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How long should it take a potential PhD supervisor to evaluate proposal?
I've contacted a potential PhD supervisor last month and gave him my PhD proposal. about a week after that I've got a response from the professor, acknowledging the receipt of my proposal and saying that he will respond as quickly as possible. I haven't received any other response since last month and I'm getting kind of anxious.

Should I write him an email again or let him contact me first with a
reply?
How long does this process of proposal evaluation take?

I sent my very first PhD application in the month of September, and I got the rejection email on April. I had totally forgotten about them by then.

"How long does this process of proposal evaluation take?" - Why don't you ask him?

Many academics are flooded with email from students (undergraduate and graduate), administrators, coworkers, colleagues, editors, etc.  What you've asked him to do for you takes more than two minutes and he may not have available time to do it, or the energy to set aside the available time in the near future.  There are enough small things to deal with that they can can easily bury the larger things.
If one method of communication is not effective you can, after a suitable delay, try another.  A phone call or visit to office hours might bump your earlier email to the top of his mind.  He may already have some preliminary feedback, or he may apologetically say that he still hasn't gotten to it, but he does plan to do it soon.  Either way this can move the process towards resolution.
On the other hand, you're considering this person for one of the most important roles of your academic career.  If he does not show enthusiasm about working with you, you may want to consider other options.

Thank you for answering my question. He seemed interested in his first email. But i havent recieved any other emails from him since then. Its been 5 weeks now, How much longer should I wait before contacting him again?

@Ali: 5 weeks is long enough to wait.  Either send another email, or try to find him in office hours.

I can't go to his office because I don't live near the university. I can send him another email though. do you think this short email is appropriate? (in the next comments)

Dear Professor XXXX
Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my emails. As you may know preparing for PhD studies requires some planning, be it academic or financial matters. and occasionally few things need to be planned far ahead.

I would be really grateful if you would be kind enough to let me know if you have had the time to go over my proposal. I am fully aware that as a professor you have many other institutional obligations and responsibilities that take priority over this matter and reviewing my work may take more time. In that case, would you please inform me of the estimated length of this process so that I will be able to plan and act accordingly.
Yours Sincerely

@ali: I would skip the first paragraph after Thank you...  If you have a deadline, say you have a deadline and when. Other than that it is fine.

I don't have a deadline, I have secured funding. And of course I don't wanna miss the opportunity of applying for another school.but I don't want to bring this up because he's the foremost expert in my field and its the most prestigious school in my area of expertise and even being considered by him is a privilege.(he made it explicitly clear that he only answered because my initial email stood out from the rest!) And I am not sure if its ethical to give the proposal to some other professor while he is working on it. I just wanna know about the progress and make the process a bit quicker!

@Ali It has been a while but I'm interested to know that have you finally end up working with the professor? And I'm curious to know, what did you submit as a proposal in your email? I have not seen a proposal in the requirements of any university. Can you mention the field you are working in?

Don't run, Walk!
May be your as quick as possible is one month and his as quick as possible is two months or more (who knows?).
Professors have their own personal/academic/career responsibilities and usually suffer from lack of time problem. Let him review your proposal and he will respond you when he is done.
In my opinion one month is not that much that you are becoming anxious, but it maybe a good idea if you don't receive any email from him in the following weeks, send him an email and remind your proposal politely. Also, if you are going very near to the university deadlines and it is affecting your application, it may worth it to include those deadlines in your reminder too.


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Is it proper etiquette to keep religious content on official course page?
Is the course site property of the university or the person engaging it such as a teacher, teaching assistant etc.,?
Is it proper etiquette to add religious contents such as quotes from religious texts, images of gods into scientific course pages in a secular institute?

It strongly depends on the context. For example, it certainly is appropriate to do so in a religious studies course.

@xuq01 institute and course are science-based and secular....

I would not use the term "recommended" for sure. Moreover, I feel like that images of Gods are a bit inappropriate for such context.

Are you really asking if it is "recommended" (as in, you should do it most of the time) or if it is "ok" (as in, you can do it if you really want to)?

If you ask "Is it recommended", then you need to ask "from whom should that recommendation come"? I can give you my opinion, but there is no international body of universities that gives such recommendations.

@Shinary .... Yeah, the word recommendation or Okay is bad. I actually mean is whether proper etiquette or not

In general, probably not, but there are cases where it might be reasonable. Religion is an immensely powerful force in human society, so inevitably it will impinge on science and sometimes it's appropriate to talk about that.
For example, the science of evolution has been under attack since its inception by those who believe in a literal reading of the Old Testament and other such texts. In a course on evolution it might be quite appropriate to present a quote from the Book of Genesis in order to discuss that opposition to evolution. What would not be appropriate there is to present it uncritically, casting young-earth creationism as some sort of equally-valid alternative to evolution.
Robert Oppenheimer apparently named the Trinity nuclear test after a religious poem by John Donne, and he famously quoted two passages from the Bhagavad Gita to express his reaction to the first nuclear explosion:

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky,
  that would be like the splendor of the mighty one.
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

Those passages are tremendously evocative and have been re-quoted many times. There's even a Linkin Park album named for the "thousand suns" line. I wouldn't consider it improper for a text on nuclear physics to include those quotes.

Is [a] course [web]site['s content] property of the university or the person [responsible for the course]?

The answer will depend on local law, but content on course websites will typically constitute work product of the person that produced the content, and work product is typically owned by the person's employer. Hence, content is probably owned by the university, rather than the content producer.
Ownership isn't particular relevant to the remainder of the question, which asks

[Whether adding] religious content [to web]pages [of a science course] is appropriate?

A course website serves to educate the course's students in the terms intended by the course. I don't see how religious content helps serve that goal for a scientific course. So, I'd consider such content inappropriate.

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What is the difference between a PhD degree and a DSc degree?
Some universities that offer a DSc as the doctoral degree, while most of them also offer a PHD degree in science. What are the differences these degrees in terms of academic standing? What are the pros and cons?

Can you give a clue to what DSc stands for? Doctor of Science?

It depends on the university and the country.
In England, a PhD is typically awarded for a thesis and oral examination of the thesis, usually followed by implementation of corrections to the thesis, the requirements for which are specified during or just after the oral exam. It's often done soon after a Masters, which is done soon after a Bachelors, so a fairly large proportion of PhDs are awarded at the start of one's academic career. Whereas a DSc is awarded for a portfolio of work, (in some cases submitted together with an over-arching critique of that portfolio), and thus is more likely to be awarded later in an academic's career.
Nominally, a PhD is a doctorate in philosophy, but is typically awarded for pretty much any subject. There are some who argue that philosophy of knowledge always form part of these studies, regardless of the subject. I occasionally use this line to try to inspire students, myself. A DSc is a doctorate in science, and is not awarded for literature, law, divinity, or music, each of which has its own dedicated higher doctorate.
The DSc is a higher doctorate than a PhD, in England. In some other countries, they're equivalent.
Both get the honorific title doctor.

A good summary of the differences between Ph.D. and the "Doctor of Science" family of degrees (D.Sc./Sc.D./etc.) can be found in Wikipedia.
In essence, different countries have different views due to their historical development, which generally fall into two clusters:

Doctor of Science is equivalent to Ph.D.
Doctor of Science is a sort of super-Ph.D.

In general, much of the world seems to be slowly standardizing around Ph.D. as a universal term, though given national pride and the traditions of academia, it might never congeal completely around a single interpretation of the terms.

In the United States, the Doctor of Science is identical to the Doctor of Philosophy except that it's awarded only in the natural sciences, and only by a few universities.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology awards both degrees, for instance, and the curriculum is identical.  (MIT doctoral graduates in the physical sciences and engineering can choose either degree title once all the requirements have been met.  Those in the social sciences and biology don't have the option of choosing the Doctor of Science, however; they all get the PhD.)
In the United Kingdom and some other countries, the Doctor of Science is a "higher doctorate" awarded after submission of a portfolio of published work -- typically around 80-120 journal articles.  It signifies a much higher level of accomplishment than the PhD, and it's usually awarded to researchers relatively late in their careers.  There are equivalent higher doctorates in other fields of study: Doctor of Letters, Doctor of Laws, Doctor of Divinity, etc.

Thank you! As I recall from my time studying for my Scientiæ Baccalaureus degree at MIT 1980-84, MIT only offered an ScD. I wonder if they later "threw in" the PhD so graduates could choose, thus avoiding having to explain the difference to the less sophisticated, or am I simply mis-remembering? I found this current official explanation helpful: "The PhD and ScD degrees are awarded interchangeably by all departments in the School of Engineering and the School of Science except in the fields of biology, cognitive science, neuroscience, medical engineering, and medical physics." (j.mp/2QaNbUj)

The Doctor of Science Degree is purely a research degree that extends well beyond what is formally required for a Doctor of Philosophy Degree. Extensive publication of research is a prime prerequisite for the D.Sc. Degree, not merely the completion of a dissertation.  A dissertation plus an extensive port folio of research publications add-up to qualify a candidate for the Doctor of Science Degree.  Usually the D.Sc. Degree is inter-disciplinary, such as a combination of research in history, economics, and political science or government, which gears the candidate for inter-disciplinary publication.

What country are you referring to here?

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What should you do if a co-author has an unethical affiliation?
A person I know was in the process of publishing her first manuscript when her supervisor told her to add his newly acquired affiliation from a university in Saudi Arabia to his name. The Saudi Arabian university hired this Supervisor as guest faculty and were essentially paying him for adding them as one of the affiliated universities in all the forthcoming manuscripts.
This was of major ethical concern to my acquaintance.  In recent years, Saudi universities have been accused in multiple different prominent articles of "buying rankings" by paying prominent faculty to list them as an affiliation, even though the faculty have little real interaction with the university.  To many, this looks like simple bribery or unethical sale of reputation, particularly give the high sums of money involved.
My acquaintance was concerned that, if her advisor was listing this affiliation on her paper, then she would be aiding and abetting in this unethical behavior.  Unfortunately, her confrontation with her advisor went badly, and although she was able to publish the paper without the questionable affiliation, the relationship was destroyed and she ended up resigning the laboratory under pressure.
Now my question is this: what should a junior researcher do when they feel they are being asked to be party to "affiliation fraud" of this sort?  We would not ask a person to remain silent if they thought a co-author was being unethically added or removed.  Should unethical addition or removal of an affiliation be treated the same way?

It didn't became the affiliation of the student, it was of the supervisor only but now the supervisor wanted to list both his German as well as Saudi Arabian affiliation in the paper. What this would have implied was that paper would belong to both universities, would also had given a wrong impression to readers that the work was carried out in both universities and moreover, the concern of Ms X was that she was feeling that her supervisor tried to sell out her work without her permission or knowledge.

Listing a university affiliation does not imply any level of support or convey any ownership of the project.  It is like giving an alternate address.  Therefore a coauthor objecting to a university affiliation is irregular and sounds like a lot of worry over something that is not the coauthor's business.  Getting paid to list what amounts to alternate contact information is also weird.  If the faculty member is not spending any time in residence at the Saudi Arabian university then it begins to seem problematic.  But...why would a student quit her PhD over this: why is it a problem for her?

Did the professor want to make it look as though the student were affiliated with the Saudi university, or just reflect his own affiliations?

While this is rather questionable ethics by the advisor, the student (or any collaborator) shouldn't really need to care what somebody else mentions as affiliation on a paper. I honestly believe the student overreacted. (of course the question remains how great the relationship was to start with if such a tiny thing can destroy it completely)

without trying to go into too much discussion... it seems to me like this question is not so opinion based.  What would the response be if a student decided to make his/her own affiliation on a paper and the professor did not agree.  Is there a previous question along these lines... if someone wants their affiliation to be 'the religion of the spaghetti monster', do co-authors have any say

Exactly what @xLeitix and pete said. The professor had the right to state his desired affiliation and it is none of the student's business. The affiliation never implies where the work actually took place (it is 2015, we have emails and skype for god's sake) only what grant pays for the person's research. And what did the student do? Refused to state the desired affiliation of the professor in the journal (this is a major mistake for any co-author) and fought over it with a senior staff of the university (why?). I think the supervisor is 100% right in this case.

A related question was asked on this site before: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/41684/19607

@jakebeal I fee that the part that the OP was able to publish the paper without the questionable affiliation with the help of another senior professor is paramount to why the advisor / advisee relationship was broken. It is one thing for two people to have a disagreement and another when external parties are involved.

@Alexandros My interpretation of the question was that the key question was not about the process of the dispute per se, but about the ethical question that caused the dispute.

@Alexandros, so if the professor wants to put "University of the Moon" as their affiliation, the junior researcher has to roll over and take it? There's more to affiliation than just an address. The university in question may trumpet this work (press release), claim the the professor as their own, etc. This will reflect on all the authors. If one of the coauthors knows this is fraudulent, then they have a responsibility to prevent it. If the affiliation is gray and the coauthor can't defend it, it might be worth fighting over. Especially for a practice that's been in the news.

This is what counts as an "unethical" affiliation? When I read the title I thought it was going to be a proposed affiliation with an ISIS or Al-Qaedea subgroup: not a university who was basically retaining a consultant on the staff list. Really, the student needs to get over herself. Imagine if she worked for a private company.

@Calchas, some people are particularly sensitive to Saudi Arabia's approach to government and might not like to have their paper associated with a university there. The junior researcher might have refused the project entirely had they known of the affiliation. To add it at the end of the publication process might have been too much. It's not a hill that I would die on, but for some this country has many unacceptable practices that they might choose to distance themselves from.

@BillBarth I am not sure why you want to spin this as the prof. being unreasonably pushy. I am not even sure this has to do with rank - if an equally ranked co-author would want to tell me what university I can or cannot use based on her/his own ethics, I would not be pleased either. And if she/he is particularly annoying about it, I may not want to publish with her/him in the future. Which seems to be exactly what happened here.

@xLeitix, the words "junior professor" came from the question. I would treat the approach exactly the same for folks of equal rank. There's no spin on my part here, and you're reading too much into nothing. People choose not to work for oil and pharma companies all the time, so I can see how particular governments might also be an issue. That's all. Since the timing appears to have been a late addition, I can only assume that the junior researcher was concerned about citation buying from a place they find objectionable.

@BillBarth Then the cost of having that kind of ethical standard is to withdraw from the collaboration and desist in publishing the paper. That's fine, ethics would be worthless if they had no cost, I think. But certainly I cannot insist that the other author breach either his contractual arrangement or indeed his own view on where he is affiliated merely because I am unhappy with his arrangement.

@Calchas, seems like a fine approach to me. Why don't you put that in your answer!

@Calchas I agree. That sounds like a great, well-reasoned answer.

@Calchas when you say 'withdraw', then who gets to publish the material under their name? the supervisor? the junior researcher? neither? both of them, separately? What if that gets them into double-submission scenario? Do they race each other to submit separately? And does it matter which of them did most of the work, and whether it was 90/10 one of them, or 40/60 the other?

@smci I mean neither. If you your coworker was funded by such an ethically unacceptable organisation the entire work is tainted.

@Calchas I think compelling her to throw away all her work unpublished plus torpedoing her first publication merely due to his behavior is utterly unreasonable and unethical. Seems more reasonable that she would tell him in writing  she's withdrawing consent to him as coauthor due to this reason, and simultaneously inform her department head (and possibly higher levels of the escalation chain) of his behavior, and let them know she intended to submit without his name by  unless the situation was resolved. Seems like the solution to me.

@smci I am being slightly frivolous. But, I don't see any compulsion, merely the co-author wishes to have his affiliations properly listed. Every journal of which I am aware requires that every person who contributed to the science of the paper be allowed the opportunity to be an author, with the appropriate affiliation, and to submit without such an author would be considered plagiarism.

@Calchas: right, it seems the dispute comes down to whether or not it is "appropriate affiliation" to list a university that has waited until after you have work ready to publish and then offered you a cash sum in return for stating affiliation with them. Although, as Pete points out, it's not a straight case of a commercial endorsement, since they might well offer you a PO box in addition to the cash.

As OP mentions in a comment that the "home" university is in Germany, I'd like to add a peculiar point wrt Germany in this situation. A German professor is a public offical, so if they take a guest professorship the Land (= owner of the university) has to endorse that. If the supervisor is not a professor, still their employer = the university has to endorse that (it's not so easy for them to refuse, they'd need to show "good reasons"). In any case, this means that the student can in good faith assume the relationship with the other university was considered OK by their universitry....

... which IMHO means that the conclusion that there is a fraudulent affiliation needs considerably more substance.

To my mind, this case is very similar to the question of whether somebody can essentially pay for co-authorship.  We see many questions of this sort on this site, a particular apropos example of which is this one, which asks in part:

Suppose I'm a billionaire who knows nothing about science, but I take it into my head that I want to be (regarded as) a famous scientist.

The case of the Saudi Arabian affiliations looks to me very much like a parallel construct:

Suppose I'm a billionaire institution which does little significant research, but I take it into my head that I want to be (regarded as) a famous institution.

I think that it is completely reasonable to find this problematic, and to object to a co-author adding this institution, just as one might object to a co-author adding the billionaire know-nothing as another author.
Now the question is what to do about it, and, as in these authorship questions, the advice tends to depend strongly on the power dynamics of the situation.  On this site, we often advise students to leave bad situations rather than creating a confrontation, due to the power imbalance with faculty.  For people in positions of power, however, like tenured faculty, it is an effective endorsement of unethical behavior if you are aware of it and do not call it out.  It may not be a hill to die on, but either you care enough to make your voice heard or else you accept the behavior as legitimate.
In this particular case, the student may have acted unwisely with regards to safeguarding their own future, but it may also have been important enough to them to take that ethical stand.  It's impossible for us to know how important it was to that person, and it's easy to engage in post-facto critique of their tactics, but I think the concern is legitimate and the actions taken are within the range of reasonable options, depending on how strongly the student felt about the ethics involved.
In short: some people choose not to take military money, not to work on espionage-related research, or not to publish in non-open journals.  Choosing not to be party to what you perceive as bribery for prestige is just as legitimate an ethical choice to make.

It seems to me a related issue is when famous researchers get added to a lesser-known university's faculty for a sizable salary and in return they do very little other than show up to give some talks once a year (or not even that).  All this can be considered "gray area" but somehow people typically only get upset when it is done blatantly rather than wink-nudge style.

Playing devil's advocate, there is little difference between a university that pays you only to do research and a funding agency.

@FedericoPoloni: one may argue that the funding agency doesn't get listed as affiliation. But: it is quite normal for research institutions to pay one for just doing research. And depending on the topic of that research, doing this remotely can also be quite normal.

One unwritten rule of any scientific collaboration between co-authors is that each party should trust the other. If I collaborate on one paper with another scientist (who might be located in another part of the world) and he is affiliated with more than one institutions (e.g., a university and a research institute or a second university while on sabbatical) and tells me that he likes his affiliation on this specific paper to be "Institute A" or "Institute B" I trust that he is doing the right thing. When he wants me to add an acknowledgement about a specific grant, I put the acknowledgement he wants for HIS part and I put the acknowledgement for my grant that I want. I have never felt the need to question neither the grant acknowledgement or the affiliation of another collaborator. For me, it is always a matter of trust. I do not collaborate with people I do not trust and I trust the people I collaborate with.
On my CS domain, where conferences are the main publishing venue, sometimes the affiliation or the grant explicitly written on a paper, sometimes corresponds to who or how the trip expenses of the suggested paper will be covered. In those cases, the author may have prior discussed this with the administrative division of his institute and only follows the provided instructions. Again, I have never thought of any of this as a big deal, because it is more of a administrative technicality than a real issue.
As far as the OP original question, her advisor wanted to list both affiliations (not just the "shady" one). In my mind, this was really not a big thing. Instead the OP by escalating this issue, was basically forced to resign from her PhD. And all this for what? So that a small obscure university has one less citation? It makes no sense and there are much more important ethical fights that is worth fighting for within Academia.
It would be a whole different story though, if the OP was forced to put another affiliation for herself. In that case, she should have a saying on which is her preferred affiliation. But fighting for the listed affiliation on another co-author makes absolutely no sense to me.

Some of this answer addresses parts of the question that have now been removed or at least veiled. It might be best to edit them out.

I'm going to disagree with the other answers. In particular, I don't think it is similar to buying authorship at all.
Listing someone as a coauthor means their contribution was to do some of the work, so listing someone who merely paid you is unethical, because it misrepresents their contribution. But listing an institution as an affiliation normally means that you are paid by that institution.
So far as I can see, the only problem would be if the supervisor's German institution felt that they were paying for exclusive affiliation rights. But that would be a matter between them and him.

Withdraw from the collaboration.
Certainly, she cannot insist that the other author breach his contractual arrangement or indeed disregard his own reasonable view on where he is affiliated merely because she is unhappy in how the affiliation arose.
If his view on where he was affiliated was essentially a fiction of his own invention, I think, it would be reasonable to take a robust position against perpetuating a fiction or a fraud. But that is not, from what I understand of the question, what has happened here. If he is paid by the university in some academic capacity related to the paper, for whatever reason and for whatever work is delivered, then I believe he is entitled to assert that he is "affiliated" with that university when publishing the paper. And the university may well require him to make that assertion. It is no less reasonable than a grant body asking to be acknowledged when work is produced from a grant.
If that is too much for her to tolerate, then the cost of having that kind of ethical standard is to withdraw from the collaboration and desist in publishing the paper: ethics would be worthless if they had no cost to their subscribers.
I have to add, when I read the title I thought the question would concern a proposed affiliation with an ISIS or Al-Qaedea subgroup, or at least with a supplier of arms technology to a capricious dictator.
Frankly, to get upset that a university in a developing country has to promote itself against the entrenched western universities by retaining (effectively) a consultant on their payroll, is bordering on the absurd. There are many problems in the world and many problems in academia. Saudi Arabia throwing some money at a small number of professors is not one of them.

For some, it's not just some random developing country. As such, I think the ethics of not wanting your work associated with Saudi Arabia are defensible. For some people, this country's approach to religious rules and questions of gender are too far to one end of the spectrum to want to be associated with them in any way. Others take a view that interactions with more liberal countries may be liberalizing, but not everyone takes this view. Labeling these strong moral positions as absurd is itself a moral position, and doesn't really enhance your answer.

@BillBarth I'm not taking a position about affiliating with Saudi Arabia as a country nor discussing at any point the integrity of the country's political system. I'm taking a position about someone saying "a university is not well known so it is not entitled to hire good people to improve its reputation". :)

Yeah, but as it appears here, if the work is done and a university comes along and says "Here's some money, start adding me to your papers including anything you submit to day," that might be problematic. If the arrangement was made ahead of the work, then I see no problem. There's some gray area here. Who should I list when I move institutions in the middle of the project? Etc. Etc.

@BillBarth That's a separate point to the "Saudi Arabia is immoral" question. But my argument is that the determination of that grey area is made by the author who is or would be affiliated with the institution, not by anyone else. Other people on the paper might disagree with the determination, but ultimately it is not for them to decide. (In my view.)

I can't 100% agree, but I do agree with you that the right approach is to withdraw if you are opposed to this kind of citation buying through affiliation. This whole "it's nobody else's business who I affiliate with" position is not so absolute to me. Everyone's name is on the paper, and so any ethical issues associated with the paper will fall on all the authors to some measure.

@BillBarth Perhaps then it comes down to the trust approach expressed in Alexandros's answer!

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

The affiliation seems genuine based on the "guest faculty" contract.  Failing to list it is a "lie of omission" and probably mildly unethical itself.  If it "distorts rankings", it simply means that U.S. News and World Report is incompetent and unreliable.  It is not a "corporate overlord" anyway. Find another advisor if you "don't like" it.

A contrarian view: in my opinion, every author is responsible for listing their own affiliations. If they do something unethical, as here, or some other wrong thing, e.g., forgetting to list one of their current legitimate affiliations, then I fail to see why the other authors would somehow held accountable. Indeed, sometimes a researcher can very legitimately end up co-authoring a paper where they have never even physically met some of the people involved in the collaboration. How could they be expected to check that they are listing their affiliations properly? In practice, I always trust my co-authors to list their affiliations, and I'm not going to go and start questioning what they do.
To me this is very different from adding, e.g., a bogus author to a paper. It's reasonable to expect that every author of a paper would know what each author contributed, and so if someone wants to unethically add someone who didn't contribute to the paper, the other authors should complain. (Although to some extent even this isn't so clear: if I end up contributing to a paper where a PhD student I have never met has listed their advisor as an author of the paper, can I reasonably ascertain if the advisor meets reasonable criteria for authorship? Probably not...)
In the present situation, I think it's a bit less clear, because the student thought they knew that the affiliation was indeed fraudulent. But in general, why would they care? Simply assume your co-author knows what they're doing, I'd say. If it's unethical, they should be the ones to bear the blame.

The main issue here could be with the university or institution which the co-author works for. It spends money not only for his or her salary, but also for the infrastructure and environment supporting the research; the expected return is, in part, in publications supporting its reputation. Depending on the country, it may be stated explicitly so in the work contract it issues.
Having a third partly spending considerably less money (and not alleviating at all the burden of the institution) to achieve the same effect is clearly a problem.
I would personally advise to raise the issue to the board (or equivalent) of the institution. They are the ones getting ripped off.

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Could you get a doctorate based solely on a thesis written in your free time?
I am a very enthusiastic person academically and I love to gather new (sometimes irrelevant but useful) knowledge about my field in my free time. I am now at the point where I would like to start writing a paper on something in my field of interest and based on my own research.
If my paper is credible, contributes to my field and fulfills the standards that apply to any PhD thesis, would I be awarded a doctorate if I applied for the degree and publish the paper?
As an undergraduate, I don't know much about a PhD program. From what I know, it's simply you and your research that counts. I understand that, in the last analysis, it is the contribution to your field that counts. Am I missing anything?

A doctoral program requires more than just a thesis. Take a look at the graduation requirements for various programs in your field to get a sense of what is required.

possible duplicate of Are there people who have done so much work before PhD that they get a PhD automatically?

I voted to leave this question open because the question linked did not specify a written thesis while this one does. But, I must admit I dislike this question because there is some ego in it.

In the second paragraph you call your intended work both a paper and a thesis. In many fields, those two types of documents differ considerably in size (although that's not generally true). Have you considered publishing your findings in a journal or at a conference instead of submitting it as a thesis?

Maybe, but why would you do that? Doing research that can lead to a PhD is usually a paid work; its (comparatively) not that hard to get funding for it. What would be the benefits of doing basically the same work, but without salary, supervision, access to a groups of academic peers, and other benefits a PhD program typically offers?

What is your field, and what country are you studying in?

Doing research that can lead to a PhD is usually a paid work — That really depends on your discipline, and your country.

Have you considered publishing your findings in a journal or at a conference in addition to submitting it as a thesis?

@kfx also that paid work actually pays really little. It is incomparable to normal and below normal IT job.

In some fields (e.g. computer science), it's pretty common that a student had already published 20+ conference papers before receiving his/her PhD degree. In other fields (e.g. psychology), a single paper that is the outcome of the whole PhD thesis would be equally successful.

@MohamedKhamis Could you provide a citation for that? 20+ papers sounds completely absurd.

@TobiasKildetoft I see that often in HCI (Human-Computer Interaction), here are some examples: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cALrMCIAAAAJ and https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZXUP5NkAAAAJ and https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=JUw6rVgAAAAJ

Are you a genius swiss patent clerk?

@MohamedKhamis A few examples was not really what I was looking for.

@MohamedKhamis I'm not even sure if those examples really support your claim, one seems to have mostly published, as a first-author, data-sets and at best extended abstracts. Being cherry-picked examples, even if that wasn't the case, they wouldn't really evidence your claim that it is "pretty common" for someone to publish 20+ papers. I agree it sounds obscenely high. In my field (broadly, AI) it ranges from 1 to 6 full papers, journal or conference (depending), from what I've seen.

Just write your paper, as long as the writing does not distract you from your undergrad studies. If the paper has merit, you may be able to present it at a colloquium of your university, at a workshop, or even at a conference. If you put some more work into it and are lucky, you might eventually be able to publish it in a journal. Certainly, your paper will open up more questions than it answers. Now you have a research trajectory that you can follow up and that may lead to a PhD thesis, based on but surely not limited to your first paper.
In other words: There is no reason why you should not start to work on your PhD topic already as an undergraduate, but it seems to me that you underestimate the time and work it takes to finish the PhD. And since PhDs require a lot of work, there are PhD programs, which facilitate the process and in which most PhDs are actually produced. In that sense, writing your PhD outside of the designated framework is a bit like digging a well with a spoon. It can be done, but it is not too efficient. On top of that (as others have said already), at many institutions, the written thesis is only one requirement among others to be awarded a title.

PhD seen as digging a well - so true.

@macduf, actually, even in a PhD program, it is all digging with a spoon and no water.

If my paper is credible, fruitful to my field and otherwise fulfilling the standards that any PhD thesis should

A research paper is not a thesis. Theses are usually expositions upon some field that the author has contributed to, and frequently contain extensive background that is typically omitted in academic literature. Indeed, many of my colleagues in industry have published research papers without having PhDs.

... would I be awarded a doctorate if I'd publish and wish for it?

In addition, you would need to find a university to endorse your work, which often requires collaborating with faculty.
Although, if your work is truly groundbreaking and you spend a lot of time hanging out at a particular campus, you might qualify for an honorary degree!

The latter is of course so exceptional that it is not a reasonable strategy to pursue.

@henning hence the exclamation mark!

To say nothing of the fact that an honorary doctorate is effectively worthless in academia.  That's why the ads say, "earned doctorate."  That honorary degree might carry some prestige outside academia, but not among those who know.

All this depends on the field, the country, etc. but in theory, if you already have a master's degree, it is possible to get a PhD based on previous (published) research. But typically not on a single paper. (Over)generalizing and assuming your research is genuinely interesting and meets all the (sometimes arbitrary) requirements of your field, a rough guideline is that you need material corresponding to at least three papers.
You would also need to write some intro/conclusion putting the research in context, make revisions based on your advisors' comments, find a jury and satisfy them. You cannot just show up with a paper and “wish” for a PhD, at least not from a real, reputable university. That's assuming you really manage to make your research publication-worthy (which means not only rigorous but also connected to recent literature and current problems in your field) and find a faculty willing to accommodate you as it's not the “normal” way to get a PhD.
Don't overlook the bit about finding an advisor: It's incredibly important. The PhD is really an apprenticeship under the supervision of a full professor. You don't ask a university or department for a doctorate, there is no process to submit a thesis and have it evaluated on your own, it's all driven by faculty members and you won't even be allowed to defend a thesis if it's not endorsed by one (he or she would also typically help you recruit a jury).
Realistically, a mediocre thesis can be validated if a professor puts his or her mind to it, asks friends to sit in the jury, etc. but even brilliant work is nothing if you don't find an interested academic to move the process along.
Beyond that, others have mentioned extra requirements but the thesis is really the most important thing. In my experience, in Europe (I got my PhD in the Netherlands but I know a little bit about France, Germany, or the UK), it's increasingly common to organise some mandatory courses for PhD candidates but the load is very light, a few short courses about soft skills or methodology with no exam, only pass/fail based on attendance. And there are ways around that if you have a good reason.
But to be perfectly honest, your question suggests you are not very familiar with academia so it seems highly unlikely you would succeed in getting a PhD without proper support. I am not sure why you want one but if it's important to you, it might be a better idea to simply enroll in a PhD program.

This is the right information! You are missing something, an advisor!

No, as commenter Zach H points out, doctoral programs also have other requirements, such as courses and sometimes exams.
UPDATE: As commenters have shown, my answer was US-centric and thus incorrect.  I'd delete it, but that would delete the helpful comments below.

It depends on discipline, country and university. Some asian universities have no course requirements for a PhD in literature for instance.

It's normal in the UK for the thesis to be the only mandatory requirement for a PhD (but this is not to say that anyone with a thesis-esque document could walk in and be awarded a degree).

How unfortunate you'd be if you had to do coursework during your PhD. That's what undergrad is for!

The classical German doctorate as well requires you just to write, defend, and publish a book-length PhD thesis. There are no course requirements.

@curiousdannii In the US its a 5/6 year deal where you take classes for the first few years and get an MS. If you just go direct PhD, its about 1 year of classes. I learned a lot, and am a better person for it.

@Mikhail The coursework years of US PhD programs are more or less what the two Master studies years are for in the EU (post-Bologna reforms). You can't go straight from BA to PhD grad school in most EU countries.

@curiousdannii it depends. I have to take a few courses, but I can choose the ones that are most relevant to my research. Also, I can drop off at any point, and grades are only pass/fail.

@henning The UK being the exception!

@MJeffryes as always. ;)

@henning define 'book length'.

@easymoden00b of course quality beats quantity. but i would guess most theses are 150-300 pages, and that depends on the field.

@curiousdannii I did not view taking graduate courses as unfortunate.  I learned a lot from them, beyond what I learned in undergraduate classes at the same institution.  Especially now that I'm a professor :-) I see taking classes as a privilege not a misfortune.

Umm, one of the best dissertations from a classmate (not mine) ran about 25 pages. Math has its advantages.

@henning, in Germany, as well as some other EU countries, they require the candidate to be registered within a PhD program at the University for at least two years.

PhD programs provide funding for, typically, no more than four years.  Given that the average time to completion is well in excess of that (it was ten years in the UC Berkeley English department last time I checked), the reality is that the majority of PhD theses are completed during time not spent doing remunerated work, which is another name for "free time".  So yes, not only can you do a PhD thesis in your free time, in most cases that's what you'll end up doing even if you enroll in a formal PhD program.  Hope that helps...

Could you provide a reference for this? 4 years is definitely lower than average for the programs I am familiar with.

The front page of every PhD thesis states "Submit as Partial Fulfillment of the Degree". So, a thesis is a must but not all for a PhD degree. The degree requires years of academic training, not as simple as just one thesis, or several published research papers.

"The front page of every PhD thesis states "Submit as Partial Fulfillment of the Degree"." No, they don't (mine didn't for example).


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Must I credit others' published research when using it in a proprietary product, if doing so would be bad for business?
If a company was building a product that uses methods designed and outlined in a published research paper, should credit be given? If crediting them would be a bad business decision, is it OK not to?
I am building a product that builds on research published by a university research group. The research outlines a quicker, cheaper and more efficient method of doing something that usually can cost much more. So it is basically just a small part of my overall project, although it allows me to cut costs drastically. The method is not patented, and the group most likely does not plan on getting a patent as they make it clear that their research is in no way related to any company or products.
I do believe in giving credit where due, but publicly disclosing the research method that is allowing me to cut costs and release an existing product a lot cheaper than competitors would be shooting myself in the foot.
My original idea was to make the hardware opensource, and then just sell prebuilt versions for a good price, although after seeing what is going on in the 3D printing industry - like MakerBot filing patents on their 3D printer and scanning - I am not sure if it is a good idea.
So without opensourcing the hardware, it puts me in a difficult situation. I would like to credit the researchers, but doing so would be a bad business decision. Would it be considered acceptable practice to use their method without crediting them?

Related: Can I use someone else's research commercially?

Since business is on your mind, before ethics, you should first check whether there are any legal restrictions on the use of the published research, or obligations arising from such use, issues that may depend on the applicable laws of some specific country. For example, it may be the case that you may not need consent to use the research results, since they have been openly published, but you may have some financial obligations if you are to use it for profit (and not necessarily towards only the research team), patent or no patent. So make certain where you stand.
As for ethics: it is rare for businesses to credit researchers. Instead they usually contract them either for royalties or to secure further development, if there is such potential, and not leave it to fall into the hands of competitors. "Credit due" may be one of the currencies in academia, but "money" is the currency that businesses understand.
By contacting and maybe contracting the research team (after doing your legal due diligence first), you may even be able to secure such exclusive use of their results, or some even more efficient version of them. Again, this will depend on the legal framework applicable.

Copyright protects the expression of a work (such as written words, images, video, sound recording), not the ideas or intellectual content in it. So unless the OP needs to use the researchers' words in the product, it's not likely to raise a copyright issue.

@ff524 No objection to that, just "too legal" for me. I would have used "property rights" but then it could have sounded "too economic" for some! And in any case, being not a native English speaker, eventually shows...

Perhaps you should edit to say "first check whether there are any legal restrictions on the use of the published research" instead. That's not too 'legal' or too 'economic', plus it's more accurate :)

@ff524 Good suggestion. Done.

absolutely:
so your coworkers can recreate your work...
more importantly: because its the right thing to do...
proprietary typically never opens the hood, so don't let "bad for business" ward you off...
on that note: if you are worried about shooting yourself in the foot, etc., how do you think the authors of the work that you built yours on feel?
there are trade secrets, and there's being honest and open: make a judgement call where to stop revealing facts, but don't withhold information because of the unwarranted fear that it'll be bad for business......openness is good for business. and the betterment of all


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How would a collective recommendation letter from co-workers be perceived for admissions to MFA requiring work experience?
I am planning to apply to an MFA program in product design, and one of the admissions requirements is having at least 1 year of work experience.
My office is structured pretty horizontally (so, nobody is nobody's boss and we're all equals). We also do all our work collaboratively, in the open. I'm wondering if submitting a letter of recommendation written collectively by my entire team would make a statement to the admissions committee of this type of program.
Have any of you seen this? If any of you have been in charge of admitting students, what's your reaction?

I had a "co-written" letter of recommendation when I was applying to graduate schools. I thought it was fine, and it was also somewhat unique, as did the people reviewing the application. The interviewer for one of the programs to which I was applying said that in two decades, he had never gotten such a letter before. So your letter will definitely stand out. However, there was also the comment that the letter was a bit strange and came across a bit "gimmicky."
I might recommend instead that you have one of your colleagues "officially" write the letter, and have the letter state that his co-workers (and name them!) also contributed to the content of the letter.


text:
Why are recommendation letters crucial for scholarships or graduate admissions?
I saw a question asking how to write recommendation letters and I wonder why this is so important? Why are recommendation letters crucial for scholarship applications for studying in Masters or research ? They should be more interested in the student willing to work hard and be loyal to the studies, not cheat, or plagarise or use unfair means to win. What will a recommendation do instead?

Your question seems to present the use of letters of recommendation as being orthogonal to the goals of selecting hard-working and dedicated students. This is simply a false assumption.
The purpose of letters of recommendation is to ensure the person making the selections that they are choosing qualified candidates who will satisfy the needs of the program. Anybody can claim to be hard-working, but how do you know this is actually the case? If you have several people, well-versed in the needs of research or advanced study in a given topic, telling you that candidate X has all the prerequisites and character traits needed to ensure success, you're a lot more likely to believe it than just to take someone's word about himself or herself.

Agreed. Anyone can vouch for himself. Having someone else vouch for you also entails that they are willing to put not only his support, but his reputation and their clout behind you.

What if the "several people" who tell you about candidate X never wrote the letter and the candidate wrote letters praising himself to get admission. Isn't that cheating and why would you believe this person who cheated more than a person claiming they are honest?

@999: Can recommendation letters be faked? Yes. Does this mean that I don't want to see any letters at all, because some fraction might be fraudulent? Absolutely not. (For what it's worth, most such self-written letters are frankly not very good!)

"They should be [more] interested in the student willing to work hard
  and be loyal to the studies, not cheat, or plagiarize or use unfair
  means to win."

True enough. But letters of recommendation are the best way to "find out."
Grades and test scores certainly count, but they do not "testify" to a student's ethics or his/her ability to "game" the system. Only human beings know what was really behind someone's record. The way to get that kind of information is to have students submit letters of recommendation.
What people don't say is often has important as what people say. In a litigious American society, not everyone will point out someone's negatives. But a letter to the effect of "s/he did okay in my class as far as I remember" is not exactly a ringing endorsement but rather a red flag, especially if that person has a high grade.
The classic example of "damning with faint praise" was cited by my father, a retired professor. "If you knew him as well as we do, you would appreciate him as much."

you are partly correct about finding out from other aquaintances but what about situations when the applicant cheats : http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1452/points-to-remember-when-having-to-write-recommendation-letter-yourself?rq=1 ? The system is so faulty that it allows fake people entry by denying others the opportunity because they may not have gone to a big brand school and didnt know many famous proffesors to vouch for them.

"Because they may not have gone to a big brand school and didnt know many famous proffesors to vouch for them.": We don't need "famous professors" or "big-name schools." The most useful letters I've ever read have come from people I've never even heard of.


text:
Can I research and publish in my Masters field when my PhD is in an unrelated field?
I have a PhD in Business with an emphasis in Political Marketing and a Masters in Linguistics.
Now due to some personal and life circumstances, I would like to start collaborating in research about Linguistics and second language acquisition.
My question is, can I initiate or collaborate on research and publish my work in a completely different field than my PhD?

What would stop you?

A field of research is not a prison, unless you make it so.

Thank you. You are very helpful. I recently contacted a professor inquiring if I could collaborate with him in a research and he turned me down because it wasn't my field of expertise. I thought I could absolutely make it my field of expertise. It was a matter of time and work. Thanks for your advise.

If you can perform some research and write it up with the result that a journal wants to publish it, then it doesn't matter what qualifications you have, if any at all! Many journals do blind reviews which means their reviewers don't know the qualifications of any of the papers they review.

Why not?
Unless you are an already recognized person in a given field (to which you write this paper), reviewers don't care what is your main field. (Of course, you need to meet the same standards to the quality of research and writing.)
You affiliation may bias reviewers (but I would guess that people would be more biased by prestige of the univ./institute/department than other factors). Moreover, it is not uncommon to:

have people working in more than one field,
official names of affiliation being not directly related to their actual specialization,

so I don't think it is a big factor.

You certainly can. Just consider the example of Professor Scott E. Page (University of Michigan) who has published in the following fields:

Economics
Political science
Psychology
Physics
Management
Public health
Computer science

He has an MA in Math, MS in Business, and a PhD Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences.
So you can not only publish in the area of your masters but even in areas unrelated to either your masters or PhD.


text:
How harmful is it for a PhD student to work with a supervisor whose ambition is greater or lesser than that of the student?
How harmful is it for a PhD student to work with a supervisor whose ambition is greater or lesser than that of the student?
I can imagine that if the supervisor aims much higher than the PhD student the experience could be nightmarish for the student (and frustrating for the supervisor). Similarly if the supervisor aims too low (something like: "Just generalize this theory in way X, that should be enough for a PhD") the work could feel meaningless and the time spent on it wasted, when more challenging and maybe even more important questions could deserve the attention and resources.
Background: I am interested in a career in research. I am worried that if I aim too low in my PhD project it will hurt my career afterwards. PhD takes years and so one would ideally make most of the years spent doing it. Some supervisors are more ambitious and knowledgeable than others. I would imagine that a PhD with a more ambitious researcher (with talent and education to match) would improve one's chances of a career in academia than with a less ambitious one. I have read that the best thesis is a finished one, but surely one should think about how the PhD helps to further a post-PhD research career.
Could the difference be great enough to justify changing programs? Even if the funding is good?

This seems terribly broad. Can we get to the underlying motivation for this question. What difference would the answer make to you? If we know that, it might help us make the question a bit more focused and answerable.

I've known a number of moderately ambitious Ph.D. students who studied with extremely ambitious advisors, and for the most part things worked out very well.

Searching for the Goldilocks professor (neither too high nor too low, too tall not too short, etc) is likely a futile effort.

It does not make much sense to me to compare the supervisor's ambition for herself to the student's ambition for himself: the supervisor is probably older (more often than not, significantly older) and certainly more experienced and accomplished than the student.  If a student feels competitive with his thesis advisor in any direct way, something has probably gone wrong.  Students should take on advisors that they view as distinctly wiser and more knowledgeable in the main topic they're trying to learn!  (The notion of a student who is comparably knowledgeable and skilled as his advisor is something which appears in the premise of a question on this site at least once a month.  Strangely, I have never seen it in real life.)  "Ambition" isn't exactly the right metric, because it aims at the future, and some very successful, eminent researchers are not pushing hard for the future: they've done plenty already.  Such "big old dogs" can make great thesis advisors.
On the other hand, some advisors are much more ambitious than others in their expectation for their students.  This is an important thing to take into account when choosing an advisor, and too great a mismatch in either direction is going to be a problem.  For instance, it is likely that at some point in the relationship the advisor will say "I want you to do X, and when you do it you'll have a PhD."  If the student thinks that there is no way in hell that he is going to get anywhere near X it is worth a conversation ASAP, and if X really needs to be attained to get a PhD (probably not, by the way, but just for argument's sake) then the student should look elsewhere.  On the other hand, if the student can (or does) do X in a month or two and the advisor says "Great -- now you have a PhD!" then the student may want to start over with someone who is more ambitious on his behalf.

Ambition is only one dimension of the complex relationship defining whether a student and advisor are well-matched.  You can have a complete mis-match in that dimension that still turns out to be a good working relationship.  For example:

A highly ambitious student with a low-ambition but supportive advisor can have a chance to shine early, and to learn how to develop their own independent research identity even while still in graduate school.
A low-ambition student with a highly ambitious advisor can be a "valued employee" who faithfully executes on the advisor's ideas.

Note, however, that you can't necessarily judge the ambition of a supervisor from the scope of a project that they plan with you: project scope depends on both their ambition and their judgement of what you are capable of.  No matter how ambitious, a wise supervisor would not plan to put you on a more ambitious project than they think you can accomplish.  And if you turn out to get better results faster than expected, adjusting goals and scope is easy.
A final note: research is hard and unpredictable.  No matter how ambitious your goals, you will almost certainly be side-tracked in one way or another, just by the nature of basic research.

I will introduce another dimension to your dilemma.  Have you ever thought about the relative weights of:

a lukewarm recommendation letter from a big name advisor, vs.
an enthusiastic recommendation letter from a medium name advisor?

The former can kill a career.
Also think about these questions, with regard to both current advisor and potential new advisor:

how much heart does the advisor have?
to what degree do you feel fascinated by the advisor?
to what degree do you feel respected and valued by the advisor?
to what degree do you feel that you and the advisor are on the same natural wavelength?
does the advisor have good judgment, so that s/he can prevent you from investing a lot of time on tangents or dead-ends?
does the advisor have a good nose for what will make a splash, and for realizing when there is a risk that someone else will publish on your topic before you do?

Take a good look at the potential advisors' publication lists.  Also, have some frank conversations with them about yourself, what you are interested in, to find out if the person will be truly supportive of you.
I would not change programs if you are more than a year and a half into your research, unless something is really wrong with your current set-up.  If an advisor has invested time and energy in you, it would not be ethical to jump ship just because the grass looks greener elsewhere.
The dean of the graduate program in your department is probably someone you could talk to about your dilemma.


text:
Where do bad papers go to die?
After a paper is rejected several times by several journals it begins to become clear that the research was off the mark no matter how much editing, fixing, and revisions are done. Therefore,
What do scholars do with unpublishable papers?
Do they stick them in a file drawer and pretend it never happened? Perhaps they burn them? Or do they try to pull something from the ashes for another paper. It's somewhat depressing to spend months on a project to watch it murdered during the review process. Surely there is some sort of afterlife for a rejected article?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

When reading the title of this question, viXra and Rejecta Mathematica come to mind.

There's always room to publish any paper, even a computer-generated one that doesn't make sense. You just need to target the "appropriate" publication/venue.
Being more serious now, I have rarely seen any rejected work that "just died". For good or bad, the paper or parts of it were always later reused / resubmitted and eventually accepted.
I am not saying that's a good thing, because some papers/ideas/research topics are really terrible and absurd, but too many researchers are usually too stubborn / invested to accept it. Many of them, in fact, have made a career out of this (like republishing the same absurd/non-working idea for decades) and everyone seems to be okay with it.
These days there's really room for everything: publishing is a huge business. Again, it all depends on your standards.

These days you always have the arXiv, or other preprint servers. This way, the manuscript is available and can be found through many (but not all) searches. Indeed, citations show up on Google Scholar, HEP spires etc.
In my field, we submit to the arXiv first, so papers we have trouble with are already available. For this reason, many people don't bother with difficult to publish articles, and leave them as arXiv-only papers.
I am aware of many completely correct, well cited, arXiv-only papers. Indeed, I would be curious to know what the most highly cited arXiv-only paper is.
Some years ago I used to think that peer review provided so little extra value that journals would simply die, and arXiv-only would become the norm. This has not happened, but it still might some time in the future.

"Indeed, I would be curious to know what the most highly cited arXive-only paper is. Possibly one of Grisha Perelman's Fields Medal and Clay Millennium Prize awarded (but not accepted by Perelman) papers: [1] The entropy formula for the Ricci flow and its geometric applications, [2] Ricci flow with surgery on three-manifolds, [3] Finite extinction time for the solutions to the Ricci flow on certain three-manifolds

@Dave L Renfro  That's a very good guess.

In general (and in most fields) the peer review process adds enormously to the value of most articles.

@DaveLRenfro FYI, according to Google Scholar [1] is cited 1979 times, [2] is 927 and [3] is 592.  Of course this work was published by other authors later...

Besides arXiv, there is also viXra.org, if you want to go a step further and avoid any potentially harmful peer review.

@Lou: Yeah, but then your paper will be a priori automatically (mis)taken for crap...

I think that in general, researchers submit and resubmit their work until it's published. If an article is really troublesome, it will die in the file drawer, hence the "file drawer problem" experienced in meta-analyses.
A better practice could be to post the manuscript on a preprint server. The research would then be accessible to everyone.

While I agree with you in principle, better practice is ambiguous in a way that misses why people keep trying. It's better for academia as a whole if people could just leave bad papers in a graveyard. It's probably not better for their careers. Some countries (and universities) use deeply quantitative approaches to promotion and hiring.  Moreover, if the paper took months of work, no one wants to have their work go wasted.

But even bad paper have data that can be use, for example, in a meta-analysis (which can take into account the quality of the data). Or they show a method that we should avoid. So they have their value.

Well, there is at least one journal that seems to have one reviewer who appears to want to prevent you from publishing.... - With a friend/colleague we submitted a paper and never resurrected it, despite talking about it for two years now. There is another paper that was submitted recently and again has one reviewer who doesn't seem to understand the paper/or just doesn't want to see it published...  - without the co-authors, I possibly would let the paper die and wonder why I bother... maybe it might be an idea to find another journal, but there are only few for my field...

Blaise Cronin tracked the fate of papers rejected by the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology in his editorial The resilience of rejected manuscripts.
Out of 180 rejected manuscripts, 74 could be tracked:

2 of them were successfully resubmitted to the same journal
59 were published in another journal
2 were included in PhD theses
1 was transformed into a technical report
6 were found in repositories
the rest were published as conference papers or posters

And of course, some would rest in the bottom of the drawer (I have one of them myself waiting for better times).
So, in answer to your question, it seems unpublishable papers are put aside (it's not worth your time or you have something else to do) or made available through some less restrictive venues (at least, you've made something with it).

What do scholars do with unpublishable papers?

The answer depends a lot on the researchers involved. Leslie Lamport has gone on record saying that he "rarely sends rejected papers elsewhere", but I would guess most academics nowadays can hardly afford such a strong stance.
In informal discussions you will sometimes hear the term "dump venue" being thrown around. What exactly constitutes such a dump venue is up for discussion, as all rankings, but for most academics these dump venues are conferences and journals that are not good enough that one would usually write a paper explicitly for it, but not bad enough that one would be embarrassed about one's work appearing there.
And at least in Computer Science, there absolutely are venues in all quality tiers. It is rare that research work that we do turns out so bad that there isn't any conference or workshop where we could put it, without having to resort to spam journals (which is a no-go for me and my colleagues). In the rare case where work turns out to literally be close to unpublishable, the sane decision is to cut your losses, and let it die. However, this has happened to me at most 3 times so far.

"this has happened to me at most 3 times so far" This would IMO be a more interesting data point if compared to something. For example, how many papers have you submitted in total, or how long have you been in the field?

I have ~ 80 published papers to date.

It is rare that research work that we do turns out so bad that there isn't any conference or workshop where we could put it Yeah, but at some point it's not worth your time to keep re-submitting it.

I do not see many solution as to what to do with a 'failed' article. I multiple rewrite of it has not been accepted, it might underline some fundamental flaw in its content.
The problem is not what do to with the article, rather understanding why it's not accepted. Is the research methods wrong? Is is superficial? Subjective? Is it adding something to the field, a new method, new point of view (is it original and relevant).
If your research method is correct and the data interesting, it's surely worth salvaging.

A paper could be good, but difficult to publish because the results aren't exciting enough. For example, the paper might reproduce someone else's results, or make a small modification to an existing algorithm that makes it just a little faster.

@mhwombat related: was listening to a Mozilla Science community call describing https://f1000research.com/ as a suitable place to publish things that are important, good science but might not be "exciting" or "impactful" enough for the big fancy journals to accept.

Since the question asks for examples, I'll contribute mine. In my long and (I think) reasonably successful scholarly career two or three short papers were rejected by just one appropriate  journal,   for good reason. Essentially, they just weren't interesting enough or new enough, despite what I thought when I wrote them. I didn't think the reviewers were murdering my work.
I still learned a lot and enjoyed the research that went into them. Some of the ideas resurfaced in later work. I think if I wrote them now I'd post them to the arXiv so someone might stumble on them and enjoy them.

I had a similar experience with one paper. Even though the work had been intriguing, I never got a good clear understanding of the underlying biological mechanism and couldn't convince myself that it was important enough to spend a year and $100,000 trying to figure it out. Wrote it up as best I could but the reviewers were also unenthused and I never got around to trying other journals.  As with Ethan, if I wrote them today I'd probably have sent them to Biorxiv but it wasn't around in the late 1990s.

You can still post them on the arXiv :)

@darijgrinberg Yes, in principle, But I wrote them in the days before word processors. I'd have to TeX up the typescripts, which would surely call for rewriting along the way ...

Depending on what you mean by "unpublishable", online mega-journals can be a good place to publish work. They're unlikely to attract many readers there, but will be citable etc. PLOS ONE was founded with the ethos that:

All work that reaches rigorous technical and ethical standards is published and freely and immediately available to everyone.

In other words, they don't select papers based on 'novelty' or other tricky criteria that make it hard for decent, but relatively dull work (e.g. replications) to be published, although I'm not sure if this applies in your situation.

Your answer suggests where otherwise unpublishable papers could go, but that's not what the question asks.