text:
Should I mention a junk citation?
I am writing down an application to a professorship, and among several other documents a list of all the papers* that cite mine is required (I suspect this is somewhat unusual to most readers, but where I live this is commonplace).
I was updating myself on the papers that cite mine, just to be sure I didn't miss any, and lo and behold there was a new one: as I always do I checked how they used my work (this is possible because I still have very few citations, sadly), and I found out the paper is junk. To be precise, this is in Mathematics and the author seems to be a crackpot (and this is not really a guess, the paper is less than 10 pages long, has no explanation for its results, and proves the inconsistency of Mathematics).
Question: should I add this paper to the list of papers that cite mine?
On one hand, I feel that it may look deceitful not to mention it: people evaluating my list may feel that I'm omitting it so that some junk research is not associated with me. On the other, I doubt they would actually check the list, and will probably just write down the number of items in it: in this case I am losing one citation, but it is not one that I mind losing... I am not sure of what to do...
*: this includes published, peer-reviewed studies, as well as sometimes preprints, as it is the case with the one I currently describe.

You have no control over the actions of others. One would hope that whomever is using the list would recognize that.

I'm puzzled how this is feasible for most people - I'm a relatively low level academic, I have almost 3000 citations of my various papers, in order to produce such a list, I'd need to spend a lot of time writing a script to combine the lists of papers that cite each of my papers and then remove the duplicates (papers that cite multiple of my papers), there's certainly no way I could feasibly read all these papers and decide if they are nonsense.

@RachelC To be fair, I never said this is reasonable for most people! These lists are usually a requirement for applications to tenured-track positions, and a lot of people will only get accepted to one of these once, early-ish in their carriers, when the citation count is not too high. Plus, what field are you in that you have 3000 citations and consider yourself a low level academic!? I like to think I'm a somewhat successful researcher in my field,  and I'm still on double digits...

You should clarify the meaning of the word "paper": Does it mean a publication or does it include preprints? In math, the standard thing to do would be to use MathSchiNet to collect references to one's work. If you use this, then (I guess) a crackpot paper simply will not appear on the list and you can make a footnote that references are collected using MathSchiNet.

Just do it like google. Omit the citation, and write a comment below: "Due to questionable quality, one paper was omitted." (Do not do this! It would just set the focus to this paper and you will end naming the paper)

@MoisheKohan It is actually demanded that we use more than one "citation-listing" service, so in MathSciNet this paper really disappears. But Google Scholar is required, and there one finds a few preprints, such as this one (which probably won't ever get published).

You should clarify all this by editing the question, as comments are supposed to be ephemeral and can disappear at any time. In particular, clarify the meaning of the word "paper."

@MoisheKohan I was in the process of editing it!

@GVT I think math is very low in citation counts (although, I am still amazed by a "low-level academic" having 3000 citations too!).

@MoisheKohan Even crackpot papers can be reviewed in MathSciNet (and these reviews can be a lot of fun, both to write and to read).

@AzorAhai-him- My PhD advisor, who is close to retirement, hasn't reached 3000 citations WITH duplicates! But yes, it's one of those things that are field-dependent.

I feel that it may look deceitful not to mention it

Well, it sort of is deceitful, isn't it? You are asked to provide a list of all the papers citing your work, and you want to intentionally withhold a paper you are aware of and not put it on the list. It may be a well-intentioned deceit, but it does seem like it would be a deceit. Why wouldn't you just give a truthful answer to the question you are being asked?
If you are concerned that this citation is undeserved, or want to dissociate yourself from the contents of a junk paper, add a footnote in your list that expresses that you have some doubts as to whether this is a credible scientific paper (no need to say you're certain it's a junk paper; the people reading your list can look at it and make up their own minds if the question interests them). Then no one will suspect you of dishonesty or deceit, and you wouldn't have to worry that you may be acting out of ignoble or dishonorable motives by listing the paper.

@GVT I must say that my response missed the part in your question where OP is required to list all citing papers (although this sounds an absurd task in all but the most junior scientists' cases). In that case, Dan's response is probably more appropriate. You should not intentionally leave off a citation that you know about if you are required to list them. Dan's suggestion of a footnote is a good solution to make clear that you are aware of a dodgy citation.

I think the idea of a footnote is brilliant: I am worried that if I have this paper on the list it may seem like I'm profiting from junk research, but I can clarify that on the note, and if anyone is feeling specially curious they can always look at the paper themselves and see the reason for the footnote!

@gvt well you can't exactly make the citation to away, why would someone hold that against you?

@DonQuiKong OP has two valid concerns here about just listing the citation without comment: 1. other people may get the (probably incorrect) idea that OP is trying to profit from a junk paper citing their work. 2. OP may question their own motives in listing the citation and may not want to feel as if they are profiting off of listing the citation. The footnote idea should address both of these concerns: it lets you give an answer that is both truthful and avoids perverse incentives. And if the institution then still insists on giving OP credit for a bogus citation, that's on them.

@DanRomik Basically, it's a special case of the more general rule: if in doubt if something is above water or if it constitutes a conflict of interest, make it transparent and give a disclaimer. This is the proper way to deal with such issues. I upvoted the response as it is a more apt one for the specific case of OP than mine. I left mine around for the more generic case, where there is not the specific requirement to list all citations.

I think the upvotes clearly show a consensus that this is the best way forward: the straightforward idea of explaining in a footnote the paper's results are not beyond suspicion never occurred to me, but it is definitely what I plan to do!

Why use it?
Citations show that people value your work or consider it relevant to what they do. However, for that, the reputation of the citing work matters.
If you get random social influencers to cite you - how does it support your esteem level amongst your scientific community if none of these influencers has scientific credentials?
Listing a citation by a crackpot does not add to your reputation; you do not need it. In fact, it would appear as if you put value on it. This, in turn, implies that you might be desperate for recognition.
On the other hand, as you worry that by not mentioning it, it would appear as if you are hiding it: this is not on you. Say, you had some some well-executed scientific work on genes without ulterior agenda. Now this work happens to be cited by people with a shady agenda to justify nefarious eugenic positions. How would that be on you?
If you happened to discover some, say, pseudo-Lamarckian epigenetic phenomena in a clean study, published in a serious journal. Then someone abuses it to "justify" creationism - how would that be your fault?
Not to mention agenda-driven mis-interpretations of scientific studies about topics such as climate.
You cannot stop people from citing you, in a way that does not not act in good scientific faith, to support their case.
But mentioning them would sound as if you give them at least a sufficient credential that they are worth being listed.
The one case where I would probably mention a mis-citation at all, is if a popular misleading piece of work abuses your work to support a false, damaging, malign or otherwise problematic position - but the right place for this would be a public scientific or publicity debate, not the CV for your application.

I think this is more or less what I was thinking myself, but it is good to know that other researchers have the same opinion.


text:
How to stop a colleague from asking for my help in solving a very difficult problem?
Summary: My colleague is asking for my help in solving fundamental problem. They are having troubles on basic level, and I don't have time to guide them through it. How I can politely avoid wasting their time AND my time?

I am a computer scientist (research focused on machine learning and statistics) and where I work I have a mathematician colleague. He is a bit obsessed with millennium problems (things like P vs NP, SSP, etc.) and so far he has tried to come up with ways to solve these two problems, but his 'solutions' so far are poor at best mostly due to his ignorance on the subject.
Now, I admire the interest and tenacity he goes about these things. However, he doesn't know much about algorithm complexity, hasn't given me any indication that he has read about what approaches have been tried/used, keeps trying random stuff and asking me to check if I think his ideas are sound or to verify them, which I find annoying since it takes a lot of time to disprove him or to refute each of his attempts (specially because I don't want to be hostile, since I barely know him).
So, I'd like a polite way to either discourage him from working on these problems because I don't want to dedicate time to this (I need to read and study to enter a PhD program and I also believe he's clearly underestimating the problems) or to discourage him from asking me about it without being rude.

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

You describe pretty well in your question what you want to communicate, so use that:

Hey X, while I admire your interest and tenacity for these problems, these are very hard problems and I do not have the time to help you with this.

Simple, straightforward, you commend him for his motivation and do not comment on their skills, you give the motivation to not do this purely based on your own motives (lack of time).

+1, and probably you want to say something about "focusing on one particular line of research at a time" (at least as reason why you don't want to get too involved), and you should consider refusing to discuss by pointing him to experts in these sub-sub-subfields.

You make a very valid point, to be completely honest I am afraid to sound rude as I i know i am a very blunt person, so I wasn't exactly sure If this way of saying it would be offensive or aggressive. Nevertheless great suggestion, i'm inclined to accept your answer, however I'll wait a little bit just in case there are more answers, thanks a bunch =)

@DiegoQueiroz there is no guarantee that your friend will not perceive this email, or any other rebuffing his request, as rude. Some people will think anything that doesn’t give them what they are asking for is rude, there’s nothing you can do about it. But, objectively speaking, nothing in the email being proposed here is rude.

