text:
Can I contact the author as a reviewer?
In my field (chemistry), the authors are known to the peer reviewers. A critical point is vague about a manuscript I am reviewing; it can be rejected or accepted based on this point.
Can I directly contact the authors to ask for clarification or I must conduct all correspondence via the editor? I know that the normal procedure is to contact the editor, but I thought it is faster to directly contact the authors, as it may need multiple communications.

Also, you stumbled upon the major flaw of the classical peer-review system in times of electronic communication.

@Wrzlprmft I don't see a "major flaw of the classical peer-review system" in the mild annoyance of having to write an email to a different address.

@CapeCode: That’s not the problem. The problem is that communication via the editor takes a considerable overhead of time, if it happens beyond the “official” reviews at all. Nowadays, when an undelayed and anonymised communication beween authors and referees is possible, a lot of time is wasted by not doing it. As far as I know, only few journals try to move away from the classical submission–review–resubmission–review–… system, e.g., Frontiers.

@Wrzlprmft you may think it'd be better if reviewers and authors could have a free and unfettered electronic dialogue, but honestly I'm not so sure. I can see that scenario leading to a gradual decrease in authors' discipline to submit polished, publication-ready papers, and instead putting more and more burden on reviewers to engage in dialogue with the authors, giving them advice about improving their papers (since it's so easy and quick), etc. Ultimately that could create more work for reviewers, make it harder to get good reviewers, with the final papers being no better than before. ...

... From that point of view, making it more difficult (but not impossible) for authors and reviewers to communicate, as with the current "classical submission–review–resubmission–review–… system", may actually ultimately result in higher quality papers.

@Wrzlprmft The editor also has a legitimate interest in being aware of all communications relevant to the review process. Of course you can cc: them, but once you start this kind of corner-cutting, it can easily lead to a very intransparent process.

If a critical point is vague, than the way to deal with that is to point it out and not recommend publication - if it is vague to you it is likely vague to other readers. This is a critical flaw in the manuscript. As such, it is just a part of the peer-review process, with no need to directly contact the authors - they will get the message...

I'd recommend asking your question via the editor, but I would not go so far as to say that asking the authors directly is unethical. I have, on two occasions, been contacted directly by referees of my papers, and I would not accuse either of these referees of unethical behavior.

Can I directly contact the authors to ask for clarification or I must
  conduct all correspondence via the editor?

No, you really shouldn't contact the authors directly. I can see two options regarding the possibility of doing that: you can do it either from your normal email account (or in a similar way that discloses your identity, e.g. a phone call); or you can do it from a throwaway account that preserves your anonymity. Both of those approaches seem very wrong to me, but the first is much worse than the second.
In the first approach, you would be spoiling your anonymity as a reviewer. That would make your entire review useless. The whole point of anonymous peer review is that you can be honest in your review without having to worry about the authors knowing who you are (and without others having to worry if you were influenced by the knowledge that the authors know your identity). You may think that this is a problem only if you intend to write bad things about the paper, but it is just as much of a problem if you want to write good things, since the journal and its readers want to know that you wrote those good things out of an honest motivation and not to personally ingratiate yourself with the authors.
In the second approach, the problem of giving up your anonymity may not exist, but it's still unethical to go behind the back of the editor. The editor is responsible for the quality and the integrity of the peer review process, and needs to be informed of any communication between you and the authors. You may trust your own judgment that you would make sensible use of the information you would be getting from the authors, but the editor might disagree, and it is not your place to appropriate his or her jurisdiction over the review process. As an example, perhaps the journal or editor take the approach that the paper must be judged solely based on its submitted form with no room for clarifying questions. Or, perhaps you would reach a sensible decision to accept the paper based on additional details the authors emailed you, but you would then neglect to require them to add those details to the paper, leaving the paper flawed from the point of view of the journal and its readers - and so on; one can imagine many ways in which a reviewer, no matter how sensible and well-intentioned, can screw up this process in some subtle way due to not having the perspective and experience (and knowledge of the journal's policies) that the editor has. That is why the editor needs to be involved.

I know that the normal
  procedure is to contact the editor, but I thought it is faster to
  directly contact the authors, as it may need multiple communications.

First of all, why should you care which way is faster? You are the reviewer. It is not your problem if the process goes slowly, it is the authors' problem, and they should have thought of including the missing details when they wrote the paper. Second of all, if multiple communications are needed for the paper to have a chance at being acceptable, then quite possibly you shouldn't be bothering to request clarification in the first place. To me this state of affairs suggests a pretty strong likelihood that the paper is simply not acceptable in its present form, so you should either flat out reject it or make a "reject and resubmit" (or "major revision required") decision, and write back with a report explaining what details need to be added or clarified to make a more in-depth evaluation of the paper possible. It would then be the authors' responsibility to comply and submit a better version if they want the paper accepted.
To summarize, it is understandable (and noble) that you want to be efficient and help the authors improve their paper. However, as a reviewer you are not required to go out of your way to help the authors with an elaborate back and forth exchange of information and critique, and you most certainly should not do so without the involvement of the editor. If you really want to have a detailed communication with the authors, I don't see anything wrong with that as long as it is done through the editor and with their approval.

+1 for "First of all, why should you care which way is faster? You are the reviewer". This points out that there is something likely influencing the motivations of the OP...E.g., knowing the authors personally. This is why I favor double blind peer review.

@neuronet This might obviously be the case, but it might just as easily be the case that he's a decent human being and the paper is in general good and interesting. To be perfectly honest saying "Why should you care which way is faster?" strikes me as incredibly callous. Even if the paper is not good someone probably wrote it and they might have some possible feelings.

@DRF:fair enough: it could be as simple as the OP being new to review process (indeed, that's actually pretty clear).The key is that whatever helpful comment the reviewer has to say to authors can and should be said through the editor. Anything else smacks of special treatment, and the reviewer needs to remain impartial. It's the apparent compromising of impartiality of the reviewer that was my worry. Going outside the accepted communication routes to speed along the paper does not seem impartial. But your point is well-taken: there are many reasons they could want to do this.

@neuronet Thank you. I didn't mean to imply that it is a good idea to contact the authors directly. It certainly casts doubt on the process of review and is generally a bad idea. I also agree that double blind peer review would is a good idea but unfortunately in many disciplines and particularly for papers by senior researchers it's just not realistic. You can either have the reviewer know enough to be able to conduct a thorough review or you can have the authors be anonymous, but you can't have both due to specialization.

"although if you want to, I don't see anything wrong with that" seems a little out of place when you just spent several paragraphs explaining exactly what you do see as wrong with that (well, sort of). I agree with the main points of your answer, I just found that phrase a little unexpected.

@DavidZ good find: I missed that, and it definitely is out of place.

@DavidZ and neuronet, thanks for the feedback, I edited the answer to clarify the last paragraph.

@DRF I agree with your "decent human being" comment, but as for "incredibly callous": to clarify, I meant "why should you care ...?" as a rhetorical question, to make the point that the reviewer should act impartially and professionally and not inject their personal motivation and emotions, such as impatience, or even an altruistic desire to help, into the process in a way that would compromise its integrity. As a reviewer I have often myself done way more than just the required minimum out of a desire to be helpful, so yes, certainly I agree there are some good reasons to care.

Best done via the editor. Either channel all correspondence via the editor - even address your concerns to the editor, as in, could you find out for me etc. or ask the editor: "I am OK with my identity being revealed to the authors. Please do so and ask on my behalf if I may approach them directly with my queries."
Of courses the review process itself does not have to be confrontational and is eminently suited for just such a query. "I think very much hinges on the meaning of the following passage: [...] It is not clear to me whether the flootnums referred to here are chizbotz or actually chuzbitz, and I believe this is a vital point because..."
If something along those lines still does not elicit a satisfactory response, then maybe you should take the heavy decision.


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What is the failure rate of dental students in Japanese universities?
If you pass a dental degree from a Japanese university, you automatically get a licence to practice. Therefore we have have a lot of dentists in Japan. The pertinent basic question of quality of dentists is how many fail university. What are some statistics on that?

Welcome to Academia SE! Could you please edit your question and give imformation about where you already searched for this information?

"The pertinent basic question of quality of dentists is how many fail university" - this makes very little sense as a measure of quality. The quality of dentists is based on the care they provide.

It makes sense if none of them fail then any entry-level dentist that you see will be potentially very poor. In any field where it is hard to assess the ability of a worker then you have look at the quality of the education as a test.

How is this a shopping question? It looks for a piece of statistics on a nation-wide level.

@sgf The reason listed for closing is not always the actual reason, due in large part to the limited number of choices.  That said, I don't entirely see the reason for closing either.

