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What careers not requiring an academic degree might be open to a self-learner who wants to do research on pure mathematics?
I hesitated to ask this question since it may not relevant to this website, but I saw a question of same category here but still couldn't find an answer ...
Since childhood, I've had a sharp enthusiasm for Maths, studying books from an elementary level to ones suited for the level of a Masters of Science student at Melbourne University. I am currently 15, but the formal classroom setting feels like a waste of my time. Because of my passion for Maths, going through the formal procedure of education is making me severely depressed...
Here is my question:
What careers which do not require an academic degree (all research positions require a PhD) might be open (in Australia) to a self-learner who wants to do research on Pure Mathematics?
Salaries for a postdoc position are ~80k in Australia, but I am looking for a research career even of a ~15k salary because that would be enough money to survive while doing research. I have yet to published any paper to impress some institution to believe in me, if it helps at all.
EDIT - Thank you all very much for your very informative answers. To be more precise, I would like to write my main reasons of the 'horror' of university:

Solving exercises or studying the texts in self-study themselves can (although difficult) be stopped for the duration of university affairs (classes, ...) but I believe that research can't be frequently stopped by other irrelevant things even with university affairs [university classes will be Math, but not be the research that I want to engross in, at least for first few years], since being creative requires to be much more engrossed (to put it simpler: 1 2-day is more efficient than 2 1-day for research).
Even with prestigious universities it involves a lot of bureaucracy, which they may find necessary to obtain a degree but are irrelevant to Mathematics.
Being very deep concentrated and having manic passion causes a lot sensitivity, that's why we have some recluse people (in Arts and Science) and most of them are suffering from Bipolar Disorder caused by their manic-enthusiasm. While there are many people with great achievements living in society with high-degrees UNFORTUNATELY I don't think it's impossible for me.
3a. An example of negativity in university education is the focus on institutional ranking. Combined with job-seaerching being the main purpose of study for some, it could impact someone who just seeks the beauty of Mathematics faith in seeking a degree.
University costs a lot for a Bachelors of Science, much more than it would to be a mathematician in solitude.

EDIT 2 - In my question, I have asked that from where I can get financial support for basic life expenditure, however many answers include enrollment in universities which costs A LOT for just BSc (supposing that I can survive with my mentioned conditions in first EDIT).
Thank you, everyone. I highly appreciate the brilliant advise in many of your answers, however my main question remains how would I pursue research in Mathematics without a degree? I know the path that is recommended for pursuing a research career, but the cost of university and not having peace of mind are too great of an expense for me.

Before assuming that formal education is out of the question, consider the fact that you will get more mature and the classes will get more demanding as time goes on.

... and if you really are ahead of your class mates, many university professors are willing to help you design your own program, such as by designing special classes for you, or by letting you get in on their research.

@Dave Clarke - NOT at all! I asked a professor to do research under his supervision, and in reply he said "I would prefer to supervise my students" and he meant that even if he have time for me. Maybe they get promotions if their helps are 'official'?

The comment said "many university professors" not "all university professors". You may need to ask several people. The more evidence of unusual talent for mathematics you can present, the better. Do you have references from any of your teachers?

Also, note that you are not enrolled at a university. I'd be similarly reserved if someone off the street asked me whether they could do research with me. This is probably what the professor means by "my students". And yes. It takes time to do the supervision, so they want to know what benefit they will gain, be it publications or promotions.

@Patricia Shanahan - Honestly, no teacher likes me since I am sitting in the back of class to study my own texts which have already raised a lot their angers, let alone they write a good letter as a recommendation.

One thing it's important to understand: University is not just "Advanced High School", it's a very, very different animal, and you'll be around a different group of people. Many people who hated highschool loved university (myself included)

Don't get ahead of yourself. You're very young, and when you're a bit older you will realize how little you used to know and how much humility you should have shown. This is not anything personal, just a universal fact about wisdom: the more you know, the more you know of your ignorance. Read Plato's "The Apology."

If no teacher likes you because you waste their time by not paying attention then you need to take a step back and redefine your goals.Why bother to go to class, and frankly waste time and money, if you are not going to at least present an interested front? You need to show your instructors that you are not a goof off and that you are willing to put in the effort and maybe they will take you more seriously.

Note that studying at an elite university does not necessarily involve taking classes. In at least some (e.g. Cambridge), the only requirement is that you sit the examinations. Class attendance is entirely optional, and if you can pass the exam without attending class, that's fine. If you are really as advanced as you suggest, professors will be happy to guide you in more advanced study, and probably fight with each other to have you work with them. Don't underestimate the value of having experienced, intelligent people to discuss your research with.

Honestly, no teacher likes me — [citation needed]  You mean no bad teacher likes you.

Is it really that hard to just get a degree?

@avid I believe that's generally true. It serves nobody to "take attendance". I'm sure even many high schools wouldn't bother if it weren't a legal requirement.

@OllieFord I have seen examples of courses/universities where attending a certain fraction of classes is a course requirement. I don't know how common this is, but I can imagine it is both region-dependent, and institution-status-dependent. Of course, practical classes in science/engineering subjects may be an exception (or rather, these are continuously examined).

@avid I did hear of it one time: a friend had a couple of courses that registered attendance. Apparently they quickly established that absent names should be written down (yes, it was paper-based!) to the extent that names appeared multiple times!

"Well, Mr @OllieFord. Would you like to explain to me why you failed my course despite attending all my lectures twice?"

This question needs a lot of work to clarify it and turn it into an answerable question.  Currently the title ("Can I do research just because I am able to?") is tautological: it is equivalent to "If I can do research, can I do research?", to which the only answer is yes.  Perhaps you meant "Can I get a paying job doing research without a university degree?"  If so, you should edit your question to ask that.  Also, you should tell us what research you've done.  There are lots of other questions here about doing research without a formal PhD degree or university affiliation.

Posting as a comment, as this advice does not address the question as stated. If you have really understood masters level material at 15, I would expect Maths to be the one subject that would accommodate getting an accelerated degree. I have certainly seen this happen with UK universities, but do not know for sure of cases in Melbourne. I suggest you get in touch with the local Universities again and ask for broader guidance on what they can offer you. Find out whether they have prior experience - you are not the first mathematician to be in this situation.   Finally: be prepared to listen.

@MKR The job you are describing sounds a lot like graduate school. If you are based in Australia, try to get in touch with Tony Guttmann at Melbourne. He has worked with several gifted young scholars to help them accelerate their math education.

@ZachH's comment has illustrated exactly what you'll get from pursuing a degree. Let's assume that you really are capable of doing this advanced work and you're going to find the academic work boring & frustrating. There are still some very important things to gain from the education: connections with people involved in your field, skills in presenting your work (both written and in conferences/symposia), familiarity with the social environment in which you would like to work, recognition that you really do have the qualifications (as assessed by others), etc.

I doubt studying in Australia costs over 100k for a domestic student. As a gifted student, you should also be able to obtain scholarships quite easily. And if university isn't challenging enough, you could work part time to diminish the financial impact. Afterwards, you will also be able to command a salary much higher than your stated "~ 15k", so see it as an investment.

I think the people recommending going for a degree are assuming academic scholarships. Presumably, you have a very high GPA or you would be paying attention in class rather than sitting at the back reading other material. You do need to favorably impress at least one mathematics teacher, to get the right recommendations.

@YiminRong Most of those links 404. Do you have a good example?

@LindaJeanne Last year, a professor allowed me to sit in his class as a visitor for couple of times. He was teaching from H L Royden and P Fitzpatrick - Real Analysis. Two reasons raised even to push me more far than I used to like to be away from university: 1- I had studied that book so deep that it sounded to me he was just 'reading' the pages to students, 2- Even if there is a brilliant lecturer to teach, e.g. that book, attending many classes just because I have left with 2-3% of that book not understood is not fair.

@MKR one option would be to search for a university that will allow you to test out of introductory classes, so you can begin with classes that are on your level.

One thing not mentioned often enough here imho: If there are those jobs, how are you going to get them? Who would hire you on the grounds of you beeing exceptionally good at maths with only your own assurance that you indeed are? You say you want neither a PhD nor do even your math teachers think very highly of you. You need some way of proving your qualities. Either publish something before having a job (most journals do not care for credentials, they are used to undergrads) or get an endorsement by someone highly respected in the field. Of course, both a lot harder than a PhD in University.

I am sorry, but if you would be as good as you think your are you would have some sort of proof for this (for examples prizes at the International Mathematical Olympiad at some level). Just reading a math book and think you understood everything is unfortunately not enough.

@MKR Have you competed in any mathematics competitions, or done anything else that could act as objective evidence of your talents? If not, you should definitely consider doing something like that; for instance, getting a high score on the Putnam might be impressive enough to get the attention of some professors. (People are often impressed if you get any points on the test.)

