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Student contribution/Citizen science?
I'm a student who, due to circumstances beyond my control, is having to take a gap year.
I want this gap year to be productive, however! And would love to engage in citizen science projects/activities. However, given where I live, the citizen science projects and open-lab type spaces are non-existent.
Could I perhaps:

Read a bunch of research papers on a common topic and synthesise a review paper? Do journals publish review papers written by non-academics/amateurs?
  I certainly enjoy reading review papers: What sorts of criteria are review papers assessed on for publishing? (I assume that the style and format and referencing follow their preference/convention is a necessity for publishing. But what else?)

In doing so, I'd learn about a topic, how to write a review paper and perhaps being published could be an advantage when I look for research internships in the future?
Does anyone have any other potential endeavours to suggest?
I've already shadowed & volunteered in hospitals & performed a few lab experiments. I'm currently looking for something that I could do to genuinely contribute to science and use this gap year as a learning experience.
Thank you!
jxs

"Student" potentially covers anything from 12-year-old in secondary school to post-grad in a PhD programmer, and where you fall in that range is quite relevant to how useful a review paper you could write. Suggesting other potential endeavours is probably too broad for a question here, although if you can pick up 20 rep somewhere in the StackExchange network then you could ask it in some sites' chats. The obvious answers given your biology interest would be biodiversity research or activities related to bird ringing (including spotting ringed birds with binoculars and reporting them).

Do journals accept a quality review paper regardless of the student's background though? @PeterTaylor

If you can produce a quality review paper, a good journals will accept it regardless of your background. That's a big if, however. I don't know how it works in biology, but in my field you need to be really deeply and actively involved in a field for several years to gain the kind of insight necessary to do the detailed, thorough analysis that a good review paper requires. Just reading others' papers won't give you enough information.

A link to Academia is your best bet.
Stay in touch with people doing research in the field of your interest in a formal setting.
If you come up with a notable work you may end up co-publishing it with them.
Open source is a great alternative
There are many, many notable pieces of code developed (and credited to) individuals no tied to major organizations to be found i.e. on GitHub. This is a good way to quickly put your results thru "peer review", albeit informally, get credit for your work and -why not- good PR.

Thank you for your answer. If I wrote a review paper (for the fun of it!) and submitted it to a journal, would it be considered? Or eliminated/discredited immediately due to lack of affiliation/higher ed degree? Surely if a paper is good, they'd be happy to receive it, no? :)

I am in a position somehow similar to yours and, discussing with the many friends i have in Academia we basically unanimously reached the conclusion that, by far the best (and probably only) way to produce a work worth of publication is to cooperate with a good friend that already does research and publishes in that field.

Have you published work co-produced with them? If so, what kind of work? I understand that that is obviously the case for any form of experimental work, but does it also hold for review articles? I mean, I could get a professor from the uni to read it and give me feedback without actually writing it with me

I have not yet. Field is UAV flight path optimization, something I have been in for around 10 years for various reasons.  Writing an article is not an impossible feat but not even an easy one, I strongly strongly reccomend you doing it with a good friend with already published work since, simply put, you`ll not go very far going on your own by trial and error :)

Depends on the field. Some fields review papers are all done by invited writers. Some fields anyone can write.

Do you know the case for Biology? @Dawn

Nope. Look at some current review articles and then see if the writers are a mix or senior faculty.

For side activities, you might want to look at Zooniverse.org.  They have a wide range of activities in which netizens participate in data classification for various projects.  Most of the projects are scientific studies, particularly in biology, ecology, and astrophysics.  There is not a requirement for substantial time investment, and you could do bits of classification as a break from other endeavors. Although you would be contributing to useful studies, you wouldn't acquire in-depth knowledge directly from participation, but certainly would be introduced to a variety of subject areas.


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How can I view a collaboration graph between two arbitrary authors?
I'd like to view a collaboration graph between two arbitrary authors.
For instance, the Erdos Number famously describes the distance between an arbitrary author and Paul Erdos, measured by authorship of mathematical papers.
I'd like to find out the shortest path or the overall strength of ties between any two authors, in a graph of authors and academic publications where the nodes are authors and co-authorship is an edge.
http://pubnet.gersteinlab.org/ purports to generate a map like this, but unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be working for me.
Is there an active resource that can provide this information?

source: Stack Exchange

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sort: votes


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where the term of startup came from?
I am finding literature about the term startup came from, which is referring to budding company. However, the info is scarce. Can anyone suggest to me, what the best website to find for terminology/etymology used by scholars? If applicable, it is good if there is a journal discussing about this

I disagree with the off-topic claim. On the contrary, this request is perfectly within the scope of the "reference-request" tag; hence I've submitted an edit request to simply correct the tags. Moreover, I find that the answer offered (check the Oxford English Dictionary) is an excellent addition of information to this site.

@Tripartio This is Academia SE, not English SE. What does "startup" have anything to do with Academia?

I am a business professor. Getting help to understand the origins of the idea of "startup" is absolutely an academic question in my domain, and one whose answer I would appreciate. Perhaps the question isn't so apparently relevant to non-business academics, but it is to me.

@Tripartio From your explanation, this question is about the contents of your research. That's exactly why it is off-topic on this site. Please note the "put on hold" reason above.

@Tripartio We actually have Startups SE

@scaahu, on the contrary, this question seems to me to exactly match the purpose of the tag "reference-request", unless I misunderstand that tag. That is, one of the explicit valuable uses of this site is to ask for recommendations for references related to some academic topic. The only problem with the original question is that this new user was unaware of the correct tag to use, which is why I tried to help by editing with the correct tags. Could you please verify if I am mistaken (please look up other questions that have used that tag)?

@scaahu, I'm sure that this question would be appropriate on Startups SE, but I also think it is quite appropriate here. If the OP hadn't posted it, I wouldn't have learnt from the fabulous answer, which I can now apply to similar questions I often have for other academic topics.

The Oxford English Dictionary has this definition:

orig. U.S. A business or enterprise that is in the process of starting up, or that has just been established; a startup company, venture, etc.

[So, as I read it, their definition contains an etymology.]
They have earlier examples of the adjective, but for the noun, they have examples of "start up" from 1970 and "start-up" from 1986, but "startup" only from 2001.

The Oxford English Dictionary is probably the best source that exists for finding the first usage of any word in English.

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Is my adviser stalling or am I being plainly lazy?
So I am a master's degree student in math at a local university. I am very dissatisfied and surprised with the type of work that my adviser asked me to do. I am unsure if I have bad attitude towards work or what is happening is already inappropriate.
The task I was given is extremely routine; it was mind-numbing. It involves a LOT of symbolic manipulations that follows a few set of rules and I apply them repeatedly. To give you guys an idea of how much computation by hand, I have done; I have used more than 30 pages and I write really small (around 0.5cm height and 0.3cm width) with very few white spaces(less than 0.5cm) so this may take other peoples a 100 pages or even much much more. One can imagine the high likelihood of making a lot of computational error due to sheer size of the number of computations. I have checked my computations a few times already, and I am still finding errors here and there. I have asked my adviser, if we can use software to do this computations and he refused without giving any reason why other than being embarrassed(I did not ask why.). Obviously, we have to make sure my work is a 100% correct so we could conjecture correctly, but I have no idea how we'll manage to do this manually.
Hence, I am really finding it difficult to be not cynical about my adviser. I feel like it's a stalling strategy, but perhaps not?
edit
@Anyon, in response to "Can you at least check your pen and paper results using software or is he against that too?"
I have asked if I could allot time to study and use software on my own and he said we should do it near the end, but that means any errors may, of course, negate results; which I don't think makes any sense because it seems very inefficient. I don't understand how he plans to proceed without any computer checks. He also said that he'll check my computations, although he did not say if he'll do it by hand or by computer. He also mentioned that, he had use software during his dissertation and have now forgotten how to use it which means he can't help me with software.
update
I have succeeded in getting my adviser to reveal his motives. Well, he has no motives. As everyone below who answered have guessed, my adviser, simply, does not want to use software because there are technicalities in the mathematics that he does not know how to implement correctly to the software, neither do I. Wolfgang Bangerth is correct, there was a serious breakdown in communication. I am happy this is settled. Thank you to everyone who've answered.