@sgf Sometimes I feel questions are closed because nobody knows an answer from the top of their head.

@user2617804 The problem is that the quality of education isn't directly related to the fail rate. If I mumble incoherently in a lecture and produce a final that's unrelated to what I've mumbled about, the fail rate might well be 100% but I've hardly provided perfect instruction. On the other hand, a dental program teaching every student everything they need to know (bit of a pipe dream, I know), and thus providing an excellent education, might approach 100% pass rate. The statistics may still be interesting, but would need more analysis if you want to say anything about the education quality.

@user2617804 Or it means that only students with a high likelihood to succeed are admitted. Failure rates by themselves tell you very little about those who succeed. For example, Harvard has a 98% graduation rate. UMass-Lowell has a 56% graduation rate. It would be easy to gather a high fail rate by admitting students who cannot succeed, but this isn't necessarily a mark of a bad approach, either: it could be that you prefer to admit students with minimal requirements and let the coursework weed people out.

If very few of them fail, couldn't that also mean that the system is just very good at training them, or at pre-selecting the talented ones at the admission stage?

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Dealing with rejection anxiety as a reviewer
I am not very experienced as a reviewer, and I often find myself stressing over recommending rejection, even for the articles which I think are clearly low-quality and unsuitable for publication in a strong journal. I imagine how the authors might feel (especially if I suspect they are PhD students/postdocs/early career researchers who have a lot at stake in the publication), and I second-guess my judgement and wonder if it would align with others’ opinions. I also always worry that I might come across as unnecessarily harsh and critical in my reviewer report, especially as English is not my native language, so I have limited ability to express myself clearly and succinctly.
This usually leads to me writing too verbose and too detailed review reports (I think). More critically, it caused me a few times to recommend major revisions in the first review round when I thought that the manuscript should really be rejected but didn’t have the guts to suggest it. So inevitably, there comes the second round, the manuscript is not much improved, and I am left stressing again over recommending rejection. I think in such instances it would have been better to just suggest rejection initially, and more importantly it would probably have been fairer to the authors and would not waste their, my or the editor’s time.
Basically, I am asking how to overcome this anxiety about suggesting rejection and the fear of coming across as the “bad reviewer.” Are my concerns valid?

If anything, too many bad papers are published, reviewers should be more strict. Think about the common good, not about the individual who submitted the paper. If the world is worse off with this paper published, it needs to be rejected. Publishing bad science, or irrelevant science, is bad for the world. It decreases faith in science, it causes waste of research money, it potentially confuses the general population, and it aids the academic careers of people who would be better off doing something else. As a reviewer, it's your task to prevent that.

FWIW, English is my native language and I would never have guessed that it isn't yours. Your English is excellent and unlikely to be a limiting factor in your reviews.

The role of the reviewer is not so much gate-keeper, but rather your role is to help the authors get the paper to a position where it is publishable. So I very rarely recommend outright rejection at the first round.
Once you have written things down what it would take for the paper to be publishable, it maybe the case that this is clearly unachievable and that this author will never get this paper to that level – but that is for the editor and authors to decide.
Reviewers are normally asked to judge two things:

Is the paper sufficiently novel and exciting to be interesting to a large enough fraction of the readership of the journal.

Is the paper sufficiently rigorous to demonstrate the claims it makes.

If the paper is not sufficiently novel or exciting I say:

To make this paper publishable, the authors must explain the additional advances made compared to Smith et al. and Jones et al. and why their work would be of interest to a reader of the Journal of Things, beyond those connected with the sub field of very small things.

Methodological or interpretive flaws I will simply point out and say they must be fixed.
So for example, I recently had to review a paper for a software tool. It unlikely to get published, but instead of saying “reject” I said:

The tool does not appear to implement any new functionality compared to  Jones et al and indeed is missing several of the functions in that tool. The authors should explain why their tool is an advance in comparison, and provide benchmarking data comparing the performance.

The tool was not installable on my system, the authors should ensure that there is a robust installation routine and that it functions on representative range of systems. {goes on to list the problems with the installation}

The tool has several bugs and conceptual errors in it that must be fixed before it was published. {goes on to list them}

In conclusion, the tool has several usability and functional shortcomings that must be fixed. Even if these were fixed, the authors must explain why their tool is superior, or even equal in performance or features to Jones et al.

Now I was 80% sure that this wasn’t going to happen – the amount of work required to bring the paper up to a publishable standard was probably more than had been put into the project up until that point – but if they wanted to do it, I’d be happy to recommend publication. I never saw another revision of the paper – I don’t know if the editor decided to reject it, or the authors decided it wasn’t worth it –, but I fulfilled my role: to say what it was that was necessary to bring it up to standard.
If the authors do decide to try for a resubmission, without fixing the problems I identified, I will just say that:

The authors have not addressed points A, B and C, and I cannot recommend publication until they have done so.

There are several "Peer Reviewer's Oaths" out there. The one I like is from here:
http://www.opiniomics.org/the-reviewers-oath/

I, the reviewer, promise:

to not hide behind a screen of anonymity
to be open and honest with you (the authors) at all times
to be constructive in my criticism
within the rules given to me by the journal, to assist you in every way
I ethically can to get your manuscript published, by providing
criticism and praise that is valid and relevant

I usually do this, always list the things that should be fixed and suggest revisions initially, even when I don't really think they can be done, like in your example. But I usually get to see the revised, not much improved, version, at which point I feel like I wasted everyone's time and let people down (I kind of feel a bit like cheating there - giving hope were I don't think there's any, if that makes sense). But this answer is reassuring in that it's our main job to point out the flaws and to try to help the authors, and everything else is up to them and the editors. Thanks!

If the authors return the article with very few changes, its them that has wasted everyones time, not you.

I like your answer, it is a very helpful approach. But when a manuscript has too many flaws, I do not think it is the duty of a reviewer to list them all. A sufficient amount to justify a recommendation is enough.

Some review systems require (in addition to free form comments) for the reviewer to choose a recommendation from a fixed list -- e.g., "Reject", "Accept with Major Revisions", "Accept with Minor Revisions", "Accept". Would you choose "Reject" for such a paper, or only ever choose "Accept with Major Revisions"? Choosing the latter feels like saying "I'd accept if they submitted a different paper."

The role of the reviewer is not so much gate-keeper, but rather your role is to help the authors get the paper to a position where it is publishable. - I think both roles are there. E.g., in pure math, if results and methods are already known or the paper is just nonsense but still slips into the review process, you should play the role of gate-keeper.

This answer is mostly wrong.  Reviewers advise the editor, not the authors.  One part is correct, the rest of the answer contradicts it.  The correct part is "Reviewers are normally asked to judge two things:    Is the paper sufficiently novel and exciting to be interesting to a large enough fraction of the readership of the journal.   Is the paper sufficiently rigorous to demonstrate the claims it makes."

https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/153931/13240

@AnonymousPhysicist I mostly agree with both you and Ian. I get that the reviewer's role is to help the editor make an informed decision, and after all it is the editors that invite us to review the papers. However I cannot help but feel personally responsible for the outcome of the review process, even though I know that it's the editor making decision, not me. After several rounds of communication, I also feel connected to the authors and invested in the success of their research, and I also feel fulfilled if I have reason to think that I helped them.

(continued) Would this be the wrong point of view to consider when trying to make my decision on what to recommend to the editor? Should I try to focus on developing the ability to detach myself from this and only take into consideration the benefit for the journal and readership? Or is it a valid approach to try to guide and help the authors even when there's the slimmest chance of success, as Ian's answer suggests? This dilemma, I think, is the reason for my anxiety when reviewing papers and it is what made me ask this question, because I do not have much experience in peer review...

@ChrisBouchard I'm not saying i've never recommended rejection. If there is a fundamental flaw with the whole conception of the study, or the data really shows nothing either way. The other place i'd recommend rejection is if a journal has a time limit on how long recommended revision should reasonable take, and after working out what it would take, this wouldn't be reasonable in that time. One danger of just rejecting is that the paper just comes back to you when it is submitted to another journal.

@AnonymousPhysicist We'll just have to disagree. My allegiances are to science first and scientists second. I owe editors nothing. If there is science under there somewhere that would benefit the field to see, I will try to get to it. If we work together with the author then both the author, the journal and science benefit.

