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How common is it to inadvertently "reinvent the wheel" in academia?
When engaging in research, I know its a good idea to read lots of papers and talk to others about what has been done before and what is currently being researched to avoid "reinventing the wheel".  That is, to avoid researching/publishing a result that has already been discovered.
In fields where physical experiments are common, replication studies are necessary.  But in theoretical/computational research, originality is key and duplication seems to be generally frowned upon.  How common is it to inadvertently publish a finding that was already discovered?  What do you when you happen to find yourself in this situation?  Should you just scrap your work if your methods are too similar to someone else's?

I find I'm being forced to reinvent the wheel. The papers I'm reading (document page analysis--image processing) have no means to replicate their work. I want to stand on the shoulders of giants, but the giants didn't release their source code.

After reading a lots of paper, I do not have the feeling that I am "standing on the shoulders of giants" any more. It feels more like standing on a pile of dwarfs (albeit very clever dwarfs!).

@Dirk The giants are generally represented by careers rather than individual publications.

"What do you when you happen to find yourself in this situation?" be reassured that you were thinking along the right lines - it is an indication that you understand your subject well.  Especially if it was already published by a very well respected researcher.  This has happened to me several times.

How common is it to inadvertently publish a finding that was already discovered?

Far more common than anyone realizes or wants to admit.
Stigler's Law of Eponymy states that No scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.  (Stigler's law was proposed in this precise form in 1980 by Stephen Stigler, who self-referentially attributed it to Richard Merton, but of course similar statements were made earlier by many others, including Stigler's own father.)  I wouldn't go as far as claiming that every scientific discovery is misattributed, but there are hundreds of examples.  Off the top of my head: Fibonacci numbers, Pascal's triangle, Gaussian elimination, Euler's formula (both of them!), Voronoi diagrams, Markov's inequality, Chebyshev’s inequality, Dijkstra's algorithm for shortest paths, Prim's algorithm for minimum spanning trees, the Cooley-Tukey FFT algorithm, the Gale-Shapley stable matching algorithm (for which Shapley recently won the Nobel Prize in economics), ...

What do you when you happen to find yourself in this situation?

Be brutally honest, both with yourself and with the scientific community.
If your work has already been published, post a reference to the prior art in your web page listing your publications.  (You do have a web page listing your publications, don't you?)  If possible, publish an addendum to your paper.  Email anyone who has cited your paper already, giving them the earlier reference.  When asked to review papers that cite your paper, include the earlier reference in your report.  Become a walking advertisement for the earlier work.
If your work hasn't already been published, try to figure out which parts of your work have actually been done before.  Some of your results will appear verbatim in the earlier work, so you can't take credit for them.  Some of your results will be easy corollaries of the earlier work, so you still can't take credit for them.  But perhaps some of your results will take the old work in a new nontrivial direction.  Build on that.
Also, if your results were previously known in a different field, there may be some value in bringing those results to the attention of your research community.

Should you just scrap your work if your methods are too similar to someone else's?

Of course not!  Now you have evidence that your methods actually work!  Push them further!

Thanks JeffE. This answer is one of the major reasons I joined this board. I have been bothered by this issue for long time. Now I know what to do. I don't know how to show my appreciation beside upvoting.

Besides the excellent JeffE's answer, I would like to add one more point to the phenomena of reinventing a wheel. It touches more "research towards an already invented wheel", rather than "publishing a reinvented wheel".
You have a problem and need to crack it. Your problem is practical and novel, you know that. But in order to solve it you need to invent some machinery and you just do not know whether it already exists, or not - simply because you do not have a good feeling for all the subtle aspects and issues of your problem. In such a situation, it is often easier to steam ahead, learn as you go, invent something for your problem and then, when you already are familiar with all the quirks and dark corners  of your problem, look around carefully to find out how's the thing you invented actually called. The odds are, it already exists in some form, most probably invented in a different niche for different purposes, but it happens to be very similar to your problem.
Of course the above does not work for everybody, because it can be a frustrating experience to find that somebody else already invented what you did too (usually already long ago and in a better quality than you). My angle on this is to be always proud of myself, because those early solutions tend to come from very smart people, so if I managed to independently come up with the same thing as they did, it's a reason to feel better.
At that moment, however, one should realize, his/her approach and angle to the whole issue is slightly different than that of the guys who invented it earlier. You simply came to the same junction from a different direction and you are heading elsewhere. At that point it's just great to proceed in your direction, because you can be almost sure, that your direction is original and unexplored territory - otherwise the earlier work would be cited and that's easy to find out.
The process I describe above also partially explains why inventions tend to be named after guys who arrived to the junction later. They simply had a perspective which took them farther in terms of social impact than was that of those who originally solved the problem. Often solutions get named after the guys who popularize them and make their applications bloom, not those who solved them originally.

Also, sometimes intentionally reinventing the wheel is worthwhile.  Several of my recent papers grew directly out of getting frustrated trying to understand someone else's proof, giving up and proving the same result myself (which was easier because I already "knew" the result was true), and then going back to see if I'd reinvented the wheel.  Most of the time I had.

Knowing a problem and having an idea how to solve it does imply knowing good search terms. This is particularly true in fields using   weird acronyms or the name of the (re)inventor. I solved the problem described in this paper because I didn't find existing work. My solution then allowed me to find related work in another field. That enabled me to develop a more general framework and  to highlight particular properties that had not been discussed previously. Quite a typical development, I think.

Reinventing the wheel may be beneficial if you explain something better than the previous studies, release your code/software, etc.
In computers science it can be frustrating when people publish a summary of their methods, provide results, but no code so that others can apply this to other data sets. So you end up reinventing the wheel.

Often the methods are published and well described, but don't include the code - there is a big difference between reinventing the wheel and reimplementing it. In any case, the core of most innovative methods amount to a page or two of pseudocode; all the remaining volume is just engineering, data format conversion, etc and often you'd want to customize that part anyway.

... and hiding the micro-optimizations that aren't so micro but in fact critical for the algorithm to attain the performance and results described. These, you'd certainly want to know by having the source code.

It happened to me once (in 40 years of doing research). I proved a very cute theorem in complex analysis by using tools from a (seemingly) totally unrelated area of math. (This connection between two unrelated research areas was the most interesting part of the paper.) I asked everybody I knew who might have known if the result was proven earlier - everybody told me that this is a new theorem. I posted the preprint but did not send it to a journal since I wanted to do a deeper literature search. It took me two years, but eventually I found that the result was indeed published (in German) in 1920 by some obscure German mathematician who proved it by a totally different method. I told everybody involved about the situation and moved on. Afterwards, people started to rediscover this theorem with different proofs. They also started to ask me to publish my proof since they found it useful for other purposes and eventually I did, of course, giving full credit to that German mathematician. The moral of this story, if there is any, is that sometimes reinventing the wheel can be useful.

Yes, some wheels are better than others, and/or are better in various use-scenarios. :)

I am curious about this "very cute theorem in complex analysis"! Any way we can get more details? :)

@MalikYounsi: Sorry, no, I like to maintain my anonymity.

@MoisheKohan no problem!

This is not reinventing the wheel, but is related to the lack of certain researchers’ willingness to be forthcoming enough to help younger researchers avoid reinventing the wheel.
I worked with computer science graduate students and their advisers after I started as an assistant professor in a mathematics department, and I was flabbergasted when we were reading a paper that I said had a flaw but the student said we couldn’t question it because the authors are famous. Then I convinced the student to write to the authors asking for the proof details for the unproved claim that was at issue. She told me that their response was that they won’t send the proof because it’s proprietary.
I lost much of my hope for humanity that day.

I’d love to take you up on the beer;  if I gained some hope since writing that answer, then it has been thrashed away by the 2024 USA presidential elections….
Can we chase the beer with some nice scotch?