@dirkk - to attend in IMO, one has to be a part of a team who go through a ~1-year training period. With all respect for these brilliant students, I have say my objections: 1- restriction in some bounded level of math for a long period of time, 2- everyday day in imposed atmosphere of competition (If one claims to be on one's own, has no idea of inside there) , 3- prefer to publish a paper in those period since I've already come some of the way which could impress a research team same or even more (not certainly less) to pay attention to me...

@MKR I'm starting to get the feeling that no matter how brilliant you are, your reluctance to work with other people and your certainty of your own superior mathematical skill (even if that self-perception is accurate) threaten to overshadow your talents and impede your career.

@Shmoo - Thank you very much for your edit. :)

@MKR You're welcome. I was a little worried that the edits I made would obscure you're tone of voice or intent, so hopefully they are inline with what you asked and helped users with their answers.

The question you seem to be asking is "Can I be paid to do research, without any formal education, if I am very good?" The likely answer is no.  I know many serious researchers across countless fields, and the only ones I am aware of who can make a living without any formal training are inventors who got quite lucky in terms of their ideas and their marketability. Many great artists, mathematicians, and scientists did other things to survive while doing the work they were truly passionate for, and we romanticise many very inspirational people. Research is probably much more a function of diligence and persistence, even when things are depressingly boring, than it is of intelligence or genius. I would suggest reading some of the good bits of advice many modern prodigies have given on the subject. Terence Tao in particular has several good pieces on accelerated education, working hard, and being a genius.
Yes, school can be terribly dull if you are quick. But being able to succeed in that environment is an invaluable human skill, which will prove useful in a research career when looking for funding, or when setting up research groups and similar things, as well as really showing that you have a sense of humility. We can complain about how slow and tedious bureaucracy can be, but if you really are quite good, it is worth your time to learn and understand how to survive in it. Mathematics is not simply something devoid of social interaction or human involvement. Pure and applied mathematics stem from human ideas and are inherently connected to social and cultural concepts, and these connections are often a part of what traditional formal education gives us. I would absolutely advise you to go further than what you see in a classroom, do independent and guided research as early as possible, and test out of whatever classes you can. But skipping the process entirely will handicap your ability to contribute meaningfully to mathematical research.

The key thing here is guidance, I think, as research divorced from human interaction is the surest path to self-delusion.  Community brings social and political challenges, but it also brings peer review.  One of the things I've learned as I slowly become an expert in various aspects of my field is that I've had to grow out of several misunderstandings along the way.  Perhaps you will make fewer mistakes than I did, but, without guidance, it might take a long time to even find out if you have.  The human challenges are often harder than the technical, but I've found it worth the effort.

Be very wary of doing mathematical research on your own. Even if you read all the books there are, you will most likely go off on a tangent and reinvent a theory that has been known in math for decades or centuries - simply because you never heard about it and did not know the commonly accepted names of the structures you have been working with. Or, as others point out, you might work on something that may be true but is of zero interest to anyone else.
If all you are looking for is the joy of doing mathematics, that may well be fine (although even then I'd say using up-to-date tools and theory would probably be more satisfying, just as I'd prefer to code on a modern machine and not an antique, even if it does run a compiler). However, if you want to make a difference in the mathematical world, possibly publish your findings, then you will need to interact with other mathematicians.
And this is where a formal education will help. A math degree will show other mathematicians that you at least have learned the fundamentals. When you contact a mathematician, you will need to differentiate yourself from a random crank. There are far too many home-educated random cranks in mathematics, and you are lucky if they self-identify by claiming that they can solve the general quintic equation by radicals. Having a degree in math will make it easier for you to get other mathematicians to talk to you. In addition, your advisor will have decades more experience than you and will be able to steer you in fruitful directions.

Good point about the cranks. There are so many people out there that have solved science...

There was a guy down the pub that could solve quintic equations... it was radical.

"you might work on something that may be true but is of zero interest to anyone else" I don't know very many mathematicians that don't do this.

@zibadawatimmy: do you know very many mathematicians at all? Most mathematicians publish articles about their work, that at least a referee and an editor deemed interesting, and are asked to give talks about their work. There is a distinction to be made between "work that only interests a few specialists" and "work that interests no one else than you".

@BenoîtKloeckner Your inability to recognize a simple joke and immediate recourse to pedantic hair splitting clearly identifies you as one to me.  I can do this because I am one, myself.  You gotta relax.  Any normal person would recognize "only a few specialists are interested in this" as "this is of zero interest to anyone else", and would have a playful laugh while doing so.  But if we're really going this route, I would take issue with your assertion that there is even such a thing as a mathematical fact that only one person finds interesting.  That's absurd.

@zibadawatimmy: a mathematical fact that only one person finds interesting would be very interesting indeed! This reminds me of the well-known proof that all natural numbers are interesting: assume the contrary, i.e., that there are uninteresting natural numbers. Then the smallest such number would be very interesting indeed, by virtue of its property of being the smallest uninteresting number.

@zibadawatimmy: I made my comment because in the context of the question and the answer, I felt yours could be taken seriously (I confess I did) and be misleading. The phrase of Stephan Kolassa is to be taken seriously, and I think what he meant is much closer to literally "zero interest to anyone else" than to "interesting enough to a few mathematicians that they will read your paper or listen to your talk": if it where not too aggressive I would point you to mathematical facts that as far as I know are indeed of interest to their author and no one else. This is an important piece of advice.

Theorem: All natural numbers are boring.  Proof: For the sake of contradiction, suppose some natural numbers are interesting.  Let x be the smallest interesting natural number.  Who cares?  QED.

Research is demanding (well, at least good research is), and a career in research requires discipline, among other things.  I understand being bored in classes, but if you don't have the discipline to go through a standard academic program, it doesn't bode well for a research career.
One option is: if the courses really are too easy for you, you may be able to arrange to take more advanced courses instead (AP, IB, possibly at a university), or go to university early.

+1 for "if you don't have the discipline .." 99% perspiration.

There certainly exist math classes that would not bore you; they might simply be more advanced classes than the ones you're in right now. It is difficult to answer precisely without knowing more about your situation (notably which country you live in, how far you are in your studies right know), but I don't think your goal should be to avoid PhD: doing a PhD is both the gatekeeper to research positions and really about doing research, so if you are dedicated to math your goal should be to do a great PhD, not to avoid it. Without a PhD, as mentioned you can still do math by yourself while working on a side job, but this has several drawbacks. You cannot expect to get a paid research position, even with very low salary (by the way there exist low-salary research positions that require a PhD). Also, note that even if you are very bright, actually advancing the knowledge of humanity takes a great deal of work and effort. Be prepared for the path to be long, the tests to be tough, and be prepared to fail more often than you succeed.
Let me give an example of possible path in a specific case. I assume you are indeed great at math and knowledgeable (beware that some people are delusional about this, but let this point apart).
If you where a French high-school student (or European with fluent French), I would then suggest you take a look at math (and physics) tests for entering Écoles Normales Supérieures. If you are able to do great at them, then you might be able to enter these schools younger than most students, and there you will find a very favorable environment which would be very different from what you know. There is hardly any chance you would get bored for long. If the tests are too difficult for you, then work toward them and see whether you can move forward one class, and aim to enter a good "classe prepa" to prepare for these tests as soon as you reasonably can (though for this you will need support from your teachers).
If you are willing to move or already in the right place, the same kind of advice can work, to look at what it takes to enter elite universities around the world, which are used to accomodate young brilliant student (I heard that Don Zagier could not do its undergraduate study at Cambridge because he was 12 or 13 at the time and they had a policy of not taking undergrad before 16, but that then he settled for MIT and came back to Cambridge for graduate studies, at the age of 15).