I should add that I'm not a big fan of deciding which papers go where based on the volume of material. In fact I'd rather not judge which papers belong in which journals on "excitingness" at all. I generally don't believe a conceptually uninteresting study can be made interesting by throwing the kitchen sink at it, so I'm unlikely be one of these reviewers that says "Could be good enough for Nature, but please do 2 years of the experiments I'm a fan of first"

See the fourth point of the reviewer's oath, now added to the article "4. within the rules given to me by the journal, to assist you in every way I ethically can to get your manuscript published, by providing criticism and praise that is valid and relevant"

Basically, I am asking how to overcome this anxiety about suggesting rejection and the fear of coming across as the “bad reviewer.”

For me, one part of it is fairness: I assume that most reviewers act according to their best judgement, and that includes recommending rejection for papers that clearly need to be rejected. If I allowed my judgement to be affected by what is essentially an ego issue (not wanting to be "the bad guy"), I would introduce unfairness against other authors who get more objective reviewers.

This usually leads to me writing too verbose and too detailed review reports (I think).

This can be fixed by organizing your review in a readable way. Start with an itemized list of the main arguments for and against acceptance (only bullet points or a brief sentence per item). Then explain the points from this itemized list in more detail. Specifically, explain what needs to be fixed for the paper to become acceptable. Only after this "high level" discussion, give a full discussion of all the details (most of which will probably not affect the acceptance decision). For typos and grammar issues, have a separate list at the end.

More critically, it caused me a few times to recommend major revisions in the first review round when I thought that the manuscript should really be rejected but didn’t have the guts to suggest it. So inevitably, come the second round, the manuscript is not much improved and I am left stressing again over recommending rejection.

This would be fixed as well if your first review clearly specified the conditions which need to be fulfilled to make the paper acceptance-worthy. If the authors submit a version that doesn't fulfill the conditions, then it's the authors' fault, and you don't need to stress out.

Thanks, that's really useful advice, especially the middle part about the review report structure. I always write a bit too linearly - next time I will try to focus a bit more on this breakdown on critical and detailed comments. Also the first part about fairness - I guess I was always worried about being unfair to the authors of not very good papers, that I didn't consider that this could make me unfair to the authors of the very good ones. Food for thought!

You are not rejecting, you are recommending. The editor does the descision  and there should be a second referee. So don't sweat it - be honest.

In mathematics, for instance, there is very often only one referee.

It is nice of you to think about the author of a paper you feel it should be rejected. Please also think about:

All the readers. They waste their time reading a bad paper. They were excited when they found the paper but disappointed after reading it.
The authors of other papers, that might be rejected (due to limited number of presentation slots or restricted number of article per issue).
And the reputation of the conference / journal that might be compromised by bad papers. This is also steered by the editor, but he has to rely on hisreferees. (thanks to Gnudiff for this aspect)

and connected with that also about the journal's reputation, no? a journal which lowers the plank of what is publishable might lose interest of the readers.

There are quite a few things to unpack here, so let’s go over them one by one:
Career Damage
You are responsible for delivering an accurate report; you are not responsible for indirect consequences of an accurate report, such as career impact.
If somebody does not get a position because you gave a correct negative assessment, this is upon them or their co-authors.
Also remember that somebody else will get the respective position instead and – on average – they are more qualified:
There is a lot of noise in career decisions and by providing a fair review, you reduce this.
Do not only think of the authors, but also think of the qualified researcher who does not get a position because their opponent managed to get some piece of junk published thanks to overly lenient reviews.
If you want to be nice to upcoming researchers without compromising the quality of research, do your peer reviews quickly (i.e., prioritise them with respect to your other duties, not rush the actual reviewing). This way, they have more time to fix the paper’s problem and submit it elsewhere before whatever application deadline they are facing and they hopefully learn something in the process:
Coping with and learning from rejections and criticism in general is an important skill for researchers.
If a student’s supervisor did not properly guide them through their research or writing process, the student has to learn this another way.
You are not responsible for taking that part of the training, but a detailed review can be that way.
Finally, it may also help you to assume that all the authors are professors close to retirement with no career stakes whatsoever.
The ideal of peer review is that it should ignore the authors’ identity (which is why double-blind peer review is a thing).
Assessing Unsalvageability
From the reviewer’s and editor’s point of inevitably imperfect knowledge, every paper has the potential to be salvaged: The authors may fix their research or explanations or present better arguments for the relevance of their work. The probability that a paper can be made suitable for a journal is never zero. Going by this, there never should be a decision for final rejection. But this is not what a rejection practically means.
Instead, if this probability (of the paper eventually being made suitable for the journal) turns out to be below some implicit threshold, it is more feasible to reject the paper and not invite further submissions, which would waste further journal resources.
All you do is to help estimate this probability and whether it is below the threshold.
If your estimate is a little bit off, that’s not dramatic, as there are several mechanism to compensate for this, namely other reviewers, the editors, and the option for rebuttal, if the authors think that they solved the issues with the manuscript against all odds.
What’s more important is that you elaborate what problems you see with the paper and what needs to be done to solve this (Ian Sudbery’s answer gives a good example for this).
Even if your criticism should be based on some misunderstanding, this allows the authors to clarify.
Nothing is more frustrating if the main argument for rejecting your paper is something like:

I don’t understand Section 2. [No further elaboration]

as you have to resort to guessing on how to solve this.
Which brings us to your next concern:
Too Detailed Reviews
I do not think details are harmful in a review per se.
The main reason to stop delving into details is to avoid wasting your time.
Of course, you should make clear what the main issues are that lead to the rejection.
A detailed review can be very helpful to the authors to solve these main issues, be it for a resubmission or submission to another journal.
Moreover it provides evidence to the editor that you seriously engaged with the manuscript thus giving your review deservedly more weight.
Keep in mind that almost every manuscript gets published eventually, so your effort is rarely wasted (unless you do such things as noting typos in paragraphs that need to be completely rewritten anyway).
Rejection Rate
You may note that you recommend to reject papers more often than your own papers are rejected or you even hear of papers being rejected.
There is a good chance that this says more about the quality of your and your acquaintances’ submissions than about your recommendations as a peer reviewer.
Remember Sturgeon’s law:
“90% of everything is crap.”
It may be worth checking out the actual rejection rate of the journal if you can find it.
But even if your rejection rate is higher than the general rejection rates of the journals you are reviewing for, this is not necessarily a bad thing.
First of all, there is the matter of chance:
You have to review quite some papers to make any substantiated statements about your reviews deviating from the mean.
Second, the more thorough a review is, the more likely it is to find a flaw leading to a recommendation of rejection.
Here, the problem is not necessarily you but other reviewers not being thorough enough to spot problems.
Wording
All reviews I have received, written, and co-written were almost exclusively in a very neutral tone, i.e., neither overly euphemistic nor aggressive.
There are justified exceptions, e.g., I once wrote in a report that I was disappointed by a revision on account of not implementing straightforward suggestions with which the authors appeared to agree.
If you stick to a neutral description of issues and suggestions, I see little that could go wrong.
The one exception where wording matters is the actual recommendation – if this happens in writing and not via a score system.
Here, you do not want to be misunderstood by the editor.
The aforementioned list of things that need to be happen before acceptance is a good way to avoid any miscommunication here:
For example, if the editor can easily see that this is probably an insurmountable challenge, they do not need your direct assessment.
It may also help you to write a short note exclusively for the editor explaining how likely you think that the authors manage to fix their manuscript.

I think the roles of "major revision" and "reject" are quite different, and it is not helpful to the author to use one when you really mean the other.
Reviewers should recommend rejection if the paper, while it may be publishable, is not sufficiently interesting for the journal. If this is the case, it is unlikely (at least in my field, which is mathematics) that a revised version would ever be published in that journal. However, the paper may well be suitable for a slightly less selective journal, and you do authors no favours if you ask for a major revision first, rather than giving them an early opportunity to resubmit to such a journal. Ideally your review would suggest alternative venues (as well as identifying any significant issues they may wish to deal with before submitting).
Major revisions, on the other hand, are appropriate for papers which have issues which need to be resolved before publication (and it may not be clear that the authors will be able to resolve them), but with an interest level suitable for the journal.

Speaking as an editor, let me reiterate something you know: the decision to reject or not is the editor's, not yours.  You are asked for a recommendation, but the editor (who typically has much more experience) makes the decision.  The contents of your report matter more than the recommendation.  As an editor, a big part of my job is recognizing the "major revision" recommendations that should be interpreted as "reject" (and less often, vice-versa).
Some great detailed advice for refereeing can be found here.

"The best lack all conviction". Your doubts sound more symptomatic of you doing a good job refereeing than of you being unnecessarily critical. I do think it's a good idea to give people a chance to improve their paper with a "major revision" recommendation. Keep in mind that a recommendation is not a verdict (the editors base their decision on your report, but this doesn't mean that they just adopt your suggestion without change; in particular, a "major revision" can become a "rejected" if the other referee is similarly unenthusiastic).

