text:
Are mentally ill people allowed to perform research?
Is it acceptable for a person to be a researcher if she/he has a mental disorders or illnesses?
Are there laws that either prohibit or not prohibit mentally ill to perform research? Caveats?

Mental illness is common everywhere.  https://www.who.int/whr/2001/media_centre/press_release/en/

Define mental illness? The DSM-V lists autism on a spectrum with many subtypes, but there's enough researchers in the 'neurodiversity' field that are solidly on various parts of that spectrum.  Just like 'gender dysphoria' is a 'mental issue'(?), transsexuality etc --- not illnesses.

Relevant comic

I'm a bit surprised (and offended) by this question. What's the background to ask this? Mental illnesses vary greatly, and I have the understanding that the most common ones are things like depression and anxiety, which don't really make anyone dangerous to others and may be hard for an outsider to even notice. Especially in research, the tests, hypothesis, results, etc. should be verifiable and should be the main point, not the people. Honestly, this feels a bit like going back 100 or so years and asking if black people, or (god forbid) women are or should be allowed perform research.

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If the question is indeed regarding a conrete law, you should probably ask it explicitely for a country. What may be legal in one country can be illegal in another. - And for explicit questions about current law in a certain country the law-stackexchange may be the better page.

I know many heavily depressed researchers and I don't know many worse mental illness than depression, so yeah, mentally ill can perform research

Let's turn this around and ask the converse.  How could you tell if a researcher has a mental illness or similar disorder?
Modern understanding of mental illness has moved towards a recognition that humans have an extremely wide range of functional cognitive and behavioral patterns. This means that most mental illness exists on a spectrum, where the boundary to illness is quite fuzzy, is only considered an illness if there is a persistent impact on a person's ability to function.
So if a researcher is producing work that is passing peer review in reasonable publication venues, then they are clearly functioning at a level sufficient to conduct scientific research, and that research is being found to be acceptable. That's it. There is no other scientific bar.
Some levels of mental illness will, of course, make it difficult or impossible for a researcher to produce acceptable research. For example, a person suffering from severe dementia would likely have a difficult time accomplishing any task in their life, including research. This isn't about saying it's not acceptable for any given person to conduct research, however, but rather that some illnesses will inhibit a person from actually accomplishing the task.
In certain niche cases requiring certification, significant impact from a mental illness on a person's trustworthiness may also preemptively bar a person from conducting research on subjects requiring that certification. For example, a person with schizophrenia not responding to treatment might not be able to work in a medical field requiring the handling of confidential patient information or at an organization that requires a security clearance.
In history, unfortunately, we find a very different situation. Until surprisingly recently, for example, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder, and many people were denied work on the basis of their sexual preferences.  I believe this remains the case in some repressive nations today.
Bottom line: in any modern liberal society, mental illness is no bar to research in and of itself, though it may become a barrier if it affects ones' ability to function as a researcher.

This answer is basically a lot fuzzy feelings, very little fact. There already are professions where a mental illness disqualifies you immediately, and you are required to go regular checkups with a psychiatrists aka pilots. "How could you even know if a researcher has a mental illness or similar disorder?" is not a novel problem, it's already solved.

@Davor "This answer is basically a lot fuzzy feelings, very little fact" - sorry, what? I don't see much, if any, feelings expressed in this answer (apart from a few words here and there like "unfortunately" and "surprisingly", which seem perfectly fine). Most if it consists of objective statements. Now those may or may not be actually be facts, but if that's in question it becomes an issue of pointing out the specific false statements or asking that they be backed up. Although backing up the claim that something doesn't exist would be quite hard.

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This does not say anything about what is "allowed" and therefore it is not an answer.

The details will no doubt vary between countries, but I would be surprised if anywhere has a blanket prohibition on 'mentally ill' people 'performing research' - apart from anything else, both terms are rather loosely-defined.
However, there are almost certainly a range of considerations that might affect whether people with certain conditions can easily work in a given research area. For example, research in some areas might require security clearance or special licenses, and medical history may be a factor that is relevant to whether these can be obtained/maintained.

A blanket ban would almost certainly fall foul of disability protections and/or patient confidentiality requirements, and so could not legally be implemented
Employers (including research institutes) are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of disability (unless it can be shown to make the person genuinely unable to perform the role in question) and, in fact, are obligated to make reasonable adjustments to enable a disabled person to perform the role, when requested. As such, if someone has a mental illness severe enough to qualify as a disability, they could not be prohibited from performing research in general (although people with certain illnesses might not be able to perform research in certain specific areas, i.e. those requiring specific clearance, or dealing with vulnerable people)
Additionally, people are not generally required to disclose medical information to their employer, their medical records cannot be obtained without their consent, and people cannot be discriminated against for refusing to provide such medical records. This means, people with a diagnosis, but no need for adjustments, would not need to identify themselves as mentally ill to any research institute and so could not be prohibited from performing research
Lastly, many people suffering from mental illnesses lack any diagnosis so there are likely people with mental illnesses who couldn't identify themselves as such to their employer to be discriminated against, even if they wanted to
Obviously, the exact details will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but the existence of disability as a protected class, and medical confidentiality is pretty universal in the developed world

If you're so insufficiently ill that you function normally, are you actually ill?

@RonJohn - yes. There are many conditions that would be considered illnesses that look, to all intents and purposes, "normal". People cope with, or mask (intentionally or otherwise) conditions that are clinically diagnosable and, sometimes, treatable.

What research with vulnerable people do you have in mind that might be restricted? I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

@AzorAhai--hehim neither can I off the top of my head, but it seems plausible that some combinations of illness and vulnerability might lead to issues and I believe it was mentioned in other answers

@RonJohn Yes. Statistically, several of your co-workers are masking one or both of depression & anxiety right now (about 1 in 5 in the US.) You can be a literal superhero at work and still very sick - the criteria for most mental disorders is "...to an extent that causes significant distress and/or meaningfully interferes with work, family, OR social activities." You can have a panic attack or contemplate suicide several times a day in an average office job, and still get all your work done.

"Employers (including research institutes) are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of disability" In first-world countries. In developing nations, there might be fewer, if any, protections.

In the United States, the ADA covers anyone with “physical or mental impairments that substantially limit one or more major life activities, such as seeing, hearing, speaking, walking or breathing.” It is illegal to discriminate against people with these conditions in hiring if they are qualified. From the FAQ on the EEOC website about the ADA: "A qualified individual with a disability is a person who meets legitimate skill, experience, education, or other requirements of an employment position that he or she holds or seeks."
This means in most cases it is illegal to prohibit someone from doing research if that person falls under the vague term "mentally ill" as it is colloquially used.

I have never heard of any restrictions. In fact, in many countries it may even be illegal to ask someone about mental illnesses before hiring them. (A strong "crazy" vibe in the interview process might deter potential employers, though.)
Also, the very nature of science is to abstract away the humanity of the researcher as far as possible. It shouldn't matter whether you're depressed, manic, autistic or whatever else it might be - if you have interesting insights that allow for testable predictions, or you can perform experiments that are reproducible, and the referees of your papers and other researchers find value in the work you do, why should you not do research?

"It shouldn't matter" - yes, of course, but hiring people and referees are all human. It shouldn't also matter if a worker is a man or woman or black or white or disabled, but (at least in my reality) it does..

A pedophile may probably not be accepted by some hiring people, even if it does not have anything to do with research.

While I generally agree with this answer "the very nature of science is to abstract away the humanity of the researcher as far as possible" is very misleading. There's no denying that research is fundamentally a social activity and that various conditions can impede the necessary social interaction (this includes both mental and physical illnesses, as well as additional things). This does not preclude doing research for anyone but it does impose additional hurdles for some people.

In fact, a lot of fields are pushing back from "abstracting away the humanity." While it may not be relevant in e.g. particle physics, a lot of research on humans has been worsened by people not taking into account their own biases and those of society. I haven't downvoted, but I think this answer would be improved by removing that sentence.

@AzorAhai--hehim: I hope I don't misunderstand your comment. If by "pushing back" you mean the recent postmodernism-infused efforts to paint science as a "tool of oppression" by "white supremacy" that needs to be "decolonized" or at least augmented by "other ways of knowing" - that is equivalent to giving up the foundation of what makes science work. It is profoundly dangerous and should be pushed back on, hard. Otherwise, "taking into account one's own biases" and being critical of one's conclusions is not new - it's precisely what any good scientist should have been doing all along.

@Richard Then your method of good science is incompatible with abstracting away from the humanity of the researcher.

@AzorAhai--hehim On the contrary. The scientific approach is to focus on the parts that are objectively factual and reproducible, to not insert personal biases or opinions where they are not needed, and to mark opinions as such, rather than present hem as fact, where they are required. In the end, ideally, the resulting paper could have been written by anyone who happened to do the same work, and can be read and used by anyone who is willing to dig into it, no matter whether they share the author's religion, political persuation, gender, or skin color (or mental illness, for that matter).

@RichardMetzler "Objectively factual" is not so clear. How was the study designed? What variables were included? How are the results framed? When we ask people to "abstract away," too often we just get views that are situated in how the majority think and behave.