What reason did you advisor give for not using software?  As a computer scientist, my first reaction to boredom is always automation, but there might be reasons it is not a good idea in the particular calculations that you are doing.

@jakebeal: The calculations were like high school algebra minus commutativity and a couple of rewriting rules, i.e. replace this symbol with that symbol. He said it would damage his reputation. Not sure if he was joking or not.

also, he did not mention why it would damage his reputation.

This is extremely bewildering. Your advisor's response doesn't seem to make any sense.

I feel like we are missing some information.

@AnonymousPhysicist: I think I am too because, I am just as bewildered as anyone. If I may correct something, the reason for his embarrassment of using software is because he is a pure mathematician which I would like to believe was a joke.

Since everyone here seems to scratch their heads about what might be going on, my first reaction is that there is a breakdown of communication between you and your adviser. It clearly doesn't make sense to do 100-page long computations on paper if they can be done by a computer. So the reaction of your adviser doesn't seem to make any sense -- but what stands out to me is that you don't seem to talk to your adviser about the situation.
Talk to him about the issue. Have a conversation, understand his motives, discuss why he wants you to do these calculations by hand and why he doesn't seem to trust the software. He may have good reasons, but you'll never find out if you don't talk about it. At this point, it's all speculation when you could have a conversation to actually understand.

I have talked to him, but like you said there might be a breakdown in communication. I'll try again, though, and be more explicit about everything and try to get him to clarify his motives, especially the almost endless computations I did. Thanks! Will update you guys.

You were absolutely right. I have now updated my post. Thank you!

Ah, very glad to hear! I think half of the posts on this forum essentially boil down to the answer "Have an honest talk with your adviser."

I have asked my adviser, if we can use software to do this computations and he refused without giving any reason why other than being embarrassed(I did not ask why.).
He said it would damage his reputation. Not sure if he was joking or not.
He also mentioned that, he had use software during his dissertation and have now forgotten how to use it which means he can't help me with software.

This doesn't sound like an adviser trying to stall you. Instead I'd guess that he is essentially saying "I don't know the software, so I won't trust results derived from it and only it, nor can I help you use it. Hence I'm also not willing to put my name on/near results derived only by software, as there could be errors I can't check, which could damage my reputation."
The algebra steps you described seem like they could be implemented in e.g. Mathematica reasonably easily, especially if you already know the basics of the software package. However, there's certainly something to be said for doing it by hand too - if both methods arrive at the same answer that tends to make you more confident in your results. There's also something to be said for trying to reach analytical result before deriving the same result using computer algebra, as you'd be less likely to fool yourself into mistakes by working towards checking a specific result. A result that may be incorrect, by the way, if you've made any coding mistakes/ Such checks along the way (not just the end) can be a valuable tool, as can any sanity checks of the resulting expressions. Maybe proposing doing so that would be a decent compromise.

Is it possible that he does not want to do the computations himself so he's letting me do it? Also, since he does not know how to use any computer algebra software, then he'd rather not let me use it; because for the reasons you have just mentioned?

I also tried asking for a different problem and the current one is the only thing he has for anyone right now.

@TheLastCipher Is it possible? Yes, but it's also possible that he thought this would be a good project for a student, and thus opted not to do the calculations for more altruistic reasons. It's also entirely possible that this project turned out to be more involved than he expected, or even that he knows about a subtle way to reduce the number of calculation steps needed (like a symmetry argument). I don't think we can tell from this question, so you should probably just discuss this with your adviser. But I wouldn't go into that meeting suspecting stalling or malice.

Thank you for the advice. I guess it is just in my personality to expect the worst; hence, the suspicion which I am trying hard to fend off.

I doubt that your advisors motives can be learned except from him. There are too many options, but I doubt that simply stalling you is one of them. No one gains from that, I suspect. I can only speculate on why this is happening.
Perhaps the advisor is simply distrustful of computer programming for this sort of thing. An error in coding can throw you off worse than errors in human computation, perhaps. Maybe he has been burned before.
Or perhaps he thinks that you don't have the computer skills to do it correctly and thinks the time required to obtain those skills and develop the correct program will slow down the path to the end.
Perhaps the advisor thinks you need some sort of discipline in computations (or in general) to make sure that you are learning lessons he thinks are important of vital. Maybe this isn't the most likely scenario, unless you have given him reason to think you need that discipline.
If you want a way out, and have the computing skills, you might develop a small program for a small part of the work, using something like Test Driven Development in which you can show the advisor that the codes are correct, through the tests, and are producing the correct results. That might change his mind if it is the first scenario and might also find errors that you are making with hand calculation.

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Can one recommendation letter from professor and two from internships help in MS applications?
The university applications for MS in Computer Science requires 3 recommendation letters. I am confused between choosing my professors or industry mentors.
Potential people:

Assistant professor
Mentor at a remote research related project from a prestigious university
CEO of an internet based company
Other professors/ head of department

I have a professor under whom I did several important research projects and have, also, taken his classes and labs. He is very pleased with my performance and he eager to provide a recommendation letter. He is an assistant professor at my university.
In case of other professors, I have never worked on any research projects so, the recommendation letter will be average in my opinion, as they will talk about classes and labs I took under them. This, also, applies for the head of the department. For this reason, I do not prefer to take one from them.
I did two remote internships. One person is from a very prestigious university. I am not sure as he prefers to keep the letter confidential. I did some research related work under him and basically, managed several teams.
Another person is the CEO of a company and is expected to provide a strong letter as he is pleased with my performance.
I am confused regarding whom should I approach for the letter? As this will be an important deciding factor, kindly share your opinions.


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Articles about different types of colleges and universities, from math faculty perspective
I'm looking for an article, web site, book chapter, whatever, that I can share with some math graduate students so that they can read and learn a little about some of the different types of colleges and universities, from the perspective of a math professor. More specifically, a math grad student who is considering an option of becoming a math professor, but might not yet have a set idea on whether they want to emphasize research, teaching, undergraduate or graduate mentoring, or whatever, and might not have a good sense of the range of possibilities.
Some grad students are not familiar with any kind of university other than an R1, and just assume that with a math Ph.D., that's their career path. Or they might not know about differences between large and small schools, state schools and liberal arts schools, etc.
I don't need an article that would rank colleges (or types of college). I would love to have one that explains some of the different types of academic settings where a professor might find themselves, especially a math professor.
I am especially interested in the U.S., but I'm open to texts with a broader perspective (global, European, whatever). I'm especially interested in the perspective of mathematics, but I'm open to texts from the perspective of "generic" faculty or faculty in other areas. I'm not really interested in articles that help students pick which type of college they would like to go to (those are very easy to find, almost spammy).

Off-hand I don't know a good item to suggest, but you can probably find something by looking through the table of contents of the past couple of decades of the AMS Notices and The Mathematical Intelligencer and MAA Focus and Math Horizons. Usually students learn about this from "graduate student gossip", but with COVID-19. . .

@DaveLRenfro: Even without COVID-19, the gossip of fellow students, who have quite limited perspectives, is not a great way to learn about academia.  It would be great to see a good answer to this question.  (And I agree your suggestions are a good starting point.)

@ZachTeitler: Assuming you're thinking about US academia, that should be explicitly specified.  Also, I suspect it might be easier to find something that wasn't math-specific.

