text:
How appropriate is it to post a tweet saying that I am looking for postdoc positions?
I am currently a final year PhD student in Computational Biophysics and I want to explore different opportunities for my future career. I am not sure if tweeting about my job search would be considered bad by potential employers. Is using social media for academic networking and career development appropriate?  For further context, I am from India, and could not afford to travel to US or Europe for conferences, which is one way people land Postdoctoral offers. I also do not have many publications (3 first author papers) which is why I believe I have difficulties in getting a position.

Who is likely to read your tweet? Are any of them interested in hiring you as a postdoc? I see no reason why it would be considered bad by potential employers (since you are looking for a job), but I also don't see how it could help.

Thank you for comment. I have seen tweets in Postdoc portals saying that people are looking for positions. I do not know about the success rate, but again I do not know if it would be seen as desperate or tacky.

I'd agree with @JonCuster that tweeting about your search for jobs won't hurt anything, but, equally, it won't help anything. Certainly in the U.S., no job applicants at any level enter the system due to tweeting. There are standard formalized procedures...

I agree that there are formalized procedures like call for applications. However, I also know of a largely grey area where you either contact faculties through cold-emails or meet them at some conferences and if you are able to impress them enough, you have a high chance of landing a position with them. I am applying for the open calls (but they are hard to come by) and also emailing profs.

The account you link to (portal) seems more like a way for groups to announce their postings, not where they go looking for candidates.

Yes, certainly personal contact at conferences can bring your name to peoples' attention... but tweets will not. Email is a mixed thing, because it's all too easy to generate spam, and people don't want to waste their time...

Thank you for your kind inputs. It seems that the exercise would in all possibilities be a waste of time. I would keep the points you raised.

A general comment: please note that publications are more of a sufficient criteria, but not necessary nor stellarly relevant: you ahve 3 publications, so the PostDoc position is as elusive to you as to the all the other recently finished PhDs in your field.
Keep on trying, but instead of passively waiting for open positions, go after your own funds. A PostDoc must shows two things:

capability of conducting research;
independence in research, both for content and for funds.

There are some -small- grants available in India. Go & grab one https://indiabioscience.org/postdocs/grants

Thanks to all the people who gave me great pointers on what works and what would not, in the context of PostDoc searches. I am happy to let you know that I have been offered a PostDoc position.

I was in a similar situation about a year and a half ago. My condition was worse than yours as I had no accepted publication, only a couple of pre-prints. I submitted 6 applications via job boards and sent 47 emails before I received an offer.
I agree with the commenters -- a tweet is unlikely to help you land a position. But here are a few things that I did that eventually helped me land a position.

If you have a list of potential labs you want to join, follow the PIs on Twitter. If they have a job available, they generally tweet about it (also follow them on Mastodon). Once you start following 15-20 PIs in a subfield, the tweets from their extended network will also appear in your Twitter feed (via retweets, likes, and network effect). So, that might be a good way of knowing if any position is available. Additionally, you can follow these handles on Twitter -- @VacancyEdu, @jobRxiv, @PostdocPal. There might be more, but I used to follow these, and they used to tweet about vacancies regularly.

Check University job portals regularly. Most reputable US and EU universities have separate job boards where they post vacancies. Apply to open job advertisements if you are interested in the position. You are much more likely to be considered for a position if the PI is actively looking for someone than if you cold-email them.

Finally, if you are really interested in working with someone, send a personalized email. Don't send a generic email; they'll see through it and promptly mark it as spam. Don't get disheartened if you don't get positive responses (or any response at all) from PIs. PIs are extremely busy and get about 30-40 emails on an average day. Many of them require their immediate attention, and as much as they would like to (or so I've heard), they can't reply to everyone. If someone doesn't reply, assume that they are not actively looking for someone and move on. Don't take it to mean anything more.

What you're describing is quite common nowadays; i.e., posting a tweet that you are looking for a position. While it may not land you the position you want, I don't see how it can hurt, so why not post the tweet?
Some advice:

Consider the specific culture in your area: are most researchers active on twitter? Or are they more likely to respond positively to a simple email asking to circulate your interest?

It would help a whole lot if you have an advisor or another trusted mentor who will share the tweet and say good things about you. Is your advisor on twitter? You can even ask them to post on your behalf. Alternatively, if people in your discipline know you, and like/retweet etc., that can help a tweet gain traction.

Finally, look for examples of others in your field who have successfully posted tweets with high engagement. What did they write? I have seen many candidates do this very successfully, mostly for faculty positions but I think a similar thing applies to postdocs.

All comments and answers so far basically say that writing a tweet announcing that you're seeking postdoctoral jobs is likely not very effective (unless perhaps if you have a following like this friend of mine with 70,000+ followers on Twitter; she was already a bit of an academic celebrity and getting paid to give talks even in her earliest years of grad school).
However I'll write a more direct answer to your question:

"How appropriate is it to post a tweet saying that I am looking for postdoc positions?"

It will hardly be deemed "inappropriate". It isn't the conventional way of finding a postdoctoral job (which your question's body already indicates you know), but most potential supervisors will not blacklist you for posting this tweet.

"Is using social media for academic networking and career development appropriate?"

In terms of using social media for networking (not just announcing job availability), it is quite common in your field of computational chemistry. Immediately I can think of a lot of computational chemistry professors who are very active on Facebook and Twitter, for example, here's just three off the top of my head that have interacted with me in the past despite my profile only having 71 followers because I have barely ever used Twitter):

Geoff Hutchison (Stack Exchange, Twitter)
Alan Aspuru-Guzik (Twitter)
Pratyush Tiwari (Twitter)

If needed, I could give you a list of 30 more, that would probably be very happy to "connect" with you on social media, but this often means nothing in terms of helping you get a postdoctoral job (the people I know have enough people applying through conventional means, and while some people might be known for re-tweeting their own students' job availability posts, they're very unlikely to do it for someone that they don't know because of the risk on their reputation if you turn out to be a very bad postdoc).
Also, in terms of using social media for networking, I'm reminded of the answer I gave to this question: Is it acceptable for a student to connect with a professor on LinkedIn? Out of 13 answers mine was accepted, and got 24 upvotes and 0 downvotes so it might be helpful to you too.


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Is it acceptable to add a result to a paper when a journal asks for revisions?
A while back, I submitted a paper to a mathematics journal. Since then, I have managed to prove an additional result that I think would improve the paper. If the paper gets rejected, I plan to incorporate the result into the paper and submit again elsewhere. If the journal accepts the paper and asks for revisions, my question is whether it would be acceptable to add the new result when I submit a revised version. The other option is to write up the new result as a separate paper, which may or may not be significant enough for publication.
The reason I ask is that I want to avoid wasting time now. It would be a shame to spend time and effort on incorporating the result into the paper now if I need to remove those changes in the case the paper is accepted. On the other hand, if I can include the result in the current paper, then I don't want to spend time now writing an entirely new paper for this one result.

@corey979 I think both 1) adding a new result is pretty different from adding a new citation, and 2) changes after acceptance and changes during revisions are pretty different, so that question differs from that one in two big ways.

@corey979 Again, I typically agree with taking a wide view of what duplicates are, but here the questions are too different. I would downvote your answer here and upvote it there: new content should not be added after acceptance unless it dramatically impacts the submitted work, for example, if it shows it is wrong.

@corey979 I also agree with Pete's answer here, because the paper is in revision (and Pete specifically says 'the key point is that the paper is being refereed again'), but your answer on the other question covers all phases of review, which is the part I disagree on for changes like this question asks about (new content) versus changes like the other question asks about (new reference).

You can make whatever changes you like in revision.  The key point is that the paper is being refereed again. (Maybe the referee isn't paying so much global attention to your paper the second time around.  But by the way, maybe the referee wasn't paying so much attention the first time around!  There are never any guarantees of that, but you have done your due diligence.)
It is quite common for revised papers to contain many small to moderate changes, including those that were not called for by the referee.  If you think about it, it is probably better not just to make precisely the changes asked for -- you are also responsible for your paper as a holistic document, and localized technical changes may necessitate other changes for the sake of unity, coherence and so forth.  However, as a referee it is a bit disconcerting to get a paper that has too many changes I have not asked for: at a certain point it begins to feel that I have to referee two papers when I have agreed to referee one.  For instance I recall getting a revised paper that was almost 10 pages longer, and I didn't like that much (but I did recommend it for acceptance).
As an author I can think of several cases where I have added significant material to the paper in revision, so it certainly does happen, and at the moment I cannot recall a situation where adding the material seemed to adversely affect the status of the paper.  If there is one extra result that you want to put in the paper and its proof takes only a couple of pages, I think you should probably go ahead.
Although I think you'll get away with it fine, whether it is really better to put more theorems into a math paper in revision is a different question that I am a bit too daunted to fully address here.  It depends on so many other factors, many of which are cultural.  E.g. another answer writes:

I would lean towards publishing a followup paper instead. Does more for you on pub count.