Here is how I would sanity-check my "major revision" suggestions: Assuming that the author followed all my recommendations, would I then suggest accepting the paper, or would I be annoyed at having to find better reasons to reject it? In the former case, "major revision" is the right recommendation to make. In the latter, it is "rejection". (And then there is "revise and resubmit", which I tend to choose if I don't understand or don't believe significant parts of the paper and but wouldn't be surprised if the author salvages it. Here I am deferring judgment until the problems are resolved. This option is good to keep in mind when you don't quite see what the paper will become after revision.)

"Too detailed" is rarely an issue in reviews. Even if the paper cannot be salvaged, any future papers by the same author will probably gain from you pointing out grammatical errors, confusing terminology, misconceptions, etc. (which otherwise would likely creep over into these future papers if left unchallenged). Peer review is one of the few ways scientists learn after their PhD!

In the long term, you need to get more experience to feel more confident about your decisions. So what you can do now, is that you can try to make this process faster by 1. Getting familiar with the state-of-the-art on the topics you are invited to review 2. Volunteer for more reviews 3. Study other people's reviews (as a reviewer, at the end of the process you can see other reviewers' comments and also, some venues have openreviews (look it up), this will tell you how you are doing in comparison to others e.g. are you too optimistic? 4. Write more papers, which helps you get the hang of it
Mindset wise:

Reviews should be written in a way to suggest how the paper could be improved, and why, and point out major conflicts/false statements etc.. So, no, you don't need to bash a paper. There are far too many reviewers that think this is the point of reviews, which is shameful really. You should keep as objective as possible and not let your "subjective" judgement get in the way. Constructive criticism is what you should aim for.

If a paper is indeed too bad, by giving them more chances you are actually skewing the reviewing process because not all are lucky to have reviewers who will just give it a go.

If you are in doubt though, give the benefit of doubt to the authors. I have received far too many false claims that I couldn't even answer to in rebuttal, or did but the reviewers mind was set from the beginning. Just because I didn't include a detail, assuming that I didn't do it that way is still just subjective judgement (in fact, I did this but to me it was trivial and standard for any research paper so I didn't flat out write the exact details for example).

All that being said, I am also on the more optimistic side and give out more positive reviews with a similar mindset, but I also realize that when I am assigned perfect matches, I can be crystal clear in my comments and judgement, so you just need to be more confident in your expertise.

I think it's important to remember that your role as a reviewer isn't to make value judgements about the authors' work. By recommending rejection, you're acting more like a moderator. You are interpreting the rules — the written rules of the journal or publication, and the unwritten rules of peer review — and applying them to a given paper. You are answering the question “Does this paper adhere to the rules and standards (or can it with modifications)?”, and not the question “Is this a good paper?”.
Recommending rejection is then just answering the question in the negative — you do not believe this paper adheres to those rules, and isn't likely to after modification. It's not a “bad paper” (well, it may be, but you're not saying so), and the authors are welcome to find a different venue that better aligns with what they've written.
Finally, remember that you are not the only reviewer. If you recommend rejection and the paper is rejected, then at least one other reviewer or the editor agreed with you. And if you recommend rejection but the paper is accepted, no one will give another thought that you recommended differently.

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


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Can I justify my PhD if I have mostly adapted existing code instead of writing it myself?
My PhD in computational mechanics (field is materials science) involves writing Fortran subroutines for implementing new constitutive equations. More specifically, my research involves continuum mechanics, finite-element analysis and other numerical methods. Though theoretically I have a decent understanding of the subjects, I find it impossible to implement them in code.
I have published a paper on implementing a modified model through a subroutine. But the truth is that I have not written the code from scratch. More than 80% of the code was written by someone else. Here's the original code. I just modified the hardening law to suit my purpose. I did not change the integration method or the structure of the code. I have cited their paper of course.
Truth is, I would not have been able to write the code from scratch even if I had been given five years to do that. I just can think of how to implement theory to code.
Now, I am about to defend my PhD, which is based on this code.
I feel like a charlatan and that I can’t justify my PhD. My advisor doesn’t know this. I am not suited for a career in computational mechanics or materials science. How can I reconcile this?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11765/ive-somehow-convinced-everyone-that-im-actually-good-at-this-how-to-effect

I actually read the code and it's not very hard, do you understand it at least?

You weren’t earning a PhD in FORTRAN Coding (gasp – I shudder to think of it). You were working in continuum mechanics. That is where your contribution was, and is.
If I read it correctly, you took an existing tool and adapted it for a new purpose. I can’t find anything wrong with that, especially as you cited the creators of the original version. If you keep it up and continue to make contributions to continuum mechanics you will do fine. You didn’t screw up. You did what any sensible person should do. FORTRAN was my first computing language. I doubt that I would even recognize it anymore.
Relax, have a culturally appropriate beverage and celebrate your success.

Was taught Cobol way back when, hated it then and shudder now...

@SolarMike You shudder? That's proper self-control, that is! So much more acceptable than gnawing on a chair-leg. :-)

You are not Newton. You do not have to develop/discover laws of physics on your own. And even Newton said that he stood on the shoulders of giants.
What you need to make sure is that you appropriately cite the code and advance the existing knowledge (i.e. how things were developed in this code) to a new field. Make your studies, experiments, theories, whatever open questions in the field are, and make it transparent where you started, and you are perfectly fine.
Not everybody's PhD thesis discovers new laws, some consist of mapping further in a field made accessible by others. Have a chat with your advisor where the open questions in your field are once such a code is available!
I'll conclude with another analogy: You would also not expect to have to invent the computer to be able to work on one - just find a good field of study to develop based on its existence.

I am your opposite. I know very little physics, and my mathematics is bachelor's degree level but very rusty. On the other hand, I would be a very good person to have around if you needed a computer program designed and implemented.
You may find that, at times during your career, you need to collaborate with a computer programmer. That should not be a problem. If you are working at a university you may be able to get a graduate student researcher from the computer science department relatively cheaply. In industry, your employer would have to pay a bit more, but there are plenty of scientific programmers who can read equations and solve them in Fortran or some other language.
The world does not need everyone to be good at everything. Concentrate on the things you are good at, and work with others to cover any skill you need and do not have.

"I screwed up. What should I do?"
NO. You have not screwed up in any way.
Before I dwell deeper into addressing your specific concerns, I am compelled to throw some light on what a PhD entails, IMHO.
I recently graduated, a bad time to do so when the world is locked down ina pandemic. PhD is a project which teaches a number of skills. A significant skill is, of course, becoming an expert in the very specific and narrow area of your research. But that is NOT the only important skill. In the long run, that is not even most significant.
During your PhD, you do a number of things, like learning to write a research proposal, doing the legwork, managing resources efficiently. Learning to write effectively for conferences, journals etc. If I may take the liberty, you also understand the politics in scientific and technological community. You learn the ethics behind collaborating effectively and sharing credit. You learn the art of conversation and arguing effectively, something you will need during your defence of the thesis. Itis the combination of all these activities (and more) and your skill in doing these which will help you in your career.
Now, since you are so worried about using code from another source ( assuming it was open source), it means that some of the aforementioned skills are still lacking. You need to understand that no PhD work or for that matter any body of work is done from scratch. In fact, in this world, it is foolhardy to do so.
At a stage when you are defending your thesis, why do you put yourself down by worrying about your ability to achieve a successful and rewarding career in the said field of your choice? If you have honestly worked hard and your 20% contribution ( as you pointed out) is good enough for you to successfully defend your PhD, you can also have a career in the same field. More importantly, you have also learnt a number of other significant skills which are crucial for success in any career.
When you are defending your thesis, it is not just the work you have done, but also your ability as a researcher to convincingly present your arguments and address the questions raised by the examiner. That is a skill. You have a written a paper, and got it accepted for publication. That is a skill. So focus on improving each of those skills because all of these collectively make you a good researcher.
So be confident, you have done nothing wrong. Apparently, you are on the right track. Best of luck with your defence.


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Including professor's telephone number of application portal
I am an undergraduate student applying to grad programs in the U.S.; The application portal asks for the telephone number of my recommenders. However, one of my professors didn't reply to my email that asks for the number. Is it appropriate for me to include his phone number that appeared on his webpage of the university's department? Thanks!

