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Referee selection : Why would an editor pass up inviting the most suitable referees?
This question is related to this one, and is dual to it in some sense.
Assume PIs A and B publish a few key papers in what turns out to be a new mini-area. Their work is well received, and they arrive at similar conclusions using complementary techniques.
Several months later, A notices an in-press paper by C, which claims to significantly improve upon the work of A and B. The paper by C is substandard, however, reflecting an evident lack of understanding.
On alerting B, A discovers that C's paper was not reviewed by either of them.
A and B agree that C's paper makes a strong, unsupported claim, and that they would certainly have flagged it as problematic (as reviewers).
What reasons could a handling editor have for choosing neither A nor B as referees, given the high relevance of their work? Replies from people with editorial experience would be especially helpful.

What makes you think they should be compelled to do so?  And even if someone had reviewed the paper, review ethics would usually indicate that they not tell other people this.

The field might be wider as A and B think.

It is sometimes acceptable for authors to request that their papers not be reviewed by a specific referee (e.g. if they fear bias or unfair treatment). The request may be granted, or not, at the editor’s discretion. So a possible explanation is that C asked for A and B not to be assigned the review. But I concur with @zibadawatimmy, a much more likely explanation is that the editor had several other, more or less equally qualified, people to consider other than A and B, and simply chose someone else.

@zibadawatimmy It is perfectly possible to accidentally discover in the course of a conversation that someone else did not review a paper. No ethical issues, as the actual referee(s) are still anonymous. The question aims to understand editorial perspectives in referee selection, so the hostile tenor of your comment is quite surprising.

@user_of_math That was entirely not my point at all.  Let's just cover my second sentence...  "I asked A and he said he didn't review it", assuming A abides by standard reviewer ethics, provides you essentially no information: that's what A should always say.  A, in fact, might have reviewed it. A, in fact, might be really good at giving you the impression that he's quite unfamiliar with it. My previous comment, as well as this one, are to point out that you are basing your opinions and reactions on assumptions that are questionable at their best.

@zibadawatimmy Although I agree that, for the sake of reviewer anonymity, A should answer "did you review this paper" the same way whether or not he actually did review it, I'd rather say "I don't think I should answer that" than "no". Of curse I'd have to remember to use the same answer when I didn't  review the paper.

Many possible reasons, although there is of course no way of finding out which one applied here (if any at all):

Editor E believes that, being big animals in the field, neither A nor B will have time to review.
Variation: E is a junior researcher and doesn't think that he has the stature to ask A or B for a review.
E is not on good terms with A and B.
E believes that A and B have some sort of personal problem with the author and doesn't want to put them into a position of a conflict of interest.
E has recently given both A and B difficult papers to review and doesn't want to overload them.
The author has asked for neither A nor B to be reviewers.
E simply has not paid attention to the previous seminal paper and so asked colleagues he knows are well versed in the general field.
E actually knows the field well herself, and so self-assigned herself the paper, plus a couple of grad students who should learn how to review papers.

Often reviewers are selected for expertise in the subject matter, such as the application, rather than the techniques used. If new techniques are used in a relatively new field, it can be difficult to find reviewers familiar with them and the field. This is often observed in fields with computational or statistical techniques where expertise in these techniques is overlooked in reviewers in favour of scientists with more domain knowledge in the field. Bear in mind that interdisciplinary researchers (involved in new fields) are busy people and editors do not always get their first choice of reviewers.


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take visiting professorship or wait a year?
I've been doing a post-doc in physics for the past 5.5 years or so and have unsuccessfully tried to obtain a faculty job at a University for the past 3 of them. On a whim I applied to a visiting prof. job at a nearby (pretty highly regarded) liberal arts school and got an offer. It's for a year with maybe extensions.
I am wondering if I should take it and if I do, do I shoot myself in the foot when applying for University positions in the fall? How will they look at it? The job entails one class and 2 labs/semester so I'm somewhat hopeful that I can continue a reasonably good research output in the year.
On the other hand, this experience will give me, hopefully, the necessary requesites to break into the lib. arts academic setting which I'm not to adverse to either.