Can you do research without formal education? Sure. Will it be of any relevance? Perhaps not so much.
There are a few advantages that a formal education gives you. First, it sort of forces you to sit through a series of topics that you may find boring, uninteresting, or irrelevant at the moment; but at some point they may turn out to be useful. Conversely, it also gives you easy access to other branches that may be quite difficult to get on on your own, but may prove useful later. For example, in a course on Theoretical Physics tailored for Mathematicians you may discover a certain trick to solve a particular problem that may pop up outside of Physics.
These extra courses also provide a broader view and understanding. Mathematics are useless unless they serve some sort of purpose, even if it is inside Mathematics. Knowing a bit of everything can help you find applications and identify potentially interesting problems. If you are unlucky, you may find yourself working for years in a theory that may be correct, but essentially useless for anybody else.
Related to the previous point is that it is easier to get expert supervision. At the beginning of your career, you work with a professor, that is the one giving you the broader understanding of the field, useful references, contacts, etc. that only years of experience can teach you.
You said you read a MSc level book, but have you fully understood it? How can you be sure of that? As an undergrad I thought I had master partial differential equations, and I totally aced the exam, only to find that my understanding was flawed, and all the answers were wrong. If I had not had an external evaluation, I would have taken me a long time to realise, and the fall would have been big.
And lastly, you have a lot to learn to do research. When I finished my master's project, I thought I had done quite a few clever things; but also realised, with hindsight, that I had done a few pretty dumb things that I hope won't do again in the future (nothing bad, just a few weeks of wasted effort). A few months into my PhD project I look back and see other mistakes. Learning how to do research takes time, no matter how smart you are. Your undergrad will provide a low risk environment to make some of these beginner mistakes that will teach you a lot. I, for example, would be wary of paying someone that has not had this basic experience, because I will have to fund their mistakes.
All of these things you can, of course, circumvent without an undergrad; but I don't think it is a wise strategy to reject it up front. You don't know how a BSc is, and you don't even fully know yourself. My advise is that you take it easy, learn as much as possible, and see where it leads. You don't have to give up research, as you can always continue it while studying; and if you are truly natural at Maths, most of the coursework won't take long (and if it doesn't, maybe you were not so good on your own).
Lastly, a word of caution: I have seen some people who had done some research in High School drop off university because they wanted to do the "real stuff", and it turn out that the path there is rougher than it seems. They discovered the hard way that there are easy things you can do in the flashy parts of research; but you need much more to actually be able to fully do it on your own. Don't become one of them.

@MKR you can't judge a book by the cover, and you can't judge a several years degree by two lectures. There is much more to this, like interacting with your peers, teaching and learning from them, and learning how to get the most out of bad lecturers.

This is very true. I remember at the end of my bachelor's degree, I thought I was already a fantastic writer and researcher and thought that the PhD would just sharpen the skills a bit, so to speak. I learned SO much about research and writing in my PhD program, more than I ever realized I would. You don't know what you don't know.

I want to answer this question from a different angle, by addressing two things you say in your original question that I think are untrue and kind of show why you need a broader education.
For one, you say that universities require you to take a lot of irrelevant classes to earn a degree (or at least that's what I think you are trying to say - part of my point). A lot of those classes you think are "irrelevant," though, are necessary to broaden your thinking and will make you into a more well-rounded professional researcher. At the most basic level, the way that mathematicians communicate with one another is through scientific journal articles. In order to do that, you need to know how to write well in English, and your university English and composition classes will assist you with that. Moreover, mathematics is often developed in hopes of applications to other fields - the sciences for sure, but also the social sciences - and an understanding of the conventions and needs of those fields will enrich your understanding of how mathematics ties the world together, even if you are interested in the purest of math. I didn't get a true appreciation of mathematics until I studied my own chosen field (psychology) more deeply.
Secondly, you espouse the idea that research can't be "frequently stopped by other irrelevant things." But the way research works in the modern world...it usually IS stopped by other irrelevant things - and relevant things too. Modern scientists spend a lot of time teaching classes, advising students, writing grants, and serving on committees in their field and at their university. No one is going to hire you to to purely be a mathematician and sit around and think 8-12 hours a day - you'll also have other tasks to complete. One of the values of formal education is that you learn how to balance all of these commitments and still think deeply and do great research. Creativity does require engrossment for some period of time, but most scholars have to stay productive over long periods of time while handling other responsibilities.

I had set the bounty for another answer, but I found esp. last paragraph of your answer more helpful and I highly appreciate it. :)

I would advise trying to complete qualifications like those in the UK.  You can take A-levels without going to classes and with only minimal coursework.  You could just take them without preparation to get a good high school level qualification. The next thing in the UK would be to get into a place like Oxford or Cambridge, you could do well in the STEP paper and get admitted. Then completing a maths degree at Oxbridge would be doable. The Oxford /Cambridge maths programs have very little in the way of compulsory course work. You could take the exams and work with world class researchers for the majority of the time.
In short, University courses with minimal compulsory class hours and course work do exist and you may be able to successfully complete these quickly and relatively painlessly.
Importantly taking some form of higher ed qualification will help you to gain respect and credibility when trying to publish or work with other mathematicians.

First, I agree with many of the other answers that advocate for formal study to help you. And I would like to caution you against thinking that classrooms are entirely a waste of time. Far too often I've come up with novel solutions to problems specifically because I took an unrelated concept and applied it to the problem at hand. All education is beneficial.
All that said, there are a few careers I can think of that would value heavy math research (although not "pure" in the strictest sense):

Finance - there is piles of research being done in finance to help produce better predictive analytics. It might be difficult to get your foot in the door there, but that sort of industry rewards success, and has a clear measurable way of evaluating it. If you can make people money, they won't care about your degree.
Games - the gaming industry has a long track record of discounting degrees. There's also a good amount of work being done on algorithms here to better handle problems in rendering, network prediction, AI, etc.

Both of these options require application to some degree, even if the research itself is purer than most. For your situation, it is a benefit since your employers will care about results, not your educational background.

Yes, you can do mathematic research on your own and without a formal education. There is a term for people who do such things. They're called autodidacts.  Many great contributions can be attributed to such people. I could name many notable autodidacts but in relevancy to your question, Srinivasa Ramanuja, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Walter Pitts may provide inspiration.
My experience with self-learning began with aviation. Out of high school I wanted to learn to fly, but I couldn’t afford to go to a "pilot mill". I read the books and found a mentor. I would study at night and we would fly in the day. Eventually I made it to my commercial license, but decided airline piloting wasn't the career for me.
Then I decided to go to University for physics and engineering. I left after two years because of my frustrations with the system. I contacted companies like Dassault systems and Adobe and asked for student versions of their software. I acquired "less than authentic" versions of Comsol multi physics and Matlab. I read books and watched videos on YouTube and learned to use the software. Eventually I was proficient enough to get a mechanical/systems engineering job. I was able to get the job without a degree because I proved that I could do the job of several people. Progressively, I took on the roles of researcher, designer, engineer, and programmer. Now I both design and build the robotics for the purpose of manufacturing specialty custom products, and I love doing it.
Next, I began studying chemistry in my spare time. Again, I read the material and watched YouTube. I invested money and bought the equipment to build a laboratory. (This is the part when you’re usually told “don’t try this at home”… but all I will say is that curiosity can be as useful as it is precarious).
I'm 26 years old and I will be applying for my first patent in 2 days (self-drafted) and forming my own company all thanks to self-taught knowledge.
However, you should know that this path is not easy. It requires enormous dedication. Most nights I come home and teach myself what is required to succeed the next day. Add in family, friends, a significant other and life in general, and the pressure can build quite quickly.
You have to stay positive. There are many times I've questioned taking the path less traveled as they say. There will likely be many zetetic influences, especially in the beginning of your endeavor. Social skeptics seem to be a universal constant.
One more thing worth noting - Always be open minded and on the lookout for mentors. I've had several mentors whom I learned a great deal from, and many of them entered my life unexpectedly.
So in conclusion, if you have the aptitude and the ambition then go for it, and give it your all. What's the worst that could happen? You may lose money? You may have to go back to school? But no matter what, you'll acquire new perspectives in life. You'll still net knowledge and neither of those can be can be considered a zero gain.
P.s.
Some relevant quotes:
"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education." ~ Albert Einstein
"I loved education, which is why I spent as little time as possible in school." ~ Karl Hess
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." ~ Albert Einstein
“I have not trodden through the conventional regular course which is followed in a University course, but I am striking out a new path for myself. I have made a special investigation of divergent series in general and the results I get are termed by the local mathematicians as startling." ~ Srinivasa Ramanujan

On the other hand, you are probably not Ramanujan.

Well that's one way to look at it. The old Occam's razor approach. Best not start making assumptions leading to one individual out of some many having high potential. However, I've always been more fond of newtons flaming laser sword. Not only does it have a much cooler name but the ultimate burden of proof is with MKR.

At any rate, I think that MKR's initial inquiry is a wonderful question in general. Even if situations like his/her are not wide spread at the moment, I'm inclined to believe it will be a cause célèbre in the near future. The current higher education system (at least in the U.S,) is in certain ways reminiscent of the events leading to the French Revolution. I hope my former correlation isn't taken to strongly. I'm only saying that if scientific progression is possible in unconventional ways we should not suppress them. Who knows, peer discussions like these could become increasingly useful.

You do understand that those Youtube videos you watched for chemistry or the chemistry books you read, were actually prepared by people with university degrees or higher and not some unknown experimenting on their mother's basement. That alone proves that university education works (even if it did not work for you) since it makes people capable of passing knowledge even through books or videos.

@Alexandros I agree with you. That is proof that the status quo works for the bulk of the population. I appreciate how well university education has worked for our society as a whole. Then again gas lamps worked just fine until electric lighting. ; ) I'm just messing around, that analogy is extreme. I posted in this thread because I've seen people struggle in traditional education because of the system not their intelligence. We live in the age of information, the tools are available, so for some people it makes since to avoid the politics, bureaucracy, and crippling cost of college.