I would assume, as you mentioned you are in theoretical/computational research, that there is some specific scenario you are referring to which may not be relevant to my field (Biomedical science) or others.
How common is it to inadvertently publish a finding that was already discovered? Very common in most fields, with the large number of journals and the "publish or perish" machine continuing to churn out hundreds of thousands of manuscripts more and more of the same is being published, and it won't be stopping anytime soon. So the chances that researchers produce the same or similar work/results is highly likely. The paper mills copying others' work to produce completely fabricated work is also highly likely.
What do you when you happen to find yourself in this situation? Should you just scrap your work if your methods are too similar to someone else's?
NEVER EVER scrap your work! If you can't get it published in a high impact journal, publish in a reputable low impact journal, if you can't publish there put it up on  arXiv or similar to get your work attributed to you ASAP.
If you have inadvertently, not intentionally rediscovered something that you missed in the current literature, amend your paper, better yet write another paper about how you think these parallel discoveries could have come about and compare and contrast, then reference both papers.
If you somehow were lucky enough to replicate or reproduce someone else's research or results independently, this is a great thing, possibly it means you are doing robust research, you should be proud.
I would also add that many many researchers do this deliberately for a living, they advertently copy others research, publish it as their own "original research" and then use it to build a career on. If you are looking for sustainability as an academic i.e. winning lots of grants it is a viable option as it can also be done transparently in biomedical research as many researchers can have similar research and the "original idea" is a bit ambiguous. Anyone copying others research to win grants can just say they are replicating others work if caught, or say "to our knowledge we are the first to discover this...", the old "get out of plagiarism free cards" !
Welcome to research and academia!


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Do you let Google Scholar index popular science articles, conference abstracts, etc.?
I enjoy that Google finds things I've written that I would never bother to link on my own web page, just because it's nice to have all my writing collected somewhere given I've made the effort.  But given that academics often assess each other from Google Scholar, I'm worried that my "year" index is getting cluttered and makes it look like no one cites my recent work.  Of course, some people allow Google to automatically list discovered works and have their indices full of articles that aren't even theirs, but that's obviously unimpressive.
If you are the kind of person that clicks "year" on Google Scholar to see what an academic does lately, and you were checking the Scholar page of someone you were thinking of hiring, funding, or working with, would you be put off by fluffy articles like book reviews, conference abstracts, and popular science mixed with good ones?

hardly anyone knows to click year and it is perfectly usual for recent pubs to  not have cites yet. I think people are more likely to look at the bar chart as you have no choice but to see this item.

Personally, I think that it is important to let one's Google Scholar index all of one's work.
When I am assessing a colleague, I will often exclusively use their Google Scholar page, since every other search method I am currently aware of is either a) badly cluttered with not-their-work or b) tends to leave out significant "non-traditional" works such as white-papers, standards documents, workshops, and books.  I use both the "Cited By" and "Year" orderings, the first to see if they have made an impact and the second to see how active they currently are.
When I see a lot of recent publications, I do not expect them to be much cited, particularly given potentially long publication delays and the fact that most scientific work draws little citation, even if it is good.  Many publications, after all, are "bridging steps" that are important for building the foundations of high-impact publications but which may not be of interest outside of a very narrow group indeed.
What I would expect to see in a highly active researcher, then, is a couple of recent "hits" and a lot of recent publications with minimal citation.  If, in fact, I saw a person who seemed to only have "hits" in their Google Scholar record, then I would find it very curious and think they might be engaging in strategic non-publication.
Obviously, I apply these standards to myself as well.  Even if somebody can't be bothered to scroll down far enough to get to last year, they're at least likely to notice the recent citation statistics bar chart.  Bottom line: I think that it is a good tradeoff to risk giving a mis-impression those few excessively careless readers in favor of giving a better impression to the more careful ones who are likely to actually be interested in the full list.

That's an interesting take that presumes all academics want google nosing about their lives.  I know several that only selectively allow google to index.

@JimB Personal life, sure, but openly published scientific works should be indexed and easily findable.

No, conference papers, etc (same stuff mentioned n Stuart Golodetz's answer) should not necessarily be found but published works, I agree should be findable in Google and Bing.

@JimB Why do you think conference papers aren't significant published works?

Most of the time its something that ends up published later.

@JimB It's published right then, at the conference.  In many cases, an "extended version" gets published as a journal article, superseding the original conference paper, but in many other cases that does not happen.    I see no reason to pretend that the conference version does not exist.

I gave this the "answered" because it's been a week and it's the highest rated & I said that would be the main criterion since I was asking for an opinion.  But I don't think it's a great answer because the first two paragraphs contradict each other.  If GS is the main way you assess someone, how can it be a good idea for them to have every piece of dreck they got strong-armed into writing on it?

@JoannaBryson "every piece of dreck they got strong-armed into writing": it sounds to me that you have a rather low opinion of some of your own pieces of work.  I've sometimes been surprised, however, that things I personally didn't like very much have apparently been of more interest than I might have thought to others.  I feel it's important to let the whole record speak together in the index, rather than try to bury parts of it.  The right place for selective presentation is on a personal web page, not an inclusive index like Google Scholar.

Yeah, you never know what people will find useful.  I got a fan email last week because of my stack exchange writings!  But I actually think of Google Scholar as an academically facing site, and have a nearly-complete list (with a brief precise) of my writings on my web page.  Maybe I'm not keeping up with the times...

My rule of thumb for Google Scholar is that any piece of writing that is available in full goes on the Google Scholar profile. That includes working papers, newspaper articles, book reviews, etc. However, it does not include conference abstracts: in my opinion, those are teasers of work to come and so aren't substantial enough to be included.
In hiring decisions, I think the CV still trumps a candidate's Google Scholar page. With easily 100 applications for one position, it's just not feasible to look up everyone's profiles. If an article is not on the CV, it's the candidate's loss. There's really no cost to having a section at the end of the CV on non-academic writing, for example. Just as long as these articles are not mixed in with peer-reviewed publications. If someone's work lends itself to being grouped into different domains, then organizing publications into subsections seems sensible. Maybe that would also address the comment by @JenB about CVs that are too long? That is, maybe the objection is to clutter rather than length?

Caveat: This is necessarily quite subjective.
Personally, I wouldn't necessarily downgrade my opinion of someone who had produced some really good work simply because they had also produced some other work that was comparatively less exciting. However:

I would be slightly concerned if their other work was actively wrong, rather than just unexciting -- it would make me wonder if there were also mistakes in their exciting work that just hadn't been spotted yet.
I might well view the person's Google Scholar page as less useful when it came to finding out what they'd been doing lately, and start searching for their research page instead.

I'm currently too junior to be assessing people for academic jobs, but if I were assessing someone, I wouldn't change a hire decision to a do not hire decision (or vice versa) based purely on the look of their Google Scholar page (or web page). I'd base any decision far more on things like the quality of their research (I'd read their publications), their ability to teach (I'd potentially get them to give a mock tutorial), their commitment to both research and teaching, and their overall attitude to other people and to learning.
On a separate note, it wouldn't surprise me much if very recent work hadn't received many citations (due to the inevitable lag time between when you publish something and when it gets cited -- people have to read your paper, do their own work and get it published before they can cite you).

I use GS in a couple of different ways but neither is really about assessment.
I am in one of those interdisciplinary areas where people who are more discipline focussed may have a couple of papers that are relevant to my work, but most of their research is not. So if I am using a reference that is say 5 years old, I will often use GS to have a look at everything that person has written to (1) identify whether they have a relevant research thread or just a couple of papers and (2) find the relevant papers. This is because a researcher's official website will typically list the papers that are important in their discipline, but may not list the 'random other ideas' type of paper. That is, the website is set up to present their main research, particularly if it is uses a department template.
From the other direction, I never allow GS to automatically add my papers and I don't necessarily permit everything that GS finds even it is mine. I obviously allow journal publications, but I only have more significant working papers, reports and conference presentations. Even those, I might combine (for example, if a conference paper is an early version of something then I might combine the two records so that someone following the conference paper can immediately find the more complete / later paper). In some sense I am trying to direct any searchers to what I think is the best description of my research.
So, back to your main point - would I get put off? I would get put off if someone had lots of minor work, even if they also had the major work. To me, this looks like padding. However, I came from a government/industry background, and many academic CVs look too long to me. Twelve pages of publications gives me the impression that the person has no ability to assess relevance or is too lazy to customise the CV. So I may not be the best judge.

Thanks.  Your usage is very much like my own.  I certainly merge old versions etc. One difference in academia is that you have PhD students, so I feel badly to take off minor works for me that are major works for them.  But I certainly have two separate CVs, one for business & one for academia.  As you see from other responses, academics can be very concerned about not losing work, so I guess the real question here is whether google scholar is that place that's a complete index, or whether it's become a CV and therefore needs more substantial curating / pruning.

I gave this the bonus because it came the closest to actually answering my question (the last paragraph.)  A lot of the other answers didn't really address the question but talked about how to use GS, which I already do.

