text:
Is there national/ethnic discrimination against Asians in U.S. graduate school admissions and in university faculty hiring
tl;dr: please skip to the last paragraph.
I am currently an international undergrad at an US university, studying math. I am currently thinking of going to graduate school and becoming a university professor after that.
My dad thinks that there must be some unforeseen and implicit racial/ethnic/national discrimination against Asians in U.S. higher learning and that I must therefore invariably be more studious in learning.
However, today's America is more diverse than ever, every university have non-discrimination policy, and collge faculty hirers are in general (I think, at least) educated people. Also, based on my interactions, no one in my college seems to be biased against racial minorities/different nationalities. So I am thinking that there wouldn't be much national/racial discrimination on graduate school admissions and in university faculty hiring, especially as my major is math, which is one of the objective academic discipline. I also plan to do a career with pure math and not on industrial/applied math.
I am perfectly fluent in English and can communicate perfectly like a native except for a almost non-existent accent. I am also very aquainted with American culture.
Of course, I know that there still must be some implicit national/racial diacrimination in job hiring process in non-academic sectors (e.g. companies/restaurants) despite there being laws against it. But since universities are places were nondiscrimination is highly encouraged and there are lots of international scholars, I think my dad's claim is highly exaggerated.
I believe that my current status as a citizen of South Korea, which is a close ally with U.S., shouldn't negatively affect my image in graduate school admission/university faculty job hiring.
I found some articles like this one but I think this is an exception to a general rule.
Long story short:
Is there national/racial discrimination against Asians in graduate school admissions and in university faculty hiring/promotion in math (and/or Physical Sciences in general)? I am asking for anything in the United States (i.e., no answer needed for other countries). "Discrimination" for scholarship doesn't count,  -- nor does undergraduate admissions!!! I am looking specifically for an answer about math department or physical sciences. A general perception is a preferred answer rather than specific instances, though that too is good. Answers are wlecome from those working in the admission/hiring process. Also, lack of communication skills frequently attributed to international scholars doesn't count as racial/national discrimination in my question.
EDIT: In reply to the replies below, I am well aware that any sort of unjust racial/national discrimination is prohibited whatsoever in the U.S., and I am well aware that the mainstream media and the general consensus of the people is that any sort of unjust discrimination is absolutely bad. I've attended an American high school and watched tons of American news and TV. However, I am merely asking a professional view (that is not speculative, i.e. someone who's been working in the area for many years) to what extent some people's implicit biases against Asians seems to negatively impact grad admission/prof hiring. Of course, having been in U.S. I know that no one would say "we're gonna hire this white guy over this equally qualified Asian guy just because of race." Also, being in U.S. for many years do not always count as state residency, as I am not a permanent resident.

You are not going to find a big sign "Koreans need not apply" at the entrance of a American university. That does not mean there is no discrimination, but it is not going to be official or even unofficial policy. But academics are still humans with all their strengths and weaknesses. The closest thing to an official policy of discrimination would be that It may be harder for non-citizens to get certain grants or enter certain projects from say the NSA.

There is a big difference between a Korean-American and a Korean. There is lots of discrimination against non-citizens (e.g., there is funding that requires US citizenship). Are you interested in just the racial issues, the citizenship issues, or both?

Are you a Permanent Resident (immigration-law wise)?

Yes. Discrimination exists. Just ask my international students attempting to go to an REU program as non-citizens. Furthermore, many employers do care about immigration status. It can be an issue. Of course, if you are excellent in Math then that will likely open all the doors you need. Your dad is not totally off base. However, it is not a Korean specific problem...The answers have given you more scholarly answers and hence this is merely a comment.

@JamesS.Cook Many US-funded REU programs reserve funding for US citizens. This is not discrimination, it's an eligibility criterion.

@ElizabethHenning it may be a legitimate criterion, but it still discriminates against international students who happen to attend schools here. It puts international students who have the misfortune of not being a US citizen at a severe disadvantage in summer program opportunities.

@JamesS.Cook How on earth does someone "happen" to go to university in a foreign country?

@JamesS.Cook Labeling programs for domestic students as discrimination seems to dilute the meaning of that word quite a bit.

@BryanKrause does it? These students are denied opportunity not because of what they have done or can do, but rather because of where they are from. That's not discrimination ? Fine, call it an "eligibility criterion" or whatever, that doesn't help the students I have in mind. Anyway, the OP was talking about graduate school, so I should stop as this is a bit tangential.

This is more of a comment, but it fits better in the answer format, so here goes.
An attitude such as you described your father as having might seem outrageous on the face of it.  However, if we remember that it is coming from his reality, perhaps it can be more constructive for you, for him, and for your relationship, if you allow yourself to absorb his attitude, without debate, and without adopting it for yourself, but with curiosity and empathy.
Can you ask him in a gentle, interested, non-confrontational way what his experiences with discrimination have been?  If things are polarized between you on the issue of Is discrimination against our ethnic group real or imagined?, then he might feel suspicious when you try to interview him.  It might be helpful to let him know why you're interested.  (Maybe -- "Knowledge is power.  I want to know more about what discrimination looks like, sounds like, smells like, feels like.")
If he's able to see that you would like to learn from his experiences, so that you can go to college with your eyes open, and with a healthy skepticism, you two may have an easier time finding common ground.

There is only one reality; there is not "his reality" and "her reality" and so on.  As to the one actual reality, there is substantial academic evidence of discrimination against Asians in academic entry, particularly in elite institutions in the US.  This is not an outrageous claim at all; it is merely a foreseeable consequence of affirmative-action in university entry processes, and it is backed up by a mountain of empirical evidence.

@Ben - If that phrasing bothers you, replace the word "reality" with "experience" or "collected experiences".

@Sam - I hope it helps.  Basically, what I'm saying is that sometimes a person has totally understandable reasons for taking a wildly irrational position.  Take a look at this: https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/questions/8334/how-can-i-try-to-have-my-mom-help-me-understand-why-she-wont-accept-a-sincere-a/8345#8345.  I hope you'll post an update when you're ready (please ping me).

@aparente: Much better.  (I'm not sure how to ping.)

@Ben - It's just SE lingo for notify -- which you did!  Thanks. // Glad we converged on some understanding.

There is quite a bit of academic research on university entry and race, mostly in US universities, so if you are interested in learning about racial discrimination in academia, this would be a good place to start.  The phenomenon of discrimination against Asians in academia is well-known and has been identified regularly over the past twenty to thirty years, both in academic literature (e.g., Tsuang 1989, Wu 1995, Wong and Halgin 2011, Kim et al 2011) and in the press (see e.g., The Economist 2015).  The Asian-American Coalition for Education claim that there is widespread discrimination against Asians in academia, particularly in the elite Ivy-league schools, and they provide references to a number of articles and books discussing this issue.
This issue has been studied in quite a bit of detail by the economist Thomas Sowell in the context of his research on affirmative action (an overview of his ideas on the subject is here and his recent book on the economics and politics of race is here).  Sowell argues that affirmative action leads to discrimination against Asian applicants, as a consequence of this group having a higher proportion of applicants with high grades/skills.  Since Asians are the "model minority", Sowell argues that the use of affirmative action in academia tends to involve a raising of the bar for entry for this group, in order to try to avoid their "overrepresentation".
Anyway, this is a big subject, and a lot has been written on it.  Some users on this site may be able to give their own anecdotal experiences, but I recommend you examine this broader literature.  The links I have provided will get you started, but there is also plenty more on the topic.
UPDATE: There is presently a major lawsuit against Harvard University for alleged discrimination against Asian applicants.  It is alleged that Harvard admission staff have systematically down-rated Asian applicants on their "personality" in order to achieve racial balancing, consistent with the university's goal of racial diversity.  @BlueRoses: If this is a topic that interests you, I cannot think of a better example than for you to watch how this legal case plays out.

I'd also recommend Milkman, Akinola & Chugh "What Happens Before" https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2063742 which presents some quantitative evidence on discrimination in informal settings - e.g. professors more likely to make time to meet with prospective students with white-male-sounding names.

Do these studies apply to graduate school in mathematics?  I certainly agree with this at the undergraduate level, but I feel that at the graduate level, at least in math, it not as much of an issue.

You will need to check the scope of individual studies to see their methodology and scope, but most look at records at a university-wide level.  Anecdotal experience speculating that one particular subset of one department is exempted from those wider findings ought to be backed by evidence.

@Kimball The Milkman/Akinola/Chugh study is specifically about doctoral candidates.

@kartop_man: I think you are correct about that, but note that what is being alleged is race discrimination, so it is the Asian part of Asian-American that is alleged to be the basis of the purported discrimination.  Unless I am mistaken, anti-discrimination laws generally prohibit racial discrimination both with respect to citizens and also non-citizens, so this case would also be relevant to Asian-Asians coming to America.