@DiegoQueiroz for a bit of nuance, the way Jeroen says "I do not have the time to help you with this" is good. If one instead said "I do not have the time for this," I would perceive this as rude - it suggests that the person is wasting your time by asking. It's almost as if an unspoken "time for this (nonsense)" is implied. If you go with the way Jeroen said it though, you shouldn't have issues.

@DiegoQueiroz If you want to soften it a little, you could point to external pressures that require you to commit your time very narrowly: "Unfortunately my commitments to my collaborators/funding sources don't leave me time to work on anything outside of my main line of research." Of course this opens the window to your colleague later on saying "Hey, now that you're done with that paper/proposal, how about we chat about P=NP?"

@d_bInitially I thought about doing exactly what you propose, I thought his first attempt was a joke and explained to him why it wouldn't work (he was proposing something with exponential growth), a few months later he sends me another one, and by this time i'm regretting not saying anything about it.
I think i can't go with using excuses because it's not as final a solution as i'd like.

@DiegoQueiroz You can escalate in firmness. I.e., "Sorry, I still don't have time for this." "As I said last time you asked, I am too busy to work on this line of work." "Please, stop asking about these problems, I've told you I do not have the time." "No." Hopefully they do not persist, but if they do, then who is it that is being rude? Not the person setting boundaries for how they spend their own time.

You can also add ''I will be interested to hear from you if you make any progress on this difficult problem in future.  To answer your final question, etc etc'', and then it's done.

Like a lot of things, "I-statements" work well, taking any lack upon yourself, which means they aren't out there and perhaps perceived as criticism or arguing points.

You know, I've been thinking about all these problems. These are problems that the best mathematicians on the planet haven't found approaches to solve. They have fiendish subtleties or missing knowledge. They get amateurs regularly convinced they have answers, who have basic knowledge compared to that needed for a serious attempt.
I admire the effort, but I can't actually help. If your papers have rudimentary beginner errors, then they don't work, and if they don't have rudimentary beginner errors, [REMOVED SEE COMMENTS] I don't have anything like the skill or time needed to check for non-rudimentary errors.  Which to be honest, they will probably turn out to have.
Half a job is no job at all, and I don't have the skill, and I don't want to make you think I could, even if I had the time.
I have to prioritise my own work, and I know how much work a good honest review takes. And you'd want reviews of approaches to problems that have defied giants. I don't have even close to that kind of time available, to track errors down or form any kind of useful opinion. I'm sorry. It's not possible, even slightly.

Pick what's useful out of that lot, and adapt it as needed, but that sort of approach overall.
If argued, you could read, and perhaps tactfully remind him, what happened with another problem of that level, Fermat's Last Theorem. World class mathematician reckoned he would have to dedicate close to a decade to master all relevant knowledge and techniques, asked other world class specialists in the field to check his work - and even then between them, they missed the errors while working on the problem.
You just don't have that level of skill or time. Be honest, say so, and tell him you won't lie to him, about that, or the time needed to check proofs to get an idea if they may work.

I like parts of your answer but referring to my colleague as a beginner might be interpreted as condescending, which is the exact thing I want to avoid.
Still your last paragraph is also quite good and is complementary to the first answer, and for that I upvote and thank you.

Struck out a bit of it that may help?

From a comment:

I want to discourage him from trying to solve it while underestimating
the problem or that he stops bothering me about it.

Okay, so you have something between conflicting or hazy priorities here. First, I'll recommend that you get your priorities straight, specifically: (1) you stop wasting time on it, and (2) your colleague stops wasting time on it. It would be nice if you could do both. But failing that, your top priority is to yourself; and after all, you can control your actions, but not another person's, so this is the only feasible ordering.
I'll say that I've brushed up against this kind of thing once in a while, so I know the frustration you're talking about. A few years back I had a student indeed fall into the Collatz Conjecture, despite both the textbook and myself warning him that it's been a time-waster for generations of mathematicians. He was sending me pages of gobbldeygook and asking if he was making progress (this being a community-college student who couldn't reliably prove that 2x + 6 was even for an integer x). I gave him one clear warning that he should definitely stop and focus on our classwork. As he didn't follow that advice, I basically had to wash my hands of him and simply hope for the best.
So in that regard, I suggest a like single attempt: advise your colleague that they should probably not pursue this path, because it's an overwhelmingly deep subject. Do that once, period. If you don't do that, that it's entirely possible that you'll be dragged down with your colleague's obsession.
Now, if you really can't find any way to say "I'm not doing this anymore" without sounding rude, you might consider a truthful-but-diplomatic approach, like:

I'm really busy right now, so I'm not sure when I'll have a chance to
get to this. I'll put it on my tasklist and see if I can get to it
after other priorities.

Then do that. If you do in fact get some free time a week or a month later, maybe look at it if you're curious. If not, so be it. If he continues to send stuff after that, prioritize appropriately. Maybe next time it takes months or a year before you have space for it.
Another thing to consider is to expect to see some single "big idea" that convinces you he's got a never-before-seen strategy that gives him a leg up that no one else has seen to date, before you spend any time on reading the body of a paper. Avoid getting lost in the weeds of details. R.J. Lipton has written on this in the past, in the context of P = NP Proofs; and some of the links there in comments to other sites are interesting, as well.
But frankly just finding some way for you to stop dealing with it should take the topmost priority.

I don't think my priorities were hazy, I just thought they weren't mutually exclusive. But I do see your point, I have already drafted a way to excuse myself based on the overall overwhelmingly good suggestions provided in these answers, will also send the good resources provided so that he can understand the problem a little bit better. Cheers!

From the comments you say " if I just let him waste years on this without telling him he could be using his time on more fruitful results".
So tell him exactly this. Tell him that he may spend 5 years trying to solve this problem, with possible no outcome, or he can tackle other problem with a time-span of 1-3 years. Remind him that money/grants/bursaries for young researhcer are granted on the basis of what has been done in the previous 1-3 years, so he may very well end up with nothing in his hands in 3 years, and no funding possibilities in 3 years.
Then, it is his call, not yours, to judge how they spend their time.
When you say, "I wouldn't be true to my own researcher principles if I just let him waste years on this without telling him he could be using his time on more fruitful results"
I miss your point. Results are not the goal of science. The way to getting the results is science. So he may very well not get any results (and that is perfectly fine, in research in an ideal world), but the issue is that he is not doing good science, not that he will get no results.
If you do not want to cut him off completely, focus on teaching him how to fish (it will not take you much time), not in providing the fish :) .
By the third time you explain him how to find the relevant literature for his problem, he will either give up getting in touch with you or get on the right path.

Very good argument, I didn't think about using money in my argument because I rationalized he thought about that.

Here are two useful questions you can ask yourself;

"How would I want someone to set boundaries with me if the situation were reversed?", and
"How would I approach this same situation if this were my child?"

You can never know how someone else thinks, or how they will react to a situation. But these two questions will help give you the best perspective on this situation.
Why? Because the first question will help you frame your communication compassionately and respectfully, while the second question will remind you that your goal here is not to solve their problems for them.
It's to support them and encourage them into becoming their best, all by themselves.

thanks a lot for your contribution, I kind of think very similarly on what you wrote in your answer, but sometimes we lack the social skills to cmmunicate things adequately or sometimes our perception of our own skills are lacking.
The answers provided here have shown me it's not that I don't have the skills, but more that it's a delicate problem and I need to be extra careful.

Adding to @Jeroen's answer, what about something like this?

I admire your tenacity at wanting to make a contribution to these problems. If you want to make a contribution in these areas, you'll need to read up on <INSERT THEORIES HERE> to get the foundation, then I recommend you start reading papers on <INSERT KEYWORDS HERE> to get a sense of what has been tried already and what theoretical results have already been proven. That will also give you a sense of any gaps in your knowledge that you will need to fill with classes or self-study. You may even need to go for a (second?) PhD. It's going to be a long and tedious road involving a ton of learning (I would expect it to take <INSERT TIMEFRAME HERE, E.G. YEARS>), but once you're fully immersed in the background theory of the problem and the work that's been done and being done on it by others, you'll be prepared to begin working to make a contribution on it yourself. That in itself will be a life-long journey, with many false starts and many thousands of hours spent learning, experimenting, and collaborating with others to (hopefully) make tiny gains, but it's worth it to be one of the <INSERT NUMBER HERE> CS researchers working to advance our collective knowledge on these problems if this is a commitment you're willing to make. But obtaining the necessary theoretical knowledge and learning from others is key to doing any kind of research, and this is especially true for a problem of this magnitude (if the colleague is a researcher consider rewording this last part as it might sound rude).

Basically treat them like a graduate student you're advising (though respectful of the fact that they're a colleague). Hopefully they will either decide to take this seriously and become a productive member of the research community working on these problems, or they'll realize how big of a commitment is involved and walk. Either way problem solved.
If the colleague ignores this advice and continues with the "hey check my proof" queries without any attempt at self-study, then I recommend @Jeroen's answer. And this approach won't work if the colleague in question is a true crank (vs. someone who is just naive about what research is).

After accepting Jeroen's answer I wrote something along the lines of your answer (minus the 'insert relevant theories here', as I think he wants me to be the person responsible for those and if I cite them I'm afraid he'll want me to discuss or for me to teach them), your approach is commendable and it works very well with what Jeroen wrote, for different types of people. Many thanks!