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Can a degree program require students to get a minor in another field?
I recently found a Computer Science BA degree program that requires, as part of the program requirements, students to get a minor in a second department. They say this is done to provide the student with breadth and depth apart from their BS program. Is this arrangement of "Just get any other minor" a common or uncommon in CS or other STEM departments? Is it beneficial for the students versus teaching additional humanities-oriented courses in the CS department?
If anyone knows of examples of such programs a comment would be appreciated.

I think this the title for this quesiton would be better if it was "Is requiring studnest to get a minor in another field beneficial" or even "what evidence is there that requiring...". The answer to almost any "Can a degree program..." is "yes, a degree program can do what ever it wants"

I think it is common for colleges to require students to pick a Major + Minor. It is unusual that the CS Department itself is enforcing this as opposed to the college as a whole.

The BS in Mathematics in my department has such a requirement and our faculty have chosen to keep the requirement so that students have more breadth in their undergraduate program.    I can't say how common it is.

It is a fairly uncommon practice that I would expect to see at small liberal arts colleges. Such a program does make sense. Many computing related jobs benefit from such capabilities as good writing (which one can pick up by studying history or theology for example) or some background knowledge in an application area such as music or art for people interested in certain aspects of game development.
The college can then offer a reduced computing program (as compared to ABET or ACM core requirements) while still allow their graduates to transition easily in a role in computing.
Prescribing the minor would not work well. One of the reasons to get a liberal arts degree is to be a good all-rounder.
Students from an ABET accredited program should be able to code around these liberal arts students (though that is debatable), but will not do so well in jobs that are not exclusively engineering oriented.
Finally, the experience gathered on the job becomes a larger and larger part of a person's capabilities so that the importance of the college experience slowly recedes over the years.
On a personal note, many, many years ago, I was at St. Louis University, which at that point (how times have changed) had a very rudimentary CS degree in Mathematics, but their graduates were picked up by Anheuser Busch and similar places, not because of their engineering skills, but because they could easily learn to do the software engineering jobs (basically application programming) while being able to write such things as manuals and communicate well with the users of their programs. Apparently, they found it more difficult to teach these soft skills to graduates from  more computer centric programs.

What is ABET and ACM?

@AzorAhai-him- See abet.org and acm.org. The first is an engineering and CS accreditation org and the latter is one of the two main computing societies.

I'm surprised you say "uncommon". I'll guess you had such a rule in your undergrad days as did I.

@Buffy I can Google, why don't you add those to the answer?

@AzorAhai-him-, not my answer, so I hesitate.

A degree program is basically a list of requirements to fulfill, primarily a list of courses. For example, you must complete courses A, B, C, D, E, F, X, Y, Z to get the degree.
Requiring a minor is no different than saying you must complete A, B, C, D, E, F, M, where M = X, Y, Z. A program may give you some flexibility on what courses fulfill X, Y, and Z; if they choose to organize X, Y, Z into various versions of "M", that's really no different.
An institution can group and require their courses however they'd like, presumably they're trying to either make their program attractive to students directly or make their graduates attractive to people who might want to employ or train them further (and therefore make their program attractive to students indirectly).

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Using others' dissertation theme and layout
I have been working on my dissertation and when doing the literature review I stumbled across another dissertation with similar research ideas as myself.
When reading it I reallly like the layout and structure as they based it around a specific well known framework. I have found myself using a similar layout and theme but with my own content, data collection, analysis and findings.
Can someone confirm if this is ok? Or will I need to restructure it?

Within reason, the general structure and format of a research document is not really something that can be protected by copyright and is not really subject to copyright. You shouldn't run into plagiarism issues, either.
However, if you very closely mimic the organization and layout of a thesis, you should at the very least acknowledge the source to which you are indebted for the structure of your thesis with a citation.

Hi, thanks for responding. Where in the dissertation should I cite?

Probably wherever you discuss the structure of yours.

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Will I be too old to apply for Ph.D. at the age of 30
I have completed my master's degree year ago and took a gap of 2-3 years before committing to the Ph.D. Right now my financial condition is worse and I don't want to make any decision in any urgency. My peers are getting enrolled for Ph.D. and I am getting worried by watching them. I am 27 right now and planning to collect enough money and build my resume strong to get into a decent Ph.D. program in Europe or Asia. Is my decision wrong? I need some advice from experienced peoples.
Thank you.

No. I've seen doctoral students twenty years my senior. Do it if you're ready.

@SeanRoberson My intention is to get enough experience and knowledge so that I won't have hard time deciding on what field I want to work on.

@SeanRoberson nothing wrong with this as an answer, but it's not a comment :)

Absolutely not.

You are never too old, in years, to start a Doctoral program or to otherwise extend your education. However, you need to do a couple of things while you "wait".
Most important is that you don't lose your edge. If you are working in the field of study you should probably be fine and your experience may help. In fact, it may give you some ideas about unsolved issues in the field that might lead to research and a dissertation. But you will also need to try to keep current through readings. You don't say which field you plan to enter, but some move faster than others. New possibilities for research open up as well.
The second thing is that you will need to be prepared to answer questions about the gap in an intelligent and positive way. Getting experience in field is a pretty good answer. Recovering from burn out is not so fine.
However, as you age, you may take on additional responsibilities that you don't now have: family, kids, mortgage, ... Seek life balance of course, but as your responsibilities change, so may your goals. You will also need to deal, increasingly, with the needs of others. But nothing is an absolute block.
Remember that you will age no matter what you do. It is better to spend your life doing something you love than otherwise, even if it takes a while to realize the dream.

My current job at a start-up is aligned with my intended research during PhD.

That should help, but note the new penultimate paragraph in my answer.

I totally agree with you. I work in AI (artificial intelligence) company and my future research would also be in AI. I love my job, though pay is less but learning is awesome.

Definitely not!
In fact, one of the best researchers in my group started her PhD at the age of 33. She managed to publish papers in high impact journals, got a patent and last year she was hired as a post-doc.
As @Buffy said, it is indeed important for you to have an idea of your project. However, from my experience, don't hold onto it too much. Be adventurous! Good science might come from a previously established good idea, but it can also happen out of chance. You'll never know if you don't try.
And also agreeing with @Buffy, do take into consideration your personal side. Living out of PhD salary can be quite tricky if you have others financially relying on you. Another thing is: make sure that, if you have a partner, he/she will be supportive. PhD involves working late hours, sometimes following tight deadlines, dealing with frustration and so on.
Don't compare your age with others'. Everyone has a different time to do things. As long as you know what you are getting into and you are ready to commit, you will be more than fine.
Best of luck in your PhD!

I am not married as for now. Planning in between PhD or may be after that.

@User relationships are not the problem, selfish partners are. You will be following your dream, so make sure that your significant other will not compete with your work.

Hello, I can't comment on that as I have never been in any relationship yet.

@User Additionally, do try to find a good balance in your professional and personal life. Have fun in the meantime. Getting too dragged into work will only make you too stressed out.
I had really bad moments during my first year of PhD because I was neglecting my social life. Find a good balance for you, and your PhD years will be nice.

Thank you for your kind advice, I'll keep that in my mind.

@User My pleasure! I really hope that you find a career path that will bring joy and  sense of accomplishment for you. :)

I started my Phd at the age of 35 and I never feel too old to do research. I acyually found that my years experience acquired from work helps me quite a lot in my Phd study.

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Change from one PhD-Program to a much more prestigious (and better paid) new program at my institution
I started my PhD last year in November. I've now heard of an incredibly attractive program that is just starting this autumn, with insanely good working condition (the salary is basically twice as high as my current salary and there are also nice internship options, which my program completely lacks.) My PhD advisor actually also participates in the program as an advisor. Thematically it is very close to what I am working on currently. I'm not unhappy with my current position or working environment.
Is it advisable to talk to my advisor about applying for this program? Of course, it is not very likely that I would even be admitted to the program, but it is so attractive, that not applying seems stupid. For different reasons, even though my advisor also participates in the program, I would not be able to apply for a position supervised by him.
I would have definitely applied for this program, had it existed last year. Also, when I started my PhD I did have the clear intention of finishing it, so some possibly related questions do not apply here.

So a conversation with your advisor starting with something like 'Hey, whats up with this new program I've heard you are involved in?' is out of the question?

If you apply there could be a like a 50% chance they accept you. If you don't apply, there would be like a 100% chance that they won't accept you. Consider doing what's in your best interest.