It's not only the case that mentally ill people are not generally prohibited from doing research* (as explained very well in @jakebeal's excellent answer). To counter a separate apparent misconception in the question that has nothing to do with mental health, I think it's a bit misleading to say that anyone is "allowed" to be a researcher. What I mean is that academic and scientific research are a much more open and democratic type of profession than many others. One does not need a license or to be a member of some professional society to be a researcher. One does not necessarily need to have a PhD or other advanced degree. One can be mentally ill, physically ill or disabled, a legal minor, even a convicted criminal. The scientific community will generally be quite accepting of high quality work coming from anyone, as long as the work itself was not done unethically or illegally.
To summarize, the idea that you need to ask someone for permission to be a researcher because you suffer from some medical condition or other special circumstance strikes me as kind of absurd, and I think paints a distorted picture of the true reality of how academia works.
* Setting aside some very specific exclusions having to do with research with connections to military defense or other similarly sensitive areas, where a history of sufficiently serious mental problems may be disqualifying in certain situations.

"One does not need a license or to be a member of some professional society to be a researcher" Maybe not, but it helps. Getting a PhD is regarded as a requirement for jobs involving research for a reason.

@nick012000 a PhD is not a license or a membership of a professional society, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at. It’s also not always a strict requirement for getting a job as a researcher (as discussed in various questions on academia.se). And in any case OP asked about “being allowed to perform research” not about having any specific kind of job. Academic research is frequently performed and published by graduate students (who essentially have entry level jobs as researchers), undergraduate students, people working in industry, and many other people who don’t hold advanced degrees.

@DanRomik, it is a question of theory and practice. One could write a paper in the own kitchen, and then send it to a reputable journal. That's "performing research." It is also extremely difficult. Much easier to be in a commercial or university research group, with a salary or grants to pay for the livelihood, colleagues and advisors to challenge intermediary results, access to labs, etc. For that, academic credentials are helpful, and a serious mental illness makes it harder to get those credentials.

@o.m. OP didn’t ask for a general discussion about the challenges of dealing with mental illness. They asked about “being allowed to perform research”, and that’s what my answer is addressing. The practical issues you raise are real ones of course but are beyond the scope of the question.

It depends on several factors

Where you live

What type of research

What type and level of mental illness

Anecdotal evidence
A. I managed to have a good and varied career including research despite having recurrent bouts of depression from the age of fourteen. I'm retired now but it was only a few years ago that I was diagnosed as bipolar. This made complete sense of a lot of events in my life that definitely weren't due to depression. Sometimes my family and friends thought I was crazy - it turns out they were right!
In fact during manic episodes I could be incredibly creative and efficient and these intense periods of work cancelled out my lack of productivity due to depression.
However, I'm officially bipolar 2.
People who are bipolar 1 can undergo much more extreme changes in mood. I've met many and they tell tales of believing they can fly or thinking they were Jesus and so on. They would also take on huge undertakings that were in theory possible for a determined healthy person but not for someone who would later be incapacitated by depression.
B. I have met many people with different forms of mental illness. If you are someone who regularly meets demons that tell you what to do (I'm not joking or taking this lightly, I know such people and they are usually lovely to know) then you will probably be on pretty strong drugs that may slow your thinking down so much that you are incapable  of thinking deeply. If you suffer badly from paranoia then you may find it difficult to work with others and they may find it difficult to work with you (I was there for a period of months years ago so I know).

Answer
As I say, it depends on those three factors. If the law doesn't prohibit you in your country then it's up to you to decide what you can manage. Get a doctor to back you up if necessary.
The main thing is to make sure you have psychological backup in place. In decent universities there will be counselling and student mental-health facilities - I used those.
If you are convinced you can do it then go all out for it! Don't let anyone stop you! Just make sure you have contingency plans in place.

In the United States, mental illness is considered a disability and US labor law typically forbids discrimination based on disability status when not relevant to the job at hand.
However, there are some exceptions to the rule that a researcher might encounter:

People with severe mental illnesses are typically ineligible for US Government security clearances, which might present an obstacle to doing certain research of military value. This may be significant in some fields. The National Security Agency has claimed to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States, and typically all of them will need Top Secret security clearances.

People with severe mental illnesses, or are taking certain medications, may not pass a FAA medical exam. This may prevent a researcher from flying an airplane or a large drone. Although if one's research project involves flying, presumably they can outsource the flying to a qualified pilot.

Having a severe mental illness may impact one's ability to obtain or retain a license to practice medicine, although this is unclear and may change in the future. This might impact a medical researcher's career, although there are notable researchers with mental illness like Kay Redfield Jamison. Instead of an MD, she has a PhD in clinical psychology and has considerable experience with patients.

It's certainly possible, e.g. Einstein and Newton are speculated to have Asperger's Syndrome.
The real problem is whether the researcher is able to have productive ideas in spite of the mental disorder/illness, and there are certainly some illnesses where that would not be the case.

I think the last sentence is somehow problematic - what is a "more serious" disorder? Depression may be very severe and dangerous, but research may still be possible; schizophrenia may be very severe, but there is still the case of John Nash... One could view the last sentence as "if one can't do research, than the disorder is severe", though…

@Dirk I was thinking of illnesses that impact cognition, such as Alzheimer's disease. Going to edit the answer.

Perhaps "there are certainly some illnesses where that would not be the case"

AS/autism might not be the best example here as their classification as "illness"/"disorder" is somewhat contentious. For some of us autistic folk it's only "illness" in the same way that being a left-hander in a world of right-handed tools is "disability". Unfortunately, the classification systems and legislation around this kind of thing aren't well designed to distinguish between "abnormal" and "unhealthy".

I presume that this questions stems from a concern about the scientific career of someone who is or may be treated for a mental illness/psychiatric disorder. In that case it really depends on:

Whteher the patient ever had the legal rights over their healthcare taken away (in the UK, this is called 'sectioning under the mental health act'), and in general what the medical classification of their illness was.

The kind of research you want to do

Where you want to work

Regarding 1, there are many people suffering with depression for instance, in any profession, and this goes undiagnosed and might not even be noticed by colleagues. Heck, the person might nit even know they are depressed. There would be no grounds on which to prevent such a person from working in research, legally (though I have seen companies get rid of employees with mild anxiety/depression which had some effect on their work, which is a nasty and illegal thing to do). Even if you visit your GP and they tell you that they think you are mildly depressed and put you on antidepressants, I do not think this counts for anything officially unless you were diagnosed by a psychiatric specialist.
Regarding 2, if you are a working on something top secret then your employer may be a bit more selective to avoid secrets being leaked. I don't know exactly what employers ask in these situations and it is probably job-specific, but I would be very hesitatant to employ someone who is on antidepressants as these can make you somewhat chatty. I would be interested whether this counts as discrimination even for such jobs were workers are handling highly confidential material. I think these more stringent selection criteria would also apply for research with highly dangerous materials (nuclear weapons, biological warfare and class 4 biological agents.
Point 3: As far as I am aware, if you are sectioned in the UK, you can no longer work in the military or any research related to/backed by the military, but there is no problem with you later becoming a doctor/surgeon! Different sectors have different policies.

I just stumbled over this YouTube video of a TED talk. It seems highly relevant, even if your condition doesn't happen to be schizophrenia.  The speaker is schizophrenic and is a high-powered researcher. Plus she is a mental-health advocate.
I Am Not A Monster: Schizophrenia | Cecilia McGough | TEDxPSU

Cecilia McGough puts a face to schizophrenia and helps empower college
students through the upcoming non-profit Students With Schizophrenia.
Cecilia McGough is an astronomer, activist, and writer as a Penn State
Schreyer Honors College scholar pursuing a major in Astronomy &
Astrophysics. Cecilia is the founder and current president of the Penn
State Pulsar Search Collaboratory. She has been participating in
pulsar research continuously since December of 2009, co-discovering
pulsar J1930-1852 with the widest orbit ever observed around another
neutron star, competing in the International Space Olympics held in
Russia, and co-authoring her research in the Astrophysics Journal.
Cecilia is a mental health activist in fighting against the negative
stigma towards mental illness. She is the founder and chief executive
officer (CEO) of the soon to launch non-profit Students With
Schizophrenia which is the only non-profit in the United States
focused on empowering college students with schizophrenia.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format
but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at
...

Note I removed some links from the quote because they weren't working following my Copy and Paste. However the working links can be found by clicking on SHOW MORE under the Youtube video.

EDIT
Here's an update to what's happened since this talk. The organisation has changed its name from Students with Schizophrenia to Students with Psychosis.
https://sws.ngo/
https://sws.ngo/resource-direction/
https://sws.ngo/newsletter-2020/

I do not have a reference, just anecdotal evidence from training and working in the field of psychiatry. There are many psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, and other allied professionals who do perform research and have performed research over many, many years. They have made enormous contributions to the field. Even before the advent of medications and more effective psychotherapy, this was done. It is not at all uncommon. Their disorders are controlled by some means. If they are not, and they do not recognize this, their colleagues help them. This is incredibly common in this field.