In most parts of pure mathematics having "more papers than theorems" or "more papers than ideas" is looked down upon.  If in a certain paper you prove four cognate theorems and then later you try to write up a paper on a fifth cognate theorem, there is a good chance that the journal in which you can publish that little paper is so much worse than the first journal that it doesn't specifically help your career to do so.  Whereas if you just appended the fifth theorem in the first paper, you probably wouldn't get any more credit for that either...but at least the fifth theorem would appear in print with little additional trouble on your behalf.  I can definitely think of theorems that I have added to papers in this way (not necessarily literally in revision; sometimes just as offshoots of the main project): I proved them so I want to publish them, but I do not always want to play the "How good is this?" game if I don't have to.

We once had a job applicant that had about ten times as many papers as all of the other applicants.  Almost all of them were in the lowest tier of non-predatory journals - journals that published anything that was valid, correct, unplagiarized mathematics.  A few were in somewhat better journals, but none were in first or second-tier journals.  This person did not make our shortlist (and, as far as I can tell, never got a permanent position).

This is actually quite common, that by the time the referee report comes you may have a bit more to say. Or the extra bit may come from the revision process itself. It is fine to add it to the paper. Indicate the addition when you send the revised version.
(Quite common: this has happened to many papers I've refereed and to some of mine as well. And I have anecdotal evidence from several colleagues that this is indeed usual.)
Of course, if rather than a bit more you have significant material to add the situation is different: the decision seems now to be whether to write a sequel, to discard the current one, or to thoroughly revise it.

This is the sort of question to ask the editor. If it is a small change it might be fine. Anything bigger could, perhaps, require another round of review to assure the editor.
Another paper would be a good thing, of course, if you can publish it, perhaps augmenting it with more results to make a more complete whole. But, you need to write it up in any case unless you intend to just abandon it. If it is in the current paper, its significance might not be noticed, of course. But if it is relatively insignificant it might not actually matter to the editor.
You could ask the editor now, which might save some effort. But you could, perhaps, also add it to the next (final?) version if acceptance comes soon. But warn the editor about what you have done so that it is clear. Editors probably don't like surprises.

Small change OK.  Big bad.
I would lean towards publishing a followup paper instead.  Does more for you on pub count.  Let's this one move forward.  Plus gives you a little more time to solidify this new finding.
Publish, publish.  Don't perish. Don't perish.

source: Stack Exchange

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sort: votes


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Follow up email if you have not heard back after tenure track facutly interview
I had an academic job interview for a tenure-track faculty position in January but have not heard anything yet (March now).  Should I send an email asking for the status of the application? Can anyone please tell me what a proper email could be?
Thanks very much for the help.

I don't think there is a down side to emailing, although if they are not communicating with you it is not a good sign for your prospects. Of my 5 faculty rejections, 3 emailed me or called me, and 2 required me to email the search chair.
A possible email could use the language below. Parts of the email that are optional/circumstance-specific are in brackets.
Dear Chair,
Good afternoon! Thank you again for having me out to visit SCHOOL in January. I am writing to inquire about your decisionmaking timeline. [OR I am writing to let you know that I have received an offer from another institution.]
[My timeline for accepting this other offer is approximately X. I wonder if I could receive a response regarding your search within that time frame.]
[Is there anything you can tell me about the status of the search? From the timeline that you mentioned during my visit, I surmise that the school has made an offer to another candidate. Has that candidate accepted, or is the search still ongoing?]
Thank you once again for considering me for the position. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
NAME
Thanks to Karen Kelsky's book The Professor is In for some of this language.

I am confused why this is down voted. The OP asks what a proper email could be.

You answered the second question (What might such an email look like?) but didn't really address the first question (Should I send this email?). I upvoted it just now because it is a good email template that is both specific to the OP's question and adaptable to other situations, and so it helped me compose a similar email just now. I also upvoted the answer by @rturnbull because they answered the first question (though they ignored the second) by offering some thoughts that would help a person make the decision.

Ideally, towards the end of your visit in January the search chair would have let you know the projected timeline. Unfortunately that doesn't always happen.
In any case, I don't think it's unreasonable to drop them a quick email to ask if there are any updates. Before you do, however, be aware that you are likely to get an evasive answer or a non-answer. There are three likely reasons that you haven't heard anything:

They don't want to hire you, but they forgot to tell you.
They have offered the job to someone else, but are keeping you around as a backup in case the first person turns them down. They may be currently negotiating with the first person.
They are still interviewing candidates, and won't decide for a while.

In case 1, you'll get a definite response. In cases 2 and 3, you won't learn anything, although they might be able to give you a rough estimate of when to expect to hear from them.
NB: If you have been offered a job at another institution, but you are still interested in this position, do definitely tell them. They may be able to speed up the process on their end to give you some more information.

I think in cases 2 and 3, you often gain a lot of information by asking. In case 3, they will probably tell you the timeline. I have been told that case 2 happened, and when a likely decision would happen. (Also, the code for case 2 can be "You are on the short list of candidates we are considering.") I've also seen case 4: they've decided not to hire anyone!

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How to cite a bookchapter that is accepted and To appear?
I have a book chapter that is accepted and I want to cite it on a conference paper that I should upload its camera ready today. What is the best way to cite it ? here is my bibtex.
@inbook{book_chapter2,
      author={Names of authors},
   year= 2019,
 chapter={chapter title},
   title= {Book Name},
   publisher= {Springer},
       Editor=  {Edited X and Y}
    Note= {Accepted and To Appear}

}

I'd suggest the following:
Accepted for publication

I've seen it several times and I usually use it like this. You could also use:
In press

But when I recompile the file, the edited by does not appear in the output. is that okay ?

@HebaMohsen That's a LaTeX/BibTeX issue and depends on the reference style.

It is IEEE conference style. Is my bibtex works fine. When the books appears, the citation will work ?

@HebaMohsen I don't understand the (new) question but it seems to be LaTeX related and cannot be answered here.

My question is: will the reference citation appear on google scholar ?

@HebaMohsen Nobody knows but Google. Sorry. My guess is that it will work but don't ask me why and how Google does anything. It's closed source and, as I said, nobody knows but Google.


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Status of my revised manuscript: editor decision changed to under review
Two monts ago, I submitted a manuscript (Scholarone Manuscripts).
I got major revisions and implemented ALL of them. Then I re-submitted my manuscript. After two days the status changed to under review. Then after five days the status changed to awaiting editor decision and then after two more days I saw my status change to under review again (today is the 3rd day with this status).
Any idea what is happening?

I forgot. Also with my article, (revised version) I submitted a 4 pages pdf in which I explained everything that I did in my revised version). Just to help the referees and the editor who handle my manuscript.

See this: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/124525/72855

It just seems like the editor's decision was to get more advice from reviewers; maybe the same ones, or possibly new.

@buffy That is almost certainly the case. This recently happened where I was asked to review a manuscript after a round of revisions due to the technical nature of the papers methods.

So, you believe that the manuscript is back to the reviewers again? But why? The editor disagree? Or...there is a misunderstanding between them?

Only the editor can tell you why. It is permissible to ask. It is also permissible to not panic.


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Job Title: Graduate Research Assistant
I worked on a project as a graduate student in a research group in order to complete the credit points (20 ECTS Germany) required for my Master's degree. I was not employed on a contract i.e. not paid for the work because it was for completing the credit points for my Master's degree. Now I want to include the work as a research experience on my CV (for application to a PhD program) but I am unsure whether I can name the title of the experience as "Research Assistant" or not.
I do not know what technical title I should give this job.

I would suggest that you not claim any title that wasn't assigned by others. You can give a description of what you did or suggest that the work was "similar to GRA" but that is different from saying that you actually had the title. Your only official "title" was student, I think.
While what you say might be accurate in some sense, the problem is that someone seeing official documentation and not finding you listed with a title you claim, all start to wonder why and even thing you have given a fraudulent answer. While that isn't your intent, you don't want to open the possibility of such an accusation.
I suspect that in Germany it is especially important to be accurate about titles, though that may be changing.
But, for a CV, have a section on experience with a very brief explanation and a phrase "similar to ..." that gives the person the right idea about your duties, but not claiming a title.
You could also, in a mail or email, ask the institute what you can call yourself on your CV. But I'd suggest that you want the answer in writing and from someone official if it isn't a formal position you held. Then there can be no question of your intent.

This will vary a lot by location and job type. You should certainly follow local customs (i.e., Germans may be pickier about titles than Americans). The below has my Western (i.e., US) bias.
In universities, you can assume the hirer will understand the subtle distinctions between contract type, so it's best to be accurate and describe exactly what you did. I don't see a problem using the phrase "research assistant" if you were an assistant who did research, but directly below that, I would give the name of the program / contract type so that the reviewer understands exactly what you did and can't accuse you of misrepresenting anything.
Outside of universities, the hirer (particularly first-line resume screeners) will not know or care what you are talking about. If you were an assistant doing research, you should definitely use that title rather than a "technically correct" title that could be misinterpreted (e.g., if an industry recruiter sees "student", they will assume you are in a classroom taking tests and discount your resume accordingly). Listing the exact program might still be a good idea, but it is essential to concisely explain what you did.  You could even say something like "Research Asst. (X program), Univ. of Y"; this is both accurate and concise.


text:
How can I validate a citation that is genuine in google scholar but as a *?
Google Scholar may mark citation counts with an asterisk (*), meaning:

This "Cited by" count includes citations to the following articles in Scholar. The ones marked * may be different from the article in the profile.