I have been a faculty member in the US in mathematics for over 10 years, and involved with graduate admissions a few times.  Based on my observations, there is no significant discrimination against Koreans or Asians/Asians-Americans for graduate admissions, or for hiring procedures.  Implicit bias is a thing, but academics for the most part work guard against it, and as there are many highly successful East Asian mathematicians, I don't think there is so much implicit bias against East Asians in mathematics anyway.
That said, if you are applying as an international student, then diversity initiatives may produce an affect similar to reverse discrimination for graduate admissions (this is not an issue for faculty hiring).  Specifically, some schools may try to aim to admit X number of domestic students and Y number of international students.  (At my mid-size public university, we typically admit fewer international students because of language concerns for TA assignments, though it sounds like that would not be a concern in your case.  Additionally, while you may be officially applying as an international students, since you've been in the US so long and are going to college in the US, a search committee which differentiates domestic and international applicants may treat you essentially like a domestic student anyway.)
Then some schools, may try to admit most Z students from East Asian countries, so that they can also admit Y-Z students from other regions.  Because of the large numbers of strong applicants from China and Korea, this means you may be facing more competition for a spot than if you were from Antarctica.  In practice, this just means it may be somewhat harder for you to get into an elite school, but if you're a strong applicant you should still be able to get into top schools.

Higher education is extremely competitive and universities do what is in their best interest. Research universities especially, profit directly from grant funding; a big chunk of each grant goes into the university's pocket. They also fight tooth and nail for rankings as this brings in students and their tuition dollars (especially international students who pay in full). Choosing the inferior candidate for reasons of bias would go against that self-interest. One caveat is lately there has been a push for diversity, including it in the rankings even. And this does imply a bias against over-represented minorities. But I'm not sure it amounts to much except at the fringes, given the same reasons plus how difficult it is to impose preferences under current rules.
There are less direct kinds of factors like "leadership" and extra-curricular being used at the undergraduate level, which some see as a backdoor way to tilt the scales (personally I think this is the same bias against introverts that has always existed). At any rate one only needs to "work as hard" as everyone else at succeeding in these additional factors.
At the graduate level especially, American universities serve the world. In STEM fields international doctoral students outnumber domestic (Source: OECD). At many schools this is the case for faculty in these areas as well. You may find yourself competing for academic jobs against a pool of mostly international candidates.
One other caveat is state schools for student admissions. They are generally required by their state to reserve a large fraction of spots for state residents. But this may be limited to undergraduate and certain professional schools such as medicine. And note that one doesn't need to be a US resident to be a state resident.

In STEM fields international graduate students outnumber domestic. - Is this true?  It's certainly true at some institutions I've been at but not at others.  Also, I disagree with the last paragraph (not true for graduate admissions, and it's unclear if the OP counts as a resident).

@Kimball Fair points. Edited the wording a little to be more careful. As for STEM, yes at least it is clear when restricted to doctoral students as in the source I added. At least it was, this year was a pretty big hit in applications.


text:
Why are textbook authors often not the most famous/cited researchers?
I am not sure if this is generalizable to all subjects. What I have noticed in some of the sciences, for example biology, ecology, and environmental sciences, is that the authors of the most used textbooks are not very highly cited scientists. Perhaps they have a book which is well cited but not used as a primary textbook, however it is not always the case, as it depends on the level of the book. Of course, books written for undergraduates are not necessarily cited in research papers. Regardless of the writing skills, which are of course important, I would prefer a textbook to be written by the most expert of a field and not just by the best educator or writer, who might lack in depth knowledge. Of course, a combination of both would be ideal.
I would expect that the maximum experts of a topic would also write a book which is heavily used in class or in research, but it does not seem to be the case.
Is it because researchers with a lot of citations (i.e. experts) are mostly dedicated to writing papers rather than books? Or is it because they work at  the edge of knowledge and are not interested or capable of writing books for rookies?

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

The question is rather condescending, and also built on many false assumptions. The most cited author is not necessarily the biggest expert of the field. Textbooks cover much wider areas than just a field. Many undergrad subject doest even have a substantial research field any more. Assuming that only few has a secret knowledge, a depth of expertise at undergrad level subjects is also false.

You might also be interested in the answers to Why don't more academics write textbooks?.

Please take the discussion of examples and counter-examples to chat.

Citation count, is not per se a good measure of quality. I discussed this once with a researcher. He stated that there are three types of publications that are cited a lot: (a) papers with great (new) ideas, (b) overview papers (so without much new ideas), and (c) papers with systems/methodologies/... that can easily be improved (since one can compare its own methodology and show it is an improvement).

From a mathematical (US based) perspective I would say it depends on the level of the textbook. Any proper undergrad textbooks will usually be written by people who are much more interested in being teachers than researchers and thank god for that. Undergrad texts are extremely basic and the amount of depth required or even possible, is essentially nil.
Any person with basic knowledge of the subject should be proficient enough in the mathematics to write the book without errors and with all the depth required. The important part of writing an undergrad textbook is being a good educator and teacher and being able to explain and impart the knowledge to undergraduate students. This is a skill many (if not most) high profile research mathematicians thoroughly lack.
On the other hand at the graduate and even advanced undergraduate level textbooks at least in my field of interest (set theory and foundations) were written by incredibly high profile research scientists that were probably in the top 10 in the world in their respective fields. Just to mention a few, Kunen Set Theory An Introduction to Independence Proofs, Juhász Cardinal invariants of the continuum, Chang & Kiesler Model theory. There is also the handbook of set theoretic topology which while not exactly a textbook and not by a single author, is almost an textbook and the contributors were all extremely good research scientists.
From a different field I know CGEL (Cambridge grammar of the english language) and A student's introduction to the English language, from the field of linguistics are both from Huddlestone and Pullum who as far as I can tell (I'm certainly no linguistics expert) are both extremely well thought of in their research community.
To summarize I think that the early and mid undergraduate textbooks are often written by educators, both since they would probably be quite boring for a research scientist to write (though Rudin is a household name and you certainly can't accuse him of not being a research scientist) and the educational aspect of the work is extremely important (though again Set theory by Kunen is certainly a great textbook both in terms of depth and educational values).
On the other hand late undergrad and graduate textbooks are often written by stars of the research community.

This matches my experience in astronomy and physics. The books for the general science classes were written by people you'd never heard of; the graduate textbooks were written by the giants of the field.

I disagree, you may need a cursory level of understanding to grasp the subject matter of an undergrad book, but to write a book that will enthrall the masses takes a great deal of understanding. You need more to write successfully than a mere grasp of the subject matter.

@NeilMeyer I don't think we're necessarily in disagreement. I just doubt that baby Rudin can be reasonably used for calc I or II.

CGEL is a grammar, and grammars are considered more as monographs than textbooks - though the example of the student's introduction still holds.

The second edition of A student's introduction to English grammar will be out very soon.

@BrettReynolds Thank you for the information.:)

You have already mentioned most of the things that are going on.

Someone who is good at doing research is not necessarily someone who is good at writing textbooks. These are different skills.
There are only 24 hours in a day, and an hour spent on writing textbook is an hour not spent on research. A person becomes a top-researcher by being strategic in the way (s)he manages her or his time. That often means not writing textbooks (see point below).
The "value" of a book differs a lot from (sub-(sub-))discipline to (sub-(sub-))discipline. Some value books (but even those not necessarily textbooks), and in some writing a book is basically a waste of time.

and a textbook in a specialised field will not sell in the numbers that a novel or piece of fiction will so the returns are not high... coupled with that is the expense of producing a quality text book cf a novel...

@SolarMike Sure, if you do that to make money, then that is possible, but you will have to write that for an undergraduate class in a large discipline. I have heard cases where such a book doubled the authors income or more. But more specialized textbooks will not come even close to pay off financially.

Textbooks pay off better than you think, especially in the sciences.  They are usually "refreshed" with a new edition every few years, which increases new book sales, and a book that costs multiple hundreds of dollars pays a reasonable royalty to the author.
The other factor to consider is that writing a textbook takes a lot of time away from research.  People doing research on a top level are probably not using their time so well to spend it writing a book containing (only) well-known aspects of their discipline.

Just to complement the excellent answer from @Maarten Buis:
In my experience, the authors of the best textbooks at the senior undergraduate or graduate level are typically some of the top researchers in their field.    In applied math, for instance, Gil Strang is certainly one of the leaders of the field and also the author of several extremely popular texts.  Virtually all of my favorite graduate-level texts in numerical analysis and hyperbolic PDEs are written by leading researchers.
The same cannot be said for texts at the introductory undergraduate level.  Top-notch mathematicians don't write calculus texts, though perhaps one of them ought to.