@CaptainCodeman Of course!  And I'm sure many people did tell him just that.  But that doesn't contradict the fact that most people that idiots on the internet say will never amount to anything are not actually under-appreciated world-class genius autodidacts.

@JeffE But what then is the point of making a statistical point?  Your marriage will probably fail, if it hasn't already.  Furthermore, as you yourself admit that any successful person would ignore comments such as yours, why put yourself in a position where only idiots will listen to you?

@CaptainCodeman I am not arguing that he probably won't be successful mathematician.  I am arguing that he is probably not a once-in-a-century under-appreciated world-class genius autodidact.  Surely the difference is obvious.  Even if you are good at soccer, but you are probably not Lionel Messi.

17th-century mathematicians operating under completely different circumstances are not good examples, and the reason Pitts and Ramanujan are famous is because they are rare. Chances are really, really good that the OP is not some genius autodidact - and even if he is, things have changed enough that he still probably won't be taken very seriously. Besides, Ramanujan lived in poverty and Pitts had patrons.

You need a Bachelors degree. Having worked in government labs (USA) there are many researchers that have a BS in math, physics, or engineering, and nothing beyond that. (It doesn't work like that for chemistry or biology, generally.)
You shouldn't focus so much on the education... the true purposes are 1) clear the minimum hurdle of the bureaucracy in order to apply for the job you want 2) prove to the employeer that you're valuable. The BS in Math can do both of those things. It's essentially impossible to do that without some kind of certification.

...enrollment in universities which costs A LOT for just BSc...

That's what loans are for. Again referencing those government labs: I may be green with envy, but some of those people were hideously overpaid. You'll have no problem paying off the loan, even if you don't receive a scholarship.
If you really want to avoid school, there are 1) accelerated programs 2) internship programs for credit while you're doing your degree 3) if you become well-liked by a professor, there are normally directed research credits you can take (so you can avoid class). I did all of these.

The degree isn't a big issue as you think it is. Just continue studying math on your own. When you've mastered most of the math curriculum, you just contact some university and ask if you can do fast track exams for most subjects. If you show some exceptional talent in some subject, then you'll likely catch the attention of some professor, who will put severe pressure on you to become his/her Ph.D student. You'll produce a lot of work together, you'll travel all around the World, visiting many conferences where you present your work.

You have seen too many times the "Good Will Hunting" movie. The world does not work like that.

This can happen, but it is significantly more complex than this really. In particular, most potential prodigies who intentionally seek to avoid the normal flow of things rarely make it. Yes, nontraditional approaches can work out, but they must be done very carefully, if the individual really wants to have a chance to make an impact.

But what I'm suggesting is petty much  the normal flow for students who are far ahead (unlike what the OP suggests he/she should do). You just study and sit the exams ahead of time. This is not the same as working on your own completely outside the system. Universities will usually help students who are far ahead to get the most out of their talents.

The normal flow when it works out, yes. But it is difficult to get people's attention simply on the claim that you are good without first being part of some program, or having some independent result. Yes, an undergraduate student who challenges a graduate course or otherwise clearly demonstrates their abilities can often be spotted, but the vast majority of emails people get of the form, "I am good at mathematics" are cranks or otherwise useless. They tend to never be read or responded to. What I am suggesting is that this flow of things does work, but your answer really needs specifics.

But what I'm suggesting is petty much the normal flow for students who are far ahead — [citation needed]  Speaking as someone who was far ahead, and who now holds a faculty position... No, it really is not.

All I'm saying is that the OP could continue studying on his/her own while he/she isn't at university anyway.

The problem with this answer (in my opinion, obviously) is not so much that what it describes cannot be done but rather that what it describes is an unnecessarily difficult path to the goal.  It's kind of like saying "Don't worry if the idea of buying a car fills you with dread.  You can learn to design and build your own car from scratch!" True but...not easier, except under a very specific set of edge conditions that probably deserve to be addressed directly.

But the OP is only 15, so he/she has plenty of time to study on his/her own.  It would be different if the OP were 18. When I was 12 I started to study math from university books at my own pace. That helped me to both develop my talents and stay well ahead which gave me a lot more options later (e.g. I was free to go on vacation whenever I wanted). Also, by challenging yourself at your level, you avoid the pitfall of getting used to doing work well below your level. Later in life that can lead to failure. That's why I think the OP should work hard on math now and not worry about the degree..

Later in life that can lead to failure. — First, 18 is not "later in life", except in the most literal sense.  Second, failure is underrated.

@JeffE – Are you saying that it is good to fail?

@AdamMosheh Yes, I am saying it's good to fail.


text:
Is there any other chance for looking to the paper after rejection?
I got a rejection after minor revisions although I handled all requirements.
I got comments from two reviewers:

Reviewer #1: Good work. Like the paper.
Reviewer #2: I like these kinds of quantitative comparison papers and
think they are good for science in general.

I didn't get any notice about the grammars or the error typos except one and already corrected it, Now the comments after reviewing say

I was hoping that the authors could provide new contributions that
would be useful to other researchers.  This was not in the paper

Also, one of the Reviewer ask for correcting an abbreviation I wrote which is right, and I mentioned the reference for this abbreviation with the replies to the comments.
What should I do ? Is there any chance to get the editor to look again at the paper?
If the paper doesn't have new contributions, why then it enters to minor revisions with some normal comments?

Hi, this question is hard to answer without knowing what the editor said, having read the comments. I don't think the part about correcting an abbreviation is relevant?

After the initial review of the paper by our editorial board, the recommendation is that the submission is below the expected high technical quality required for this journal and must be rejected in its current version.

Don't think reviewers are knowledgeable and that the editor will trust them.  I have been a reviewer whereby I rejected a paper and other reviewers said accept.  Main reason: I provided a detailed review with justifications and I'm a senior member of the community.

@user20133451 please, don't destroy the existing question by deleting its contents.

Is this your first paper? What you describes happens a lot (at least in my experience). The best way to handle this situation is to improve the paper as much as you can/want and send it to a different journal.

Just to warn you that ''minor revisions'' and ''major revisions'' can be somewhat subjective.  I have had major revisions that were fairly easy to implement and apparently minor revisions which I could not deal with and led to rejection.

Your paper is not being rejected because it is wrong. It is being rejected because it doesn't contain anything new. It's like, if I were to write a paper that proves that 2 + 2 = 4 (because 2 = 1 + 1 and 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4), then that proof is not wrong, but it will also never be published.
This particular reject reason:

I was hoping that the authors could provide new contributions that would be useful to other researchers. This was not in the paper

Is very damning. As long as this this reason is true, most reputable journals will likely reject your paper.
You address this comment by adding more results. Superficial changes won't do it. You need either more analysis, more experiments, etc., or you need an argument as to why your paper does provide something new. The latter probably means a significantly rewritten introduction.
As it is, an appeal to this journal is likely to fail. You could try to submit to another journal, but it'll be important to fix the above objection first.
Edit:

If the paper doesn't have new contributions, why then it enters to minor revisions with some normal comments?

It's hard to say without knowing the first decision letter or the contents of the paper. However, it's rather common for editors/reviewers to give the author a chance to address the raised issues. If for the first decision the reviewer had already expressed doubts about the novelty of the paper, then they might be expecting you to explain what exactly your contribution is in the revision. They might expect you to spell out exactly what you've done that's new. This is arguably a minor revision, because it's something you ought to know well already and so should be able to address quickly.
A minor revision decision is not a sign that your paper is going to be accepted. For example, I've given minor revision decisions before the formal review process even started, because the paper was written in incomprehensible English and the recommendation was for the authors to get it proofread by a native English speaker.

if the paper doesn't has a new contributions , why then it enter to minor revisions with some normal comments !!!!!

@user20133451 I don't know, because I don't know what the reviewers wrote in the first review. However, I'd guess that it's because during the first review the reviewer already had doubts about the novelty of the paper, but wanted to give you a chance to explain yourself. Your explanation was unsatisfactory, resulting in a reject recommendation.

"If for the first decision the reviewer had already expressed doubts about the novelty of the paper..." -- my interpretation of the question is that the first two comments quoted ("Good work..." and "I like these kinds...") were the only significant comments in the initial reviews, i.e., there was no comment on lack of novelty until after the revision, which is understandably frustrating to OP.

If you're lucky, your paper may be published anyway despite not containing anything novel. Example: calculus "invented" in 1994.

If the paper doesn't have new contributions, why then it enters to minor revisions with some normal comments?

