your suggestions are very much appreciated.

I found your post far too long to read and I suspect others will as well. If you have a specific question, can you distill your question to that and avoid the extra story that is not relevant?

Too much rant, not enough question.

At some universities, all PhD students have multiple advisors.  In principle, this means that if one advisor is not doing their job, other advisors will fill in the gaps.  This is not exactly accountability, but it gets close.
At some universities, all PhD advisors are required to meet certain standards.  In principle, if they fall below those standards, their ability to continue having PhD students could be revoked.  However, there is no accurate way to measure supervision quality, so this is not completely reliable.
In my experience, these are university policies, but there is no reason they could not be departmental policy.
The best form of accountability available is for students to refuse to work for advisors who do a bad job.  That's not what you asked for, but it's the best that exists.


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What to do when professor denies authoring an extremely negative letter of recommendation?
I asked a professor for letters of recommendation for 7 universities. I was able to view his review for one particular university and it was extremely, unnecessarily negative.
When I confronted him, he denied submitting this review. However, on comparing the negative letter and the actual letter that he forwarded, I found that the first paragraph of the letters are the same except that the adjectives are all negative. I have no way of knowing if it was him who submitted this. If so, there is a possibility all the universities received this negative letter.
What do I do?

What do I do? Seek better referees and never ask him for a letter of recommendation again.

I actually don't understand the question. What is the review?

@Alchimista I think: "review" means "reference".

Personally, I would always ask to see the letter.  I have also often had people ask for input to the letter and then I gave them a thoughtful list of bullets including some granular facts and examples drawn from our interaction.  I realize there is this fetish of unseen letters in academia, but that is not how it is done in the business world and I feel more a part of that world than the herr doktor professor academic world.

Should the reference letter reflect your abilities or your "perceived" abilities?

Did he say more about the part that "[h]e asserted that it wasn't him who submitted this review"? Did he say that he submitted a different letter (i.e. with more positive adjectives), written by himself, submitted by himself? Do you think he doesn't dare to tell you that he wrote a negative letter? (In that case, Monika's answer isn't really fitting the problem, since there was no "mistake" on his side, nor that he didn't write the letter himself)

"on comparing the negative letter and the actual letter that he forwarded" I assume the "negative letter" is the one you saw as submitted, but what is "the actual letter that he forwarded"?  Is it a letter he showed you and that he claims was the one he submitted?

It sounds like the professor didn't expect you to see his letter and, when confronted about it, chose to deny it.

I am reluctant to answer to phrasing that posits the OP as a victim of a falsehood without further background. The OP choose the professor. Why? Perhaps the OP had little to no in depth interactions with the professor and just chose him to have another name on the list. So the OP was ignorant of what the professor really thought. Shame on the OP for not knowing better first. As to the denial of the letter, I presume anyone has full right to deny a claim to a recommendation letter at any point later when the person of interest has previously already waived his/her right to see the letter.

I think the question is unclear, so I'll try to cover all the scenarios.

If the professor is claiming that he submitted the positive letter and someone sabotaged it, then he should be very concerned that someone is falsifying letters. He should take the lead in helping you get to the bottom of this. If he says "oh well, someone sabotaged my letter but I don't care", then I would question his honesty.
If the professor is claiming that he did not author the letter at all, then it would seem that you've caught him in a lie. (This doesn't really make sense to me; doesn't the letter have his name on it?) Best to find another referee; if possible, you could even try to switch out the letters on your in-progress applications.
If you're not sure which of these is the case, you could express your concern that a letter was incorrectly submitted on their behalf, and ask for their help in fixing it. Or, if you have another referee, you could just try to swap them out without involving this person.


text:
Is there a way to do a PhD such that you get a broad view of a field or subfield as a whole?
I will aim to keep this as general as possible, given the already narrow scope of the question.
I am looking for a way to design a PhD around the broader study of mathematics. I want to learn more about the relative relationships of different subjects within math, and am less interested in the arcane outer reaches of a particular subject. I understand that in order to do this successfully, I will probably need to find some lens through which to focus my study. I am curious if there are existing ways that others have managed to do this.
As an example, suppose you are interested in analysis. Rather than study whatever particular problems lie on the periphery of the field, you might focus your research on the particular approach of 19th century mathematicians like Cauchy and Weierstrass. In this way, you've chosen history to be the lens through which you are able to examine the whole (or at least a larger part) of analysis.
Maybe another way to do this is to develop alternative explanations for theorems and/or subjects? It bleeds a bit into pedagogy. Could you direct your PhD research on re-framing traditional explanations in a geometric/visual context? I'm thinking specifically of Visual Complex Analysis and Tristan Needham's idea of the amplitwist. Is it viable to have a thesis that is based on developing/reexamining alternative approaches to understanding math, while still maintaining a rigorous relationship with the mathematical content?
To be clear, I am not speaking specifically about history of math or math education. These are just the only examples I can think of. I am curious if anyone has tried to broaden the scope of their study through other lenses.

I sense a false dichotomy here.

Potentially an interesting question here. I suggested a change to the title to make it clear you are asking about the feasibility of the general approach, rather than "shopping" for a particular PhD institution (the latter would be off-topic here).

"[Y]ou might focus your research on the particular approach of 19th century mathematicians like Cauchy and Weierstrass. In this way, you've chosen history to be the lens through which you are able to examine the whole (or at least a larger part) of analysis." With the aim of doing what? "Developing alternative explanations for theorems" sounds extremely vague tbh. Certainly you will learn a lot if you dive into this kind of investigation. The question is, however, how this will contribute to scientific knowledge above and beyond historical research (which you say you don't want to do).