How can I validate citations in my Google Scholar account that are genuine but are marked with a *?

Why not just open the different articles, search for your name and see the citations for yourself? Usually, this is quickly done. If some of the articles are not available at your institution, it may be harder.

I edited the question to explain the meaning of asterisks, but perhaps that's an answer in itself: Google doesn't know whether it has correctly counted citations, in particular, it is unsure about those marked  with an asterisk.

@Mick Why does it not? Would you like me to explicitly add: So, you can't? I left this implicit, because it seemed to follow naturally

My bad, I read the first line and misread the second line. I will delete the previous comment.


text:
Are there any online tools to calculate academic collaboration distance (i.e. a generalisation of the Erdős number)?
The Erdős number is the academic collaboration distance someone has to Paul Erdős.  MathSciNet has a tool to calculate the collaboration distance between two mathematicians (where one may or may not be Erdős).  Alas, I am not a mathematician, and if I have an Erdős number at all, it's probably quite large.  But the concept of collaboration distance is, of course, not limited to mathematics.

Source: Wikimedia Commons, user h2g2bob, cc-by-sa
Are there any online tools to calculate the collaboration distance between two arbitrary scientists, whether in mathematics or not?  In principle this should be possible using any large database of scientific publications.  It would be fun to know if I have an Erdős number, or what my distance (and the route!) is to famous scientists in my field.

I have been using https://www.csauthors.net/distance for a few years now. It seems to work decent considering I am not a mathematician either. However, it does not work on your name :(

This one does not work well for me (gives me a smaller number than my true number.) One of my co-authors has a very common (Chinese) name and this tool isn't able to distinguish between different authors with that name.

It did work very well for me.

This works great for me in 2023 - I've barely published anything but it did find a correct path between me & Erdős.

Did not work for me at all. I find distances of about 5or 6 for some of my own coauthors (with sometimes dozens of coauthored papers) where it should clearly be 1 for them.

While it's always pretty difficult to offer a definitive “no” as answer to such a question, I'll go on an limb and say it here:
No, the mathematical community is the only large scale community to feature comprehensive collaboration database, and ways to query the collaboration graph. None of the widely used general publication or citation databases offer such a feature (I checked Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar). Field-specific databases in other fields (such as PubMed, SciFinder, etc.) do not offer them either.

VOSviewer is a free (however not online) tool developed at Leiden University that can be used to create maps based on network data. Although it does not have any function for the Erdös number, it provides capabilities to view collaboration networks. The example below (taken from the VOS-viewer web page) shows an overview of the scientific world through relations among 5000 major scientific journals. Visit the web-page for more details on the software and additional examples.

I think it's a nice visualization tool, but it doesn't feature “collaboration networks”, unlike you said… it provides plenty of other (interesting) graphs, but not that particular type.

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text:
After long time without, three review invitations in two weeks. Coincidence, or do editors share lists of helpful reviewer names?
Being early in my academic career, I don't yet get many paper reviews.  Until recently, I had reviewed two papers in two years, and rejected one invitation to review.  My last review was completed some 10 months ago.
Two weeks ago, I agreed to review a paper.  Since then, I have received two more invitations.  In total, in the past two weeks, I have received as many invitations to review as in the two years prior to that.  All are from different editors, but the latest request is from a journal for which I reviewed 2 weeks ago, and comes 2 days after submitting a review to a different journal.
Although I have not calculated the probability, I guess it is unlikely that the sudden string of reviews is a coincidence.  I have the impression that accepting and quickly submitting a helpful review has caused the additional review invitations.  Which brings me to the question.
Do editors within the same journal typically share with each other names of people who have written helpful reviews in the (recent) past?  How about editors of different journals, that may or may not have the same publisher?

Why the down vote?

The journal editor (in chief) may not, but boards of editors have overlap and word does often spread that "X@Y is prompt, conscientious and fair."
Or it could be random entropy.
I wouldn't give it much thought. At best, you are being thought of as a good reviewer. At worst, it's a random quirk.  Choose the interpretation that makes you happiest.
--
p.s. If you're feeling overwhelmed, it's entirely ok to tell a journal that you have to decline. Respond as soon as you can so that they can move on. Quick declinations (and referrals to potential other reviewers when possible) are also signs of good, conscientious colleagues. And I'm a strong believer that the good karma from these unrenumerated acts of conscientiousness will help in the long run.

In addition to possible sharing by editors, if the journals are by the same publisher or reviewing system, they may be sharing a database of reviewers and their expertise.  Some journal management software lets you search for reviewers with related expertise, and also allows editors to give ratings to their reviewers.  Thus, if you give a good review, the software may begin recommending you to editors in the same "family" of publications.
Between being a good reviewer and general growing notability in your field, within the next couple of years you may find yourself getting many review requests.  It's important to set a boundary for yourself of how much time you want to invest in professional service, so that you can strike an appropriate balance between service and the rest of your responsibilities.

I guess it depends on the platform that manages the submission and review, but within the ScholarOne system as an editor or an associate editor there are additional filters that help you see when was the last time someone was invited for review, how many he has accepted/rejected, what is the average review turnaround time etc.
There are also two additional stats, the timeliness of the review and the relevance of the review that allow editors to essentially mark reviewers (rather simple system of 1-2-3) for a given review and which appear next to each reviewer. High averages, a good turnaround time and matching keywords in your profile make you a good candidate for a reviewer.


text:
Is it unusual to get an informal offer before any recommendation letters have arrived?
A person I know applied for a time-limited position (i.e. a post-doc) somewhere in western Europe.  Xe gets invited for an interview.  The next day, xe receives an informal e-mail, We will recommend HR to send you a formal offer.
However, we are still waiting to receive recommendation letters from your references before we can do so.
And I thought the content of recommendation letters were essential.  In this case they are apparently a formality.  Is this indeed very unusual, or is it more common than I think?

Why the downvote?

Yeah, I think this is a difference in academic culture. In the US recommendation letters are huge. From what I've read on this site and elsewhere, it seems that in other places they are not really considered and often contain little of substance

Hiring for a limited-term position like a postdoc is a much lighter decision than making a tenure-track offer.  Often, there is an urgency to the hiring as well, as many postdocs are tied to specific contracts with specific tasks that need to be executed on a fast time-frame.  As a result, "ordinary" postdoc hiring can sometimes run a lot more like corporate hiring than academic hiring: a fast process where it's more about the person's ability to fill defined responsibilities and less about their long-term potential as a researcher.  In a case like this, references are still important, but are more like a corporate hire, where they are confirming the candidate is what they appear to be, rather than causing them to be noticed in the first place.
It sounds like this is the case for your acquaintance.  That's great, if the position is one that they want.  Nothing is certain, however, until the offer is in hand: just as easily as an informal offer can be extended, so can it be retracted if the circumstances change.

In the UK, or at least at my University, recommendation letters are not used in the hiring process of tenure track positions. For some reason after a department decides to hire someone, HR requires recommendation letters. For PhD students, we request and use recommendation letters. HR is not involved in that process and they are not employees.

Does that mean the recommendation letters might as well contain meaningless gibberish?

@gerrit no idea. We have never had HR say we cannot hire someone, but potentially if the letter was really bad, or blank, or gibberish, they might overrule our decision.


text:
Teaching Multiple Subjects
I plan to do my PhD in Computational Linguistics in the near future. As one would imagine, it requires a bit of knowledge in Computer Science as well as Linguistics. Particularly, I enjoy French and Japanese.
The problem is that I want to teach too many topics at the university level. In my imaginary world, I would teach courses in Computer Science that overlap with Computational Linguistics (e.g. Structure of Programming Languages, Artificial Intelligence, etc.), as well as French and Japanese.
As far as I know, we have only one professor at my university who overlapped topics - the Russian department needed a temp, and one of the Computer Science professors was a Russian native; he filled in for a semester.
Presumably I would only teach courses that overlap with my research (the Computer Science courses I listed, French/Japanese Syntax/Morphology, etc).
Granted this is pretty specific to my case, so how about I generalize: how plausible is it to teach multiple subjects that are inter-departmental at the university level? If it is indeed plausible and is something that I can specifically work toward, what steps are necessary to be able to do so?
Edit: To clarify, this would be teaching as a postdoc, not particularly during my PhD. I think my brain would explode if I tried to take on that kind of workload.

At your institution are language courses taught by linguists? This sounds like a silly question but I ask because at my undergrad university, linguists taught linguistics courses but the actual languages were taught by (mostly adjunct) faculty in the respective departments e.g. a native Spanish speaking adjunct professor, not an American linguist with a research emphasis on Spanish.