This is ultimately a personal choice, but if you've spent the last five years as a research postdoc with no success in landing a tenure track position at a research university, then it's probably time to change your career strategy.
There are lots of permanent or tenure track positions at liberal arts colleges, regional comprehensive universities, and community colleges where little or no research will be expected of you and PhD and teaching experience are necessary to get a job.  If you want one of those jobs, then now would be a good time to start getting more teaching experience.

yes, I understand that. But regardless I will be in the job hunt again, so I will apply for PhD-granting schools as well. Do you think my experience as this visiting prof will reflect poorly on my application?

No, I don't think that a year is a visiting assistant prof is going to look worse on your vita than another year in your postdoc.

@shane I'm just basing what I said off what seems to be the conventional wisdom: that you can't go from a SLAC up to a University.

for the CW, see the first answer to http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/61825/could-teaching-at-community-college-for-a-few-years-harm-my-career?rq=1

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Should I already have a publication related to the NSF RUI proposal I will submit?
I am working on an NSF RUI proposal (research at an undergraduate institution). I have a manuscript on the subject that is languishing on the coauthors desk. How important is it that this manuscript be published before submitting my proposal? The manuscript is mentioned as prior work in the proposal but I fear that the proposal will be less effective without a publication directly related to it.

A track record of relevant publications is very important to a successful grant application.  But the results you get in your case depends on the content of your application and the other applications submitted.

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meeting with Executive VP for Academic Affairs during faculty interview
This is a first for me. This will be at a SLAC for a TT position. This is in addition to a dean so do you have any idea of what to expect from this meeting with the Executive VP for Academic Affair?

What's a "SLAC"?

@WolfgangBangerth: "Selective Liberal Arts College".

I would guess this person's role is similar to that of a provost: the boss of all the faculty.

At a small (selective or not) liberal arts college (or a small engineering college like mine), there will typically be relatively few faculty members and as a result, there may not be as many levels of management as at a larger university.
For example, at my institution, we have about 120 faculty.  Until recently there were no deans between the department chairs and the vice president for academic affairs.  Under that system, the vice president for academic affairs was doing the work that a dean might do within a larger university.  Note that he had fewer faculty than the dean of a large college within a big university might have to supervise.
The vice president will probably have questions for you that are similar to those that a dean might ask.

where I am interviewing these are two different people. Just not sure how different these two meetings will be.

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tips for Assistant Professors applying for new Assistant Professor positions after being cut
The major at my school was cut and I am first to go in the department.
What do I do different when applying for new AP (in US) now compared to when I was coming off a post doc?
Do I address the reasons for being let go in my cover letter?
What other tips are there for coming up with a good application under my unfortunate circumstances.

By "cut", do you mean "laid off"?

@GoodDeeds yes. major cut, so I am now expendable

This does not answer the question, but:  Carefully consider a non-academic job.  US universities have laid off 500,000 people and they are not finished.  Owing to low birth rates, recovery might take decades.

yes, I realize that I may need to consider non-academia. I want to test waters this round to see how competitive I am right now in academia.

You are being let go for a reason that apparently has nothing whatsoever to do with your individual performance; your program was cut, and you as the (most?) junior person, are being let go first.  That should not be interpreted as a reflection on you personally, or the quality of your work.  Everyone in academia knows that things can be unusually difficult right now, and people are losing jobs that would have been totally secure under normal conditions.  Of course, you will need to explain why your position has gone away in your application package, and your recommenders can explain it was well.
Actually, the kind of recommenders you have available in this situation could potentially give you a significant advantage, relative to other applicants for the same positions.  You already have experience working as a full-time (possibly tenure-track) faculty member, and you should get a senior person in your department (the department chair being the most natural choice) to write a letter on your behalf that talks not just about the quality of your research, but also addresses your capability as a teacher in a full-time faculty position and your service work.  A chair's detailed recommendation that says that they are extremely unhappy about losing you, due to budgeting changes completely beyond your control, could be very compelling to hiring committees.
All this being said, given the current economic situation, you are probably going to be in for a rough ride.  In fields where whole majors are being cut, there are likely to be few new jobs opening up, so competition is likely to be extremely fierce, even for people who already have faculty experience.

I think it's important that either you, or a reference letter writer (if they are accepted in the first round) provide some context about why you're leaving your previous university. This is especially important for a move to either a "lower-ranked" or peer institution, where assessors might wonder if there's a back story here.
I wouldn't dwell on it, and you want to stay positive – it's an opportunity to bring your expertise that you've developed at your current institution to bring to this new one.

A search committee that does not know about wide-spread layoffs in 2020 would be unusual.