Re: Kay Redfield Jamieson, I do not know of a source that backs up why she would have preferred to choose the field of psychiatry. I did search.

You would be excluded: If you have a mental illness where your research will damage or endanger you, because of the nature of your research and illness. Or if you have a mental illness where your research together with your mental illness makes you a danger for others, because of the nature of your research and illness.
For example, there are plenty of mental illnesses where the effect is that you may just be out of action sometimes. For much research, no problem. But if you are a chemist heating up some material on a bunsen burner, and you are sometimes incapable to remove that material from heat, that could be dangerous. Still, no problem if you have a research assistant who watches out.

In most first-world countries, you wouldn't be allowed to be excluded because of a mental illness because of anti-discrimination laws - your employer would be required to give you "reasonable accommodations" instead, like the research assistant you mentioned.


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Are new conventions for namings or illustrations publishable?
I am an undergrad student, and the paper writing is not involved in curricula here. Nobody  even talks about it seriously at undergraduate level at my place.
I have derived some conventions/names which to me seems that they are provide a lot of convenience in illustrations/communications. Admittedly, these are just that - notations. No drastic new formula, or framework or anything like that. But their appeal feels a lot to me. I have searched over the internet, and they don't seem to be already known.
The conventions for ease in illustrations are in the field of chemistry. And the names are in mathematics which bleed a lot into physics too.
I want to know - is this kind of stuff publishable? I mean yes, in the past, it has been. Like we have lots of projections in chemistry, and same for maths. But is it so in the current times too, especially that those concerned fields are already mature enough?
And what approach to take for articles for such notational improvements?
By trying to pre-publishing (or whatever apt process it is), I want to mainly fulfill 3 goals:

get those out in public in a formal manner and maybe receive feedback (or in worse case backlash lol)
get my paws wet with the general procedure of publishing
move on in life from that stuff (ticking it off from the mental to-do list). I am holding onto these over myself for over a year now, and I really want it to reach a definite conclusion.

I’m voting to close this question because it is not appropriate for this site. My answer: you probably can't publish your nomenclature ideas. When you reach a point where you have actual new results that are best expressed with your new vocabulary you might try to get that vocabulary accepted by defining and using it when you publish your research.

Not sure why this got downvoted so badly, seems like a legit question. Maybe my edits will help. In any case, my answer here may be a bit relevant.

Thanks a lot everyone. I am reading through all the inputs and processing. I will do the required action (marking accepted answer or coming up with an update/reply etc) in some days after I think it out :sweat_smile:

It is doubtful that such a thing could be published on its own, other than on an informal site like ArXiv or a personal site. But what is publishable is up to the publisher. For the most part, publishers want to publish advances driven by research rather than what you propose.
If you included (some of your) ideas in a research paper or even in an expository work on some subfield of interest in industry or academia it would have a higher chance to appear, but the decision would center on the other things you write, not the terminology and such that you use.
But, as an undergraduate, you have an opportunity to discuss what you are doing with a trusted faculty member and get some advice on where to take it.

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How to talk with advisor about leaving/changing PhD?
I need some advice as I’ve been struggling a lot with the mental battles of doing a Ph.D. It's now come to a point where I’m considering quitting, because I’ve almost finished 1/3 years without much progress. I don’t mind using more than three years (without funding toward the end), but I’m worried that my advisor will not accept this solution. My project is a part of collaborative work between different partners so any deviation from the plan will inevitably affect everyone. We have set certain goals and I’m currently far behind on all of them. I’ve been feeling pretty demotivated about this part of the project, so I want to ask my advisor how we could change it to make it a better fit for me. I don’t want the decision to affect the people around me but I don’t see any other outcome. If I quit I’m afraid I’ll put my advisor in a bad light and that people don't want to work with him in the future, because of my failure. I feel kind of unqualified to be in this program and on year of experience has not helped much with this. From the beginning, I was questioning their decision to allow me to join. I know I’m mainly responsible, for this, but my point is that these thoughts have brought on a level of self-doubt that is very hard to work with. I’m currently seeking counseling for this, but I still need to deal with the messy situation I’m in.
Please let me know if you need more details to answer my question properly. I appreciate any advice.

Does your program have an annual review to check on student progress? If so, that would be the natural time to discuss these issues.

Yes, we have one every December, but given the limited time I have, I feel like I should get the problem solved a bit earlier.

"1/3 years" may mean 4 months. Please clarify.

"If I quit I’m afraid I’ll put my advisor in a bad light and that people don't want to work with him in the future, because of my failure." Your plan is to spend at least 2 years of your life on a project because you believe that otherwise it may put someone else in a bad light? That doesn't sound like a sane plan to me. (Not that I'm saying you should quit. I'm just saying this is a bad reason to stick around.) Also, you seem to vastly overestimate your own importance when you imagine that people won't "want to work with [your advisor] in the future because of [your] failure."

I meant one out of three years @Dilworth. I get that that was confusing.

@AdamPřenosil I think you're right. Thanks for the reality check.

Sorry you haven't gotten much of an answer, but I think the three posts linked above cover this ground. If there is some aspect of your question that those three posts don't cover, please [edit] your post to focus on this aspect, and we can try again. Good luck!

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What kind of hypothesis should I state in an application requesting public health data?
I work in a quantitative social science where it is not common to formally state hypotheses in papers or presentations. I am applying for access to public health data, and the applications ask for explicit hypothesis statements. The applications will be reviewed by boards consisting of administrators, MDs, and researchers with PhDs in fields like public health and social work. Is the norm to state a general "scientific hypothesis," or a formal null/alternative hypothesis that will be used in statistical tests?
To be concrete, I am interested in studying the effect of X on some health outcome Y, because I have a hunch that X has a negative effect on Y. In that sense, my "scientific hypothesis" might be "X has a negative effect on Y." However, I will statistically test the null hypothesis "X has no effect on Y," against a two-sided alternative, i.e. "X has a positive effect on Y" or "X has a negative effect on Y."
Which of these hypotheses should I include in my application? If it's ambiguous, what are some relevant considerations? My feeling is that the scientific hypothesis might better reflect my motivations for the study, the null hypothesis is more precise.

I'm not so much an hypothesis person (more of critical realism). In your case, since the application explicitly ask for one, is there anything against going with what you have ... statistically test the null hypothesis

This is a good question, and I suggest that you un-accept the one answer that has appeared, as this might lead to more answers from people who have experience of this or useful information.

Fair enough, I'll un-accept the answer, if and if there are not additional answers within the next week or so I'll re-accept Peter Flom's answer.

I would state my research hypothesis, unless the place you are submitting to has explicit suggestions. E.g. I've helped write a bunch of applications for NIH and NIDA funding, and those places have fairly detailed instructions. (But my experience is from many years ago).

Do you mean the  "scientific hypothesis", as OP calls it? It is not clear.

Yes. Or "alternative" hypothesis.

I would first question your statement that hypotheses are unusual in quantitative social science research in public health, in my experience, they are extremely common and your research should always be driven by a theoretically derived hypothesis.
That being said, data providers often ask for hypothesis or even a short description of the project, however, usually noone follows up on that. Just pose your hypothesis as framed above (X is negatively associated with Y) and you should be finde.


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What font is Frontiers journal using?
I am looking for the name of the font used in the body of published articles of Frontiers journal, as shown in the downloadable article here.
I tried Helvetica Neue, MinionPro, and Times. Please note the difference in letter 'y' here.

Which specific journal? Please share an example article link.

There seems to be at least 4 journals with the name Frontiers.  Which one are you referring to?

Please see link. Thank you. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2017.00061/full

the webpage or the PDF and the body or the abstract?

In the body. Again, thank you for requesting further clarification.

How did you produce that Minion Pro sample? If you try here the y is much closer to the text in the article, and other samples I can find on the internet agree.

You are right, Federico. Having downloaded the font from the source you linked and restarted Word, letter "y" stands corrected. I do not know why existing MinionPro in Word yielded unsatisfactory results. Thank you very much!

Perhaps Museo Sans.  When I look at the HTML, I see these references:  font-awesome, museo-sans, museo-slab, open-sans .

On my pdf reader (Evince on Ubuntu), I can simply click on Hamburger menu -> properties -> Fonts to discover that the fonts are Helvetica Neue LT Standard and Minion Pro. The others in the list are math fonts.

Adobe Reader has the same feature, however, neither MinionPro nor Helvetica Neue match the font of the body. As for the other fonts, I cannot find them in font directories. Thank you.

To me the body font looks quite similar to Minion Pro. Anyhow I suggest specifying in your question what you have already tried and why the results are not satisfying. This will prevent duplicate efforts and make your question clearer.