@Tim In fact it varies greatly. At my university, the Japanese courses are taught by 2 Americans and 1 native Japanese; the 2 Americans don't have any particular linguistic experience: 1 did a PhD in Japanese theather, the other I'm not so sure. In the French department, it also varies. The Advanced French Grammar course is sometimes taught by an American French linguist, sometimes by a native French person. The French Linguistics course is usually taught by the aforementioned American linguist.

Unless you have absolutely no prior teaching experience, i'd advise against this.  Your job as a postdoc is to publish.  Teaching will only get in your way.

It sounds like fun, but teaching is hard work. At the very least, start with one course, judge how it goes, and adjust your schedule.

As someone who is doing my PhD in Natural Language Understanding I first of all recommend you are careful what you wish for. Undertaking a teaching post while doing a PhD is very time consuming and I have found that it has got in the way of my research. So much so in fact that I limit myself to no more than 6 hours of teaching a week.

In my imaginary world, I would teach courses in Computer Science that
  overlap with Computational Linguistics (e.g. Structure of Programming
  Languages, Artificial Intelligence, etc.), as well as French and
  Japanese.

I'm sure it's different depending on the university, but whatever department is paying your PhD stipend most definitely has first call on where and what you teach. Although I'm a mathematical linguist, I spend all of my time teaching programming and artificial intelligence. Another reason for this is because my background is mathematics and computer science.

Granted this is pretty specific to my case, so how about I generalize:
  how plausible is it to teach multiple subjects that are
  inter-departmental at the university level?

Taking on a PhD project is about becoming a specialist, not a generalist. Everyone is arguably a generalist. If you are a Computational Linguist, just take on modules such as Intelligent Systems, Computational Linguistics, Mathematical Linguistics, Logic Programming, Math for Computer Science, etc.

If it is indeed plausible and is something that I can specifically
  work toward, what steps are necessary to be able to do so?

I think it is possible. However, you would need to get explicit permission from your project advisors which I imagine would be difficult. You would then have to discuss how you can help with the other departments such as Linguistics. However, be prepared for rejection if you are not classically trained in the subject and hold some sort of academic merit.
When you start your PhD you will not become a lecturer most likely. You will be encouraged to take on a teaching assistant or demonstrator role, aiding a lecturer. This is still good as it's the next best thing and sometimes you can get loads of marking. It will also give you loads of time to reflect and decide what you want to teach.

This is a good answer, but I think that I hadn't made something clear previously; I don't intend to try anything like this during my PhD, that would be quite the workload. This is teaching as a postdoc :)

Regardless of the stage of career at which you would teach, the basic issue is the following: at least in the US, faculty and teaching staff are normally hired by individual departments, and approved up the "food chain," as it were.
Consequently, your teaching duties are expected as much as possible to be a part of that department's work—since you're being paid by them, you should teach their classes. If you want to teach classes in multiple programs, you'd need to find a way to secure a joint appointment, in which you could teach in multiple different departments.
An alternative—although this would be harder to do as a postdoc—would be to look for a smaller school in which several of the programs are lumped together. Obviously, this is much easier in your case to do with the languages (French and Japanese), rather than CS. I would be hard pressed to think of a case where someone would get a joint appointment in CS and a modern languages department. (CS and linguistics is another issue, but linguistics staff wouldn't teach modern languages.) The reason it would be hard to do this with a postdoc is that schools small enough to lump lots of languages into a single department probably aren't big enough to support large numbers of postdocs (or in some cases, any postdocs at all).

Postdocs are short-term and hard to get, and I don't think it's wise to make such restricted plans (at your current stage stage). It might be for example that if you get a postdoc, they will have in mind a specific course that they want you to teach, and it almost certainly would not be a language course. On the other hand, such planning could land you a first job (not a postdoc) somewhere that had multiple instructional needs. Setting aside the postdoc restriction, it is plausible and potentially advantageous to be in a position to teach multiple areas, even in multiple departments.
Speaking as a linguist, I know a number of linguists who are also in language teaching. Sometimes the language (modern) is taught in the linguistics department (which may be a "languages and linguistics" department), and sometimes this is via a joint appointment. In the latter case, the person usually is hired in one department and later splits the appointment. I doubt that you could get an initial position in a French department with a degree in CS or Linguistics, but if you had an appointment in Linguistics, that could be split later. Though if you spoke something "exotic" (in some contexts, that could be Japanese), you might actually get your first appointment in language teaching.
In R1 institutions, such arrangements probably exist for 5-10% of appointments, and for smaller colleges I expect it would be much higher (because they might only have need for a half of a Japanese instructor).


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Why do some academic papers have sentence-cased titles?
I noticed that many academic papers that I cited in my thesis have sentence-cased titles, for example, this one "Comparative analysis using K-mer and K-flank patterns provides evidence for CpG island sequence evolution in mammalian genomes."
I was just wondering why and if this is correct?
I was about to manually fix all of them so that they will appear with the proper title-cased titles on the Bibliography.

Your last paragraph (and the implicit question) is addressed here and your first question is not really answerable, as it is just a matter of style or personal preferences. There is no rule saying that you have to use title case for every title.

The title of the linked paper is formatted correctly, at least, per APA style. In general, whether a title is formatted correctly or not, is a matter of its adherence to a publication style, which should be used consistently throughout a document.

Also somewhat related (concerning words like "correct", "fix", and "proper"), on User Experience SE: Is it default that an English version is always Title Case, while other languages like Dutch don't use Title Case?

Because title case is a (horrible) custom used (only?) in the United States of America.  This tradition is redundant now that technology allows for titles to be set in bold or in larger typefaces.

Many journals prefer sentence-case to title-case - in this case, a quick glance at the contents list for that particular journal shows they use sentence case for all titles. Neither is "proper" or "correct" in all circumstances.
If you are trying to conform to a particular style, check if it has guidelines on preferred capitalisation for citations. For example, the ACS style guide recommends:

In [articles from] ACS journals, capitalization follows that of the original publication;
  in other publications, the main words are capitalized

If there is no firm guidance in your particular style, then you can either leave them in the original capitalisation, or standardise them all in whichever form you prefer. (Personally, I default to sentence case...)


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Ethics of using company data from internship for academic project
I am a graduate student and one of my research projects requires me to crawl a website using their public API.  This is going alright but the amount of data we can collect is limited, since it is a public API.
As it happens, I will be doing an internship at the company that owns that website, and will soon have access to an unlimited supply of their data.  Is it okay if I use that data for my academic research project, or will they expect me to only use their data for projects relating to my internship?

You will almost certainly need the company's permission. I'd expect you will have to sign an NDA. It may also be more difficult to publish your results if you can't share your data with reviewers.

"will they expect me to only use their data for projects relating to my internship?" - Why don't you simply ask them?

This is not about ethics, really, but about law.

The public data is obviously ok to use for academic research, but do not expose private client data through research publications, regardless of whether or not an NDA is in place.  I guarantee that you would be persona non grata in your industry if you do that. You would be de facto blackballed by any company that discovered that you exposed private corporate information of a client.  I know for a fact that if I ever found out that you published private data of any company you worked for, you would never work for me; I'd make sure of it.

You need to ask for permission. Aggregate summarized data may be okay, but proprietary data will probably not be.

I suggest that you may already be doomed before ever asking.  Depending on the nature of your research, you should be prepared to be a pariah in the corporate world for publicly exposing private corporate data or a pariah in the research community for shilling for a client whether or not you use their private data for your research project.  If your result is unflattering to Corporation A, you could be blackballed. If your result is flattering to Corporation A, you could be thought of as a corporate shill.  If your results are in between, no one will care about your findings.

You should ask the company where you do your internship. Perhaps they are fine with whatever you want to do. Perhaps they will allow you to use their data but only release summaries, not the raw data. Perhaps they will require you to anonymize it.
In addition, how will you do the analysis? Will you take the company's data and transfer it to your own computer? (This may well not be welcomed by the company.) Or do you plan on using a company-supplied machine to do your analyses? (Same problem - companies don't necessarily like it if you use their hardware for what are essentially personal tasks.) Do you want to install third party software to analyze your data on their machines?
Think through what you want to do, then go to your supervisor. Depending on their personality, people may even be interested in working with you on this, perhaps get a publication out of it.
Whatever you do, don't, don't, don't just use the data without asking. Whether or not you sign an NDA.

Strong, strong emphasis on "don't". It could get you in to serious trouble.

Ask them and see what they have to say. It's one thing to crawl their public api in your own time ( which actually may specifically prevent you from doing your research according to its terms of use ) but using their internal data directly without asking would be unethical at best and potentially illegal at worst. ( and the last thing that you would want is to be known as the guy that stole people's personal information for their own gain then got dragged through court when they made it public) while your research may only contain aggregate data or  anonymised datasets then that still won't change the perception of potential future employers.