I understand the urge to contribute to the "big picture" of the field rather than the "small picture", but the point is that it's quite difficult to meaningfully contribute to the big picture without first learning, during the course of your PhD, how to contribute to the small picture (what you call the "arcane outer reaches" but what is actually the bread and butter for most working mathematicians).

@AdamPřenosil First off, apologies for the insulting language. I didn't mean to come across as scornful of actual math research. In grad school I felt ill-equipped to contribute to scientific knowledge and much more adept at re-articulating and explaining already known results. I guess my goal of completing a PhD is to continue to learn and set myself up to become a professor. I am honestly less interested in contributing to scientific knowledge through published research, and more interested in contributing through cogent and engaging teaching. Maybe a PhD is not the place for that?

I did not find your language insulting, just somewhat misleading. Yes, the goal of a PhD is precisely to learn how to "contribute to scientific knowledge through published research". This is not to say that teaching cannot be an equally important or more important way of contributing to science, but learning how to teach undergraduates is not the goal of PhD studies. Though, for better or worse, if teaching math courses is your goal, then my impression is that in practice you need a PhD degree in math anyway, i.e. you need to successfully demonstrate that you can do some research.

Somewhere in a PhD should come some reasonably broad view of a subfield. This is not just some initial 'literature review' but also a natural byproduct of reading the literature. Maybe I read too broadly, but I don't think so - I adopted and incorporated various concepts and experimental techniques that helped me make progress in my specific area.

@AdamPřenosil - Not to mention, most of the big picture stuff has already been pored over by tens of thousands of people... your odds of successfully finding novelty there aren't zero, but they're close to it, and novelty is a fundamental requirement to grant a PhD

I think you can do research like this, but it usually wouldn't be in a math department.
Your two examples fit squarely within math history and math education, respectively. Philosophy of math is another topic where people take a broad view of math and look at it from different lenses. By contrast, to receive a PhD in math, one is generally expected to do new math research, i.e. develop new mathematics that has never been written down before.
There is some wiggle room here. The line between "new mathematics" and "new ways of viewing previously-existing mathematics" is somewhat blurry. But to get a PhD in math, it's expected that your contribution gives some new mathematical insight, in some sense.
One could argue that this segregation between researchers who "do" math and those who "think about" math (for lack of better terms) isn't a perfect state of affairs. We need big picture thinking as well as progress in specific subareas, and modern math academia tends to push people toward the latter.

Thanks for the response. I think that the distinction you make in your last paragraph is essentially what I am struggling with. Do you think it is accurate to differentiate between learning math for the sake of research and learning math for the sake of teaching? If I try to distill my post down into one question, I think it is essentially: If my goal is to understand the breadth of math deeply enough to become an effective teacher to undergraduates, what type of approach should I take?

@ahblay I think that's quite a different question, actually. I know plenty of people who do a great job teaching undergrads despite their research being not big-picture at all. Teaching and research are not COMPLETELY unrelated, but to some extent, they are different skills. I don't think the choice of PhD topic has anything to do with how good a teacher one becomes. You'll certainly understand undergrad-level math well enough to teach it if you graduate from any reputable math PhD program. Understanding the material is absolutely not the hard part of teaching.

And in terms of careers, there are a good number of faculty jobs (particularly at liberal-arts colleges) where teaching is the main focus and research is semi-optional. But to get such jobs, you typically have to do a nontrivial amount of research early in your career.

For what it's worth, "Math Education" is an area of research in the math department in which I'm currently enrolled, and my undergraduate institution had a "History of Mathematics" program (note: had is accurate here --- the singular professor who was in that program has since retired; her PhD was done in a history department).  That is to say, such programs do exist in math departments, though I agree with their rarity.

While you might not be able to find a program like that, you might be able to find an advisor somewhere who meets your needs. But their focus might be more on the history of math or the philosophy of math. Such folks exist.
Doctoral programs, however, in the US, at least, include a breadth component in the initial coursework and the comprehensive exams that give a fairly broad view of the field. Most research, however, following comps is very narrow based as you note. But if you can find an advisor who has a broader view you might be happy enough.
Alternatively, you can get a "typical" doctorate and broaden your view, though you might need to wait to mid career to really do that.
At liberal arts colleges in the US, faculty often take a broader view and it is possibly more acceptable there than at strictly research universities. They need to earn a doctorate (mostly) somewhere, of course.
The path is uncommon, but it is there. You'll have to seek it out.
Let me note that mathematicians seek insight. Insight is what gives you the ability to come up with things that might be true (and significant) but aren't known to be true or false. Insight can be hard to come by and takes work to achieve. One strives for this in a doctoral program. My experience, however, is that mathematical insight isn't general, but can be specific to a subfield. One can, for example, have great insight into, say, abstract algebra, but little if any into topology. This can make your quest difficult. You want more than superficial knowledge of these areas and it can take effort for each of them independently of the others.

Nicely said.  It seems like that's a very cogent argument for a sabbatical.