I just uploaded an image noting the difference between the article body and MinionPro. But yes, I agree that MinionPro probably approximates it best.


text:
Can I save my financial aid after this?
During fall 2021, I took 3 classes at my community college. I had very good financial aid so nearly everything was paid for. My first issue was in my online nutrition class. I took a hit when I submitted an “incorrect form” of document on my final so I guess when the professor tried to open it he was unable to see my work. So he gave me a 0 on the final. I reached out to him and asked if I could put my work on a different document and resubmit for a correction, and he said yes. I did it immediately and resubmitted it, but he never actually corrected it. So I ended with B’s in my other 2 classes, but I got a D in his class.
My second issue was also in an online psychology class (spring 22). The professor dropped me without notice. To this day I’m really not sure what the issue was, it was about a week into the semester and there were no meetings I could have missed, etc.
I feel that because of these 2 events my gpa/aid has been affected, is there anyone I can talk to to avoid taking a big hit? I just feel kind of powerless as the nutrition professor really didn’t have to correct my final, but he said he would and he didn’t. And I thought it was strange for my psychology professor to drop me without notice.

The rules for financial aid are almost certainly local. You will have to ask at the college. The financial aid office might be a place to start. Or the department head.

Probably too late now, but did you follow up with either professor, to remind the former of his agreement or to ask the latter why they dropped you?

he never actually corrected it

Ask him again, politely.  He was likely very busy and not paid anything for the extra work you are asking him to do.

The professor dropped me without notice ... about a week into the semester

If you were removed from the course a week into the semester, it should not appear in your record or have anything to do with your financial aid.
That said, the word "dropped" is quite vague.
For some financial aid, the college can decide what it wants to do.  For other aid, there are fixed rules we do not know, but you can ask them to give you the rules.

Sometimes financial aid is dependent on completing some number of credits, so a dropped course (for any reason) can certainly be relevant. Of course I don't know what's relevant to OP specifically because they don't provide enough information.


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Can/should I mention other peer reviewers' comments in my revision review?
In my field, it's common that once the first round of reviews are complete and the manuscript is revised, the revised document includes detailed responses to all peer reviewers' comments. There are some comments by another reviewer I do not agree with, and some comments that I do. Some comments are incredibly constructive and some are obviously "my group doesn't do research this way, so neither should you."
When reviewing the revised manuscript, what is the etiquette involved in addressing this? For some light context, the manuscript is about a technique that is relatively new to my field and is slowly catching on, but not without a serious uphill battle. The other reviewer is clearly someone who is opposed to "shaking things up" and taking this new technique seriously, while I am open to it but still unconvinced that it works.

Related: When writing referee's report after paper revision, can I discuss the reports of other referees?, As a reviewer, is it inappropriate to make unsolicited comments on another reviewer's comments?

Were you a reviewer also in the first round? If so, did you comment one way or another on this technique you're unconvinced of?

What is more important to you, etiquette or good science? Stepping in to controversies can bounce back on you. But not saying what you think seems sub-optimal.
My preference would be to call it like I see it and if it ruffles a few feathers then that is OK. Einstein's special relativity paper ruffled feathers among the most prominent physicists of the day, who were committed to the aether theory.
If it is nuanced in your view, then say that. If it is unproven, then say that. Referring directly to the comments of another reviewer might be the only way to state the case you see. My preference would be to not be bashful about this, while avoiding attacks.

I would probably not address the other reviewer's opinion directly, but you can be strategic and persuasive in your comments and refer to their review, similar to how you might respond to a review as an author.
If everyone in your field weaves underwater baskets with bamboo, but the paper is weaving their baskets with hemp, and this other reviewer is a bamboo purist, you need not write:

Reviewer 2 is a ridiculous old buffoon for insisting on bamboo and the editor should ignore those comments, the way of the future is clearly hemp!

However, you can add your own praise of the paper and address the controversy, and perhaps even suggest a reference or two to the authors even if they haven't included them, and even propose a middle ground. An example might be:

Though there is resistance in the field to use of hemp for underwater basket weaving, recent advances have suggested hemp is superior to bamboo in some contexts (NewRef1, NewRef2), as the authors also note by citing (Author's reference 54). The authors might improve their paper by referencing the recent discussion on these controversies in (ReviewofBasketMaterials).

Alternatively, if you find the authors already addressed the concerns of that reviewer in their revision I think you can just call those changes out directly:

I appreciate how the authors have addressed concerns about use of hemp in their underwater baskets by referring to (Author's reference 54 and 55) that establish this as a suitable approach.

You may even acknowledge your own skepticism of the technique and how this paper addresses it for the field, if you find it persuasive:

Although the field is still overall resistant to use of hemp, the authors make a convincing case for this approach that strengthens the significance of their paper for the field.

To me, these are strong signals to the editor yet they are not overly confrontational to the other reviewer. I think it's possible to do both good science and keep to etiquette, which is more about how you communicate things rather than what you say. The other reviewer can remain convinced their opinion on techniques is correct, but that should not be sufficient to rejecting a paper if other reviewers (you) are accepting and the authors at least speak to the possible controversy.


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Publication ethics - rights of a co-author to access full data
Institute II is setting up a benchmark project under the lead of main-author MM. 20 other developers participate, run their methods without having access to ground truth data and also MM contributes with his methods results.
A paper is written by MM. Is it the right of one or all of the other 20 developers (results have been submitted to MM already, so there is no reason that tuning/overfitting can happen) that he gets access to GT data to check if the analyses of the results are reasonable?
The best source for publication ethics known to me is Cope, the Committee on publication Ethics. They have a document for author guidlines (PDF), where it is recommended that an author submits "A declaration that that person takes responsibility for the integrity of the paper".
This is like always in Ethics only a recommendation, the journal obviously has to do here the final decision.
In my opinion I can try to get access to the GT by writing MM a mail, nevertheless if not granted, I cannot personally assure the integrity of the paper and have to retract my authorship. Or I get in contact with the editor of the journal if MM is not cooperative and let him decide.
Am i right about my conclusions? Are there other strong widely followed ethical guidelines about this issue?
Thanks for further recommondations.

In order for the benchmarking exercise to be convincing to readers, it will ultimately be desirable to release all of the data (and presumably code) so that the comparison can be replicated.
There's no reason that the ground truth data couldn't be revealed to all participating researchers after they've done their analysis and the results have been frozen but before the submission of the paper.

I absolutely agree here, it will addtionally make future methodological advances or completely new developed methods impossible to validate against those published results.

The co-author certainly does not have a legal claim over the data.
With regards to ethics, it strongly depends on the communication beforehand. Was it made clear that the data was not accessible to co-authors? Or could it have been accidentally implied they will get the data? One way or another, this is something that the authors have to discuss. The owner of the data should give a good reason why the co-author cannot get the data.
It is likely, though, that the co-author will be disappointed or upset that they do not receive the data.

Even though a co-author has no legal claim over the data, I find it strange to not have shared access in the first place. Depending on the field that might be normal, though.

@AttilaKinali I think it is okay to prevent access before participants submit their results. On one out of 24 data sets GT access was granted to check for example if results can be formatted in the requested way. The main author though is as well a participant (having full access to everything), and his method is winning in nearly every aspect. My method shows weaker results partially than on other validation sources. That makes me curious...

It's generally best to have a neutral third party organize this kind of exercise.  The challenge in doing this is that you need someone who is quite familiar with the subject but doesn't have their own method to test.  Being the neutral third party is a somewhat thankless job...

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


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Blockchain for publications
Today`s publications lack of the possibility to be extended by others after being published. A data base paper could for example benefit when contributors would gain authorship by opening data with a meta description.
Blockchain is a technology which offers the inheritance of documents. Each block can be seen as a single owner.
In case of scientific publications that means:

Paper x00 is written by x.
Paper x00 is taken by z and extended to xz0.
Paper x00 is taken by y and extended to xy0.
Paper xz0 is liked most by q and extended to xzq. q finds the advanced paper
xz0 better than xy0 or the original x00.

There would be no merge options (xy0 and xz0 are merged to xyz), but fields within science would develop interesting publication trees over time with self pruning capabilities. Most useful contributions will inherit, none useful extensions will "die out". You can still cite other sources.
I worked as an informatician in the barely digitized field of forestry and found myself citing a technology called optimization developed in the 50`s.
Specifically the "Downhill Simplex" method developed by two authors Nelder and Mead.
I also know that only the basic principle of the algorithm is used in today's
libraries. Details have been changed. Multiple thousands of method clones exists published over half a century. The implementation I rely on differs from
the original published one. I always wondered who contributed most over the decades. Might have been a lot of scientists who made advances on the algorithm which others did rely on. But I do now know.
What benefits and what negative effects would such an application have I do not think of? Energy costs could be another issue which I cannot quantify.
To clarify, the benefit I see is the expandable authorship.

The general answer to "Will blockchain help with X" can be found here: https://www.xkcd.com/2030/. Also, don't confuse the energy cost of "blockchain" with that of "bitcoin generation".

@Buffy If you want to generate a decent hash for savety it will cost energy.

What is the threat model you’re defending against? Nothing you described explains why you’d want a blockchain instead of just citation tracking, and nothing can guarantee that the method you’re using actually cites to an academic paper. The lack of merging makes this significantly worse than existing citations, because knowledge doesn’t advance as a tree — there’s a reason why papers have lots of citations.

