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Which problems would a blind person have when applying for a professorship?
One day, I spoke with one of my professors about if it were possible for a blind person to obtain a professorship in my university. This was motivated by thinking on the Russian and blind mathematician Lev Poyntriagin who made important work in topological groups and control theory.
So my question, which is hypothetical, is the following one: Suppose that we have a blind person such that is a very "good" researcher in his/her field in the sense that he/she has "good" articles in his/her field, which problems would this person have in applying for a professorship in a University due to his condition?
Ii is important to address the problem that this person would probably need an assistant for continuing doing his/her research and for giving lectures at some extent. So, will this be something that would could count negatively?

This is highly country dependent. In the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for disabilities including not treating a disability as a negative in hiring.

Note also that in reality, most (all?) of these hurdles would have been encountered throughout the person's career. If they're a serious contender for a professorship,  they will presumably already have their own strategies for dealing with such issues.

@BillBarth There's similar anti-discrimination legislation in the European Union, too.

Here is a very interesting 2002 article on blind mathematicians from the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.  Some quick highlights:
1) Although Lev Pontrjagin is the best known blind mathematician -- and was a wonderful mathematician; "who made important work in topological groups and control theory" is quite true but may be an under-sell -- there have been others.  If we count mathematicians who were blind for a substantial portion of their professional career then even Pontrjagin gets outclassed: there is, after all, Leonhard Euler.  And there are more contemporary examples, such as Bernard Morin and Lawrence W. Baggett.  Both of the latter are still living but retired (on the other hand, the article is 12 years old).  It would be interesting to have even more contemporary examples.
2) Being a blind mathematician is rare but not singular.  In fact there are enough to notice that blind mathematicians tend to specialize in geometry and topology.  This is very surprising, as these fields are thought of as requiring visualization skills beyond the norm (I for instance have felt a little locked out of certain parts of geometry and topology because of my limited skills in this area....though my vision is fine).  The article really shines in the way it addresses this point: the insight it offers goes far beyond, um, sight.  At the same time there are blind mathematicians in other fields: e.g. Baggett is an analyst.
3) Blind mathematicians must in many ways work harder than sighted mathematicians.  But of course mathematics is hard for everyone, and much of being a successful mathematician is embracing the struggle and continually pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and beyond your current range.  This is a key point of Terry Tao's career advice.  For that matter, I am suddenly struck by Andrew Wiles's famous description of mathematical research as exploring the rooms of a dark house one by one: you spend almost all of your time in the darkness; when you find the light switch you flip it and go on to the next room.  (I don't mean to trivialize the challenges of literally living in the dark, just to indicate that the experience of dealing with and gradually surmounting challenges that to a static observer seem totally insurmountable is a somewhat familiar one.)  Reading this article made me wonder about the OP's assertion "this person would probably need an assistant for continuing doing his/her research and for giving lectures at some extent."  Some might need or want a formal assistant, but some might not and might be self-reliant and of course reliant on the informal assistance of colleagues, friends and family...as we all are.  The mathematicians featured in the article are much more independent than one might have assumed possible.
The question was not specifically about blind mathematicians, but that was the example given, and I am a mathematician, so I ran with that.  Off the top of my head I would suspect that blindness would be less of an issue in mathematics than most other academic fields...but as a sighted mathematician, how the heck could I possibly know that?!?  I would be very interested to hear about blind academics in other fields and what challenges they face.

Do you know how they work with formulas? They are much less linear than text.

@Davidmh: First: I don't know anything about this topic that I didn't learn by reading about it.  I have not personally known any blind mathematicians (or other blind people, unfortunately).  So there's not much point in asking me specific followup questions, except to get pointers to the literature (sorry!).  Second: you're on to something.  The article talks about the difficulty of working with formulas as a reason why geometry/topology is a preferred field.  But I also gather that the technology here has improved in recent years.  Again, you can read about it too...

There are really two questions here:

What problems would a blind mathematician have in doing their research?
What problems would a blind professor have in handling their teaching/service responsibilities?

I think the first question has been answered fairly well by others. Since I'm not a mathematician but I am a (sighted) scholar in Disability Studies, let me address the second.
Academia is on the whole much more accessible to blind people than private industry. Most internal department administrative business is conducted over e-mail or in face to face meetings. For the most part, you're mostly doing your own research or teaching. There's little printed media that isn't renderable into an accessible format. For example, I have all of my students submit papers online, so I rarely deal with paper anymore.
However, there are very few scholars with disabilities and there is still prejudice in the academe. It will be key to establish a good track record of publications and some experience teaching so that you can put these fears and prejudices to rest.
Try to network with other scholars with disabilities whenever possible. There's strength in numbers.
Just as a total aside. One of my colleagues wanted to bring in a Deaf scholar to give a talk, but the scholar would give her talk using American Sign Language. While the university will provide enrolled Deaf STUDENTS with interpreters, there was no provision for providing external SCHOLARS with interpreters. We had to bring this up to the provost level in order to accomplish anything. But this is an example of the differential treatment of students with disabilities vs. scholars with disabilities that you might face in the future.

In that situation, the interpreter is there for the students: because they do not understand ASL, so they need an interpreter. If they did understand it, they wouldn't need one. It becomes so much simpler when you think of it as a language issue rather than a disability issue.

A professor's principal job is conducting research. Depending on field, blindness may or may not be much of a problem at all. Sheena Iyengar is an endowed full professor at Columbia Business School and is blind. Her research is fascinating and she seems to be doing pretty well for herself.

Specifically addressing professorship, as opposed to researcher, the most immediate question that comes to my mind would be one of teaching techniques. Much college education takes advantage of blackboards or other visuals to present the formulas and techniques that students will have to learn, to supplement the lecturer's voice. That could be a challenge for a blind instructor. You should probably be prepared to explain and/or demonstrate to the school how you will address this, perhaps with citation of other instructors who have used the same solution.

The American higher education institutions I am familiar with have put a great deal of emphasis on improving diversity.  So I would expect a successful blind researcher to do well on the faculty job market.
Otherwise healthy blind adults do not need assistants.  Many sighted faculty do need assistants.
Presumably a successful blind researcher has already overcome significant barriers to access; as a faculty member I think the main barriers they would experience are a few faculty who are ignorant about disability.

I may add personal experience with a blind mathematican I've seen in an invited talk some time ago. He was giving two lectures about the same topic and I could only attend the second one. He worked on the blackboard an turned towards the audience to speak. He needed help in the beginning to get familiar with the size of the blackboard and also had help to clean the blackboard (he was already a senior mathematician but turned  blind gradually in the last years). He started his lecture with a crystal clear recap of the previous one, without writing on the board. Then he started the new lecture and as usual, he wrote full theorems and formula at the board. I was shocked. What he wrote was totally unreadable. In most cases one could only read the first few letters of each word while the rest was just a wiggly line. Also he did not have a good orientation on the board. It happend frequently then he wrote directly over his own writing - sometimes three or four times over the same line. The blackboard was a hell of a mess. However, I usually listen more than I read in lectures and my notes reflect more what I hear than what is written on the board. Hence, I started to use the blackboard only for crude reference for what he referred to when he pointed to places where he suspected the formulas he needed, but took notes on the basis of what I heared. It turned out the be one of the best guest lectures I heared - ever. Even the mess on the blackboard was helpful. It gave the lecture some spatial structure although I could barely read the letters. I still knew what he had said at the respective points and could follow the lecture without problems although it was only loosely related to my own area.
Finally, I have been told that he still give lectures to students at his home university and the students are happy.
That story probably illustrates that at least lecturing should not be a great problem without eyesight.

It is impractical to pose this as a hypothetical question to people who are sighted and who do not understand how a person who is blind does his/her job. If the person is already established as a successful researcher, it should be understood that the person has demonstrated ability with or without assistance to do what is needed to serve in this capacity. The only question left to answer is whether the person actually does need an assistant. This will depend on the individual--some people do and some do not, depending on the skills and technology that each individual person uses--and whether the particular university is willing and/or able to provide an assistant. Many universities provide assistants whether a person is sighted or blind. If a professor who is blind asks their assistant to help with specific tasks related to use of sight, that is an individual matter. A different professor might have the assistant do something else that is equally useful to him/her.

You would be surprised by modern technology and methods that a professor already as at her or his hands.  Computers can read research papers to the person, they can help navigate the user interface through audio commands and feedback, etc.
The biggest issue I can think of today would be; getting acquainted with the campus at first, so one could navigate on their own.  Besides that, I think issues of research would be very field based.
One modern day example (not in mathematics) is Sile O'Modhrain.