Yes, that's fine.
It's extremely unlikely anyone will call anyone or that anyone will pick up, but that is why public numbers are listed publicly. Don't share home or cell numbers.
If the professor does not have a phone number listed, the department number is also OK.


text:
Quantum computing and string theory: which path I may want to pursue first?
I'm an undergraduate physics student waiting for responses from graduate programs I applied to. I apologize if this question is slightly off-topic for physics SE, but I really want to hear some advice about the path I should pursue first to achieve my long-term goal.
I applied to Ph.D. programs in quantum information, as well as master's programs in mathematical physics, with a focus on string theory. I'm fascinated with the prospect of solving questions in fundamental physics through quantum computing. Recently I've been reading about some research that combined these two fields.
My undergraduate study and research experiences introduced me to the basics of quantum mechanics and quantum simulation. I think the PhD program would definitely allow me to deepen my understanding of this field. However, I don't have a very strong background in mathematical physics and haven't been introduced to string theory. So I'm worried if there's no relevant course in PhD program, whether I would still have a chance to learn about string theory.
I would really appreciate it if anyone could give me some advice about how I can connect quantum computing with fundamental physics, or the path I should pursue first in this case.

I’m voting to close this question because we can't answer it for you. The answer depends on your interests and your aptitude. Talk to an advisor if you can. Both those subjects call for deep mathematics.

It would certainly depend somewhat on the nature of the program and the faculty available (if nobody there has string theory expertise it would be quite challenging), as well as your own aptitude and background. To gauge the latter, I would encourage you to have a look at Zwiebach's "A first course in string theory" or maybe the more advanced book by Becker, Becker, and Schwarz.

@Anyon Thank you!!


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I'm still being waitlisted after April 15th, is this a rejection?
It's April 16th today, most applicants should have made their final decision for graduate school. However, earlier this year, I was interviewed by a very prestigious university in the US for their ECE PhD program. In February, I was notified that I'm on their waitlist. Now the resolution deadline has passed, but I still haven't received their final decision on my application. I wonder am I still supposed to receive one, or if this is a rejection? Is it appropriate for me to send an email to the professor who interviewed me if they're still considering my application? Thanks!

Today is Saturday. So nobody will be doing anything until Monday.

No this is not a rejection.
Let's think about how admissions works.
The department has a certain number of spots.  They send out offers to some number of people (which might be more than the number of spots if they are sufficiently confident that some people with decline).  If people decline their offers and they still have spots left, then they send out offers to people on the waitlist.
April 15th is the final reply deadline, so there are some people who declined their offers today.  Sending out new offers isn't instantaneous, so you can expect some offers to be sent out well into next week.  Some of those offers will get declined as well, with more new offers being sent because of that.  Sometimes people are offered admission and or funding well into the summer.
However, if you are on the waitlist, it is reasonable to send a brief e-mail saying that you are still interested.  On the flipside, if you accept a different offer, it would also be polite to proactively send an e-mail letting them know you are not interested in staying on the waitlist.


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Can I mention the same experience in 2 sections on my cv?
I am an incoming physics PhD student. A few weeks ago I participated in organizing a summer school at my current university and delivered a small lecture. I would like to include this experience on my cv (in the 'teaching experiences' section), but I was wondering if it's appropriate to also include my lecture on the 'talks and presentation' part. Can I mention the same experience in 2 sections on my cv? Thanks!

I'd suggest not doing that for an application focused CV as it can seem like "padding". But you can make it work if you are careful to avoid that suggestion.
An alternative option is to list it both places but to annotate the second reference with a pointer to the first, making it clear.
Just don't make it seem that you are listing two things when it is really a repetition. And, if the two "sections" are sparse, you can also combine them. "teaching" and "talks and presentations" are conceptually pretty similar.


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Why might a paper published in a good journal no longer be available anywhere?
I came across a paper with an interesting title/abstract which was published in a rank-A journal. However, the article is missing from all online listings (Project Euclid, ScienceDirect, etc.) and is also missing from the journal's website. The article has volume, issue, and page numbers x–y (listed as such on arxiv). The journal website and other online listings have the previous articles (up to page number x–1) and the following articles (from page number y+1), with the article in question just being omitted.
I contacted the journal about accessing the article a couple of weeks ago¹, but still haven't received a reply.
¹ A formal version of "Hey, I tried to access [this paper], but it wasn't available [here] or on your website. Is it possible to access this paper electronically?"
The article itself is posted on arxiv and is listed as a publication on the authors's professional websites.
I am very much interested in the result, but I am not familiar enough with the methods in the paper and it would take me a lot of time reading and working through the details of the paper. Time that would be better spent if the paper was withdrawn for containing errors. I don't quite feel comfortable contacting the authors blindly, asking if their paper contains an error. I can't really use "Please send me a version of your paper" as an excuse, because the paper is published on the arxiv.
What should one do in such a situation? In particular,

Are papers sometimes withdrawn "without comment"?
Do publishers usually reply to requests by email?

Have you tried looking at http://retractionwatch.com/ just in case?

How did you conclude it was published in that journal? It sounds like it is simply not the case. Are papers sometimes withdrawn "without comment"? not in "rank-A" journals, nope.

@Emilie if there is no retraction notice it's probably more scholarlyoa.com that needs to be checked.

listed as a publication on the authors's professional websites Did the author list the volume number and issue number of that paper? If yes, did you mention the volume and issue number when you sent e-mail to the journal?

@scaaahu Yes, I did mention volume, issue, and page numbers in my email. Also see my comment below.

@Earthliŋ Can you walk into a physical library that has a printed version of the journal? Perhaps it was retracted prior to publication but after the page numbers have been assigned. I guess that in any case, finding out if it actually ever appeared in the journal would be good.

@DCTLib Your comment above makes sense.

Printed versions of the journal seem to be quite rare, since it is practically open-access. The closest library with a physical copy is still over three hours away.

@DCTLib is right; don't drive, ask a copy by interlibrary loans (or contact the library by phone or e-mail, but then you may not get an answer). Then you'll have a librarian try to copy the given pages, and you will know if they exist.

Gosh, this is a weird case.  The paper is indexed by MathSciNet (22 citations) and Zentralblatt (43 citations); there are multiple citations from 2015.  (This is a lot of citations for a math paper.)  Thus the "two bibles" of mathematical indexing regard the article as having appeared in the journal, but the journal itself keeps no record of it!  This is definitely worth following up on.  Did you email the editor-in-chief of the journal?  More than once??

@PeteL.Clark No, only once, and only the department/secretary that is responsible for online access, since I thought it might just be an oversight of the journal. After you comment, I guess I should try the editor-in-chief next. I thank everyone for their feedback and hope to be able to provide an update soon.

Am I the only one for which the pdf-link on http://intlpress.com/site/pub/pages/journals/items/jsg/content/vols/0002/0003/a005/index.html works? Or did this page appeared just recently?

@Dirk That link did not exist 3 hours ago, or rather it pointed to the next article in the publication. So it must mean that this was an oversight that was corrected in response to OP's inquiry

@PeteL.Clark I contacted the director of the publishing company and he made the article available online.

@Earthliŋ: Great, I'm very glad to hear this.

After forwarding my email to the director of the publishing company, he put the paper online, so it appears that this was an administrative issue. I thank everyone for their input and apologise for the noise.

quite anti-climatic :)

@beta Much ado about nothing, but at least it's a happy end =)

Good to see a nice simple solution here, for once :-)

I guess we forgot that mistakes happen, and are sometimes followed by another mistake (not answering the query quick enough that it does not leak).

Are you sure that the paper has been published, or is it rather accepted in the journal?
I see no situation that would make a paper disappear from the publisher's website. Even in case of fraud, papers are still mentioned, but are added a retraction notice explaining why the paper has been retracted. This is so to ensure the integrity of the research record, and is taken very seriously.
If the paper is only accepted/to appear, then what you write makes sense. It happens that papers wait up to years between acceptance and publication. Many journal in this situation of heavy backlog have a list of papers to appear, which enables one at least to check the author's claim
Added in edit: the question now makes it clear the second scenario is not what is happening, but a comment by DCTLib proposed a possible explanation for the situation. During the process of editing a volume, journal attribute pages and format papers accordingly. If after that stage but before actual printing and online posting, something wrong about the paper is detected, it could a priori happen that the publisher decides not to publish the paper but does not change the pages numbers of the remaining article to avoid reformating. That would still be weird and quite unheard of, but it does seem possible. Then the paper would not formally have been published, and the claim by the author would be wrong. Of course, that says little about why the paper was not published.

Yes, the paper was published, with page numbers, 47–95, say. The journal lists all articles up to page 46, and all articles after page 96. The paper I looking for is just missing.

@Earthliŋ: this is weird. I would be dubious of any journal doing that, but that might be a temporary problem of some sort (though I cannot imagine which). Would you mind pointing to the website (I would understand a yes)?