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Can my grant pay for a conference marginally related to award?
My NSF award runs out in a several months.  It still has funds budgeted for conference travel. I cannot find any conferences that would be strongly tied to the work. However there is one I would like to attend (too late to submit abstract) but not connected with the award very well. I would be able to network there with collaborators and presumably discuss the research related to the award which would lead to progress on the project. Would using the grant to attend the conference be unethical?

If a conference is one where you "would be able to network there with collaborators and presumably discuss the research related to the award which would lead to progress on the project" I do not understand why you are labeling it "marginally related". I also don't quite believe that it's possible that there is any fundable research project that has no relevant conference at all.

As far as I know, the NSF requires that expenditures of grant funds be for furtherance of the research for which the grant was awarded. (For example, I was told that buying books with NSF grant funds is OK as long as the books are relevant to the project.) In your case, the plan to meet collaborators and discuss research related to the award seems sufficient to satisfy this NSF requirement.

Please avoid answering in the comments. There is an excellent, nuanced real answer below.

You asked two very different questions.  Do you want to know if this is an allowable expense, or do you want to know if this is ethical?

@TerryLoring When would spending an allowable expense be unethical?

@Azor Ahai -him  I had in mind the other way.  Certainly it is ethical to charge an Air France ticket to an NSF grant, but it will be disallowed due to a silly law.

@TerryLoring Ah, fair enough.

Research administrator here, who approves expenses like these every day.  The actual answer has to do with your institution's policies.  In the event of an audit, if your institution is more restrictive than the government and prevents this type of purpose to be allocable to a grant, then it's not allowable.  Let's say your institution has a posted policy that conferences on sponsored funding must be for the purposes of disseminating research results.  That is more restrictive than the federal government, but that is the choice of the institution.  If the charge hits the grant in violation of that policy, your institution can have a finding in their audit, even though the sponsor doesn't care.  So the first thing is that you need to talk to a research administrator at your institution.
Secondly, the question I always ask PIs is whether or not this will be embarrassing to put on the progress report and explain to the program officer (PO).  If you find yourself squeamish about explaining how it directly benefited the project, don't put it on there.  Otherwise, at the time of reimbursement, make a statement as to how the trip benefited the grant.  That's what makes it "allocable".  The exact allocation methodology may be dictated by local policy.  E.g., I sometimes force a percentage of such expenses onto discretionary funds because the sole purpose was not the grant.  That's not a sponsor policy, that's me apply cost principles outlined in Uniform Guidance (UG), a section of the Code of Federal Regulations, which nearly all federal grants are required to abide by.  You won't see all the rules for UG in your terms and conditions; you have to know that it's included as part of NSF general terms and conditions, and then know how to read the regulations.  Usually your institution should do this for you, they then incorporate such things into their own policies, so if you follow the policies you are following the laws.
Generally speaking though, if I were your approver, given what you stated, I would deny the reimbursement without a strong explanation as to how this benefited the grant.  Looking at 2 CFR 200.403(a), and I am already stuck on whether or not you meet this requirement, "Be necessary and reasonable for the performance of the Federal award and be allocable thereto under these principles."  The first rule of spending sponsored funding is that you cannot spend the money because funds are running out.  You have to prove to me that the cost stands alone.  The way that you are hedging here suggests that you are trying to spend the money more than thinking of the benefit to the grant first.
You can look up "cost principles" at different universities and see similar language on how approvers are guided based on the requirements from Uniform Guidance.  Here's an example from University of Washington.  These are all directly sourced from 2 CFR Part 200 Subpart E - Basic Considerations.
If you want this to go on your grant, come up with a strong justification as to how it benefits the grant, and also make sure you can explain why 100% of it goes on the grant and shouldn't be split with discretionary or another sponsored fund.  See 2 CFR 200.405.  It also needs to be listed in your progress report (RPPR).  If you don't want to list it in your RPPR, it's not allocable to the award.
This type of networking use of conferences is very popular in CS because so many collaborators end up in the same location, it's so much easier to have in person meetings at conferences than traveling to another person's site.  But prior to approving such an expense, my PIs have to provide me with a more robust explanation -- e.g., I make them name who the people are that they are meeting, and how that relationship benefits the grant.  In the case of my PIs, I usually know who their friends are, so when I see "Dr. Jones from Example University" listed, I know that they publish with that person all the time.  It is no longer sketchy because we took the time to do a thorough job showing the benefit to the grant, including the adequate documentation (2 CFR 200.403(g)).
ETA 2: To address some confusion in the comments, when it comes to proving something is related to the scope of work, the PI needs to declare the relatedness to the expense approver and provide any required documentation per the institution's policies. In the event that this declaration were later proven to be fraud, the university would be protected because of the attestation, and the PI could face personal consequences for lying and intending to defraud. If the university approves without requiring attestation and appropriate documentation, they are at fault in the audit due to lack of internal controls. Individual institutions deal with this situation differently. Mine would charge someone's discretionary for all costs that needed to be removed, but that is just one example.
In 2020, NSF OIG special agent,  Maureen Weir, wrote in NCURA magazine, "Detecting and Preventing Grant Fraud":