Happy to help! :)

"I respectfully recommend that you not waste too much of your time on this problem at this stage of your career. And I am afraid that my own free time is too precious to waste on this problem. I am sorry I can't be of any help."
If you try to be more polite, you will be misinterpreted.

If your colleague is struggling with fundamental math questions, and he is very enthusiastic in dedicating their time, there is a very good solution.
Explain him once that any serious attempt at these fundamental questions will need a very formal formulation. Then refer him to Metamath, software and community. In the same email, inform him that you are short in time, and so you cannot provide any timely assistance. Be polite, Be concise. No justifications whatsoever.
After that...

So, I'd like a polite way to either discourage him from working on these problems because I don't want to dedicate time to this (I need to read and study to enter a PhD program and I also believe he's clearly underestimating the problems) or to discourage him from asking me about it without being rude.

If he asks again about these problems: "Sorry, I'm short on time to properly reply. How did you progress with Metamath?"
If he says that is having trouble expressing something with Mathmath, reply: "Sorry, I could not help you with that."
Automate these replies, in email and in conversations.

It's not that he is struggling with fundamental math itself, he is a mathematician. He's just not knowledgeable about this particular field and does not appear to realize throwing random stuff at the problem is one of the worst ways to solve it.
Regardless of that, great advice =)

In Metamath, or in any other computer assisted mathematics, there is no "throwing random stuff at the problem". All and every detail must be justified, in excruciating detail. So recommending him to use automated mathematics may be a way for him to realize that.

Yeah, I've added that to my written response, will definitely recommend it. Thanks a lot!

source: Stack Exchange

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sort: votes


text:
Is it appropriate to indicate being a member of an online community in your resume?
I am a teacher and an undergraduate student about to complete my study. I was recently working on my CV and I got stuck.
The problem is, as an individual I like being part of organizations and platforms (some of which are online, like this one; Academia Stack Exchange) that will help me continue to learn and develop as a professional. I am convinced that continuous professional development, as I would term it, will be a plus when seeking a job. The purpose of the CV is to secure a teaching job in a higher institution.
I am however confused as to the appropriateness of including these memberships on my CV. If it is appropriate to capture these memberships, how do I go about it?
Thank you.

Did you mean "I got stuck" instead of "I got stacked"?

What is the purpose of your CV? Do you want to apply for academic positions or programmes or outside of academia? I think that the expectations will differ vastly between these options.

What is your confusion?  Just whether it matters if the community is online or not?  That answer is no.

https://chemistry.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4873/chemistry-se-on-your-cv-r%c3%a9sum%c3%a9-other-professional-avenues/4875#4875 and https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5789/is-physics-se-on-your-cv/5791#5791 offer perspectives from technical fields...

Membership information can be helpful on an academic CV in several respects.  First, it tells people what communities you are interested in or involved in.  Second, it can show "service to the profession" that you have performed.  Online communities are not fundamentally different in this regard to other communities.  (Contributions on a stack.exchange website or other online community can count as service to the profession in a range of academic jobs.)  In these cases, you should do more than just listing yourself as a member of a group --- also explain your activities, contribution to the group, length of service, etc.

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text:
What should I do if I discover the job posted at the institution for which I had submitted my CV but they didn't contact me?
A year ago I submitted my CV to an institution of higher learning and they indicated that they would contact me if any openings for instructors became available.  At that time all positions in my field were filled.
I just discovered that as of November 1, new positions were posted on their jobs page, including one for which I am qualified.  They haven't contacted me.  They have posted an applications deadline of the first of next month for the position.
Should I feel that they have essentially rejected me already?  Has it been too long since I filed my information with them?  Is it likely to have been simply an oversight?
I would appreciate advice, especially from those who may have been in a similar situation before.  What should I do at this point?
CLARIFICATION: The "year ago" was a round figure; it was more than ten months, and so far as I am aware, no position in my field had been available during those months, making this the first opening since my CV submission.  From comments received so far, this may not matter, as the CV could have conceivably been forgotten almost as soon as it had been received.

You apply for the job

Apply! Even if it is in the same department, it doesn't mean that the same people are dealing with it. Just apply for it.

within the same organization, different individuals may be recruiting or the recruiter may have changed or the same recruiter you talked to just forgot.

Your CV hasn't moved from the filing cabinet someone put it in a year ago.  It's probably not even been looked at.  It may have simply gone into the bin.  Unless you have a signed agreement with them to notify you when positions become available, always just assume first that nobody else cares about your jobsearch but you.  This will most of the time be the case.

You assume they still have you on the list of people to contact after a year?

@Karl  Honestly, that is what I had assumed.  The collective voices here make it sound foolish; however, the institution is small and I'm sure it has a much more limited region from which to draw applicants than most of those spoken for by respondents here.  I would estimate they'd receive only a handful of qualified applicants from in-country, and perhaps a couple dozen from abroad.  Perhaps this factors into my surprise at not having been contacted.

@Polyhat I guess they guessed that applicants would have found another position after a year.

"they would contact me if any openings for instructors became available."  They lied.

Apply!
“We will save your CV in case of new openings” is mostly meaningless HR phraseology meant to reduce the sting of rejection, not only at universities but across industries. In general, employers don’t assume that a job seeker who applied a year ago is still interested, since much more often than not they will have accepted a different job by now.

To be fair, HR might pass those CVs on to some internal recruiter (who may or may not even exist depending on a variety of factors), and that recruiter might then go on to contact some subset of the CVs they get. So it's theoretically possible that your CV really will result in a contact of some sort. But this is not terribly useful in practice because at best, it gets you into exactly the same pile of applications as everyone else.

I have been contacted about openings becoming available.  It means they have no new applicants and are so desperate to fill a position that they are encouraging past applicants to re-apply.  They are not desperate enough to increase the salary or benefits though.  Also the situation that causes them to be this desperate would also tend to put the past applicants in better jobs - so it is worthless.

As a manager who has hired occasionally over the years, never had I paid any attention to HR's offer to pass their stack of collected applicants to me. The work in vetting them would be high, and chance of a good-fit candidate still being available so low, it doesn't make sense. So yes: Apply!

Despite the fact that another very good answer has nearly three times the votes, I am choosing this answer as the best answer because it actually answers the question asked.

You are assuming a degree of organization that most institutions just do not have. You lose nothing by formally applying to the new position.

One year is an eternity in term of uni. organization.  Most of the time we can’t organize anything more than a couple of weeks in advance.

Perhaps a related question might be: Is it possible that they are already considering me but are required by EEOC-type policies to open the position to other candidates?

@Polyhat It is highly unlikely if they didn't contact you to see if you are still interested.  And at least in the US, you are typically required to apply for the specific job in order to be hired.

You don't say what kind of position it is, but at institutions I have been at all searches for permanent faculty lines start fresh.  There are rules around advertising and opening and closing dates, rubrics and interview procedures..

@ZeroTheHero In advance? That would be extraordinary! The typical time the HR department acts is three months late. ;-)

Even if they mean the sentence it translates into "if someone drops out within the next 3 weeks " or similar. After a year, we would assume all applicants from a previous round have found other jobs by now.

Yes, it's usually a mistake to think of an organisation as if it was a single person, as the "have they essentially rejected me already?" question implies. One person can promise to contact you, another person posts the job ad - no connection between the two, no actual decision about not contacting you was ever made.

@SteveBennett  Yes, more than one person is always involved in these things.  In my case, there are some within the institution who will either know me or know of me already, which contributes to my sensitivity on the level of acceptance and/or potential influences among the various persons involved in the hiring process.

It might even be for your benefit to mention you've applied one year before, as it shows you are actually interested in the institution itself, not just the job.

@Marianne013 make that “if someone drops out this afternoon” and I would agree. :)

Long answer: I'm not as familiar with the hiring process within academia, but in industry at least most organizations use an Applicant Tracking System. If you never actually filled out an online application at any point, you are most likely not in the system.
Also, in many Applicant Tracking Systems, a system which would allow them to contact candidates that they want to "save for future consideration" requires a separate subscription and configuration, so there's no guarantee that there's an easy way for them to identify and reach out to previous candidates.
Short answer: apply.

In my institutions hiring process, I'm not allowed to consider past applicants - they must apply to a specific job posting themselves.

@JonCuster  That's the kind of comment that would be helpful as an answer with a few added details (e.g. what kind of institution, is this a standard practice in the industry, etc.).  I'd never even considered this possibility.  How would an applicant become aware of this policy?  It would seem to unnecessarily limit your pool of candidates.

No, they haven't rejected you.
They probably receive dozens of applications every day, and it's likely they haven't even seen yours. It's nothing personal. I know a manager who had to literally choose a random double-fistful of applications out of an entire 2-foot stack, and the rest got shredded. he says he knows that the shredder ate the applications of some great candidates, but he literally did not have time to even glance at the vast majority. Not fair, ideal, moral, efficient, or maybe even legal, but that's what happens.
Apply through the usual channels, and make no mention of the previous unsolicited application.