@MarkMeckes Thank you, I edited the question in response to your comment. I agree that the math specification may be highly restrictive, but I maintain the preference for it if possible, simply because my students and I are in math. A mathematician weighing SLACs, say, considers different factors than, e.g., a biologist who might have to give up building a large lab. (Actually, I have no idea what a biologist would think about a SLAC. Maybe I do need that more general article after all.)

@DaveLRenfro Thanks, I appreciate the suggestions. If anyone can narrow it down that would be great, otherwise I guess I'll start scrolling through some TOCs.

If you're a member of the MAA, then you'll probably get a few useful answers by posting to their daily all-members mailing list. If not, perhaps ask a colleague who is a member to do this for you, or if for some reason that's not feasible for you, then I can do this. Finally, if you get some useful items doing this (and/or by going through TOCs), then it would probably be a good idea to post bibliographic information about these items as an answer to your question (answering your own question is allowed).

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Is it appropriate to ask to be delisted from department webpage?
I am a doctoral student. I share an office with one other individual. As is customary, the names, emails, and offices of graduate students are published on the department site.
I am the victim in a stalking case. The authorities have been involved and I am in the middle of legal proceedings. Without going into too many details, my stalker is currently not being held. Until the situation resolves, would it be appropriate to ask my graduate administrator to strike my identifying details from the public graduate directory out of concern for my safety?
Edit: Some more relevant information... My office mate and I are moving rooms this year so my concern is more about preventing the new information appearing on the department webpage. Also, I am located in North America, and my stalker has been physically violent with me in the past resulting in admission to a hospital for treatment.

Which country are you in?  @AlexanderWoo brings up the matters of law and regulation in his answer, so it might depend on where you are.  Perhaps publicly funded schools are required to list their students in some countries?

Are you employed as a graduate student teaching assistant?

Note that removing your info from the web page won't remove it from archived copies such as the wayback machine. Those sorts of sites usually have procedures for removing information in cases like this, but you'd have to contact the individual sites for details.

I am in North America. I am moving office this year so I am not worried about archival sites. I would just like to prevent my new information from being released.

Yes.  You should ask.
There may be negotiations and compromises might have to be made.  (For example, they might still list your name but not your e-mail or office.)  It's also possible that, as a matter of law and or regulation, they will require a court order to not list you (and they may be more or less cooperative in helping you get that court order).

I don't think compromises should be necessary. OP should insist on their information being removed, including their name. I guess it is possible that the administrator would require a court order, but it seems unlikely as this is a case of safety.

Seems extremely unlikely that regulation would require the public listing of a postgrad researcher's personal information in any case... Let alone one such as this

@Oliver882 Agreed. The university should never place any of its interests above the physical safety of its academics, which it would be by not removing all information requested.

It is appropriate to ask and no law would stop you from asking. I doubt that any laws would require a court order to comply if it is done with a reasonable request such as yours. The university might have its own reasons/policies for not removing you I'd guess, whether appropriate or not.
But, I think it would be completely ineffective unless other steps are taken as well. The stalker is very likely to already know such things and very likely to have seen the web site already. If you want to "hide" your email and office, then they should probably also be changed, with, for example, the old email getting filtered through some authority (compromising privacy, of course).
What you need is more proactive measures taken by the university and by legal authorities. Probably more than just court orders to (try to) prevent contact and approach. Campus security, in particular, should be apprised of the situation. Your department and its faculty should be made aware, though it might need to be done "quietly" if that is possible.

Don't underestimate the incompetence of people.  Sometimes people will be competent, and other times they won't be.  A solution that causes problems incompetent stalkers is almost always worth doing, even if you don't rely on it.

A lot of stalkers suffer from mental conditions where they seem completely sane one day but fall into inappropriate behavior the other day. You want the information gone in case they haven't had a "bad" day yet.

Although FERPA allows for the release of “directory information” without the students consent, you can explicitly “opt out” and keep your directory information private. For example, at IU this is done through the registrars office at the last link on this page. In addition to people with stalkers, this is common with celebrities or children of political figures. My impression is that this is usually taken quite seriously and would stop the department from listing you.
I would suggest both asking the department directly to take your info down, and also going through this process of blocking the release of directory information. Asking nicely will make you less likely to annoy someone, but the official process is needed or else your stalker could just call the registrar and find your directory information.
As usual I’m not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, and I probably have some details wrong. Talk to your local registrar’s office. You might also talk to someone at the Student Advocate’s Office (or similar) who can help you navigate this and may have additional ideas for how to protect yourself. I’m sorry you’re going through this and I hope you’re ok.

Pretty sure my undergrad institution hid directory information unless you released it. I had to so that my information could be verified by an external club sort of thing. Nothing in your answer is wrong, but plenty of people do it besides stalkers, celebrities, etc.


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Is it wise to try to remove myself from predator mailinglists?
A predator journal (Americal Journal of Applied Mathematics) regulary sends me mails about how I should submit to them or join the peer review. Recently I discovered there is a Unsubscribe link in the mail. Now I'm wondering if I should use it.
On one hand, if it works, great.
On the other hand a general rule is not to reply to spam in any way. I can't say where I've heard that but that is my usual MO. But the predator journals are not a fake Nigerian prince, so I'm wondering if I should unsubscribe.
I am aware of the fact I can just mark these mail as spam or delete them automatically with a decent mail client. This alternative is known, but not part of the question. The question is if unsubscribing would be without negative consequences. Maybe someone had some experiences with SciencePG (the predator publisher) or similar groups.
EDIT: For future readers I would like to point out Nav's comment, which links here

I tend to unsubscribe, because you gotta give the predatory journals a chance to improve. What's the worst that can happen anyway - they spam me? They're already spamming me, so it doesn't seem like a big deal. That said, I'm not the most familiar with internet security, so if this is dangerous someone please point it out.

Can somebody tell the clueless (that's me) what is a "predator journal?"

Found it myself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_publishing  Wow, yuck.

@Allure They can spam you more, your mail address just got upgraded in worth for reselling and they can target you with phishing and other attacks because it may be worth the effort. The core decision point is whether the other side is a legitimate business that wants to care about their reputation or whether it is a scam anyway making money any way they can. In the latter case clicking the link may well have negative effects.

Be prepared for things that look like spam but are actually phishing lures. Don't click email links from sites you can't trust.

What I find surprising is that you appear to be targeted by only one predatory publisher. As soon as I had published my first paper (with my e-mail address on it), I started receiving mails by several ones. So, even if you successfully unsubscribe from one publisher, it may not make a difference in the long run, because others are going to find you.

Everyone: The unsubscribe option is unsafe: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/92721/unsubscribe-safely/92742

Option: You can get free add ons that send "invalid address" bounce messages - if they care about bandwidth (less and less likely these days) they stop after a while. || Auto delete to bin or nul also an option.

@FrankHopkins I'm honestly not worried that my email address becomes known as an active one, because it doesn't take a lot of effort to tell that it's active (it's on the institution website ...). More concerning is possible malware. I do have antivirus software installed though. Can the malware defeat the antivirus?

@Allure Some can, some holes even only exist due to an antivirus being present^^ But it's a numbers/probability game. And a how you use the tools game. Security experts can heartily disagree over whether antivirus is helping making the computer world more or less secure^^ In particular, you should not do anything you otherwise would not, just because you have an antivirus installed. Your biggest defence is common sense, e.g. not executing something from unreliable sources and not providing information at places that don't ought to get them.

@Allure But that's getting a bit broad now^^ Imho even if you don't mind getting more spam, others might, so it should be mentioned.

The problem is that unsubscribing to the e-mail list requires you to follow a link send to you in e-mail. As general rule this is already something that you should be hesitant to do, even with e-mails from reliable sources.
A predatory journal is not a reliable source of course. Even if the journal is not actively trying anything dubious with the link, a predatory journal is bound to be a small scale operation, meaning that they are more at risk of having their domain compromised in some way.
If you do decide to follow the link, please take standard precautions like copy-and-pasting the link rather than following it directly, and checking that the link actually leads to a domain controlled by the journal.