@cpast i did never write that citing would not be possible. I gave with the data paper an example papers could benefit by giving a way to extend authorship over time with self cleaning capabilities.

Git. You want git.

We use citations for what you propose.

Scientific publishing is certainly experiencing a lot of changes and is looking very different from what is used to, even, let's say, 20 years ago. The increasing role of electronic publications, open-access journals, mere publication capabilities, open preprint services (like arXiv), ability to attach media\data\source code to the publication – all that has revolutionized and will continue to change the way we publish, read and comprehend scientific publications.
Nevertheless, all those advances solved (or attempted to solve) crucial problems in publishing and/or significantly increased the quality of the experience, both for the reader and the author. The extension/correction of the existing work does not seem to me like one of them.
Nobody prohibits (and usually it is encouraged) subsequent publications that extend the subject knowledge. That's why we have references at the end of the paper. Nowadays, a lot of publishers offer easy access to referenced material (sometimes, even across the publishers) in a click of a button. In addition to that, there is often also "Citations" section which would show the papers that cite this paper.
Example (just took a random paper from my field, not implying by any means that IEEE does a perfect job):

The paper "Error analysis for the truncation of multipole expansion of vector Green's functions" by J. Song and W. C. Chew in IEEE MWCL.
IEEE provides references that this paper contains with links to the available full-texts, contexts, and several means of accessing it.
Also, IEEE provides access to papers that cite it both from IEEE and other publishers.

All that ensures the continuity and availability of the research. I certainly do not see the value of creating a new revision of the same paper later to include new contributions from the same or different authors. That would be a new publication.
As for the corrections, with electronic publications, the authors themselves can correct their paper if the publisher policies allow that. Moreover, let's not underestimate the value of the "Correction to the paper" publications. While some of them are not so interesting, others might offer valuable content by showing what and why it was wrong in the original paper. Again, with electronic publications, these correction papers can be linked to the original publications.
To sum it up. While blockchain can be useful to create the system you have described, I do not see the need for this system. And this need, in my opinion, should be investigated and analyzed first in great detail. Also, see some of my points on blockchain usage for avoiding fraud in collected data. Here I would repeat the final thought:

I am very interested to see practical uses of blockchain in other areas (let's see where the smart contracts go in 5-10 years). Academia and research process does not scream for blockchain and its usability is totally unclear and hard to implement.

In general, researchers prefer to finish a paper, publish it in its final state, and then be done with it. This avoids dependency hell: in subsequent papers you can write "By Lemma 3.17 of [14], ..." and know that Lemma 3.17 won't change or be renumbered. It also makes it easy to prepare
lists of publications for Department chairs, deans, grant-making agencies, and others.
If someone wants to build on a previous paper (someone else's or their own), they can write a new paper and cite the previous work.
Finally, the security features of blockchain aren't really needed: there just aren't a lot of researchers falsely claiming to have contributed to papers. But the Stacks Project is somewhat along the lines you suggest. It is a huge book on algebraic geometry -- with ongoing updates, additions, and improvements, maintained as open-source software might be. It currently stands at 6,600 pages with 351 contributors.


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Would most prestigious journal editors reject one-author papers written by newbies?
I have heard over and over again that most journal editors have a negative attitude against papers with one author when the author is a less-experienced non-academic (let's say a Master's graduate), without paying much attention to the quality of the paper.
I have even read a blog about how Einstein had the same problem in publishing his first papers.
Does such a phenomenon exist? If it does, how unethical it is? and what could be done about it?
PS:
Once, I sent a manuscript, which I thought was substantial and important, to 10 journals, and all of them rejected it before sending it to review. Then I've done something unethical out of my sense of despair, based on cluelessness and what I had repetitively heard. I only altered the title and added 2 academic friends as co-authors, nothing more. Then I sent it again, to one of the journals who had rejected it before. Subsequently, it was sent for peer review and got accepted after minor revisions.

Side, tangential comment: the goal of research should be "to be read and to be properly acknowledged", not "get my idea published on a journal". So, abstracting from the specific problem you have, traditional publishing is doing you a disservice (don't worry, it is a general behavior they have with respect to science), have a look at alternatives: not-for-profit publishing, public preprint servers, etcetc ...
If you read an interesting paper from nobody on arXiv, what would you think?

"I have heard over and over again" From whom?

The Einstein anecdote is incorrect.  Even his early papers were published in the top journals of the time.

@AdamPřenosil. From friends in academia who had reviewed my manuscript and believed it was publishable in the highest-ranked GIS journals. They were overwhelmed by the repetitive desk rejections and proposed to submit it again under a different title and with co-authors.

@Anyon Thank you. yes, you are right. Nature rejected Hans Krebs.

I can't comment on your specific situation. But the overall question seems to essentially be are there biases in journal publishing? The answer is certainly 'yes' (as there are in pretty much all areas of life).
The identity/affiliation of the authors can influence the editors/reviewers (also for grants, awards, etc). This seems to be widely acknowledged (even see this PhD comic) although I'm not aware of any study attempting to quantify it.
Should it be this way - no. Some journals run double-blind peer reviewing which can help with this, although the editors may still know the identity of the authors (double blind peer review is rare in my field). But it's extremely difficult/impossible to remove all biases from any activity in which humans are involved.
How unethical is it? This is difficult to answer, it goes against the principles of science. How unethical would depend on details of the specific case. There can be very good reasons for editors to desk reject papers, and papers also get desk rejected for the wrong reasons. This is not necessarily malice or unethical editor behaviour.
We need to recognise that journal publishing is a business. Papers by 'big' names will inevitably get more citations which improves the journal impact factor, etc. So editors have some incentives which may conflict with the pure scientific ideal.
I have never heard of a bias specifically against number of authors (although this may be field dependent).

One other thing to note: there's a difference between prejudicial bias and statistical bias.  Papers written by students are less likely to be written to the standards of the field than by experienced authors.  So statistically one would expect a bias even in an unprejudiced process.

+1 I can relate! ... are there biases in journal publishing? The answer is certainly 'yes' ... Should it be this way - no. || ... ... Nonetheless, I've had success with single authorship. For newbies, I think getting a hang of the art of research is important, even more than 'result' from research!

I can give a personal anecdote - I recently wrote my first paper, which was a single author paper in pure mathematics. I wrote this between my 3rd and 4th year as an undergraduate, and submitted it at the start of my 4th year.
It was accepted by a high quality journal, and should appear very soon! I will begin my PhD in September, and despite this I have had no problem with academics taking me seriously. Perhaps the fact I'm at a well known and highly respected university helps, and maybe the culture is different in other areas of academia - this is just my own experience.

Fortunately, in mathematics, the cultural context is pretty mature. This is evident by looking at percentages of single-author papers by each discipline.

I'd think that most editors would agree to the statement that whether a paper is rejected or not should exclusively depend on its content and not on its authorship. I also think that most editors, most of the time, try their best to live by this principle.
There is unconscious bias however (and maybe occasionally conscious bias), so it seems realistic, by and large, that a one-author paper by a newbie has higher chances of being desk-rejected by the editor than the same paper with one or more big names among the authors.
Still I'd think that the newbie who writes a paper that is indeed good enough has very good chances to not be desk rejected. Based on my experience as author, reviewer, associate editor and editor, bias will rather make an editor too reluctant to reject a big name paper than making it very likely to reject a really good paper by a newbie.

+1 agrees with my experience too. If there's a single-author paper by a newbie, bias is more likely to manifest as extra care taken (e.g. checking if reviews have been addressed carefully, checking if the reviewers are qualified to review) before accepting the manuscript.

Many newbies think they know how to do research, and would like to report the Earth is flat.  Consequently, an editor will immediately know that the person does not belong, which leads to rejection.
Single author papers are fine as long as the author is competent.  Check out the story of Zhang Yitang; https://www.quantamagazine.org/yitang-zhang-proves-landmark-theorem-in-distribution-of-prime-numbers-20130519/

Zhang may not be a good example for two reasons: (1) From this answer, "Writing single-authored papers in math is extremely common". (2) He was not a newbie when he published his famous paper.

I'm sure the mathematicians here will tell you how many papers claim to have proved P=NP every year.   I'm sure many of these papers have a single author.  As for being a 'newbie', the editor will think Zhang is a newbie as he is unknown.   To verify that he is not, the editor will have to read the Abstract or the paper.  I.e., his name does not signal he is competent.   The editor could have dumped his paper without reading the Abstract.  On the other hand, a paper from a Fields medalist will not invoke such thoughts.

@VitaminE please don't be so negative towards newbies. This could lead to Association fallacy or group attribution error.

@Ash I'm just stating how the world works.   We are dealing with humans, who come equipped with all sorts of biases.

The editors may use author's credentials and reputation as a proxy to quickly estimate the quality of the paper. "Paying attention to the quality", i.e. giving a paper a careful read, is not free, it expends finite and valuable resources, and the editor should allocate them wisely. Mistakes may occur, which is of course painful for the authors, but I don't think this makes it unethical. Say, you increase the level of attention given to every paper; that may lead to accepting a rare good paper with an unconventional author at the cost of wasting thousands of hours of expert time proofreading junk.
What you could do about it as an author is to submit the paper to an editor with research interests and expertise directly in the area of the paper. Editors will typically read the title and abstract of the papers they receive, and if it's in "their" area, they will have their own opinion of the paper's potential.