Both doing research and writing books take a lot of time and effort and many academics don't have enough lifespan to greatly succeed at both.
A lot of stars need to align for a successful researcher to write a successful textbook.
Economics of writing a textbook is pretty rough. First, you have to teach that subject for several years, sometimes decades, to get a feel of how new students acquire knowledge of that subject, their difficulties, what works, what doesn't, what is too easy, too hard, relevant/irrelevant to their future careers.
Then you create the first version of the book, get it edited, proofread, tested on students, revise it at least once.
Then you have to sell it. There is competition, the market is not very efficient so if you book is better than the competition, faculties around the world will not automatically switch to it. You have to promote it. The cost of publication is high, the price is not so high so you have to sell a lot to break even. Most textbooks are barely profitable.
If you actually manage to write a good book and sell it, you have to keep it up to date, revising it every year of few and still keep promoting.
So becoming a famous scientist + writing a great textbook is a heroic task. Huge respect to those who manage both.

While the other answers have explained why most textbooks at the service course level are written by people whose main focus is education as opposed to research, I want to point out that this isn't always the case.  Off the top of my head, I'm aware of calculus books by Serge Lang, Gilbert Strang, Tom Apostol, and Joel Haas (all of whom are or were active research mathematicians).  I'm sure I'm forgetting some other names as well.  Among younger research mathematicians, I am aware of textbooks for service courses by Dan Margalit and Joseph Rabinoff (see https://textbooks.math.gatech.edu/ila/) and by Kevin Wortman (see http://www.math.utah.edu/~wortman/advprec/), and these are just examples from people in my immediate mathematical social circle.  It is true that neither of the previous two books I mentioned were published in a traditional manner, but that is just a function of the authors' personalities.

Also, there's Richard Feynman.

@henning: I'm not sure it is accurate to call Feynman's books "textbooks for service courses", at least not in the traditional sense of the word.

Well, I sort of think of Feynman's books as being comparable to Apostol's calculus books (in fact, they were both for 1st and 2nd year Math and Physics at Caltech).  And to add to the top of your head, Rogawski has a calculus book.

@Kimball: While it may have been intended to be used that way, they stopped trying to use Feynman to teach undergraduates at Caltech long ago.  Apostol, on the other hand, is still a viable textbook for the right audience.

Another good example: Keisler wrote an undergraduate calculus text which was based on nonstandard analysis. Despite the novel approach, it was intended to be a first course in calculus and was used by some universities for that purpose.

Well, in undergrad, at many of the more expensive schools especially: the professors create a book from their curriculum put it in the bookstore and then make it required.
For the researchers that have spent long years and gotten tenure and gotten to the head of their fields, a few among these detail their expertise in books. These books are far better and comprehensive and also they are more readily found in graduate school.
The point of graduate school is to teach you to read cutting edge things and learn them yourself, this is generally the reason for this.
Also, books written by the greats tend to be very tricky even for people with PhDs, and so it is inappropriate for the majority of people to familiarize themselves with a subject this way initially.
It is a breadth or depth question, books rarely have both, and the best books usually cater to the second.

One factor I'mmnot seeing in the other answers, but which seems relevant to me: Text books often don't contain original research. They (hopefully) provide a good summary and (hopefully) cite their source.
For further research this can be an entry, but the underlying research typically has the citable information.

Why is this relevant?  I'm an active researcher, and though I have no interest in writing a textbook, I produce documents that don't contain original research all the time (for various reasons).

Not true for books from Donald Knuth. He uses and cites what others found and adds everything else what's missing. But his approach is rarely copied...

@usr1234567 It's fairly common to do this in linguistics. A couple of examples are Haspelmath's Introducing morphology (which invents a bunch of new terminology for stuff he doesn't find clear) and Comrie's Aspect (often cited as a monograph on aspect these days despite being a textbook).

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Should I write an email to the professor I want to work with regarding my performance in the exam?
I am a masters student in one of the Swiss federal institutes. There is a professor I wish to work under as a PhD student after my masters. In fact, this was the entire reason I decided to join the masters program in this institute. After coming here, I did a semester-long project with this professor and took a course under the professor.
I think I did well in the project. Although I did not do anything original, I read a lot of difficult things and made a nice report. I asked the professor if there is a research position that I can apply to and continue working for the coming semester (it is very rare to get research positions in pure mathematics as a student) and I was told that it may be possible and more will be informed in a week.
However, this week the final exam of the course that I had taken under this professor was scheduled and I am not too hopeful about the performance in the exam (I think it was mostly because I spent too much time in the project and spent less time in my coursework). This professor is famous and can easily get students more capable than me.
Do you think I should write an email to the professor apologizing and explaining about this? What should I say?

So to be clear, has the exam already happened or not? And have had your marks returned?

Wait until you know your exam results.  You may have done better than you thought.

The exam copies have not been returned. But I had a look at the solution booklet.

What's a Swizz federal institute? Did you mean to write Swiss? (I hope it's not a swizz.)

From your explanation I assume that you are very keen to work with him/her in future as a PhD student. So you were trying to your best to do very good in his/her paper. How about your project work? I assume that it was appreciated by your professor, but doesn't matter.
To answer your question, you can always write emails to him/her mentioning about the project work and future advice. So if you write emails, then forget about the exam results and no need to mention about the performance of this exam in your email.
I would prefer to take an appointment after the exam and meet him to discuss about my interest to work with him as a PhD student.

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

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


text:
What should I be doing now to get a good recommendation letter as a graduate student?
I am currently doing a Master's degree in applied mathematics. I am worried though about after I complete my degree and I apply to another graduate school for an applied mathematics PhD program. While I have a good relationship with my supervisor an expect to get a good recommendation letter, most graduate schools and research award applications require three.
My question is what should I be doing now to ensure that I can easily get good recommendation letters when I graduate?
Right now I spend most of my time doing research which by it's nature in my field is a solo activity in collaboration with my supervisor. The rest of my time is being a teaching assistant, and doing a few extra circulars. I want to start working on getting good recommendations while I still have time before I graduate.
More Personal Notes

I am in my first year, started September 2017.
Things I do outside of research and being a teaching assistant include being part of my school's graduate society, and mentoring undergraduate students in the department.

Do you not take classes from other faculty in your Master's program?  As well as a separate professor you're TAing for?

Sorry I should have mentioned this.  Yes I do.

In part, the requirement of 3 letters tests exactly whether you do interact with more than just your advisor. Genuinely "solo work", unless it is ground-breaking, is not necessarily compelling in itself.

Okay then in a field where it is common for papers to be authored by one or two people how can I work in the meantime to show that I am a team player.

One suggestion is to get a good teaching reference if you're working as a TA.  Most departments have one or more faculty who supervise graduate student TA's.  If you're actually leading a recitation section or teaching a class, you should ask this person if they would be willing to write a recommendation letter addressing your teaching and you should invite them to observe you in the classroom environment.  A good letter of this support together with good student evaluations will make a strong case for your ability as an instructor.

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


text:
PhD salary and teaching assistantships in German-speaking countries
I am currently searching for a master and then a PhD in Finance/Quantitative Finance. Since I have a certificate in German Language, I could choose German-speaking countries (Switzerland, Germany, and Austria) since their master programms have low fees and PhD students get paied in contrast with other countries as UK,etc.
My question is about pursuing a PhD and whether I could enhance my income by providing teaching assistance in the University. In these countries, are classes based explicitly on German or English?
Moreover, do these countries offer a salary for a PhD student, or is the cost of living prohibitive?

This question is dangerously looking like a 'shopping question'... As for the teaching language, this information is probably available on University website.

Not sure how the two are related. You are looking for a master's programme but you ask information about a PhD?

@BramVanroy I am greek and studying abroad has a great cost of living, so before choosing a master, I have to check the long-run cost of living/opportunies etc. S

So you are not looking for a PhD position but to enroll in a Masters program. That is a huge difference.

I can only speak for Germany:
Teaching is done by professors. Sometimes they delegate certain courses to assistants (not TAs, usually PhD candidates or post-docs), but this is still counted as "teaching" by the professor (there are legal issues involved which I don't want to adress here, but this is the common practice). As a consequence, the assistant gains teaching experience (which is good and might help in further career steps!), but there is no additional financial compensation.
Usually, PhD candidates are hired for certain research projects or they are assigned to graduate schools, in both cases there is a salary / scholarship financing your work. In my discipline (computer science), this is less then a job in industry, but it's not bad (you might want to look up TVL-13 here). It depends on the culture of your discipline if you are getting a full salary or just 50% (in biology I heard there are people getting even only 25%).
In addition, universities might hire external visiting lecturers who are recieving up to 55€/hour, but at my university we were forced to lower the rate to 35€/hour (teaching hour = 45 min.). But usually those people have to be external, you can not be employed by the university and get this salary on top.
But in short: If you are getting a position in a funded project, funding your costs of living is not an issue.
BTW: Teaching can be done in German or English, depending on your University and course level.

In my (German) department you are typically either part time employed on a certain project, and in your free time you are expected to write your dissertation. In that you typically don't teach. It is efficient if you write your dissertation on a similar topic as the project. Alternatively some professors have positions available for "generic" PhD students (also part-time). Those are typically required to teach, but have less project work to worry about.
The PhD students typically cannot supplement their income by teaching courses.


text:
BSc and further career in Academia on different subject
Currently pursuing a Bachelor if Finance, but I have a huge interest on Statistics. I was wondering whether BSc in a non technical subject (With technical I mean Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science etc.) affects a potential academic career in Statistics.
Can MSc and PhD in Statistics or Applied Mathematics enable an academic career in these fields?