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Visit to a different university - is it OK to bring my girlfriend along?
I am a PhD student, and I was recently invited to visit a university which happens to be at a very attractive touristic location.
It goes without saying that the purpose of the visit is purely scientific, and any other matters are  tangential. On the other hand, it has occurred to me and my long-time girlfriend that it would be a perfect opportunity for her to see this touristically attractive place. Now, I am wondering how best to make the arrangements, so as to maximize both research and personal benefits (and not offend the host as a by-product).
To state the obvious, at the time when I am supposed to be doing research I will be doing research, and not get distracted by the presence of my partner. The place is interesting enough to keep her entertained through the day, and to keep us both entertained during the evenings. I would not expect the host to have much interest in how I spend my free time if I want to be left to my own devices, so if me and my girlfriend make totally separate arrangements and only spend the evenings together, this should not cause any problems.
Keeping things entirely separate feels a little impractical though, so I have some questions about issues that I do not see as so clear-cut. My host will be booking accommodation for me and paying for it. Is it impolite to suggest that he book a double room, and we pay half of the price from our own pocket? It is probable that I will be invited to some social gatherings - maybe beer after a seminar, maybe dinner. Is it polite to bring my partner along/resign from joining? Would it be OK to streach the visit for an extra weekend after the research is done (paying for the hotel, of course, but hopefully still getting the return flight refunded)?
I would also be grateful for input on any issues that I have not yet thought of.
A few details, just in case they are relevant: My field is (pure) mathematics. The university is in Europe, at the Mediterranean coast. The visit is about a week long. We are in a long-distance relationship, so a extra week together does make a difference. The host strikes me as rather easy-going, but I don't know him that well.

Related: Is it appropriate to register a girlfriend with “companion registration” for an academic conference?.

are you considering relocating there at some point in the future?

In most hotels, the price for a room for two is far far less than double the price of a room for one.  So although it's good for you to offer to pay for whatever extra cost your visitor incurs, paying for half the room strikes me as more than they'd want.  (There are exceptions, e.g. cost per person can be higher in Japan, and some conferences use dormitories for lodging that might not be able to accommodate two people.)

@FábioDias: I could end up doing a postdoc there, but probably nothing more permanent.

@NoahSnyder: That's true, but I don't want to be exploiting the situation too much. It seems only fair that the host institution should save as much as we do on a shared room. Of course, if they offer to pay more, I'm not going to argue ;)

No need to write such a lang question;) sure it is okay!

It is perfectly reasonable. I have done it a couple of times and I know colleagues that frequently do it. Her presence at work/social events depends on the event and how well you know the host and the events. Often the work/social line gets blurred. I am friends with a number of my colleagues partners and my partner are friends with them and their partners. Sometimes my partner will join me for social events when we have a visitor.
That said, while it is not inappropriate, the trailing partner at academic events never has worked well for us. I have been both the leading and trailing partner. The person working is often tired at the end of the day and not really in the mood to be a tourist. We find it is a better use of our time and money to travel both as tourists and really enjoy our holidays.

+1. I'd just like to add that, in OP's shoes, I wouldn't bring my partner to social events like "having a drink." Those are great to get to know others, and be known by them; and with a partner around, interactions are likely going to be much different. Not a universal rule, but if it's just a week, what could be a good opportunity on the soft side of your visit might not be one. That would be different, of course, if it were an extended stay; and depending on your partner, it might not be true even here,

I had a good experience being the "trailing partner" when my GF went to a math conference in Strobl, Austria (rural town on a lake).  We stayed at a B&B in walking distance from the conference centre, instead of in the dorms at it.  I rented a bicycle from our B&B hosts and rode around the countryside, stopping to take pictures sometimes.  We met up for supper in the conference cafeteria along with the other attendees, and I'd show her some pictures from what I did that day.  We travelled in Europe for two more weeks after the conference, so we did get the chance to be tourists together.

It depends on the diplomatic skills of the girlfriend .Imagine if she upset somebody that is important to your future .Social settings and work settings can mix with great care .In social settings stuff that shouldnt be work relevent like say religion could come up .

@Autistic in my experience, in academia social and work setting mix whether you want them to or not. Trying to take great care on social interactions just does not work.

We often invite people to our institute, and it's not at all unusual for them to bring their girlfriend/boyfriend/family with them. This is never a problem - we're often asking them to come a long way, and it would feel strange not to accommodate their personal ties as much as possible. I imagine other institutes are similar - certainly no-one should be surprised if you ask, and I would be surprised if it caused a problem.
I would also ask about extending the visit to cover the weekend. Sometimes institutions have bureaucratic rules that can affect their ability to pay for your flights if you do that, so it's worth making sure that's not the case here. I don't think it's an unusual thing to want to do, so again they won't be surprised if you ask, and they will probably be apologetic if it's not possible.

An example of the kind of rule that some funding agencies might have is that the majority of the days on the trip be related to business.

@NoahSnyder another is simply that you have to arrive on the day before the first business activity and leave on the day after after the last one. Such a rule is quite silly, because it means you always have to spend the first day of a conference half asleep from jet lag, but I've worked in more than one institute that had that rule, in two different countries.

@Nathaniel when there are collaborators in the same city, a gentle meeting may be arranged - with a proper agenda of course - on the day before the conference.

To complement StrongBad's answer I'll address directly a few points of your question:

Is it impolite to suggest that he book a double room, and we pay half of the price from our own pocket?

No, it's not impolite: there should be no problem for them to ask refund for just half of the hotel's invoice.

It is probable that I will be invited to some social gatherings - maybe beer after a seminar, maybe dinner.

Of course it depends on your host, but as a European, and according to my experience around Europe, for a week-long visit, there might not be many social events, probably just a dinner. You can surely tell your host that you would like to come with your girlfriend.

Would it be OK to stretch the visit for an extra weekend after the research is done

Whether it's ok or not depends on the administration of the university which refunds the flight: if it's your host's, ask them; if it's yours, ask your university administration.

I can guarantee you the university has no procedures in place for paying external-visitor accommodation where they split the cost 50:50. Any accountant would take one look such an invoice and say "what the hell were you thinking? This exposes us to so many legal issues I don't know where to begin".

@J.J It depends on country, university etc. I'm aware of many universities that allow such a split.

My experience has been that often schools can just book you a two person room and pay for the whole thing.

Right, paying for 1 extra-large deluxe single or double room is OK so long as it can be justified as a requirement to get a certain person to come to the university/institute - but the university cant just hand out the cash. They have to keep invoices else whats stopping them from making up a bunch of scenarios where cash was given to people that never existed, and the money really ended up as a tax-fee, charitable donation to the dean and his/her assistant? This may not be a universal truth, but its common enough to warrant mentioning

The most important thing is to ask in advance.
Often, administration works by the principle that anything that reduces the cost is okay with them. They might even accept a flight arriving a day earlier or leaving later if it is documented to be cheaper (this mostly works if a weekend is inbetween - a flight arriving wednesday, leaving friday is usually more expensive than one returning on sunday because of business travelers. Usually the night sat-sun is reducing the price). Similarly, splitting a double room usually reduces cost (and you might not even need a double room - if its a single bed double occupancy, they might pay it completely, or minus breakfast).
The tricky part is knowing in advance what documentation is required (e.g. a screenshot of the booking site, comparing best fares).
Often they won't expect you to be around every night, in particularly when visiting a research group: many members will want to spend the evening with their families, too (this is different on a conference, where almost everybody is not local; it is advisable to join the events there for networking). I have been on a number of trips where I was on my own at night.
But consider that you'll both have a different experience if you spend most of your day separated. Sometimes it may be nicer if e.g. you arrive a week earlier for your research, and after completing work, you spend a second week (or even just the weekend) of vacation together. Then it's a true shared experience. Otherwise, she'll be seeing a lot of places and things that you did not. And she might not want to go to all these places a second time with you.

Being a PhD student/candidate is quite different from having earned one's PhD...There are some who would see such behaviour as presumptuous, bordering on entitlement--regardless of the student's motivation.  The time allotted to you is to get to know you, your behaviour, ability to interact with a number of people, professional and ancillary, in as many situations as possible...it's their dime.

Sure, it's their dime during the working hours, but I would imagine that it's up to me how I spend the rest of my time. Where's the problem?

It depends on how much the guest value you (professionally-academically), not on whether you have PhD or not.

I think bringing in girlfriend is absolutely fine for the trip. Hotel and other logistics for you might be covered which might compensate your girlfriend’s logistics. Often I find difficult is synchronizing between visit schedule and including girlfriend in that schedule. For example if you are going for a lunch while you are in the middle of meeting session with the host it may not be very appropriate to being your girlfriend along with you. Also, if meals are paid and number of tables are fixed, it’s tough to accommodate your girlfriend. Also, it may be fine to involve girlfriend in unofficial tours but how about official sessions? So, becoming clear on these things are important before making decisions.

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Awaiting EIC Decision for more than 1 month
I have submitted a paper in a journal's special issue. In the first notification, I got a major revision. After submitting the revision it goes through (awaiting for reviewer selection -> awaiting for reviewer scores -> awaiting for editors decision -> Awaiting EIC Decision). Now, it's in the "Awaiting EIC Decision" for more than one month.
Is it a bad sign? Is it ok if I send them an email? I need your opinion.
Thanks in advance.