What could have happened here is that at first glance, the editor did not desk reject the paper and sent it out for review. The two reviewers in the first round did not think your paper was bad and suggested only minor revisions were necessary. In the second round, the first two reviewers were not available anymore (which is not an unlikely scenario) and another reviewer was brought in who had less of a good opinion of your paper and suggested to reject, which led to the editor rejecting it in the end. Or one of the first round reviewers did a more thorough review in the second round and found shortcomings initially missed.
In the end, although in an ideal world it should be, peer review is not an unbiased system and the quality of reviews is not always stellar and not all reviewers will be a good match for the articles they review. From my own experience both as an reviewer and a reviewee, it is not unlikely that one person really only has minor comments and thinks a paper is worth publishing with some minor changes, while the next has three pages of remarks and feels that only major revisions will make the very same article publication ready, if ever.

If this happens (new reviewer invited) it should be noticeable by the authors, since the reviewer will have a different ID.

Submit to a lower-ranking journal.

Correct advice, but technically not answering the question at all.

I think it answers the question posed in the title.

It is unlikely that you will get any better result from this journal.
You weren't rejected for minor things like correcting abbreviations. The third review is saying that there isn't sufficient innovation in the paper (nothing new) to warrant publication. The editor seems to agree.
You might get a different else from another journal, but probably not from this one. If the third review says more, consider what they say carefully.

"I was hoping that the authors could provide new contributions that would be useful to other researchers. This was not in the paper" and "I like these kinds of quantitative comparison papers and think they are good for science in general." are not contradictory; it just means your approach was good but you failed to provide anything new.

The reviewer who stated

"I was hoping that the authors could provide new contributions that
would be useful to other researchers. This was not in the paper."

May very well be wrong. If you believe that your paper does in fact make new contributions, you may do well to point them out in a new version of the paper. I see that done in papers all the time.
If you do not believe that your paper makes new contributions, then I guess there is your answer. You may be able to expand on the paper so that it does make new contributions.

The pragmatic answer is to earnestly address the reviewer comments and then submit to a lower ranking journal. Realistically, this may be the best chance for the paper.
Also, make a note to modify your paper writing process going forward so that this is less likely to happen .

source: Stack Exchange

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

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text:
How can a working student reference a completed co-authored manuscript in their online portfolio?
TLDR: Please advise how a tech professional/working student may go about referencing co-authorship on manuscripts that were submitted to academic publications in a resume or online portfolio?
Background: I'm a final year BSc student at one of the major NYC schools working in a data analyst/assistant role under a research scientist at the med school. My degree and career path is more industry-oriented than academic as an aspiring data scientist.
Although my supervisor is a professor at the med school, my work is not funded by the school—I was hired on the basis of my professional experience with statistical analysis tools. I'm paid through the business of the head research scientist and main author on the studies, who independently funds the projects and is based out of another US university. I am included as a co-author on two submitted manuscripts for statistical data analysis performed for the projects.
Is there an appropriate way to demo my work in an online portfolio whether or not it is accepted for publication?

You can definitely mention these manuscripts in your resume or online portfolio. To do that, you give the manuscript title and full author list as it appears in the submission, and mention the word submitted either in a section heading or with the reference itself. If you want to explain more about your contribution to these manuscripts, you can write a brief paragraph in which you describe the relevant points.
For a resume that is not publicly accessible, you could even add specific information from the manuscript, such as abstract, figures that show your contribution, or even the full manuscript as might be helpful for your resume. However, for that you need approval of the other authors. Best would be to inform the lead author and the corresponding author which information you want to use where and ask them for approval. They can coordinate with any other co-authors if necessary. Also, you clearly need to indicate that what you show is from a submitted, not yet accepted / published, work.
For a publicly accessible online portfolio, you should usually not disclose information beyond what is stated in the first paragraph of this answer. If all authors agree, it would be possible to publish the manuscript as a pre-print, and you could then link to that from your portfolio.

In addition to silvado's answer, let me make a few remarks:

Submitted is the appropriate status for a paper that has been submitted to a journal or conference and is possibly under review. Don't specify the journal which you have submitted to, because you don't know in advance whether it will be accepted there or not.
Once the paper is accepted, you can modify the status as in press, and in this case you can specify the journal. Moreover, nowadays, many journals put online the final revision of the manuscript within 24 h of the acceptance, and assign already the DOI: in such a case, you can also add the link to your online portfolio.

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


text:
Is there the risk of repercussions after making a formal complaint?
If I make a formal complaint against my PhD supervisor, where I have evidence of them failing to comply with university policy in Australia, is it reasonable to be afraid that they could essentially try to "blacklist" me (or any other repercussion), as I'm in a close-knit field? Are formal complaints even taken seriously?

What regulations are they breaking, and why is this so important to you?

By the time you get to filing a formal complaint, all bets are off - the relationship is broken.

I agree with the previous comment.  I suggest you make the complaint after you've changed supervisor.   If you want your supervisor to change his/her behavior and still continue to working with him/her, then do it informally.

The big issue here is that most of the important things that an advisor does are well beyond what is formally required of them.  An advisor doing a kind of "work-to-rule" is not going to be an effective advisor for you.  If there's really no way to work out this situation directly with the advisor, or at worst some sort of informal meeting with the director of graduate studies, it seems likely that you will need a new advisor.  The concern you ask about (getting "blacklisted") is not really the main thing to be concerned about and is much less likely, they're unlikely to advocate for you but it's relatively unlikely that they'll take on some kind of time-consuming vendetta.  That said, you do need someone to advocate for you, which is why you'd need to look for a new advisor if your relationship with this one has completely broken down.

Assuming that Australia is like most other places, yes it is reasonable to afraid, as well as potentially dangerous to your career. If someone is not adhering to policy in some area, they may well be someone who thinks more highly of themselves than is warranted and will brook no contrary talk, especially a perceived attack.
In general it is a bad idea to get into a serious dispute with your advisor. They can hurt you in a lot of ways if so inclined.
However, if their breaking policy affects you directly, then you might explore other options than a direct assault to get your needs met. It may be that a "quiet word" with someone would be more safe and effective than a confrontation. A department head, dean, or even another faculty member, perhaps.
But, if you are willing to change advisors and even universities in an extreme case then there aren't likely to be long term consequences, though it is possible for an especially powerful-evil advisor.

Even if the advisor is professional enough not to respond by actively trying to 'hurt you', it seems inevitable that making a formal complaint against them is likely to obliterate any sense of goodwill that currently exists. Rightly or wrongly, many things in academia are much easier if you have a supervisor who is willing to support you and put in effort on your behalf.

Agree that if a formal complaint is necessary, it's time to request a change of supervisors, and it may be worth considering whether that change of supervisors is enough to resolve the issue to OP's satisfaction. OP has every right to make a formal complaint if the supervisor has violated policy, but shouldn't feel obligated to do so if the personal/professional costs are too high. (Assuming this is a "supervisor is being a jerk to me" kind of issue, and not a "supervisor is doing unauthorised human subjects experiments" level of misconduct, anyway!)


text:
Collaborative project started by a post-doc taken over by PI
I am a young post-doc working under an ERC-contract (thus, I do not have my own grant or fellowship). I recently attended a conference where I met some people and we discussed possible collaborations with their company. This is a company who is really making new developments and it is normally difficult to get collaborations with them. Nevertheless, after a nice discussion they showed interest in the project I was presenting to them and in the prospective things we could do together.
When I came back to the lab, I told my PI about this possible collaboration and explained to her that we would need to have a meeting with the person responsible for R&D in the company to fully establish our collaboration. My PI told me that as I was very busy with other stuff, she could prepare the slides for the meeting. We were then going through the presentation together and (substantially) modifying it based on my comments. She suggested that she could introduce the project during the meeting because she is better than me in "selling the project" (what is totally true) and I agreed. Everything went well and we started the collaboration.
My problem is that I know she is now asking other people in the group to work on this project and she is exchanging emails with these people and our collaborators without even including me. I feel that I brought this collaboration to the lab, I made the company get interested in developing their technique in our model system, I presented the technique to my PI and thought about the scientific questions we could answer by applying it, thus, I feel this is my project.
I also have to say that we are a big group of 10 people, but the borders of each one's project are not well delimited and we all work together to answer broad questions. I would then understand that this is my project within the big project of the lab. But I still do not think it is fair that she is now leading this part of the project, leaving me out. Am I wrong?

Thanks all for your comments. I post a common asnwer to all of them because they are related. Yes, my PI is a supernice person and I want to talk to her about the issue. But I come from a totally different PhD experience where talking to the PI was imposible, so I am not used to that and I wanted to know in advance how reasonable are my concerns.
Regarding having discussed the involvement in the project in advance, it is true that I did not clearly stated that I wanted to be involved. I was assuming it was assumed. I will learn for the future.
I did not want to be too long in describing the situation, so I summarized, but the negociation with the company started already during the one-week meeting, going from them not being interested at all to be really interested. The same happend with my PI when I came back and presented her the possibility, I had to encouraged her because I thought it was a wonderful project that would help to answer many of the questions we have. And finally, in the online meeting we had all together, my PI was reintroducing the project, but they were saying that they were already very interested in working together. Thus, I was assuming that if I was putting so much interest in making it to work, it was clear that I wanted to work in the project. But I do not want to be the PI of the project, I do not want to be the one taking the decissions about other people working in the project or not, or what other people will be doing. I can understand is not my role. I just would like to be an active part of the project. I though that was also being a post-doc. Not only doing experiments that someone ask you to do.