I don't see how this is an ethics issue. Unless you're worried your advisor might behave unethically upon learning about your desire to apply and either sabotage it, or hold your attempt against you later if you failed to get in. Those are the dangers we can't really judge the individual for you. However if you start by telling your advisor you are currently happy, but that the double pay and other opportunities are too tempting to pass up, it may go well.

I have some sympathy for your situation - my PhD programme had x5 Wellcome Trust funded students, plus me as the single MRC funded PhD student on 1/2 their stipend.  In my case, one of the other students decided to leave the programme early on, however that did not mean that I got access to their higher funding.
Just a couple of things to be aware of in your situation when talking to your supervisor (I'm based in the UK and did my PhD in Genomics):
1) Depending on the policies of your funding body and the timing of when you drop out of the programme your failure to complete your PhD could be recorded and could negatively impact your supervisor's access to grants from that source for future PhD students.  I know situations where late or non-submission of a thesis has had a greater impact on the supervisor's prospects than the student's - PIs/departments don't want a black mark on their record jeopardising future funding.
2) Depending on your funding situation any unspent pot of money allocated for your PhD might be lost to your department/supervisor should you drop out (not to mention that a year's worth of expenses has already been consumed).

First off make sure you have some solid research about that program, I've seen tons of friends jump ship from Masters of Engineering to MBA Business, only for them to call me crying about how terrible the program and job opportunities are.
Second, you best get solid networking connections, a prof is an okay start but knowing the dean of program is better.
Third, find out which companies/organizations are the big sponsors of the program and network with the people who are board members.
Fourth, find out and get to know the people who are doing the acceptance of applicants. Might take a few phone calls and emails, but use some social engineering (legal ways only, don't do anything illegal). And then network with them.
Fifth, join the Uni club associated with that program. And network with the people in that program.

Recommending that someone date the dean's kids is such horrible advice that I don't even know where to begin.


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coauthor removed other author's name after reviews
I have discovered that a co-author has submitted a book chapter to a major publisher omitting my name of co-author list without me knowing. I was included in the first submissions, but corresponding author made an executive decision to not include me, based on unknown grounds. I have substantially and creatively contributed to the work, in design, datacollection and analysis. What are my options now to get credit where credit is due? technically it is plagiarism, I think.

I would verify that this was done on purpose first

how does it change the facts?

It may or may not technically be plagiarism, but it’s definitely fraud if it was done without your consent. Papers and book chapters can be retracted for such infractions.
If this has indeed happened, then your next step—assuming you've reached an impasse with your co-authors—should be to contact the editor and publisher of the book, laying out your case with the appropriate documentary evidence included in its entirety. Make sure they have enough information that they’re not going on a “fishing expedition.” There should be clear correspondence—emails showing the work and production of the article with your participation, and so on.

And, never work with that person again...

If you do as the above answer says, you could possibly put the entire publication on hold until your issue has been resolved , that will derail the reputation of the bad guy the next time he goes to a famous publisher !

I'm curious, why do you say it's not technically plagiarism? It certainly seems like wrongful appropriation and misrepresentation of another author's work to me.

@Anyon There isn’t enough to say if it’s plagiarism, especially if results and decisions were shared with the other authors. But what has been done is absolutely unethical. If I were writing the editor, though, I’d lead with “My co-author removed my name without my consent,” not a plagiarism accusation, which would be confusing.

@aeismail I certainly agree with that, and with your prudent edit.

Why the first step would be contacting the editor and not the co-authors? I think that he should escalate the situation to the editor only after talking to them. It is implicit in the question that he already contacted them, but for completeness and to avoid ambiguity I think it would be better to set this as the first step as @cactus_pardner suggested in his answer.

@TheDoctor: I was assuming an impasse had been reached. I've made that explicit. But the obvious issue is that if the OP changes the other authors' minds, there will be a major issue raised at the journal—why was the author added all of a sudden?

You might also examine if there are any parts where you hold the copyright. It's usually not of that much importance in academia, but if you insist that nothing appear in a book without your name on it if you are the copyright holder, then he's in trouble.

Retraction Watch has a lot of useful reports on the aftermaths of such investigations. I'd recommend looking at the kinds of sanctions universities have imposed.

It's easy for people to make stupid mistakes, especially if they had to write the author list in a new form. (Harder to accidentally delete one name from a pre-existing list, though.) I recently got an email from coauthors saying, "Oops, we forgot to put your name on the most recent submission," after being on a prior conference submission. They promised to make it right on the next phase of the project.
The absolutely first thing to do is to approach the corresponding author directly about this mistake, and politely ask them to correct it in the current draft (or with the editor and publisher, if it's that far along). They will either do so or give you more information. Even if it was somehow intentional, treating it like a mistake allows them to change course but still save face.
Before you approach them about this, be prepared to escalate the issue as aeismail suggests. If they refuse to add you back on, then contact the editor and publisher. You can also add, "The corresponding author claimed X when I asked about this today, but clearly the emails enclosed show !X." That is, if the other person is acting in bad faith, then they might try to talk with the editor and publisher before you do; and there is some benefit to being able to tell the story of a conflict first.


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During junior year, should I focus on taking advanced courses in my major for admission to grad school, or can I take courses for my minor?
I came in as a liberal arts major freshman year, and by around February realized it wasn't what I wanted to do.
I took general chemistry last summer. By the end of the summer, I had begun working in a research lab and was already on track to graduate with the rest of my fellow biochem majors. By that I mean I was in the same courses as everyone else,
 e.g., took organic, physics, required maths, etc.
This summer I'll be working a paid internship working in the lab, and might be able to get something published. Junior year will be this fall; I'm taking biochemistry and physical chemistry. In that regard, I'm on track with the other chem majors.
I'm not sure to what extent this is a "problem" per se, but I've really begun to enjoy physics and decided to minor it after the introductory physics courses I took this year. I was considering taking two higher-level physics courses both in the fall and spring of my junior year.
I want to go graduate school for chemistry. But will it look bad on my transcript if I have all of those physics courses junior year? That is, will it seem like I'm not focused enough in the field of chemistry? Should I be spending those seven credit hours on something like analytical chem or a special topic in biochemistry course instead? Should my junior year have more chemistry courses than biochem and pchem? Should I drop the physics courses to focus on more chemistry courses?

It sounds like you've got a plan to take all of the courses required for your chemistry core. That being the case, having a physics minor won't hurt you since physics and chemistry are closely related sciences. Having a broader background in a related science will likely help you as long as you have the required core courses. You will also have a chance to do some more upper level chemistry work in your senior year.
Doing research will really stand out in your application as well, and this is at least as good as having done an upper division special topics course. Since graduate school is more focused on research, having undergraduate research experience lines up well with your plans, and that will stand out to the selection committee.
My one suggestion would be to start looking ahead to where you want to go to grad school. Look at their graduate college page and see what courses are required for applicants and make sure your remaining course work lines up with that. Also look at the faculty research pages and start thinking about who you want to work with as a graduate adviser (a critical decision!). Contact a couple you're interested in and ask for a phone or skype informational interview. In addition, talk to your current research adviser or the principal investigator you're going to be working with this summer. Most likely, they will be very happy to mentor you in preparing for graduate school, and also helping you establish contacts at your schools of interest. My undergraduate research advisor helped me open doors to both graduate school and a prestigious post-grad internship that really boosted my appeal as a grad school candidate. Good luck!

If you're applying for graduate school programs, you want to present the strongest case you can that you are on track to satisfy the requirements of the program and, even more importantly, that you will be able to do research in the field. Most undergraduate chemistry departments have a relatively well-specified curriculum, with a number of courses being fairly standard requirements (general, organic, physical, inorganic, analytical), and then a few electives. If possible, if you can, you should try to have all the "standard" courses and one or two of the more advanced electives finished by the time you apply.
The extra courses in physics might be helpful, but not nearly so much as the chemistry courses will be. So, if you have to choose between a chemistry course and a physics course, I'd go with the chemistry course this year, and wait until your senior year to take the remaining ones.

You see, under normal circumstances I'd do this, but the class is only offered on odd years, and it's a really interesting course on gravitation and spacetime that I won't get to take unless I do it my junior year. At the same time, that's four credit hours I could be spending on some specialized biochemistry course

You said you wanted to take multiple courses in physics, so you could always split the difference.