Red flags for fraud may include excess spending in a given budget
category, charging expenses that are unrelated to an award’s purpose,
charging unrelated research to an award to spend down the funds, and
continuing to spend funds after the end of an award. Issues often
arise when a university does not have adequate controls in place or
faculty and staff are not following university policies.

NIH OIG fined University of Nevada, Las Vegas $1.4M partly due to travel expenses:

OIG further alleged that the NIH awards were improperly charged for
the salary and fringe benefits of the PI without adequate
documentation, and for the travel and associated costs of at least two
trips to Nigeria that were unallowable because there was no evidence
that the trip was in furtherance of the NIH-funded research.

Administrators will trust that PIs are not lying to them at the time of approval, but requiring attestation at the time that the expense is approved shifts the legal accountability to the PI.
ETA 1:  Including an example of a travel-related audit finding from NSF for Dartmouth College (publicly available on NSF's website).

"I make them name who the people are that they are meeting, and how that relationship benefits the grant." - as the OP is already mentioning "collaborators", they may actually have concrete people in mind, but I wonder: Generally, isn't the entire point of "networking" at a conference that you meet (= get to know) people you do not know beforehand, and discover previously unforeseen avenues for your current research topics? If you already know who you want to meet and what to talk about, it would seem there are much cheaper ways to achieve that than attending a conference.

@O.R.Mapper - so some institutions would disallow attending a conference for general knowledge right off the bat; it's their prerogative to do that.  Also, the explanation given to me is that "we are all going to be at X conference, so it makes sense to meet about our work while there instead of having another trip across the country".  Thus we are coding the conference as partially a scientific meeting to help advance the project.  This matters more for collaborative research projects.  Sometimes this type of thing is written into the collaboration plan and is thus approved by the sponsor.

What's an excellent answer!

What's the point of showing the audit? Those denials, cancelled travel, premium airfare, receipt discrepancy, have nothing to do with OP's question.

@user71659, because audits will go into the level of detail of actually asking questions like "how does this benefit the awards".  It specifically says that the expenses "did not benefit the awards charged". They cite a lack of documentation to support the charges.
They will also pull your progress reports to check on if you report these activities.  I added this as someone noted in another answer, "I doubt that anyone is checking the relevance of the topics of the conferences where you go."  Aside from people like me checking, there definitely can be an audit checking exactly this question.

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin I disagree. All of those examples are bright-line, but OP's issue is far less clear. To me, it shows they'll only go after things they can point to a regulation about. You need to give an example where NSF charged back attendance at a legitimate conference for the reason it wasn't closely related. Until then, it's speculation.

Yeah, in case (a), if I understand it correctly, it was obvious that the expenses did not benefit the awards because nobody traveled anywhere at all.

@user71659, auditing is always speculation -- they are allowed to test on anything.  Here's an example that is more specific:  "In June 2022, UNH charged NSF Award No. [redacted] for $1,037 in travel expenses for the Principal Investigator (PI) to attend a conference in  [redacted]. Although the PI's attendance at the conference benefited the award, the PI inappropriately claimed reimbursement for costs associated with refunded lodging costs after leaving a day early and for a conference registration purchased for an accompanying person whose attendance did not benefit the award."