It is indeed possible to write a Ph.D. thesis providing alternative explanation for theorems -- but to write a good such Ph.D. thesis is much harder than writing one proving new theorems!
A good example is the 1950 thesis of John Tate. Tate's main results were the analytic continuation and functional equation for the Dedekind zeta and Hecke L-functions associated to number fields. (This includes the Riemann zeta function, as a special case.)
The results were already known, but Tate's methods were extremely innovative,
developing an elegant approach in terms of adelic integration and Poisson summation.
Tate's work was enormously influential in the development of modern number theory; almost any working number theorist will be at least broadly familiar with Tate's thesis, and many of them will have read it. It is widely regarded as one of the best Ph.D. theses in math to have ever been written. Tate then went on to have a brilliant career, and advised many students who are now famous number theorists in their own right.
Most of us (including me!) have far more modest talents than Tate. So my advice is to set out and initially try to do something new. That is easier than having new insight into something old. However, if at any point you discover new insights into old methods, by all means pursue them!

I'm not sure about your first paragraph in general. An anecdote doesn't prove a general rule. But, an easy proof of an old result won't likely be innovative enough for publication. Some exceptions apply. And are exciting when they do.

@Buffy I'm saying that it can be done. I'm certainly not saying that an attempt to do something similar will necessarily be successful.


text:
Discontinuing my Master's Thesis
Recently, I was planning on finishing my Master's studies and following it up with a PhD.
I received an offer from my advisor last year about this and even already signed up for the
PhD program which would require me to finish my Master's thesis first, which I am technically currently
working on.
After the first semester of my Master's program at my institution, I actually felt very dissatisfied with
the content and quality of the program and did not really learn the things I wanted to (not to say that everything was in vain).
Frankly, I did not really think about the program's content too much in advance but rather blindly continued to study where I
also did my undergraduate degree, out of convenience. I then looked for different institutions but was intrigued by the PhD offer and
discarded the idea of going somewhere else.
Right now, I am kind of at the same point again where, additionally, I am working on a thesis that is not
all that interesting to me and has a very vague / too unspecific topic, in my opinion. I could finish this somehow
but I would certainly not be satisfied with it in an academic sense. The thesis also feels very rushed because it would have to be done in
time for the PhD program to directly follow up.
I thought about it and would like to start a new Master's program somewhere else without finishing my degree at my current institution.
I also want to move to a different country for this and it seems like a good time in my life for doing so.
I talked about all this to my advisor and they want me to definitely at least finish my thesis, since they think
that otherwise my time would be wasted. They said I could also chose a new topic and finish in a year or so. The only thing that
mattered to them was that I would get the degree right now. I do not feel this way at all, as I do not really want to finish it just "because". The question is if it is really such a bad idea to just quit my Master's right now? Would it hurt
my ability to get admission to a new institution? I would appreciate some other views on this.

Consider that in the future, you will be competing against tons of people who did not quit their masters.

What part of the world are you in?

@cag51 Western Europe

You seem to be substituting short term thinking for long term. If you finish the masters you will have more options and people will look at you more positively (many factors) than if you quit.
There is no reason you can't explore other doctoral programs, even abroad, while you finish. If you want an academic career, the nature of your masters is much less important than that you have it, and much less important than success in the doctoral program.
I have to agree with your advisor, that your own best path is to get it finished. I'd suggest otherwise if the advisor was subverting your progress, but it seems the opposite. There are no guarantees if you switch programs. The grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence.

Thank you. I am still undecided, but I have heard different opinions and arguments and am now more willing to find a compromise. I will definitely be mindful not to fall into the "greener grass" hole.


text:
Publish a paper about a contribution already briefly outlined in one of my papers?
Can I publish a paper about a contribution X that was already (very briefly) outlined in the Supplemental Information of a previous paper of mine ?
Background: X is significant and deserves a paper on its own but could not be completely published in the first paper due to space constraints.
Field: STEM/CS.

Answers already given are good, so it shouldn't be a big problem, but maybe in the future keep in mind that how you feel about this now is a good reason for not mentioning research ideas all too generously in your papers/supplements. As a reviewer I tend to say if such an idea is bad it doesn't deserve to be mentioned, and if it's good, it deserves its own paper with elaboration and should probably not be mentioned in an earlier paper either, beyond maybe a one-liner (length and being nice to readers are an issue here).

To note that blind review may require you to write as if the previous paper was written by somebody else. So you may need to either cite it and explain how your work is different, or if you can't do that not cite it because it would give away your anonymity. You could say "We build on work we outlined in [42] ... [42] Citation redacted for blind review" or some other formulation. In that case the reviewers then aren't able to see the earlier paper.

In general, yes, absolutely. People expand on previous research all the time - whether their own or someone else's.
Of course, you will need to cite and refer to your earlier publication.
The question then turns into whether your new contribution offer a sufficient advance over previous work to be publishable. That will depend on the specifics of your case. The reviewers will give you feedback on that. If you'd rather not write a full paper to have it rejected, ask someone in your field their opinion, with the specifics: your earlier paper and an outline of what you propose to do now.

You can definitely submit - it will be up to program committees / editors to decide whether your new paper is worthwhile for publication.
I would suppose you should endeavor to "adorn" your contribution with consequences, applications, context, potential future work on the basis of it etc. - which is stuff that was not included the brief outline and may make the difference between mere elaboration and a beefier contribution.
Also:

Refer explicitly and clearly to the brief-outline publication, but don't "shoot yourself in the foot" by deprecating the significance of what you're writing.
Perhaps a venue with a slightly different scope, which would better fit the result you had outlined in the previous publication, would be appropriate.


text:
which option should i prefer Thesis vs Non-thesis for MS in CS?
I've got admission for MS in Computer Science in a US university. Which option is better Non-thesis or thesis ? How do I decide which one I should take ?

Better for what purpose?

@JeffE i was asking in a general perspective

That's like asking "Which is better: The Beatles or Elvis?" There is no "general" answer. Each optinon is better for some purposes and for some people than the other.