You have to ask for permission, in writing [*]. Don't just use the data without asking, that would be terminally unethical. If they are reluctant or have a confidentiality or security concern, you (and/or your research supervisor) need to make the case to them in terms of how they will benefit from publications and exposure - for reputation, recruiting, etc. Conduct this negotiation at the highest appropriate level you can manage, i.e. involve the people who have the authority to say yes and are actually incentivized to. (Also good for your career recognition). Sometimes you need the engineering dept to nudge the legal dept on your behalf, or override stupid policies.
Define whether you can/should anonymize/double-anonymize/ aggregate/sample/fuzz the data (e.g. look at how the Census does it). Or maybe only use non-identifying fields. They may ask you to take reasonable efforts to secure it (password, encryption, firewall, external HDD), but don't agree to unlimited indemnification.
Try to get the agreement as broad as possible, i.e. no time-limits, no limits on (non-commercial) scope, allow derivative works by you, your dept or your co-researchers. Agreements will almost always forbid derivative commercial use. If you come up with a patentable idea, who holds the rights? etc.

[*] UPDATE: nightmares like the following (a retrospective IP policy) are precisely the sort of thing that can happen: "PhD student, issued contract at year 3 which will sign over intellectual property. Is it legal?". Now that person can have all their publications vetoed and their thesis closed by the industrial partner.

@StephanKolassa: hell yeah. What if a couple of years later, the original managers you dealt with has changed, or you want to do derivative or follow-on work, or give your co-researchers access, or the company simply change their mind, or deprioritize the collaboration, or your contact leaves... Let alone getting into disagreements about IP, and who does or does not own what, or did or did not discover what. All these things can happen.

The only danger is that if you want something in writing, the lawyers may get called in. In which case, everything will get much more complicated and take much longer.

@StephanKolassa: yes, sure. You have to develop a sense for what is achievable, and secure that in writing, upfront, fairly quick. Often it's simply not worth defining IP rights, or they may already be covered by a frame agreement (or verbal understanding) between the university and the company. Company cultures on all this differ immensely. Often, identifying the person/set of people in the company who is both incentivized to say yes and has the authority to, is a large part of it. And sometimes educational in itself. Or eye-opening.

@StephanKolassa: the nightmare scenario is you don't want to do a ton of work then have a publication embargoed or held up by the partner...

I will be doing an internship at the company that owns that website, and will soon have access to an unlimited supply of their data. Is it okay if I use that data for my academic research project

NO!
No with the same strength as the answer to the question, "I'm doing research on wages in different professions. A friend has invited me round for dinner next week. Is it OK if I rifle through his filing cabinet to see if I can find a payslip?"
If you want to use somebody's data and that data is not unambiguously public, you get their explicit permission, first. In a corporate environment, there are many reasons why permission may be refused: for example, the data may be commercially sensitive or the company might have privacy obligations towards its customers. The fact that you need privileged access to get hold of the data should tell you immediately that you need permission to use it for anything other than the specific reason for which you were granted that access.

What you are talking about doing is technically considered corporate espionage without explicit permission from the client.
Facts (as you have stated them):

You are performing academic research consuming public data of Corporation A
You will be taking on an internship with Corp A and have access to Corp A's private information
Your capacity within Corp A is disjoint from your academic research involving Corp A.
You are at least entertaining the idea of using Corp A's private data for research purposes without their consent.

So my recommendation is entirely dependent upon the nature of the relationship between your internship with Corporation A and their knowledge of your research project involving their data.
If they knew about your research project before granting you an internship, I see it as entirely appropriate to ask them for permission.
If they did not know about your research project before granting you an internship, you put your internship at risk by asking for permission to use their private data, depending on the sensitivity of the data you would have access to and the personalities of the business members in control of your relationship with the corporation.  The risks associated with you violating their denial of your request could be more trouble than you are worth.
If they did not know about your research project before granting you an internship and you publish private corporate data without explicit consent, they have a legitimate claim that you sought your internship with them for the express purpose of gaining dubious access to their private information and you would be in for a world of hurt both legally and professionally.  Depending on the fallout of that, you could reasonably expect to find yourself to never be employable again in your field and you could reasonably expect to find yourself in prison depending on the nature of the data that you expose and the political clout that is held by the people that you piss off.
Edit To Add
You may already be between Scylla and Charybdis on this. Look at the potential optics: you have a research project (the nature of which you have not disclosed.) You also have an internship with access to corporate private data of one of the subjects of your research study.  Assuming that you do not announce your research project and you take the internship, your standing both within your academic community and within the corporate world will definitely hinge on the nature and results of your research project.
If you take an internship with them and then crucify them in your research project, their quid pro quo will be reciprocal regardless of whether or not they consent to you publishing their private data.  With access to their private data, your research methodology will be called into question (perhaps legally) and any potential mistake you may have made will be exacerbated.  If your results are flattering to Corporation A, then your academic peers may consider you to be politically beholden to Corporation A.
You may already be in a no win scenario other than to cancel your research project or cancel your internship.  You really are not supposed to do what you are thinking about doing.


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Consequences of applying for two (or more) programs in one university
Is it alright to apply for two different programs in one university (and in some cases programs within one department) at the same time?
I wonder whether that would affect the decision of the admission committee. For instance, will that make them reject both applications due to the differences (different ideas expressed) in each statement of purpose? Will it have any effect in general?
Finally, do you recommend such approach?
UPDATE:
I finally applied to two different Master's programmes at one university, and actually got accepted to both of the programmes without any problems. However, the programmes were in different departments! But they were both Computer Science/Technology-related programmes.

People may see both applications, and if the statements of purpose are dramatically different, this may have a negative impact on your chance of admissions. On the other hand, if the statements of purpose are compatible, I don't think it should have any effect.

please add information regarding at what level you are applying, und,grad,ms,phd

When I applied to graduate school, I sometimes sent applications to two departments within the same university because I could see myself being a fit for either department. In fact, at least one school had explicit instructions for applicants to two or more departments, so it is likely not as uncommon as one might think.
My experience was that it didn't really matter that I applied to two different departments within the same school. The biggest issue was making sure that things like my GRE scores and letters were sent to both departments instead of just one, since somehow there were mix ups along the way. In terms of the review of my application, I don't think there were any drawbacks because there was no overlap between the two review committees (i.e., no one who reviewed applications for department #1 also reviewed applications for department #2). As such, expressing different ideas in different SOPs, etc. did not have any impact on my admissions to my knowledge.
I would, however, caution you against applying to two degree programs within the same department (e.g., the Master's degree and the doctoral degree). Since it's within the same department, chances are high that the same people will be reviewing both applications, or at the very least, it is likely that someone will notice that you applied to two different degree programs. This might come across as a sign that you do not fully know what you want to do, which can hurt your application to both programs. Many departments (although certainly not all) have a policy where if you apply to the PhD program and are rejected, you can automatically be considered for the Master's degree program. If you know you ultimately want to apply for a PhD, I would apply for the PhD and see if you can be considered for the Master's program if your application is unsuccessful.

It's possible at MIT that if you apply to somewhat similar departments (e.g., physics and mathematics) someone like me who is affiliated with both departments may see both applications. If your SOPs contradict each other, it might easily have a negative impact on your application. If your SOPs for the departments are compatible, I don't think there's any problem.


text:
How can I best approach journals and academics about paying to re-use content from their papers?
Apologies if this is off-topic - please close away if it is.
I am currently engaged in writing a book. This isn't speculative - I have a commission and an advance and a budget to spend on securing additional things required such as images and photographs. And the subject matter isn't the sort of new-age nonsense academics get occasionally pestered with during their careers.
Although it's not an academic text, one of the chapters is quite academic in nature, and discusses some niche topics in archaeology. I'd really like to secure some photographs of the finds in question: they're easy to track down online.
This question - I'd like to use a figure from a paper; what's the best way to do this? - makes it clear that, as I suspected, I'd need permission (and like to pay a fee) to republish the photos. That's fine, and of course someone deserves remuneration for my profiting from their work.
The trouble I've got is that no-one I've contacted seems the least interested in helping. I've mailed several journal editors and contributors alike, asking for permission and offering to pay, but I've had no responses at all.
I was once a PhD student myself, and I'm aware that many academics are disinterested in such relatively trivial requests. But I don't know what else to do: if I can't secure at least a few photos, the whole book is likely to be cancelled. Who am I best off approaching about this, and how am I best off approaching them to try and generate some interest and engagement?

Which pubilsers are involved?

@FuzzyLeapfrog you'll have to excuse my ignorance but I'm not entirely sure. I've been finding things in journals and mailing the editors directly. Relevant journals include Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research and Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente. There is other useful material that I'm having a lot of trouble tracing to its academic origin - which is a whole other issue, of course!

You could use the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) which offers RightsLink for Permissions and is used by several publishers. Your library (if you work at an institution) could help you, too.

You're probably out of luck with material from the Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, as it has been dissolved in 2012: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istituto_italiano_per_l'Africa_e_l'Oriente. Of course, this doesn't mean that their material is not under copyright anymore, but that it may be next to impossible to find out the current copyright holder.

Many journals have a "Request Permissions" feature on their website. Open the paper of interest and look for a button with that label - often it's grouped with other options like downloading citations, setting up alerts, etc. Then follow the instructions given.
Although I've seen this in a lot of the major journals in my field, I've not done an exhaustive survey of how many journals have this option, so your mileage may vary. But it should be a good first place to look. To take an example from your comment, the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research is on JSTOR, and if you visit the page of an article, there is a "Request Permissions" button right at the bottom, below the abstract. Example here - I hope that the link is stable. If not, visit the latest issue and open any article.