Thank you for your insightful answer.

There are at least two different ways to interpret your question.

Would editors of prestigious journals reject a paper because it is a single-author paper written by a new author?

Absolutely not. Any competent editor (and prestigious journals can get competent editors) will try to assess the paper based on its contents, and send it out for review (or a pre-review check) if warranted. Of course the reviewers may be influenced by the authorship, though they should not be. Reviewers are rather more of a mixed bag than editors, and some of them may unfortunately not be competent. There is not much that can be done about this, other than editors avoiding reviewers who have previously given them low-quality reviews.

Is a single-author paper written by a new author and submitted to a prestigious journal more likely to be rejected than a multiple-author paper with at least one experienced author submitted to the same journal?

Yes, I think this is definitely the case. This is simply because the experienced author(s) will have a better idea of how good their work is and what journal to choose for it. They will also be able to write the paper in such a way as to make it clear how good it is, which is a skill that new authors sometimes lack. It is very important as a new author to at least get someone experienced and close to the topic to read a draft and comment on the writing and journal choice before submission. (This person would not become an author, but would normally be thanked in the acknowledgements.)

+1: Very good take. I consider them part of art of research ...  ... experienced author(s) will have a better idea of how good their work is and what journal to choose for it. They will also be able to write the paper in such a way as to make it clear how good it is, which is a skill that new authors sometimes lack.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of biases in publishing that I don't like. But to answer you generally, no. Editors don't care about experience, they care about expertise. If you can dance with the top people in your field and not miss many steps, then you can make it into these prestigious journals. Not guaranteed of course, but you have a shot. What's my proof? This. These girls are children, compared to us. And yet, without a Bachelor's degree to their name, they still were able to get accepted into the American Mathematical Society. Caveats? Their work isn't peer reviewed yet. But either way, the fact they made it into a conference filled with PhDs and professional mathematicians tells you that your status is only an indicator, it is not a complete measurement on your abilities or where your work truly belongs.

Is your proof that single-author papers by newbies can make it into prestigious journals really based on a two-author submission being accepted into a conference's "Special Session on Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics Research, I"? Granted, the authors are high school students rather than undergraduate students, but your argument seems to have a few holes in it.

I agree with @Anyon, I think you have picked a poor example.  Johnson and Jackson presented at a conference, and conference submissions in mathematics are not peer reviewed.  There are no editors per se. The presenters only submit an abstract, not a full paper, and the amount of screening is usually minimal, e.g. "does this appear to be mathematics and not utter crankery".  This is especially true for a Special Session on Undergraduate Research where they want to be extra encouraging to young people.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great experience to present work at a conference, and I am making no judgment on their work itself - just that "got accepted into the American Mathematical Society" makes it sound like a much bigger deal than it actually is.  A better indication of the reception of their work would be if and when it is published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Note the politely encouraging but pointedly non-committal quote from the AMS director: "Members of our community can examine their results to determine whether their proof is a correct contribution to the mathematics literature".  Making it clear, by implication, that it has not yet been established whether the work is even correct, let alone significant.

Yeah I'm aware of all the critiques. I stated these up front (and yes, I'm smart enough to know the difference between a conference and a peer reviewed publication). I know these critiques, and i read the article. But, I do not care. My main point was, expertise matters. Being a "newbie" is highly correlated with expertise, but it isn't the full picture. In principle, if an undergraduate can publish in Journal of the American Statistical Association by themselves, then they should be allowed to do so. Publication is conferred with strength and contribution, not necessarily your title.

I looked at the link and didn't get it - it only says the students are credited with "solving Pythagoras’ Theorem", but aren't there like several hundred known proofs of that theorem already?

@Allure The point is that it is a trigonometric proof that, assuming it's correct, does not assume sin^2 x + cos^2 x = 1. Apparently, people long assumed this would be impossible, but in 2009 J. Zimba published the first such proof; see https://www.cut-the-knot.org/pythagoras/TrigProof.shtml I guess this result was too obscure to feature in the news stories.

@Anyon if that was already done in 2009, what is new about the solution in the article (which dates to 2023)?

@Allure That I do not know. In the abstract Johnson and Jackson mention Loomis' 1968 book, but not the more recent developments. It says their proof is based on the law of sines (instead of e.g. subtraction formulas in the case of Zimba), so the proof may be novel even though the framing of solving a "math problem thought to be impossible for over 2,000 years" is overblown. For high school students it is clearly an achievement anyway. Unfortunately, media reports on math/science topics often mislead or oversimplify.

What the editor cares is about the content, with proper scientific approach undertaken in the manuscript. There are many single authored articles in many reputed journals. (Myself included). I have shown my professor my own written manuscript, and he would decide whether he wants to be the coauthor. This gives me a chance to write, select the journal, and to go through the entire review process on my own. And from my own experience, affiliation did not matter in my case.


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Ph.D. admission in Nordic countries with mediocre grades w. good publications in unconventional fields
I have a master's degree in Geography and Urban Planning with mediocre GPA scores (15.5/20 or B). I graduated from a public university in the middle of nowhere that has a strict test system in which university professors cannot evaluate their students. A central assessment office introduces two to 5 books for each course at the beginning of each semester and a uniform strict exam (something like a national entrance exam) is carried out. I have never seen anyone obtain an A in this university.
I have published three ideas in prestigious peer-reviewed journals (for all of them I am the first and corresponding author). These contributions are significant. the problem is, they are important for various fields, not one. And none of them is closely related neither to Geography, nor Urban Planning. One of them solves a famous geometric calculation problem in computing cumulative viewshed of a large region. So it is related to GIScience. The other is to increase the spatial resolution of SAR data. Therefore, it is related to remote sensing. And another is a novel spatial regression model that eliminates aggregate errors. All of them solve problems that haven't been solved before. And I was nerdy enough to waste my time this way.
I want to further my studies (attend a  Ph.D. position), preferably in one of the Nordic countries, in geography or urban planning but I do not think I am a good fit with the Frankenstein research background I have. Plus, my grades are not good too. The university I graduated from is not good either (it is ranked 350<400 worldwide). In most Nordic universities, the Ph.D. topics are pre-determined. Their topics are often popular concepts that are completely relevant to geography or urban planning.
Is my dream of getting a Ph.D. a mere fantasy with regard to these facts? If not, what a proper strategy could be?

Is one of your papers on optimal use of bold text?

I suggest that you focus the question on one issue, so that someone else could potentially have the same problem in the future and benefit from reading this (this is our site's model). For example, the part about dealing with 3 great papers in 3 distinct fields may be interesting. Or a general question about how graduate admissions works in (say) Norway -- we don't yet have many Nordic countries here. But as it is, this smorgasbord of issues is something better discussed with an advisor or career counselor.

@AzorAhai-him- I just used bold for the readers' convenience. I will edit the post. Thank you

@cag51 , I explained all the aspects so the reader would understand the situation. Thank you.

Note that if the PhD recruiter is not familiar with your university, then they have no way to know whether "15.5/20" is good or not. Rather than looking at your grades, they will probably look at your rank among the other students in your year group. I know several institutions that will outright reject any candidate who isn't in the top 33% of their year group, no matter the exact grades.

Thank you @Stef. I was among the 5 percent of my cohorts. I am starting to be optimistic because of what you have said.

Is my dream of getting a Ph.D. a mere fantasy with regard to these facts?

No, it's not a mere fantasy.  Your dream of getting a PhD is realistic.  You've already been an author on three papers, which is three more than most people starting a PhD.  It's not critical that the topic doesn't match exactly.  When you're just starting PhD studies, it's entirely normal you are not set on a particular topic yet.
Grades cannot be compared between countries because grade inflation varies widely.  Admissions will probably still look at grades, but hopefully not at the expense of all else.
You can do this.  See also "impostor syndrome".

Thank you @gerrit for your great answer.


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Proposing research as Ph.D. thesis in Sweden
I am a geography M.Sc. and I want to study Ph.D. in Sweden. I wrote a research proposal about a computer program which simulates some spatiotemporal situations. I have done some underlying logic and calculations too.
The problem is many many Ph.D. programs in Sweden are announced with special conditions. They demand that you work on a specific question or problem chosen by the authorities. But I want to work on my idea since I think it is so needed in geography.
Since in my country situations are completely different I am wondering: What's the solution?

Find a supervisor prepared to accept your topic. This may be very challenging.

When it comes to PhD and postdoc positions there is essentially two types of positions, and some partially overlapping ones. The critical element here is where the money for the actual research is coming from. That is way more important than whatever idea you might have for a project.
So if the money is coming from:

a specific grant with certain goals and deadlines, then the PI (the principle investigator, i.e. the group leader) will have to show some results. S/He will want to have someone work on that project and nothing else
alternatively if it's core funding (from the faculty/university/private funding etc) then the money is not "earmarked" and the PI can pursue interesting ideas more freely.