To first approximation, once you have a PhD and a sufficient research track record,  your previous degrees don’t matter.  (In fact, if you have a strong research record in field X, gaving a PhD in field Y doesn’t matter.)  If anything, having a more diverse academic backgound will make you a more attractive faculty candidate (all else being equal).
To give some anecdotal evidence: One of my academic siblings has a bachelor’s degree in classical civilization and a PhD in computer science.  She is now a tenured full professor and former department chair in computer science.

That was the answer wanted to hear.

You might check in advance the application requirements for the MSc and/or PhD in Statistics or Applied Mathematics. By doing so, you will have a better overview on the technical competences you have to show to receive admission to the program.
In addition, you can show your interest by taking part or leading extracurricular activities with strong technical components (e.g., programming clubs, competitive programming, and so on.). Admission boards not only take into account your degree but the sum of your experience and potential.

Actually I am not referring to getting accepted on a MSc or PhD In Statistics or Applied Mathematics but being hired as an Assistant Professor or Lecturer teaching these topics


text:
How can I explain poor grades on courses taken after obtaining my undergraduate degree?
I have a 3.8 undergraduate GPA with almost entirely A's in all courses. After obtaining my undergraduate degree, I took courses for fun in various subjects at two remote graduate schools. Because I was working full-time, I was exhausted a lot of the time and didn't focus on the grades. I got mostly B's, although I withdrew from a course or two when I couldn't handle both work and the courseload at the same time. I didn't get a degree but really enjoyed learning new things.
Now I'm applying to graduate school and have a real problem. I'm applying to top programs and applications want me to submit transcripts from all programs attended, but my grades on these "freelance" graduate courses are quite poor. How can I explain that I took them for fun and knowledge, and didn't focus much on my grades, but I'm very capable of getting good grades if I want to?

Were you in a degree program or just taking individual classes?

Technically in an MA program, but strayed widely out of it.

Are you applying to doctoral programs? Will you still be working? What has changed that suggests a different outcome?

I'm applying to MA programs, and no, I will not be working.

Usually, there is a section on an application to explain "special circumstances" or otherwise make comments about your academic history. It would be perfectly legitimate to mention that you took these courses a) outside of a regular degree program, b) when working full-time, and c) "just for fun". And for these reasons, the grades you received do not necessarily reflect your potential in a future graduate program.
In fact, it may even be a net positive if you can spin it as evidence that you were being proactive: it was a low-stakes way to get exposure to advanced material and test whether graduate school would be of interest to you.
Full disclosure: I have never served on an admissions committee

How can I explain that I took them for fun and knowledge, and didn't focus much on my grades, but I'm very capable of getting good grades if I want to?

There are no magic words for this --- just be forthright and honest about your circumstances.  Roughly speaking, you explain this by saying those words you just said to us.  Applications for graduate programs always give you a chance to give a cover-letter or give additional information on your application, so find an appropriate spot for this and just tell them what you told us.


text:
How much the region you get your PhD is important to your career path?
I am about to make an important decision for my career. I have a good PhD position (fully funded with a good stipend) in East Asia. The university is one of the top 50 in my subject, which is electrical engineering and computer science (based on QS, THE) and Top 100 generally (QS, THE). The professor is somehow well-known and has an established international connection: He graduated from a top US university and is the author of a well-known book on the subject, associate editor of prestigious journal, etc.
I want to say everything is good. However, I ultimately seek a position in the West and not the East. At the moment I’ve missed the opportunity for Western schools for Fall 2018, and such an opportunity might not be offered to me in Western universities.
Here is my question: Assuming that I manage to produce good research and a good CV with a good international collaboration, does having a PhD from abroad (esp. East Asia) dramatically lower my chance of a research career in the target country (let's assume the US, but I am asking more generally)?
I want to compare the importance of individual merit for career and the region you get your PhD. What’s its impact?

It's difficult to answer your question with too few details.
You can look at the alumni of the lab/department that gives you the offer. What were their first jobs after leaving the lab? If none of them went to the west, then it is very unlikely that you will do :)
East Asia is very broad, which includes China, Japan, Korea etc... There are only a small set of universities that are known to the west. These are the one or two top universities in the most developed countries in the region, e.g. NUS in Singapore, KAIST and SNU in Korea, Todai in Japan, etc
If you obtain a PhD from a university outside this list, it will be significantly difficult for you to find a position in the west after PhD.
Theoretically, if you have a strong publication records, LoRs from big shots in the fields, you can get a good a position after PhD. But in reality, it is easier to achieve that (papers, LoRs etc) if you are in a top university.

The university I talked about is supposed to be well-known/high-quality (top 50 QS rank), so can you make your argument directly pinpointing the case which is just the influence of the region? You're saying a good records of papers and LoRs are theoretically convincing but within a low quality university this is unlikely in reality. But this didn't directly answers my question and it has a pre-assumption. Consider high quality university and high quality CV and good collaboration, then how much the region is influential?

@PiTao I wonder why you keep asking about region, this is what matter the least. What is more important is the reputation of the university. If the assumption is you have a strong publication record, and have big shots in the fields that can give you LoRs, then even the reputation of the university is not that important.

qsp, I have not keep asking about it (just one comment). This is the SX way to aim for an approved answer. That asking is to motivate you make your answer more clear. So now you are saying the region has the least importance.


text:
How to use the linking word "e.g.", meaning "for example"?
Talking from one field in the human sciences.
When giving examples in parentheses illustrating one notion ‘the subject agrees in number with the verb (e.g. "it belongs")’, or providing references from the literature ‘the sign "un" is an article (e.g. Grevisse & Goose 2008)’, can we not use the "e.g." linking word? Concretely, writing ‘(it belongs)’ instead of ‘(e.g. it belongs)` and (Grevisse & Goose 2008) instead of ‘(e.g. Grevisse & Goose 2008)’?

You should put a comma after e.g. ("online help sites, e.g., Academica Stack Exchange...").

e.g. the contraction of the Latin exempli gratia, which translate to “for example”.  Thus the easy rule is to use it when you would use “for instance”.  I would use it in both of your examples.

Thanks, I edited my question which was not completely clear. Is it possible to not use "e.g."?

I get that, and I would not “not use it” in the examples you provided. In both instances it is much more natural to use “for instance”.

Sorry for being a bit repetitive maybe, but my manuscript is full of this kind of parentheses, and I feel having "e.g." is like overcharging. It does not matter?

It's fine in the uses you cited. Meanwhile a ton of people suffering from collective amnesia write "i.e." (id est, "that is") in the same place, when they in fact mean e.g., i.e., "for example". :)

In the uses you mentioned, "e.g." makes it clear that, though you've given only one example, there are others.


text:
Can a department revoke a degree, once granted by the university?
I’ve just completed a graduate degree at a university in the UK, as an older student.
The department, IMO, is a mess of politics, fickle actions, and backstabbing. Whilst here, I have been pushed, abused, called names, intentionally failed and ignored.
A few others have suffered the same fate and it has dealt more than a few low blows, so much so that it has made me severely depressed.
I finally got my course completed, received notification of passing and confirmation of my degree award.
Recently, I learnt that I may be facing yet another confusion with my department (regarding my choosing to publish dissertation findings with a certain professor (dissertation supervisor) and not including the department head).
Please can you let me know if my degree can be taken away, i.e, revoked, from now to graduation ceremony? (No plagiarism or fraud)
My question specifically is, can a whimsical and angry department head revoke a degree once granted by the university?

"a mess of politics, whimsical actions, and backstabbing" <- That's better than most, I think, where you get a mess of politics, monotonous actions and front-stabbing...

Your dad's not some high-ranking politician who has power over the university and pulled strings to get you through? I'm being somewhat facetious, but because you mentioned politics, the Heather Bresch scandal comes to mind.

@AnonAnon: I think some people interpret "whimsical" as "funny, humorous, spontaneous"...

Could you tell us what field the degree relates to?

@camden_kid Management studies

@AnonAnon: Thanks. Kind of ironic considering the mismanagement that happened to you.

Why the department head should have been a coauthor? Not that if we assume he had the right to be indeed coauthor change much the situation. But if the answer is that he should not have been coauthor, tgan this is just an abuse that cannot stand an university committee or some judging organism. ...

Might want to change "whimsical" to "fickle"; has connotations more in line with what you seem to mean.

Possibly "mercurial" is what we're really looking for here.

Check the wording on whatever letter you received from the University. IIRC, the one we got said we had "satisfied the examiners" and that the examiners had "recommended" that we be awarded a degree. That's not the same as saying a degree has been awarded. There may be other conditions to fulfil: for example I recall students not being awarded a degree because of unpaid bills.