Ahem, well, I thought I'd ask first without mentioning names. Should I? Like I said, being a "rank-A" journal, I'm not really doubting the integrity of the journal.

@Earth: Even if the top-rated linked answer wouldn't indicate that it's fine to use journal names (in a different context, but still), you essentially ask "How did pages x-y in journal z vanish?" I don't see how this could be controversial at all; but maybe by linking it someone has a smart idea what happened.

@gnometorule OK, I'm looking for pages 393–410 of this issue. This issue is also available on Project Euclid.

@Earthliŋ This is weird. The author's website cites those journal pages, as if it had been published, and includes a link to the article. Since the journal hasn't responded, have you tried contacting the author? Not to ask whether his paper has an error, but just to see whether the paper was, in fact, published, and mention the reason you're asking is that it's missing from the publisher's website copy of that issue.

@BenoîtKloeckner I can imagine keeping the missing pagenumbers in a "last minute withdrawal" circumstance, if the other pages had already been typeset, page numbers had been circulated, and offprints produced (plausible for 2002?)

@Andrew 2004, actually. I'd say your theory is plausible: my recollection is that a few journals were still routinely producing paper offprints at that time.

FWIW, the paper is reviewed in MathSciNet (MR2131642). The review (about 20 lines long) by Frederik Witt does not mention any errors.

Is it possible that they've (relatively speaking) "only just" received notice of a [possible] problem and have removed the article while they investigate but not yet got to the point of saying "This paper has been removed because..."?

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


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Cheating among the international students very common in college. What should I do?
I am an international student in an European country. During midterms and finals, I realized that more than half of the students are overtly cheating. I do not mean just looking other student's paper, but rather very extreme cases like sending the questions to other people to solve, googling, going to the bathroom to check the formulas, etc. Most of the lecturers do not take any measures, all they do is warn them and let it continue. (Some of them even let student go to toilet twice.)
I have talked with students from other sections and courses and their observations were the same. Also, I take two classes in which I am the only international student in class, and the local students do not even dare to cheat. They just do their tasks, be in class on time, etc. I am not an excellent student but really try my best. So at some time in my career, cheaters will get better exchanges or intern programmes than me because they are more cunning than me. There are people who spend their days and nights in the library and that would be even more depressing for them.
I came from a third-world country where, even if you go to a low-quality university and are busted while cheating, you have no chance to continue your education: not only that, you lose the chance to work in the public sector. (Of course there can be exceptions.) It is counted as a serious crime that never leaves your future life.
So what are my options? What can I do about it? Should I write a letter or something to the dean or someone else? I just want to know about the college's academic conduct code (I couldn't find it on their website). I feel like I've been taken for a fool and nearly lost my motivation to study.

what country is this?

Why do you think they are not turning a blind eye?

Answers in comments and discussions about attitudes to cheating moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

I am teaching, and this is a big problem here too, sad but true. Being an international from a 3rd world country myself, I am very sorry witnessing this issue... wrong mentality! I have a feeling some university authorities fear of being labeled Xenophob, otherwise why they punish locals while only warn the internationals

As a student there is little you can do other than inform the instructor and maybe the administration that this is rampant. You don't need to mention names, just the fact that you observe a lot of cheating.
The one thing you want to be assured of, however, is that your own position isn't being affected. If grading is competitive in any way this is a serious problem. But otherwise, if you earn the grades you actually get the rest of it is less your concern.
If you were an instructor I'd have different advice as I've seen this myself. I once had a group of students who really wanted to help their friends and it got out of hand. People didn't understand that it wasn't right to help weaker students get good grades if it meant the weaker students weren't really learning anything and would suffer later. We never really had a solution other than to try to convince people that is was counterproductive. Of course, it helps if the course is run in such a way that cheating has little effect, say by minimizing exams. But that is a question for faculty and administration to deal with.
Just make sure that the system treats you fairly and complain if it doesn't.

"If grading is competitive in any way this is a serious problem. But otherwise, if you earn the grades you actually get the rest of it is less your concern." If I'm understanding your claim correctly (that cheating only affects the cheaters, unless there is a curve), I think this is incorrect -- if employers become aware that high grades awarded at this school may have little value (either because they become aware that there are many cheaters, or if they discover that the "A" students being hired are not competent), then high grades will lose their market value, even if truly deserved.

@Lorenzo, yes, but a student has little power to affect it. You can complain to faculty or admin, but little more.

IME, exam are usually seen as the primary anti-cheating measure, so I'm confused by the "a way that cheating has little effect, say by minimizing exams" line.

I agree with Dan.  Think an in class exam is more of an anticheating situation than take home projects or the like.

Those are not the only alternatives.

@DanielR.Collins exams and quizzes are not always even the best way to determine student understanding (in CS for example) so I've rarely been in a course past my Sophmore year where exams/quizzes counted for more of the grade than classwork/projects/homework. It is also, typically, really easy to see when people are cheating with code and queries. Note, sole exception was design portions (like database design) where many times the exam was a specification with a single question ("Input your design plan for this system:")

@Buffy: Perhaps you could clarify in your answer what you think are better anti-cheating measures?

@DanielR.Collins, there isn't room here for a course in pedagogy. But lecture + quiz is at the bottom of my list of effective teaching techniques.

@Buffy: The point of unclarity is not effective teaching, the point is anti-cheating, which is unclear in your post. But you seem resistant to clarify that, so whatever.

@The_Sympathizer, I learned once that sometimes rampant cheating is based on a reaction to past injustice. I once had a group of Russian Emigres in a class who cheated constantly in everything. But they were all part of an ethnic group that had been terribly disadvantaged and discriminated against in their former home country. They had formed a sort of herd to protect one another from "the authorities" who were "out to get them". So, the stronger students "helped" the weaker ones during exams and such. It took a long time for them to learn that the society in the US wasn't as terrible.

We had to convince them that their own personal standing was going to be partly determined by views of their moral standing and that the weaker students wouldn't be "supported" indefinitely and had to learn to stand on their own. We were successful with some of them, but probably not all.

Your question is "what are your options". I presume that you came to that university to study and obtain some knowledge rather than fixing the world. Yes, there are lots of universities that turn a blind eye on cheating and a great number of teachers who don't care. Is it the only unfair thing in the world you can think of?
Thus, I think you should ask yourself whether the educational program at your institution is decent, and if yes, just do you best to study, i.e., to pursue your original goal. One thing that is hard but necessary to realize is that everyone is running on his/her own lane here. You aren't competing for the gold medal. You are working towards building a solid basis for your future, and university exams and assignments are just benchmarks that help you to measure your own performance.
So, why should you care if someone breaks the measuring device and gets an incorrect benchmark for themselves? It's worse for them. If one gets "A" in a Java class by cheating, he/she won't know their real level of Java knowledge, that's it. High grades won't make you a good specialist (and if a certain company hires people just by looking at their university grades, you won't really want to work there).
BTW, this is one of the reasons why some of my colleagues ignore cheating completely. They just shrug shoulders and say that it's not of their concern. Got an "A" by cheating and feel clever? So what? It's your life, my job is to give you knowledge and a measuring device, do whatever you want now.

The point is that a culture of cheating devalues the grade in the employment market. Caplan's 'the case against education' outlines the evidence for this signalling theory, and more.

@Lorenzo, this is true. Though from the employer's perspective it would be foolish to presume that grades are universally fair (especially in today's global world where it's likely that you never ever heard of a candidate's university before). I really understand the wish of employers to be able to judge applicants by their grades, but it's not going to work, let's face it.

People use it because there aren't many better alternatives. There are lots of rational reasons to use grades (at least as a first approximation) -- for example, they demonstrate that a given student has the desire to conform to certain standards imposed by authorities. This is an attractive feature to employers.

@Lorenzo, The alternative is of course test assigment (at a company) / extensive interviews / prior internship or "test period", etc. I'd say most companies do that. Well, I fully understand your argument, and I'd say in a perfect world it should be like that. But at the end of the day here is your company, and here is your applicant. If you are going to employ him/her, it's ultimately your job to find out whether the applicant is good enough. Blaming universities for poor scoring scheme won't help. I'd also say that my goals as an educator and as an examiner often contradict each other.

Tests don't fully capture everything that university grades do. Crucially, while they might measure the capacity of a student to study for one exam, they do not measure the capacity of the student to study hard for exams years after years. This later talent is relevant to employers, who might prefer students who have demonstrated that long term conformity and conscientiousness. (This is how Caplan explains why the last year of college tends to give students a significant raise in pay, even though arguably most students do not learn much more in that last year.)