Right, the issue is that if I don't take those specific courses this year, they won't be offered the next year, my senior year, as they're only offered in the spring of odd years (2019)

Given that, I’d argue do one of each: take an advanced chem course and an advanced physics course. Unfortunately, sometimes we have to think of long-term goals in making short-term decisions and sacrifice. Besides, you might be able to incorporate some of your physics work into your graduate curriculum, as many grad programs require a minor as well.


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What happens if I don't pay the article processing charge after my paper was accepted by a gold open access journal?
My manuscript has got accepted and published online as "in press" in an Elsevier journal.
I noticed that it is an open access journal late after its acceptance.
I have not signed any forms yet, but the "in press" manuscript is online.
I cannot afford the cost and asked for a waiver. They declined my request.
Can anybody recommend me what to do?
What happens if I don't pay the fee? Will it affect my chances of future publications in other journals of the same publisher?
Please let me have your thoughts.
Thanks

Will your employer pay the fee? Some will.

You probably accepted some kind of contract when submitting your manuscript. Have a look at the journal guidelines and agreements that you accepted.

@Mark, implicit contracts are problematic. I doubt that there is any thing enforceable until you sign something. A submission is just an offer, not a contract.

@Buffy, no, they won't. The open access journals is a red line for them.

@gnometorule, I have published several paper in Elsevier journals but all were non-open access. I have had reviewed many manuscripts for the journal but never knew it was "only OA". In the guidelines page it is not clearly stated that they are OA. But, have a link, which I did not click, to a page where it is explained in detail.

@Mathisfreedom: It sounds as if I mid-read your question.

It is very strange: usually there are some forms to sign before they can even start the publishing process. There may be some fine print on the journal web page saying something like "by submitting the paper, you agree to the following terms and conditions", of course (or even some "I agree" button that you might click without reading what you are agreeing to as most people do). You may want to check that to see to what extent the "contract" is enforceable. Unfortunately, I have no answer to your main question. Promaster1 may be right but that doesn't sound like a real threat, just nuisance.

@ fedja, In the journal guidelines it is stated that "Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (see more information on this). An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement."    I have not completed the forms sent to me by the journal and Elsevier yet.

how did things turn out for you? Did you pay the fee?
I am exactly in the same situation right now. I regret greatly that I did not read the open access's policy carefully.

@Idearix  They keep sending me emails, yet I cannot pay.

That's odd, when I recently submitted to an open access elsevier journal (which are currently waiving the fee) selecting the publication method (which included the cost) was one of the steps I had to do on each submission / revision. In any case I'd contact the editor and explain your issue.

Can anybody recommend me what to do?

Apologize and retract the paper.

What happens if I don't pay the fee?

Your paper will not be published by this journal.

Will it affect my chances of future publications in other journals of the same publisher?

Probably not.  I doubt they track this behavior.  Many of Elsevier's journals are edited independently, and will not care about a mistake made in a different journal.

Why is this answer being downvoted?

@JeffE because the last part is dangerous - this kind of behavior can be tracked, and journals can also feel aggrieved since it's rather exploitative of their resources. If you were the editor/publisher of an open access journal, would you send a paper out for review knowing that the authors had earlier reneged on an implicit agreement to pay the APC?

Rather than depublish the paper, it's more likely that they'll paywall it (unless this is a pure open access journal).

@henning--reinstateMonica The question is clear it is pure.

Irrespective of weather the last part is true or not (the answer says "Probably"), there really is no other option than withdrawing the paper.

"Your paper will not be published by this journal." Are you sure? Have you ever seen this happen?

Assuming you can't pay the fee, then you should make it clear to the journal that you can't pay the fee. What happens next is up to them. It's possible they will retract the article; it's also possible they will publish it anyway as a gesture of goodwill.
Will it affect your chances of future publications in other journals of the same publisher? It's possible. Modern editorial management systems are capable of tracking submissions by the same person, and the data can be shared between journals. The real question is whether the journal will take action. They are more likely to take action if they think you were being exploitative, and less likely if they think it was a genuine mistake. In the former scenario, the exploitative author submits to the journal knowing they will not publish there, but are making use of the journal's resources/time to get "free" peer review for their paper. It's similar to how taking up "free consultation" services with no intention of actually purchasing the service can be viewed as exploitative. To avoid looking exploitative, you should definitely say that you noticed the journal was open access too late.

"making use of the journal's resources/time to get "free" peer review for their paper."  That's both an ineffective and an unethical way to improve your work.  I doubt anyone has ever done that.


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Can I send math subject GRE scores to programs that do not require them?
I'm applying math graduate program and know that some program reads "gre math subject is not required". Does that mean I can't send gre subject score to them?
And if I also want to apply cs program, can I send gre math sub score to them to exhibit my mathematical ability?

You can still send it in. You can always add more information to your application, but there is no guarantee that they will consider it. I know a few schools have stopped asking for GRE subject scores because they don't feel that it's a good way to predict performance, and if that is the case they will not look at it. Assuming you have a good score, it will not count against you.

You can and should send them. Not required means it is not essential; they don't want someone who has not taken that exam to worry. But grad schools would typically want to know about a candidate from as many sources as possible and getting your subject GRE scores is really a good plus point for your candidature. Of course , additional fee for each report has to be borne


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Is it okay to ask a former tenured professor why he suddenly left his job?
He's also not listed in the faculty directory / contact list any longer.
I used to meet him about twice a semester to talk about life and academics, so he knew me fairly well.
He was tenured and, to me, was brilliant.
Can I email him to say hello and ask why he left? Or is that being too nosy and inappropriate?

Only you know if you know the guy good enough to do that. And what has this to do with "academics"?

Do not be nosy. Just email and tell him that you would quite like to continue meeting him twice per semester, assuming that he still has the time and the inclination to do so.

This is very country-dependent and culture-dependent. In some it would be ok, in others it would be nosy and rude.

Does it potentially impact you? You may be able to get your impact analysis without prying too much into personal details.

May be a better fit for the new https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/

Unless you are a very good friend, you should not ask the question. You can, of course, continue to meet him in private if he is up for that. I do not recommend prying into the issue if he does not talk about that from his own initiative.

As Philipp said .. Maybe you know someone in his former department you can quietly ask?  "Oh, he moved to Princeton" or "He had a heart attack" or "He started his own company" or  "He resigned to care for his ailing mother" ...

There is a million possible reasons why the professor and the university do not work together anymore. Some of these reasons might be private matters which should not be shared with the public. Tenured appointments aren't broken easily, so you can assume it's either one very serious problem or a huge number of small problems. The problem might or might not be relevant to you personally. But unless you have good reason to believe that the problem is relevant to you, acting on the assumption that it is would be unfair.
You could always ask, but if the professor doesn't seem to be willing (or able) to speak about it, pondering the issue will just hurt your relationship. But if you really want to find out what happened, you might want to ask people in person, not per mail. It might be a matter nobody wants to make any statements about in writing.

I disagree with "you can assume it's either one very serious problem or a huge number of small problems." It might not be a problem at all. I know someone who suddenly left a tenured full professorship to move to a research position in industry. His main reason was that he wanted to develop resl-world applications of the theoretical work that he had done at the university.


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Can one do mathematical physics research without much knowledge of physics
I've looked around a little but did not find something that really answers my question.
I'm a (pure) math student currently applying for Ph.D. My interest are in fields that are closely linked to physics, mainly PDEs and analysis in general. I have basically no basis in physics except for some very basic reading.
My question is: is it really possible to do good research on the maths of a subject such as quantum mechanics, kinetic theory, general relativity, etc... without prior knowledge beside maths ?
I should finally add that this question is for a Ph.D. in West Europe, and that the programs I target do not have a taught component (even if it is probably possible to follow some courses if necessary).

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about a specific subject.

Should I move it into the mathematics stackexchange? I hesitated to put it here at first.

I revised the title to say "mathematical physics" since that's what the body of the question specifies.  The answers would be totally different if you wanted to do math research that isn't directly related to physics.

It might be off-topic also on Mathematics SE (and also on Physics SE), but I don't know their rules very well.

If you want to do applied math with applications specifically to physics, you either need to learn some physics, or you need to have close collaboration with someone who knows some physics.  Same for any other area of application.

Historically, most of the mathematics was developed to solve physical problems, and a fair amount of physical intuition helps to understand the ideas behind the mathematical methods, interpret solutions and check that their mathematical form is consistent with subject-specific problem, and also to develop new methods and communicate them to the users. So in general some background in Physics improves your chances to do a successful research in Applied Mathematics, and in particular to carry out PhD program.
However, there are some areas of Maths where you do just fine without any Physics. For example, general analysis of PDEs can lead you into functional analysis, and I don't think that analysis of properties of Sobolev spaces relies hugely on physical intuition.