In my experience, many non-thesis options are used as bailout options for students admitted to PhD programs that get deep into the program but decide not to finish. On the opposite side of the coin, some professional Master's programs have both thesis and non-thesis options where there's no discernible downstream difference between the two. If you want to continue in academia, having a good Master's thesis to point to in your PhD program application is probably better than having nothing. If you plan to go to industry, the Master's thesis may do you no good unless you're trying to reach a job in a research department at a company or national lab.
If you can answer some of these questions about what you want to do with your life after your Master's degree, you might be able to sort out an answer.

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


text:
Preprint got published on Authorea without sending it to review (desk rejection). Is this how it is supposed to happen?
I just submitted a manuscript to a journal that uses the ScholarOne Submission system. There was the option to agree that the manuscript will be published as a preprint on Authorea. It says:

New! Preprint your manuscript while it's under review This journal is
piloting the under review service, powered by Authorea—Wiley’s new
initiative to streamline the early sharing of research and open up the
peer review process.
The first submission of your manuscript will be imported by Authorea
after the initial submission screening is completed, prior to peer
review. Preprint posting on Authorea is a free, optional service and
will not impact the editorial decision or time to publication at the
journal.
By opting in, you agree to share submission metadata, including email
address(es), with Authorea and to the terms. An Authorea account will
be created for all authors. Preprints are assigned a DOI and are
therefore a citable, permanent part of the scholarly record; once
opted in, you cannot change your selection at later stages of the
publication process or if your manuscript is rejected by the journal.
Learn more at the under review FAQ.

Would you like to make your research publicly available as a preprint on Authorea?

Yes! Please preprint my manuscript
No, I do not want to participate

So I selected yes assuming that the manuscript will only be published as preprint if it went through the initial submission checks (i.e. is going to be reviewed).
The manuscript got published as a preprint a few days after submission. But a week after submission it got the rejection notice without any review. This was not what I expected to happen. I would have preferred to revise the manuscript in the case of a desk rejection before publishing it as preprint.
Now I am a bit puzzled about what could possibly have happened.
Did I misunderstand the statements explaining the process?
Is this how such things are usually handled?
Or do you think that something went wrong in the editorial process?
I would really be interested if someone else experienced something similar. In any case, in the future I will definitely handle preprint publishing myself instead of using such "services".

I think the misunderstanding here is that "initial submission screening" probably just means checking that all the required parts of the paper have been uploaded correctly, have been correctly typeset by Latex, etc.

Yes, you misunderstood. This is exactly how preprints work.
You decide when your work is at a stage where the rest of the world should see it. That's when you post your work on a preprint server. This decision is made by you independent of any editors or reviewers.
The confusion here comes from the fact that the publisher of the journal is also providing a preprint server. But this is done to make things convenient for authors (and to promote their own preprint server) not to mix editorial decisions with preprint uploads.
Note, if you really don't want your work to appear on their preprint server you might be able to ask them nicely and explain that you misunderstood. Even though you signed the paperwork they might reasonably let you of the hook. (I don't think they have to, but that's a legal question and for another site.)

Note, if you want to post on a preprint server that is not associated with a publisher, here are some of the main ones in the sciences: https://www.biorxiv.org/ (Biology)
https://www.medrxiv.org/ (Health sciences) https://arxiv.org/
(Physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics) https://chemrxiv.org/ (Chemistry).

The preprint already got quite some attention and is in the systems of researchgate and google scholar. So, I think the consequences of removing it now are worse than having it published in the current state. Anyway, I cannot get rid of the feeling that I was somehow tricked into publishing it there. Although I know that I shouldn't have agreed to the terms. Do you see any pros/cons with also publishing it on another preprint server such as bioarxiv.org? My motivation to do this is to have it published in a place where most preprints of my field are published.

@HansJürgen I agree that you got tricked. The same way one gets tricked into "buy one get one free offers" by sales persons and realizing only afterwards that one overpaid because one didn't actually want the second item... As for your question: it is not generally recommended to post on multiple preprint sites. But it's also not the end of the world. If you do that make sure the versions are identical / updated in sync in order to avoid confusion (you can add updated versions to preprint servers such as bioarxiv and Authorea).

@HansJürgen Note, that you can curate your google scholar profile to exclude particular "publications" that it finds for you. So that by itself is not necessarily an issue.

Publishing is all about control. The cynic in me thinks that Wiley doesn't like the fact that the popularity of ArXiv has spread outside the "hardcore nerd, do everything in LaTeX" sciences and that they might lose their gatekeeping function as a result. So, they're incentivised for you to use their pre-print service and as a consequence push Authorea in your general direction.


text:
Are unimpressive grades in core courses an indication of not being competent for a career in the field?
I have recently passed my qualifiers and research proposal. My research is in computational mechanics. I had two courses (continuum mechanics and finite element method) as part of my research related courses. I will be using the concepts learnt in the courses in my research, though my research will be more applied than theoretical, so will involve utilizing a commercially available software and develop few additional routines for it.
Now, I scored B+ in both the courses (the minimum grade required for being eligible for qualifying exams was a B-). I struggled through few concepts but fared fairly well in the qualifiers and answered most of the questions asked by the committee.
However, I am concerned that my average grades might be an indicator that I might not be fit for the field I have chosen to build a career in. Now, I am confident that I will manage to adequately complete my PhD thesis and publish papers as required.
But, I am worried that academia is going to be a closed door for me. Eventually, if I get tenure track position after my PhD, I will have to teach these subjects (There's no teaching assistantship opportunities in my department for me), and how will I be able to teach something in which I fared poorly? Also, I will have to do theoretical research work after my phd, and I will not fare well in that. What should I do?