@Lorenzo, Yes, that's why many companies (from my anecdodal evidence) demand that their applicants have higher education even for jobs that not necessarily require it. Kind of "this person is smart and diligent enough to get a degree" test. Personally I punish cheaters, but I understand why many of my colleagues don't see helping HRs to identify good candidates as their life mission.

Okay. I see these signals (allowing employers to discriminate between employees on long term measures) as one of the most useful tasks education fulfills for the economy, and through the increased workplace efficiency it helps to create a lot of value for people, not just those in HR. Personally, I think that point of view can be fulfilling.

(1) Inform the teachers and department or administration abut the general problem and then (2) forget about it.
Rationale:  if you never do anything it will bug you (1).  If you expect satisfaction or pursue it or the like, it will distract you from your own studies (2).
So report it once.  And then move on and just be Zen about it.  There is some chance your actions help, even later in time.  But don't expect it.
P.s.  I am proud of you for not cheating.

I've learned that in some cultures cheating is apparently not regarded as such. And it can be  very difficult to wean these students off of, let us say, a collectivist mentality when it comes to working on homework or even taking tests.  It's a very tough situation to deal with as an instructor.

I disagree. I wouldn't react to your statement, but this is a very common viewpoint that is widely circulated. In my course, I list in the first paragraph of the course description what exactly constitutes cheating and how I will punish students for doing that. Believe me, after the first round of punishments all cultural differences vanish. You just have to set the rules explicitly and follow them strictly.

..until your institution comes and asks why the students that are paying full fee are at risk of dropping out.   And asks in a way that makes it clear that it is your problem...  afterall they are paying your salary...

@GreenAsJade, As a tenured faculty member I try to adhere to my ways of grading without much fear, but of course these things happen. Dropouts of my course typically can find an easier way to get credits, but well, I can't fix the whole system all by myself.


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Coronavirus, school lockdown and future uncertainty
I am a master student expected to graduate in April. I want to work as an R/A for my thesis advisor after graduation and want to do a PhD afterwards. However, the entire school is closed and I cannot meet him in person. When I asked him about meeting after the corona is over, he said “don't worry about graduation, you will be able to graduate online”. It seems that he does not want to meet me, which makes me feel very depressed and anxious. My only option now is to write an email. I want to talk with him over several things:

Is my thesis good enough that justifies doing a PhD? If yes, is it possible that I publish it with him being coauthor?
Is it possible I become his R/a? Even if my thesis is good, that is not a guarantee.
What can I do to improve PhD chance?
Will he write me a letter of recommendation?

I think that asking all of these in one email is not a good idea. So I am thinking to start it with the email:

Dear Prof.A, I am very grateful for your advices for my thesis.
  Without you I would not have been able to graduate. I learned a lot
  from you and now that the thesis is finished, I discovered my passion
  for research and realize that this is what I want to do for the rest
  of my life. I have some questions, I would be very grateful if you can
  answer them:

do you think my thesis is good enough justify me going to phd. If it is good can we coauthor on my thesis and publish. That sounds a bit
  too arrogant from my part, so I do not know how to word it.
Is it possible I become your r.a. Your research is very interesting and you taught me so much during our time working together . I wish to
  learn more from you.
Do you have any advice for me to get into good Phd school?

thank you so much again!
  regards,
  B

Can you give me some advice? I am very depressed and anxious to the point I cannot move for many days.

"It seems that he does not want to meet me" Not to me, at least not from what you are saying. Chances are he means what he writes.

There is no such thing as "coauthor on a thesis". Do you mean split the thesis out into papers?

The question is confusing -- if I am understanding you right, the general question behind your question is whether the strategic components of PhD advising (career guidance, RA funding, perspectives and opinions on the quality of one's thesis work) can be discussed online or must necessarily be talked over in person. This would be a rather interesting question.

Hi, darij grinberg, yes, it is partly my question. It is something I have to do rather an option, because the school is closed and I do not know when it will be opened again. I am graduating soon as well, then the semester is over and maybe he will just ignore my email after graduation since he will be very busy in the summer, I suppose.

He may not have time to deal right now with anything other than the immediate problems of turning a traditional physical campus into an entirely remote school. He has students worrying about whether they will be able to graduate on time. He may have been counting on in-class finals, and has to work out what to do without them. He may be preparing on-line material to substitute for the lectures he had planned for the next few weeks. If you can possibly delay this until things have settled down, do so.

What I meant is publish my thesis as a paper, maybe it will not get into a good journal, but I think it is a good experience regardless

Hi Patricia Shanahan, firstly thank you for the answer. To my knowledge, he does not have any class this semester. Furthermore  the administrative stuff  are done by administator. I am graduating in April, so I can wait until then, but I am not so sure that the school will be opened in April. The situation is pretty dire in  my opinion, maybe it can well last into the summer, or maybe there is no antiviral /vaccine for the virus anyways. If that is the case, then  I think it is still a good  strategy to communicate with him about my future plan as soon as possible.

What country? ..

It is in Europe. It is spreading fast, many people die everyday

Even if your professor does not have a class, he has colleagues who do.

So should I ask him now? Or should I wait and how long should I wait? There is a chance the situation does not get better

If you are depressed or anxious, you should get help from a professional.  If your university has a counseling center, use it.

“don't worry about graduation, you will be able to graduate online”

In this context, I would translate your advisor's thought process as:

This student sounds like they are anxious and worried about graduation. The best way I can help them worry less is to simply tell them not to worry.

Nothing there about wanting to meet or not. Indeed, if your advisor does not want to meet in person, it's more likely to stay out of the public and help contribute to reducing disease spread.
I think it's fine to write an email with some bullet points about things you'd like to discuss further. Thank them for reassuring you about graduation, but make it clear that there are in fact things you could use advice on besides just a path to graduating.
Then you can ask whether the professor would prefer to discuss those things over email, to meet via phone or video chat (like Skype, Google Hangouts), or to meet in person.
Be as patient as you can be, because this is likely a stressful time for everyone. Your advisor may not be able to meet or respond right away - don't let that worry you.


text:
is it OK to include own questions on CV?
I was re-writing my CV and I thought that it could be a good idea to include the general/ultimate questions that "drive me to do science" or in particular "the kind of science I want to work in".
I don't want to make this personal. I would like to know if this kind of questions are acceptable/desirable or not a good idea.
I am a little bit prone to Biology questions because that's my area but I would love to have this question edited with other areas questions (example for physics: How do particles X and Y interact when condition=Z?)
Independent Examples I can think of:

How do we learn?
What drives animal instinct?
How does an ecosystem work and fluctuates?
How do plants deal with stress factors?
Which is the origin of the cell?

I know that this might be quite naive/text book questions. However, I also believe that the eagerness to answer them is what really drives science forward.
UPDATE
I believe that the best/most used place to put these questions is the Statement of Purpose, or any other type of "motivation letter". I've found that many CV templates free available have an area dedicated for "Career Goal" or something equivalent. My understanding is that this is a brief place where you must include the most important part of what you would develop in a longer text. Also, when you send your CV (to a PI for example) you don't send a motivation letter with it. They are most used for application to universities and grant proposals.

That would fit well under research interests.

rplease see my edit

It's always a little risky to put "ultimate" questions on your CV -- often they're questions that everyone else has as well and that people don't know how to answer. You risk coming across as naive or even pretentious because you're effectively trying to associate yourself in people's minds with hard problems that you don't (at least right now) know how to solve. It's much better to stick to (a) things that you've done, (b) things that you're working on right now, (c) achievable things that you want to work on and that you have some specific ideas about.
Basically, being eager and keen to work on things is great, making your CV focus on your eagerness to do things rather than your ability to do them is not so great.
It's clearly important to say what you want to work on, but the goal is to say it in a calm, measured way that makes it sound plausible to everybody else.

Ignoring exactly where you would put questions (e.g., CV or SoP), your example questions are inappropriate everywhere. They are such broad, unanswerable questions that they tell the reader little about you. The combination of questions makes the already broad even worse. If you are going to put questions/topics that interest you, they need to be specific enough, and ideally well thought out enough that they tell something abut you.
Instead of "how do we learn", maybe something like "in associative learning how does the saliency of the unconditional stimulus affect learning outcomes", if that is what you are interested in.

I get the point my CV questions look like the one you've written, I tried to avoid too technical questions in order to reach more  people into the relevant issue (whether or not is a good idea to include them). Also, I provided examples of different biological areas, clearly I'm not interested in unraveling the principles of plant biology AND the mysterious human mind, they were just two random examples.

Also, the "general kind of questions" are the things you might encounter in any lab webpage. Such as "What are the physiological mechanisms at the basis of fear and anxiety ?"