Check out this question. You're at the "Editorial Decision" stage, and as you can see from there, the typical duration is a few workdays to a week. So more than 1 month is definitely atypical, and you should write in and ask.
If you're wondering, there's a good chance the abnormal wait time is because there's more than one "editor-in-chief": the original editor-in-chief, and the editor(s) in charge of the special issue.

Thanks for the answer. is there anything to do with being special issue?

I don't understand your question. If you're asking if it being a special issue has anything to do with the extra time taken, I'd guess yes, for reasons already given above. It's quite possible though that it's for some other reason (e.g. the EiC is ill).

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A person added his name to my articles
Almost a decade ago, when I was a young student, one of my professors invited me to make a tiny undergraduate research under his supervision. The idea was to solve an optimization problem with applications in our country. I wrote five simple solutions: three of them using mathematical models, a fourth one using an algorithm, and a fifth one adapting the latter for computational implementation (I had to design data structures, rewrite the algorithm, etc.)
The only contributions the "leader of the project" (the guy who invited me) made were to suggest me to use a specific algorithm for the second paper, and then implement it as a computer software.
Here is the problem: when I gave him my LaTeX originals for the three resulting articles in a pen drive (I didn't have much experience with e-mails back then), he recompiled my articles with his name as first author, even when it's last name comes after mine in alphabetical order ... even when he did virtually nothing! He said he sent them to the university journal for publication, beacause I couldn't send them myself (he said).
Since I gave him the LaTeX sources of my articles in person, I don't have a record of my complete authoring. Even worse, I was young so I believed every word he said, and even put in my resume the description "Co-authored with [name-of-Professor]", so I naively acknowledged his name.
It has been 10 years from that moment, and I haven't found any of my articles to have been ever published. This professor said he was the advisor, so his name should be included, even when his apport was marginally minimal, and that I couldn't send them to another journal until we get a response from the university journal.
Now I want to publish the articles as chapters of a tiny textbook I am writing, but I think he doesn't deserve his name to be mentioned in any way in this work. Is there any way I could achieve this? Nobody has been able to help me on this matter here in my country.
I really want to publish these articles. They are not exceptional in any sense, but they are part of my work as a young mathematician, and they're even an important achievement, since I wrote them without previously knowing the subject. So they are important for me.
Thanks in advance for your answers!

Do you know if there was ever a response "from the university journal"? The authorship sounds plausibly defensible, but if there's something dodgy about the publication process as you hint at then that may tip the scales.

Not clear what happened to the papers. Are they published in peer reviewed journals?

In your place I'd probably write in my textbook something like "Thanks to xxx for pointing me to this topic and that algorithm" - assuming that these are not a substantial part of the textbook and that you have no specific reason to suspect that the supervisor will do something to hurt you unless his "co-authorship" is respected. I would probably also change the odd small thing here and there so that it's harder to say that this is the same work for which you once agreed to be second author. It's probably not legally safe what I recommend but chances are you get away with it.

Hello, everybody. Thank you very much for your comments! As for @MichaelHomer's question, it is my understanding there was no response from the journal. Even worse, there are many university journals where I studied, and my Professor never told me which one he sent the articles to. He did tell me that the editor resigned a few days after receiving my articles, and two years later a new editor appeared. I asked her to find the articles, but never found them by title. (The database is not searchable by author names!) I've been told the articles were never received, but I cannot confirm that.

As for @Alchimista's question, as you can see from my previous comment, I actually don't know what happened to the articles. However, concerning the university journal where the articles were supposed to be published on, they are limited edition publications that are gifted to professors of the university, but I don't know if they are also published electronically. Nobody seems to be willing to give me information (that's common in my country). However, if they are not electronically published, it seems to me that the only review process (if any) is made by professors of the university itself.

As for @Lewian comment, yes, it seems to be plausible to proceed as you say. This path was recommended by my lawyer, but he also told me this implies a risk of trouble. What worries me is that the articles have a lot of fixed-parts, like theorems, definitions, algorithms, data structures, models, and comparatively very few explanation words. Now, the explanation text could be rewritten, but the articles would be unmistakably recognizable. Could you please elaborate on your suggestion based on this? (It is safe to assume that 10, 30 and 85%, respectively, of the articles can be reworded.)

First of all a textbook isn't an original paper. You could use that material, adapting it to a book format and avoiding apparent plagiarism. Note that even self plagiarism wouldn't be the best. Nor a textbook consisting of just collated papers would be a nice book. Problem seems how to know if citations are needed and/or what to refer to.  You should get this mystery university journal for perusal, or contact that professor.

@dsv: Sorry, I cannot elaborate on my comment as I don't have a clue what would make this "safe". Personally I'd probably just do it because I find it hard to imagine how this can lead to trouble. However I don't know your country, academic culture, scientific detail, and the persons involved, so I cannot assess this safely. I should also add that my proposal is not based on the assumption that the articles are made unrecognisable, but rather on the (somewhat debatable) thought that even if they can be recognised, nobody in their right mind would object.

Thank you very much for your comments. I think I will have to rewrite the contents of the articles in a totally new format. But I had to do it anyway, since the old format was not adequate for the book.

Can somebody in this thread please turn the comments into an answer?

Now I want to publish the articles as chapters of a tiny textbook I am writing, but I think he doesn't deserve his name to be mentioned in any way in this work. Is there any way I could achieve this?

Pretty sure the answer here is no.
First, your textbook needs to cite its references, so in the Bibliography, you would need to list the paper where he declared himself the first author.
That being said, you will probably chose some citing format for your textbook such as "According to [3]", rather than "According to DUDESNAME, 2008".
If your book is written in first person speech (which I dislike, but is your option), you can still claim "Back in 2007 I've done A and and B, as explained in [3]". Your former advisor will likely not dispute those claims with you, but you would probably gain very little from this passive agressive strategy.
Moreover, having your advisor who contributed very little as a co-author is very common. Although he usually would have contributed in other ways, such as providing equipment, references and guidance, which may not look like a lot of hard work, but it does take a lot of hard work to have the knowledge and resources to do this properly. Also, the co-author status is part of his reward for advising you. He making himself the first author sounds pretty unethical though.

"you would need to list the paper where he declared himself the first author." From my understanding of the situation, there is no such paper. There are paper drafts which have been submitted to some journal by the advisor 10 years ago, but they have never been published.

Yes, indeed, @lighthousekeeper, the articles have never been published, as far as I know (actually, according to my former advisor). However, it is my understanding that I should include them in the bibliography as "unpublished articles" or "unpublished reports". I suppose that is the correct way to proceed. I have to agree with Mefitico in that suggesting the research subject, along with giving me advise (a couple of meetings we had) and access to resources, is enough for him to add his name. I also consider this behavior to be unethical, but it seems very common practice, unfortunately.

To be clear, adding his name as last author is common practice and pretty much fair in my opinion. But adding his name as first author is absurd. Because in some places, people do the "favor" of adding all of their friends as co-authors, for some academic metrics, only the number of works published as first author counts. Hence why the "first" author is the one place that should be taken seriously.


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Is it polite to send a follow-up email to the editor after 15 days, if the previous email had no reply?
I submitted a research paper in pure mathematics in a good (in the sense of science citation indexing) journal published by a university in the USA. It has been over 3 years since I submitted it.
In the mean-time, the third round of revision (a minor revision) was submitted two and a half months back. The first round of review took almost 2 years, then a minor revision for the second round of review took almost a year. The final and third revision was submitted two and half months back. The review reports were positive every time. The last time (two and half months back), the editor said that the referees will inform soon. After two months, I gave another polite reminder (15 days ago) about the status of the paper, but I received no reply from the editor. I understand, an editor might have been busy and might have been missed or forgot to reply.
If I give another follow-up email to the editor, would it be polite or the editor mind it? If I write a follow-up email, what should be the email's message?
Some more information: I am a graduate student, and will be defending my thesis soon. So, a few publications will help me for the next step of my career. The paper is almost 30 pages paper of fundamental mathematics, that is, mostly theorems, lemmas etc, not many figures. However, in my opinion, the mathematics involved in the paper are not very difficult to review by an expert.

Do you mean that the first submission of this paper was over 3 years ago?

@Buffy, yes exactly. It is three years one month now

And, do you mean that the thesis was submitted to the journal? Or to the university?

@Buffy, no I just submitted an article, not my thesis. My thesis have other papers as well. My PhD thesis is submitted to my university.

I wouldn't worry so much about politeness, since you have a need. But this journal seems a bit (ha ha, more than a bit) lethargic. I doubt that you can expect anything to happen soon.
In a note to the editor, ask for the prospects of publication within, say 6 (or whatever) months. Maybe you will get an answer. I hope so. Mention that you are graduating soon and a published article will help in the job market.
Withdrawal is an option, but it probably won't speed you up by much if anything by submitting elsewhere. Yes, math publication can be slow, but this is a bit much. Ask. Keep the wording polite, but don't worry about the politeness of the request itself.
Normally asking for follow up in two weeks is a bit soon, but I think this is an exception.