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How to submit a computer science paper to arXiv when I am a physicist?
I am member of the Physics Department at my uni. I did the arXiv registration and automatically was allowed to submit papers in maths and physics. However I am interested in submitting a pre-print work in computational linguistics (mixed with acoustics). I found the right place in arXiv to do this: https://arxiv.org/list/cs.CL/new. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to sumbit papers to computer science -> computational linguistics. How can I do this?

That is somewhat hidden. Here's where you find that:
Login to the arXiv, go to "My Account". Below the info-box with your information there is the link "Change User Information". There you'll find boxes for the different groups to tick.


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Should list my advisor as an author on a paper I wrote alone?
As a part of my PhD project, I wrote a paper. When my supervisor read it, she said “it is perfect and complete, go ahead and publish it yourself because I cannot contribute more to it”. She really meant it and tried to do me a favor.
However, I still think it can be more beneficial for my future to have her name on my paper. Should I insist to have her as a coauthor or it might be useful in the future to have all the credits of a good paper?

If you put your supervisor on the paper as an author, that would be academic dishonesty since she did not contribute sufficiently to it to earn authorship. Having your supervisor as a coauthor does not increase the value of the paper (and for you personally, it would probably decrease the value).

What you are proposing is known as gift authorship.

@DavidKetcheson: True, but I advise against using that term. It makes it sound like a positive act of giving, which is not how I see it.

it can be more beneficial for my future to have her name on my paper – What makes you think so?

@DavidKetcheson I'm not convinced this is a dupe. The other question is quite clearly phrased around a lab environment and it's not clear that this applies, here.

My advice would be to read the answers to http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/644/705, and if they don't adequately answer this question, revise this question based on what you've read there.  At minimum, that will help you provide relevant information (e.g., about the involvement of your supervisor in project topic selection and the research work itself; the field and the standards in your field); but more likely, the answers there provide a suitable answer to your situation.

You should be a sole author for two reasons. First, your supervisor did not contribute to the paper. Some journals actually make you write out what each author accomplished, so you would be at a loss there anyway. Second, a sole-authored publication will demonstrate that you can work independently, which looks great to faculty search committees! When you are on the market, they want to hire people who will become independent researchers. You are demonstrating that by sole-authorship! If you want to publish with your supervisor because she is well-known in the field, my suggestion is that you talk with her about an additional paper project that both of you can work on.
On a side note, your supervisor might have described your paper as "perfect and complete," though this is only one reviewer's opinion. Though the paper may be at a stage for journal submission, please be prepared that the 2-5 blind reviewers may have different opinions about what is "perfect and complete." You still may get A LOT of revision requests from them. I'm sure you did a great job, I just don't want you to get discouraged if the reviewers end up being more critical.
Best of luck!!!!

One problem a friend of mine had: his advisor had encouraged him to write almost exlusively single-author papers, so that when it came time for him to apply to postdocs, people in the field did not know who his advisor was because they had written hardly any papers together!  So, it is important to balance the value of a single-author paper with the value of letting people know who your advisor is (as well as only listing authors in a paper who actually contributed to the paper.)

@Joshua The way the hiring committees will know who his advisor was is by the fact that his advisor will be writing him a letter of recommendation.

@TobiasKildetoft, but they won't know until then.  It's difficult to establish at a general level during your grad school years who's student you are if that fact isn't being advertised on your papers (at least in some fields).

@Joshua And why does it matter before that point?

Exactly this, +1.

If simply having others know that someone is/was your advisor is important, my suggestion is to list your advisor on your CV where you list your degree and institution. For example, underneath "2010 | PhD, Discipline, University of Somewhere" you can write on the line below: "Dissertation/Thesis Title. Advisor, Dr. V. Smith."

To the point of only having single-authored papers, this is also discouraged, because it is unclear if you can conduct and write research in a collaborative setting, which is how most research is done today.

@TobiasKildetoft, to help build your brand before that point, and to get people to notice your papers (people are more likely to read papers coauthored by an established person in the field than just by someone random they've never heard of before).

@Nicole Ruggiano: I would have thought that everyone who is recently graduated (well, virtually everyone; there's always going to be exceptions to most anything) would say who their Dissertation advisor is on their CV, and probably also the title in order to convey at a glance what the topic is. The fact that you would have to even say this suggests that this is not as universal as I had thought. On the other hand, I don't think I've ever seen a CV (in mathematics) where this was not listed, and at the least I've seen several hundred such CV's in the past 25+ years.

Thanks for the follow-up, Dave! I have learned that graduate students and junior faculty have wild variability in the amount of professional development mentoring they receive. Also, many junior scholars look at senior scholars' documents for guidance on CV writing, and a senior person wouldn't necessarily have that. So, I don't take for granted what junior scholars know and don't know about CV writing. It's good to make sure they have the basics!

TL;DR: Don't list her as an author, because: 1. She isn't one. 2. It's ok for you to be the sole author.
First it must be said that the question of what benefits you is the minor consideration in listing the authors of a paper. A scientific paper needs to be attributed to the people who performed the research and/or writeup, and that's that. While there are many cases in which it's not clear whether a person should or shouldn't count as an author because the weight of the contribution is debatable, this is not one of them. So even if it were to help you somehow to list your advisor as an author - it would be inappropriate. Unethical even.
Irrespective of that fact, it's perfectly common and acceptable, and often appreciated, for PhD candidates to write papers of their own. So you're not even risking anything.

I advise clarifying with the supervisor whether "go ahead and publish it yourself because I cannot contribute more to it" meant that you should submit it with only your name in the author list, or whether they meant that in their opinion it was ready for submission and that they had no suggestions for improvement.
At the University where I completed my PhD, and at others Universities of which I have direct knowledge, it was the norm (i.e. expected) to include supervisors as co-authors independent of direct contribution to a paper.
In the case where you are the (otherwise) sole author then the author list would read < self >, < supervisor1 >, < supervisor2 >, ... . And in the case where you were the lead author and had contributions from others then the author list would read < self >, < co-contributor1 >, < co-contributor2 >, ..., < supervisor1 >, < supervisor2 >... .
Additional commentary:
I have not been able to find anything which states this explicitly. I have since found this, which to me indicates that supervisors should only be listed as coauthors if they directly contribute, contradicting what was communicated verbally to me:

List the authors on the title page by full names whenever possible. Please be absolutely sure you have spelled your coauthors’ names correctly. Be sure also to use the form of the names that your coauthors prefer. Include only those who take intellectual responsibility for the work being reported, and exclude those who have been involved only peripherally. The author list should not be used in lieu of an acknowledgments section.
  (Additional Information for BSc Honours Dissertation and MSc Research Projects)

On reflection, this suggests that early papers will normally have supervisors as coauthors (assuming intellectual or tangible contributions to the papers) as the PhD candidate develops as a researcher, but that later papers would only list supervisors if the supervisor has clearly contributed in the same way as would be considered for any other person to be listed as a coauthor.
(Independent of this, I have also seen academic environments where it is politically expedient to list supervisors as coauthors - to keep them happy, so to speak...)

Could you provide anything official from said schools on this policy? It goes directly against most academic principles of what authorship means.

Mick, I take "publish it yourself" and the fact that the poster asked this question to suggest that it does indeed mean "without advisor as coauthor".  Just because it was practice at your institution to include as courtesy doesn't mean it is universal.  I too had one paper as a PhD student where my advisor said he didn't contribute and shouldn't be included.

I have added some additional commentary. In my opinion there seems to be often cases where academic principles and internal politics are not aligned. ;-)

My advice is to ask your supervisor. If she really does not want to go on the paper, ask other colleagues who might have helped you. If she hints otherwise, include her. Being alone on that paper might raise your reputation in a way, but it might also give the impression that you are grandiose and ungrateful and not a teamplayer. And that you don't recognize a situation where you can indebt other people to you at no cost. If in your group, everybody writes their papers with ten co-authors, chances are that being a sole author on a well-published paper will invite bad feelings from your peers.

But the OP clearly already asked their supervisor, so does this advice make sense?

Honestly, I think this answer is mostly nonsense. Authorship is an important thing, and it's important that every person listed as an author made actual contributions to the paper. Advisors often contribute (e.g., through general discussion) more than the student thinks but, in this case, the advisor has already said that she doesn't feel she should be an author. Looking around for other people to list as authors is even worse. And no reasonable person is going to come to judgements or jealousy because of one paper.

In any case, it's very unlikely that somebody would write a single-author paper in an environment where most papers have ten authors. In that sort of environment, almost all research begins as a group project, so there are multiple authors from day one.


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Ways to Improve Grading Speed of Papers
I have the privilege of teaching composition. This requires me to read several dozen papers in a given class. I have rubrics but no matter what I have to sit down and read the papers word for word in order to assess them. They're not long papers (about 10 pages), but I still have to read them.
Naturally, this takes a great deal of time in comparison to grading other forms of assignments. Checking main ideas, grammar, cohesiveness, APA formatting, etc.is slowly becoming a nightmare.
I want to know ways that others use to decrease the amount of time it takes to mark term papers.

There's a related question here, although that one is about grading problem sets, not papers; but maybe you will find some of those suggestions useful nonetheless.

yeah I saw that, so I was really careful in how I worded the question. This question focuses on compositions and not short answer/problem sets

Hmm, a tremendous amount of creative liberty was taken in the editing. I know we need to catch grammar but I don't recall saying anything about a "nightmare". I just don't express myself in such a vulnerable way.

Not sure what you're getting at? You can see the complete version history by clicking on the "Edited" link above and see exactly who said what. As far as I can see, "nightmare" was your word.

You could always say "If you don't hand me any of your sheisty papers you will get an A. If you hand me one of your sheisty papers, I might not like it and you might not get an A."(Zizek) Then all of your papers will be read with quality but you might not have any papers to read!

I find it efficient to make several passes through the all papers. Although it would involve reading each paper more than once, I find I am able to give them better focus and achieve better results, which I will explain.
In the first pass I check for very basic things, such a rubric, have they been labelled correctly in the correct basic format; I check for typos, spelling, citations, bibliography and note anything messy and distracting. Having got those out of the way I find I can now focus on content without being constantly distracted by flagging the visual aspects. I read (scan) through all the papers only handling the trivial aspects. Once done I start again on the next pass.
In the next pass I focus on the reading and ensure the sentences and paragraphs make sense. I can pick up missed words, malapropisms, homophones, punctuation and such like this way. Once I am happy that the words make sense on a micro scale (in all the papers), I can start to look at the bigger picture.
On the third pass I can look at overall structure; is the material introduced in a sensible order, is the focus on the right area and finally did I enjoy reading it and did overall make sense.
It might seem long winded, but I find that my performance (scripts per hour) can be faster and more detailed than myself or compared to colleagues that note everything in one script before moving to another.
This may not work for others, but I offer it as an example methodology.

To clarify, do you do all three passes on one paper before moving on to the next paper, or do you do pass one on all papers, then pass two on all papers, etc?

@ToddWilcox No. I do each pass on all the papers before starting again on the next pass. I thought my wording was clear....

Funny, I thought my wording was clear in that I wasn't asking a yes or no question... In any case, your method for grading is now clear to me, at least.

Sadly, you would have to read every single paper. In your particular case (language composition), you ought not to take shortcuts. Sparse reading of the composition would not provide proper evaluation. Hence you may not be able to decrease the time you spend for correction.
But, there are ways you can reduce the stress you get during correction. Segregate your task and process them at regular work-rest intervals instead of taking them all on at once. Also as you progress, your speed at evaluation will increase, but it will require experience.

Well, I don't want to sacrifice quality I just want to improve my efficiency

@DarrinThomas: Efficiency in this case would only improve through practice.


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When can I safely use CC-BY license on arXiv?
On arXiv one can license a preprint on one of the following (see also a note on arXiv on licenses):

arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license to distribute this article (Minimal rights required by arXiv.org. Select this unless you understand the implications of other licenses.)
Creative Commons Attribution license
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license
Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration

For cases when it is fine to submit a paper on arXiv.org perpetual (see also Does publishing a paper on arXiv prevent me from submitting it to a non-open access journal?), when I can safely use CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution license)?
Ideally, I would use it all the time, as it is the most permissible (=open) license, which requires attribution. (However, I used it only once, it a case where I don't intend to send it to a journal; so, except for that case, when one should (or shouldn't) be afraid of using CC-BY on arXiv?)
EDIT: Here the emphasis is on arXiv perpetual vs CC, not on choosing between CC licenses.

Using a CC-BY license on arxiv.org will be fine whenever you don't need to retain exclusive rights. CC-BY is a non-exclusive license, and you are free to grant as many non-exclusive licenses as you wish. However, you won't be able to grant a exclusive license thereafter, which is what most commercial publishers are looking for. The typical "transfer of copyright" would essentially be an exclusive license in these cases.
If you intend to publish the paper submitted to arxiv.org with an open access publisher, it should generally work with a CC-BY license. Most open access publishers require only a non-exclusive license to publish a paper, so there would be no conflict here. It may however not be possible to go to a publisher which requires either an exclusive license or a copyright transfer afterwards.
Interestingly, a copyright transfer may be less restrictive than an exclusive license in this case. In principle, it should be possible to transfer copyright even if a license have already been granted to someone else (that's how a company would buy software from another company that has already been licensed). So, why not try the following with your next paper:

Submit it to arxiv under a CC-BY license.
Submit to a commercial publisher, and add a statement like this to the copyright transfer agreement:

"This agreement is with the understanding that a non-revocable, non-exclusive license under the terms CC-BY has been granted to a arxiv.org."

I wonder how they'd react...

I wouldn't try using a CC license and then submitting unless you are seriously willing to find another journal if it doesn't work (since it may very well not work). Also, even non-profit publishers often ask for terms in compatible with some or all CC licenses.

There is at least one case of ACM dropping a paper from a proceedings replacing it with a one-line note linking to the arXiv copy in this case. See: http://r6.ca/blog/20110930T012533Z.html

@MikaelVejdemo-Johansson Thanks for the link. I can understand that they like public domain even less than CC-BY...

A "transfer of copyright" is completely different from an exclusive license, and I am not aware of any reason why you cannot perform a typical academic copyright after having made the document available under an open licence.  BTW, I have performed steps 1 and 2 on every paper I've submitted and I only have ever had trouble with the ACM because they have an on-line only copyright transfer form.

@RussellO'Connor In my view, transfer of copyright and exclusive license are equivalent. In my case, I can't even transfer copyright (it's a non-transferable right where I live). I don't have an explicit source know, but I remember publishers claiming that when I sign a copyright transfer agreement, it's essentially equivalent to an exclusive license for me. And the key point is that you cannot give an exclusive license after you gave a non-exclusive one, such as CC-BY.

Note that "transfer of copyright" is not even a thing in some jurisdictions (e.g. in Germany). If German researchers sign something like this for US publishers, afaik, the passage is void.

@Raphael I don't think it's void. AFAIK it would be interpreted as granting an exclusive license, which you can do also under German copyright.

Certainly. It's not quite the same, though.

Does anything in this answer change if the default "arXiv perpetual" license is chosen instead of CC? The "arXiv perpetual" license is also a non-exclusive license.

@wimi in principle I think it would be the same, but if publishers explicitly state that prior submission to arXiv is ok then I would interpret that in the sense that they are ok with authors having granted arXiv a license to publish the paper. That may even be part of what is usually called "retained rights" in the copyright transfer.

There's no way to know except by checking with the journals you have in mind. In mathematics, almost all journals will be OK with the default arXiv license, but most of them have copyright terms that would be incompatible with the CC licenses. Some may make an exception for you, but I would guess that many commercial journals would not (and probably some non-commercial ones, too - for example, the ACM is not friendly towards this sort of thing). Because this would often involve an exception to posted policies, I don't think there's any way to find out systematically besides asking individually. They may also be reluctant to make any general statements that could be interpreted as a precedent.
So in mathematics, I would be wary of the CC options unless you are sure you will submit only to the minority of journals that allow this. (And, of course, you should never choose any license without agreement from all coauthors.)

I never saw a statement explicitly allowing using a CC license (except for case when a journal publishes on such license)

I've never seen it explicitly mentioned, but some copyright forms for free journals are compatible with CC BY (e.g., http://www.combinatorics.org/ojs/index.php/eljc/about/submissions#copyrightNotice). Aside from these cases, which you can determine by reading the copyright form carefully, or journals that use CC licenses themselves, you would have to ask for an exception.