If I understand correctly, you'll use material from these courses in your thesis research. So it seems that,by the time you finish your Ph.D., you'll know those concepts quite well, certainly well enough to teach the courses in question.

Here's a link to an obligatory PhD Comic on the topic: http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=470

I come from Europe where grades do not matter as much as in the US. Often, grades are given for arbitrary reasons (the Professor not feeling well, politics not good etc.) and many profs admit this.

You are overthinking it. First, if you complete your degree and get that first academic job, no one will care anymore what your grades were.
Second, you seem to be implying that your learning ended in those subjects with the courses you took. I think that isn't very likely.
In fact, for teaching purposes, it is sometimes valuable to have had the experience of struggling earlier, so that you have an appreciation for those students that don't find everything easy, or even trivial. You will probably be required to teach students who are not at all like those who go on to earn doctorates - i.e. not at all like you. Every student is different and the strugglers need to be taught along with everyone else.
There are many reasons for mediocre grades, though yours are a bit better than that. I suspect that things may have been hectic at the time and there wasn't time enough to reflect and gain deeper insights. But that level of insight isn't forever closed off to you.
As for the research, in many fields the research is so deep and narrow that it is almost necessary to give up a deep knowledge of other somewhat related, but not essential companion fields.

A bit about myself-

I am a methodological/statistical reviewer for the top journal in my subfield
I landed a postdoc in a top 10 school
I will be an assistant professor at an R1 where I will teach graduate level statistics (of which my B's on my transcript never came up in the interviewing process).
I publish methodologically rigorous work (at least in my opinion) that uses complicated statistical and computational techniques.

Also

I got a B- in my introductory stats course in graduate school and probably should have gotten a C except for the professor cutting me some slack.
I averaged around an 85 in my statistics courses throughout graduate school.
I think of the myriad of statistics courses I took, I only got a single A. Maybe 2.

I have found that me making B's in my stats courses in grad school has only had the purpose of showing how grades in graduate school are not reflective of research productivity or expertise. I can share my story and say "dont worry". The moral of things are not to worry and let your research do the talking. My grades are probably reflective of me being a poor classroom student rather than anything else. Probably indicative of the test anxiety I have.
If you publish research with rigorous methods in good journals, you are likely an expert. At the very least, you will be perceived as such by your peers.

If one needs a single indicator to predict future performance, the set of grades in first year graduate courses is likely as good an indicator as any. Usually a student with the passion, interest, and work ethic needed to do research will get good grades in courses. Bad grades in courses at this level certainly are negative indicators (on the flip side, good grades are less reliable as positive indicators, because there is a sort of student whose goal is good grades rather than learning and this can lead to good grades, although the mentality is not one necessarily conducive to doing original work).
However, when one says grades are an indicator, one is thinking in probabilistic and distributional terms, in terms of expected values, and in big populations the lower probability events do occur. In fact, I know a guy who never passed his qualifying exams but got close enough that he was allowed to continue and went on to be a productive researcher, as good as many others who got much better grades (some of whom did not survive). He publishes things closely related to the subject matter of the qualifying exam he never could pass. But he's an unusual guy, with a lot of faith in himself and very little psychological need to attend to social conventions or institutional demands. His sometimes almost pig-headed passion for his field of study was always plainly evident, and he focused on what interested him rather than what he had to learn to pass qualifying exams.
You should ask yourself why you are trying to get a PhD. If the answer is that you want to have a doctorate, that a doctorate will be useful for achieving your professional goals, something external of this nature, etc., then bad grades are a bad sign. If the answer is that you want to learn more about X and there's really nothing else you want to do right now, then there is cause for optimism, provided you work hard to learn a lot about X.


text:
Applying for PhD programs abroad while doing one in your home country
In September I am starting the second year of PhD in my home country. At the same time, I am also going to apply for foreign PhD programs in the same science this year. It has always been my intent to apply for PhD in a prestigious American or European university. The reason I didn’t do it one year ago is that I wanted to gain some more working experience and knowledge before leaving to work abroad. Now I feel that I’m ready. What is more, now I have publications and good CV with talks at conferences, short research visits and such things.
I would like to know, what is the general point of view on such PhD applicants as me? Should I mention in my applications that I want to do double PhD or maybe not even mention this at all?
I should say that applying abroad, I don’t intend to leave the PhD program I’m currently doing. I know many students who obtained their master’s degrees at my university and then applied for PhDs abroad and left to other countries and at the same time were accepted to continue our PhD program. Now they are doing double PhDs, you could say. Of course, their situation was slightly different at the moment of applying, as the universities that accepted them didn’t know if they were actually interested in doing double PhD. However, practically it doesn’t seem to make any difference now.

"Should I mention in my applications that I want to do double PhD or maybe not even mention this at all?" If you don't mention it you might find yourself kicked out of your foreign phd programme the moment they find you out...and they will find you out. Why do you want to do two PhDs at all, not to mention at once? There's no point in two PhDs.

Really I always wanted to do PhD in a prestigious university in the US or Europe, however, I needed some extra time to prepare for it and for this reason I got enrolled into PhD at my home university in the first place. At the moment I’m even more determined to apply, because now I know specific places and professors I want to work on my PhD with. In addition, I want to pursue academic career in US or Europe in future and for this reason it’s much better to obtain a PhD somewhere there.