Maybe I should one more week before sending another reminder. The reply from the editor was two and half months back when I submitted the third revision. But didn't receive reply of the last email that i sent 15 day back.

Waiting one more week will be the Christmas break in many parts of the world...

While I understand that math publishing moves much more slowly than most other fields, the pace here seems so lackadaisical that I don't think you have much to lose by being a little pushy--and things do happen.  A journal lost a short paper of mine for a year[1]: the editor and assistants kept getting reassigned and this particular paper fell through the cracks. Like you, I held off on sending reminders in the interests of politeness, but I wish I had started sooner.
However, I would caution you that the timing of your emails is a little unfortunate. Two weeks ago, many western universities were starting to wrap up the academic term, setting final exams, papers, etc. That's finishing up and we're now heading into the holidays. If your paper is being handled by an academic, rather than a full-time professional editor, it might be on the back-burner while they deal with seasonal things and/or vacation.
Thus, if you don't send something in the next day or so, I would suggest waiting until January 6.
[1] In biology, this is essentially an eternity.

yes you are right, I have that in my mind.


text:
Correction of Minor Errors in a Published Research Paper
As a current PhD candidate, I was delighted to have published my first paper two years ago in a journal during my doctoral studies. Subsequently, I left that research group and joined a new one, along with a new supervisor. Recently, while reviewing my previously published work, I discovered several minor errors in that paper.
To be precise, there are three such errors:

In the main text, a parameter used for calculation was incorrectly stated. This error, however, does not affect any subsequent calculations or the principal conclusions of the paper. Additionally, this parameter was cited from another reference, which is clearly indicated. Thus, readers can refer to that paper to obtain the correct value.

In the supplementary materials, a simulation parameter was incorrectly listed in a table, though the value I actually used in the simulations was different. Upon discovering this mistake, I carefully rechecked the calculations and confirmed that due to the precision of the model, this discrepancy does not affect the simulation results. Both values are widely used in the literature and are valid.

The video accompanying the paper does not match the content of the article. Specifically, the version of the video that was published is an earlier draft and should have been updated to reflect the phenomena described in the paper. This might confuse readers, as the demonstration shown in the video does not correspond to the events discussed in the text.

The first two errors are merely typographical and do not affect any data or results. However, the discrepancy in the video might lead to some confusion, as the visual demonstration differs from the text.
We discovered the error in the main text before publication. I brought it to my former supervisor’s attention, but it seems that while correcting other mistakes, this one was inadvertently overlooked. As for the video, I had sent my supervisor the updated version via email, but apparently, it was not uploaded. The error in the supplementary materials was entirely my own oversight. In short, these errors stemmed from both my and my former supervisor’s oversights.
I have already consulted my current supervisor, who advised me to reach out to my former supervisor (the corresponding author of the paper). I contacted him, but he has not responded. I am unsure whether this is because he considers these errors trivial or if he is upset that I pointed out two of the mistakes were his responsibility. (At the time of submission, my supervisor handled the entire process, and I did not thoroughly check the materials uploaded to the submission system.)
As such, I am uncertain about how to proceed. Should I wait for my former supervisor’s response, or should I directly contact the editor to request a correction? Although this paper is unrelated to my current PhD research topic, I am concerned that these minor errors may negatively impact my progress towards obtaining my degree. I also feel ashamed of my own oversight.

Did you put reasonable effort into contacting your PhD advisor? Many academics routinely overlook single e-mails. This sounds like a great opportunity to call up your PhD advisor and catch up.

@Joooeey   I have made every effort to contact him, including phone calls and emails, but I still haven't received any response. I would like to meet with him in person, but even the colleagues I worked closely with in the research group are unsure of his whereabouts; they only know that he is still assigning tasks to his students. I am beginning to suspect that he may be intentionally not replying to me.

If you haven't been contacted by anyone about these errors, then there is really no need to bother. If you've been read and cited, people have overlook or corrected for the minor errors.
You can, of course, contact an editor at the journal and ask for a solution. Perhaps they can make a correction online, or provide an errata page.
If you have your own web-site, you can also publish errata there.

Thank you very much for your detailed and helpful response！

The best end result would be to publish a corrigendum in the same journal where the original article was published. For this, it would be best to have your former supervisor, the corresponding author, involved. Some authors don't like to publish corrigenda, viewing it as a mark against them. Some authors prefer to include remarks in subsequent papers pointing out the errors in the earlier work. Personally, I think it's best to publish a corrigendum, so try harder to get in touch with the former supervisor, e.g. by calling if email doesn't work. You might need to convince him/her.
Lastly, if you're in a field that uses arXiv, you can fix the errors and update the arXiv preprint so that at least new readers who get your work from there will get the right version. But, that creates a conflict with the published version, so it's still important to eventually get in touch with the journal. By the way, if the editor views the errors as very minor, they might decline to publish a corrigendum.

I greatly appreciate your comprehensive and thoughtful answer.

The first two errors almost certainly do not need correcting, because they do not affect the overall conclusions of the paper.
The issue with the video may be worthy of correcting - it's not possible for us to say.
If you are the first and/or corresponding author, you could consider reaching out to the editor of the journal, explaining the situation re the video, and taking their advice. Otherwise, I would stick with what you have already done.

Thank you very much for your reply! As the first author of the paper, I will follow your advice. While waiting for the corresponding author’s response, I will reach out to the editor directly.


text:
Why is the Marie Curie Individual Fellowship only for 'experienced researchers'?
The Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (IF) has the following eligibility requirement:
"Researchers must be experienced researchers (ER), i.e. at the date of the call deadline (for IF) ... be in possession of a doctoral degree or have at least four years of full-time equivalent research experience." (page 80 of the PDF Work Programme 2018-2020: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions).
By my calculations, this means that that a student spending 4 or fewer years in graduate school must have a lag time of 6-12 months after obtaining the PhD before they could begin to recieve funding. Why is this desirable? Are there any other EU-wide fellowships for STEM which could fill the gap?
(I am aware of other postdoc funding opportunities but none that are as prestigious.)
EDIT: To clarify, why are PhD students not eligible to apply in the fall of their final year, unless they already have "four years of full-time equivalent research experience" at that point? (i.e. a student graduating in May 2021 and applying in September 2020)

Looks like a PhD -OR- 4 years experience, if you have quoted correctly (not going to download the pdf...). So a PhD suffices.

Yes, a PhD by the 'call deadline', not by the time the researcher would begin to receive funding. It takes months after the call deadline for applications to be reviewed.

To be more concrete, last year the proposals were due in September and the earliest start date was May. (7-8 months later) (Source: https://www.uio.no/for-ansatte/enhetssider/hf/aktuelt/bilder/2017/timetable.pdf)

"Are there any other EU-wide fellowships for STEM which could fill the gap? " Do you mean other than regular postdoc positions? Because that would be the standard pathway: get a postdoc then apply for grants with a stronger profile while being a postdoc.

@Erwan Yes, exactly. I am a US citizen and will be applying for an NSF postdoc fellowship. I think I have a good shot at it, but would rather be in Europe and am annoyed that I can't apply for Marie Curie at the same time. I am looking for fellowships to apply to that I might accept even if I got the NSF. I already have backup plans in Europe in case I don't.

I don't understand the question, if you have a PhD you can apply, its a PhD or 4 years of research experience, not both. In general in Europe a PhD takes 3 years, unlike the US.

@Anonymous if you feel like going for highly competitive funding, you could try to apply for an H2020 call. These grants are assigned to institutions so you'd need to apply with a PI in the EU (I assume from your comment that you already have contacts).

@Erwan Thank you, but could you be more specific? I was under the impression that Marie Curie was part of Horizons 2020. (Yes, I want to work on a specific project with collaborators in the EU, but there are no country-specific grants we can apply for, and if they do not get the ERC they are going for then they can only fund me for a year.)

@Anonymous yes you're right, but H2020 covers many different kinds of funding. afaik Marie Curie are the main kind of individual fellowship, but there are also a lot of calls for proposals (project-based). These often involve building and/or participating to a consortium with several organizations, but again this depends on the type of project. The H2020 website is a bit hard to navigate but given time you'll find a lot of information there: https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/programmes/h2020

@Erwan Thank you! I will look into it.

Funders are allowed to make their own rules. Typically they try to be as fair as possible, but there will always be some 'edge effects' where the rules have unintended consequences.
In the case of Marie Curie grants, there is an explicit intention to draw in people from across the entire EU (and beyond). As such, the rules need to accommodate the wide variety of different systems, norms and expectations found in different countries. The clearest point of synchronisation is the date of award of the doctoral degree, and this is what has been chosen in the rules.
Some additional advantages:

If applications were allowed before the doctoral degree was awarded, there would inevitably be cases where someone didn't complete the degree before their fellowship was supposed to start.
All applicants should have a concrete body of work that can be used to assess their suitability for a fellowship.