"it's likely they haven't even seen yours" except that OP specified they got back to him when he applied a year ago. They definitely saw it, probably either forgot about it or simply don't contact old applicants.

Apply.
I think after few years of intensive cynicism course for others known as life you will build your own HRspeak-english dictionary.

We will contact you when new position opens = We will forget about you as soon as "reject" button is pressed in our hiring system.
We will inform you about the hiring process... = We will ask you for more details only if you are among the hot candidates, or the one we want to hire. Otherwise you will get, at best, the auto-formatted rejection e-mail.

These are just two that came in my mind roght now...
Really, one year is really long even for extraordinarily helpful recruiter. The "we will keep your records" stack decays much faster. Within days it is very limitted, within a month it is extict already.
On the other way, the only thing you lose by applying again is the time for writing the application. Nothing more.
It is worth the opportunity.

Interesting response.  Perhaps I should have been a little more precise as to the passage of time in my question: it's been nearly 11 months, not quite, i.e. 10+ months.  During that entire time I am quite certain that no positions in this field have been available.  Even though they have set the application deadline as the first of next month, the position will not be available until middle of next year.  In other words, this opening is planned to be filled well in advance of actual vacancy.

The field you are applying in is not The Field the HR is looking after; they are looking for all the fields the company is interested in. Your application got burried below all 11-month worth of applications they are dealing with.

Recruiter here :)
Re-apply! As it was mentioned before, organizations don't have the muscle to properly build talent pools of candidates that could potentially be interested in the future. It's sad but it's true...
Do you still have the contact (email, phone number, etc.) of the person you spoke with a year ago? I would advise going directly to them instead of following the standard application.
In case that person is no longer part of the organization, reach out to a member of the recruitment/ leadership team mentioning that you were already in process a year ago for a role that was no longer available. You can also elaborate on how the experience you gained in the past year, would bring more value to the role.
Go for it!! :) Best of luck!

As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please [edit] to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.

I did reapply....and got a standard type of response basically saying if they decide they need me, they'll be in touch.  No word yet, but perhaps they haven't yet met to consider their list of eligible candidates.  Still, I am beginning to think I should just have taken a hint from the fact that they never contacted me in the first place.  I'm certainly not feeling very wanted at the moment.

That may not be necessarily true :) Try to reach out in the unconventional way - contact someone from the team directly, it might give you an extra push in the process :)


text:
What happens if a letter of recommendation for a grant contains a mistake about the title of the proposal?
I submitted a proposal for a grant. My advisor read the first "final" version of the proposal and approved it. He really knows the project as we both have been working on it for months. Then, some collaborators read the proposal and suggested some pertinent changes, but nothing fundamental. As a result, the title changed slightly (the old and the last title are practicaly the same). I sent the new version (the version I submitted for the application) to my advisor and specified that the title changed, but I think he did not manage to read it because he was traveling to places with bad signal and he is a very busy person. Then, suddenly I received a mail confirming that my recommendation letter had been submitted. I am not sure if he noted that change. As I said, he knows exhaustively the project and my qualifications, but I am scared about that detail. If he has mistaken the title (obviously unintentional), could it be a red flag enough to reject the proposal? I read that some reviewers automatically reject a proposal if the recommendation letter has any little inaccuracy. I think that it is kind of an extreme position; however, I am not the reviewer. What do you think about it? Thanks in advance for your opinions!

No one can say for sure but I doubt it will be an issue. People make mistakes. Other people recognize that. And the mistake wasn’t yours.
I don’t think you need to do anything but if the writer has a way to correct the error it wouldn’t hurt.
But it is what it is if nothing can be done. Relax until you know there is a problem.

Thanks! I can't stop thinking in the worst situations haha. But, I will try to be relax. As you said, everyone make mistakes and I hope the reviewers comprehend that.


text:
How to respond to failed start-up and salary negotiations for lecturer position?
I got a job offer from a UK university as a lecturer. I accepted the written offer and started start-up package negotiations.
I did not get anything cause it is a small university so I had a counteroffer to get my salary higher but of course, it did not work out and got a response that this is a very late time to negotiate salary.
Is there something else I should negotiate at this point? or just accept it?
Note for those who ask:
I received advice from one of the directors at the university that they do not provide a start-up package so I did not negotiate and accepted the offer. then I had a meeting with the dean and he asked me to provide him with what I needed. I provided him with a list of things I need and I get a response from the dean that it is very late to negotiate these things.

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's not entirely clear what you are trying to achieve. Are you asking how to word a letter where you accept what was initially offered?

Yes, the wording and if there is anything else I can negotiate.

@DanielHatton While the scales are set nationally, its perfectly possible to hire someone at a pay point higher than the lowest point in the grade.

I don't understand  -- wouldn't you negotiate on everything before accepting an offer??

I find that the question is lacking so much context that it is impossible to really understand what you are asking. I hope that this is not the style of emails you used in your negotiations with the university.

@ScottSeidman I received advice from one of the directors at the university that they do not provide a start-up package so I did not negotiate then I had a meeting with the dean and he asked me to provide him with what I needed. Unfortunately,  at this point, I had accepted my written offer. so apparently that's why my negotiations failed

@WolfgangBangerth of course not, I edited it, hope it is better now

I still don't understand "so I had a counteroffer". Who made the counter-offer?

@ADHD I think what Scott is asking is: if the startup/salary would affect your willingness to work there, why would you accept the position prior to negotiating? Or conversely, if the startup/salary has no impact on if you'd do the job, what incentive does the Uni have to make any changes to what they're offering?

Negotiation is a very cold game: if you are not willing to walk away, then there is no negotiation and you will just have to accept whatever the other side is offering.
It can still pay to talk: You may be able to get things that are cheap to the employer but valuable to you. For example the university may have a reserved number of spots at a child care facility and these represent a "sunk cost" for the university. Or you might be able to convince them to invest in you, e.g. allow you to teach fewer courses in the first couple of semesters, so you can develop them as good courses. As a consequence after those initial semesters they have a lecturer with a portfolio of quality courses.
As to your question: If the response came from the university level, then you are just one of many. They will have seen these attempts at negotiation many many times before, and will have forgotten your very existence the moment they pushed the sent button and moved on to the next thing that needs to be done. This negotiation is important to you, but for them it is just item 367 of the 8,563 items that need to be done that day. So don't overthink your response. Keep it short, to the point, and polite.

"Negotiation is a very cold game: if you are not willing to walk away, then there is no negotiation and you will just have to accept whatever the other side is offering." - There is also the possibility of pretending you are willing to walk away. Risky, though.

@user253751 In principle you are right, but in practice you have to remember that the persons you are negotiating with have done this many many many times before. They know when you are bluffing. The likely outcome is that they will call your bluff, to teach you a lesson, and than give you an off-ramp and still let you accept on their terms.

I think you have slightly more to negotiate with. You don't have much power if both parties know you will take the job, but for small demands a kind off social pressure can work. Just asking for something and having your potential employer know that you will be less happy not getting something can sometimes be enough. Even if you already decided you are taking the job the one thing you have left to negotiate about is in a sense how happy you will be once there. Sometimes reason or appealing to decency can just work even if the other party doesn't really gain much (except a happy empolyee).

I accepted the written offer and started start-up package negotiations

Caveat that I'm not familiar with how things work specifically in the UK so maybe there is some difference there, but from a US perspective at least, a negotiation is about getting to an offer you can accept. Your only leverage in a negotiation over a job is to say or imply "I will not accept this offer; here are things you could change in the offer that would make me accept it". From there, you might be offered what you asked for, or there might be further counter-offers or discussions leading to a mutual agreeable offer, or else one of the parties walks away.
You accepted the offer, so your negotiating is done. From the perspective of the university, you've agreed to the terms they stated. It feels odd to them that now, after having accepted this offer, you've asked for more. They may wonder how many more times in the future you will ask for something additional that they can't provide.
It seems there are some communication barriers between you and the dean/directors: when they've asked what you "need", they clearly had something different in mind than you. I can't begin to guess, so you should probably ask them to clarify.
Again, things may differ in the UK, but in the US I would interpret a position without available start-up funds to be effectively a teaching-only position, where the institution doesn't have interest (at least not the sort of interest that will separate them from their money) in your research program, but is rather hiring you primarily to teach. Alternatively, they view you as sufficiently advanced in your career that you are not in need of start-up funds as you are expected to have or obtain extramural grant funding.

"Again, things may differ in the UK, but in the US I would interpret a position without available start-up funds to be effectively a teaching-only position" -- I'm afraid this is totally wide of the mark. In the UK it is extremely rare for entry-level positions (lecturer, etc) to come with start-up funds, whether they are teaching-oriented or not.