So assuming you are not bringing your own research funds, if you really want to work on your own idea from day 1, and not willing to compromise on that, then your only option is to find someone that has plenty of money and not many ideas.
Not to sound too grim but you should know that it's a tall order

Or apply for a stipend. Or a grant. Or figure out funding in some other way. If you bring funding and an idea, it might be easier to find someone willing to provide mentoring and infrastructure.

@skymningen yes, of course. I took that for granted for a PhD student it would be difficult to bring your own funds. Thanks for the comment


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Trouble handling simultaneous PhD application in two different teams of the same institute
So, there are team A and team B of the same institute and I have been interested in both since I started looking for a PhD, especially in team B.
I have been writing an application for team B but had trouble finishing it because they asked for so many thinks it was discouraging (like I had a hard time writing a two pages research statement because I did not really get what they were expecting from me in this letter).
In the meantime, I met a professor from team A that talked me about a PhD subject A. I had a good feeling so I applied and I got invited to the institute for interviews with the team A. At this point I have thought it would be weird to apply to team B too.
It went well and after this visit, I thought team A and the institute were amazing, however, talking all day long with researcher about what I wanted to do, I realized that 50% of the subject A is not really aligned with what I want to do, while team B researches really fit more what I want to work on. So I really regretted I did not apply to them. I mentioned to Supervisor A that I was also considering applying to team B.
So the following day, thinking I would regret it too much if I did not try, I finalized my application for team B, which was then far easier to do since thanks to the interviews, I finally knew what they wanted to know from me in the research statement. Since the leader of team B was also one of my interviewers, I also wrote him a short mail to let him know that I applied to his team as well.
The thing is, he answered me that "he would not interfere with my application in team A.."
I guess he can't "steal me" while I am in an application process with team A, I did not see it that way when applying...
So now I am concerned about 3 things:

Did I made a faux pas by sending this mail?
It seems that my only chance for my application to be considered by team B would be to refuse team A proposal and I don't want to find myself without any option since my other applications did not succeed.
Moreover, I am not even sure Team B would have any vacancies for a PhD

Did you get an offer from Team A already?

@silvado No yet, they will get back to me in the following days.

So now I did get an offer from Team A.


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Is it rude to ask whether a professor will leave by the time you're finished PhD classes if you want to be their PhD student?
Is it rude to ask whether a professor will leave by the time you're in the middle of research as a PhD student and you want to do research witht hem?

Leave or retire? If planning to retire, they will likely just say they won't take any more students, sorry. Leaving in the next year or so for sure, same thing. Might possibly leave in the next 3-10 years? They really don't know, and neither do you.

Faculty, especially very successful ones, get recruited to other schools and often ask students to come with them. If you're commiting to work with them for many years it is reasonable to ask them how attached they are to the school and community so you can plan accordingly.

Perhaps this is a controversial opinion, but I am shocked at how much emphasis the answers are placing on being careful and tactful, as if you should be ashamed for wanting to know. This is a very important thing to know. Your advisor is supposed to be committed to supporting you. Please just go ahead and ask. If they are offended by the mere question, then they basically represent part of what is wrong with academia, and you should probably not start your PhD with them.

I would say it is not rude per se, but could be rude in implication. Rudeness always has a strong cultural component, though: what is rude in one culture may not be rude in another.
In the US, "you look/seem old" is rather rude. There is also an understanding that a PhD advisor would by ordinarily expected to supervise the entirety of a student's thesis project, and to not take on new students if they do not plan to commit to that. It's possible that the question you pose would appear like one of these accusations if it is not otherwise supported.
Assuming you have good reason to be concerned, though, I would recommend posing a question like this as about yourself and your career rather than the professor, and inquire if there are any time limits on supervision, or ask whether they will be able to supervise you for however many years is the planned duration of your degree. It is certainly suitable to ask about funding availability for the future if you are paid off of a supervisor's grants (e.g.: how many years of your expected PhD term is funding actually secured for), and to ask about any expected gaps in supervision like a planned sabbatical. "Is there likely to be any time during my PhD career that you won't be able to advise me directly, like a planned sabbatical?" might be a diplomatic way to raise the concern, and would be an appropriate question to ask of any professor.

It's a reasonable thing to want to know, so as long as you phrase the question in an appropriate manner, it should not come across as rude.  Academics may leave a university due to retirement or due to other jobs at alternative institutions.  This is common enough that it is something that should be considered (on both ends) when forming a supervisor/candidate relationship.  I recommend you speak directly to your potential supervisor.  To avoid rudeness, I would try something like this:

"One of the things I've been advised about when searching for a supervisor is to check to see whether you have any plans to leave the university in the next few years.  I'm mindful of the fact that I'd like to have you as a supervisor for my whole candidature, but I don't want to be a burden if you have other life-plans that would make that difficult.  If it's not too personal, would you mind telling me if there's any reason that you might not be able to support me for my whole candidature?"

No, it's not rude, but have a face to face conversation with them about your future and the possibility of working with them. Include and concerns such as this one in that conversation. Ask for their general advice on preparation and such as well.
Such a conversation can be very valuable for your future, but it isn't something to do by email.
If they are planning on leaving or retiring, they will probably give you hints at least, perhaps suggesting other people. But there are no guarantees as people can also take advantage of opportunities. Some students move along with professors who change institutions.


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What is the difference between an academic CV in the US and an academic CV in France?
I am currently applying for graduate school in France. How (if at all) would I modify my existing CV in the standard US format to conform to French academic standards?
I have searched online, but most results are comparing a standard US resume to a European CV.

Maybe translate it to French?

@AzorAhai probably not a good idea if he's looking for a PhD (unless maybe in some specific field)

Off the top of my head: The European CVs I've seen typically include a photograph of the person; that is more the exception than the rule in US-style CVs.


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How should an independent researcher introduce him/herself in his/her to be submitted articles?
As we all know, all academic professors or students who want to submit an article (research or review) to a journal should write their affiliations (their institute name and job there) on the first page of the article.
All of the articles I have read till now were from academic authors and I haven't met a single article from an independent researcher yet.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19710/what-to-put-in-affiliation-field-when-submitting-paper-without-affiliation

The linked questions provide good answers ("Unaffiliated Scholar" / "Independent Scholar"), but another question might be what do you hope to accomplish with your paper?
Are you trying to simply make a contribution to the academic literature? In this case, Unaffiliated Scholar might be the best approach. Are you interested in establishing your bona fides for a corporate career or consulting business? In this case, I have seen plenty of independent researchers publish with their personal consulting company as their affiliation. The paper then presumably adds to the academic literature while providing a track record to use in advertising for future consulting gigs. In this case you may need to incorporate yourself, which is beyond the scope of Academia SE.


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How to deal with political (literal) situations in the workplace?
A few days ago, I went to have lunch with my colleagues (working in the same group). Somehow, the conversation turned towards politics and the "immigrant emergency" that Europe is currently facing.
To put it mildly, I as a person have very strong convictions regarding such issues. I am from India and I have to deal with passive racial profiling on a regular basis (People looking me up and down and then holding their bags a bit more firmly; No, It was not my appearance, I was very well dressed/groomed). After having experienced it the first few times, I understand the biases that affect such behaviour and do not really mind it.
Nonetheless, it is very difficult for me to ignore it when my peers portray this issue from a one-sided perspective. At that moment, I let the matter be because a short argument over lunch is not going to change a people's minds.
Yet, at this moment I feel very angry at myself for not having spoken up.
For future reference, how should I go about addressing such sensitive issues without raising a furore?
In other words, how can I present history/societal and political issues from the other side of the fence without creating a fuss? Is that even possible?

Do you think the answers to this question need to be tailored to academia? If not you may be better off at Interpersonal Skills, or possibly the Workplace.

@BryanKrause Yes I think so. I am well aware (I think so) of the background and biases that affect such opinions. Therefore, I expect my colleagues do too. So, the solution, at least in my mind is not an inter-personal one but rather about how to present relevant information from the other side of the fence in a logical fashion.

@FoldedChromatin Academia.SE is more about the world within academia, rather than taking an academic approach to issues in the world. Is your workplace a university or research institution? If so, would your approach differ if you were working in your same field in an industrial setting? If not, again, the other stacks might be more appropriate (though being more appropriate on another stack does not necessarily make it off-topic here). It's just that I have seen almost exactly this question asked there before.

Unfortunately, information and reasons (logic) presented to people with biases has been shown (research) to only deepen the bias, not dispel it. People don't want to be rational about their biases. Reasoning is actively counterproductive. Again, sad, but true.

This question seems more appropriate for workplace.se since I'm not sure how the answer would be specific to academia.

@BryanKrause my workplace is an academic research institution and I am a PhD student. To answer your question, If my workplace were an industrial one where I still had the same rational capacities and my assumption regarding peers was not true, my answer would have been different.