I'd be careful with risk attribution this way. Being small surely could mean they have worse security - or a dedicated hacker guy that knows what they are doing - but they are also much more likely to not attract any attention. Which "force" is stronger seems hard to estimate - unless you have some clear evidence / study, I'd not follow your argument.

You should add, he can open the link in a browser inside a virtual machine.

The question is if unsubscribing would be without negative consequences.

You can't know in advance, even if others have had positive experiences. Predatory journals aren't well-behaved. (I suggest automatic deletion.)

If you click the link, that puts your email in the "does exist indeed" list.

@PerdiEstaquel Maybe, maybe not. That's a risk.

@Perdi: Seeing how "not receiving a mailer-daemon bounce-back" already puts your email in the "does exists indeed" list, I don't see why this is so important. At best it puts you in the "reads his spam" list, and I'd reckon that it also puts you on the "probably added these emails to their spam-filter list".

@Inkblot Bouncing-back mail allows accounts to be identified, e.g., send email to abcdef@domain.com, get bounce; send email to target@domain.com, get bounce; send email to t.arget@domain.com, no bounce means the target has been identified. Disabling bouncing seems like a good thing

@user2768 Tell that to any academic IT guy ever, not to me. That being said, I do appreciate bounceback emails, especially when sending a mass email to registration lists (yes yes, in BCC), where you copy-paste from the email field of the form. It's a good way to spot who wrote their address with a typo.

Not to mention that the email addresses are often farmed out of recent publications, arXiv posting, etc. They already know the email exists and is active. Why would you intentionally put a false email in your published paper?

@Inkblot I don't understand your point. (I disagree that They already know the email exists and is active though.)

@Inkblot Even if a mail is scraped somewhere that doesn't tell them that someone actually reads it. It's not as if they (typically) look through where their bots got the mail addresses from, they perhaps know which type of bot got them, but the resulting heap of mails may include bogus mails, mails that have long since been deactivated or are only read once a year or have strong filtering or or or. A click on a link makes sure that there is an actual person reading those mails. It makes it a tiny bit more worth investing time on that mail address.

@Inkblot And btw. depending on how the link was clicked it might also tell other things, like what the readers favourite browser is, what the operating system, what their mail web frontend used likely is. To an semi-legitimate journal all of no interest, to an evil minded person that might be another piece in the puzzle of how to best get some money from you, e.g. which way to trick your browser when presenting a fake page. Or how to get it to do some clicks on other pages for you etc. pp. (and yes, the more elaborate the more unlikely, but claiming there is no difference is clearly wrong)

@Frank: Most of the academic spam I receive shows that the mailing list matches more or less exactly a certain journal issue, or "today's arXiv submissions". You might want to upload papers with a fake email address, I will keep using my own.

@Inkblot Never suggested you should do otherwise.? Nor did I say behind all spamy journals are villains that will screw you any way they can. I'm just pointing out that when that is the case there can be negative side effects to unsubscribing. It's eventually up to OP to make up their own mind where the journal mail senders likely fall and what OP's preferred annoyance/risk trade-off etc is.

The crucial point for that decision is how legitimate the journal is (or tries to be) and how much on the untrustworthy side where they try to make money any way they can it is.
If they try hard to appear trustworthy or they are honestly trying to set up a journal but are really bad at it, unsubscribing may well work and not have negative repercussions - obviously you are not the guy to fall for them and they might move on to other candidates. However, if they fall into the "general villain" category - making money any (illegitimate) way they can - then trying to unsubscribe might well not work or have other negative side effect. That could be you receiving more spam or being targeted for more elaborate phishing attempts as you have proven that the mail address is actively read by someone. No one can tell you for sure what will happen either way in general. It's always a probability game.
However, as mmeent points out: As always it is prudent to not just click on any link in a mail. Instead check where the link points, go to the main website and see if that is a website affiliated with that journal/publisher or a generic mailing list provider. If it is the first, just look on the website for an unsubscribe option or hand-type the url from the mail if you want to try to unsubscribe.
If it is the latter, the same analysis that you just did for the publisher applies to the mailing list provider - is it legitimate or not. If you still want to unsubscribe look at their page for such an option or again make sure you actually end up on an address on their page when copying the link.
If there is a 3rd party mailing list provider involved that is legitimate and you consider the publisher so far in the villain area that you consider them criminal, reporting them to the mailing list provider might also be a way to shut their mails down...

As a general rule, any time you respond to an email or click a link in it, you provide information to the sender. A distinct issue with "unsubscribe links", is that it provides feedback that you definitely read the email, making your address more valuable to unscrupulous senders.
If your goal is not to provide them information (it probably should be) and not bother seeing them, do not interact with the email(s), but segregate them based upon some filter into a different directory for later inspection/deletion.
I recommend this type of strategy for not just Journals, but all email.
EDIT: Unsubscribing safety is now well-covered in the Question!

EDIT: For future readers I would like to point out Nav's comment, which links here

Your fear has some grounding, but is probably misplaced this time.
Some spam is really malicious, and is trying to feed you a virus, or phish you. However, most isn't, and is just trying to get you to spend money. Predatory Journals almost certainly fall into the latter category.
Most mailings come via an email mailing list service, such as mailchimp. Whilst the journal may not be reputable, the mailing list service probably is, and will honour the unsubscribe, and not do anything bad with your details (they may keep them on file on a suppression list to prevent you being resubscribed, or they may purge them completely).
So it's almost certainly OK to ubsubscribe.

As someone who believes that unsubscribing is something that is usually* worth trying, I can say wholeheartedly that the amount of academic spam (of this sort) is so diverse, that they change journal names and websites so much... I can't even measure the effect of the unsubscribe.


text:
How serious can this review invitation be?
I published my first article a while ago, nothing special, just rigorous formalization of some well-known facts.
Now I got a mail writing

We have read about your published precious paper in FORMALIZED MATHEMATICS titled About Quotient Orders and Ordering Sequences, and the topic of the paper has impressed us a lot.
  The paper has attracted attention from researchers and scholars specializing in quotient order; ordered finite sequences.

Especially the last part looks manufactured, that are just the keywords extracted.

On behalf of the Editorial Board of the journal, we sincerely invite you to join our team as the editorial board member or reviewer of ******. Taking your academic background and rich experience in this field into account, the Board believe that you are quite qualified for this position. We believe that your position as the editorial board member or reviewer will shine a light on your research in related fields.

"academic background and rich experience" Yeah, but no. Really, really no, at this point in time.
So the email is clearly generated automatically, but the links seem to work and the journal does have entries in Google Scholar and an archive on their website, it is not a scam per se. It is an Open Access and Peer reviewed journal, but it is obvious I was just some entry and no one looked at my paper (or my academic background) seriously.
How serious can such an invitation be? Since it's a peer reviewed journal, are they just frantically looking for reviewers? Would they even consider a positive reaction of me, due to my academic short comings which start with me not even having a M.Sc. yet?
I'm specifically not asking for career advice. I'm not in the league of publication for too long, I don't really know how things like becoming a reviewer work, if this would be payed for anyhow, etc. If this mail constitutes a bad practice I would like to know because I will likely get more of these in the future.

Can you see the paper in question?

@Thomas This was a general invitation. They added MY abstract at the end of the mail.

So it isn’t a specific review request. In that case, I would probably treat this as spam.

Check the journal and its publisher against the predatory Open Access list. I bet it's there!

Regardless of the journal's quality, you will not be paid for peer reviewing.

I get these often. I suggest deleting it and blocking the sender.

In this context, "precious" is also a red flag for spam...

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8959/83888 I think this just turned up in the related questions since I added the disreputable-publishers tag

I have a very easy filter: Have I ever heard of this journal (or one of the names mentioned, because they will try to mention people they work with if they are new)? No? Then it cannot be that important in my specific field of interest. There are two options: either I am not knowledgeable enough in the field they publish, or they are a scam.