I know of one person that was stripped of a degree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milena_Penkowa but this was a pretty severe case of fraud.

@camden_kid I think there's a law of nature that requires this kind of irony. At my university, the architecture department had the ugliest building on campus, and the lifts in the electrical engineering building didn't work. My mother-in-law worked at a university where mathematicians' inability to do basic arithmetic blew a multi-million-dollar hole in the department budget.

My diplomas say that the regents of the university conferred the degree upon recommendation of the faculty. Thus the department presumably could recommend rescission, but only recommend. But I don't know how other universities do things.

Absent plagiarism, fraud, or other academic sanction, it would be difficult to revoke an awarded degree. There would have to be strong evidence for doing so, and it’s not often attempted, in part because of the likelihood of legal action.
So, I would normally say don’t worry about it. However, in a dysfunctional department, anything could happen, and you should be prepared to act in that unlikely event.

I don’t think I’ll have the strength to act, if something like that happens. I’ll want to give up on everything.

A department may be dysfunctional, but revoking a degree already confirmed is a step that at the very least could be challenged in court. I can't see a department wanting to do that. There is a difference between being annoyed by someone and embarking on a punitive expedition that is almost certainly going to lead to a lawsuit. Few people are stupid enough to do that.

@WolfgangBangerth Few > 0, though.

@jpmc26 -- no, I meant zero. This would be behavior so stupid that it is not worth worrying about or planning for.

@WolfgangBangerth it depends on the outlooks and if it is civil or criminal law. In many places if something is illegal but not criminal, you would have to sue personally ending up with lots of court costs if losing. Which kind of a newly graduated student would both expect to afford and dare to do that..? Most of newly graduated don't even have the balls to be tough in interviews/negotiations at work. Sue a whole university? Nah that's just waaay out of the box for most. It would be stupid for many other reasons though, with bad PR for the university being one of the worst.

@mathreadler -- bad publicity, and more importantly lots of additional and unnecessary work for the department in question. People hold grudges, but rarely do they let that lead to actions that might require them to deal with lawyers, face a court, etc. That's just exceptionally stupid, and exceptionally stupid does not happen very often.

@WolfgangBangerth : Yes... much smarter to do it in a way that still is efficient but difficult to prove or maybe even legal, amirite?

Can a whimsical and angry department head revoke a degree once granted by the university?

No, because your degree was granted by the university (e.g. the senate or other such body) not by the department head. At worst s/he could initiate a procedure to possibly revoke the degree, but there you would not be at the mercy of his whim.
Caveat: There is a remote theoretical possibility that somehow in your university, departments grant degrees themselves. Even in that case, the department head cannot revoke a degree him/herself, and would need the appropriate forum to do so (same forum which grants degree). But again, this is extremely unlikely.

Degree was awarded by the University, not department.

@AnonAnon: In your case, ok. But you need to consider other people reading your question as well - so I'm keeping the caveat.

Your university would normally have a policy document on this subject and you might try contacting the registrar's office and asking if they have one.  Don't go into details why with them.
For reference this is from Swansea's Revocation Of Awards document :

Revocation of Award
The University may, on the recommendation of the Senate, revoke an award and all privileges connected therewith, having determined that there is good cause to do so.  This may include where a person

has after investigation, been found to have obtained an award by fraud or deception, including unfair practice;

obtained an award due to an administrative error  or irregularities in the conduct of the Examining Board.

There's an explanation of the procedures required as well on that linked page.

Recently, I learnt that I may be facing yet another confusion with my department (regarding my choosing to publish dissertation findings with a certain professor and not including the department head).

There's a possibility this could be construed as academic misconduct, although the details would be important in making that assessment.
I think your best bet is simply to see what happens, rather than anticipating the worst.  Again there should be a very detailed policy document on this available from the university.
I think if it's a case of genuine mistake it's very unlikely much would happen at all, but you'd probably need to have committed some major infraction (misrepresenting a substantial body of work as your own would be typical) to suffer a loss of the whole award.
If at all possible try and discuss the issue with the people involved and ask for advice on how to rectify any error by e.g. contacting the publishers and seeking to make a correction.

I don’t think I’ll have the strength to act, if something like that happens. I’ll want to give up on everything.

Your comments make you sound somewhat depressed.  I suspect you're suffering somewhat from a difficult process qualifying and may have actual clinical depression.  You might consult a GP about this, rather than anything else.  Final stages of qualification can do this to people - it's very stressful.

It seems to me that action taken a posteriori cannot have effect on an awarded certificate. At least if the awarded person didn't behave so unethically that the awarding institution want to break every liaisons with him/her (it happened in a spectacular case of reiterated frauds, where a PhD degree was dismissed for misconduct well after it was awarded).

@Alchimista To clarify, was the "misconduct" in your PhD example a breach of the rules above? To me it seems clear that unless OP has erroneously been awarded the degree (for example from fraud that is only found after the award) - it cannot be taken back. I.e. Even if OP commits some horrendous act of academic dishonesty in future, as long as it didn't contribute to how they got the degree itself, the degree is still safe.

I comnent exactly to say that seems unrealistic that a phd us revoked for anything happened a posteriori.  Ergo I mentioned one of the most spectacular fraud even happened ib science!

Not unless you cheated to get it. Or if you do something really nasty like crimes against humanity.
I am sorry that you are going through this. It sounds like your department is acting like pompous idiots. I can understand that they prefer students to complete their degrees as this represents well on them. They also want people to go into successful academic careers, for the same reason. But the reality is that you need to decide for yourself what is best for you. Pay no attention to their pressure.
It is a shame you will not be able to remain in good standing with them. These academic contacts are important, but certainly, it is not going to end your career to lose them. Ultimately, they will also benefit from your success in the private sector. And they know this. They are just giving you a guilt trip which is absolutely reprehensible.

Crimes against humanity are not sufficient reason to revoke a degree, unless that is an explicit part of the charter and law providing for the award of it, which is thankfully rare (as an extreme case of politics interfering with academic action).

Committing reiterated spectacular scientific frauds unrelated to the PhD had sufficed for the revokal of the latter. Likely crimes against can do the same.


text:
Position of npj journals and Communications journals in the Nature Portfolio
In the Nature Portfolio, there exist two series of journals lower than the 'Nature branded' ones: npj journals launched in 2014 and Communications journals launched in 2018.
However, it is not quite clear to me what their positions are supposed to be. Of course the npj journals are less multidisciplinary. But this aside, which group is higher in the ranking?
The editorial expectation might differ from the real recognition by the readers (e.g., the Communications journals are younger). If this matters at all, I presume knowing the editorial expectation would also be helpful.

As far as the rankings go, you can see the impact factor (and some other metrics) here.

What is your question? The impact factors, acceptance rates, and any other metrics you could want are available on the Nature website. Past that, you'd have to read into each journal to get a sense of what they are looking for.

@sErISaNo The problem is that the metrics are either very close or not yet available. So it would be helpful to know where they are placed by the publishers, assuming such editorial goals will eventually come true.

I don't think anyone can give you a better answer than Nature's own website. Obviously the text there is vague, but that should be expected. It's basically marketing material. Nature started these series presumably because they could (and probably to snatch up market-share). Publishing is a business after all.
With that in mind, I think you are lumping editor and publisher goals together. Nature cares that each journal is successful - not necessarily how it fits into the portfolio in terms of "ranking". So what does that mean? To a publisher, success likely means that a journal makes money. Impact factors, prestige, scientific rigor, and all those other things that authors and editors care about are somewhat secondary to this - I think it's a bit naïve to think otherwise. So, there are probably 5- and 10-year plans but on the publisher side I would expect them to be business-focused. And on the editor side they will be too journal-specific to make a statement about the series as a whole.
The most obvious way to get an idea of "ranking" has already been mentioned: impact factor and other published metrics. Since these aren't available for every single journal yet, you have to be a bit more holistic. I think, if you are considering submission to one or another journal, you should take the time to read the journal website. They will all include an aims & scope section. If you want to see what the editors are actually accepting, just read some articles and judge for yourself. Their expectations will be reflected in what they choose to publish. I would expect each and every journal to be slightly different in that regard.
Unfortunately I don't think there is a quick and dirty way (other than IF) to compare all of the journals in those series - you would have to go through each journal yourself. And each journal is likely different enough that you won't be able to make an accurate general statement. As for long term expectations, just assume that neither Nature nor the individual editors what to run a journal into the ground.


text:
Shall I ask for coauthorship?
I and my advisor (both theorists) used to have a nice collaboration with experimentalist A on paper X a few years ago. A and I were the co-first authors.
A few months ago A came to us again on a follow-up experimental study, which will be paper Y to be submitted. A wanted to use our old theory from paper X to explain the new experiment in paper Y and asked our thoughts on this.
My advisor and I, after some discussion, found it somewhat interesting and did some calculation for a different new mechanism. I talked to A and sent my short calculation note and A also found this new mechanism a very interesting possibility and worth experimental investigation. However, eventually, we found that this new mechanism may not be all-compatible with this particular experiment, although it should appear better in some other cases and will be an important finding. Finally, we agreed to mainly rely on the old theory again in paper Y, and A probably will briefly mention this new possibility (not sure).
A wrote to my advisor and cc me asking to put our names in the acknowledgment and my advisor said OK (**). My advisor has so many papers and does not care (at least will not object in such an email reply). To be honest, I somewhat care, given the discussion and time involved (not sure if appropriate).
After a week, A wrote to me only again asking if some additional calculation or formula was possible for the explanation and comparison in this new paper Y. It is simple and I can do that. But I started to feel a bit disappointed to be still in the acknowledgment. Am I being too greedy and unethical? Or what should I do?
(If given coauthorship, certainly not co-first author, just some random position no one cares. A will be the only first author.)
(**) Actually, this was the only time my advisor replied to A's email. A was mainly communicating with me because my advisor acted not so responsively in replying to A's emails (ignored twice). But I'm pretty sure he was just too busy recently, otherwise we two didn't have to discuss the experiment and new mechanism at all when I mentioned to him A's early email.