Your question has many moral, philosophical, and practical sides and the answer is more or less the work of a lifetime. I recommend: (1) Don't remain silent wherever you see untruth and injustice. Silence sends a strong message of assent and approval. (2) In some cases, you can content yourself with one firm statement of truth and justice and then withdraw without engaging in combat. (3) Don't jeopardize your power and position to the point of extinguishing them, because then you will have no power to help society. (4) Be ready to sacrifice something in defense of people who have far less power and status than you do. To fail to come to the aid of someone who has much less than you is a deep moral failing. (5) After making your one firm counterstatement, make sure you have some larger outlet for your convictions where you can apply them effectively.
Clearly, some of those principles conflict and this is why I say that discovering how to respond to untruth and injustice is the work of a lifetime. Often in life two opposite principles are true at the same time, like "I must respond to injustice" and "I mustn't get killed by a band of bigots."

Don't neglect the actual danger of confronting bigots, especially for an immigrant or visitor to US. I mean, actual danger. It isn't hyperbole.

The world is, unfortunately getting more dangerous rather than more accepting at the current moment. It is good if everyone of good will can work to make the world a better place for everyone.
But you can't, safely, act, or even speak out, in every situation in which you might find yourself.
But one thing you can do is to seek out allies who think about things in a clearer, better way, and work with them. It may be possible to do that even in the workplace.
But even within families, if you have a bigoted uncle, it is sometimes best just to let him rant as you won't change him and you have better things to do than try.
Collective action wins. Ghandi taught all of us that lesson, not just those from India and its neighbors.

@yahoo.com, actually I think it failed because people forgot the lesson and need to be reminded. One problem we have as humans is that once we think a problem is "solved" we forget about maintaining the solution. It is called "The fallacy of the last action." and is studied in game theory, for example.

@yahoo.com, Possibly Huxley: https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/quotations/lessons_of_history.html

@yahoo.com Individuals do sometimes learn from actions. Collectives learn from actions, but slowly (or painfully - war), and forget after 2 generations. The best shot are structures (governmental etc.), they tend to have a longer memory, but even they need to be reminded from time to time.


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Making business out of Ph.D. thesis
Would advisors and universities generally support Ph.D. students who have an applicable thesis, to make contracts with the public sector in the US?
And, will it bring a good share for the student and advisor or mostly the university?

As this would mean a profit for the university, the answer should be yes in most cases. How that is handled in your special case we can not answer though, you should ask around at your university.

You’ve likely already signed over your rights to IP before you started your degree. You can commercialise findings and techniques but be aware of this.

The answer really depends on the university you're in and the kind of agreement that you have. In most cases any intellectual property developed during your studies at an academic institution would entail signing off some rights to them. From my experience this is not a significant amount (less than 15%) but YMMV. You have to be aware that if you have any coauthors from other institutions this may complicate things - those coauthors have rights to the idea as well and that needs to be negotiated. Note that even coauthors that express no interest in joining your venture may have rights to some of the IP, and as a result to the potential profits. There are also funding agencies that may want a piece of the action (if you were supported by an industry grant for example).
In any case, your first step is to talk to your advisor/coauthors. Step two would be to contact the legal department of your university. They may ask that you remove any code you have made public (say on GitHub), and that you patent your work, a long and annoying process. I would not contact anyone about commercializing your software before a long discussion with the legal department.
This could get you in trouble, and most likely any company with a semi-competent legal team would not allow this anyway without you going through the proper channels.
Good luck!


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When mentioning the author of a journal I am using in my Literature Review, should I mention author's credentials?
In my Literature Review, I mention the authors of the published papers I use and the results found in their study. My question is whether I should reference the author's credentials alongside the field in which they belong to or is this unnecessary?
Ex.1 (With)
"Joakim Ruist, a researcher in the department of economics at Gothenburg University, studied the effects of refugees on public finance, finding similar results."
Ex.1 (Without)
"Joakim Ruist studied the effects of refugees on public finances, finding similar results."
Ex. 2 (With)
"In contrast to the conclusions drawn by Ruist, Alden and Hammarstedt, and Storesletten, Bo Rothstein, Professor in Political Science at University of Gothenburg, argues the sustainability of the Swedish welfare state is not under threat by refuge migration."
Ex. 2 (Without)
"In contrast to the conclusions drawn by Ruist, Alden and Hammarstedt, and Storesletten, Bo Rothstein argues the sustainability of the Swedish welfare state is not under threat by refuge migration."

Adding the statement about Riust's location seems to imply he studied refugees in Sweden and not elsewhere. If that is relevant to your paper, state it explicitly, don't assume the reader will "join the dots". Ruist might have been studying refugees anywhere in the world. And if you think his results were biased in some way because he was based at a Swedish university, again, say so, and don't leave the reader to figure it out for themselves!

What matters is the work presented in the paper. So you just write

Ruist [1] studied the effects of refugees on public finance, finding similar results.

Agreed, this is correct and succint +1

@user2768: Probably for using a Vancouver referencing style eww ;)

Another upvote from me. Perhaps it depends on the discipline though? In physics I'd do what's in this answer, with an et al. if necessary.

@user2768 The downvote isn't mine, but it would be nice to have something better than an unsourced assertion that something is true, implicitly across all disciplines.5 hours ago. I've never seen credentials listed in an academic article, but everything I've read has been in STEM fields. I doubt that, for example, the humanities are different in this area, but they might be.

@DavidRicherby That's why my answer isn't so forceful. My use of "generally" perhaps oversteps, but I have read articles across many disciplines. I'll edit my answer to make that clearer.

@user2768 Yes your answer is good. Mine is more Stack Overflow style... giving the OP some code that works and then moving on

@BjørnKjos-Hanssen I personally don't object to your answer, I just thought a bit more detail might be useful, which is why I bothered to provide an answer

In other words: in scientific papers, you don't use the argument from authority, but the authority from the argument. That is, you don't want to use the argument of someone because they have high reputation (whether it makes sense or not), but because the argument itself makes sense (whether the person has a high reputation or not). I agree there tend to be a correlation between both, but they are definitively not equivalent.

There are occasions when inclusion of author credentials is useful (especially in the general press), academic publications (generally) aren't such an occasion and I've never seen such an inclusion in academic publications. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a discipline that includes author credentials in publications.
TL;DR: Without

I have the impression the academic discipline may factor into this. I cannot recall ever reading a phrasing like your "with" examples in any STEM publication, but in the social sciences this may easily be different. From my limited experience with social sciences, many papers seem to have a bit more of a "conversational" tone to them, and your "with" examples would probably fit in more in such a style than with the fairly dry and reduced style of writing that is often preferred in STEM.
That said, what I have sometimes seen as a mixture, as in:

Conversely, researchers at the University of Gothenburg [1] have stated ...

That is, I have seen people mention the place where the research was conducted, but not the credentials. Obviously this would happen if it could have at least some tangential relevance where this research has been conducted. In your example, if the other researchers were outside of Sweden a reader may be inclined to put more trust into a statement on the Swedish welfare state from researchers actually working in Sweden versus people who only look at it from the outside. It goes without saying that this is simply not the case in most STEM publications (although, as I wrote, I have seen it come up very occasionally).

I have no experience with social sciences, but it might be more important to mention the place because local habits / laws / ... will have an impact on people's behaviour; and the same experiment performed twice in, say, New York and Gothenburg, will almost certainly yield different results. In contrast, an experiment in a STEM discipline should yield the same result in both cities.

@Sabine "In contrast, an experiment in a STEM discipline should yield the same result in both cities" Not necessarily! There may be physical differences between the locations as well (temperature, humidity, even the force of gravity may be slightly different).

I am in the social sciences. This would be an exception, rather than the norm. I suppose that one could find this relevant if one were comparing the results of several studies and the researcher's country location (or country of origin, perhaps?) might be relevant. But, once again, I have not seen it directly.

I also have never seen in a literature review mentions of an author's credentials unless it is directly relevant to discussion. For example, during certain periods of time two different universities might have had different approaches to a philosophical orientation. In that case, noting where an individual was located at a given time might give some insight. So, an individual at the University of Chicago for Economics (neoclassical approach) might be contrasted with someone from the Austrian approach. So:

John Smith [1], while lecturing at the University of Chicago, astounded his colleagues by suggesting massive federal expenditures.

Without some note about the UofC, the astonishment would not make much sense.
The American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines suggest that academic credentials are omitted. There is a blog post here where the guidance is that:

Typically APA Style reference list entries and in-text citations do not include the authors’ academic credentials or professional titles.

This assertion is somewhat associated with section 2.02 (APA 6th edition). The MLA has similar guidlines.
There is a note that if the credentials "are relevant to the discussion" they may be included, which I think follows with my opening observation. This blog post on the MLA also suggests the omission of qualifications unless it directly makes a point:

You might, however, explain the qualifications of an author in the body of your essay if they are helpful in making your point or refuting a claim

So, based upon the OP's examples, the answer would be "without" as the titles and affiliation are not directly relevant to the discussion. The APA and MLA guidelines are in agreement on this point, I think.

On the other hand, your economics example sounds like the sort of thing that will make little sense to readers in 50 years' time.