Don't waste your time with it. You were smart to catch how the mail might have been generated (keywords etc). These mails are often sent out by journals that turn out to be predatory*; you wouldn't like to be associated with it.
If you accept, you may find your name being used here and there, in an attempt to increase the journal's scientific credibility. It is likely that their editorial board etc. is fluffed up in this manner (you could take a look at that if they've put up one, and see if there are any known researchers on their board). You are right — this is likely to happen repeatedly; ignore any requests that:

mention a specific paper of yours and extend editorial board invitations — it's a sign of auto-generated content.
appear in predatory journal lists.
have extremely general scope (eg. STEM) and no matching editorial board.

EDITS:
(1)* Predatory journals,  in a nutshell, charge authors exorbitant fees to publish articles with little or no peer review, with very low visibility or scientific credibility. In the most extreme cases, the article may not even be published. In this manner, they are 'preying' on unsuspecting authors who submit their hard work. The linked question contains a detailed description.
(2) It would be a good idea not to respond to such mails at all, and to mark them as spam. Over time, it ll get easier to spot them right away.

What exactly does "predatory" mean in this content?

@SK19 : It means that they charge authors exorbitant fees to publish articles with little or no peer review, with  very low visibility or scientific credibility. In the most extreme cases, the article may not even be published.

Do have a look at  this

Please edit note about "charging fees, etc" into the answer. And maybe use a different word than "predatory"; it doesn't seem to fit.

@MartinF - just to clarify, are you suggesting that I add the charging fee bit to the answer, or remove it from the comment? As for 'predatory', I believe this fits the category, based on similar mails I have received. Could you tell me why it seems inappropriate, I'd be glad to address that and edit if needed.:)

Add the explanation to your answer to make it clear. If we have to ask, it's not clear. Keep the word if you like it.

I wouldn't suggest to "deny", rather "ignore".

Should the OP flag the mail as spam? Also pls make the [edit] that Zulan recommended

It is spam. Don't pay any attention to it. No genuine "publishing" source works this way.


text:
Is three citations per paragraph excessive for undergraduate research paper?
I've had a teacher tell me that I needed to have 3 citations per paragraph in my paper. The paper is to be 20 pages long. Is this level of citation (over 200 individual in-text citations in the paper) too much for undergraduate work? The way that she phrased it left uncertainty whether this was for every paragraph, or only for the quoted ones, so the context of whether similar works have this level of quotation in them is the only standard I have to go by.

What field is this? What type of paper? Does she mean 200 unique references or 200 citations? Please add more detail.

Why are you asking us rather than the instructor? You are not even clear on what the instructor is actually requiring. Obviously 3 citations for every single paragraph in a 20 page paper seems high, but without the context, we can't say more than that (and our opinions don't matter in any case).

by default, do what instructor say, show them example of your work, then adjust

How many words is "20 pages"? FWIW I made just over 200 citations in a 14K word thesis.

@curiousdannii a fair comparison is probably the number of citations in your literature review/introduction since that is closer to a term paper format.

I suspect the assignment is a review of the literature, in which case yes the huge amount of citations is expected as that is mostly the point of the paper. On the other hand if it's a new experiment, then part of the paper must be detailing the novel method/idea you developed, so at least those paragraphs would have fewer citations as @Allure points out in his answer.

What even qualifies as a paragraph?  If you just turn in a 20-page wall of text with no paragraph breaks, can you get away with only 3 citations for the whole paper?  (Do not do this, of course.)  On the other hand, if you write a lot of short paragraphs with only a sentence or two, do they all need extra citations?  This sounds extremely arbitrary...

If you are asking whether it is a general "best practice" for a research paper at any level to have three citations per paragraph: no, it is not.  In any level research paper, you should cite as often (equivalently, as little) as necessary in order to inform the reader of relevant prior work.  If seven papers are relevant to what you are saying in a given sentence, you should cite those seven papers.  If in a paragraph you are not saying anything that makes reference to or would be aided by making reference to prior literature, then there should be no citations in the paragraph.  You never insert citations to meet numerical requirements.
However, this is an assignment for a course, so the best practice is whatever your instructor told you.

The way that she phrased it left uncertainty whether this was for every paragraph, or only for the quoted ones, so the context of whether similar works have this level of quotation in them is the only standard I have to go by.

No, you can ask your instructor which of the above is what she wants.  I encourage you to do so.

This is true for professional-level work, but undergraduate term papers don't generally include contextualization in the literature because they don't generally make new contributions to the field.

@ElizabethHenning Even if you don't add anything new, isn't it still good to provide context?

@JAB Of course, but advice like "three citations per paragraph" leads me to believe that the OP is a Writing 101 course where the assignment is to do independent reading on a topic and then write it up in an "academic style" with citations back to the source material. This is very different from a survey paper or doing original research and providing citations in a lit review.

It was an undergraduate course, but was in fact a literature review. I followed the recommendation about taking the instructor's advice seriously, even though it led to an awkwardly constructed paper. I never planned on publishing (and this wasn't part of the project, anyway) but I conducted a large amount of research to construct the paper using the A and B therefore C type of construction for any claims. This was necessary because the fields of social psychology and sociology both use such thick language to describe anything, that it was hard to construct relationships between papers.

Yes and no. This is highly field dependent. Here are two examples:

Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a
General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm. This is an artificial intelligence paper about creating a neural network engine that plays Chess & Shogi better than conventional engines. Notice that it starts by citing a lot of previous articles in the introduction, but by the time it goes into detail about how AlphaZero is created and trained, there are much fewer citations. This is natural: after all, the authors are doing something that hasn't been done before, so one cannot expect there to be references.

Princes’ Wars, Wars of the People, or Total War? Mass Armies and the Question of a Military Revolution in Germany, 1792–1815. Here we have a history paper about Germany during the Napoleonic wars. Now we see citations everywhere. The entire paper is filled with it, almost uniformly. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find a paragraph that doesn't have three citations.

Since expectations vary by field, the answer to your question is also going to depend on your field. But there's an easy shortcut: since your lecturer is requesting 3 citations a paragraph, you are probably in a field more akin to history and less to artificial intelligence. In that case, three citations per paragraph is not excessive, and you should conform to the field's standards.

Nice examples! (I don't have access the the second paper, but what you said about it definitely seems reasonable to me.)

@DaveLRenfro good point, switching to an OA article.

I found that three citations per paragraph was excessive in the fields cited (social psychology & sociology & business psychology), given that the papers that I was citing often only had one to two citations per paragraph. I worked my way through it regardless, and it ended up being a very awkward paper given the guidelines. I'm not sure that she had thought through the guidelines well, honestly, and found no evidence in the papers of other students that they had been asked to perform the same work. I must have done something to irritate her, or something in my paper rubbed her the wrong way.

Trying to get the people here between you and your instructor will annoy her even more. Whether it is excessive or not, it is her requirements that matter.
But I'll just guess that she wants to push you a bit to give you good habits of backing up everything you say in your paper using the available literature. She probably also wants you to do a lot of literature searching.
Treat it as something like a "wind-sprint" ordered by a football coach to give you endurance and prepare you for the big game. As Nike said: Just. Do. It.

I don't plan on using anything here against anyone. I just want to get a basic feel for what's generally expected. Her style of communication isn't the clearest, and I'm expecting that this is one of her many sins of omission.

As much as I agree with this answer and respect your intent, I think you need to balance following a specific instructor's rule of thumb with truly understanding what a citation is and when you should use it. Forcing yourself to generate three improper or artificial citations per paragraph is different than writing paragraphs that inherently have three legitimate citations each.

Consider an analogy: if you're a building contractor putting up houses in a development, and the developer tells you "every house must have three staircases!" you should probably make sure you're not slapping three staircases to nowhere in a bunch of one-story houses.