In the UK there is typically no negotiations for the entry-level academic posts, such as Lecturer. You may be able to negotiate you starting salary a bit (one or two spinal points) but that's about it.
There is nothing wrong in trying, as any University may be able and willing to make exceptions to attract exceptional candidates. But if you are not prepared to walk away, you do not have much leverage for the talks and are at disadvantage.
Welcome to UK adademia and good luck!


text:
Should I own up to posting questions on Chegg?
So long story short, I'm a current studying biomedical sciences at a Canadian university (University A), and I ended up posting some questions on Chegg last year. I can't get them removed, but haven't been caught yet. I was under a lot of stress mental health wise with online school, but what I did was still wrong and I really regret it. But I guess I got what I deserved and failed the course anyways.
The policy at my school is that if I get a transcript notation, it is erased 4 years after the offense or 1 year after graduation.
I'm also thinking of switching out to a community college to do a technician's diploma and maybe coming back to finish my undergrad somewhere else (University B) in maybe 4 years because I'm interested in grad school, but I know the technician's diploma will help me with making some money NOW to pay off my loans.
What I'm worried about now is this coming back to haunt me in 5-6 years if they go hunting for old assignment questions and I have finished undergrad at University B, leaving me with a black mark on my transcript for 4 years and unable to apply for grad school.
I think it might just be the smart decision from a long-term perspective to finish up now so that even if I get hit with a transcript notation, it will only last for 1 year after I graduate. Also, after dropping out of University A, would they even bother to give me an academic offense? And even if they did, wouldn't it just be automatically erased according to the policy?
Alternatively, I would like to just own up and confess to the prof about this even though it's been a while and while this may lead to the black mark, this would help me a lot with the guilt I'm experiencing and leave less uncertainty in the future for me long term and maybe this is the way to go.

I may be wrong, but I don't think any professor has the time to search for old assignment questions posted by a specific student years after the fact.

Hi confusion, welcome to Ac.SE. Your post is quite long so I tried to tidy it up but that left me with some questions, which I'll post in separate comments so they can be deleted as they are addressed.

"The policy at my school is that if I get a transcript notation, it is erased in four years or one year after graduation." You suggest dropping out so it goes away in one year, not four. Is the policy one year after graduation or one year after leaving the university?

Why would they go hunting for old exam questions, and how would they know who posted them?

By "charges," do you mean legal charges?

Ac.SE tries to focus on single, answerable questions. Your question is really riding the line of answerable questions and personal-decision questions. I'd suggest trying to focus your question, but note that we can't answer things about your university's policies, not in the least because we don't know them.

Not knowing how Chegg works, I assume you mean you posted questions from a test on Chegg?

@confusion_time But how would they know where to look? Does Chegg say "questions supplied by confusion_time at the University of Toronto"?

This is an interesting question, but it's effectively unanswerable without answers to some of the questions that Azor has raised. Since OP hasn't been seen here in a while, I'd say these answers are not forthcoming. So, closing.


text:
How to deal with a PhD supervisor that acts like a company manager?
For the background: I am a Ph.D. student (UK) in a computational field (my job can be done anywhere in the world where there is an internet connection, no experimental work involved). I started around one year ago, during the covid period.
My supervisor is a senior professor, who graduated from a top university, his whole career is based on his post-doc project. He is really busy and has little to no time to give (I speak with him around 30 min each week.), other problems are:

He is asking us to be from 9 AM to 5 PM, Monday to Friday in the office.
He doesn't know anything about my topic, and never really gave me good advice, he never for example told me "I found this interesting paper you should have a look at it". I never had an exciting scientific discussion with him.
He never listens to you and shows it with disrespectful behavior (Constantly look at his watch among other things of the same sort)

I like what I do so much that I do not think of it as a job, but this 9 AM to 5 PM thing makes it feel like a job. If I wanted to transform my passion into work I would just find a regular job. In my (maybe naive) opinion, academia is hard work and responsibilities, but at least you are supposed to work with more freedom?
I asked if I could leave the office from time to time to work from home or anyplace else (the office is small and crowded, I spend my day in front of three screens, I find it hard to study books here for example). He told me that my request is "unreasonable".
When you are late in the morning he sends you a salty email, etc... He gives more attention to this micromanaging things than our actual projects. It is such a big deal for him that we had to sign a paper saying that we are "essential workers" to come work during the lockdown. When one of us receives a ping that we should self-isolate because we've been close to someone with covid, he is pushing for that person to still come. I don't know why he is acting like this, because nowhere in my contract it is written that I need to do these hours in the office.
So now I am doing like every other student, I ignore him and do what I want. Which of course I feel guilty about... This starts to affect me, I notice that I don't want to work as much as I wanted before (I used to do much more per day during my master for example)
Now the question: Am I the one being unreasonable? I just wonder if I am delusional and not fitted for academia

Are you getting paid (employed), receive a scholarship, or are you self-funded?

The last sentence and the title contain different questions. I suppose you are looking for answers to both?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Please do not write answers in the comments.

Would you describe your experiences with company managers? You're the newcomer and it's possible this senior professor has more or less run his lab this way for many years.

Now the question: Am I the one being unreasonable? I just wonder if I am delusional and not fitted for academia

Based on your description it is your advisor who is unreasonable. If this was an experimental (e.g. biology, medicine, etc.) lab, there may have been a justification to insist on attendance registration. But seeing it's a mathematical/computational science you do, your advisor's standards are highly non-standard internationally, in my experience.
Since what matters eventually in academia is for most parts your productivity in publishing significant work in selective journals and conferences, I think you are neither delusional nor not suited to academia. It's your advisor who is not suited, it seems.

I run things on the basis of core hours, usually between 10am and 4pm.  I make it clear to students that this is when I will normally be available, and when I expect others to be normally available.
I find it is useful to have core hours with everyone present so that some amount of “peer troubleshooting” can be done between members of the group.  In addition, there is something positive about showing up for work regularly.  If the atmosphere in the group is good, attendance is rarely an issue.
On the other hand, I also make it clear to the students that I am very flexible with exceptions, and that I am “result-driven”.  There are days where people will be absent, and I’m fine with this provided they give a heads-up to everyone in the group (no side deals with me personally).  Someone may work late because things are going really well and it’s not reasonable to show up early the following morning.  Someone may have a dentist appointment etc.
I am fine with people occasionally working from a coffee shop but less so working from home.  At least for me, I need to transition from “leisure time” to “work time” and this is best done by changing environment (of course, not always possible with the pandemic).  Everyone realizes that common sense should prevail, and I’ve rarely had to enforce strict core hours with one or another student.
So while I don’t think it’s completely reasonable to be so strict as in the situation your describe, I see your situation as an extreme case of a generally reasonable system.  In my experience,the converse extreme situation where nobody shows up leads to fragmentation and loss of productivity. It seems the major issue in your case is that the supervisor does not provide a constructive environment that would stimulate the students on a regular basis.

Just because you would be more efficient in a coffee shop than at home does not mean that it is not the other way around for many people. I certainly would not be able to work in a place with many other people while I can comfortably work from home. Not everyone is like you ;-)

Thank you for your answer, I agree with most that you say here which is a good middle point. I need to transition from “leisure time” to “work time” I agree, I do not wish to work from home full time or even part-time. I just want to be able to get out of this office sometimes or be able to come late because I woke up and fixed my calculations that failed during the night without receiving a salty email.

@user2316602 of course different people have different habits, but for most people I work with, physical presence is best.  I occasionally escape elsewhere to avoid office distractions, and I can see how people might be too confortable at home.

@Kalliope yes I hear you and in fact I would never come down hard on someone who burned the midnight oil because they were debugging a code or something like this.  I will gladly trade core hours with any hours on occasion but I wish to avoid people getting isolated and spinning their wheels with no resources in the middle of the night.

This model may be suitable partially to experimental labs, or labs that develop program code. This is highly unsuitable and highly non-standard to any lab doing theoretical work, in which creative thinking is done many times in solitude by individual group members.

@Dilworth I don’t see how one excludes the other.  I do theoretical work and this doesn’t mean I work only by myself.  I do reserve time to myself where indeed I can do my own stuff, but I still need to discuss my calculations with others on a regular basis (especially if I’m bailing out a student trying to figure out where they diverge from my own approach).  This is precisely when having other people around is helpful: you write stuff on the board, and can interactively discuss this or that aspect of the calculation.

Please rethink your position on working from home. I have been working from home to a greater or lesser extent for almost 20 years now. I did a lot of my PhD work from home (I never even came to the lab at all while writing, for example) and a lot of my postdoc work as well. I would never be able to work in a coffee shop but I am more productive at home than in the lab or office. Your point about transition from leisure to work is very valid, but that's why I have a home office and even when I didn't, I was still more efficient at home than in any place with other people.

@ZeroTheHero, that's an interesting model of work. But I'm not sure if it is optimal (maybe other models are even more productive?) and whether it is very theoretical research that you do (you need to run computations by students on a daily basis?), and certainly I don't think it is the norm.

@terdon Funny how people have latched on to that part...  I rarely do the coffee shop gig:  'twas just an example of flexibility within a certain cadre, to contrast with the inflexibility of OP's supervisor.

@ZeroTheHero: I suspect the reason people have "latched on" to that part is that it illustrates a theme that seems to underlie your entire answer: you describe yourself as "very flexible" and "result-oriented", but all your specific examples depict your management style as only marginally less rigid and controlling than the OP's supervisor. The part about working from home is illustrative in that regard: you clearly felt a need to justify it, but your only justification amounts to "it doesn't work for me, so I don't like to allow it for anyone."