Finally, while I don't know the statistics for Marie Curie specifically, in general success rates are skewed towards more experienced applicants. It may well be that the people impacted by this rule are generally not competitive for the fellowships.

Do you think this is unintentional? It's interesting to note that the criteria for 'early-stage researchers' and 'experienced researchers' are perfectly mutually exclusive.

@Anonymous Well, clearly the formulation of the rules is not unintentional. However, I doubt these were explicitly written with the goal of disqualifying people whose PhD timings happen to fall a few days after the MC closing date.

This is simply a question of target audience. Marie-Curie grants are designed so that some applicants will choose the grant over a mediocre tenure track position (with the hope to get a better permanent position afterwards). The grant comes with funding and salary to match that experience level. Trying to apply for a Marie-Curie directly after your PhD is hopeless in most cases (I don't know anything about your specific skills), that is simply not what this fellowship is designed for.
If you either are German or plan to go to Germany there are DFG grants that are targetted at young researchers, that is directly after the PhD. Presumably there a similar programs in other EU countries. There may be EU programs for young researchers as well.

You're misunderstanding its requirements.
For Experienced Researchers, it says they need to "be in possession of a doctoral degree or have at least four years of full-time equivalent research experience". Notice the "or": you either need a doctoral degree, or you need to have four years of full-time equivalent research experience. If you have a doctoral degree that you accomplished in three years, then you meet the requirements.

I think you are misunderstanding the question. OP wonders why it's necessary to have the PhD completed by the time of submission, which, assuming a PhD in less than four years, introduces a lag of 6-12 months between completing your PhD and obtaining funding from MCIF.

No, I'm not. The OP seems to think that it's an "and" rather than an "or"; that if you complete your PhD in three years, you need an additional 12 months of research experience to get the four years.

That he doesn't say. He talks about lag arising for a student "spending 4 or fewer years in graduate school", which includes a student who takes precisely 4 years. The additional 6-12 months come from the reviewing process.

@lighthousekeeper That's not how I interpreted that sentence. The OP can feel free to clarify, of course, but it sounds to me more like he's saying that he thinks you need both 4 years experience and a PhD - otherwise the amount of time you spent doing your PhD would be irrelevant.

He explicitly mentions the reviewing timeline in his comments.

I have added some clarification to the question; lighthouse-keeper is correct about my intentions.

I'll leave the "why are the MSC requirements like this" question to the other answers, and focus on the

"Are there any other EU-wide fellowships for STEM which could fill the
  gap?"

I'm not aware of any EU-wide programs, but you don't needed an EU wide program, you need one that is EU-wide, you just need one in the country of your intended host institution. Many EU countries have post-doc grants for incoming international post-docs, many of which are considered quite prestigious. Some examples include:

The Newton International Fellowship in the UK
The Humboldt Research Fellowship in Germany

You will find many similar programs in other EU countries.

You can try to argue that the last year of your undergraduate counts, if you did something like research experiences for undergraduates.
I was a MC fellow in 2002-2004 and at the time of applying was in the last of 5 years of graduate school, having spent 4 years in a combination of research, taking courses, and working as a teaching assistant. So hardly "full time research" in a narrow sense.

The document says "'Full-time equivalent research experience' is measured from the date when the researcher obtained the degree entitling him/her to embark on a doctorate" which I think would not contradict you applying in the 5th year of graduate school. I would indeed be eligible if my undergraduate research experience counted. Thank you for the encouragement! I will double-check with the funding body.

Oh okay, that does sound rather strict (and maybe it was the same back in 2001).

For anyone else to whom this applies, I wanted to say that I contacted the appropriate people and was told that undergraduate research does not count, with no exceptions.


text:
After our first Zoom interview, my potential supervisor asked me to prepare a presentation for the next Zoom meeting
After our first Zoom meeting, my potential supervisor asked me to prepare a PowerPoint presentation about my thesis or any research I've done (it doesn't matter if it's not related to her research area), and present it in another Zoom meeting to the rest of the lab members. She said it will also be an opportunity to meet them and ask them questions about the lab environment.
She says she wants to see how I communicate about research. I found this request weird. I'll still do it of course.
However, I'm afraid because in our first Zoom meeting, even though the current went well between us, I feel likeI wasn't able to talk about my research project as well as I'd have liked to due to stress and some language issue, so she may have regretted answering my email in the first place, and now doesn't have the heart to just reject me.
Am I overthinking it?
She said that with the next meeting she'll be able to make the decision.

This is not weird at all. If you ever interview somewhere, asking the candidate about what they do is a classical icebreaker. Look at it like this: you get to pick the topic, and it's one you are an expert in! That is pretty much the best position you can be in in a conversation. You get to portray yourself in the best possible light.

Like others have mentioned this is a usual request. In fact recently I was asked the same when applying for a Phd AND to do individual zoom meetings with every single lab member.

This reads to me like an online version of first interview (which is often done by Skype or phone) followed by a more in-depth interview including a presentation.  It's a good sign.  There will probably be a few other candidates doing the same, but not a huge number

If anything, I would consider it a compliment: a group of people will devote time and attention to your work. Giving a presentation may feel like doom, you might have to get used to that. But it's actually a gift of time and attention. If they want to reject you, they'll rather do so without listening to your presentation.

All my job interviews post PhD (and some for PhDs) asked me to present my work. At this point I'd be suspicious if they did not!

Seems like you are overthinking this. At my institution, prospective grad students often are asked to give talks about their current research. This is a good way to get to know the candidate, and evaluate how well they can communicate ideas (obviously very important for grad students), how committed they are (here via how "good" the presentation is), how it is to discuss research with them (which your prospective supervisor would be doing a lot with you) when discussing the contents afterwards, etc.

Absolutely. Making assumptions that you are doomed can lead to ... doom. I doubt they would bother to take the time if they've already made up their minds.

"prospective grad students often are asked to give talks about their current research" -- where are they doing their "current research", and how did they join that place?

I'm in a country where typically students do a Master's before starting a PhD (the "real" grad program). But elsewhere, people who want to get into research often get some experience in an undergrad program, e.g., through their thesis.

Even here in the UK where a lot of students go straight on to a PhD from undergrad, they may still be asked to present on their final BSc project or something similar.

Short answer: you are overthinking this. Do the presentation. Keep it short and to the point. I have been on both sides for such presentations. Introduce your research and spend some time talking about the contributions that you made. Important to consider some things that you would find interesting to research and link them back to your research. Good luck!

+1 Highlighting your own contributions is the way to go.

You are in the best possible situation for this job. You are already an expert on the research topic of your choice. Now spend some time studying which concrete projects, they are working on in the lab. Round off the presentation of you topic, telling them how your research relates to concrete, current research activities in the lab. I am stressing 'concrete and current' because by referring to those, you demonstrate that you are really interested in their work.


text:
Do US academics get sick days?
In a comment to their answer to the question Faculty member brought sick (feverish) child to class - is this unethical?, the user Anonymous Physicist writes:

It's okay to cancel class for a sick child in US academia, but some US workplaces do not grant sick days for sick children. US academics don't have sick days at all.

I come from a European country where the concept of "Sick Days" is different than in the US (indeed, I understand the word "sick day" only because of Workplace SE and I am still not sure I understand it correctly) — as I understand, a sick day is day you can take when you are sick and still get paid.
My question: Is the comment true, i.e. do US academics not get sick days? Is it really true universally in the US (i.e is there some "law" or regulations that universities are not allowed to give sick days to their employees)?
Is there some other system in place or do US professors really just not get paid when they are sick? (If not, why haven't there been any strikes/demands/movements? Surely tenured profs don't need to worry about getting fired when they make demands?)
Please note that while those questions may sound silly for a US person, US and European employment laws differ a lot and the whole concept of "sick days" is really complicated to me.

I'lll wait to see if Anonymous Physicist provides their own refinement, but the implication isn't that US profs don't get paid. They do. But they don't have to count days or worry about it as long as they can meet their general obligations otherwise. For a long absence (recovery from an operation, say) the university will provide a replacement, but the pay would be very likely to continue uninterrupted. We aren't paid for time spent, but for results.

@Buffy: So how does this work out for obligations like teaching?

The answer of user Jeff says it well. You find a way to assure a quality experience for students. Lots of possibilities beyond standing in front of them.

It depends. Upon the specific university. Public universities in the US depend upon their specific state. See this story for the University of Wisconsin Madison https://madison.com/news/uw-faculty-not-taking-sick-leave-audit-finds-this-other/article_d44475e3-01c1-5afc-b7a7-3a02cd698fc9.html

@RichardErickson: What does the article say? It is unavaible to me for legal reasons since I am in the EU.