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Is it good to add one extra pdf with with summary of a transcript?
In my undergraduate level, I had retaken three courses for grade improvement. I was absent in one exam that's why the grade is showing 'F', since it was improvement exam and I had passing grade in earlier semester, I did not seat for the exam with my little preparation.
I am applying for Ph.D. and I think it might have a negative impact unless they know it's 'F' because of my absence. Is it okay to add one PDF where the title will be summary and there will be a table. On that table, I want to add a column named "comments" with other columns, and I want to add the comment about that exam.

Will it be any problem?

This is not clear to me. Why did you not take the "improvement exam" if not taking it gave you an F?

My university had AB grade for absent, but I am not sure why they gave me that grade. My university kept changing the grading policy and I was one of the victims of it.

What country? It would help to get someone who knows this system to answer.

Bangladesh, but in general do you think adding an extra pdf with the transcript has any negative impact?

I am intentionally not answering because I don't really understand the situation. I hope someone familiar with that part of the world can answer you.

It depends. Some universities require you to submit official transcripts, and that transcript with the extra column is by no means the original one. However, it is also possible for you to include supplementary documents in your application. Please check the requirements.

Does the transcript also show the earlier grade or only the failing grade?

And are you applying for study in Bangladesh or elsewhere? Especially if it is places with a different marking/grading system?

I am applying for study in US, currently doing my MS in the USA as well.

@Buffy, it has both grade, for example D in the regular semester and B+ in the short term/improvement semester.


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What is the role of processing editor in a journal submission?
I submitted a paper to a high impact factor journal in my field a 4 days ago. Today, I received a email from the journal editor with the following description:

Thank you for your recent submission to TTT journal. XYZ will be the processing editor for your paper referenced above.
Your submission has been been assigned the following manuscript number: ARBITRARY007.
You will hear from the processing editor's office when the review process is complete (please allow 2-3 months for this).

So, what does this mean? Will it go to the reviewers and take 2-3 months for review? Or will it take 2-3 months for the processing editor to decide if it should be sent to reviewers for getting reviewed or be rejected?
What's the role of processing editor in this workflow?

Seems to clearly say the review process will take 2-3 months.

The email clearly says that you will hear from the processing editor's office when the review process is complete, and that the review process will take 2-3 months - so your first interpretation is correct, it will go to the reviewers who are expected to finish reviewing in 2-3 months.
Taking 2-3 months to decide to send the paper to review would be pretty extreme.


text:
Is it appropriate to cold email professors in search of a postdoc position?
I am a final-year PhD student doing my research in the field of theoretical physics. Soon, I will start applying for postdoc positions in different universities, primarily related to my area of expertise, which is holographic chaos. The problem I am facing is that there are few postdoc opportunities for my specialization, so I worry that I need to switch to a related one.
Would it be a good idea to personally mail prospective professors even if the institute doesn't have open postdoc positions in my area of expertise?

I think the answer varies for each person seeking a post doc depending on their personal goals and values.

As Buffy wrote, it is better if you can get your advisor to help you with this. However, for what it is worth, I got a postdoc in a good university in Europe (roughly top 50 globally) just by sending a cold e-mail. I was definitely lucky, but I would not have lucked out without attempting it. (I sent 3 cold e-mails around that time. One got me the position; the other two resulted in me getting to know two great senior researchers with which I still stay in touch.)

I suspect the answer may also depend on geography and the field. I personally had good luck in reaching out to potential advisors, regardless of whether I knew them well beforehand or not.

While it isn't inappropriate per se, it is also not very productive. If someone has a position they have probably made it known somehow, somewhere.
A cold email from you is easy to ignore. But if you can have your doctoral advisor make inquiries on your behalf, even with cold emails, then it is more likely to result in something. That is just because a mail from a colleague/peer is hard to ignore. They can also ask any correspondents for suggestions if they don't have anything themselves. They can also tout your skills in related areas that it is hard for you to do yourself in a believable way.

That's a great advice. Although I have personally met many professors during conferences, I fear they might ignore my email due to their busy schedules.

@codebpr They may also just not remember your name.

@WolfgangBangerth that is very true indeed. Also Senior Professors hardly reply to mails.

I don't agree with this (though I don't think this deserve a downvote). I happen to have sent such an email in the past to a professor that I barely met at a conference a few years before, explaining my motivation to join his research group. He replied that, unfortunately, there was no open position yet, but that external fundings existed and strongly recommended me for these applications. He also sent my profile to one of his collegues who later opened a position. I ended up joining the team

@Didier, your experience gives me hope. It definitely depends on the Professor, not all are same, for sure. Some of them are really benevolent, like you said. Same thing happens to me when I email an author regarding some doubt related to his/her paper. Some are kind enough to give the details and some turn a blind eye to it.

@codebpr Glad it can help. I have to say that this person is a very nice person, that our interests really matched and that I really was focusing on that specific research team. Not sure this would have worked in any other circumstance. I had nothing to lose so I tried. Good luck with your applications

@Didier there is a massive difference between contacting someone you met at a conference - even briefly - and cold-calling professors you have never met before.

@JackAidley I get your point and I quite agree with you. But I am very unsure that this professor even remembered me, one a the numerous PhD students at that conference. If it had any impact, I would say that it was the fact that I could start my email with "We met a few years back at [...]".

...because an email from a colleague generally isn't "cold".

"While it isn't inappropriate per se, it is also not very productive. " This is completely untrue in certain places--see my answer below. (and: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4471/academia-varies-more-than-you-think-it-does-the-movie)

My answer is it depends on your own priorities. Talking about my own experience I choose field that I am interested but not necessarily in my PhD research area. I used tools and techniques but not the subject knowledge from my PhD research. It’s not bad to switch field based on job perspective, your interest, and future scope.
If you think there are not many post-doc positions in your field you may create one for yourself by applying grants/funding if that is something you like to do now and in the future.
Emailing professors for potential post-doc positions is also a great idea—it helps and sometime professors may be able to create positions if they are really interested in your expertise and work.

Thank you for your valuable advice. Just a quick question how different is the Postdoc scenario in Asia (in particular Japan)compared to Europe in general? Which one should be preferred in terms of the research environment and funding?

Do you mean post-doc opportunities or trend of having post-docs? I am not particularly familiar with Japan but there are several forms of post-docs (if you think postdoc as a position to take after PhD to do research under supervision of senior researcher) in multiple countries such as China, India, Japan, South Korea and so on.

Yes, by postdoc I mean, further research work after PhD under the supervision of a senior researcher, probably an Associate Professor or a Professor. In some cases, there might be special research groups which work as a team and hire recent PhD graduates.

This is strongly dependent on the country.  In Europe, especially Germany/Austria, cold emailing is basically the standard way to apply to PhD and postdoc positions. (It is so common that many professors never explicitly advertise positions on their websites, since they get a steady stream of cold emails from which they have a pool of applicants to select from.)
In the US, on the other hand, cold emailing is unheard of for PhD positions, and less common for postdoc positions. I am not sure about the situation in Japan/east Asia.

And here in Australia, cold-emailing is the norm for PhD positions (unless you do a PhD with someone you worked with previously, which is very common), but usually a waste of time for postdoc positions, which are advertised.

In European universities this could work. I would recommend to check Euraxess and Researchgate and scholarshipdb to check out any potential places. One more thing you could do is to check news about any large funding received by professors which is generally announced on the University websites which can be seen with Google search. This way your cold email search will be beneficial since you know the potential projects that could possibly recruit or looking for post docs.

It's a zero-sum game.  If emailing really does work then everyone will start sending those, and the inbox of the perspective host will become the new indeed.com.  There will be YouTube videos teaching you how to write those emails, or even offering their ghostwriting services.
If you need to raise a host's attention, do something that is not free.  For instance, asking your advisor to send the email will cost his/er reputation.  Meeting people at conferences is also not free (conferences are not free).


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Is it possible to get a research grant without any degree as a person that has a self-learning mentality?
With advancements in the internet and technology, I think that I can learn anything from internet with requirements of time and interest. I am very interested in quantum computing technology, but after finishing the learning process, I should do some research to find new things in that field. I am not aiming to get money or anything like that, I want only to get knowledge and have fun.
But in that stage, I guess that I will need a funding to build a lab and fulfill my needs to finish research. My writings above are my plan, I didn't mean any isolation,but I think that self-learning is the best way for me because I don't have enough money to get a degree and one of the reasons of plan is that. I also think that the internet can fulfill any needs for research except money.
Therefore,The aim of that question is asking you about your thoughts about my plans. Also,I want to ask about funding, is it possible to find research grant as a non-degree, self-taught person?

If you want to convince grantgivers that you will do something useful with the grant, you need a track record that shows you're able to pull that off. Such a track record is usually acquired while completing a PhD.

Yes. There are a few researchers at major universities without advanced degrees.  They can get grants.  But in your case: no, without a university (or company) around you, there is little prospect for money to build a lab.