" I do not want to be the one taking the decissions about other people". I could suggest things, but I would not be the one deciding because I am not the PI. If there is no half way between being a PI and just doing experiments someone ask you to do, which is the difference between a technitian, an ingeneer, a PhD student, a post-doc, etc? Why so many different names if it is just being a PI or doing experiments someone else ask you to do without any other implication?

Well, there is a difference between "making the decisions" and "being involved in the decision-making". If your goal is to stay in academia, you will need to take on PI duties on some point, and having some involvement with project management (formal or informal) during your postdoc is definitely valuable training for that.

This is what I thought it was going to be my role in this project. And as I already said after reading the comments, I did not say anything in advanced, I assumed it was like that. So totally my fault and I will learn from this. But I am happy to read that actually there are intermediate situations (at least some people thinks so).

Could this be summarized as — you want to be treated as the “junior PI” or “PI in training” on this project? Could you ask to essentially have insight (cc on emails) into all the PI related tasks and to have a weekly meeting to discuss managing the project so you can take some parts of that work (as appropriate) and get a sense of all the moving parts (as a learning experience)?

Am I the only one here that doesn’t know what a PI is? Private Investigator???

Thank you all, your comments have been very useful!!

Have you tried speaking with your PI about your dissatisfaction about the situation? Because she might not be aware that you are unhappy, she is just doing this as she always does. We have a similar system at my institute, the people who acquire funding or projects do not necessarily work on said projects - the work rather gets distributed to whoever has the time, capacity and sufficient expertise on the topic. This system is not (meant to be) fair or unfair, but rather ensures that the work gets done.
So I would suggest that if you would like to be involved with this specific project, talk to your PI. Tell her how you feel about it and that you very much want to be a part of it. There is no guarantee that she will say yes, but if you don't bring it up chances are very low that you will be involved from the sound of it.

To answer the actual question in the post - no, not unfair. Like others already mentioned - if you wanted to be the PI, including formally, you had to voice that at the very start. As it stands, you were most likely deemed too inexperienced to handle the project management.
You have not said a word about logistics and it would seem that to you, being a PI is chiefly about the scientific contribution. In most places I am aware of, they have the burden of allocating funds, handling reports, assigning work to others... While you should be getting some kind of that experience as a post-doc, I suspect you are just not quite there to navigate financial aspects and negotiations.
As for working in that project or possibly being a co-PI, voice your desires while you still can do it reasonably. There is no implicit understanding that you bag everyone you rub shoulders on a conference with and claim any collaboration with them under your name - there are usually a lot of leads to follow at any given moment, and you should not be hoarding them. Or expect that the others perceive you as deeply invested in a project until you say so. Preparing a presentation is not generally seen as a big deal immediately implying that you want to continue working on the topic: it is a rather routine task. That is not to say your situation is not typical.
Do not hold grudge against your PI and just talk to her. It is likely she is just trying to optimize the workflow for the entire lab and there is no second, malicious meaning to all that. It is not the most considerate of her, true, but... not unfair. You two just value the project itself and transgressions to date differently, somewhat akin to a kid who wants their painting to be hung on the fridge and an absent-minded parent :)


text:
Is Academia.edu's "mentions" feature real?
I just got an email from Academia.edu saying that my name has been mentioned two times (Edit: now up to 150 papers!), but to see the mentions you have to upgrade to a premium account at 8.25AUD/month.
This seems very unlikely to me, because

The name being mentioned is my nick name (and a very uncommon nick name!) and not my proper/working name
I'm not an academic, and haven't published anything! I have done undergrad research and a little bit since then, but nothing published, and also nothing really worth referencing.

Is the "mentions" feature basically a scam?

I just noticed that the mentions page now says this:

We search for mentions of the name "Dannii Willis", "Willis, Dannii", "D Willis" or "Willis, D" in 20 million papers, books, drafts, theses, and syllabi on Academia, and around the web.

Which means that their count of mentions (currently fluctuating between 137 and 152 for me) must also include all of the David Willises, Dennis Willises, and Deborah Willises. What a joke!

Edit:
By searching on Google for my name in quotes and site:academia.edu I did find one paper that referenced a very old blog post I had written (and forgotten I had written!) But that's only one reference instead of two.
I guess unless anyone else has more data on the illegitimacy of this feature I'll have to call it real. But still a waste of money of course!

What do you mean by "scam"? There has been various criticism of academia.edu's "premium" features, and how it illustrates the problems of social networks that first attempt to gain traction, and then exploit their users: https://www.forbes.com/sites/drsarahbond/2017/01/23/dear-scholars-delete-your-account-at-academia-edu/#4e49379b2d62

Despite the fact that you haven't published anything, is there still any chance that people might have noticed your work (for example, because you contribute to open-source software)?

I suspect that whatever mentions academia.edu can find you can also find by googling for your name in doublequotes.

@darijgrinberg Hmm, you're right, there was one result which quoted an old blog post I wrote.

Scam or not, it doesn't seem like its worth the monthly fee.

I had a blog (just a few posts, really) a long time ago. Abandoned and offline now. I can only think of Quora posts. Yet academia claims that my name was mentioned in "6 papers". I find that suspicious.

Didn't Classmates.com offer a similar service over email promotions years ago? They suggested that friends had been asking about you and when you signed up (essentially providing them with the only content they have available to sell) it turned out to be false. They faced a massive class action suit and I wouldn't be surprised if Academia will also.

I know I'm suspicious because no one should be citing me. I have a unique name so this type of mistake is strange but suspect.

@curiousdannii, that's related to a bug we fixed last week in how we report to you the name variants we search for. I believe that we wouldn't search for "D Willis" or "Willis, D" for you. You can check the page where you saw that issue, and it should be resolved (DM me if you don't have the link).

@JackMaris The blurb has indeed been changed, but the number of papers it claims mention me is the same.

It is so clearly a hoax, trying to get more subscribers. Please, Academia.edu software engineers, do not try the "we make errors" card, as it is not believable.
I do believe they are legit, but this mentions baiting reeks of dark patterns. If they continue doing this, they will lose credibility with the public, and end up losing the one thing people are willing to pay for, especially in research: a trusted reputation.

This is definitely a scam. (+1 for Dominique Kenens)
I registered 7 years ago, and haven't logged in for many years. I'm definitely not a premium user. Still I have received several of such emails from academia.edu. The latest one comes just today:

A paper published by a member of the Department of Nematology
  department at Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources mentions
  the name "John Doe"

Sometimes, the emails include the words "famous", "well-known" or something like that, such as: a well-known researcher of ABC has mentioned the name "John Doe".
This is really a stupid scam because I'm in Computer Science, and I don't have time to check the dictionary what is nematology or whatever.
My name is very rare in my country (Google returns only 3 other results and none of them are doing research). Moreover, I added a hyphen to my name in publication, since our language consists of only one-syllable words. So I highly doubt that this is just a classification mistake.
I think they want me to pay for my curiosity, but I have only less than 200 citations, and Google scholar tells me immediately when a paper citing my papers appears.

FYI: Nematology is the scientific discipline concerned with the study of nematodes, or roundworms.

I'm a software engineer at Academia.edu. We have a feature which allows users to see which papers mention which users.
That feature is only available to premium users. During the first month, you can email us to cancel and we'll refund you. So users can test-drive the mentions feature, and if they decide they don't like it, they can cancel. We think it's useful, and we don't want users to be coerced into using it.
Also, we do make mistakes. Sometimes we mistake a user for another academic with the same name! But Google finding only one paper with a name on academia.edu does not mean that there is only one paper that mentions that name on the site.

Thanks.  Next time we have a question about Google, I hope a Google software engineer will come and provide his side of that question!  And similarly for other companies...

@GEdgar +1. Actually, there is a bunch of questions on Google Scholar profiles, citations etc.

As many others have said, it is not at all clear why a site whose mission statement is the support of open access would charge at all for advanced search features.  Google scholar certainly does not, and the burden of proof is on your company to explain what you are offering that google scholar does not.  "We think it's useful, and we don't want users to be coerced into using it." The way that you're marketing the premium account is clearly a form of coercion.  Why not just offer the first month free upfront?  And why not offer it to all your uses?

I am highly skeptical. I regularly get emails incorrectly asserting I’ve been mentioned in other people’s papers, and have a rather uncommon name. I closed my account because I decided your service was a scam in significant part due to this feature.