… To me, actually flexible and result-oriented management (whether in academia or in the workplace) means 1) starting from the assumption that your team members are competent adults capable of self-organizing and managing their own work and collaboration, 2) only departing from this assumption if and where evidence shows it to be necessary, and 3) supporting your team and helping them develop efficient working practices together, rather than imposing solutions from above.

… Just to be clear, IMO many of the ideas in your answer (like "core hours", informing everyone of absences, changing environment to shift from leisure to work) are good ways of maintaining team cohesion and keeping a healthy work–life balance, and I would strongly recommend them in many cases. But a flexible manager would only recommend them, not impose them, unless it's clearly necessary to solve a specific dysfunction that the specific person or group they're imposed on is unable to solve on their own.

(Also, I really should've included "4) accepting that people are different and work differently, and that things that improve productivity and wellbeing for some people may be detrimental to others" in the list above, but it's too late to edit the comment now.)

@IlmariKaronen that's fine I get your point.  Yes looking back it could be better written and clearer along the lines you suggest.  I am also probably more flexible that I'm willing to admit; in practice I've never had any issues of the size described by the OP, in part because students actually want to come.

To echo the other commenters, saying both "I only permit flexibility in ways that work for me personally" and "I am flexible" doesn't make sense.

"I've never had any issues of the size described by the OP, in part because students actually want to come." in part because of that, and the other part? because you are a charismatic boss and they enjoy being in the same building as you? please expand what is the other part

@EarlGrey I was told because the students feel engaged,  I'm available when I say I'm available, I'm reasonably flexible when required to be flexible, and because the expectations are clear and transparent.  Of course there is no doubt there is self-selection and self-censorship on the part of the students providing feedback.

@ZeroTheHero, I'm curious about your model of work: do you have any evidence that forcing people to stay in the lab 9 to 5 every day increases productivity? I work under the assumption it reduces productivity. But will re-consider my lab setting provided a convincing source to show otherwise. (Again, I'm interested in pure and theoretical research only.)

@Dilworth I would not say "forced".  I do not have evidence beyond anecdotal that this is optimal: it works for me.  The students comfortable with this style are self-selecting and are the ones I end up recruiting.
I had a (summer) student allergic to this model, working at strange hours in quasi-isolation, and it didn't work out. Progression was much slower because this student devoted lots of time reinventing the wheel without leveraging the expertise of other students or myself.   I found students do enjoy being informed for what others are doing and sharing tips and resources.

@Dilworth to repeat and make doubly clear: I do think zero flexibility will kill this way of doing things. If the supervisor does not leverage her or his presence with students to accelerate progress, students have zero incentives to show up.

Supervisors come in all shapes and sizes. I'd say that around 50% of supervisors i know require attendance 9-5. This is true of purely computational labs just as much as experimental ones, although it is a field with a high proponderence of experimental labs, so its possible the culture of experimental labs rubs off on the computational ones. My attitude is that I expect group members work 8 hours a day and to usually be available 10:30-4 (but available can mean on slack/email/zoom, especially since the pandemic). I do think that things work better with people present in person because it allows casual interaction between people, and senior members of the group to provide unscheduled help to junior members. But i don't enforce this. And i would certainly never have recommended people use the essential worker loop hole (unless they were doing COVID research, which one member of my group did)
Most supervisors, even the ones that don't require 9-5 attendance do have an attitude that a PhD shares a lot in common with being employed, and that things work better if both student and supervisor work on this assumption.
As for the rest, just sounds like you are being poorly supervised. 30 minutes a week is more than many people get, but i would expect the  to at least concentrate and act interested during this time. All professors are busy right now, and apparently more than 50% of academics are currently showing signs of burn out, but it sounds like from the rest if your group members that this isn't a new state.

Some PIs run their lab in one way, other PIs run it differently. Choosing a lab which does not fit your wishes is a poor choice. Yes, you are unreasonable to expect the lab to change for you.

Food for thought: Professors operate on grant funding. Bidding to a grant requires a basis-of-estimate for the cost (hours and currency) to do the research. Establishing core hour expectations allows them to obtain an estimate of how many student-hours a project with a given scope. Of course, student-hours are different than person-hours in a real world setting, but it's a start.
The expectation that you be physically present suggests that your prof wants to do "management by walking around" but your description doesn't seem to fit that pattern.
The issue raised on your advisor's attitude is separate from the core hour and physical presence expectation. Sounds toxic. If you're making progress, keep moving forward. If you're flailing, I suggest seeking a different advisor.

A PhD is a delicate balance between a job and an education. On the one hand, you're getting a degree and are expected to learn something. On the other hand, you're also getting paid to be there. So, while I understand your frustration, I don't think it's completely unreasonable that your supervisor is treating you like an employee; he is, after all, paying your salary (assuming you're not on an independent fellowship).
The fact you're also getting paid to be there also means you don't have complete (or even much) control over the direction of your project. Most likely, your PhD is part of a larger, externally-financed project with very clear deliverables that need to be reported back to the grant agency.
As a student, the realisation that a PhD often has less freedom than an MSc is pretty tough, but unfortunately this is the way the system works these days. My advice is that if you want real academic freedom, you need to "buy" it via your own external financing. The good news is that there's plenty of opportunities for such early-career financing for e.g. travels abroad, postdoc fellowships, etc.
As someone who now finds themselves running a large(ish) group, I have to say I'm also a little sympathetic to your supervisor. I'm sure that nothing would give him more pleasure than to spend the days discussing the technicalities of your project. However, the system described above likely means that most of his time is spent managing these large large projects (including reporting and other admin tasks) and figuring out how to keep the ball rolling via the next round of grant funding. Just like going from an MSc to PhD, the postodc to professor jump is also something of a bait-and-switch...

Thank you for your answer, a few clarifications: I don't think it's completely unreasonable that your supervisor is treating you like an employee; he is, after all, paying your salary He is not paying my salary: the university is. On the other hand, you're also getting paid to be there. I am not paid hourly, and as stated, my contract doesn't mention anything like that. I'm sure that nothing would give him more pleasure than to spend the days discussing the technicalities of your project. This is highly optimistic

Do you mean you're paid via a university-funded fellowship, or a grant for which he is the PI? Because this makes a difference...

I have a studentship from the university for X years, my performance needs to be assessed each year. This studentship is mainly (but not fully) funded by a grant from an external institution.

In those business areas where physical, 9-to-5, five-days-a-week attendance is not clearly required by the business needs, I believe that it's also unreasonable for a business to require it.

@Kalliope Maybe this is not a valid point. At the end, you are getting paid to do some research under this supervisor, and he is getting paid (indirectly) to be your supervisor - that is, to supervise your research and ensure a positive outcome. This essentially makes him your boss, regardless which pocket your salary is coming from. Of course, it can be a case that a boss is not a good fit for an employee, and so can be a supervisor a bad fit for you.

I believe there are two main issues:

Your workstyle is different from what your supervisor wants:

This is a question that you sould have discussed during interviews (e.g. is mobile office possible, can I work frquently from home etc.) Of course this is harder during the pandemic to see how this plays out but especially then it is important to also check what happens after Corona, during lockdown and in phases without lockdowns. It is of course NEVER acceptable if your boss forces you to sign an essential worker document if you are not exactly this. This could be taken up to HR or the responsibles from University, but with the probable outcome your boss will be very annoyed.
Micromanagement is also something which is hard to realize during interviews. If you are not the only one in the group who is unhappy about this maybe create a need in the group to allow home office e.g. for 4 days a month. Start with a small number and show your boss that homeoffice is not holiday but working time and you are productive. In general I recommend everyone for PhD interviews to spend time (lunch, virtual coffee) with the working group ALONE to get more details for the ways a group works as you are not alone with having a hard to deal with your supervisor.

You are not happy with supervision:

This is essentially a different topic. While as a Master student you can expect a grade of supervision during PhD this is not the case anymore. Often supervisors do not really understand the topic of the PhD students so usually post-docs are more helpful for technical things, supervisors more for the general direction. See if you have people with similar problems in your lab. I was in the same situation, the sole one working on a topic and a supervisor I saw maybe once a month for like 30minutes. It taught me a lot (like seeing possible research directions, carrying a project on my own) but it is much harder than having a supervisor which knows the topic and guides you. Therefore, this highly depends on the group and supervisor and you need to decide which style you prefer and what you would like for your PhD but just know this type of supervision is not completely unusual.

I am not unhappy with my supervision, I am quite independent and it's not a problem for me. I am unhappy because my supervisor is not active in my project and still forces me to be here from 9 to 5 every day. If we would have an active collaboration, I wouldn't mind doing 9 to 5. If he asks me to be here 8 hours a day, it should involve him working with me, at least having some interactions. Maybe I have a naive view but in the world we are living now, it feels weird to have a small office crowded because of ideological reasons.

I understand your issue I would probably feel the same. As I mentioned it is not okay during these to force people into the office. Decide wether its worth talking to people at the University about this or try to create a force within the working group. Without high incidences I guess @ZeroTheHeroes answer applies, I also feel communicating with people in the office and other PhD peers (at least 2-3 times a week) helps foster the community and more creative discussions over a coffe.  And for me such discussions were valuable even without shared projects.