It seems like your advisor has been handling most of the communication, so you should approach him and get his opinion on what to do. Trust the advisor to support your case if meritorious or correct you otherwise- this is the simplest course of action.

@AppliedAcademic See my update at the bottom.

Since the update, it appears that most of the communication has been between A and you, and the advisor was only roped in when the decision about sharing credit was made.
From my viewpoint, it seems like A considers the advisor to be the decision-making authority on this, and believes that you will fall in line. If this is true, directly making the request may not be a good idea, and you could instead prevail on the advisor to speak to A.
If my reading is wrong -you will know this best- then I think there's no harm in reaching out to A with your concerns about time. You could cite your other commitments, need to show tangible output and then ask if you could be included as an author.

Talk to your supervisor. Forward the e-mail with the new request from A to them and ask your supervisor to schedule a short meeting to discuss this. You probably want to explore the following:

This case in particular: What is your supervisor's idea on whether you should do additional work to begin with (since this is taking time away from other projects, presumably, even if it is small/quick)? Does this change the authorship/ackowledgement discussion in in their opinion? Would they be willing to ask A for authorship for you in that case? Do they want to settle this now or after you've done the work/they've revised the manuscript?
Your supervisor's attitude in general: are they someone who believes that collaboration drives scientific progress and not every effort should be turned into an authorship battle? Or are they someone who want authorship credit for things like this? How and when do they decide on authorships in their own lab? Do they have a fixed structure for that? Would they allow you to be granted co-authorship even if they are not on the paper?

You are probably right that with a long publication record this single paper weighs less for your supervisor than it does for you, but also consider what it will mean for you in the long run. If someone asks you: how did you contribute to this work? Can you give a clear answer? Check the CREDIT taxonomy for different roles. Is this a paper you would be proud of to have on your CV? Is it solid work, related to the profile you want to build for yourself? Are you comfortable being a co-author even if your supervisor would decline? If someone from another lab came to you with a request for authorship based on what you did, would you offer them a spot?
There are no hard and fixed rules for this, part of this depends on academic culture (and that differs per field) and even the personal moral/ethical principles of a single scientist (in this case your supervisor) - although you might want to check out the guidelines for author credit by ICMJE as a lead. Also remember that authorship credit also comes with responsibility for the work. In the long run one additional publication doesn't matter, but your reputation does.
It's hard to predict which data/efforts will end up in a manuscript, and indeed sometimes you put in work that doesn't result in anything tangible. Where we draw the line is quite personal. A wise scientist once told me that good scientists have more acknowledgments than publications (meaning that they generously share ideas and data without always expecting to be paid in publication currency - academia would be a better place if more people held that viewpoint).
By the way, if you have no intention to stay in academia than non of this really matters anyway.


text:
Should I review for journals where I would not publish my own papers?
Sometimes I receive review requests from journals that are not popular among my colleagues. I'm not so sure about the situation of these journals. They are typically Web of Science SCI Q2 journals (e.g., EUR PHYS J PLUS), but for reasons I don't know they are often not our choice. We simply have other more popular Q2 journals.
Should I invest my time in the review work for them? What are the pros and cons?

Related / somewhat overlapping https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8959/should-i-accept-review-requests-from-dubious-journals

Does this answer your question? Does the peer review reciprocity principle apply globally or per venue?

@Sursula Thanks for linking to that useful question. It has a focus on the ethics of reciprocity and especially the amount of work expected. I'm here more interested in the real consequences of getting involved or not.

Review papers if your review would be helpful. If you feel it's worth it to just get a point on your CV, then that's fine too (as long as your review can still be helpful). If your review will not be helpful, or not what the editors are asking for from you, then, no, do not agree to review. I've only reviewed for journals that I haven't published in.

There's no major difference from the pros and cons of reviewing for other journals
Editors send so many reviewer invitations that they won't bat an eye at yet another reviewer who declines. If you give a highly unusual reason they might remember, and "I will not review for journals that I would not publish in" qualifies as such a reason (since it takes a strong affirmative stance that leaves the question "why won't you publish in this journal?" unanswered). But if you write "I don't have time to review for journals that I don't publish in", that's unremarkable enough that they'd probably not remember after a while.
I suppose if you review for a journal which is lower tier than those that publishes your papers, chances are good the paper is less interesting, but that's about it.

Editors send so many reviewer invitations that they won't bat an eye at yet another reviewer who declines - Not every editor spams like MDPI does.

MDPI editors invite ~17 reviewers on average. Non-MDPI reviewers invite ~7? on average. Add that up over all the papers your journal publishes and it's still a lot.

Maybe these journals are going to grow substantially within the next years and become powerhouses in your field? Then you might be happy to have some good contacts with the journal and their editorial board.
Personally, I do not review for journals in which I cannot afford to publish on my own because the APC is too high. I experienced this issue in the past where a big publishing house (looking for frontiers in some field) would not be willing to give me a 15% discount on the APC although I reviewed for them one article per month. What I want to say is that we have to support smaller publishers to have more diversity.

Some OA journals will automatically give you a discount for your next APC after you hand in a review, which may also be applicable at other journals by the same publisher.


text:
D.Eng. or Ph.D. on a degree?
My friend is soon to obtain her doctoral degree in applied physics and start postdoc. She is provided by the department a chance to choose what to be displayed on the degree (between D.Eng. and Ph.D., but both in applied physics). She is actually doing purely theoretical physics although the department is named applied physics. She says that she will try to stay in the same academia, but not excluding the possibility of moving out if not going well.
She asked me and it's not quite clear to us what the difference might be and what might be affected in the future.

It is her decision and hers to ask...

It should not matter that much - most people hiring doctoral-level folks know that they are equivalent. HR would likely be more familiar with PhD, but university and research lab HR folks would recognize D.Eng. just fine.  Seems mostly a personal preference.

I often see advertised positions writing "Ph.D. or equivalent required". The D.Eng. would fall into the same "equivalence class", and so I agree it's mostly a personal preference. Depending on field and social circle, one degree might be more well known than the other, however.

I was given a similar choice between Ph.D. and D.Sc.  I chose the former in the belief that more people would recognize what it meant.

Select Ph.D. over D.Eng.  In a job application, you want to make it as easy as possible for the reader to understand your qualifications.  Ph.D. is well known.  D.Eng. Is obscure.

At different time periods and in different countries / academic cultures, either one or the other was more popular to denote (essentially) the same thing.
I won't go into the historical details (in which I am not too well-versed), but here's an example: In my own Alma Mater, for example, they used to award D.Eng. and D.Sc.'s, and no (?) Ph.D.'s until the 1980s or so, but at some point they switched, and these days everybody gets a Ph.D.
Did this matter to anyone? By and large, no. I've never heard anybody complain about the latter or the former having caused him/her any trouble being recognized. So while it is theoretically possible there will be some kind of issue, it doesn't matter.
My personal opinion is that it's a shame we are losing these discipline-group-specific titles and going with something generic - even if it has older historical roots. So I would go for D.Eng.
Also, if your friend has a signed official letter saying something like

We can award you with either a Ph.D. or a D.Eng. and we consider them equivalent in your case

then she can use that specific letter with whatever degree she is awarded, if any questions come up.


text:
What's the point of contacting editor during review process?
I have a paper under its second round of review with some minor revisions only since only one of the referees asked for some clarification. Now it's been like 40 days with the referee. Somewhat unexpectedly long for such a small amount of revision but maybe not yet too abnormal(?). But I do need the result, the earlier the better.
I notice that the submission system just has a button for sending correspondence to editor for each manuscript. I was wondering about the following. If I used it to simply inquire the status would the editor somehow urge the referee a little and what should I say exactly?
Or in other words, I often hear that people contact or inquire the editor about the manuscript status during the review and it sounds like a very common practice. Since the status is basically online I didn't see the point until I came into this and started to wonder if this is the point, i.e., once you inquire there's a good chance that the editor will contact/urge the reviewer. Surely the reviewer can still take his/her time but there's at least a kind reminder sent.