Sorry, didn't realize the page would be blocked in the EU. Basically, faculty are Wisconsin State employees. They got "sick days" but didn't use them because they could get other people to cover their classes when sick and work more than 40 hours per week on a regular basis. Politicians got upset at them. I don't remember how the story ends. Search for "Wisconsin uw faculty sick days audit 2006" and maybe you can find a story accessible inside the EU

"Is it really true universally in the US (i.e there is some "law" or regulations that universities are not allowed to give sick days to their employees)?"  That is definitely not what I meant.  There are no universal practices at all.

At my US institution,

Hourly employees (administrative assistants, groundskeepers, custodians, etc.) fill out (electronic) time cards showing all of the hours that they've worked and the hours that they've taken off as vacation or sick leave.  They earn hours of sick leave and vacation for each pay biweekly period and can only take paid leave if they have enough time "saved up" (accrued) to cover their absence.
Salaried professional staff (typically employees with college degrees such as computer systems administrators, accountants, etc.) and full-time academic administrators (deans and vice presidents and the like) also accrue leave but use a different set of forms to track their leave balances.
Faculty on 9-month contracts do not accrue sick leave or vacation and do not generally have to account specifically for how (or where) they spend their time.  However, they are required to teach their classes and be available for students to talk to for at least a few hours a week outside of class time.  They can take vacation whenever they want when classes are not in session (summer, Christmas break, and spring break.)  If they get sick, they stay home and try to make alternate arrangements for teaching their classes (e.g. a grad student TA or another faculty member might cover their teaching for a few days.)

For serious and long-lasting illnesses that would keep an employee out for many weeks or months, all three groups have disability insurance that pays an employee's salary while they can't work.  There's also a separate type of insurance called "workman's compensation" that specifically covers situations in which an employee is injured in the course of their work.
The kind of freedom that faculty have to manage their time is very uncommon in corporate jobs in the US, although self-employed professionals often have much the same freedom.

Thank you! Another question: The responsibility to find alternative arrangements for classes: is this a responsibility of faculty by contract or is it legally a responsibility of the university (and de facto done by the instructor)?

There's nothing in my contract (a one page document) or the faculty handbook (legally considered part of the contract) that discusses this.  Rather, I'm expected to fulfill my duties and a significant failure to do so could result in my losing my position.  This is handled informally.  At institutions where faculty are unionized there are often much more specific rules.

For full-time faculty, the question doesn't really apply well because faculty aren't paid hourly or daily.  In the departments I've been involved with, the policy is that faculty handle their own classes and minor illnesses.  That is, if I need to cancel class one day then what that means for the class is up to me.  Maybe I have a TA teach it, or I offer a recorded lecture to fill in time, or even just cancel the class and adjust material accordingly.
What it comes down to is whether I can meet the obligations for the class while handling my illness.  For major illnesses where that isn't true, the department would schedule someone else to teach and I would look at my short-term disability benefits, which are commonly available in large US universities.  The unfortunate exception is an adjunct faculty member, who simply teaches contract-to-contract, and may not even have benefits through the university.

Do you know if "not paid hourly or daily" is a common thing for US employees in say, office jobs, or is this really special to Academia?

@user111388 I'm a software developer in Germany and am not paid per hour or day, but per month. And I don't think I know anybody who doesn't get paid the same each month.

When I was a researcher in a think thank, I was paid hourly because my time was billed to projects, and those projects had discrete funding sources.  My allotted "sick days" where when my salary was paid out of the general company's coffers.

@Christian: Sure, as Germany doesn't have the concept of "sick days" (as I understand, you are only allowed to be sick certain days, afterwards it means reduced pay). I would hope the same is true in all civilized countries (but am not entirely sure about the US).

@user111388: "Not [being] paid hourly or daily" is called being salaried.  How common it is depends on the exact profession, but there are plenty of salaried office jobs in the US, and plenty where the workers are paid a wage instead.

@jwodder: And salaried people are always paid when being sick (within realistic constraints, eg doctor's note, not being sick for too long), do I understand it right?

@user111388 In Germany one can be sick six weeks, afterwards one gets not paid by their employer anymore, but by the mandatory health insurance.

@Christian: Sure. But I am not asking about Germany (I'm trying to understand the US employment system better.)

The idea that faculty in the United States uniformly do not receive sick leave/family leave is not entirely accurate. Some universities grant 12-month regularized faculty and 9-month restricted (academic year faculty) sick leave and family leave as part of our benefits package.
At my institution, 12-month regularized faculty have 26 weeks (1040 hours) of protected sick leave immediately upon hire for each year. If they use it up they can then begin accruing it back at the rate of 5 hours per week. We immediately have 80 hours of family sick leave (for family illness or death).
9-month restricted faculty (academic year) begin accruing sick leave at the rate of 5 hours per pay period, and immediately have access to 80 hours of family sick leave.
We enter our sick leave and family leave just like regular employees on the university's leave system.
Now, the more procedurally focused and organized departments on campus establish policies guiding a limit for sick leave (ex: no more than 1 full week or 2 full weeks of class total) after which they will ask you (if you are experiencing a sustained or continued need to take sick leave, to either arrange for any future classes to be covered (at which point you will not have to be charged sick leave days) or to take the remainder of your leave as you wait for your short term disability benefits to kick in and they are then required to get your classes reliably covered for the remainder of the semester and ensure your students receive sufficient and adequate instruction.
However, less organized departments can remain fairly lapse about even reminding faculty they can record or take sick leave. Most operate on very old-school understandings of what it means to labor in academia-- a sense that they are not "traditional employees" that might need to report or take sick leave and barely have anything resembling a "boss." This outdated culture can frequently mean departments fail to provide clear and consistent guidance to their faculty and, in some cases, accidentally violate university policies by trying to penalize faculty who take any sick leave. There can be instances where faculty are essentially told that there is no need or reason to ever talk to the university's HR, and this is more common in departments that do not have their own leave representative (which is not required, but many wise departments take advantage of this option).
My institution is not unionized, but we do have the above policies for sick leave/family leave for faculty.
However, universities are extremely varied, and many may not have any sick leave/family leave as part of faculty benefits packages. This may go back to the idea that academia can tend to struggle with how it views teaching labor.


text:
In my statement of purpose, should I justify a dropped course that I later made up
I am an international applicant currently applying for a PhD in mathematics in the US, and in my statement of purpose I have highlighted my interest in analysis and topology, but during a summer semester (short semester, two months only) in my undergrad, I had to drop an elective topology course, due to two reasons. During the same semester, I was doing my graduation project, which I did before my graduation semester, to open myself up to the opportunity of doing research, which fortunately worked and I was able to publish a paper. The second reason is the time of the class and life issues.
After my undergrad, I decided to do a master's, where I had a course whose syllabus covered and went over to more advanced topics compared to that dropped course and I was able to get an "A" in it.
Should I try to write about this experience in my SOP or should I leave it out?

The SoP is not the place to make excuses. It should be forward looking, focused on your plans for graduate study and thereafter.
The CV and the grades transcript detail the past.
Additionally, there is no reason to explain or justify dropping a course. It is just part of being a student. If you are asked about it in an interview, explain it then, but I doubt anyone would care.

Indeed, students drop courses all the time for all kinds of reasons. The 'last day to drop a class' date is prominently displayed on every university's calendar I've ever looked at. Many transcripts will not list dropped classes.

Some universities have multiple dates: Last day to drop and receive a full refund.  Last day to drop without a negative mark (W = withdrew) on transcript.  Last day to drop at all (after which the student will receive a grade, probably F).  The presence of the W entry for the course corresponds to when the university administration expects the student to need to explain/offer justification to those receiving the transcript.

@BenVoigt, I'd say "maybe F". Some people drop when doing well for reasons not connected to course progress: health, for example. I don't normally consider W as a negative mark. it doesn't figure into GPA, I expect.

@Buffy: But a student who defacto drops (but is not dropped by the registrar) doesn't earn a grade based on their progress up to that point, it's calculated at the end of the semester.  Just missing a final exam is often enough by itself to tank the grade.  Although in a circumstance where the student had been doing well, they're much more likely to have other options offered, such as "incomplete".

There are situations where it makes sense to address shortcomings of your application in the SOP, e.g. a semester of poor grades related to a physical illness or other temporary obstacle. But I agree that dropping one class will not be considered a big deal by pretty much anyone, and therefore is not worth addressing.


text:
Should I send an email thanking a professor or would they be bothered there's no other content?
If I send an email to ask a professor for a PhD position, and the professor replies, do need I need to reply with something like "Thanks very much for your concern", "Thanks very much for your reply" to him/her?
I am afraid if I don't reply, the professor will think I am rude (in my country, students should reply to the professor even with "yes, thank you Professor" to end the chat, since if the last sentence was written by the professor, it would be considered impolite to not respond). But I don't want to bother the professor with this spam-like email.
The professor is from a western culture (US or Europe). Do I need to reply?


text:
For non-native English speakers, is it ok to use ChatGPT as a translation assistant?
For non-native English speakers, is it ok to use ChatGPT as a translation assistant?
Example prompt:

As a non-native english speaker I am writing a scientific article, so you are my english language proof reading services assistant: Please correct the following paragraph for spelling, grammar and style. Please do not alter the technical content but focus on improving the language only.