If your supervisor is paying you (with a stipend or tuition remission), then you have an obligation to make a minimum amount of progress on your project. If you are being paid through a grant, your supervisor is expected to make progress on the project described in the grant application. Therefore, the supervisor must see to it that you make progress on the project. In this case, the supervisor–student relationship is much like manager–employee relationship. The supervisor has obligations that must be met and you have been hired to meet those obligations. The supervisor should have explained the obligations of your position when you were hired (or joined the group). If you are not making sufficient progress on your project, your supervisor is well in their rights to demand that you put in more regular hours or find a new job.
If you are not being paid and are supported by an external scholarship or from your own funds, you should move to a new group because it sounds like your current supervisor is offering you nothing. If you have your own project and are sufficiently self-motivated, you may be able to find a supervisor who is much more hands-off.

The question is whether creative progress can be made in such an authoritarian environment. I assume that forcing people to stay in the lab physically all day long reduces productivity.

@Dilworth This is exactly it! From 9 to 5 I am just a machine in front of a computer trying to find something to do that is suitable with my environment. I am not able to think clearly, or to study a book, read a paper...

If you are not making sufficient progress on your project, your supervisor is well in their rights to demand that you put in more regular hours or find a new job. I never said that, please do not assume anything.

As other answers pointed out, you are very reasonable and this is not usual. But...
What can you do?
If he acts as a company manager, treat him like one.
Compile a detailed, clear, professional email describing how his current management affects your productivity negatively, with examples given where possible.

Describe in a few words how you usually spend the 9am-5pm hours at the office, whether there are times when you cannot do anything, and how would you spend these times on work more effectively out of office. Give examples where a flexible working hour style would have worked better.
Describe the negative impact of being in the office on your ability to research. Tell him how you would be more productive out of office (going to the library, being more focused in a calm and isolated environment). Offer openness to test the productivity increase.
Highlight your need for professional help regarding your research. Do not question his expertise in your topic (even if you see signs), but describe how a bit more input from his side would be very helpful. Ask him that if he lacks time to participate more, suggest professors in the department with whom you could conduct scientific discussions.
Propose a solution to the above issues that potentially could satisfy both of your and his expectations. Ask for a 1v1 meeting to discuss it in person. Be ready to compromise on many points.

Be very clear on your issues and with the goal of the email. Focus on your productivity and professional relationship: what affects your performance negatively, and how could it be solved to increase your productivity. Avoid private issues, as they can easily derail the whole point and give a hook to refuse your suggestions. (For example, "I could spend more time with my SO" is not a reason and should not be included, as it is unrelated to your productivity, at least not directly.)
Keep the email short and concise to the maximum extent, describe each point in no more than 2-4 sentences. Busy people (or those who want to see themselves as one) will not read lengthy letters in detail, and some of your crucial points will be overseen.
Of course, it's possible that you cannot arrive at a situation that satisfies you. In this case, there's no way to resolve the issue, so you must consider whether you can accept the situation as is, or find a new supervisor who would be a better fit.

Regarding the lack of professional discussion: you can attempt to improve this by email communication. Before each meeting, write him a brief email (5-10 sentences) with a list of the points you want to discuss. This gives him a chance to prepare beforehand in mind and give more thoughts on the topic. Supervisors are working on multiple projects, and it can be hard to "jump back" into a specific one you didn't pay any thought for for days, maybe weeks.


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Fail a P/F Doctoral Seminar course
I am asking the following question for a friend, who is currently a Doctoral student in Business School (Marketing area). He told me he would leave his program by the end of this semester (after discussing with his Chair) as there is no clear research fit between what he wants to do and the faculties in his department. Apparently, he shared with me last week that he is likely to receive a 'Failed' grade in his Doctoral Seminar in certain Marketing topics (P/F grading scheme, 1 credit). As he is planning to apply for several Master programs in Computer Science area (he has undergraduate degree in C.S. and Math), he is pretty anxious about whether the potential "F" grade on the transcript would negatively impact his application for those Master in C.S. programs. I told him my guess is that it does not matter much, since Marketing's Doctoral Seminar is not related to Computer Science at all, but he told me to post on this forum to ask if he needs to take further action to avoid getting a "F" but a "W" (it means he has to replace all in progress courses with "W" in this semester). Any thoughts would be appreciated.

What is the action here? He is going to fail even if it's a bad look, right? Are you asking if he should even bother applying for the master's in CS?

Yeah, he is wondering if it is worth the effort for him to take serious actions to get a "W" on the transcript, rather than a "F"? He also wonders if the Master program in C.S. cares at all about the Doctoral Seminar in Marketing. He has a pretty perfect record otherwise, from what he told me.

Yes, there is a chance that a single F grade would have an impact, but if the rest of the application is positive then it might be survived. A bunch of F's would be much harder as there can be clerical decisions made to weed out some applications to a popular program, implying that, in some cases, the applicant doesn't even get in the front door.
However, if the F grade is caused purely because of withdrawal then it can be explained, provided that you get a chance to explain it. But there is a lot to explain and not a lot of opportunities to do so. Some will wonder why the candidate is going from a doctoral program to a masters, perhaps.
These kinds of things can be explained in a "Personal Statement", but are less useful in the "Statement of Purpose" which should be used to discuss future plans not past issues. If an admissions process includes personal interviews then such things can be discussed there. Whether the explanations are accepted or not is up to the people receiving them.
My advice would be to try to get W grades instead of F grades, but if that is impossible then still apply to a few places and see what feedback you get.
You don't say where this is occurring, but in the US, at least, no single thing (such as the grade in a 1 credit course) is likely to be determinative. A broad, overall, view is normally preferred. So, there may be room for hope even in the worst case.

@Dr. Buffy: Thank you very much for your detailed answer. I shared it with my friend, and he said the reason he does not want to go and fight for a "W" grade is because it would make all the in-progress courses become "W" at his U.S.-based university. He also shared with me that since he's a full-time student and the other two courses  consist of 8 credits which he is pretty certain to obtain both "A," he is thinking whether it is wise to have all 3 "W" that would appear on transcripts (because the course-drop deadline already passed at his place). What would your advice be in this case?

The only real advice is that things will possibly need explaining. Leaving the program may be enough of an explanation in any case, but I'm not the one making the judgments.


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How can I relate my undergrad works to professors research areas?
Recently, a professor answered my email for a graduate position. He asked me to tell him to what extent I am aware of his research. I have a background research experience in his research area, I can understand his papers generally but I can't talk about them in detail. Since he asked me to answer this question in detail, please help me to how can I talk about his research area?
Moreover, he asked me to tell him about a specific direction that interests me for my future studies and the way I can make a contribution to his research.
Answering this question is hard for me because I don't know how to define a specific direction that doesn't make me limited and lose the opportunity of working with him.
Please help me if you have any ideas.
Thanks in advance.

Answering this question is hard for me because I don't know how to define a specific direction that doesn't make me limited and lose the opportunity of working with him.

This is a thoughtful response on his part. He is not asking for you to send him a dissertation proposal, but maybe something four or five times as broad. Maybe something like "I'm interested in interventions to support learning in recent immigrants to [your country]," rather than "The effect of X intervention on mathematical learning on late teenage refugees to [your country] who did not receive formal education in their home country."
It's not a quiz to see if you come up with a good enough one and "lose" the opportunity to work with him (unless he's a nasty person). More of a determination whether you two are a good scientific fit.

Depending on where you are, he could be asking for more than is reasonable. But, do the best you can. Mention the papers you have read. But don't overstate your understanding of them. If you have questions about those papers, then some of those questions might represent lack of understanding but others might indicate unformed ideas about future possible research.
The second question about a specific direction is also difficult. It might be enough to indicate one (or two) of the recent papers that you find especially interesting, and why.
I see two possibilities. The worst is that he is trying to find someone who will be easy to advise and won't take any particular effort. The best is that he is just trying to weed out those who say they are interested but haven't done any prior work to understand what his research trajectory and would take too much time and effort to bring along. I suspect that it is more the latter case, but can't know.
But if it is the former case then you probably should look to someone else to advise you.
With that in mind, it might be good not to be too definite about your answers and not too confident in expressing your understanding. If he thinks you are unready, then, on his terms, you probably are. But only for this one professor. You otherwise seem to be well prepared.
Close with "hoping for the opportunity to discuss this further with you" or similar.

Note that such questions of a student would seem more extreme in the US than in, say, Germany, where students normally have a more concentrated program at that point.


text:
Does my university get billed every time I access a paper?
I do not keep a folder on my computer with the hundreds of PDFs of the scientific papers I read, but rather whenever I need a paper I just go and download it from the publisher's website. Of course I access via my institution so there is no charge.
There are papers I access multiple times, and recently this got me thinking: is the university paying a flat fee for the journal (or conference proceedings), or is it billed directly when I access the paper?
And in the latter case, if I access it multiple times, will the university be billed again?
I honestly have no idea how these deals work and could not find information, but if the latter case is true, I feel there should be better communication by the institutions so we can adopt better caching strategies.

Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.

Most large universities have subscriptions that allow their staff unlimited access to the journals to which they subscribe. Some smaller institutions have different arrangements: when I worked for a small research institute with only about 100 scientists, they had full subscriptions to only a few journals. For others, they instead had a publisher subscription that gave them a limited number of tokens for journal access, and a token was used up each time we accessed an article.

Even in the situation that Allure describes where there is a flat fee for subscription, the number of articles downloaded from various venues may well be kept track of, and this information used to justify to the administration that it is worth subscribing to a given venue.
Consequently, though there may not be a 1-1 cost associated with accessing a given article, in practice we can associated more downloads from a given venue with a higher probability of that venue being retained by your libraries, and furthermore with a willingness to pay a higher fee to do so (since this increases the bargaining power of the publisher).
Whether or not these tracking mechanisms are granular enough to recognize multiple downloads by a given user is beyond my knowledge and probably varies by institution and venue.

"may well be kept track of" is an understatement. Of course these data are collected by publishers, then used and resold extensively. Remember that Elsevier describes itself as "an information analytics business".

This definitely happens, it's how librarians tell what to subscribe to and what publishers see as lost business. The technical term for it is "denial", e.g. https://support.springer.com/en/support/solutions/articles/6000262711-journal-denials

Interesting. Under this perspective, poisoning the publisher's data by re-downloading things may be a good thing.

@Pronte I love the idea of poisoning the ******'s data. But this would be poisoning it in such a way that it increases their bargaining power... Sylvain: since not every publisher is Elsevier, "may" seems nevertheless appropriate.

You look at the data multiple ways: number of downloads, number of articles accessed, and some combination of the two. 1000 downloads of 1 article tells a different story than 1000 articles downloaded once each.

Alternately, the publisher may look at the total number of downloads by an institution when setting pricing for next year's subscriptions.  Making unnecessary downloads may boost future costs.

@user46053 definitely not. Journals are most commonly priced by article count. A journal that publishes 100 articles a year is typically more expensive to subscribe to than one that publishes 10 articles a year. And the prices for subscribing to individual journals is given on the website (although it's common to give discounts to institutions subscribing to more than one journal).

@JohnMadden any publisher serious about doing marketing keeps track of article access rates. Why wouldn't they? It tells them which of their articles/journals are in demand, which in turn informs them on how to focus their marketing. Article access rates are so widely tracked across the newspaper industry (to which journals belong) that I would be very very surprised if any major publisher doesn't do it; it's so widely tracked that some publishers do it automatically and publicize the number, e.g. OUP.

No
Assuming your university subscribes to the journal, you get full access until the subscription lapses. It's not dissimilar to, e.g., you subscribing to The Wall Street Journal. You don't pay a fee every time you read an article there.

I'd be hesitant to assume that every journal and every publisher follow this model exclusively.

Even if your institution has unlimited access at flat rate pricing, it might still be a good idea to keep a local copy of anything that's currently essential to your work.  If you have the copy locally, you have it.  Otherwise, there may be the possibility that your institution decides to no longer subscribe to a particular journal.  Another factor to consider for students, particularly near the end of their degree progress, is that sometimes the need to access articles extends past their classification as a student as far as their institution is concerned and eligibility to access your institution's subscriptions may be cut off.

As others have noted, the general guide is that libraries subscribe to bulk packages that contain sets of journals with a desired level of unrestricted access to all articles within any journal in the packaged set. The purchase models that are available are set by the journals that distribute the copyrighted content, not by the libraries that wish to provide downstream access to that same content.
An alternative case to your case is worth noting. By downloading articles directly from your library each time rather than storing them locally after a one time download, you may be skewing the library statistics at your institution to favor your specific journals. By specific example, our librarians have noted to us as faculty (and to our students) that, in addition to considering our direct requests for expanded access to currently restricted journal sets, they also review download statistics from journals in each budget cycle to help make decisions on which journals to cut or keep. Perhaps your contribution is in the noise, or perhaps it will matter. The statistics should be available from your library.
Finally, as far as ... "there should be better communication ...", I have experienced only help and positive feedback when I contact my library administration (e.g. library dean) to ask for clarifications or even to suggest an update be made to their Website with better clarity on such information as you note.


text:
postdoc positions by countries
I would like to categorize the research destinations by countries. In the level of postdoc positions, let consider three categories, the first one includes US, UK, Canada and Australia, second one includes (West) European countries and the third category consists of China, Brazil, eastern European countries and India. We know that the first category is a popular destination for postdoc applicants. I would like to know whether a postdoc position in third category has any weight from perspective of academia? I know this is a general question and it depends on many factors, more specifically, list of publications.

The question is asking whether having a postdoc position in a non-Western European country or Commonwealth has any weight from the perspective of academia. It is by no definition a shopping question.

Sorry but the premise of the question is flawed in many ways: one can find low-quality institutions in the first group and high-quality institutions in the last group; an institution can be good in one field and bad in another; and more importantly somebody can do a brilliant postdoc anywhere and a terrible one anywhere as well. There are simply too many parameters for answering such a question in any meaningful way.

So the only possible answer to this question is: yes a postdoc anywhere can have academic weight... but that doesn't help with anything.

There are strong research groups and weak research groups within all the categories of countries you mentioned. The weight of the postdoc period depends on who you are working with and what you accomplish.
Doing a postdoc in a particular country might make it easier to find a position there; going abroad at some point in one's academic career will make it easier to find a position in some countries.


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Postdoctoral and Research associate
Is there any difference between Postdoctoral fellow and research associate?

Which country is this about?

This will vary by institution.
Post-doctoral fellow, at least in the US, is almost always a temporary position to bridge between grad school and a faculty position. Some funding agencies (and therefore some universities) require that post-docs received their PhDs within the past 7 years.
Research associate can mean almost anything. At MIT, senior research associates:

"possess a demonstrated research competence equal to that of a tenured faculty member...Appointments are of indefinite duration and are to be reviewed within every five-year period"

So, a potentially permanent, but untenured research position with qualifications parallel to the tenure track. In other contexts, this can be a temporary position granted at any level.


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About awaiting assignment status of manuscript
I submitted a short paper to a math journal more that one month ago. The status is still "awaiting assignment" and I checked the online system which shows that even no editor has been assigned to my paper. I sent two emails about updating the status of the paper to editor and Editor-in-Chief several days ago and I got no reply from them. What can I do now? May I withdraw that?

You can certainly withdraw the paper. But note that this is a busy time for academics, some of whom are the editors and certainly the reviewers. It might be good to wait, especially if the journal is somewhere that you really want to publish.
The one month is more problematic than the few days without email, I think. But that might be explained if your paper is a bit esoteric in any way and it may be unclear which editor to assign the paper to.
But withdrawal is a possibility. I'd recommend it only if you have an alternate plan that is better than patience.

"I'd recommend it only if you have an alternate plan that is better than patience" I agree. This also implies that you should not wait for too long. As soon as you are really fed up with waiting for an update in the online system or an e-mail, withdrawal is something to consider. And maybe you know someone who submitted to the journal before and can tell if you are within the normal timeframe.


text:
Jobs in industry for mathematicians
As a Ph.D graduated in mathematics (combinatorial algebra), I would like to apply for jobs in industry such as finance and/or Data science. I have some knowledge on programming but no real-world experience. Do I have any chance to get a job in industry? I looked for industry jobs, in most finance and data mining sector jobs, there exists

mathematics

as one of the field of studies that students of them can apply for.  My question is about my chance for these types of jobs.

If you don't apply, you won't get the job.  So, apply!
Yes, it's possible to find a job in industry and many Ph.D. graduates in mathematics do this every year.  There are lots of things that you could have been doing earlier in your graduate career to help you prepare for a career outside of academia, but there are also many things that you can do starting right now to help you develop a non-academic career.
One very recent resource that you might find helpful is the book:
Rachel Levy, Richard Laugesen and Fadil Santosa, Big Jobs Guide: Business, Industry, and Government Careers for Mathematical Scientists, Statisticians, and Operations Researchers.  SIAM, 2018.

Maybe one thing to add is that different companies look for different things at different times (and sometimes at the same time).  Some positions want people with specialized skills, and some positions don't.  So the OP probably has reasonable chances for the latter, but perhaps not the former.

If you look at your local jobs portal for positions that require a PhD in mathematics, you'll find if there are opportunities for people like you. Here is an example. Yes you have a chance - if they weren't looking for people with PhD in mathematics, they wouldn't list that as a requirement. Besides, there're more graduates than there are academic positions, so most of those graduates end up in industry.
Good luck, and be sure to visit your university's career center if they have one.

Another option you might want to look in to is Actuarial work. I haven't looked at it in decades so my information may be long out of date, but it used to be a very highly paid profession - and highly mathematical. To get a proper license you need(ed) to take a series of tests, but a doctorate in math would give you a pass on some of them.
The actuarial business may have changed this century of course, and also entry to the profession, but it can be a good fit for some mathematicians. See: http://www.actuary.org