Actually, @dwizum, wouldn't a wise contractor try to figure out the real intent and satisfy it intelligently? Should a wise student do less? I hope the OP doesn't conclude that artificial citations are "going for the win". (Actually, at one point in my early educations I was a "smart ass" student myself though. Parent-teacher conference resulted, of course.)

Yes agreed - I guess my point was, if the instructor is requiring three per paragraph, then yes - do three - but also, make sure you're understanding what a citation is for, and using them appropriately. I think in the end we're saying the same thing.

First of all, the number of citations needed doesn't have anything to do with whether it's undergraduate work or a professional article. My guess from what little you've said is that she gave you a rule of thumb that you're taking too literally.
Citations are used to support a statement you make with an authoritative source, since presumably you aren't an authority. Three citations per paragraph would mean that you are synthesizing a variety of sources and not relying on any one source for long chunks of text, which could border on plagiarism. As long as you are making good use of multiple sources and citing them properly, I doubt that she is going to count the exact number of citations per paragraph.

Hmmm. On the other hand, reasonable as it sounds, you won't be the one with the marking pen.

I am sure this is somewhat field dependent, but 3 citations per paragraph seems like perfectly reasonable advice to give. In terms of general advice, paragraphs have 5 sentences (yes sometimes they have more and sometimes they have less, but we are talking in generalities). The first sentence is a topic sentence and the last is a concluding sentence. These should be (to continue with the sweeping generalities) original ideas that do not require citations. The other 3 sentences are you supporting arguments and should each have a reference (possibly to multiple works).
When you extrapolate this out to a 20 page paper, there might be 40 5-sentence paragraphs. The first paragraph and the last paragraph may not have citations also (as again they are the original ideas). Finally, some works would be cited in multiple places. That might put the total number of unique references in a 20 page paper at around 80-100. I don't think I have ever seen an undergraduate paper get to that number, but I also write citation needed an awful lot.

This is actually pretty close to the unique references I used at about 75. What I ended up doing is formulating complex statements using parts of the original authors dialog (A and B thus C format), rephrasing them to make them more consistent (paraphrase) and quoting wherever it matched. It ended up being an impressively complex paper because of this. There was still about 180 internal citations that referred to 75 original works in the works cited. Making a ten minute presentation out of this paper was daunting.


text:
People with multiple PhDs and People teach in different departments
Is it allowed for people to obtain multiple PhDs at different stages of their career? I am thinking of Phys and Bio.
Then regardless of that, is it allowed to teach in different departments at one or multiple institutions. (But I would want a tenured-position somewhere.) By teaching, I also wish to include doing relevant research in the two different fields. (for me, maybe physics and biology. Beware: Not biophys.)
John

There is, in general, no prohibition on getting multiple PhDs.* However, it is usually not recommended. This topic is covered in another questions on this site, e.g., When does one go for a double doctorate?
Teaching in multiple departments at a university is unrelated to having multiple PhDs. Usually someone who teaches in two departments effectively teaches "one thing" that is relevant to both departments, rather than teaching two unrelated things. For example, someone who specializes in internet law is likely to be associated with both the law and computer science departments.
*Although some universities/departments won't let you join their PhD program if you already have a PhD

Thanks for the suggestion!!By teaching, I also wish to include doing relevant research in the two different fields. (for me, maybe physics and biology. Beware: Not biophys.)

@user510607 There is nothing stopping you doing research in as many fields as you want. Except, maybe, time and money.

@John - perhaps you have a very narrow view of what biophysics is or is not. It started with a bunch of folks who wanted to bring a little physics perspectives to biology, or a little biology perspectives to physics. Interdisciplinary fields are not rigorously defined.


text:
Advisor drops incoming student four weeks before Master's program starts
This is not my directly personal situation, but that of a family member who is to start a Master's program (natural science), in Canada. You are, as a rule of thumb, admitted with your advisors specified on the offer of admission.
Their primary advisor (with whom I happen to have professional ties) has abruptly resigned from the university to take an administrative position elsewhere. For them, it is a great career move. However, this advisor is contractually unable to start new projects in January, so they have dropped the family member as a student. The secondary advisor appears to have done the same because they lack expertise in half of the project area. The primary advisor further says that the project is cancelled; the project was in collaboration with a government body which would have provided funding.
From what I've gathered so far, it might be possible to get the collaboration going if another prof would be supervising but it looks like a Hail Mary option. The department that Master's was to be done in is very small and the profs have fairly different areas of expertise. Going with a different advisor and project would mean (a) finding funding in three weeks (b) a radical shift in research area and (c) finding a prof who can take on an extra student.
This opportunity arose slightly in part from my ties to the original primary advisor. I would be able to advise my family member during the Master's based on my expertise in the field (this is the field of expertise that the original secondary adviser lacks, whereas I have a Ph.D. in the broad topic) but a formal supervision, aside from my not having any formal link to the university, is completely out of the question! So, if a prof could be found that would be comfortable with such an arrangement where I informally assist my family member with the parts that the adviser (original secondary or otherwise) is shaky on, that could be an option. And precisely for this reason everything seems like a Hail Mary!
As it stands so right now, my family member is being completely screwed over by the original primary advisor out of the money and an education. I have in addition advised my family member to go see the university's ombudsman to see what they think or advise. Otherwise, I myself am out of ideas, because the options I can think of so far are long-shot Hail Marys.
What else can be done here?

Thats too bad but not absolutely surprising given the instability of academia. I would say to advise him to take a temp job for a year and then reapply--for next year he should not have trouble. Can he work as an intern somewhere, etc.? This wasn't his fault so the situation shouldn't hinder his employment opportunities elsewhere.


text:
Presenting collaborative work in progress
I am collaborating with multiple people on a project. I just found out that one of my collaborators is presenting the work (which is still in progress) on a major conference in my field. I feel like this should have been discussed first (and I would have also liked to be the one to present). Is it usual that this is done without discussion? Is it just the first one that organizes a talk that gets to give it? (We also were still somewhat secretive about discussion the ongoing project since we believe they will be quite a breakthrough so it comes as an additional surprise.) I guess I should have started the discussion on how we will present our work earlier.

I have worked on a few collaborations. Any member choosing to "publicize" or "present" the work always informs the group first and includes all its members (I am an undergrad and I am always included in the notifications). The only exception is when the Project Head chooses to do so but even then a small vote is taken whether the time is right or not. Especially if it's a conference paper, everyone who is relevant, their names are added and they are informed that a paper is being made.

Generally speaking, people should check with their collaborators before presenting joint work, including work in progress that may be controversial.  An exception might be an individual invitation for work that has been published and presented previously.
Certain fields, like particle physics, often have very large collaborations, and they usually implement very formal procedures for deciding who gets to represent the collaboration at what conference, and what official material can be presented.
If you don't have a formal mechanism in place, you're right it's probably good to chat with your colleagues in advance to set the ground rules.


text:
What are examples of trustworthy no-fees open access scientific journals where serious scientists have published?
I sometimes hear the claim there are no no-fee open access journals available in some fields. An example on this website was recently for the case of Bio Informatics / Computational Biology.
What are examples of trustworthy no-fees open access scientific journals where serious scientists have published for different fields? Can we list at least one such a journal for each "field"? (A community answer would probably be best.)
To start things of does someone know a no-fee open access journal in Bio Informatics / Computational Biology?

I think SciPost Biology counts except for "where serious scientists have published" it seems it has zero publications so far...
Seems the web developer is outpacing the actual publishing and this journal doesn't actually exist / allow submission yet.

Example answer for Theoretical Physics:
In theoretical physics Scipost Physics (https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys) does qualify. Even some quite renowned physicists have published there.