One can only assume that you intend, as a journal reviewer, to respond immediately to any and all requests for review from journals. Even during major holiday periods (like much of the past month).

40 days, including the winter break when most universites are closed?  Not excessive at all.

Think about it from the point of view of the editor - they often have several manuscripts on hand, and they're also working full-time on another job. So they might not look at your manuscript for a long time.
If you nudge them, then they'll look at your manuscript. They'll wonder if they should, e.g., nudge the reviewer too, or if the revisions are actually minor enough that they can check the revision themselves. A lot will depend on how long the average review times for your field are. If 40 days is a long time (how long did it take for you to get the first decision?) then it's more likely they'll do something.
If you do contact the editor just say something to the tune of "it's been 40 days since I submitted the minor revision, can I check what the status is?".

There's also journals with full-time editors.

A period of 40 days with a referee is not excessive, even for minor revisions.  You can contact the editor if you wish, but it is not clear to me why your preference for faster progress is their problem.  If you can explain some compelling reason for needing your publication fast-tracked (ideally one that is sufficiently unusual that it gives good cause for the journal to treat you differently to other authors) then that would be fine, but otherwise it might just make you look like the squeaky wheel that wants the grease.
If you decide to contact the editor, the main thing you need to do is to give a compelling reason why you need the review process to occur faster than it would usually occur.  This will immediately raise the question of whether you should have submitted your paper earlier, and so you should also explain why it wasn't possible to submit earlier.  If you have some exogenous deadline you are working to, explain your deadline, and ask if the editor would mind contacting the reviewer to make them aware of it.  If you can't give a compelling case on these points then you should be careful with your contact, and consider waiting until a more standard review time has elapsed.

Whether 40 days is excessive for minor revisions might well depend on the field and journal.


text:
Is there any way to stop the one-way brain drain from academia to industry?
About 5 years ago, Jake VanderPlas wrote an interesting and in my opinion, crucial, piece on why many academic cultures are unsustainable in the long run, and will eventually be outcompeted industry if not totally collapse due to excessive brain drain.
His key argument is that desirable academic skills are increasing indistinguishable from desirable industry skills, the difference is that industry pays more, and produces vastly more interesting results with higher impact. Thus raising the natural question: why stay in academia? For instance, why would any post-doc earn 40k when they can earn 200k using the same skillset working at IBM, Apple, Google, Uber, Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo, Etsy, Ali Baba....this list is endless.
This brain drain  has been documented in recent articles such as:

"Big tech firms' AI hiring frenzy leads to brain drain at UK universities
High demand at companies such as Google could leave fewer talented scientists to teach next generation, academics fear"
"'We can't compete': why universities are losing their best AI scientists A handful of companies are luring away top researchers, but academics say they are killing the geese that lay the golden eggs"
"AI academic warns on brain drain to tech groups"

It seems the author's prediction has by and large came to fruition.
Key excerpt from the first article:

With virtually the entire world utilizing the tools of data-intensive discovery, the same skills academia now ignores and devalues are precisely the skills which are most valued and rewarded within industry.
The result of this perfect storm is that skilled researchers feel an insidious gradient out of research and into industry jobs. While software-focused jobs do exist within academia, they tend to be lower-paid positions without the prestige and opportunity for advancement found in the tenure track. Industry is highly attractive: it is addressing interesting and pressing problems; it offers good pay and benefits; it offers a path out of the migratory rat-wheel of temporary postdoctoral positions, and often even encourages research and publication in fundamental topics. Most importantly, perhaps, industry offers positions with a real possibility for prestige and career advancement. It's really a wonder that any of us stay in the academy at all.

Couple years ago I have read similar question being asked (perhaps precisely on this StackExchange), and at the time the common consensus was one of denial. A few prominent professors predicted that no such brain drain would occur due to historical tendencies they have seen in the students, in other words, a non-issue. But now it seems that the brain drain cannot be stopped, a quick survey of my fellow graduate students quickly revealed that none of them wanted to remain in academia after graduation.
Out of this denial and leadership vacuum in academia, a very insidious academic culture has developed: students would start a PhD degree just to take enough industry-oriented courses and then quickly leave for industry. I have personally witnessed this in many fellow graduate students.
So, once again, is there anyway for academia to stop or halt the one way brain flowing from academia to industry? What can academic culture change in order to attract bright and talent students to carry on with fundamental research?

So, is it better to have intelligent people actually working in industry to solve real problems or keep them in academia to just discuss issues they think up? In reality we need intelligence in BOTH places...

Yeah, the doom 'n gloom stuff here's a bit confusing.  That intelligent, well-educated people are finding commercial success outside of having to beg for money through grants seems like an entirely happy circumstance.  Why should anyone even want for research and education to be bound up in the limited space of ivory towers?

I'm not sure what kind of answer you are looking for. One answer is already implicit: Pay more for academics.

Yeah, what can we do to stop this brain drain, I mean, academia isn't competitive enough nowadays! Why don't bright people just become tenured professors like in the old days! The culprit must be industry...

Closely related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/86862/1033

Although I think this question is interesting and important, I fear that it is, unfortunately, too broad.

"Academia" is not going to collapse. Pay scales for certain departments may have to change. Then, of course, you will always have people for whom the salary is not their prime consideration. Lets face it, different people want different lifestyles and have different quality-of-life priorities.

Looking at the links, this seems to be very specific to AI, not academia in general. It isn't something I've observed.

@MichaelGreinecker That answer is the first thing that comes to mind, but how? and to whom? Money in unis is already hard to come by, and this brain drain is very field specific. If the answer is paying an AI researcher 150K USD or 70K£  in UK (random numbers), what should we pay to a social anthropologist? Not everyone can find a job outside unis with that salary. Should we introduce that pay gap in fields within the same uni?

@AnderBiguri: That pay gap already exists, in many places (e.g. the US).  Faculty at comparable ranks in different fields get vastly different salaries, and this does depend in large part on industry demand for people in that field.

This concerns a tiny fraction of academia. In many places on Earth and for many fields a cosy government job is the jackpot.

@NateEldredge is it e.g. US or only US? AFAIK, most countries in europe do not do this.

@AnderBiguri: Good question, I don't know.

"industry (...) produces vastly more interesting results with higher impact" - I disagree with this claim (that, by the way, I think is at best implied in the linked article).

@Rosemary7391 I am in the department of chemistry. My engineering group has shifted from doing control of chemical plant to machine learning. All my fellow graduate students are chemical engineers, and many of them positioned themselves to working for software companies or companies that are doing AI or machine learning. This is to say, "AI" or data analysis in general, doesn't simply concern AI research, but it drains from every STEM department imaginable. Read the articles, the researchers are literally saying people who do not appreciate this is like an ostrich putting its head in the sand.

@Rosemary7391 In addition, every single sector of the industry are attempting to utilize AI/Machine Learning technologies. An oil and gas company would hire data analysis's just as a media company would. This is to say, there is a lot of mobility in this area. I know people who have done completely unrelated areas of research jumping onto this big data bandwagon, read some of the questions on stackexchange and you will see this trend. e.g. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/75482/advice-for-a-math-phd-student-who-is-also-interested-in-a-part-of-ee-cs

It's a good thing when a field has a healthy private sector that attracts graduates! It means research in that field can be financially self-sustained. I don't think a contraction of the academic workforce (if that ever happens) for these reasons is a cause for concern.

@RoyAyers your first two links talk about AI and computer science exclusively; your third is behind a paywall. I'm doing my PhD in a STEM department that isn't doing AI and I'm getting out afterwards because it's too competitive! Exactly the opposite problem... One professor has 6/7 PhD students and a couple of postdocs at a time. They can't possibly all remain in academia. Certainly I'm not seeing people leave before they finish their PhDs.

I think the OP should modify the question to specify the brain drain is from STEM PhD go to TECH firms. If he does so, I hope the question will be reopened, as this is the elephant in the room in most Computer Science/Physics/Math/Bioengineering departments.

@famargar No worries, someone else will just ask this couple more years down the road, after all the academic positions are filled up, people are fed up to their ears with pseudo-applied research, and big tech firms have completely taken over our lives. Until then, we will continue to stick our heads down in the sand.

You mentioned one answer (pay). There're others. I once communicated with someone who left his position as a professor at a major North American university. That surprised me since I knew the job was in high demand. I asked him why, and he responded:

Professor positions in major research university in  US require
  generation of research funds - a process of writing your best ideas
  and sending them to funding agencies. The process of getting money
  from funding agencies is worse than the lottery. You spent a lot of
  creative effort in putting a proposal together and then most of the
  time it gets thrown into a garbage can. It is a general state of
  affairs, not just my experience. I just decided that I've had enough
  of that. When I spend time creating something I want it to see the
  light of day. So  I switched fields and now work in a very dynamic
  industry, generating new knowledge or writing products that are
  actually used.
If any postdoc ask me for advice now - whether or not to go into
  academia - I would answer why would you torture yourself? There are so
  many fun jobs and are even better paying.