Funding to pursue a PhD may be easier to get.

What do you mean by "get a research"?

Furthermore, many grants I have seen have explicit eligibility requirements. One of these is usually "The PI is a faculty at a public university or research centre in Country X / European Union".

Many universities will pay you for pursuing a MSc or PhD in quantum computing. So no, it's not expensive. The issue is that you typically need a BSc degree to start these but some universities have an exception to that rule -- i.e. if you convince the university that you'd make an excellent researcher -- how you convince them is up to you.

The appropriate context is that it's simpler to get a PhD than to get grants or funding for a lab - most people with PhD's don't succeed in that; so a degree is considered a not-that-high bar of admission, just table stakes that everyone (including the "unworthy" with little hopes of getting funded) is assumed to have.

A comment: a lab? so i assume you actually want to do Hardware? Thats funny, the best groups in the field worked over 10years in a team of 10people with leads who worked for 30years on related subjects. I can assure you, the instruction which you need are not in the internet, you have to study (the degree is a byproduct). If I am looking at your questions here, you have no clue how hard it is to get any quantum HW working. Probably the time i spend on calibrating procedures of simple coax cable to control the qubit exceeds your attention span.  Study physics/CS/Math, then come back.

@Sascha: Whatever your penultimate sentence means, it does sound not very friendly to me.

@user111388 It was as friendly as possible, and at the same time the advice  in the answers: If you are so brilliant, then getting a degree is probably simpler (and faster) than trying to get a funding without a degree. At the same time, i looked at a few of his questions and my assessment would be more devastating than my last sentence, so i would prefer to leave the assessment to the potential professors.

No.
Without a degree and a position at a university or research institute, it is highly unlikely you can get any kind of funding for research.
You can try to get a job at a company that does research in such topics (which requires who to have the background knowledge, not necessarily a degree), but this will also be hard to get.

It's the job, not the degree, that is critical.

For private persons without institutional or academic background there's Patreon and GoFundMe as funding sources. YouTube "researchers" like NileRed, William Osman or Linus Sebastian get funding from Patreon I believe, in addition to sponsorships on videos. After William Osman's "lab" (i.e. garage) and house burned down he could get a six digit figure funding to relocate. This is more of an exception though and less of a rule, but is a nice fit with OPs idea of "I want only to get knowledge and have fun."

I wouldn't absolutely shut down the idea.  OP may have extraordinary networking skills and charisma - it's not impossible that they could privately persuade some VCs to part with some money.  This is how the entire private sector works, recall.  I don't think OP has any chance at applying for normal grants targeted to academic and research institutions for fundamental research, but I wouldn't say it's crazy that they try to seek private funding to finance R&D for a startup, for example. The only requirement is that a sellable product has some sufficient probability of coming out the other end.

@J...  VCs (which I really don't like as a funding source) are extremely hard-nosed.  They only invest if there's a very good prospect of a pretty fast turn around on their investment to a large profit.  Charisma and networking skills might get you a hearing, but the only thing that gets you a cheque is a solid business plan that doubles their money in a matter of no more than five years.  I've seen VCs sell up and effectively ruin profitable businesses simply because they're not profitable enough and they want to get their money back immediately.  Avoid them if possible, IMO.

About it being hard to get such a job at a company without a degree... depending on the jurisdiction it might even be completely impossible/illegal. There are countries where certain positions can only be given to employees who have a degree in that field. And who would hire a researcher into a made-up unskilled blue collar position but white collar wage? That would just invite tax investigators...

@StephenG I don't think I suggested this route would be easy, if that's what you read from my comment.  OP is looking for free money.  The options will all, naturally, come with heavy caveats.

@J... One doesn't even need a working product.  Look at Theranos, for example.  That being said, there is a joke in private aviation:  "How do you make a small fortune in aviation?"  "Start with a large fortune."  I would imagine that something similar applies here:  if you want people to fund you, you have to start by funding yourself.

To add to J. Fabian Meier's answer, there is more to getting a research grant than just the research part and having a good idea.
There are many requirements in terms of financial aspects (turning your proposed budget into something the research funder will accept), rules and regulations about what can and can not be funded, legal issues (Most research funders will have requirements that you be affiliated with a university/research institute), and regulations on how the money used is reported which may also include requiring financial audits.
Also many funders will require someone else to also commit to partial funding, I.e the funding body only pays 50% of some costs while the rest comes from, say, a university.
This makes submitting a grant application almost impossible without a university/research institute backing you.
Even if you got all that, when you apply for the research grant you will need show that a) you are capable of doing the research b) you are the person they should fund c) your research ideas are plausible and exciting enough for them to spend money on you. All of which is much easier once you have a degree and have done research first in a research group with another person (who has their own money) before you start applying for money yourself.
Also you say you can learn anything from the internet, well the point of research is to do something new, thus by definition it wont be on the internet yet. If you want to learn over the internet have a look into some online degrees, just be careful some places are scams but there are some quality institutions out there that give degrees based on partial or fully online courses. These can be cheaper than a traditional in-person degree.

In the U.S., there is the Small Business Innovative Research program (Google). A Phase 1 award is (last time I looked) about $500KUSD which expects a very convincing detailed plan (think Ph.D. thesis proposal); if a Phase 2 is awarded, it is up to a USDmillion or so, to produce a proof of concept; Phase 3 requires the proposer to have an industrial or Federal government partner who formally commits to teaming with the proposer (with their own money as well as with the Phase III money) to productize the project. I know a 2-person company that made it up to Phase II.

"you can learn anything from the internet" evidently means you think you can learn anything that is on the Internet (i.e., the WWW, which is a subset of the Internet). That is implausible. Moreover, so much essential information in any field is not on the Web, and quite a bit on the Web is poorly documented and even outright wrong.

You can't get your own research grant, but if you start your own business you can be part of a research consortium.
I worked on a Horizon 2020 project.  Those are big, international projects, where the funding agency (European Commission) requires that the partners are from different countries and some are small or medium enterprises.  One of our partners was a company with just one employee apart from the founder.  If you are really good at something that partners from academia need, and they know and trust you and your business, they may well invite you.  You won't be leading the project (or maybe you can — I'm not actually sure, but it would seem uncommon and unlikely), but you will be getting a part of the grant.  I'm pretty sure the business partners are not required to have degrees (some had roles that weren't research), so this way could, at least in theory, be a way in.
However, you'd have to be really good at what you do, network with the right people, and win their trust.  None of this is remotely easy, but there is no formal rule blocking you.

I was just going to point out exactly this, when I saw your answer. As opposed to what several other answers claim, research grants are not exclusively given to research institutions, but they may well be given to industrial partners, as well - although the funding modalities may be different in that case, such as an obligation to pay an equal part oneself in addition to the grant (i.e. the grant funds 50% of the work). Although, if you're at that point, the closest thing to a "research grant" might rather be one of the investment programs for startups.

I've worked on multiple Horizon 2020 grants, and IIRC it's common to include key personnel CV's in the grant application. Academic degrees and relevant publications are useful but not strictly necessary - prior business success in the sector is also a valid way to show competence. "Self-learned from the internet" is not. It's just a subjective claim, not objective proof.

@MSalters True, the reviewers may raise their eyebrows if a one-person company with a self-learned person is on the application, but if the senior professor PI with a stellar CV then declares that they vouch for the high quality work of this partner, I think it may well work — which should happen only if OP is indeed very good at what they're doing (if they are, they will probably have business success).

In most cases, research grants are not awarded to people.  They are awarded to research institutions.  So no, an individual cannot get those grants on their own, no matter what degree they have or do not have.
There is no rule preventing eligible research institutions from hiring someone who has no degrees and having those people apply for grants on behalf of the institution.  But generally there are plenty of people who have degrees, so they get hired.

Even for grants awarded to research institutions it's somewhat common to have specific requirements for the research team e.g. having the principal investigator without a doctorate degree may mean automatical disqualification.

If an institute hired someone without qualifications to a position applied for by people with qualifications it would likely be bombarded with law suits from people who lost out.  I just don't see how any institution would ever risk doing this.

@StephenG It depends on what you mean by qualifications.  Publications and prizes are often preferred over PhDs.  Typically, if the person's qualifications match the job ad, then there is no risk of litigation.  There is no requirement to advertise that a PhD is required, though it often is advertised.

More on principle investigators without PhDs https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8428/professorship-without-phd-in-the-united-states

@AnonymousPhysicist The OP does not seem to have any qualifications and I include publications in that term.  There are other potential legal problems with hiring someone without formal qualifications, e.g. insurance requirements may require that only suitably qualified people work in a lab or can use certain equipment.  If the OP needs to hire assistants then it will be hard to get good staff when the person directing research is unqualified.  If the OP is serious about a career, getting a B.Sc. would be very valuable in the long run.

The distinction might be minor, but typically grants are awarded to the person, while the institution acts as a sponsor. I've seen many times professors with grants (such as ERC) that move from one university to the other bringing the money with them.

@BlueElephant I am unfamiliar with ERC rules, but I think that if you check them you find you are wrong.  Certainly grants awarded to institutions do change institutions along with the named personnel.