Hi Jack, can you confirm they recently changed to also include mentions that just match your first name's initial? Such a change must have greatly increased the false positives for many people.

I'm curious how academia.edu collected the email of the person whose name is on the paper. As of May 2018, I still receive their spam

Why are people upvoting this "answer"? Or should I say free advertising...?

I think there are many ways to provide mention data rather than scanning the entire document that are not always correct. Maybe mention other person directly after publishing so the other user can also search all paper by that user. It's more valuable rather that this.

I have a college email address that was used when I was researching one paper, so I was easily able to look back at the number of times I get emails from Academia.edu, telling me that my name has been published in a paper.
Essentially, I have gotten the email every three weeks or so for that past two years (since I did my one-off research). I have a very unique name (I'm the only one in the world with it, actually), so to be cited in papers having to do with biostatistics, allergy, immunology, cognitive functions, mental health, and more is beyond ludicrous. My research had to do with food and the arts...
I'm calling SCAM ALERT!

I agree that the "mentions" emails (1) are just trying to convince me to pay to subscribe and (2) are becoming less and less likely to be true mentions of my name. Today's was "A paper published in Biotechnology and Bioengineering mentions the name "---- --------"." (Using my real first and last names.) But I know for a fact that I am the only person in the world with my name if you include my first and last names, because they are a mix of ethnicities. And that includes all people who have ever lived, until a distant cousin happens to name someone with my first name - which isn't bloody likely.
And yes, I am a researcher, and I have a free account with Academia.edu, but my field is not at all related to Biotech/BE.
These solicitations from Academia.edu have definitely ramped up in frequency and detail in the past month, and it's really putting me off.

Total scam.
Since they have a 30-day-money-back guarantee, I have checked out the mentions to my name they have spammed me for years. There were 10-15 mentions of my name and none of the mentions were real.
When I contacted customer support to get my money back. They did a full refund but they have made an odd remark about "It is RARE for their algorithm to list mentions that are ALL fake".
Just put their fake mention emails to the spam folder, that's where it belong.

I receive these messages on a weekly basis, with texts like "mentioned in influential papers" or "mentioned in a paper published in The Journal of xxx". I have a unique name, so it is clearly not correct.
I have complained for two years about this scam-construction, but all I get is "I'll be happy to share this with our Mentions team for you" and "We apologize for any inconvenience. Please let me know how else I can help you in the meantime."
I have also asked for just a confirmation that the documents exist, bc I would gladly pay to read them, if my name really was mentioned.
Definitely scam.

Its not exactly a scam, but it is grossly exaggerating hits. I routinely get emails saying that there are hits on "Stirling Westrup", but there never are. There are often hits on 'S. Westrup' but none of them are me. Frankly, I consider this to be false advertising because what is being told in the email is completely false. If the email said "Stirling Westrup - when we search on variation on your name we get 15 hits!" It would be true, but not nearly so compelling. So, they chose false advertising over dull truth. Not a good sign for something that calls itself Academic.

AE finds mentions of my not-uncommon name, including my first initial instead of my full first name. Across the year or two that I have subscribed, AE has found several thousand mentions (not as many as Google Scholar has) of which about 10% are mentions of my actual name in various forms (first initial instead of first name, etc.). I consider the AE service cost-effective.

I get e-mails from a.e every few weeks saying someone mentioned by name, trying to entice me to pay in order to learn more. I already try to keep track of who cites me. It's easy because few people do. :) It was easy to figure out which citations a.e meant every time.

they were all legitimate. My last name is relatively rare, but I do have some prolifically publishing relatives with the same last name, and even one cousin in Belgium with the same first and last names. Impressively, a.e never attributed other people's papers to me.

I already know all the citations they found, and quite a few others. They missed quite a few.

They refer to the same citations differently in different e-mails, as if trying to create the false impression that they have more than they really do.

I have no plans to pay anyone to search for my citations.

I have a unique name (in the world!) and Academia.edu claimed that 109 people mentioned my name in the full text of the paper.
My research is not that interesting or popular.

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


text:
Best aspect ratio for conference presentations?
As it is relatively easy to setup an arbitrary aspect ratio for my Beamer presentation, I am wondering what would be the best aspect ratio for my presentation slides?
I think the 4:3 aspect ratio would be suitable for lecture notes as it leaves no blank margins when I print out 4 on 1 handouts. But for screening purpose, would it be necessary to go for 16:9? As suggested by this online article, in most cases 16:9 is more suitable, however in the end it is a matter of preference.
Any suggestions besides that?

Why not contact the organising committee/chair? and just ask what the projector is?

@Oxinabox I did ask and the answer is 16:10...my question is mainly to ask for some general suggestion. My problem arises since I use heavily customized vector art background. Dont want to screw up the aspect ratio.

@TroyWoo - well, perhaps there is the problem. Why do you feel you need to use a heavily customized background? Does it help convey the point of your talk, or do you think it looks cool? If the latter, consider that it might just be distracting to many members of your audience.

A 16x9 aspect ration will fit into a 16x10 projection...

@JonCuster Thanks for your concern but perhaps you jumped to your conclusion. Heavily customized does not necessarily mean heavily colored or decorated, or cool. The reason that I choose to customize my Beamer background is for aesthetic reason. Of course I would bear in mind that it must remain within the boundary of not distracting or offending any of my audience. For your concern, I do believe that no matter what I did with my presentation, I may always end up distracting someone unintentionally, just like my post.

In the following, when talking about displaying a presentation with a certain aspect ratio on a projector with a certain aspect ratio, I always assume that the presentation’s aspect ratio is preserved and black bars are added at the appropriate sides. Never have the projector digitally warp your presentation: It destroys hinting¹ and may make fine lines invisible.
The best aspect ratio is the one of the very projector you are presenting on, as you can make best use of the space. In particular with projectors, you do not want any content to be unnecessarily downscaled as their resolution is very low to begin with and the projection area may be rather small (and thus difficult to see for the audience). An okay 16:9 presentation may be rendered unreadably small, if displayed on a 4:3 projector.
Now, depending on your presentation and how dynamical you program it, adapting to a different solution may be a rather simple thing with Beamer (apparently in contrast to Powerpoint, going by the article you linked). I once changed a presentation of mine from 4:3 to 16:9 in about half an hour, and this included recompiling complex animations and a lot of perfectionism – a “normal” presentation could be adapted much faster.
If you do not want to adapt, the choice essentially depends on the average age and purpose of projectors in your conference venues (I would guess that newer projectors or projectors mainly used for movies are rather 16:9). Thus it depends on your field and probably also your continent. Anyway, most projectors I have encountered so far had a 4:3 resolution and most of those who hadn’t had a resolution very close to it. I’ve only encountered a single 16:9 projector. I thus use 4:3 as the default.

¹ To give you an idea, the following shows this sentence as natively rendered by my computer (with hinting) and the same text digitally stretched or squeezed:

If a 4:3 gets stretched horizontally, it won't lose legibility, though it may look lousy. Going the other way, text may suffer and graphics may lose fine detail altogether ... or, worse, lose some vertical lines.

@keshlam: Actually, if you (digitally) stretch a fully rendered presentation, you destroy hinting, which may severely impede legibility – see the edit to my answer.

Well said. Thanks. In fact, my only concern is that I used a customized background, and might need to adjust the aspect ratio in some 3rd party software. So for one presentation, I have to prepare two suites of backgrounds.

Hinting: Hmmm...

@keshlam I dont know man...I guess it is a valid point. I never heard of hinting before...now I learned something new. Can't complain XD.

Based on the example renderings, it looks least legible when text is compressed, and comparably legible when stretched. This seems to conflict somewhat with the comment that stretched presentations destroy hinting leading to poor legibility.

@jvriesem: Humans are capable of deciphering a lot of things, fr xmpl ths txet. This does not mean that they are easy to read.

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


text:
How to introduce multiple authors of a research paper in content?
I want to introduce the findings of a case study in my report, but it has four authors and I would like name them in when introducing it.
What would be the best way to do this, or is the below perfectly acceptable?

Andria A, Paul S, Derek B and Howard C provide an interesting insight in their case study...

First one, et al. (2014) provide an interesting insight in their case study...

Or First one et al. [APDH14]

More accurately: "Andria \emph{et al.}~\cite{APDH14}"

@JeffE I'm pretty sure a specific markup language's code for something is pretty situational form of "more accurately".

How to handle this depends on your field.  If your field has a notion of first author, then "[name of first author] et al." is appropriate.  In fields like math that use alphabetical ordering, I'd strongly recommend naming all the authors, since "et al." could be read as diminishing the credit later authors get.  I would not be happy if my name disappeared into an "et al."
The sentence "[last name of author 1], [last name of author 2], [last name of author 3] and [last name of author 4] provide an interesting insight in their case study..." sounds fine to me.  (I.e., the same sentence as in the question, except that I assume "Andria A, Paul S, Derek B and Howard C" are just stand-ins for the actual names, and not actually a proposal for how to format the names.)