There's more. If a fresh PhD graduate stays in academia:

You live a nomadic lifestyle, hopping from one postdoc to another. This is not only bad for any significant others and children, but also a great hassle. Each time one moves, one needs new visas, needs to find accommodation, and so on. To add to that, postdocs offer no job security, and one is virtually always looking for a new job.
After that, if you're smart / lucky enough to get a permanent position, you have to generate research funds, which is unreliable (above).
After that, there's no guarantee you'll actually get tenure. If you are denied tenure, what are you going to do next? One is probably already >40 years old at that point.

Taken together, only the extremely passionate (or extremely masochistic) choose an academic career. For further reading I suggest these two articles which strongly shaped my view on this: Women in Science by Philip Greenspun, and Don't Become a Scientist! by Jonathan Katz.
Having said the above - why would a brain drain from academia to industry be a bad thing. It's simply market forces of supply and demand at play. If more people took the option to shift, there would be less competition for permanent positions. Less competition makes the academic path more attractive. Eventually things balance out. It's further possible for society to reverse the brain drain whenever it wishes, simply by providing more funding. If society doesn't want to do that, I don't see why academics should try to force it.

"why would a brain drain from academia to industry be a bad thing. (...) Eventually things balance out." - if the primary goal is to achieve an optimal integration into the general job market without changing anything, just waiting till things balance out may be fine. If the goal is to ensure the academic environment is equipped optimally for producing good research results, the same cannot necessarily be said.

"If society doesn't want to do that, I don't see why academics should try to force it." - I am not convinced that level of intentional and directed decision-making can be ascribed to "society". Very often, things just happen to evolve into a certain direction without anyone specifically targetting that outcome. In fact, I would argue that the only way to specifically target any particular outcome is often for interested parts of "society" to try and fight for that development.

Thank you for your answer, I agree with many points, but to your question "why would a brain drain from academia to industry be a bad thing" - how about professors literally cannot sustain their research group when all the students are fleeing towards industry and no students are coming in? This is glaring in some departments that traditionally performed theoretical work, which are increasingly under/de-valued. These departments are increasingly unable to retain or attract students, and hence attract funding, and no new hiring has taken place for many many years.

@RoyAyers well if the students are fleeing towards industry, it's a sign that they're in high demand right? There should be people willing to study if it enables a high-demand job. If there's a discipline which cannot attract students at all, I'd interpret that as a sign that the discipline is not useful.

@O.R.Mapper I agree, but I think the way to proceed is to make the job more attractive, not to figure out how to keep good people in not-so-good jobs.

@Allure High-demand, but not in their field! For example, I am from the department of Chemistry, we do power plant control. Nobody from my research group wants to do anything even remotely related to Chemistry afterwards. They are in high-demand based on their software/programming skills, and none of their chemistry skills which is what their graduate program has trained them for. This line of research is useful, however, it is not as exciting or as high-paying as software jobs, or modeling jobs in industry. Our research group will run dry of students unless major change happens.

I wish your assumption was correct!
The typical cases you mentioned cannot be extended to academia as a whole. It is true that industry can pay higher salaries, but still, faculty jobs are competitive as hell.
On the other hand, in many countries (e.g., in Europe), the number of students is strongly declining. This means that even the current faculty will be out of the job soon. This is the reason for high pressure on faculty members for doing various tasks including attracting funds. Many universities rely on international students to survive.
With all the problems and pressure on academics, faculty positions are still among the most competitive jobs. Still, headhunting is a common practice in the industry for attracting talented people. If there was such a one-way migration, headhunters would not need to persuade academics with attractive job offers.
In my practice, for any faculty position, there are at least 10 qualified candidates, but one will get the job. Some try again somewhere else, and some get frustrated with the competition and give up to get a job in the industry. This is how the migration occurs in general.

Could you provide a source for declining numbers of students in Europe?

@MichaelGreinecker just make a quick search https://www.ucas.com/corporate/news-and-key-documents/news/applicants-uk-higher-education-down-5-uk-students-and-7-eu-students and the US https://bryanalexander.org/trends/higher-education-enrollment-declined-in-2017-again/

The first link only addresses demand of EU citizens for tertiary education in the UK- in the process of brexiting. The second link has even less to do with Europe.

@MichaelGreinecker Poland:https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/06/universities-poland-struggle-shrinking-enrollments Sweden: https://www.thelocal.se/20101124/30406 It doesn't need a reference. The Europe population is in decline. The number of local students decreases. This is the reason that all European and North American universities have massive programs for attracting international students.


text:
Is a general GRE score of X sufficient for entry to postgraduate degree Y?
Question: I got general GRE scores of VR (verbal reasoning), QR (quantitative reasoning), and AW (analytical writing).  Is this a good score to apply for entry to postgraduate degree in field X?  How will this score look to the selection committee?

Note: This is an intentionally generic GRE question (with unspecified scores and field of study) which is intended as a template for a large number of questions asked on this forum regarding evaluating the scores on the general GRE test (e.g., this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this).  This question seeks answers that are applicable for an applicant for graduate-level programs in any field, based on any scores in the GRE general test.  The goal of this question is to provide a general reference to avoid the need for specific questions with particular scores/field of study.

The two close votes on this question assert that it is off-topic since it strongly depends on individual factors and cannot be generalised to others.  This question (and its answer) solicits objective comparisons of scores relative to student cohort, and thereby allows a generalised method of comparing scores to a cohort.  The question is a generalised version of the eight linked questions that have asked about specific scores and fields of study.  If there are additional individual factors that affect assessment of the scores, these would be useful fodder for further answers.

This probably should be a community wiki if it stays opened. You may want to ask a question on Meta to get the consensus so everybody is on the same page.

I see that you have an answer for the Meta question about GPA. But, GPA and GRE are two separate things. Even if we do want to have a  question about GRE, it should be a CW.

@scaaahu: Thanks for the suggestion - I have added a meta post requesting this.  (I have not done Community Wiki questions before so this is new to me.)

A very related question: The GRE: Why does this still exist?

Preliminary remark: There are differing opinions on the important of the GRE in admissions to postgraduate programs, and its weight largely depends on the preferences of the academics making admission decisions.  Some regard the GRE general test as useful information, and take it into account, and some regard it as unimportant.  Meta-analysis of the predictive validity of the GRE can be found in Kuncel et al (2001).  Nothing in this answer should be read as implying that the GRE is determinative of entry, but if you are going to submit scores on this test, or if you are required to do this, it is good if your scores compare favourably to your cohort of applicants.

Assessing your score relative to your field of study: Assessing your score on the general GRE test can be done by comparing your score to data on the scores of test-takers, broken down by their intended graduate major.  Unsurprisingly, different fields have applicants with different levels of ability in the three sections of the GRE general test.  A score that would be considered good in some fields will be considered weak in other fields, depending on the average standard of applicants to that field.  Hence, it is important to look at your scores relative to the cohort of test-takers with your intended graduate major.
The Educational Testing Service (ETS) have published test data for test-takers (seniors and non-enrolled college graduates) who undertook the general GRE test in Financial Years 2014-17.  This data shows score outcomes for each group, based on their intended graduate major.  This data can be used as a reference to check how your score compares to other students who are intending to pursue the same graduate major as you.  It can also be used by academics to help them to interpret your score.  (ETS also produce annual 'snapshots' of score outcomes that give information on the scores across demographics and majors.)
If you would like to get a good idea of whether your GRE score compares favourably with your cohort (students seeking admission to study the same postgraduate major), the simplest thing to do is to compare your result to the published data for students in that cohort.  The data gives score frequencies in bins, so it is not usually possible to obtain your exact percentile in the cohort, but it should be possible to see roughly where you fall in that cohort.  The data also give means and standard deviations for the scores, so it is possible to obtain a standardised score relative to the cohort.

Example: In this related question the test-taker was seeking entry to an applied maths graduate program, with GRE general test scores of VR 167 (98%), QR 161 (78%) and AW 5.0 (93%).  This can be compared with histograms of scores from this cohort taken from the aforementioned data (means and standard deviations are also given in the data):

If we place the scores of this student into the data for the cohort of test-takers seeking entry to an applied mathematics graduate program we see that his quantitative reasoning score is actually below average for this cohort, despite being substantially above average relative to all test-takers.  The standardised scores for this student (standard deviations above/below the mean) relative to this cohort is VR 1.875, QR -0.500, AW 1.875.
This result shows that this particular student has a lower quantitative reasoning score than the majority of the cohort, and so this is likely to be a weakness of the application (to the extent that GRE is considered).  This is unsurprising when considering the fact that applicants for mathematics programs tend to have extremely high levels of quantitative reasoning ability.