If the answer is no, then how is using AI-assisted translation support different from the generally accepted (even encouraged!) academic writing proof reading services for non-native speakers(*)?
Would it be also ok to let the AI tool not only improve English writing attempts but let the AI translate whole sentences or paragraphs from the author's native language (say French) to English?
Of course I would very critically review the model's output. I take it as given that any scientist's passive understanding of English is good enough to judge the technical, subject-matter related  correctness of a writing assistant's output (AI or human), otherwise the scientist would not be able to follow international scientific discourse in the first place.
(*) e.g. from Submitting Articles to ACM Journals:

Language Services ACM has partnered with International Science Editing (ISE) to provide language editing services to ACM authors. ISE offers a comprehensive range of services for authors including standard and premium English language editing, as well as illustration and translation services

Someone using a language model for a task it's actually suited for! My faith in humanity is restored slightly less tarnished!  That said, 1) you might try to find a dedicated translation interface without the chatbot stuff, 2) depending on exactly what the model was trained on, it might not have adequetely sampled the areas of the language where papers in your field live, and 3) that prompt seems a bit cargo-culty. I'd be somewhat surprised if it adds anything over saying "Translate from French to English, in the style of a scientific paper" (it's a transformer, not a person).

As an aside: Chat-GPT is not well suited to translation, there are tools using similar technology that are much better at it. Google for specific translation tools.

@Ray LLMs are suited to translation? That's news to me. If they are, it's more a fortuitous happenstance. If they confabulate (the correct description in stead of the usual "hallucinate") in one language, they will certainly confabulate during translation. Morever, the non-english text corpus may be lacking, grasping cultural differences will be beyond the model's abilties, and God knows what else. Well, research & engineering is certainly ongoing.

Transformers (the “T” in “ChatGP”) were specifically invented for Google Translate (and, in fact, their use as generators (the “G” in “ChatPT”) is what is actually the result of fortuitous happenstance). So, yes, this is indeed a rare case of “AI” being used for what it was designed for. That being said, since Google Translate essentially is ChatGPT (not literally, but the same underlying tech), the question basically boils down to “is it OK to use Google Translate as a translation assistant”.

@indi Isn’t the training of ChatGPT and a dedicated translation AI different? I would not go so far as to treat them as essentially the same - I would not use ChatGPT translations with the same confidence as Google Translate.

@DavidTonhofer ChatGPT uses some extra techniques to make it more suitable to conversational language that are probably not especially helpful when it comes to translation. But language modeling in general is a central part of good translation systems, and transformers, which are the main component of the GPT family of models, are quite effective at that. The math that does the heavy lifting is going to be basically the same for text generation, speech recogntion, and translation. But a dedicated translator will work best.

Ray: " that prompt seems a bit cargo-culty". No. Giving as much context as possible is very important for promting LLMs.

@DavidTonhofer Looking at message boards for translators, I get the distinct impression that their job market has massively shifted towards post-editing of AI translations since roughly 2023. I don't think it's plausible that this is due to specialised translation AIs.

I've had often enough native-speaker human editors change sentences' meaning when "improving" a chapter, often subtle but sometimes really problematically. It's a cue I should have written the sentence differently (it suggests ample room to misinterprete --- are my readers making the same mistake??); but book editors aren't (sub-)subject specialists like the readers are... I see no real difference between ChatGPT and a fallible human here; the non-native writer can't really judge either of them.

@MisterMiyagi Yes, indeed, the training and configuration of every AI is different, though, as Ray points out, the core is the same. I do agree with you though: It would indeed be silly to use ChatGPT for this purpose, in much the same way that it would be foolish to use a mallet to drive a nail. I mean… it would probably “work” for simpler tasks, but… seriously, they should just use the right tool.

@indi "mallet to drive a nail" - fair enough if you don't have space and time enough to store every specialized kind of hammer and learn how to use it best. And certainly better than all the people who currently use the GPT mallet for peeling their vegetables...

In my mind, even worse are the people who use the GPT mallet for peeling their vegetables, and think it has an opinion about the recipe.

Sure, it's OK to use Google Translate as a_translation_ assistant, but NOT a style assistant and not without some non-artificial intelligence proofreading afterward!  I've seen Google change negative to positive and vice versa, and frequently make the wrong assumption about gender, person, or number.  Sometimes even tense!

Bear in mind a lot of journals will require a formal statement if machine learning/AI was used at any point to assist in the writing of a submitted article.

Your two questions are quite different, but I'd give the same answer to both. At some point in the process it would be acceptable, though probably not for the final version (less acceptable). But, using it as a tool rather than as a replacement for thought is probably ok.
It is, however, dangerous, and more dangerous when the non-native speaker is especially weak in the target language. There are lots of problems with an AI tool. The most vital issue is that it is nearly (maybe totally) impossible to know what it does or how it makes its decisions. It has no mind and no human judgement. It has no morals or ethics.
However, IMO, an AI tool can be used as long as the output is vetted by a moral, thinking, human. If you have the knowledge and judgement to verify that what it produces is valid then it seems fine (to me) to use as a tool.  But if it is producing output that you aren't certain is correct then the danger increases. And for some scientific work, that is not acceptable.
In other words, oddly, if you desperately need to use it, then you should not. If it is just a minor suggester of how to phrase things and you will completely understand the output (in other words, if you don't really need it), then it is fine. Odd, that.

As I mentioned, there already have been professional proof reading, language and translation services for a long time. And of course I would critically review their writing/translations/suggested edits as well. I would take it as given that any scientist's passive understanding of english is good enough  to judge correctness of the services's output (AI or human), otherwise the scientist woould not be able to follow international scientific discourse in the first place.

@zx-81 You shouldn't take that as a given. I have an example, from earlier this year, where a fairly strong English speaker didn't realise that ChatGPT changed the meaning of the text: If I let ChatGPT improve a post of mine linguistically, does that count as "AI generated content"?

@zx-81 The person with less than ideal English is that it leaves you very vulnerable to tricky meanings.  A paper is written to communicate, not to deceive.  But you can't trust an AI not to write something deceptive.

This is another great example why such AI tools are really bad at getting answers in a topic you don't know about, but are really great as search tools, in cases where an answer is hard to get but easy to verify.

wizzwizz4: Thanks for the link to the relevant post. This is a very good example. (However, I for myself did catch the changed meaning of the AI output immediately).

@zx-81 It's different when it's something you've written yourself, because you know what it's supposed to say. It's easy to read that context into the text, even when it's not there. (That's why it's often best to get somebody else to proof-read your work.)

It should also be understood that an LLM chatbot such as ChatGPT does not understand the prompt any more than it does the text it produces.  It is perilous to assume that it will accurately perform the task you (think you) ask it to do. Plus, if the input is not idiomatic for (in this case) English, then it is even more likely to misinterpret.  All the more reason why its output must be carefully vetted.

Academia is still figuring out how exactly to handle AI writing tools, and there are some uncharted issues here, eg how to handle it if ChatGPT is used so heavily that if a human had done it, they'd be a coauthor.
Edits for spelling, grammar and style are clearly unproblematic. If an academic text is translated by a human, the translator would receive credit, but not co-authorship. As such, I personally feel that if an AI-tool is used for translation, this should be mentioned in the article, but it wouldn't be an ethics issue.
What is important though is that the responsibility remains with the author. This means that the author needs to verify that the output from the AI model indeed says what it is supposed to say. The way how ChatGPT makes mistakes seems very different from how humans make mistakes, which can easily mislead us into trusting it more than merited.
For example, the pieces of mathematical writing by ChatGPT I've seen superficially read like text an actual mathematicians would write. There seems to be a logical structure there - until you try to follow it, when it becomes clear that it is actually all nonsense. In contrast, student-written nonsense tends to be glaringly obvious. Thus, when checking AI-written text for accuracy I believe we need to be much more sceptical than we would be when checking the work of a fellow human.

I don't think your characterisation of LLM mathematical capabilities still holds up, see e.g. https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/113132502735585408 .

@Polytropos My characterisation is explicitly about the stuff I've seen, not about the stuff that exists.