Another example of requiring a justification that the benefit for the award is down to specific days on the trip: "In July 2022, NDSU charged NSF Award No. [redacted] for $9408 in lodging expenses to enable the Principal Investigator (PI) to stay for one additional day after a conference. Although six of the PI’s seven travel days benefited the NSF award, the PI stayed this additional day to collaborate with industry partners on projects that did not benefit the NSF award."  https://oig.nsf.gov/reports/audit/performance-audit-incurred-costs-north-dakota-state-university

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin Example 1: supports my point again. Refunded costs are clear, no argument here. Reading between the lines, can't bring your wife. Example 2: same, the conference wasn't an issue, it was his obvious side consultant gig. None of these are judgement issues with the conference, they're issues with receipts, extended stays, and other travelers, all red flags. NSF says you should be doing interdisciplinary research.

@NateEldredge, it's not as simple as "because nobody traveled anywhere at all". In some cases for COVID-related travel cancellations, we were able to put costs on grants because the traveler was not at fault. Those cases had to have documentation at the time of reimbursement to demonstrate it wasn't their fault (see cost principles). I realize this is all complicated. This is why the advice is to talk to the institution's research administration office, as they are trained in all these regulations.  See "NSF Implementation of OMB Memorandum M-20-17" for COVID-related cancellations.

@user71659 you are missing the point of how audits work. There aren't rules for every single possible situation. The general rule exists, and they test against that. Here, the burden is on the traveler to prove that all costs directly benefit the grant, period. I gave an example of UW's policy and what they require if you are not presenting. With all due respect, I have been doing this for 15 years and we are getting into the weeds instead of agreeing on basic federal law: the burden is on the institution to prove allocability and allowability otherwise they can suffer penalties in an audit.

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin Your examples all support my point: they aren't going to hit you for issues of scientific or professional judgement. None of your issues have any judgement involved, they're receipt, documentation, refund issues. Your answer is administrative butt-covering, with all my dealings, I have never heard NSF question that something legitimately interdisciplinary is not related enough. I suggest you defer judgement to the PIs who write the grants, serve on NSF committees and talk to PMs.

@user71659 I am very sorry that you feel this way. Unfortunately, my university is legally obligated to prevent PIs from approving expenses on their own funds, so that won't be happening anytime soon. It's actually the job of Research Admin to protect PIs from administrative burden; that is why you are not aware of these rules. My intention was to share knowledge with a community that is not regularly exposed to this information. I am sorry that in all this, I failed to convince you that providing adequate documentation is federal law. It's so tax payers know their money is being well-spent.

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin You do not have a PhD in computer science and you are not in a position to tell a computer scientist that their research in quantum computing has nothing to do with databases. That is clearly out of your knowledge and is why NSF judges the track record of the PI as part of the proposal, not their research administrator.

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin I wish you were my friendly research admin! This is far more useful than anything I can get out of our team.

@user71659 you are saying the documentation doesn't support the answer (which I agree with) and then arguing that for that reason it supports your opinion - which it doesn't for the exact same reason ... Are you really not noticing how hypocrite that is? Anyways, I do think this answer would benefit from examples were actual borderline / grey area cases have been investigated. The examples are all clear cut cases, or at least seem to be.

SHORT ANSWER:

I see absolutely NO ethical issue in using money from a grant awarded to you for a research topic X in order to attend a conference about research topic Y, especially if that might be your next topic of interest, and especially if the conference is gathering people in the same general research area.
Discussing it informally with the head of your department might alleviate your doubts more efficiently than discussing it with strangers on https://academia.stackexchange.com/!

LONGER ANSWER:

What is ethical or not is evolving over time and varying from one culture to the other, ethical rules are inherently social ones, the ones that a community collectively agrees to enforce and to follow for the benefit of the community as a whole. Maybe in the future or within a specific context (with scarcer resources) the answer will be different, but for now  and in the academic contexts I know (European, North American and South American universities), I am reasonably sure that there is absolutely no ethical problem with what you describe.

Strangers on https://academia.stackexchange.com/ might be representative or not of the views of people in academia at the international level, which is only one of the communities to which you belong, and not the most critical one for the advancement of your career. Better discuss it (informally because it is not important enough an issue) with colleagues in your department, and ideally the head of your department.

In any case, paying someone to check whether topic Y is related enough to topic X to justify using funds awarded for results on X in order to pursue Y for all uses of all grant money over the world would probably be more costly that the few misused of that money, so I doubt that anyone is checking the relevance of the topics of the conferences where you go.

Hope it helps! If you enjoy the conference and make the world a better place, it will be a good use of the resources of your grant!