Prestigious universities won't "share" you with another institution, if they accept you they want you focused 100% so you'd have to quit your current PhD.

Looks to me like you should try instead to collaborate with the professors you like (or their students), if possible leading to co-authored papers. That would improve your network and potentially help you getting a postdoc there later.

It's usually a bad idea to do two PhDs at the same time because:

A PhD is a full-time job, with some very intensive periods. One has to deal with enough stress already when doing one PhD.
It would unavoidably generate conflicts: sometimes your advisor no 1 will ask you to do something which will keep you busy the full week or month. What do you tell your advisor number 2, that you're on holiday? If your two advisors don't agree on the direction of your research, what do you do? What if one insists to have their name on a paper you did with the other?
Either you do your best on both, but then it will take you more time than doing only one, probably double. Or you do one seriously and you botch the other, but then what's the point of doing it?
Assuming you survive the two PhDs, at the end you can apply for a postdoc or industry job... Exactly the same as with one PhD, no benefit.


text:
Writing postdoc fellowship before contacting postdoc advisor?
I'm in my last year of PhD (in the US studying biomathematics) and I didn't know how early I was supposed to start applying for postdocs. My main concern is funding. Apparently, the NSF postdoc grant is due in less than 30 days and the NIH F32 series is due in less than 2 months.
These grants all require research statements and some kind of sponsor statement. Since I haven't contacted anyone about postdocs, I can imagine a few routes of action:

I quickly write a research proposal -> send it to potential postdoc advisors along with CV and application -> ask if they are willing to advise me + write a sponsor statement for me within 2 weeks or so
Contact postdoc advisors now -> explain that grants are due in a month or so and ask if they want to quickly draft up something together

Which one is better? Finally, how many postdocs are funded by their own grant?
How many are funded by PI's grant?
Of course I will speak to my PhD advisor about this asap.

I'd write to the potential advisors with your CV and a summary of the proposal. I don't know what the paper work is for these schemes, but I suspect they require a ~1 page summary or abstract. I'd write that as a token that you've thought about it and arn't just trying it on. You might find thought that the sponsoring institution has processes that must be gone through before they are allowed to sponsor people, and that these have deadlines earlier than the NSF/NIH deadlines.


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Is using a similar experimental procedure and analysis structure to test something different considered plagiarism?
Here is the situation:
I am currently writing a thesis which uses a behavioral experiment to answer the main research question. Its main aim is to test how a certain welfare scheme would affect taxpayer behaviour, and thus relates to a very broad strain of literature on taxpayer behaviour. I have found a paper which uses (in my opinion) a very clever experimental procedure to test how behaviour is affected by the way taxes are used. Therefore I decided to use this experimental procedure and adapt it to the specific welfare scheme I am interested in so I can use it to answer my research question.
Currently I am in the progress of writing my thesis and was wondering where the line ends from building on previous work and plagiarism. Because the experimental procedure is similar in it's structure, the model used for the formulation of my hypothesis is also an adapted version of the model in the original paper. Consequently, the data I have also takes a similar form, which will result in taking similar steps for a correct analysis of this data.
So, would it be considered plagiarism if I have adapted an already existing experimental procedure, adapted the (mathematical) model previously used to formulate hypothesis, and use a similar structure of hypothesis testing (that is: first using statistical test A, then B, then C, etc on my own data)?
I have obviously referenced a great deal to this original paper, and even explained why I think the experimental procedure is so good and fitting for answering my question. Obviously, I am using my own wording and data, but was wondering if something like this can be seen as 'structure plagiarism' or is something desirable as it can be used for direct comparison of the papers.

"Plagiarism" means you do not cite the source.  To find out if something you are doing is plagiarism, check that definition.

You are only building on the shoulders of giants, there is nothing wrong with that, as long as you cite the sources. Your hypothesis and your data are original, you are only applying a method that has the advantage of having been validated in the literature.
This might make your work less original, but what is the point of developing a new statistical analysis if a perfectly fitting one already exists?

Is this also the case when I adapt an mathematical model by adding one or two variables? By doing this the most general implications of the model still stand (and I also formulate them as testable hypothesis) but also makes me able to test other hypotheses. To what extent should I describe the full model in my thesis?

You are improving an existing model, it's not plagiarism. The originality of your work does not lie in model-development, but in the modelling of some phenomenon. Concerning your second question, you should ask your supervisor. The answer entirely depends on your field, your doctoral school, etc. Personally, I would give a thorough description in the thesis, highlighting your additions.

You are confounding two issues here:

Is it plagiarism? Not if you cite this source for everything you take out of it.
Will it be enough to do only that? It depends.

For a master thesis and even more so for a bachelor thesis, it would probably be enough to replicate a known experiment in another context and see if it holds up.
For a doctoral thesis, this is not always the case, but it still might. If the original work made a strong conclusion that has had large implications and you can rigorously show that it doesn't replicate, this can be very interesting. If all you find out is "It worked in America. There were no reasons to think it wouldn't work in Europe and indeed it does work in Europe", then this is probably not a very substantial contribution.
That brings me your extension of the model. Be very specific about the reasons behind this extension. If you can motivate them well, the extensions will be the original contribution of your work. If you can't, the reviewer might assume you just wanted to add on something so that it looks like you were busy.