About this being a shopping question. Perhaps. If people prefer this to be closed I'll ask elsewhere on the internet. I very much think this would be a great resource to have to point people to at least one open access free journal in each field. Note that the criteria are objective. And I'm not looking for the best. Just for at least one example of a no-fees open access scientific journal for every field. Perhaps I should expand on serious scientists just meaning scientists with academic affiliations. I wanted to weed out crackpot journals or journals without actual publications.

SciPost Physics is not restricted to theory, it just seems experimentalists often prefer other journals.

Feels like a classic shopping question: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3657/why-was-my-question-put-on-hold-for-shopping

@user176372 If it it intended to make a big list of these journals in all major fields, then that seems like not a shopping question. If the intent is to just get a journal meeting their specific needs in a specific field, then it is a shopping question. Not clear to me what intent/setup was. I interpreted it the first way.

@JoshuaZ What pushes me over is the request for "serious scientists" having published. Too much opinion. I really don't think this format works for producing big lists of links.

@user176372 Hmm. I agree that "serious scientists" may be too opinion/subjective.  It doesn't seem though like a bad format for producing a lot of links. But those seem like issues distinct from whether this is shopping.

@JoshuaZ Lists are also explicitly disallowed in the close reason for shopping questions.

Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management and the https://www.theoj.org/ publish 4 and are all open access and free for everyone to submit or read

@BryanKrause Ah, good point. I forgot that.

@RichardErickson, thanks for the suggestions!

BTW, for anyone who had more suggestions. Closed or not I'm interested in the answer. I added the question and answer to my profile (including a way to contact me) which I believe to is allowed (see https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/31505/377032).

I think expanding "serious scientists" to "scientists with academic affiliations" makes it less opinionated, but also much too broad.

Honestly I'd be fine with leaving that constraint out completely. I just hope not to get a list filled with "journals" that are no more than a way to pretend that you have published something. I guess most of those are pay to publish anyway so perhaps the constraint is not important.

In mathematics there are a lot of them. Two that come immediately to mind are Integers, and the Journal of Integer Sequences. Both have a number theory/combinatorics sort of focus. They aren't high prestige (as evidence by the fact that I've published in them) but they are definitely trustworthy.
A few others include Communications of the AMS (seems to on the higher prestige end). Rather than go through and list more, I'll just note that there are a lot of others, and this Mathoverflow question has a bunch although some of those there may have changed their access models since people included them. From that list, it looks like they are more common in pure math than in applied math, but that may be due to Mathoverflow running more on the pure than applied end for active users.


text:
Research assistant: I am responsible for scheduling subjects, how do I deal with attrition in my PI's longitudinal study?
At my place of work, among my other responsibilities I am responsible for following up with and scheduling participants in our longitudinal study. This study has been going on since the late 80's, and many of these subjects have been coming in since they were children. For context this is my first job since completing undergrad.
At first productivity was high. I was scheduling more subjects per month than my PI had seen in several years. As time went on, it became apparent that this glut of subjects I scheduled in the first few months was a result of a build-up during a transitional period shortly before I was hired. Not many subjects were scheduled for a span of about four months before I was hired, and these neglected subjects were the cause of my high numbers.
Since then productivity has steadily lowered.
I then began blaming myself. Spending hours on the phone each day attempting to contact subjects, while not difficult, is draining. I do sometimes procrastinate when I should be working. However after months of serious attempts to bring my numbers up, I feel comfortable stating that my work is not the issue.
It seems apparent that the study, or at least it's current phase, may be winding down. Due to the nature of our research, many of our subjects have a troubled home life, severe substance abuse issues, and are estranged from their families.
Often our contact information for our subjects is out of date. Many of our subjects use pre-paid phones and change their number often. Our study is also based in NYC, and many of our subjects have moved several times over the years. I currently use White Pages Premium, White Pages Pro, Facebook, and just googling people's names when the info we have in our records does not suffice.
On top of this, many of our subjects are now at an age where it is simply not worth it for them to come in. They either make more than what we offer in compensation at their jobs, are too busy with their careers, or have family to take care of.
My PI has been concerned with productivity as we will be applying to renew a grant soon. I'm trying very hard to bring in more of our subjects, but it feels like there is only so much I can do.
As this is my first job, I'm worried that this could seriously affect my career/hopes for grad school if my PI feels that I am to blame. How should I navigate this situation? Are there additional resources for tracking down these subjects I should suggest to my PI?

Could you go out and meet the subjects? Do they really need to come to you?

@Emilie Yes, the study involves ERP so the subjects would have to come in. There is an interview portion that can be completed over the phone if the subject is unavailable to come in. This is generally what we do for subjects who have moved out of state.

Have you asked your PI? He may be concerned about progress of his study, but not be concerned about your productivity. Since the study is going on for 30 years, he/she should have experienced similar issues before.

@Mark I've discussed this with my PI, unfortunately nothing very productive came from the conversation, other than an emphasis for me to keep trying to reach the subjects. Our lab coordinator has mentioned productivity being low several times however, and it's concerning.

Document. As scientists, your PI and supervisor should hopefully be receptive to data. Use a time-tracking app (maybe one of these push-button mobile apps?) to track and make statistics on how long it takes you to track down addresses per person, how many people you contacted, the call answer rate, the success rate in bringing them in, etc. Then, if anyone is concerned about how you use your time, you have hard facts to show them exactly why the productivity is what it is.
If you have another meeting with your PI after that, emphasize what else you could be doing with that time that is not getting done. Something like "You've asked me to prioritize subject scheduling. I'm currently using X% of time on tracking them down. This means I only have Y% remaining for these other tasks. (If you also have some metrics on how efficient you are at those, you could emphasize your productivity: ...but despite the limited time, I managed to get Z items done.) Should we keep going this way, or should we make any adjustments in how we use my work time?"
Or, if you really want to stop doing so much of this, not just worry about your higher-ups understanding why productivity is what it is, you can also instead say "It's really burning me out spending X hours on the phone or tracking down addresses each day. Can we get someone else to share that work so that I can spend more time on project B instead?" You'll know your context, but maybe there's a way to bring a student in for some part-time work calling people.


text:
Am I wasting my time as a research assistant?
To make a long story short, I have been a clinical interviewer/ERP technician in a lab for almost 1.5 years now. This has been my first job since undergrad (Psychology major/Biology minor). I plan on pursuing a PhD in cognitive neuroscience.
While I enjoy conducting the interviews and administering the ERP, I want to say about 70% of the job consists of going through my list of 400 study participants, and attempting to reach them to schedule a follow-up appointment.
When I first began this was very easy. It seemed like there was a surplus of readily available subjects. Now I suspect that this surplus was a result of the previous interviewer neglecting their list of participants towards the end of their time here.
Due to the nature of our study, many of these subjects have very unstable lives, and our contact information is often out of date. Many days I will spend 5+ hours on the phone without scheduling a single subject. The job more or less feels like I work in a call center now.
The study is a cohort study that has been ongoing since the late 80's, and I get the sense that it is winding down. Many of our subjects are simply no longer interested in coming in.
Because of the difficulty in scheduling subjects, recently I have been getting very little opportunity to gain experience either interviewing or administering the ERP. On top of this, my rate of pay is terrible. I am struggling to make ends meet with rent, car payments, phone payments, and student loans.
If I were to leave, I have the option of a job outside of my field of interest that would pay roughly double what I am currently making. Am I better off staying in my current position till i have 2+ years of lab experience, or leaving, saving money, and just studying for the GRE?
Question/TLDR:
I'm already currently studying for the GRE. My question is, in the meantime between now and when I enter graduate school, should I stay in my current position for the "on paper" experience (I'm not getting much actual experience these days), or if I would be better off saving money at an unrelated job that pays better, with my 1.5 years lab experience already under my belt.

If you want to pursue a PhD, do not forget that GRE is just a requirement with a benchmark. However, research experience is actually what makes you be admitted. So, I personally believe research assistant jobs are important to have. You can always review GRE in a daily basis (max. 1 hr) which can be enough.