This is not good advice, particularly about spending on topic Y for a grant on topic X.  That violates the scope of work.  Please do not do this.  Grants come with a host of terms and conditions, and if you violate them, you can open your entire institution up to a federal audit.  If you are not sufficiently convinced, please read the public NSF audits of many institutions: https://oig.nsf.gov/reports-publications/reports/audit
We are talking multi-million $ DOJ settlements.  In 2008 Yale paid out $7.6 million over effort reporting.  That's why 100% effort for "summer salary" went away.

Expenses charged to a grant are supposed to specifically "benefit" (i.e., help advance) the aims of that particular project. Whether attending a particular conference does so is essentially a judgement call, which is why you're getting such conflicting answers. Fortunately, most universities offer researchers pretty wide latitude to use--and defend--your professional judgement.
Thus, it largely boils down to what you mean by "marginally related". At one extreme, you probably can't attend a conference in a totally different field: A physicist probably shouldn't attend an ornithology meeting just because they really like birds. However, it might be permissible if it is somehow connected to your research. For example, someone I knew in the Physics Department used the  Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Lab to study how the nanostructures of certain materials, including bird feathers, can produce colors without pigments.  In this case, they'd probably have to write a "business purpose" justification. This is simply a short (paragraph or so) explaining how this does advance the grant's aims. For the feather stuff, they might explain how the session on birds' flight and preening habits will let them understand stresses on the materials and corresponding changes in their properties, which in turn informs the design of experiments for the remaining aims of the grant, etc etc.
In fact, you generally have to write business purposes justifications anyway; it's just easier for you (or someone else) when a pro forma one applies: "As described in the proposal, we attended Meeting X to present the results of Sub-project Y." As long as you can produce a reasonable justification, you should be fine and this is generally not a big deal. This is especially true for interdisciplinary conferences, where your topic might be represented but not the exclusive--or even primary focus--of the meeting. For example, if your grant is to study the molecular mechanisms of Parkinson's Disease, you should be okay to attend a conference on neurodegeneration or mitochondria (which are are thought to play a role in Parkinson's). Contra @yourfriendlyresearchadminstrator's answer, I have never seen expenses like this refused, on the grounds that while Conference A was related to the work, B or C would have been an even better fit. Plus, presentations by your collaborators (on this grant?) would seem to be prima face evidence that it is within the scope of the project.

I think we are largely in agreement.  Though not sure about this part "on the grounds that while Conference A was related to the work, B or C would have been an even better fit".  I don't go around looking for other sources to put it on; I make them attest to it being 100% related to one fund; then they often start to hedge, and then we have a conversation which results in a split.  Something else for you to think about--the increasing focus on "overlap statements" is making it trickier to declare overlaps at the time of reimbursement--now that statement should go on current and pending docs.

In my opinion, the grant/fellowship funds the science and the scientist/applicant - the two are closely linked and intertwined. If you think this is a legit and useful conference that will benefit you and your research in the short and/or long term (so not just two weeks on a tropical island for a fake conference), then it is very well defendable and explainable that this would not be unethical.

The problem with this answer is that it actually suggests the opposite.  If I can't untangle the conference from the PI, i.e., it represents "all their work", then it should go on discretionary.  This is per federal law 2 CFR 200.405.  You have to directly prove it's allocable to the award you indicate and defend the percentage you choose.  If you can't adequately defend and document a percentage, it's not directly allocable.

But then what is considered sufficient proof? Let's say if one only attends (and not presents their work related to the award) as would be the case in this question? I agree that if no argument can be made then it's a problem, but what is 'sufficiently related' if there is no hard evidence of "I am presenting the work I said I would do in aim 1"? I'm genuinely curious.

this is always a judgment call.  The institution puts people like me in place to make such calls.  Also the institutions make their own policies based on what they perceive the risk to be. UW states "If no formal presentation was made, or the traveler was only attending the conference/workshop, written documentation should include the business purpose of the travel, which includes the benefit to the Award, and a copy of the agenda or schedule as available."  This is how they want to handle the risk.  I see Depaul and Harvard both have public guidance you can read for other examples.

@yourfriendlyresearchadmin Could you give an example of where you (or the funder) made a judgement call against the PI on technical details? The examples in your answer are essentially procedural (or fraud), not "Legit meeting X is not related enough to a grant on X'."