I only review papers in engineering & physics fields, and I suspect the answer depends on your particular research field.
When I, personally, am reviewing a scientific paper, I actually have no interest in, nor attempt to find out whether AI was used to generate any portion of the paper.
What I am reading for is to find out whether the process is scientific, logical, readable, and whether conclusions are proven by the data acquired, whether the data acquired makes sense and could likely be replicated, and that the experiment performed has its Purpose well-defined by prior research/work.
I personally try to be forgiving to non-native English speakers, I am more interested in their thoughts than their writing. What I really care about is whether the research will help other researchers.
In engineering/physics, minor grammar mistakes may not cause any problems with understanding the experiments, and can sometimes be a question of style preference more than scientific communication. (If it makes the experiment hard to understand or has double meanings, I request the writer to clarify.) On the other hand, for sociology or philosophy, for example, the exact use of language may be a critical part of the actual research, so may be scrutinized much more closely.
So, as others have said, as long as you can proof read the LLM’s output with a critical eye, and ensure it is scientifically valid, then I personally see no problem with using ChatGPT/other LLM’s to help you proof read your paper. (In fact, I hope it increases the number of good scientific publications & scientists by lowering the language barrier!)
For the current state of AI LLM’s like ChatGPT, you will need to be extremely careful that they don’t change your arguments or conclusions. Perhaps it would be worth buying the upgraded OpenAI/other services to increase their accuracy.

" In engineering/physics, minor grammar mistakes may not cause any problems ", " more interested in their thoughts than their writing"
Ye., of course. But in our extremely competitive publish-or-perish-world, the style & language (all other things equal !) may make the difference, for a paper to be accepted or not.

Style and prose is not the point of a scientific/engineering paper, so personally as a reviewer for Optica/JLT/other photonics pubs I try to avoid having the author’s style affect the acceptance. Other reviewers might think differently on this point though.

@Demis avoiding to have style affect acceptance is reasonable as long as the writing is clear to understand. But some papers have so poor grammar that whole passages become needlessly ambiguous or at least take way longer to figure out than they should. It's not the job of peer reviewers to first spend that extra time and then help the authors polish up the text, nor does it do the authors any favours to leave the language problems in the published version.

Welp, as of 2024, on the one hand, the ignorance towards the actual authorship or predominant presence of an LLM due to lack of sufficient enough validation tools is understandable, yet on the other - the chance of letting an illiterate to the outer world is fairly tremendous... However, if we set full responsibility for LLM usage on a student, in the aftermath, it's their choice how to exist in the society, I believe. The what is actually incredibly sorrowful though, is alive professors reading, scrutinizing, and realizing output of a machine and not human...

I don't see how peer review would accept a paper with "whole passages becoming ...ambiguous" nor "illiterate to the outer world" - if that's occurring then the reviewers (and editors) are not doing their job, the journal is thus not terribly good with low standards, and LLM usage could only make a positive difference from this low starting point!

Translation should be a relatively uncontroversial use case, as at least in theory the translation engine just takes ideas that are already in the source text and represents them faithfully in the target language. The machine just acts as an intermediary and improves scientific communication if it can speak the target language better than the author. The author obviously remains fully responsible for the work, but they are also in the best possible position to check. Besides the danger of misrepresentation of the intended content (which I think the author can check very well) there is also probably some risk that the translation system picks a wording for things that have been said many times before that comes from another author (maybe from a widely used textbook on the subject), and I think this is significantly harder for the author to check/prevent; but this type of regurgitation should only affect boilerplate material and I could see it happen with a human translation assistant, too, especially since it is my understanding that professional translators use both AI and non-AI translation aids themselves.
That said, the rules for AI use in academic writing in general are still evolving, and may evolve differently in different disciplines and for different use cases; and they will continue evolving as model capabilities increase. It could make sense to check the guidelines of the journals you intend to publish in to be sure what rules apply currently to your situation.

RE: "at least in theory": In theory, theory is the same as practice, but not in practice: various attributions. If you can't verify how it arrives at a "decision" the results cannot be trusted.

What you describe is the ideal of AI-powered machine translation, perfect success and accuracy only limited by the abilities of different languages to express some concepts.  If we had that, it would be vastly less controversial, especially for uses like translation.  We don't.  Especially with ChatGPT-style LLMs, big errors are not rare.

@PeterCordes: I explicitly said not to trust, but to check. For the record, I would strongly advise checking also if a translation/post-edit were done by a human with subject expertise.
In terms of error rates, I've had to occasionally post-edit technical texts (computer science) translated from foreign languages to English, both by professional translators (in the pre-LLM era) and by GPT-4. I would say GPT-4 was a lot better in terms of post-editing effort required than unaided non-subject-expert human professional translators.

@Buffy I'd disagree with the claim that in theory, theory is the same as practice. In fact, I would say it is clear that in theory, practice and theory are very different, but the unreasonable power of mathematics shows that in practice, theory when done with care works surprisingly well! I would also disagree that black-box outputs can't be checked without turning the black box into a white box. There are many cases where checking a result is much easier than achieving it, and translation is one of those cases (although it is not the most striking one).

I simply said that if you don't know how an AI arrived at an answer, then you can't trust that answer. Verification needs to come from elsewhere. The same is true, actually, of an answer given by a human.

Also, in practice, various regulations may require to disclose any use of AI chatbots. Our university requires this, including all prompts used, and makes no provisions or allowances for just grammar checking usage. A journal may require something similar.

@VladimirFГероямслава Any policy anywhere that asks for complete disclosure of LLM use is utterly unrealistic. Google uses an LLM to produce their "AI summaries", and they turn up on normal Google searches. Grammarly uses an LLM to provide grammar checks and style suggestions. Various code autocomplete tools use LLMs. In neither of these cases does the user even know what the prompt is, but there most certainly is one. Requiring complete disclosure of all chatbot use is on this backdrop irrationally driven integrity theatre (obviously, it is as much enforceable as security theatre, though).

As a non-germanic language speaker, I strongly disagree. AI works in translation only if the translated languages have extremely similar structure, like English, German, Swedish, Spanish, French. It doesn't know if it is making very simple mistakes.

Just for the sake of testing, I just tried to have GPT-4 translate some random news from Finnish (language not similar to English but well-represented on the internet). Judging by looking at reporting on the same event in English sources, this worked perfectly. I could well imagine to-other-language being much worse for GPT-4 than to-English for many language pairs, however.

By now many publishers and conference have laid out their rules for the use of LLMs. Most of the ones I have read specifically allow LLMs and other automated tools to polish your text.
The following example is taken from AISTATS call for papers (emphasis mine)

LLMs and image DGMs are not allowed for the following use cases:

Fully automatically generating text of more than one page, unless the    produced text is presented as a part of the paper’s
experimental    analysis.
Generating quantitative figures (such as learning curves), unless the produced images are presented as a part of the paper’s
experimental analysis.

Other potential use cases of LLMs such as polishing text (e.g., paragraph-wise, prompted by a manually-written paragraph of content)
are not banned.
Even with the usage of LLMs and DGMs, it is still the authors’ responsibility to ensure the quality, correctness, and originality of their submission(s).

The IEEE Robotics & Automation Society writes (emphasis mine)

We encourage the use of those emerging technologies in a responsible
manner. We aim that such AI tools mostly promote researchers' own
capacity to create high-quality scientific work. For instance, AI
tools can help researchers arrive at new ideas and improve
self-written texts, especially for non-native speakers of English.
However, we need to consider that AI tools also raise questions about
what exactly constitutes their responsible use.

So the answer depends on the specific scientific community and your target venue.

Your conclusion is flawed. Note the term "responsible manner" in the IEEE statement. It depends on more than venue. Much more.

One concern with using AI tools like ChatGPT for translation is that subtle changes in meaning may occur, and the author might not notice them. However, this issue can arise even when the author translates the text themselves, as non-native speakers may inadvertently introduce errors or nuances that differ from their intended meaning. In this sense, the risk isn't unique to AI, and I don’t see a major difference between using AI for translation and the author translating it manually.
With that concern addressed, I see no ethical or practical issues, provided that the author remains vigilant in reviewing the AI-generated text for accuracy. (Which one might be tempted to forgo if it seems to work most of the time...)

I’m having a hard time buying those comparisons to manual or human translations. Doing the translation oneself means one actually writes the text one wants. Using a human translator means one has a very slow turnaround with a human being that can provide feedback on ambiguities. With an LLM it’s all done a matter of seconds, sometimes even directly integrated into tooling. The level of attention - vital to catch changes in meaning - is not at all comparable across these options.

Check out this story on the Science Friday podcast from 20 September and titled How Are AI Chatbots Changing Scientific Publishing? In it, a senior executive editor at The Lancet says that large-language models can be very helpful for non-native speakers of English. She even argues that this is important for equity.
Of course, any user must be scrupulous in avoiding any ethical issues from leaning on AI to such an extent that the resulting artifact is not accurate or not truly one’s own intellectual accomplishment.

When someone tries to proofread a paragraph and the AI tool lacks a holistic understanding of the context, it may provide inaccurate suggestions that lead to undesired changes in meaning. The key here is to assess whether the proofread paragraph aligns with the broader context of your writing.
I believe the debate is ongoing about the extent to which AI tools should be used in academia. From my perspective, if you have a good grasp of the target language, using AI for stylistic changes to improve the flow of your writing is beneficial. However, the challenge arises when people start using AI tools to generate content rather than for linguistic refinement. This becomes problematic due to the speed at which AI creates information (whether accurate or not) and the slower process of peer review, for example.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава