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GPA dropped due to a death in the family. How do I explain this on graduate applications?
I'm in the process of applying to graduate school. Naturally the University will require transcripts from all coursework. The school doesn't just look at grades, and they place an emphasis on recommendation letters and a strong GRE quantitive score. I have academic issues which naturally need to be disclosed.
I first started my undergraduate studies in the early 2000s. I was young, dumb, and self-medicated for depresssion by drinking. Additionally I had an other illness which caused me to lose consciousness, and I had multiple concussions from falling and hitting my head. I didn't do well in school, and after 5 years was academically disqualified. I maintained a GPA just under 2.0.
I moved back home and turned my life around. I transferred whatever credits I had, took classes at the local community college, and transferred all this to a local university and finished my Bachelor's degree with a 3.6 school GPA, and a 3.1 GPA including my old coursework.
Even though I had a non-technical degree, I landed a contract at a big tech company through a contact. Shortly after that contract ended I got an offer from another company and did some interesting work in testing core mobile applications and my skillset grew.
I felt I had hit a ceiling in my career and lacked the knowledge base to progress because I lacked a CS degree.
I decided to do a post-baccalaureate program in CS instead of a masters. Shortly after I started my program my dad passed away unexpectedly in a violent manner. I was present when it happened.
I was emotionally messed up to say the least. My family was not near me . So I spent a lot of time traveling home to help my family. My performance was up and down, I got some B's, a few A's, and two F's, and withdrew from several courses.
Fortunately I did complete an intensive internship last year at a tech company, and have a lot of skills and strong recommendations to show for it.
I've moved home now and am figuring out if I want to continue this program (it will take several years) or just apply for an MS CS since I already have a bachelor's degree. I'll have family support near me in all the places I'm applying.
My strongest assets are my work experience, and a solid quant GRE score.
Sorry for the long story. How I should address all this. My dad's cause of death was very traumatic and violent. Should I disclose details to admissions officers so they can understand why I didn't perform academically? How should I address the issues during my first undergraduate program?
-This question was marked as a duplication to another question. I believe addressing a death in the family is a different process which wasn't addressed in the other question. There is also past academic problems.

First of all, I sympathize with your loss. Few questions though. How many years do you have left on your post-baccalaureate program? I am not familiar with such degrees but can't you accelerate its duration (by taking more courses). Also, would not a MSc degree be more expensive and with two inherent risks: a) that you might not get accepted b) that you do not have the necessary theoretical CS foundation to make it through, if you get accepted.

I have 2.5 years left on the degree. The CS program I'm applying to is tailored for individuals without a CS background with accelerate introductory courses. I've already got a few years of programming experience, so I can skip some of those perquisites.

You haven't said what country you're in, and the answer may vary somewhat.
From my experience in the US, I'd have concerns about an application with the kinds of grades you've described that didn't come with some explanation of the personal circumstances that caused the poor academic performance.  When I see bad grades with no explanation, I'll typically vote no on the applicant.
However, even with an explanation of why you did poorly in the past, I'd also have to consider whether or not you'd be likely to do well in the future.  If the personal problems that you've had are ongoing, then it's likely that you'll continue to do poorly in your academic work, and you'd be a high risk applicant.  If the personal issues are well and truly resolved, then I'd be more likely to vote yes on your application.
My advice would be to include a statement explaining your past poor academic performance, pointing out how you've done well at times when you weren't having these personal problems, and that you're confident that you won't have these problems going forward.
If any of your recommendation letter writers can also address this, it might help too- many recommendation forms have a specific question asking the recommendation writer whether the student's grades are fully representative of their performance or whether special circumstances should be considered.  .
You don't need to go too far into the details of your experience ("a family member died suddenly and I struggled with this during the xxx semester" is more than enough detail.)  What's more important is showing that when you aren't having such personal problems you have been a successful student and that these personal issues are no longer going to affect your academic performance.

Thanks, I'm in the United States. I do plan on including an explanation of the poor performance. I can say that not being physically closer to my family and lacking proper mental health resources was a big problem. I'm getting the help I need to deal with the grief now, and am spending time with the family. While the grief is still there, I believe I won't have these problems going forward.


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If during revision process an author discovers and corrects errors not detected by reviewers, should the author inform the editor of these changes?
I recently submitted my manuscript to Journal of optics (IOP Publishing). A couple of days ago, I received an email regarding initial decision on my paper. Thankfully, it is a "moderate revision". Referees also have made some comments about typos and grammar and a point or two about the core material of the paper which is only to clarify more. So far, it seems a possible acceptance for my paper. doesn't it?.
The thing is, when I was making the amendments based on the referees' comments, I found that four of the formulas used in the paper are incomplete and I wrote them wrongly. But it does not affect the rest of the paper in any way.  The reviewers did not notice these errors.
This is my first paper. I am a worried that they might reject the manuscript because there were some errors in the original submission that I have now corrected.
I am obliged to make a point-by-point response to the reviewers' comments and make a list of the changes made to the paper.
So, my questions are

Is it common for an author to detect additional errors in a paper during the process of making revisions?
Should I just correct them and make no mention of them in my report to the editor?

After correcting the equations, you should let the editor know that you did so. If the errors in the previous version were just typos, then it would suffice to write to the editor that you corrected typos in such-and-such equations. If the errors were more substantial, so that the equations might really be misunderstood, then you should probably say a bit more about the nature of the corrections.

This is a straightforward question with a simple answer: correct whatever you find is wrong, even if it has not been raised by the reviewers.
I have an experience of more than 600 publications (see Google Scholar for instance) and have reviewed even more manuscripts as peer reviewer, editorial board member or editor, and it is commonplace to have the need and opportunity for improvements in a manuscript during the revision process.
Be candid, disclose the correction. Possibly don't say it was a mistake in the first place, but present it in a positive fashion, saying it is a correction or improvement in the paper.
In most cases reviewers and editors will be pleased by your self-reviewing effort.

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Errata on ArXiv
Just a quick question. Is it appropriate to post updates on published papers on ArXiv? I am mostly thinking to use ArXiv as a place where to post papers including corrections (mostly technical typos). Thank you for your feedback. I’m mostly concerned by copyright issues and the fact that published papers cannot have more advanced versions published somewhere else.

Can you put the whole article on arxiv? It seems somewhat useless to just post errata.

Sorry for the confusion. I meant to say to post papers including corrections in ArXiv. Mostly technical typos. I edited my question.

In case there is an issued erratum/corrigendum also see Erratum or corrigendum on arXiv too? Should the authors lists match?.

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How to stand out in mathematics PhD admissions as a student from an online school, with no research or opportunities to get strong recommendations?
After reading some the posts here about graduate admissions for PhD/masters in mathematics in different countries, it seems like the requirements are quite a lot higher than what I have in my country. Just for clarification, in my university (the Open University of Israel), there's no undergraduate research besides one undergraduate seminar. I've never heard of anyone from my university writing a paper in mathematics while attending the Open University of Israel. I've already read the ways to stand out in admissions on this site, and for me, research cannot be one of them.
In addition, since my school is an online school, none of my recommendations will be personal, and none of my teachers writing the recommendations are well known in their field, since they all only teach and don't do any research. I suppose that in this sense my university is the equivalent of an American community college.
Therefore, based on my readings here, the best ways for me to stand out for graduate admissions are on the Cover Letter (which I need to write), GPA (currently around 88% average, when the average for mathematics in my university is around 65%), and TOEFL/GRE (TOEFL, I may not need to do, since I'm a native English speaker, and the GRE's I still need to decide if I want to do, since I'm not yet sure that I want to apply in the United States). In addition, I'm graduating in a year and a half, so until then, I'm planning to fly to different universities around the world once every six months to meet with the graduate math program coordinators (I've already met with the coordinator for the math program at Bonn University and I've set up a meeting at Trinity College Dublin already) to get information and to also start making connections.
Given these specific circumstances that cannot be changed (graduating without a single paper from an unrated university, with weak recommendations), are there any other creative or unusual ways (which I will really need), besides improving the GPA, getting excellent GRE grades, and working on a great cover letter to stand out in graduate admissions for universities in the United States, Europe, and Canada? If I can't get accepted after graduation to a university abroad, my alternate plan is to do a masters here in Israel, and then do a PhD abroad.

REU? Although I know many USA ones may be closed to foreign students.

1 1/2 years should be enough time to get a "small" publication, in cooperation with a potential phd advisor perhaps?

I'd consider a masters in Israel, to target a foreign Ph.D. after, if that is possible for you. Locally, your program is probably better known.

Have you considered doing undergrad research in a different university in Israel?

tl;dr
Get a MSc from a top Israeli university first. It will practically ensure that you will get accepted to just about any PhD program that you want to. And a math MSc from a top Israeli uni is a pretty good thing to have. (edit see below)

I'm an Israeli currently studying outside of Israel, so I might give you a more relevant perspective on the issue. Although I'm in earth sciences, and not math, I think you will find this useful.
I am having a hard time understanding some of your circumstances. You claim that you will graduate in a year and a half. Assuming you are studying full-time, you are only halfway through and it may be too early to start thinking about your PhD, let alone fly to institutions in the world and meet with them (unless you happen to be there as a tourist).
You are correct that graduating from the Israeli Open University is hardly beneficial in terms of reputation and prestige. It is also close to impossible to get meaningful and honest recommendation letters. I do not know how much people trust GPA scores from a distance learning institution, and this may also hurt your chances. Unfortunately, as hardly any research is done at OU, I doubt that you will find a research partner to work on a publication. Even if your numbers are right, the fact that you do not study in a university where you have day-to-day interaction with other students and senior stuff is not going to help the admissions committees to choose you over other candidates.
Instead of thinking about PhD research abroad, I suggest you start with a MSc degree back home in Israel. There are several reasons for that:

Math degrees in Israeli universities have excellent reputation (particularly Tel Aviv, HUJI and Technion). This alone might boost your chances.
You are still an undergrad, halfway through. You have not been exposed to research yet. If you were in a physical university, you might be exposed to research around you, which is something. Yet you don't even have that. You do not know if research is what you want to do. Who knows, you might get offered a job and leave academia. Going for MSc will be your "introduction" to research and will give you a chance to get your desired publication, if you wish to pursue this further.
Starting a PhD program with MSc background will make you a much better student. I can sometimes see the difference between PhD students with and without prior MSc experience in the institution I am currently at.
Admission committees, in general, look favourably upon applicants with proved research experience in the form of MSc.

I will give you an example from my own experience. Having graduated my BSc with a research component, I was eligible for PhD studies abroad without having to get MSc. However, I did study for MSc in Israel, mostly for the reasons above. It made getting accepted to my institution of choice much easier, I had more than one publication by the time I applied for the PhD, it gave me a different perspective on what research is and what is it that I want to do, or more importantly, do not want to do.

EDIT
OP mentioned that conducting research in Israel is not possible due to personal reasons. I don't see how this sits with OP's idea of taking MSc research in Israel, but here are two more ideas:

Go for a one year Honours degree in countries that have it (for example, UK or Australia). This is something that's usually done straight after BSc and is one year of research.
Go for MSc in a country where doing this is common as a precursor to PhD research (continental Europe mostly, also Israel btw).

These two are very expensive solutions because you can't usually get funded or a scholarship for this, unlike doing PhD research. I would personally go for number two from the list above.
Again, getting straight to PhD after finishing your BSc in the Open University is almost impossible. If you do get it, it's probably in a low ranked institution and that might not be the best thing for your career. Regardless of whether you are accepted or not, I still think that you should have some kind of research experience before going for a PhD, particularly as you're done your education so far in a research-free environment.

You seem to have a bit of a nest egg to spend on this.  I suggest that rather than spending it on the travel plans you outlined, you use it to finance a three to six month period in a place where you can be involved in undergraduate research.  Of course, you would need to do some legwork before going.
The trips you have planned seem unnecessary to me.  If you want to meet with a graduate math program coordinator abroad, set up a Skype or phone meeting.
I don't know the panorama in Israel, so I can't rule it out as a possible place for a research project.
My proposal would give you valuable experience and hopefully a strong recommendation letter.  If you're very lucky, you might co-author a publication (but please don't assume a priori that this will be the case).
A second suggestion: get involved in something that combines community service and math.  (This may take some creativity.)

Hi, Thanks for the suggestions! Specifically, I can't get involved in research in Israel due to a personal issue, but I can try the community service angle (which we have lots of these projects in Israel).

Also, perhaps you could spend a few months somewhere else working on a research project.

The first task is to figure out why you want to seek/acquire a PhD in math, since the normal point of a PhD is to equip you to do research.  If your answer is that you want to do research, but you haven't had an opportunity then the problem transforms to "How can I do research and communicate that successfully?"  We live in a golden age of information, there is a tremendous amount of problems and work in-progrees that are freely available on the internet.  Pick something you are interested in and start publicly blogging about your ideas, your accomplishments, your dead-ends.  Communicate with other people in the world who are working on similar problems.  As you gain some accomplishments and receive positive feedback solicit suggestions for what Universities and professors are working in that problem area.

Echo-ing @MaoWao's comment, I don't think things work that way in mathematics, and it's not due to biases in the system so much as to the deep relevant background in pure-or-applied math: things don't "become wrong" or "become irrelevant", and/so the smart, insightful people over the last 300 years did a lot of good things, and even the old things have not really been superceded. Thus, to be competent, and to not reinvent crappy wheels, one must be a good-bit scholarly, and so on. That said, one's own journey of (re-) discovery of good things is very good, but it's not "research".

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Should I share my course notes with my co-students?
After leaving school I set myself the goal of completely digitalizing my note-system. Because of this I now scan all hand-written notes and make digital notes while in lectures and keep them nicely ordered on my laptop.
After a couple of days I realized, I could as well share these notes with my co-students having the same courses, which is what I am doing right now.
I've now (sometimes) observed an attitude among them along the lines of "I don't need to go the lectures, X will take notes anyways and I understand them better than the actual lecture". This also resulted in most of them taking (nearly) no notes on their own at all, however I'm not 100% certain they would have without my notes.
So I'm no longer sure this is the right thing to do, so I wanted to ask here:
Should I share my course notes with my co-students having the same courses?
A few notes on what they have access to: They have basically everything (e.g. notes on the lecture, public lecture slides, lab notes, assignment solutions, assignment corrections) where I enforce the policy of not sharing assignment solutions before the end of the admission period.
The notes in question are current, e.g. they are not ahead of the courses and we all have the courses (largely) together.
Everything is shared via the university-run OwnCloud service from and the actual process of uploading / sharing is no more than doing one addition conversion and making a bunch of copies.
If it matters: I study computer science in Germany.

Please clarify as it was a bit confusing -  Are these course notes for  courses that you attended in previous years but that are mostly identical year to year?  Or are these notes that you and your co-students are taking at the same time?

@Carol, most of them are taking (close to) no notes at all right now. The notes in question are the current, e.g. they are in no way ahead of the lecture.

You have just discovered some of the seemingly irrational ways in which students sabotage themselves and behave contrary to their own interests, and how they sometimes do this precisely in response to an attempt to help them by offering them useful resources.
Professors constantly struggle with this issue: do I offer my students lecture notes? A practice exam? Homework solutions? A detailed outline of the topics I covered in each lecture with precise references to the textbook? Etc. What one observes is that sometimes by the very act of offering such resources you paradoxically hurt the students by reducing their incentive to come to class or take other action that is important for their educational success.
What makes these decisions especially tricky is that almost always, offering these resources does in fact help many students while at he same time hurting others who have the inclination to respond in this counterintuitive and self-defeating way. So it is a real dilemma about whether you insist on helping the "deserving" students who are not tempted to slack off because you made their lives a bit easier, or take a more "social engineering" approach that tries to optimize the success of the class as a whole without getting drawn into moralistic judgments about which students' needs are more deserving of being addressed.
To summarize, I don't have a good answer to your question. All I can say is that you need to think what goal exactly you are trying to achieve by sharing your notes, and then consider (keeping in mind my analysis above) whether the sharing actually helps or hinders that goal.

Thank you very much for your answer, however I'll wait at least 24h before I'll accept any answer, so please don't be offended if you don't get the instant-accept :) If you see 24h of inactivity on this question (and no other posted answers), feel free to ping me and I'll give you the accept.

@SEJPM no worries, I assure you I won't be offended no matter what ends up happening, including if you accept another answer or don't accept any answer at all.

Your main concern appears to be the pedagogical aspect of posting your notes so widely. Is it your responsibility to worry about whether it is doing your co-students a disservice?  @DanRomik is pretty articulate in his answer about faculty struggling with this same question in all aspects of course design and administration.
You are a student, the more relevant concern should be; Is posting the lecture and class notes as you do supporting the faculty's methods for the course design or not. Are you are working with him or counter to him? (This is only coming up in my mind because it sounds as if you have a rather large operation going that large numbers of students are counting on! and is affecting how they interact with the course/professor).
If I were your professor, I'd prefer if you eventually came by to ask me whether I found it helpful or not. I'd likely welcome that the notes are posted. I may have some requests to tweak the timing or type of information you post because of other administrative bits that you don't know. Or I may tweak what I do in class to use it to better advantage for all students.

as for "large operation": 8 people should have access right now, not exactly a large operation, but I'll consider your advice.

Normally, (at least in US) students in study groups and others share notes informally and it would be unusual that students talk to me about it. However, while I may or may not be unusual, I am always glad if a student has a concern about something that feels 'off'  and comes to discuss it with me. Those are the conversations I feel the best about, as if I was able to step in at just the right moment to 'mentor' someone about something important. Of course, now that I know about Stack Exchange, I'll probably be telling my students about it early in their careers.


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Editor not taking action after I reported plagiarism. What steps can I take?
Some people erased three author names including mine from a paper previously submitted (and rejected by three different journals) and got it accepted by Case Reports In Emergency Medicine.
I presented the publishing editor of the journal multiple clear proofs of the plagiarism. Although the journal declares that it complies with COPE, the publishing editor is dragging feet not to publish a retraction about this article despite the proofs. Instead, they are trying to overlook the situation by involving the politically driven hospital administration from where the paper was submitted from. This in turn caused  violation of my rights both as a human and as a researcher. I am currently subjected to serious mobbing by the hospital administration secondary to the inconclusive behaviour of the journal. This mobbing includes the change in my workplace and an official warning because "I ruined reputation of the hospital by contacting the publishing editor".
I also sent a message to COPE but there is no response.
Would anyone suggest any further action?

Please state clearly how you and the and the hospital are connected; and please provide the jurisdiction.

"mobbing" is a pseudo-anglicization in German and means "bullying" (esp. in professional context). Not sure a precise specification of their action is relevant here, as it could identify the poster.

Working with the editor, until that process is finished, is probably the only thing to do at first.  It will undoubtedly be a long process, with delays, so patience and persistence will be necessary. Try not to let the mobbing get to you, and try to remain calm and professional at all times, despite any pressure others may exert.
If the editors, in the end, are unable to come to a resolution you accept, then the options will be (essentially) to escalate the situation or to let it go. But making an action of that kind while the editors are still working would be premature, in my opinion.

I always get down voted for saying this, but outside of Academia, if there is a very cut and dry case of someone trying to take ownership of works that you hold copyright in, then it would go to court and be handled in about a month or so (in Germany).
I appreciate that going to court is something that is considered the absolute last option in Academia, rather than the first option everywhere else, but in my opinion this is a terrible mistake. We don't tell academic's to just "research the problem and fix it yourself" when their car breaks down. We don't ask academics to "go through the correct channels" if a teacher is caught abusing a student. No, we extend our arms out to the rest of society and get the professionals to sort it out. People who are experts in dealing with these issues. But for whatever reason, many academics think that because they are intellectual, they must by default know everything there is about intellectual property law, and can handle these sorts of issues in their weekly committee meetings. Or perhaps they think they can handle the issue with more grace and finesse than the justice system. Maybe. But I have heard the same logical argument used by both the military and religious groups, who ultimately put justice secondary to some other objective - like saving face or maintaining the hierarchy of power.
Regardless of whether the journal/hospital does come to the right decision in the end, by not exercising your right as the copyright holder to justice through the justice system, you are handing unwarranted power to the publishers and academic establishment handling your case, and disenfranchising the people who have spent their lives thinking about copyright disputes and their fare/proper outcomes. All to avoid some perceived stigma over using real lawyers.

One possible complication here is whether the author actually owns the copyright in the first place. If he doesn't this route may be closed to him, even if he does own the copyright it sounds like escalating this to legal action against the will of his employer may cost him his job.

My original draft of the above included "if it is clear you own the copyright, then..." - because if it's unclear as you say, it could take a lot-lot longer through lawyers. Ultimately "experts" would be brought it, which would be academics anyway. But if it's really cut and dry, the OPs name was originally on the document then was dropped, it's not going to take long to figure out. Regarding him losing his job, if he was fired for initiating legal action of any sort he'd get the most enormous unfair dismissal payout that I don't think he/she would mind.

Search for legal help from an expert in I.P. , expose them publicly and hope for the best.
This doesn't mean that you'll be able to prove the rights if you didn't took enough precautions to protect your paper and ignorance by this side is hard to prove in court.
The next time though, you can publish your own thesis/essay/book and get an ISBN with total rights and you might still be able to publish your work before it gets published since "accepted" doesn't exactly mean "released" or "printed"(this isn't clear in the question).
After years of oppression, I find this as the only way to get proper recognition since many of those cheap "book makers with ISBN" can print your work "in hours" and you can begin to spread your own knowledge at your own pace and people will think twice before abusing with your intellectual property.


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Why is Google Scholar popular in some fields but not in others?
In disciplines such as computer science and engineering, Google Scholar is a fundamental tool in not only searching for recent work of a researcher but is also frequently used as a metric for the proficiency of the researcher.
I've noticed in many other fields, e.g. political science, or even math, Google Scholar is not nearly as popular.
Does anyone have any insight into why this is the case? Do these other fields have other tools they use to follow researchers or measure their output? Perhaps these factors are not as important in these other fields?

I should comment that Google Scholar is a problematic tool to use, since Google tracks people across its various services, building records and profiles, and using them not just for personally-customized advertising (which is bad enough IMO), but also copies all of this aggregated data to the US government. So, to be specific: Your NSA records now also include which articles you're looking for and choose in the search results.

Math already has an excellent tool, MathSciNet.  And, more importantly, MathSciNet is much more accurate than Google Scholar.
If you are a mathematician, look up yourself in both places and compare!

It’s a trade-off though, MSN only includes published papers and not preprints, so it’s more accurate but less extensive.  Also google has features like searching within papers that cite a given paper.

+1 This is a useful answer. However, I think calling Google Scholar "less accurate" is not exactly correct. I think what you mean is that GS is more inclusive in indexing. So GS counts citations from arxiv preprints and the like, which some people think should not be counted. MathSciNet is more exclusive. It's not a question of accuracy, they measure different things.

Similarly, astronomy/astrophysics has the Astrophysics Data System and has had it for a very long time: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu.  This is also more accurate, complete, and up-to-date than Google Scholar.  It also indexes preprints.

Even in computer science, if I'm looking for a particular paper or papers by a particular author, I usually try DBLP before Google Scholar.  Being based on manually-curated conference and journal metadata, DBLP's coverage isn't as broad but the quality of results is much higher.

@Thomas Not to mention that GS will give a more up to date picture than MathSciNet, since the latter can take quite a while to actually index papers sometimes.

There is no single answer to this question. Every field is unique. There is also an element of randomness: If a handful of the right people create Google Scholar profiles, others will follow and adoption will rapidly spread.  However, I think there are two key factors:

Willingness to adopt new technology. This depends on the existing alternatives (e.g., MathSciNet) and also how tech-savvy people are. I've noticed that, even at the individual level, there is a strong correlation between having a good, up-to-date website and having a Google Scholar profile.
Publishing attitudes. Google Scholar is very inclusive in indexing. It counts citations from arxiv preprints, not just peer-reviewed journals. I even get citations from lecture notes and research statements that people have uploaded to their websites. Different fields have different attitudes about what should "count" as a citation and that will affect how they view Google Scholar. For example, math is much more conservative than computer science and Google Scholar adoption reflects that.

A final note specific to computer science: Just about every computer science researcher knows people (e.g. former students) who now work at Google. And Google also produces a lot of computer science research. Thus computer science has a very positive view of Google, which may not be the case in other fields.

This is the best suitable answer.

"Time to market" of the paper (e.g., shorter review time) as Keelan noted might be a reason.
It might be also related to what is indexed by google scholar vs. more official indexes.  (see link below). For example, google scholar counts as a citation basically everything that looks like a citation, regardless of whether it was peer-reviewed or not. It is possible, that some fields are more reluctant adopting such metrics. For example, arXiv platform has been long ago a popular in math field. But those papers are not peer-reviewed, at least for posting them, there is no requirement of peer-review. In other domains (I think biology) preprints have become popular more recently.
Another reason: in CS there are a lot of people outside academia. They are interested whether someone relevant cited their paper (or whatever it was). This boosts google scholar use. In many other fields researchers work only in academia. the official representatives might tend to rely more on official indices (e.g., for promotion etc).
It is also possible that some fields are more conservative than others. CS is in general a relatively young field. Also, it is more natural for CS to adopt new technologies. But think about philosophy field that has longer traditions.  People in such fields also less care about technological innovations.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/239314956_Citation_Analysis_Comparison_of_Web_of_ScienceR_Scopus_SciFinderR_and_Google_Scholar

Probably there are more computer-illiterate people in these fields.

This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post; instead, provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker. - From Review

@Buzz: This is clearly not a valid comment; it does nothing comments are designed for. You may still consider it wrong, lacking explanation, or similar, but it clearly belongs in the answer domain.

This would imply that math has sufficiently many computer-illiterate people that they cannot use Google Scholar effectively. Given that mathematicians regularly use LaTeX and put up preprints on arxiv this seems unlikely.

@JoshuaZ: I suspect that the universality of LaTeX is overstated. Meanwhile, most of my senior colleagues in a math department don't do email, can't troubleshoot their computers, can't use the school's LMS, etc.

Google scholar is easier to use than other indexing services. It's basically made for computer illiterates.

@DanielR.Collins while different people's experience is, of course, different, I am yet to come across someone like you describe. Even the pretty elderly people in my department all use email, and almost all of them (that I have interacted with) use LaTeX. In fact, I can only think of one example of someone producing some maths stuff (that I have personally seen) that wasn't in LaTeX. Given that journals ask for tex files, as does arxiv, I personally expect the use is actually quite universal. Only my experience though!

I disagree, @Buzz This is an answer to the question. It's not a good one, but it is an answer and there is probably some nugget of truth to it.

@Thomas My opinion is that this was not responsive, and the review comment was, of course, boilerplate.  If you disagree, obviously then vote against deletion.

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


text:
Including non first author papers as "sample papers" on academic job application
Academic job applications often require one to submit a few recent papers in the application. I have been a postdoc for the past couple of years and my role has primarily been advising: coming up with research problems for the PhD students and guiding/helping them to write a good research paper. As such many of my recent and current papers have a student as the first author, with me as the second author (or third author in the event that I am advising two students on the project).
Is it okay to submit some of these papers as part of my application? Or will it look bad since I am not the first author?

When I did a similar post-doc many moons ago, I made sure to have my own work on the side (so to speak). Nothing you can do about that now, but I at least ended up with a few first-author papers in addition to all the student ones.

This really depends on the employer and also the field of research.

I agree with most of the others. I can only say that you should make clear that you were supervising, in the CV or, ideally, shorting during the interview. You don't have to be necessarily papers specific, but it must be clear that your 2 y post-doc was productive. Somehow I disagree with the opening of the answer you have accepted.

If I were in your situation, I would just show the ones from grad school that were first author.  You should have a few from the last year or two of the degree and they may have even come out after you left.
I would not enclose the non-FA papers.  Don't open that box.  (But of course show them on your CV, since that has everything.)
And I would not have spent a postdoc, not getting recent first author papers.  As you can see they would be desirable, now.
Of course, if you get to an interview and are asked about it, have a practiced poised answer ready.  [Standard interview prep for any job interview is to write out 2-3 sentence canned answers for anticipated questions.  Especially important for weak areas, since you just want to give a forthright but short answer and move on.  And if you think about it ahead of time, this works much better.]  But don't enclose as select examples, work where you were not FA, if at all possible.
When they ask for select papers to attach, they probably just mean a couple.  Won't read more than that.  So use selection and pick the best ones.  And those are not going to be second author ones if first author ones are available.  In other words, when they ask for your recent work, there are two conditions: "your" and "recent".  And (I assert) "your" is the more fundamental, important criterion.
And of course if you don't have any FA papers even from grad school, enclose what you have.  It's not ideal.  But it's what you got.  So just plow ahead.

If you are applying for a job where you will supervise researchers, not including any papers where you supervised research would be a terrible mistake.  Since the question does not specify the type of job, this answer could be correct or could be wrong.

Every paper published by a reputable publisher is a good paper and should be on the CV. Advising students who rightly have first authorship is also a good thing. In some fields, advisors aren't co-authors no matter the input on student papers.
It think it a mistake to leave such things off of the CV. In fact, somewhere in your application materials you might want to explain that you were advisor to the other author(s) on the papers. Probably not in the CV itself, but a statement of purpose for an academic job will benefit from indicating a willingness and history of advancing student research and careers.
I assume you know your own field's standards, but in some, people assume that the last author did the work and the others were along for the ride. I dislike that sort of thing, actually. But a faculty position in most places is more than just a heads-down-don't-bother-me researcher.

Edited to add. Including the papers themselves as separate from CV references is a bit different. The first suggestion is to ask first. The second, in the absence of guidance, would be to include a mixture, with mostly first author papers, but a sample of the others. But an explanation of the situation on the latter should be fine.

I don't think the question is about the CV (or possibly separate list of publications), but the more limited number of papers that can be attached to the application directly..

Thank you for the answer. These papers will definitely be on my CV. My question is concerned with the part of the application that requests me to attach a few sample papers. I plan to indicate my advising role on the cover letter and/or research statement, but I'm unsure if attaching non first author papers will be satisfactory for fulfilling whatever information the hiring committee is trying to gather from the  "sample papers." My field is electrical engineering and computer science.

Perhaps you should ask. Possibly a mixture of things, along with an explanation. But asking first might be the best course.


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What did my referee mean by asking about my "Plan B"?
I am applying for PhD this Fall. Came across one of my referees today, had a great conversation and then he asked if I had a plan B if I would not be admitted. Does it mean he thinks I'm not good enough?

When in doubt, someone probably meant what they said and no more.

I wonder whether your referee wanted to offer a Plan B, but that's wild speculation! As answered below: Don't overthink this.

Maybe this referee is actually looking for someone themselves and were interested to know if you might be interested if your other PhD application falls through.  Who knows?

Just to be clear, you're not applying to a single place for a PhD, are you? I suppose that's unlikely, but just checking.

Don't overthink this.  It sounds like he's just showing a friendly interest in your plans.  No matter how "good" you are, graduate admissions always has some degree of uncertainty, and so everybody should consider what they will do if they don't get admitted.  He just wants to know what that would be for you.
If he really didn't think you were good enough, he wouldn't have agreed to be a reference for you.

Probably not. I had a really similar conversation recently with one of my referees for an MA that I'm applying for in the fall. He elaborated by saying that he wants to see me succeed, and wondered if I would continue to try and bolster my skills for reapplication in the event that I did not make it in. The road to success in academia is paved with failure, and I'm sure your referee is genuinely looking out for your best interest and not implying anything negative.

It's unlikely this is any reflection on your ability, but more on the lottery of postgraduate admissions.
Personally, when I'd decided on my research interests, there were literally three people in the entire country who would have made suitable supervisors. The year I applied none of them had grants available to fund a PhD student. I decided to go into a different field instead, rather than waiting, which was a colossal mistake but that's a whole different story.
I only mention my personal circumstances to illustrate one of the many reasons that you can fail to get a PhD place which have nothing to do with your learning or skill.

In science we often have to consider "Plan B". In fact, when you apply for a grant and aim to achieve several connected things, you often required to discuss what would happen if one of them won't work out.
There is no reason to assume that your referee is questioning your ability. I think they want to know one of these things:

what other school you are applying
have you thought about alternatives (non-academic career)
do you want to get PhD to stay in academia or move to industry after getting degree (both are legit goals)

The question was not really about science but rather about OP's career, IMHO.

@einpoklum i was trying to point where PI might be coming from

The PhD program I graduated from typically had about twice as many strong candidates who they would love to have in the program as they had spots available.
Some of those people would end up choosing to go elsewhere anyways so that's no problem, but ultimately some of those people have to be denied just because of space and not because any of them were not good enough; the decisions on the most borderline of those cases might be simply tossups.
In summary, I think it's most likely this was just a polite question and didn't mean anything beyond that, but it most definitely doesn't mean that you are unqualified or not good enough.

If you do not have a Plan B, that would indicate that you are 100% committed and fully invested into your doctoral studies should you be granted admission.
Personally, I would hope and very much love it if a person seeking admission with hopes of becoming my advisee answered the question with a negative on a plan b.


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How should I deal with a well-intentioned, but poorly organized advisor?
I am doing my PhD with a supervisor who is well-intentioned but very busy and disorganized. (It doesn't seem they're uninterested in my work.)
It's always been a struggle to meet up, e-mail answers take forever, reviews of work even longer, etc. I am their only student. I don't think the work is going that bad, but I envy other PhD students who have a more followed, mentor-pupil relationship with their advisor.
Having someone takes time to explain more advanced/technical stuff (stuff seen only in research articles) is quite useful. This prevents me getting stuck with the more advanced stuff, or failing to get the bigger picture behind the technicalities.
I feel I could learn and produce a lot more with a little more support, but at the same time I understand he's busy and I don't want to bring this up and risk upsetting him.
How can I deal with this?

What field is this? Pure Mathematics? How many people does he advise?

Yes, and at this stage in the game I feel like having someone that takes some time to explain to you the more advanced and technical stuff (stuff you see nowhere else basically, other than research articles) is quite usefu. Otherwise you may get stuck with the more advanced stuff, not getting the bigger picture behind the technicalities

Well, just me, that's the thing that is incredible! I am scared to think what would happen even if he took in just another student!

It could be worse. One PhD student had to camp at his advisor's office door for several days in order to get his advisor to write a recommendation letter. Hopefully you will not have to resort to this tactic.

@Alex999 I feel "disorganized" is a separate issue from "won't take time to explain advanced/technical stuff". How does he react when you do get his attention and ask technical questions?

Who else can you talk to ? Most PhD students talk to their peers first, then any postdoc willing to lend them an ear and their supervisor last. Though I agree regular scheduled meeting as suggested elsewhere are probably the way forward.

When I was a PhD student, I felt a bit in this situation (not as extreme as yours). At least I learned to be independent. There is a saying that "Bad supervisors make good mathematicians".

Have you tried requesting a regular schedule of meetings (say at the same time every week)? Even procrastinators can typically keep their calendar appointments.

This would be my suggestion: watch Meetings Bloody Meetings and apply that format to your meetings with him. Make sure that you keep good minutes, and each meeting you have an agreed plan with clear actionables, and have discussed how or whether this still fits with the more long-term objectives.

In all of these situations, there is a big stretch between the ideal and the practical solution. Ideally, you would express your concerns, your advisor would listen, and together you come up with a detailed plan that has goals, deadlines, etc. Well, good luck with that.
In my experience, people who are chronic procrastinators at a late stage in their careers (e.g. by the time they get to be advisors), seldom change. (In response to comments: here I also include those that suffer from chronic indecisiveness, are addicted to being over-scheduled, and are disorganized to the point that it negatively affects those around them.)  And why would they change? It has worked for them. But this is not a fatal flaw. One person in my thesis committee was an absolute procrastinator: nothing, but nothing would get done until the very last minute -- we are talking about running to the FEDEX box on every grant deadline. Never returned an email in less than a week, never arrived on time at a meeting, etc. But she was otherwise a wonderful committee member! Always encouraging, always generous with her time (ahem, maybe the reason always late), always giving good advice, known for writing good letters of reference, and always generous with lab supplies.
I suspect that any attempt to set deadlines on a procrastinator or chronically overscheduled person, especially one that has power over you, is risky at best and counterproductive at worst. My advice is to learn to live with it: submit your things on time, send reminders, be friendly and lighthearted about it. And if this particular procrastinator has other traits that compensate for that, appreciate what you've got.
Having said that, here are a few strategies that have helped me with dealing with disorganized/procrastinators, especially those which have power over me:

Write very short emails, no more than 2 sentences each, and one subject per email. Make them easy to reply to.
When you meet in person, bring 1-2 questions written down, and read from them, to show the person you are not there on an open-ended chat, but that when you go into their office, it will be all business and then be out in a few minutes.
When you make requests, be precise. Don't say "I wish I got a little more support". Instead say "What do you think of me spending a week doing experiment X as a proof of concept for Y?"
Send them weekly (or monthly) short progress reports. Even if they don't reply, they'll read them, and it will lower the activation energy required for the next conversation.

If you are like me, procrastinators drive you crazy. So as you progress in your career, and are in a position to choose who you work with, make sure to choose to work with people who don't procrastinate.

I'm not sure procrastinator is a good description here. I would read OPs description as the advisor working hard all the time. They are just very disorganized and bad with time management. They see an interesting task so they work on it but forget the other tasks they should have been doing. Your general advice still applies in this case though.

@quarague I had the same thought, but then again working on an interesting task instead of handling higher priority more boring tasks is a form of procrastination. Like surely you had heard the joke about people suddenly doing all their house chores when it's time to do their taxes.

To add some additional perspective, I'm an experienced and successful professional who was recently diagnosed with ADD. It's not my place to diagnose, of course, but I recognise some of these traits in myself. Procrastination can be a coping strategy for folks with challenges with executive functioning. This isn't to say that the world around them just has to put up with it. Rather, it means that a solution that works for both of you will need some compromise and recognition of peoples' limited ability to change. A regular scheduled meeting is an excellent idea to help address this.

Don't assume it's procrastination: He could simply be overworked. Many academics are, and then things that are not the absolute top priority (e.g. being prepared for a lecture the next day) will tend to get put off as you describe. It's a life spent "firefighting".

I'm going to have to speculate based on hints you have given here. First, I'm guessing that the advisor is a bit new at this and that it may be that his learning/working style and habits are a bit different from yours.
I'll note that your success is important to his career, though he may not be aware of that. And he may be overwhelmed with his job as you are with your degree. And some students work well alone with little support, which might have been his own case.
But the main "guess" is that he doesn't actually recognize that there is a problem and so hasn't taken action to address it. If that is correct, then you need to make him aware with a personal meeting in which you ask for regular, scheduled, guidance.
I'd suggest that you try to arrange a one hour weekly meeting, perhaps even in a coffee lounge or other comfortable place in which the goal is to "discuss mathematics". You each talk about your current concerns and search for insights into your research.
If you can arrange for this to happen, don't look for answers to questions but to pointers as to where you can find those answers. Take a bunch of index cards to each meeting. Some blank ones and some with questions or "thoughts". You and he can write "ideas" on those cards and follow them up later. Some of those ideas would be authors or papers to explore.
In mathematics it is possible to get lost in a thread of research. This might be true for both of you. Insight can come from informal conversations and is one reason authorship of a math paper can be earned in a short conversation that imparts a key insight.
But, until he realizes that you need support you aren't likely to get it. And if he realizes it and won't provide it then you have decisions to make about whether he is sufficiently supportive to continue with him.
If I've "over supposed" here, I apologize.

It is unfortunate that your advisor is not being organized. A lot of frustration in mentoring stems from a student feeling like their advisor isn't there for them.
I think that you need to raise these concerns in a very honest manner. This can be done without offending anyone. Some examples:

Technical stuff: set meetings on an online calendar (like Google Calendar). This is to help you have regular scheduled meetings that set off reminders. If an email goes unanswered for more than 2 days, send a polite follow up.
Create a mentoring plan with your advisor: a compact (yes, a compact, not a contract) between the two of you. This sets the expectations you have from them, and their expectations from you. This plan should be regularly reviewed and updated.
Create a mutually agreed mid-term plan with them. For example, "on the Spring 2024 semester I want to finish this draft, start a new project and attend the seminar by Prof. X on sublunar conjugations".

If none of this works, perhaps suggest introducing an additional mentor (another faculty member, a postdoc) that would help with your work.

and 3) are good suggestions,  but 2) can really really backfire. Telling your supervisor how to do their job ("sets the expectations you have of them"), even if you are right and they are wrong, is not going to go down well.

@Marianne013 The key point with a mentoring plan is that it is created together - it should not be you telling your supervisor how to do their job, but rather you telling your supervisor what they can expect from you, and your supervisor telling you what you can expect from them. Importantly it might reveal things the OP needs, but the PI can't or won't provide. Our dept requires such agreements when a faculty member gets a new student. This depend on the OPs judgement of the advisor's character. I But as an advisor who is chronically over-busy and disorganised, I would not take it badly.

A mentoring plan, as pointed out by Ian, is an exercise in setting mutual goals and expectations. It is never one-sided.

@IanSudbery If a student came to me with (2), I would be open to the idea and not offended, but with little experience and no one to turn to for advice, I'm not sure how effective I would be in writing such a plan or in recovering if something went awry. OP could try, but it seems like the sort of thing that works better if entire departments adopt it.

@academic you are right that it is important to have departmental/college/university support better mentoring practices. However, this is not necessarily a very complicated thing to do - just a discussion on the whiteboard with dates, expectations etc. can be a good step in the right direction.

No supervisor is perfect. I would hope that your relationship with your supervisor has positive aspects though. It may be worth identifying those to keep a positive attitude. Generally it helps if you and your supervisor are a good fit from both sides so you may be able to make up for some shortcomings on the supervisor's side and vice versa.
I see, however, that what you describe can be quite problematic. You may be able to address your wishes and concerns directly when talking to your supervisor with the goal to reach some agreement how to handle such situations. It may help you already if your supervisor tells you to remind him as often as you feel necessary about feedback you want etc. Personally, I am always happy to receive reminders from students. I prefer that a lot compared to unhappy students who do not let me know when they want/need support. So if your supervisor is a reasonable person: Give him the chance to explain himself and to improve. Try to reach a mutual understanding of each others expectations which, I fear, works best by talking to each other.

If your supervisor doesn't work, there's no choice but to get information and skills elsewhere. It can be from classmates or other students of similar fields, or other teachers, on the Internet, during an internship, or from artificial intelligence.
Then you will just test if your supervisor will be satisfied if you de facto take the initiative and bother them only in the most necessary cases, where you will only present them with a solution. But if it doesn't work, there's no choice but to find another supervisor, perhaps in another workplace or another country.

I had a similar experience with my supervisor and as a result my three year PhD ended up taking five. Its clear that this individual is using up your most precious resource which is your time. In my case this supervisor was behaving the same way with other candidates and they all ended up firing him from their PhDs. I followed suit. Its really a question of competence and unfortunately well meaning doesn't cut it. There isn't much to be gained from trying to second guess what this persons issue is as its not something you can change. Your best bet is to request a change in supervisor based on their performance, usually these kinds of supervisor have a track record of similar behaviours and the university are aware of the issue, its just some departments take the head in the sand approach. I would approach the department head or whoever your contact is in terms of managing PhDs.The second best scenario is to add an additional supervisor to the team. Its your PhD so you have take responsibility for managing it. Because if your PhD lasts longer than your stipend that causes even more problems and people have had to abandon their PhD as a result. You simply dont have the time during a PhD to let someone else dictate your timetable and waste your time. The thing about these kinds of people is that if you behaved the same way towards them and wasted their time I doubt they would allow it either. It will obviously upset the supervisor however its their responsibility to work to standard which is what they havent been doing.


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Do published articles go through detailed check? And often require a extra data to be submitted
I have published a paper and one month after publication my supervisor is telling me that I should prepare a bunch of statistical tests for that published paper, even though usually in my area (materials) we don’t need heavy statistical analysis. He said that it will be checked by someone.
I don’t understand if the paper went though peer review ( I had 4 reviewers) and got accepted and finally published, why I need to go back to it and prepare for possible requested corrections. So, my main question is: how often did your published works require corrections raised by the readers?

Why not ask your supervisor? If you don't understand why someone is asking you to do something, the natural thing -- one would assume -- is to have a conversation about it!

May it be that this has nothing to do with the journal or readers? For example, the request may come from your university (e.g. being an internal requirement for a PhD), or from a funding agency etc?

This is not common. You might get it if there's a challenge of some kind - a comment for example (see this for what a comment is in this context), an allegation of misconduct, a peer review failure such that the journal is thinking of retracting your article, and so on. Informally, there might also be people emailing the authors about parts they don't understand or do not seem correct.
It's not clear from your description why exactly your supervisor wants you to do the statistical tests. It could simply be extending the work, leading to a different paper. Ultimately, asking your supervisor about the point of the tests is probably the most productive thing to do.


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What do you think of some journals with high IF, but not famous?
As a PhD student, I always go through many journals and found out that some journals have a high IF, but mostly they achieved it because they do not publish many papers per year. One example in my field is "Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials", the IF is over 20, but most of the papers there are not even close in quality to some top journals in this field. Do you think it is better to publish in a well known and respected journal for example with IF 5-9, or just chase a high IF journal with a very low number of publications per year. Assume that my paper is a perfect fit for both of them.

Correlating impact factor to publishing fewer papers per year seems, well, wrong. Submit the paper to the journal it best fits. Stop worrying about impact factors of journals.

Journals have reputations that don't come from IF.  What are the reputations of these journals?


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How to write a paper with word count limit?
What your preferred approach to writing a paper with a word count limit?
The two obvious approach are to

Try to write so that you don't exceed the word limit in the first place
write however you want, then shorten.

I would assume not worrying to much about the length and then shortening is easiest.
Regarding shortening:
How do you go about it?
Any specific suggestions on the use of LLMs?

another approach is just send the works to these journals that are possible to be explained appropriately within the page limits inherently, so select the journals based on all features of the work not just the title. A work that needs to be explained with a lot of details and experimental results, is not suitable to be shortened and sent as a short report, unless you want to report about it! (the same is true for the reverse situation)

I'd say the first step comes before you start really writing, in that you choose a scope for the paper that can fit.

Good points.
In this case though, my Professor chose the journal and it is my job to make the content fit the scope

I have always found that it is helpful to go way over and then force myself to find more efficient ways to write it; leads to a more readable paper ultimately.

Write around 20%-40% too much and shorten. The paper will be much better.

Find a different journal.

"Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers."

Journal/field dependent but one option is to put the least-important text into the supplemental document.

First regarding using LLM, it is increasingly becoming a commonplace to use AI to generate text for the papers. I think this practice should be discouraged not only by the editors/reviewers/publishers but also by the authors themselves (self accountability). Ironically speaking, there are so many cases reported on the LinkedIn showing the papers containing the unedited text from AI. The academic world is just getting weirder.
Regarding your question related to word count, it not always fixed word length but an estimated word length especially when it comes to long format publications such as journals, patents, and so forth. Yes the best bet should be write completely and then revise it considering the word count. You can also check other papers that have already been published in the same journal if they follow the word count guidelines strictly.

I disagree regarding LLMs. Using it to generate text is a different thing than having it revise your writing. I was thinking about shortening some formulations etc. not having the LLM basically rewrite your paper to a certain length...

@RandomName42 Having an LLM revise or rewrite rather than starting from scratch does not prevent it from hallucinating errors and changing the meaning of your writing. I would not advise it for anything important.

This is a Problem only if I don't understand the LLM's output enough to correct it or if I just blindly accept it, which should obviously not be the case.

@Bryan Krause hence why you proof read the revised text for errors. I see little issue in using an LLM to make sections of your writing more clear, concise and readable.
To be frank, I've always hated the way a lot of journals are written, You're almost expected to make your writing as obtuse as possible to look professional. So, writing your report in simple terms and then using an LLM to alter it into a professional format seems quite reasonable to me.

@BryanKrause: I'm not a native English speaker, and writing takes me a long time (even in my native laguage, and more so in English). It is easier and faster for me to understand written English, and to judge whether a text fits with what I want to say or not. Moreover, to put it the other way round: if someone's English is too poor to realize that LLM-generated text is ambiguous, any text they generate themselves may have the same problem.

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX Strongly disagree. The LLM can't know what the human author does and doesn't know/understand. The human author can. Revising is way more work than initially writing. Don't outsource your intellect to something that's provably not intelligent.

@ChellCPlus No, you're not expected to do that, so don't do it. Especially don't expect an LLM to "upscale" your understandable writing to something opaque. Terrible idea.

@RandomName42 Those checks are more work than the initial effort would be if they are done correctly; I'm suspicious that they ever are. In any case, by using an LLM you're letting statistics about what is found in writing generally to make decisions about what is and isn't important, with a model based on an old corpus and not actually intelligent in the first place. Do you really want that thing making decisions about what is and isn't important to your novel research publication? Writing isn't some game, it's a critical piece of the research process.

@Bryan Krause clearly often times having your writing changed so, that is conforms more with what is generally found writing is exactly what you want. In the end, arguing about whether LLMs are intelligent or not is beside the point. I am definitely able to judge whether the proposed changes are valid or not. Sure, it might in the end be inefficient but there is no risk involved as long as you are careful.

@RandomName42 No, there is risk involved that you might be able to alleviate if you are sufficiently careful. Multiple lawyers have now been sanctioned because they failed to fully cite-check LLM output and cited to non-existent authority.

@BryanKrause Is your assertion that LLMs are "provably" not intelligent backed up by proof? Judging from personal interaction with these systems (Claude-3-Opus and the latest version of GPT-4) I would say they clearly are intelligent to some extent and that it is also clear that they understand to some extent (albeit maybe in a p-zombie way, obviously). Indeed, I would even say that small models that can run on an ordinary laptop like Mistral-7b have some understanding of what they say.

@Polytropos You must have a very different concept of "intelligence".

@BryanKrause It is much worse. Intelligence is one of the things that I do not in fact have a clear "concept" of. But I recognize it when it's there on a case-by-case basis (maybe with some error rate - who can tell these days).

How do you go about it?

Cut out a lot of discussion, replace all convoltued forms ("it is possbile" with "may") ...

Any specific suggestions on the use of LLMs?

Yes: check carefully if and where the text you give is saved. You may be breaking confidentiality, in the not so far future you may be exposing yourself to plagiarism (what if the LLM you use is sentient and submit the publication before you?)

I like your scenario. An LLM with a scientific ego.

+1 for checking carefully. However, preparing a publication means that the risk of breaking confidentiality is low since the text is anyways meant to be public. (IMHO generating texts for internal use is a very different scenario in that respect. And yes, there may accidentally be confidential things in drafts that are removed before publication - but then the baseline to compare to would be the risk of accidentally exposing confidential information and not realiziing this before publication).

Wrt LLM submitting faster: I guess for now the risk would be rather the LLM generating text for someone else who then publishes faster. Anyways, writing e.g. with version control means that there are time stamps which can be used to contest such plagiarism.
(And in turn, one should maybe be careful when the LLM expresses good ideas that were not in the input...)

My dad taught me a good rule: delete the second sentence in every paragraph. Sounds weird, but it's amazing how often it works. If you don't believe it, try it on some of the answers to your question.

I would recommend you do both: write a first draft concisely, then revise to shorten if necessary. It is good practice to be short and to the point (step 1) even if you do not have a word limit. Your readers and reviewers will thank you for it.
This is not easy, especially at first. You will get better with experience.
I have not tried using LLMs to revise text. I agree that this is a task they may be good at. However, I would recommend you revise the result thoroughly; LLMs do have a tendency to hallucinate, and I would be very careful as to whether their shortened text still conveys correct information and kept the important bits.

The only correct answer to this is, "Do what works for you," because there's no reason that anyone else's work process should align with how your mind works.
But in the spirit of helpful examples:

Outline
Write at length
Trim
Trim
Trim
Polish
Trim

My natural writing style is expansive and verbose.  The only way I can work my way around to 'terse' is by writing what I want to write and hacking away at it.
The same applies to page count maxima, which are arguably even worse.  I've never been so tempted to throw my laptop out the window, as the day I added a word-- a short word-- to a paper draft on Page 1, and the various rules in the venue's mandatory Word template turned that into two or three extra lines on Page N+1 of an N-page-max paper.

You missed a few steps.  8. Polish.  9. Polish.  10. Trim.  11.  Add a section of explanation.  12.  Trim.  13. Trim.  14. Curse the Writing Gods.  15. Polish. 16. Remove the section added in step 11.  17. Revise.  18. Trim.  19. Polish. &c.

@XanderHenderson I had to cut those to maintain the word count.

+1 because I came here to give the same answer and the opposite example :D . My writing style (at least in academic wiriting) was rather dense, my first draft of a paper was usually below the page/word limit, so what I did was 1. Outline, 2. write, 3. expand explanations here and there, 4. polish, 5. find that one word that makes LaTeX wrap every paragraph so oddly that the bibliography ends up beyond the page limit, 6. polish, 7. upload a few hours before the submission deadline, even though the paper feels far from perfect.

I tackle this by thinking in units much larger than words. For example, in paragraphs, or pages, or sections. Take a document you've done before, and see how many words the paragraphs tend to be, just roughly. Many of mine are 200 words, so if I have a "budget" of 1000 words, that's 5 paragraphs.  You can't express 20 ideas in 5 paragraphs, right? This sets the scope of what you will write.
If you have 5000 words, they will probably be introduction, thing, thing, thing, conclusion, each about 1000 words. Or of course you may have required sections like Summary, Background, Method, etc.  What is a long one of those for you? What is a short one?
This will let you get the scope right. You won't find yourself needing to cut a thing in half. Then you may find that you need to chop 10% or add 10%, and that can be done by removing a sentence here and there, or perhaps shortening some wordy phrases and dropping "filler" like "with this in mind, we proceeded to perform the operations required to complete the" . This sort of work can be very frustrating, so don't start until you've got roughly the right number of sections, pages, and paragraphs. Only then, refine the word count.

Several other answers make excellent points already, so I won’t repeat them, but to add one point they don’t cover: Outline extra-carefully, with the word/page count in mind.  (I’ll use page limits here since that’s more common in my field.)  This also has a lot in common with planning slides for a talk, where you have a fixed time limit which (for planning) can often roughly be translated to numbers of slides.
For a tight page count, I’d start by making an outline including estimated page counts, something like

Title, abstract: c 1/2 page
Introduction: 2–3 pages
Technical background: 1–2 pages
Definitions + basic properties of reticulated widgets: 2–3 pages
Main proof of frobnicating theorem: 1–2 pages

so I can make sure my outline looks well-balanced and feasible.  Then I start drafting based on that outline; as I draft, I keep the outline in mind, and both shape the draft to fit the outline, and adjust the outline as necessary to fit the growing draft — when (inevitably) some sections need more space than I’d expected, and (hopefully) others turn out to work more concisely.  If too many sections are demanding more space, and all are feeling as concise as I can get them, then that’s the time to cut more concisely.
What I do not recommend (at least, it doesn’t work for me) is just writing first without thinking about the word/page/time limit, and then trying to cut/compress it afterwards.  One of the most frustrating writing tasks I’ve ever attempted was cutting a c.24-page draft I was very happy with down to 20 pages — no paragraph could be cut without weakening the whole structure.  In the end I think we just submitted as 24 pages and trusted to the journal’s generosity.  Different space constraints are often best suited to a different outline and selection of material entirely — e.g. a longer version gives space to present technical details; in a short version, rather than presenting them unreadably densely, it may be better to cut them entirely and set up a black-box abstraction of what they provide, which can then push towards a different organisation of the surrounding material.  So keeping the length constraints in mind from the start helps to find an exposition well-suited to them, and avoid too much backtracking later.

I would recommend a mixture of both methods, and add a third component:
(3) Prioritize the parts of the argument that are really important. Not everything in your work must go into the paper. It's always possible to put an extended version on arxiv or similar.
I can't stress that last point enough. I find it not uncommon when reviewing papers to encounter the case where the authors have worked hard to cram everything they found out about their scientific question into the page limit of the conference/journal they submitted to, only to end up with a paper where half of the results were weak or partly wrong or at least insufficiently supported by evidence or not fully worked out.
These hurt their chances of getting accepted, even if the core contribution is good. I would in those cases much rather have reviewed a 15-page paper containing only the core contributions and referring the interested reader to the 42-page extended version, than the 30-page thing the authors submitted because they were afraid to leave something out, and maybe that the short version would insufficiently dazzle the reviewers.


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How to deal with co-supervisor that does not contribute but requires coauthorship?
I'm a PhD student with two supervisors, one main PI which I has nothing to complain about, and a "co-supervisor" that had a long history with my PI. He was my PI's student, then post-doc, then worked in industry for years and came back as an assistant professor.
I barely talk to the co-supervisor beyond first year, and started to notice he puts in minimal effort into research and supervison - only giving wording suggestions when reviewing papers, doesn't providing anything more than "Have you tried AI?" or "What's your plan in 3 years" kind of feedback.
Other students are complaining about him being very pushy on publishing and cares much more about quantity than quality - suggested another student to submit to an irrevalent journal because it is "faster" when the student is aiming for the best in the sub-field.
All in all, I think he is much suited as a manager in industry or a lecturer than a researcher. However, because of the co-supervision title, he asks to review all my papers and becomes a coauthor by providing feedback that are exactly the same as the ones Grammarly provided (and I meant not similar but word-to-word the same as Grammarly and nothing else).
I realize it is academic dishonesty to let someone that didn't contribute to be a coauthor, but I'm not ready to be on the bad side of him, and potentially my own PI, this early on, especially considering I hope to go into academia after. I'm thinking about talking to the department chair, whom I trust, privately after graduation, which will hopefully be taken into account to some degree during his tenure review. Is there anything else I can do in this situation? Am I wrong to think he is a fraud?

Do you know the dynamic/relationship of your co-supervisor and your main supervisor with respect to acquisition of funds, generating ideas, etc... Sometimes the contributions of all parties involved is not clear to students because the main advisor does not communicate it.

@R1NaNo I think he does help with grant proposals etc, kind of like a small prof under a bigger PI kind of situation. But he is very new and has been a part-time post doc rather than a co-PI for the majority of my PhD. In terms of ideas, they are almost purely my own with occasional discussion with the main advisor. I don't believe they ever communicate about them without me.

You "hope to go into academia after." - So be glad that you are learning early on what academia is like.
"Am I wrong to think he is a fraud?" - Possibly not. Possibly it's more nuanced. You are not in a position to make a definitive judgement.
"I realize it is academic dishonesty" - A big word. I appreciate your ethical motivation to stand up against such scandal. Nobody will disagree that we must combat fraud and dishonesty. None of the adults in the game, however, will admit to you that this friendly and helpful person in their very own department is a fraud and living of dishonesty. Keep in mind that you don't have the full picture and that your own judgement might be more differentiated in a few years from now.
"I'm thinking about talking ... privately after graduation" - That is not very courageous. If the situation is making you unhappy then seek clarification now, not at the end of your PhD.
"I'm thinking talking to the department chair" - And why not to your supervisor? You need to discuss the author byline of your papers anyway with him, preferably before writing the first line of text.
"... which will hopefully be taken into account ... during his tenure review." - Not your business. Academia is as hopeless a swamp as society at large. Work your way up, remain a honest person, become respected in your field - then you will be in a position to make your modest but efficient contribution to fairness in research.
Also to consider: your merit in your publications is not diminished by a larger number of coauthors. Don't overestimate the importance of the publishing game. In the end, it's your research results that count. And hopefully, it's research that is attracting you into acedemia, not the reporting of research.

I want to clarify that I don't hold anything personal against him, in fact I think he is a great project manager. I just don't think what he is doing is right and someone should know. Talking to the chair is one way I thought of that wouldn't backfire too much on myself, and I definitely don't mean it as some sort of revenge. I also don't mind having an extra coauthor for the reasons you are suggesting. I am indeed attracted to research for research itself and think he may not be. If anything I feel like he's unrightfully taking up a space for someone like myself.

I understood that. I should have shown in my answer more empathy for your ethical motivation.

I added a paragraph on "I realize it is academic dishonesty".


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How can I effectively challenge a final grade?
I'm enrolled in an honours philosophy program (taking premed prereqs and maths as electives), going into my fourth year. I had a 3.9 until today when I got my first B. I made a point of kicking the crap out of the final essay; Nevertheless, the TA crushed me on it. I received less than 60%.
I'm applying to med school in the fall. Given the way that the schools that I'm going to apply to weight the grades of applicants, that B is going to be considerably damaging to my application.
There are two phases in the univeristy's process for appealing a grade.

Talk to the professor
Appeal to the university for an independent evaluation.

To the best of my knowledge, independent reviews are usually kangaroo processes that just confirm the original decision. Fortunately, the university's process isn't the only way to resolve the problem. The TA, the professor, and the department head all could change the result.
I don't suspect the TA will change his opinion.
The professor is good friends with the TA. Generally, people tend to defend their friends when someone accuses them of making a mistake. Ultimately, if I appeal to the professor, no matter how I approach it, the appeal will amount to an accusation that her friend made a mistake. Accordingly, I don't believe that I would succeed if I were to do that. Moreover, if I were to appeal to the professor, she would need to justify her decision, and by doing so, would become convinced her TA got it right.
Accordingly, I see three ways I could go about it:

Write the professor (I can't meet with her, I'm out of province this week, and need to contact her within seven days) and hope it works out (I'm pretty confident nothing will happen).
Write the professor and, using all the tact I can muster, gently allude to the escalation process, and the fact that it would just be easier to give my essay a fair shake. I saw a lawyer use the 'it's just easier to say yes' approach with a judge once. It worked surprisingly well. Nevertheless, it's kind of a jackass thing to do, and could backfire if my tact fails me.
Approach the department head: I'm in his good book. I first got to know him after he emailed me to talk about pursuing work in philosophical research. It was out of the blue, so I figure that's some sign that he'd like to see that happen. (I'd like to help solve some of the conceptual problems that predominate psychiatry.) He and I have spent about ~20 hours working one on one to solve some philosophical problems. I've done well in his classes. So, he knows I generally do good work and he seems to want to ensure things work out well. I suspect that he would doubt that the TA could justify giving me <60% on the essay. Perhaps he might suggest some way to fix the problem, or might offer an alternative if I can't fix it (e.g. 'Try this, and if it doesn't work, come back and talk to me.')

How can I effectively challenge the grade that I've received?

@Karamazov It's not the sole reason, not by a long shot. I wrote a 500 level paper for a 200 level class because I enjoyed the essay topic. However the TA docked ~40% for going "overboard" (despite the fact that I was within the word count). The mark is wrong. The fact that I need it for medical school just makes the consequence of the error severe.

Did you get the essay back with explanatory comments on it, or just the final grade?

@Potato I asked for the essay comments before I decided I ought to object.

@Hal What exactly was the content of the comments? Presumably something more than "Overboard, -40%" in big red letters? I ask because if the TA gives even semi-plausible reasons for a such a grade, you're probably sunk. But if they don't, you probably have a legitimate appeal. I don't really understand what "overboard" means here.

Also, whoever you talk to, I wouldn't approach the conversation as a "challenge," where you go in projecting the attitude you're entitled to a better grade (even if you are). I recommend leading with something along the lines of, "Hey, I'm confused about how this paper was graded. I don't understand why going 'overboard' is a negative thing, or why it merits such a large deduction. Could you explain this to me?" If the grade really is egregious, your department head should pick up on this fact pretty quickly and suggest you appeal.

Also, you should probably go to the professor first, even if you later feel you need to go the head. The person who will eventually need to sign off on changing the grade is the professor, and I have a feeling they would be pretty annoyed if you went above their head without contacting them about the issue first. It seems the best approach is to talk to your professor and hope they see your side. Professors have considerable independence in assigning grades, and it seems unlikely the head could force them to change it even if they agree with you.

@Potato
10% for using too many subheadings.
10% for using formal proofs
10% for failing to properly cite quotations (although I used a standard chapter-paragraph-sub-paragraph numbering system for the text; and no particular system was recommended).
Finally, another 10% because the TA believed the argument was defeatable (which is impossible if the premises are sound -and mine were direct quotations of the relevant text -and the argument is valid - which mine was: I provided proofs.)

For the other side of this question, see  http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9014/what-to-do-about-grade-grubbers. I don't mean to be offensive, but that post and its answers may help you get a sense of issues that would face a professor considering such a request.

(1) Why did formal proofs make the TA downgrade your paper? (2) I noticed you asked as far back as '13 about proper quotation here, for an essay back then. Did you use the same quotation style in an earlier essay w/o negative feedback?

@gnometorule I didn't use an unusual quotation style. The same one I've used since then. I've never been docked for it.

@Hal: That seems like a reasonable point to argue then if there was no prior guidance for the style to be used in your essay. I'd collect papers in which you used that style w/o objection, and ideally a source which confirms it's a style others use for essays like yours. As you still rely on good will, be tactful but point out that had you known, you'd have gladly followed this style, and that the result of not having to led to a grade that doesn't represent what you feel your knowledge is in the area.

I would go through the process set out by your university. Talk to the professor first. You don't have to phrase it as an attack on the TA. Just tell the professor that you feel the grade was too harsh, and you would like him or her to review it. If you feel that the professor doesn't fairly address your concerns, then take it to the department head, and perhaps ultimately to an independent review committee. Typically, in order to get a grade changed by a committee, you will have to show that there was an error in grading your paper or that your paper was not graded consistently with the other papers. If the TA graded everyone's papers harshly, then there's not much of a basis for a complaint. As was pointed out in the comments, if you go to the department head before you talk to the professor, the professor will likely be annoyed at being blindsided by an issue they were unaware of. Also faculty are given broad leeway in grading their classes as long as it is done consistently. Unless there is an egregious mistake and the faculty is uncooperative, it is not the department head's place to interfere, and they most likely will just leave it to the professor.

4) Write the professor and, in addition to asking that the grading be reviewed,  ask whether there's any way you could tackle a piece of extra-credit work to show that the grade does not accurately reflect your mastery of the material.
It's your grade. Own it. Either a mistake was made, in which case a review should fix it unless there is active malice -- which you give no reason to believe --or your own evaluation of you work on the final if flawed and if you want a better grade you need to give some justification for deserving it. Volunteering for the latter may make the former moot.
You may be charged for the summer session if you take this approach. It sounds like you feel that cost would be justified.
Just be glad you don't have your heart set on becoming a veterinarian.  From what I've heard, vet school is harder to get into than med school.
(Valid counter-arguments below. But I'm going to leave this up because I think that's worthwhile discussion.)

It's probably not a good idea to ask for extra-credit work. That just comes across as a naive, obviously grade-grubbing request to me. I've never heard of a professor assigning new extra-credit work at the conclusion of the semester.

I'll take your word for. But I don't know of any other way to "fix" this which doesn't involve another undergrad term or two, if the grade turns out to have been fairly assigned.

(Hm. You can't down vote your own post either.)

@Potato: Indeed. At many universities, offering one student a special extra credit assignment would be considered unfair to all the other students, and have repercussions for the professor.

@NateEldredge That's the case at my university. There are no special opportunities for individual students.


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When does an editor fail?
Let's assume that a journal editor has been allocated a submission, started reviewing it himself, but stopped responding to the managing editor (= you) despite a long time since the authors had sent the submission (a little less than 3 years).  The submission is longer than each of the papers accepted during the last 5 years, but historically, even longer papers were accepted. The authors are aware of the length issue, but they are concerned.  The editor's Web page gets updated (say, new teaching contents appears), so, she/he is presumably still alive, but simply unresponsive.
The journal has no written, formal deadlines in its guidelines.  How long is it acceptable for the managing editor (= you) to wait after the first unanswered message to the editor before replacing the editor? What is typical in the field of computer science?

Seems a bit long. No, seems very long. Time to contact them.

You haven't said how long it has been. If I haven't seen any changes in a month I'd worry. And if I'm the editor, I'd want an explanation of why the delays. And the response to the enquiry "why the delays" should come in a week or so. Maybe less. Time to put the stick about.

It probably depends on how long the paper is and maybe other factors, but I should think replacing him in -1.5 years would be quite reasonable (if you could get your hands on a time machine, that is). Dismissing him from the editorial board might also make more than a little sense.

In my initial reading I wasn't sure of your perspective, author or editor. I think you mean that you are the editor managing others.

@Just_A_Man I don’t have more to add, but this delay is obviously unacceptable. Hope you manage to figure out a path forward.

I would say that lack of communication is a failure in itself. No matter how long and no matter the fact that there is a paper on review stage. A total lack of communication is a failure in any concerted collaborative task or scenario.

How long is it acceptable for the managing editor (= you) to wait after the first unanswered message to the editor before replacing the editor?

If the lack of contact is unexpected and unannounced, then wait three weeks with weekly email reminders.
If it is expected or announced, then negotiate with the authors.  The authors might prefer to wait out an editor's absence if the editor has suitable expertise.

I'd start getting concerned with no responses after about two weeks, and very concerned after about one month.
If the editor doesn't answer increasingly-urgent emails asking about the status, then I'd use different ways to contact them. The obvious way is to email their department receptionists. Alternatively, I might also phone the editor, or contact other people in their research group.
Three years is certainly way over the top; if a submission goes three years with no visible signs of being handled I would assume as an author that the journal is dead (and the publisher is being irresponsible, too).

I'm just dumbfounded that in any field, 2-3 years to get a paper through the first round of reviews would be considered "acceptable". It's a perspective that gives no priority at all to the paper whose papers are held up that long. How is one supposed to get tenure and promotion if processes take that long?

These days, if you need a phone call to communicate, it's impractical to be an editor.  Time zones alone rule it out.