Yeah, sorry, you are correct. Although I'd like to stress that the actual application is done by the PI, not by the institution (even though, legally, the institution is the recipient of the money).

@BlueElephant I think both "awarded to institution" and "awarded to person" are simplifications. Both the PI and the institution are necessary pieces for a grant such as ERC to be award - the PI because they are the one promising specific research results, and the institution because they are tasked with administering the money. Neither of those sides can choose to cut out the other (but the PI may change to a different eligible administrating organization).

@xLeitix Thanks for the clarification.

"With advancements in the internet and technology, I think that I can
learn anything from internet with requirements of time and interest."

So why don't you just "learn from the Internet" how to make money? Seriously, to achieve your goals, you don't necessarily need research grants, you just need money. Note that, e.g., Einstein, Fresnel, Tsiolkovsky, and Grassmann made history in science when their jobs had nothing or little to do with their discoveries. Note also that people in academia often spend time and effort on teaching and/or raising funds that are at least comparable to those spent on their research.

Fabian and Rob have explained well why you can't get an academic research grant without a degree, relevant experience, a track record of success, an institutional affiliation, and a substantial part of the required equipment, space, personnel etc.
On the other hand, there are plenty of public competitions, some substantially funded such as the x-prize, that are geared towards private individuals and small companies. The downside is you get paid only if you win, but if you win, it is not out of the question that you could be funded to continue working on a specific research topic.
For example

NASA Venus Rover Challenge
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-wants-your-help-designing-a-venus-rover-concept
DHS https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/prize-competitions
DARPA https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/public/prizes

It is quite common for private consultants to do research for hire. They won't get funded from academic sources, but corporations and government agencies pay for such research all of the time. You'd be surprised what kind of equipment some people have in their garages. Others rent shared user facilities at national labs or universities.

I'd say it's very unlikely, but not impossible.
Most fields/companies value experience more than a degree. AFAIK there is a quantum computer you can access for free, so you can get experience. You can use this to get a job, and then - with a company behind you - it'll be easier to to what you want.
Crowdfunding could be a way as well for research (instead of a grant). Thunderf00t financed his research by his Youtube subscribers that later lead to some interesting papers. (the idea to do a research on alkali metal+water reaction also came from there)

Not all grant programs have the same requirements. Recently, the OpenStreetMap Foundation's microgrant program closed (where "micro" is still thousands of euros, depending on what you need) where you could apply for funding if you want to do OpenStreetMap-related projects or research, and it's not as if only Dr. Ing. Male White PhD could apply to those.
NLNet is another organisation that funds various projects. They also have theme funds: if you want to do research that fits within one of those themes, it should be possible to get funding there. A related organisation is NLNet Labs, which helps find funding for projects like looking into the security of some important software. Which organisation may be able to help you depends on what you want to do and whether someone finds that important enough to fund it.
I happen to know of these two since they were pointed out to me, but there are many more organisations that spend money on all sorts of things. You may need to do part of the work beforehand to, like others already said, prove that you can actually pull it off, at least until you have some kind of track record, but you needn't simply accept that without a silly piece of paper you can't ever get funding for research you're enthusiastic about.
That said, I did interpret your question in a broad way: a research grant without a degree in general, but I'm not sure if that's what you meant. If you don't merely want to do a few projects for the good of all, but really want to make academia your career, then universities is typically where the money is at, and they indeed generally require you to have completed a university study before considering you worthy of a position in a university.

I say Yes. I did something very similar when I was a teenager but on a smaller scale.
You don't say what country you are in. I live in Britain. Many years ago I was learning classical guitar. I discovered a comprehensive guide to guitar playing that was only published in Spanish. I decided that I should translate it into English. The problem was that I spoke no Spanish. I applied for and received a grant to spend eight weeks in Spain at a language school. In the end I did not translate the book but there was never any requirement that I report back to the grant-giving body. I can now play the guitar and speak Spanish.
If you are enterprising enough and convincing enough, pretty much anything is possible. You just have to be willing to find the right channels.
In your situation (but assuming you live in Britain) I would do the following:
Search for a charitable institution that provides funding for the advancement of individuals. There are surprisingly many.
Preferably find one that has some connection to the field you are interested in. If you can't, there are more general ones.
What are these charities? They are almost all a result of a very wealthy individual who has left a sizable trust fund in their will. Usually these are for funding "young" people but not all. Surprisingly some of these funds are underused - they have money sloshing around but they don't get enough applicants.
Note: If you fail with one, keep going - they don't keep in touch with each other.
Now comes the bootstrapping process. Firstly you must come up with plans for a feasibility study. This will require some work but you usually need to convince a committee not a panel of scientists (although sometimes one expert will be asked to look over the proposal). If successful, this limited grant will be enough to get you started on a small scale. When you have a very convincing and well-researched plan with preliminary results, you go back, declare your success and ask for further funds to progress to the next stage. The charity will be delighted that the money has been put to such good use and will likely fund you again for the next phase. At the end of this, if you are successful, there are a number of ways to go. If you want to get into academia rather than go it alone, then at this point you can go to a university and say, "Look I have self-funding for the next X years and I have all these original results, can you help me to publish my work, can I register as a student and make use of your facilities? Unis always like funding from outside, whatever the source and if your early results are really convincing, they are likely to find you a supervisor.(See note at end) If you don't want to be in academia then continue independently. Maybe you can sell a patent to a big company and/or work for them. Maybe you can form your own company.
There are plenty of millionaires and billionaires in the world who never had a degree. You just have to be made of the right stuff.
By doing it gradually this way, you discover whether you are actually any good and whether your enthusiasm is lasting. There is a heck of a lot of work going it alone, but exceptional individuals have done it throughout history.

Note: I personally got into music college without the necessary exams. I worked hard and got a teaching job at the end of it. After teaching guitar for 7 tears I got bored. I got into a postgraduate computer science course at Cambridge University without having a first degree. This was on the basis that I had taught myself to program and then got a job as a programmer. Experience counts - even with academics provided they can see beyond the ends of their noses. It is even possible to get huge exemptions from an undergraduate degree course and still be awarded the degree if you can demonstrate actual working experience.
If you (cliche coming) think outside the box and appear confident, it's surprising how many people will be generous enough to help you. If you don't get a grant then at least you have tried so what's to lose?

what's to lose is your time and energy that could have been spent on strategies with higher success rates. also note that OP is not talking about translation or something else that is a "one person job." they are talking about quantum computing research that require enormous capital investments (easily in the millions of dollars). There is 0% chance that anyone would give a random single individual this kind of funding. The legal liability alone for issues like OSHA would preclude granting to an individual without an organization behind them.

It is good to hear that you were successful in securing a grant for 2 weeks journey to Spain. Unfortunately, the research environment became much more competitive in the last decades. There are more people asking for support and less funding overall. Also, quantum computing is way more expensive than language courses.

@Dmitry Savostyanov  -  8 weeks not two ;)  I half expected this sort of response. There are always ways for exceptional people (I don't count myself) to bootstrap themselves into success. Take it small step-by-step and it's remarkable what can be done.  Limited thinking is what limits people.

@roger-reject - I suppose I should have known better than to post this solution on the Academia website! It presumably is full of people who only know the conventional way of doing things.

@chaslyfromUK It's not about conventional or not. It's of course possible to break into quantum computing research in unconventional ways, nobody's disputing that (other answers mention grants to attend school, or other step-by-step approaches). But the OP is specifically asking about getting grant money to directly fund research they'd carry out in their garage. It isn't plausible to expect that even a crazy rich guy is going to give a random person with NO experience and NO support structure millions of dollars in funding. You'd have better success getting your millions from the lottery.

@  You'd have better success getting your millions from the lottery. Or getting rich by some other means! If you are the crazy rich guy, you can do what you like. Admittedly you have to be a one-in-a-million person to succeed the way I describe. I'm just pointing out that it can be done. There are always non-conventional ways forward. That's what separates the sheep from the goats.

If you have even an average income, you can fund a student to do the work you specify. Go to the uni. Say I would like to fund a PhD student to do , here's some money. You dictate what the student's over-all project is.  How much does it cost to fund a student? Very little (a few thousand a year) there are students begging for money. Don't be one, fund one!

A budget for PhD research student would be much more than a few thousands per year. Whether or not there are "students begging for money", Universities have strict rules on how PhD projects are done. Even if you bring in funding, University will appoint a superviser from their permanent staff, and you won't be allowed to "dictate" your research program. PhD students are not "servants" of the funder.

@ Dmitry Savostyanov  - Thanks for your comment. I realise now that I dashed off my answer very quickly. I plan to write another that is much more specific and that, I hope, will address some of your scepticism. I shall probably delete the first answer as unworthy ;

Commenters here are talking past each other. While this answer probably doesn't apply to quantum mechanics, the title question doesn't either, and what this answer does provide is a great example of a field (language learning) where there are grants and even research (translation) opportunities available to those without a traditional degree. +1.

"Surprisingly some of these funds are underused - they have money sloshing around but they don't get enough applicants".
Which ones? Asking for a friend.