There are only so many ways to design behavioral experiments and so many ways to analyze them. If you consider experiments at any level of abstraction you will find that most of experiments in cognitive and social psychology can be reduced to a limited number of patterns. Consequently, the statistical analysis that follows is also basically the same from paper to paper. What novel research introduces is the creation of experimental materials, and more rarely, insightful experimental manipulation and control of important variables.
Successful applications of these sort become paradigmatic, and other papers re-use the procedure by adding more variables to rule out spurious effects or extend the scope of the explanatory adequacy of the approach. (For example Solomon Asch's and Henry Tajfel's experimental procedures have been reused and modified in a plethora of other studies.) Even direct replication of a study can be published, especially if the result is surprising and counterintuitive. (For example this finding https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-toys/ about human-like gender differences in toy choice of chimps, was replicated by another lab.)
Plagiarism per se refers strictly to the reproduction of the material expression of a concept (e.g. written prose, or the experimental stimuli) which results from the intellectual labor of an individual. It cannot refer to abstract ideas. If you construct your own material, following the methodology of the original paper, it is your original intellectual labor. You can ask the permission of the original author to use the exact material, which, in case it is granted, will result in the studies being comparable.
Finally, with respect to updating the mathematical model by adding more variables, it is common place to do so in analysis of behavioral experiments with general linear models and their variations (including all type of analyses of variance for example), and it is also desirable because adding variables to these models can control their effect to the main variables of interest and provide a better overall fit to the data. I guess the same holds for other type of mathematical models, if the new model provides a better account of the observations and a deeper understanding of the effect you are studying.

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


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How can I avoid the requirement of using friends or acquaintances to complete coursework?
A friend of mine recently sent me a game he made as part of his coursework and asked me to make a Youtube video of it. He was supposed to get 3 people to do the same in order to get a better grade.
I'm happy to help my friend out this once but this is concerning for me because the professor asks non-enrolled people to do gradable work. Even if the 'external dependencies' are willing to do the work, they might not be able to due to other commitments, which could conceivably put unnecessary strain on the relationship.
I was told the video can be a short, 1 minute video, with you talking mentioning the title but the amount of work required isn't the point; the point is that any amount is required at all.
Assuming I was the student in question and asked to find reviewers for my game demo, what is the best way to refuse? I'd think the 2nd paragraph of this post is enough if reworded into an email but I'm not an academic, and there might be some nuances I'm not considering.

edit I have to clarify my objection. It's not that any work is required at all from a third party, it's that a student's grade depends on work being done by a third party that has no contract with the University and no obligation to deliver. This is different form many forms of outsourcing, be it a vendor (the student pays for something so the vendor must deliver) or an interview (the student still has to prepare for and edit the interview and still does most of the 'work')

Doesn't he need ethics approval for this? Imagine a game with flickers which triggers a fit in the player? Or that can exacerbate RSI?

Wait, so it was specified that the reviewers cannot be the student's classmates?

@Malandy I'm not aware of the exact wording but I believe the only requirement was to have a YT account, so classmates were not excluded.

'Cause if it was just "Get 3 people", is there an inherent implication that getting classmates are easier, and externals could be chosen, just to expand the pool of reviewers, to make things easier?

@Malandy That is certainly possible and doesn't sound unreasonable

"non-enrolled people to do gradable work" - are you sure that's the case? That is, is it really the videos that are graded, or is it either your friend's way of dealing with critique in such videos, or just the game itself (with the videos as some kind of an indirect way of enforcing that the game is not just some half-baked thing that technically fulfils all the requirements, but cannot be used by anyone?

@O.R.Mapper I misspoke, videos are graded on their existence only, not their quality. I think Malandy got this right, he could've asked his coursemates but chose not to. To my understanding, the requirement is there to simulate working with "promoters" who can hype your product - streamers and the like - but I could be way off.

I agree that this concrete instance is somewhat problematic, but as usual it's a sliding scale. In practice, there are certain learning objectives where you as a student can't help but interact with the outer world, which usually requires them to spend some amount of time or work on your course work.
To give another real-world example, for a teacher's education course on diversity I am currently doing I was recently asked to interview an international student w.r.t. their experiences at our university. This required me to find an international student who was willing to commit 30 - 60 minutes of their time to talk to me about diversity. I found this assignment quite reasonable, as it's clear to me that the general learning objective underlying this exercise can't really be achieved differently.
For me, the difference between your example (which I agree is problematic) and mine (which I think is not) is that in my example, the student did not actually have to do any "work" alone and by themselves. They did not write or submit anything, I actually had to do all the work related to writing up the analysis and report. The student "only" had to commit the time, which is not nothing, but the barrier is certainly lower than if the student had to, say, write a report themself.

Assuming I was the student in question and asked to find reviewers for my game demo, what is the best way to refuse?

I would ask the teacher whether you can also do the assignment in the way that you as the student make a few review videos with your friends. Basically you would still do the assignment, but you would take over all the "work" of making, editing, and uploading the videos. Your friends would only need to commit the time to look at your game and speak their thoughts into your camera. This would sound like a sensible compromise to me, while accomplishing the same learning objectives for you as a student.

"I would ask the teacher whether you can also do the assignment in the way that you as the student make a few review videos with your friends." - do I understand correctly that you base the distinction on who presses the "record" button, all else equal?

@O.R.Mapper Not only that. It "feels" different to me if the student taking the course is responsible for setting up the recording, doing any editing, getting an account and uploading to Youtube etc. My gut feeling is that it's ok to ask people to commit a little bit of time, but asking them to actually "do" something on top of that (such as making and uploading a video) feels wrong.

@O.R.Mapper That said, if I were teaching this course I would probably just have the students evaluate each other's games. Not sure what the point is in involving outsiders in the first place, but that's neither here nor there.