Sorry, but I think that "Andria A, Paul S, Derek B and Howard C provide..." is actually not that great, and I would certainly suggest it be reworded if I were editing a paper in which it appeared.

"Provide an interesting insight" isn't how I'd phrase things, but I don't see anything wrong with it.  Aside from that, is your objection to the list of names?  First names and initials sound funny, but I'm assuming they are just a placeholder for real names (not that anyone is proposing actually referring to people that way).

Having a long list of names (especially with initials, as you propose) is unusual, unwieldy, and inelegant - in my opinion.

Don't know why you are being down voted. In math it would be frowned upon to put et al for any paper that was 4 authors or less. In other fields et al will be acceptable.

For more than two authors, it's generally the norm to say something like "As Andria, et al. (2014) discuss, ..."

it's not good style to start a sentence with name(s) of author(s) — What is this I don't even

The question is not about citation, as with a works cited page, but whether or not it is appropriate to introduce all authors when first stating the title of the work. ie "In such and such article by author A, B, C, and D...."
I believe the question is: Must all authors A-D be noted or is it acceptable with less? In this case I'd say yes it is just fine as is.


text:
Exact results found, but not reported
I am writing a physics paper, and I have decided not to write down explicit equations I have found since they are incredibly long. Instead I just report plots showing the behaviour resulting from these equations.
Is it deprecable to say something like the following?

We have found analytic results, but we do not report them here for sake of brevity.

considered including the equations as supplementary material?

"Please refer for the analytic results to Appendix~\ref{foo}." If you are not presenting the equations (imho this is also true for experimental data) at all, it looks like you are hiding something. If you have to move the appendix to your website later, because a journal has restrictions on the length of the paper it is fine.

Idealistically, a paper should aspire to contain all the information required for reproducing its empirical results and verifying its deductive results with reasonable effort. Just writing the suggested sentence, however, does not allow for this, as someone would have to redo your work on finding those equations from scratch.
This may drastically reduce the usefulness of your paper, as it unnecessarliy increases the amount of work other people have to put in using your results and decreases their perceived soundness (see Fermat’s Last Theorem for an extreme example). This may also be harmful from an egoistical point of view as it does not improve your popularity amongst others in your field and you may receive less citations.
Depending on how exactly your equations were derived and look like, the following ways to include or not include them may be appropriate:

From [equations derived in the paper] we can obtain closed solutions for [variables] using [standard technique or computer algebra system], which we use in the following.

From [equations derived in the paper], we obtain closed solutions for [variables] (see Appendix X).

If the target journal does not allow for appendices and has a content limit (in which case it will usually be a letter journal), the following may be acceptable:

From [equations derived in the paper] we derived analytical results for [variables]. For brevity’s sake, these results are not given here and will be published elsewhere.

Something similar may also be appropriate if you are publishing in a journal of another discipline, e.g., you are publishing in a medical journal as your equations are relevant for an imaging technique.
Either way, it should go without saying that publishing the results elsewhere should be a realistic endeavour and actually be intended. Also, if you are not giving too much away, it would be better in terms of soundness and acceptance to actually publish your analytical work first.

As always, you will likely get a better answer from someone familiar with your work and field, such as your supervisor.

I would emphasize that if a paper is missing information needed to reproduce its results, it can have a serious negative impact on other people's research process. I've been dealing with exactly this problem for a while, trying to manipulate some results of a series of theoretical papers where the derivations are not given in enough detail to allow me to reproduce them.

@DavidZ: Indeed, I included this in my answer. I wonder how one would go about publishing such derivations, which others omitted.

Replace "will be published elsewhere" with "are available in the arXiv version of this paper [##]".

@JeffE: If publishing on the ArXiv only is an accepted way in the respective field, this is only a slight variation of “will be published elsewhere”. If not, this may not be well-received by the journal or the reviewer’s. (Also, do not forget that for some journals the best you can do is publish the derivations on their own, as they do not allow ArXiv publication.)

@Wrzlprmft My reaction as a reviewer to "will be published elsewhere" is "Suuuure it will. Reject." If the missing details are on the arXiv (totally standard in physics), then they're not really missing, so I am more willing to trust the results.

And if the journal doesn't allow arXiv publication, choose a different journal.

@JeffE I agree with your general point ("will be published elsewhere" is a really bad idea), however, in some fields you have to be careful with referring to another version of the paper. So if there is no possibility to have an (online) appendix you could put the appendix as a single file on ArXiv / your website and provide a link to it in the paper.

@Wrzlprmft +1 However, "... has a content limit (in which case it will usually be a letter journal) ..." might be true in your field, it is not true in every other fields. In economics most journals have a content limit (which is in most cases very high , e.g. 50) and some even have short and long papers and it is easier to publish a short paper (~ 10-15 pages, so not a letter, usually theoretical work) than a long paper (up to ~60 pages, most of the time empirical stuff).

You might want to consider attaching a Mathematica notebook to the arxiv submission, which is something I've been seeing relatively often lately.

Can you add an appendix to the paper? If not, I think whether it is reasonable to add the statement you proposed depends on how central the analytical results are to the findings in your paper.
If the result isn't important, I think what you propose is fine.
If the analytical result is crucial, then you need to think very carefully about making the result available to a reader -- maybe an extended version of the manuscript on arxiv? Or on your website?

The result is indeed crucial. The fact is that the results are unusually long, we manipulated them through the use of Mathematica. I think is impossible to write them even on several pages...

In my field (Neuroscience), it it possible to make data or analysis software available with a publication (usually as supplementary material). You could try to take that approach -- write to the editors and ask them whether supplying supporting code is an option for you.

I strongly disagree with "If the result isn't important, I think what you propose is fine." How do you know that the result will never be important? Some papers are frequently cited for something that the authors though at that time was a minor comment. I think if the result isn't important you either do not publish it or make it "verifiable".

@giulio: You might want to edit the question to mention that the equations were generated using Mathematica, since it could make a difference in the answer. For instance, you could consider including the Mathematica code in your paper, rather than its output. That might be shorter, and easier for a reviewer to check.

I was in a somewhat similar position some time ago and decided against publishing the analytical results, since they were too long. Essentially, I was solving a linear system of equations with Mathematica, which can produce horribly long equations, which are hard to analyze any further. Also, computers might actually be faster in solving the initial linear system numerically, then evaluating long arithmetic equations. For these reasons, I did not stress that I could have written down the solution in analytical terms in the paper. I just gave the linear system and said that we produced the plot from its solutions.
In summary, I doubt that the result is crucial, when the analytical equations are several pages long. That being said, if you can make the equations available (preferably in some electronic version, since nobody is gonna type them into a computer), that is certainly a good solution.


text:
Why would a Ph.D. be awarded five years after attendance?
I recently verified a degree, and the university reported that the degree was awarded five years after attendance. In other words, the student attended from 1995 to 1998 but the degree was not awarded until 2003, five years later. Why would there be a gap between the time the student attended and the time the Ph.D. was awarded?
(Note that the years above are fictitious and the actual years were at the time of the war in Vietnam so it is possible that some kind of military service may have been involved.)

Why don't you ask the student? He will give you a more precise to you.

Or the thesis was not finished (or finalized) until some years after the required residency time at the university. Not uncommon at all, particularly in liberal arts where getting a job offer for -now- trumps quickly finishing the thesis.

In some countries there are requirements like language tests, that can delay an otherwise finished PhD

In many universities, attendance (in the sense of registering for courses and/or paying tuition) is not required for Ph.D. students once they have completed the coursework and residency requirements for the Ph.D. After thus period, the Ph.D. student can work independently with minimal (or no) supervision from the Ph.D. advisor. When the Ph.D. thesis has been written, it is usually submitted to the advisor who does the first evaluation as to whether the research is of adequate quality, and then to the Ph.D. committee (examiners), the thesis defense is scheduled. After the defense has been successfully completed, the thesis (which often undergoes revision based on the Ph.D. committee's comments and questions that arose during the thesis defense) is submitted to the University and the degree granted at the next commencement/convocation etc.  During this last period that begins with the thesis being submitted to the Ph.D. advisor, the Ph.D. student might need to be registered at the university and possibly have to pay some tuition (usually not the entire fee for a full term), but this is usually not regarded as attending the university or listed as such on CVs and job applications.  In short,
it is quite possible to have a gap between the last date of attendance and the Ph.D. degree award date.

To add an alternative answer: until recently, Oxford did not allocate graduation dates, it was up to students to sign up for a graduation ceremony, to graduate either in person or in absentia. For various reasons, there are a small number of people who didn't officially graduate for many years after passing their course.