@MatiasAndina: They're more appropriate on a lab webpage because they're the goals for an entire group, usually articulated by a professor with a serious track record in the field. They sound less pretentious coming from someone with 20 years' experience, a couple of hundred papers and some prizes - people like that are expected to articulate their vision for the field.

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


text:
Exchange administrator requesting author order change in exchange student work. Is there an easy way out?
We are currently hosting in our labs an international postgraduate student on a 12-month exchange visit. We have had students from the same university before without any issues.
We have completed all the modelling, analysis, results etc for an article and we are in the last round of reviews before submission with an agreed author order for the five contributors in the article. However, the exchange administrator from the overseas university has requested that their local supervisor be listed as a second author as well as a corresponding author to the submission otherwise the publication will not be counted towards the student work from the university (and will affect scholarship rankings etc). Oddly enough, the supervisor has agreed to the original author order but the admin person has not budged so far.
Given that in the foreign country where the student is from, first and second authorships are considered important, what would be the best way to convince the administrator about the current author order? Or should we avoid conflicts that might affect the student's scholarship applications and chances and accept the change?

Why is "international" and "foreign" in quotes? Is it international or not? 2. What field?

No reason for the quotes @AzorAhai - Field is Engineering.

It does not seem to me that this is any of the exchange program coordinator's business.  They simply have no legitimate reason to even be part of this discussion.

@Buzz, Completely agree with you, but when they effectively tell the student, your supervisor second or the paper will not count in your final report / evaluation, it puts us in a difficult position that we have to navigate (hence the post!)

It sounds very much like you are being blackmailed, with the institution and its officials holding the student and his/her career hostage to their corrupt demands. I don’t see how you can reasonably agree to this, but you have some leverage, since the university apparently sends a lot of exchange students to your school. Get your administration involved and have them explain to the officials in question that this is unacceptable, and that they should back off if they want to keep sending students to benefit from your school’s educational environment. At least, that is what I hope might happen.


text:
Will there be bad consequences if I decide to leave my current master's program?
I am doing a 9-month master's program in physics at a very top UK university. However, after completing the first two semesters, I found myself very unhappy with the program itself. I don't feel like I enjoy my life here as I really need to spend almost all of my time studying for the exams and writing my essays. I also got quite frustrated as I failed my January exam (the exam is the only way they evaluate you). I still have a chance to pass the course and eventually get a decent grade when I graduate, but that requires an even higher amount of effort and time commitment.
I am thinking about dropping out of the program, not because I'm not motivated in the subject (I'm still really passionate about theoretical physics), but just because the program is so intense that makes me unhappy. My question is will there be bad consequences in terms of my academic journey if I decide to leave my current master's program? I honestly don't know if I will be able to get my degree in the end because the course has been so challenging. So I don't know which of the consequences: 1). Drop out from the program and leave. and 2). Continue the program but eventually have an unpleasant result. will cause less harm if I still want to pursue a career in physics.
Thanks for the help!

I am doing a 9-month master's program in physics at a very top UK university. However, after completing the first two semesters -- Maybe clarify this (provide the number of months completed and the number of months remaining), because in the U.S. it is quite standard for two semesters to extend through (and not beyond) 9 months. Maybe you mean "two quarters"?

@DaveLRenfro the word "quarter" in this sense is not used in the UK. The academic year is divided into three terms, or two semesters. I suspect the OP means they have completed two terms, as we are approaching the end of the 2nd term (Easter) now.

In general, dropping out of a program won't have bad consequences if you leave on good terms and can still get good letters of recommendation from a few faculty.
However, I suggest that you don't take such a step until you are clear about the alternatives and have an opportunity to take advantage of at least one of them. Sitting out for a year can have consequences. But if you start the application process for another program while you continue in this one it might be possible to make a seamless transition.
An alternative is to spend some time with current faculty and explore why you are in the situation you are and try to develop a plan for success. You might just find that people can be helpful.
You might also talk to a health counsellor about burn out and how to avoid it in case that is the real issue.


text:
How to look for research opportunities in a different field?
I am a physics student doing a one-year taught master's program. Previously, I completed my Bachelor's degree with 2.5 years of research experience in subfield A of physics, with a few publications in A.
However, in my master's program, my coursework is mainly focused on field B instead. A and B are quite unrelated, so I am basically studying B as a complete beginner. Compared to my peers who have already done relevant research in B, I think it would be a disadvantage if I want to pursue B for my PhD. (My grade on the transcript also doesn't look very well.) However, I am still very interested in B, but I don't know how I can look for research opportunities in B without a strong background. Also, I am completing my program just in 2 months, so I don't think it would be easy for me to get in touch with a professor and conduct research in this field.
My question is what should I do if I still want to consider pursuing B in the future? I know it's possible for me to self-study to improve my background knowledge, but how can I look for research opportunities in B?

To clarify, by "research opportunities," you mean PhD supervision?

@Azor Ahai -him- Thanks for the comment! By that I mean either PhD supervision or some informal research opportunities (such as research assistant) which help me learn deeper into B and then decide if B is the right field for me.

What is stopping you from applying for research assistant jobs?

@Azor Ahai -him- Because I am completing my program very soon, and my course would be very intense in the remaining time. I actually want to apply for research assistant or ask the postdocs at the department if they are willing to supervise me on some project after I complete the program, but I don't know if that's possible because at that time I will not be an enrolled student at my university.

So is your question looking for the magic formula to get a job/grad school in B, or are you literally asking how to identify open positions?

You have provided quite a list of your disadvantages. But then you also have your advantage, a few publications in A, as you said. Not many people have publications when they are applying for PhD studies. The fact that these are in a different subfield is less important at this point. More relevant is that you know how to give shape to things and to turn your research into publishable papers. So, in your applications, make an emphasis on your research experience and on your publication record.
Also, over the remaining 2 month, why wouldn't you get in touch with some professor in area B and start some research? Getting back to my previous point, simply the fact that you have publications will make you look good in the eyes of your potential future adviser.

Thanks very much!!

@IGY Good luck with your studies and your PhD applications!


text:
Balancing PhD Research with Interest in a side project and Postdoc Goals
I am currently a first-year PhD student in physics at a U.S. university. My research is focused on a topic I’ve been involved with since my undergraduate studies. I chose this field because of my prior experience and the potential I see for its applications in various areas.
At the same time, I am deeply interested in another area of physics, specifically string theory, which demands a strong foundation in mathematical concepts like differential geometry and group/representation theory—areas where I currently need to improve. My university offers the option to pursue a double major during my PhD, and I am considering adding mathematics as a second major to develop these skills and pursue string theory as a 'side academic interest,' possibly leading to a postdoc in this field.
Given that there are no faculty members at my university specializing in string theory, should I seek out academic collaborations with researchers from other institutions to build a relevant body of work in this area? Or would it be more beneficial to concentrate on my current research project to demonstrate my academic capabilities in my primary field?

What is the other topic you're focused on?

@Anyon I'm currently working on quantum information and computing

So you are a first year student, so have been in the program less than a month now (early September). My take is that you have absolutely no idea how much work it will take to actually come up to speed on, and then start performing research in your advisor's area. Time and effort spent elsewhere is going to be really hard to find without burning yourself out completely (which many people do anyway in pursuit of just one area).

@Jon Custer Thanks so much for the advise! Really appreciate it :)

You might want to check out this question https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/188985/109799. I am referencing that question because I have converged to thinking that the Ph.D. topic must be the primary one and other interests must be pursued as hobbies in free time. I call it to be realistic. I agree with Jon Custer. Still, my case is somewhat different than yours because I like my Ph.D. topic and my other interests equally. But I agree, approaches can be different. Can you update this post when you advance in your career to see which way you chose and how it worked out for you, please?

@Ivan Nepomnyashchikh Will do! Thanks for the comment :)

My question to you is whether this side project would "balance" or "unbalance" your doctoral studies. This is especially true if you need to rely on outside help to work on it.
While taking one or two extra math courses (mathematician writing) should be fine, especially if they support your mainline project, the more important short term efforts should be in your dissertation research.
However, think about the career you want and how to best move past student status into the early career.
Everyone is different of course. Mathematicians are often internally driven to study math. It isn't an option. But it can have an effect on your career, either positive or negative. But that depends on what you want your career to be.
Unlike some "hot" topics today, I doubt (without evidence) that string theory is going to go away in the next few years if you concentrate elsewhere for now. Alternatively you could consider a big change and move to a place that strongly supports that area. Your life. Your choice.

Sure, the OP can take a math "minor" in their PhD, and hopefully put that to good use on their quantum information project. Actually then coming up to speed on string theory is way out of scope for their PhD, and will only harm their progress as well as their relationship with their advisor most likely.