Ok, I see your point. Personally, I'd consider the most questionable part the fact that the video is supposed to be uploaded to YouTube, no matter by who (which, I could imagine, reduces the set of people generally ready to help the student from "almost everyone they know and possibly even strangers" to "almost no-one"). I do, however, see the point of involving outsiders, because I think exactly that - "involving outsiders" (who are not primed for specific results or answers by being in the same class before) - is a very valid point in itself.

@O.R.Mapper I think we are all in agreement that the assignment seems a little "off" in various directions, but that doesn't answer OP's question.


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Work on a conditional accepted paper for a 4 stars journal not even mentioned on the acknowledgements
A while ago I got involved in a project with my current PhD supervisor that consisted on coding about 120 papers for a Meta-Analysis that took a considerable amount of time. Due to the fact that the paper was conditionally accepted, I was told that I would appear in the acknowledgements as a contributor. However, when the paper got finally published, there were no acknowledgements mentioning my name. I raised this issue to my supervisor by email and answered with "I did not realize" but did not even add an apology for the lack of recognition. What can I do to get recognition for my work?

I think you overestimate the value of being listed in the acknowledgements, which is not to say that an apology was not in order (but this is not worth pressing about).  However, there are almost no tangible ways in which being listed in an acknowledgements section of a paper will help you professionally.  The most it will do for you is that your name gets seen a couple of times, which may remind/inform a reader of your existence as a human being.
The ways that you get recognized for work which either does not get published or you do not get co-authorship are:

Appreciation by other researchers who personally know what you did (e.g., your professor).  Consequently they may be more motivated to bring you in on projects in the future, which you might get coauthorship for or at least be in a good position to get a strong letter of recommendations.
(less direct) You gain experience and knowledge from this work, and it may be that you will have an opportunity to share your newfound wisdom with someone in the future, who may be impressed.


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Should I quit my average interesting long-term contract for a 12 months interesting postdoc in photovoltaics experimental physics ?
[I am French, so my english is not perfect ...]
2 years later I graduated from my Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics. That was a nice time however tough sometimes.
Then I was unemployed for about 16 months as I could not find a postdoc in the field. Maybe I "missed" something, but some friend of mine had the same trouble too.
After those 16 months I was finally contacted by a company to perform maintenance on a nuclear computation code (fixing bugs, solving users troubles ...). I have been doing it for a year now, and I must say it is not very interesting. Seems that I was bad luck as every two year the code has to go through complex changes which implies boring things to do for the person doing my job (producing reports and so on). But I think the problem is more profund than that, I am just not found of doing bug fixing, answering people who kept telling me than things do not work, and of course, I won't do physics in this job (according to my predecessors who stayed 4 years) even if is related to it.
I don't feel like I will earn the Nobel Prize one day, as I know I am not a genius, but I am very interested in physics and I feel quite depressed not doing it anymore for a living.
Now, I have an opportunity for a postdoctorate in spectoscopy on solar materials. It seems complex but also very interesting. The salary will be a bit less than what I earn today.
I don't have a family right now (not even a gf) and have a bit of money left.
Do you think I shoud jump on this postdoc ? Seems so cool but I am afraid having troubles to find a job afterwards, even if the solar energy field (and more generaly surface spectroscopic experiment) is more trendy than the nuclear one.
All opinions are welcome, thanks a lot !

From what I could understand, I believe it will fall into the category "only you can answer that". It is your life, your decisions. Also, the question itself is too broad. If there is any specific question, considering the site rules, that would be better too.

I don't think anyone can make this decision for you, and SE sites are not really the place to gather opinions - see the [help/dont-ask]. Is there anything you don't know that we can help you with instead, that could help you make the decision?


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Asking my prof. whether he is affected by the hurricane in Texas,
I and our security guards have not heard from nor seen a prof. of mine who I do research for.  We do know that he is from Texas, but we are unsure of his exact hometown.
How can I email to ask about his and his family's safety without overstepping any boundaries?

Would you be wondering about him not answering your research-related emails if the situation in Texas wouldn't be as it is?

If he's on vacation, someone in your/his department should know, such as administration, head of department, close colleagues. Unless he's going on vacation every now and then and doesn't spend much time at the institute. Check with them maybe? Just mention that you are worried, given the situation in his home state/city/whatever

Ask. He'll appreciate the gesture. Do not add that you are asking because you haven't heard from him.

I sent an mail to my supervisors the minute I heard about Paris' shootings. Nothing wrong with that, IMHO

It's fine to ask. Like a commenter mentioned, probably better to not add that it's because you haven't heard from him on a particular issue (i.e. not "Did you forget those TPS reports, or are you affected by a hurricane?").
Some things to consider:

It's possible you haven't heard because he is directly affected: stranded, injured, hospitalized, dead.
However, it is also possible you haven't heard because his family is directly affected. He might be searching frantically for them, trying to make contact, helping in some way, etc.
Lastly, it's possible that the situation is completely unrelated.

With all of those things in mind, especially #2, a polite show of concern is certainly appropriate, without any attached expectations or requests. Something along the lines of "Since I know you have ties to Texas, I hope you and your family and friends are safe." Even if it turns out he isn't from the Houston/gulf coast area, there is a reasonable probability that he could know someone in the area and would appreciate the sentiment.

Your professor may be your superior, but he's also a person (and a co-worker in some sense). There is nothing wrong with writing an email that says that you are hoping that he's ok given that you know that he's from Texas. Wouldn't you appreciate if one of your colleagues write such an email?