Many days I will spend 5+ hours on the phone without scheduling a single subject.

I do not think it is unreasonable for someone without any graduate level education to spend 50% of their time doing grunt work in a cognitive neuroscience lab (e.g., scheduling participants, filing paperwork, preparing regulatory reports, cleaning and calibrating equipment, ordering supplies). The fact that so much of your time is spend doing the same type of grunt work and that the cool stuff is limited, means that it sounds like you may be wasting your time.
My suggestion is for you to tell your PI about how you are spending your time and some of the tasks you would like to be involved in. Potentially, there is a happy compromise. Many PIs do not know how long things take.
As for pay and studying for the GRE, those are really personal issues. I cannot imagine it being really beneficial to spend 8+ hours a day studying for the GRE. In general, RAs are paid just enough that they will struggle to make ends meet with rent, car payments, phone payments, and student loans. There is often not much flexibility on the PI side to pay an RA more.


text:
List of Research Institutes (excluding universities)!

There are many international rankings/lists for universities (e.g. QS ranking). However, I am interested in an science institute ranking/list that does not involve universities.

Let me give you an idea of what I am searching for: I am from Germany and I know that a major part of scientific progress is happening in universities. Nevertheless there are institutions such as Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics (Germany), or German Aerospace Center (DLR), or Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), or CERN (Switzerland), or Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (Canada), with great significance in science. These institutions do not appear in any ranking, any list of science institutes, or my Google search for "science institutes".

So where can I find a list of such institutions, e.g. by subject?

Question background: (1) I am curious in general to find a list/ranking that includes such non-teaching institutions too. (2) I went for several internships to science institutes, e.g. DLR/CERN. I am in my bachelor studies and currently searching for new internship opportunities during the summer vacation period. There are a lot of great opportunities in Germany, but I would like to spend this summer in some foreign institute (that is not an university) - to gain international experiences and because German scholarships (ironically) only financially support internships that are in foreign countries. However, in this context I am struggling to find such institutes... For example: I was looking for science institutes in Japan, but I only found the main universities.
Important Note: The ranking is not the important thing to me, but a list to have an overview!

Read through the affiliations of authors in a journal.

Well, of course #1 will be IAS (Princeton), and #2 will be IHES. The only question is what will be #3 and lower..

@user386359, thanks for your excellent and accurate spontaneous ranking! But may I ask what is IHES?

@Dilworth Are you saying that none of the names Grothendieck, Thom, Connes, Deligne, Kontsevich, Lafforgue (all Fields medaillists), Gromov, Ruelle,... sound familiar? It is not an "anthill" (thousands of average scientists, only a handful of brilliant ones) institute like CERN.

Most of them are very familiar, of course. Still, never have I heard of IHES. But I'm happy to learn new things.

Having rankings for universities is already a bad mistake. Why having another one?

@MassimoOrtolano I agree in parts... However, that is why I explicitly added list to the explanation! The first wish of mine is to simply find such foreign institutes, regardless of the any ranking.

@MassimoOrtolano I think opposite, we need to rank institutes bcs it is good field for freeloaders in academia

@SSimon I don't understand what you mean by "freeloader" and what is the connection with ranking institutes.

It means "a person who takes advantage of others' generosity without giving anything in return." @MassimoOrtolano many of them at institutes

@SSimon I don't think you have a clear understanding of research institutes, but it doesn't matter.

@MassimoOrtolano what you mean? It is serious problem around Europe, PhD stacked in institutes on salaries, never published as first author or corresponding author for 20 years, 10, or 5, on permanent contracts.

@Roland Limited? why there is than so many paper and statistic telling otherwise?

After some further search I found exactly what I was looking for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Research_institutes

or by country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Research_institutes_by_country

This comprehensive list includes the majority of all existing research institutes and definitely all notable one's. However, there is of course no ranking provided (which is not a problem for me but may be for other people that visit this question).


text:
Can the benchmarking of the existing algorithms be considered as a contribution in a PhD research?
In my area (computer science), many researchers have employed some algorithms to solve the problem where most of them used their own private datasets.
I collected several public datasets and have benchmarked the performance (the accuracy) of the state-of-the-art algorithms on several public datasets. I have not seen anyone have done this so far.
However,
1. The benchmarked algorithms are existing algorithms. None of them is my own proposed algorithm. Most algorithms have been used for the researchers' private dataset.
2. The datasets I used are public dataset which has also been used in other studies but there are some algorithms that have not been employed for these datasets. Those algorithms have not been investigated on these public datasets.
The purpose of I'm doing so is:
1. To investigate the accuracy of the existing algorithms employed in my area across various datasets.
2. To show that the accuracy of a particular algorithm is not consistent across various datasets and there is a need for a combination of algorithms.
Is what I have done can be considered as one of the contributions of my thesis before I proceed to the next contribution which is to propose a combination of algorithms?

It's opinion.  Ask the people who evaluate your work.  Their opinions are the only opinions that determine if you get your PhD.

I have done something similar, and it has been well received.  My contribution was to show how existing algorithms perform on a common platform because everyone does their own thing.  While doing the research, I also have new findings or insights.

Are you confusing "algorithm" here with "program"? Algorithmic analysis is abstract and doesn't require running to reach conclusion. Programs on the other hand are messy and their concrete performance can be affected by many things, including the specific architecture on which they are run and the quality of the compilers used to translate them.

@Buffy I believe I can say "algorithm" here with "program"

@Aqee, you can optimise an algorithm on paper by changing the way the calculations are done. A "program" is one implementation of an algorithm (e.g. a Python implementation of, say, grid search vs a C++ implementation of grid search). Optimising programs might involve a profiler and tweaking lines of code to make it run faster. Optimising an algorithm might involve tweaking variables to make it more accurate. I think you mean "performance" in terms of how accurate something is on a given dataset, though (not how fast it runs on your fancy GPU).

@Prof.SantaClaus Do you mind sharing some papers that you have published? –

@Pam Yes, true. I meant how accurate something is on a given dataset,

What you propose sounds like an in depth experimental review. You would certainly be able to get a paper out of it and, if you made the datasets easy to access and easy to use, you could gather a respectable number of citations. There’s a good example (and another) of this in the Visual Object Tracking community. Both of these are novel because of their objective evaluation or novel dataset. Done well, there is no reason why this can’t be considered a novel contribution to research. By that argument, they would count as a PhD contribution. But you should ask your PhD supervisor to confirm. They will know your field and your school and the normal rules that apply.
On the other hand, if you plan to create and evaluate your own algorithm, then putting together an evaluation
framework is necessary anyway. Having comparisons with existing methods will only strengthen the contribution of the new algorithm, so it is simply a matter of whether you write your work up before or after you have your own algorithm.

Yes, the papers you shared are similar to what I meant. BTW, what is "evaluation framework" that you are trying to say?

@Aqee by "evaluation framework" I mean all the code you'll need to write to loop through all your gathered datasets and all your gathered (or implemented) algorithms. When you write your algorithm, you'll just add it in with all the others, that way they'll all be evaluated in the same way.

I would urge just one (more) point of caution.  When you are benchmarking other people's work "objectively" be careful to be sensitive.  There's a danger that you can offend someone in your field by clumsily suggesting that their claims of performance are not all that great.  It may be that you could work with that person in the future or that as a PhD student your study may not be as objective as you might think.
All I'm saying is that it is important to discuss this approach with your supervisor or someone experienced whom you trust.
I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't challenge results or be scared to say something that might take the shine off someone else's contribution, just that you should tread carefully.
I myself am hoping to do something similar, i.e. pick up algorithms that people have "benchmarked" and run them against more benchmarks on the way to hopefully combining them in novel ways.  Good luck.

Well, it is very normal I think if we can challenge someone else's approach in an academic way. In the case, we may work with that person, as as a researcher, that person should be excited how the problem can be solved better