I'd be somewhat surprised at a math journal overruling the decisions of their editorial board over copyright concerns.  But at any rate, it's the acceptance that matters, not the publication.  I'd be happy to list a paper as accepted on my CV in this situation.

I don't think it would be looked at as overruling the editorial board.  The acceptance is always conditional on dealing with the copyright issues, and if the author is unable to do so then the acceptance is moot (and might be officially rescinded, depending on the publisher's policies, which would complicate listing it on a CV - at the very least the wording would have to be very careful).  Furthermore, I'd bet many editorial boards would be unsympathetic.

In my experience, editors often push publishers to give authors reasonable rights, but not necessarily everything they ask for, and I've also seen boards push demanding authors to compromise regarding copyright issues.  If an author declares "It's too late; I've already released the paper under CC BY so your only option is to agree to everything", then some editors would be annoyed and view the author as acting in bad faith.  Other editors might be sympathetic, but it would be difficult to convince the full board to stand up for the principle that authors must be allowed to use CC BY licenses.

The principle isn't that authors must be allowed to use CC BY licenses (personally I don't, as the arXiv's default license seems to cover the rights that I want), but rather that acceptance decisions should be made for mathematical reasons and not corporate reasons.  As far as quality of theorem is concerned, everything after acceptance is irrelevant.


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High likelihood I'll be unable to submit my thesis before the deadline... What's my outlook?
Ok, so I'm in a pretty dire situation here. I'm coming towards the end of my PhD contract in France. For a litany of reasons, it hasn't gone too well.

I had extreme difficulty getting my experiments to work, and as I'm working with living organism (microalgae) this often meant months of delays. My experimental schedules were often incredibly strenuous and I had nobody to help me with them.
My supervisor is a kind person but far too busy for me, and I've never really been a real priority to her. She's often away for weeks, responds incredibly slowly or not at all to requests for review of my work or help, and has decided to go on a research cruise just before my deadline date (while continuously delaying review of my currently written chapters). I don't want to be too pessimistic but I feel like she gave up on me months ago and didn't suggest I quit because she wanted me to finish the work and publish the papers.
Ridiculous bureaucracy in France has no leeway on deadline for submission -- 2 months before the prospective defence date and no later, and no defence date outside of contract end (to avoid paying unemployment benefits to students while they continue to work). Apparently I am unable to waive this either, as I would be happy to do if it meant a few weeks more time.
The difficulties of living abroad and alone exacerbated incredibly my pre-existing depression and anxiety and this meant me having extreme difficulty self motivating and keeping good time. I've had probably 4-5 mental breakdowns over the last 3 years due to experimental scheduling.
I didn't have a good grasp of what I was supposed to do in my PhD apart from experimentation, and I was ostracised pretty badly by my mostly French department (I'm English). Other PhD students (French) all received great advice and tutelage under the senior members of staff, whereas most staff here don't know my name nor have ever tried to talk to me.

I feel like I've just failed life. I don't have any idea what kind of employers would accept me after this 3 year mess. Due to my extreme experimental schedule I feel very underdeveloped as I didn't manage to publish anything (yet), go to many classes, go to any conferences... etc. The only thing going for my is 5 years of lab experience. However most lab jobs I've seen (in the UK - my home) that pay well require experience in techniques I haven't used, and low paid ones that I could adapt easily to require only A levels; having a first class masters would probably mean they think I’m overqualified.
Science was always my dream and it's been my career path since my youth. Now that I have the experience of what not to do in a PhD I feel like I could enter another program and succeed easily. I made SO many mistakes this time around that could've easily been avoided if I'd known what to expect. Unfortunately, almost nothing at all was communicated clearly to me on what I had to do to succeed until it was too late, and the language barrier meant that I had a hard time finding this info myself. However, I don't know at all if another project would accept me. Also, I don't know if I could handle the stress.
Sorry for the rant. The advice I'm asking for is:

Do I have any career prospects?
How on earth do I present myself to prospective employers as anything but a failure?
Would a potential future PhD supervisor ever consider me given my failure? It's unclear, while I feel like i'm advantaged because I know what to do now and I'd have the confidence and drive not to repeat the same mistakes, I don't know if anyone would see me like that. I've truly learned from my mistakes.

Thank you for your time...

How far are you in your thesis-writing? Any chance to wrap up in eight weeks and submit some kind of draft in lieu of the "final" version (which doesn't really exist anyway)?

I have a week and a half to wrap up, I have two chapters done, and a final one to go as well as the overall discussion. I still have data to analyse for this chapter so the likelihood is - no not really.

Are you sure there is no way to extend, e.g. by taking a TA or lab assistant position at your university? It is rather common that PhD students don't finish in time, so I would ask your advisor about options here.

The only real way to do it in France (in my lab at least) is to have more funding to pay a salary to the student. My supervisor made it clear from the beginning there was no chance of added funding. She says the only way, which is just speculative and unheard of, is trying to convince the doctoral school that it would be mutually beneficial to allow me to work on the thesis on my own time, and re-enroll next year sometime when it is done to allow the review process to proceed.

Hello Ben, and sorry for your situation. You wrote " there was no chance of added funding", but I guess this should be read as " there was no chance of added funding from her". Maybe you could find other ways of getting paid? That's precisely what @DirkLiebhold is referring to: by teaching or becoming a lab assistant, you could still be paid, but on different funds.

Hey Ben, I am actually very surprised what you say about "no defence after the contract ends" to avoid paying students unemployment benefits. This sounds like either very new, or false. I did my PhD in France, and that was almost the go-to solution for any students needing a couple of extra months to finish. I had obtained 2 months of extra funding (I believe through CNRS) and after that me, as many other students, went and registered for unemployment. I even directly told them at my first interview, I am still currently writing my PhD thesis and will be doing so for another month or so.

*Sorry, that was a go-to solution for any person who was allowed to stay due to immigration regulations. Since you say you are from the UK, you should not have problems such as this. But, to repeat again: this was a go-to solution for any student needing extra time when I graduated 2 years ago. I got unemployment for 1 month until graduation, 2 more months after, 3 month post-doc, and then 2 months unemployment before moving to the UK for a post-doc. Where did you bump into the rule that this is forbidden; from your supervisor, Uni, or is there some new unemployment regulations these days?

I would personally try not to focus on the deadline and just continue to write. It is always better to have sth in your hands. You invest a lot of time into thinking about the situation. If you can't put it to rest, go talk to the head of research of your lab, but make sure not to say anything negative about your supervisor, that is academic suicide in France. Don't worry about the impact on your career, 1) you will not be able to anticipate possible consequences 2) handling a difficult situation by getting your work finished will always be an asset on your cv.

The situation you are describing might sound like a difficult one, but I am pretty sure that if you go and talk to your doctoral school you will find that is not an uncommon one.
Instead of relying on what your supervisor says, you should probably just describe your situation to your doctoral school and see what possibilities are before you. It is, in a way, the role of the doctoral school to provide counseling in such cases.
In the meantime, if you do not know what ATER are (Attaché Temporaire d'Enseignement et de Recherche), have a look at these specific positions. They are sort of TAs positions. The link is in French, but in your case, the most important sentence might be:

Pour devenir A.T.E.R., il faut être dans l’une des situations suivantes :

[...] soit être inscrit en vue de la préparation d'un doctorat, le directeur de thèse devant attester que la thèse peut être soutenue dans un délai d'un an ; [...]

This means that you are eligible for such a position, only if your advisor is positive that you can defend within a year.
Finally, while your experience feels wrong, you sound like you have learnt quite a lot from it. I guess you should focus on finding the positive sides your experience.

I lack sufficient reputation to simply comment. I am also unfamiliar with rules in France, although in Germany there is similar rigidity (in US much less so). I would try to apply for some sort of health status exemption that suspends the bureaucratic clock and gives you time to sort things out. Also, consider taking stock of what data you do have ... you may have results that are indeed valuable and can be written up, published. Most PhD work doesn't go as planned, and with original research this is unlikely anyway. A key component of working as a professional scientist is being able to look dispassionately at data, including your own, and understand what's really there. You need some distance, some detachment to be able to do that.

Thanks for your contribution. Unfortunately, getting a "sort of health status exemption" needs precise documentation in France, and "my experiments didn't work as planned" (which is the reality of scientific research) would not work.

@Clément I would imagine Rolf was addressing the depression and anxiety part, not the research part.