@Matt, so in the ETA 2 I mention that we require an attestation. If the grant says it's to study trees and the conference is about insects, I am going to ask a direct question, "can you please tell me how this benefits the grant with regard to the scope of work?" If they say, "why yes, this insect is killing trees, which is important for the objectives of this grant"--I take them at their word. Sometimes the question is unsettling and PIs pull back and say to put it on discretionary.  I don't set myself up for a fight--I shift the liability to the PI away from the institution--that is my job.


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Why do some journals have anonymous editors?
By way of background, there are journals in which the editor - as in, the person who contacts referees, guides the review process, and makes a decision is unknown to the corresponding author. Communication with the author is solely through a named, administrative editor who does not have any decision making authority, and is merely a conduit for the editor's decisions.
What could be the rationale for such a system? Of course, one can understand the importance of referee anonymity so they can comment freely on the merits of a submission. However why should editors remain behind a veil of anonymity?
Thanks.

"there are journals in which the editor" --- Specific examples would be helpful.

However why should editors remain behind a veil of anonymity?

My educated guess is that these are the same reasons why peer-reviewers are anonymous:
An editor has to make potentially unpopular decisions, beginning with deciding about desk rejection over selecting the reviewers to making the final decision.
In fact, the editor usually has more power than a single reviewer.
These decisions should be made without fear of repercussions and similar, and editors do not want to pestered about negative decisions outside the journal’s channels.
By the way, all journals that I know to follow such a policy (which are almost all I know) also stop anonymising the editor in case of a positive decision, i.e., the acceptance is usually sent in the editor’s name and thus tells you who handled your paper.

Which brings me to a follow-up question: If anonymity of editors is so important, why is it not universal, like referee anonymity?


text:
seeking reimbursement after faculty interview
After an on-site interview, should I seek reimbursement for meal expenses that occurred to and fro the interview? They did give me a expense report so I know it is legit to fill it out but just not sure if this would give a bad impression.

I think it's pretty standard that "travel expenses" include all meals purchased from the time you leave home until your return.
Some institutions do meal reimbursement on a "per diem" basis, where you get a flat amount per day for meals, regardless of how much you actually spend.  In some cases there is a slightly lower rate for the first and last day of your journey, reflecting the fact that you might have been at home for part of those days.
If you are unsure, you might get in touch with the administrative person in the department who handles travel reimbursements and ask them about their policies.  This person is typically not involved with the hiring process, so there's no need to worry about making a bad impression.
Side comment: You are probably worrying about this a bit more than you need to.  If you're on the job market, this is probably one of the first times you've had people paying your travel expenses, and it's normal to be a little sensitive about that.  But paying travel expenses is a very standard part of academic life, and for the most part, the people paying for you are not going to notice these sort of financial details or let them affect their perception of you. It's just an academic chore for them, and it isn't their personal money you're spending!  Just use your own best judgment, and unless you do something outrageous, like asking to be reimbursed for strippers and champagne, you'll be fine.

@ChrisWhite: Possibly, but not necessarily.  I figured that if the poster had much experience traveling and being reimbursed, they would not have needed to ask this question.  I thought that paragraph might be helpful reassurance in case the poster really is new to this - if not, they can ignore it.

Some universities in the US base their reimbursement policies on the US Government policies:

On the first and last travel day, Federal employees are only eligible for 75 percent of the total M&IE rate

A conservative approach is to ask for reimbursements for expenses while in the city of the interview. For example, I would not ask for reimbursement for taxi fare from your home/work to the airport or a meal eaten at the airport prior to departing for the interview. I would ask for taxi fare from the airport to the hotel and any meals eaten after you arrive. Similarly, on the return, I would ask for taxi fare from the hotel to the airport, but not from the airport to your home.

these meals were eaten at layovers...

Your suggested approach is indeed very conservative.  Every time I've traveled on "university business" (my own or another), it's been quite clear that expenses such as travel to/from my local airport, airport parking, etc, are legitimate and reimbursable.  (For me, meals while in transit have usually followed the US government per diem rule, as you cited it, so that's always been clear too.)  I personally wouldn't hesitate to ask for reimbursement for such things.


text:
external grant on application for SLAC/PUI
I am looking for tenure track faculty position in a hard science field at 4 year colleges.
Recently a grant application, which I worked on as a postdoc, was successfully accepted. I am not a PI but by supervisor is willing subaward part of it to me when I get a new position.
My question is how do I refer to this in my cover letters?  Will this set me above other candidates or is it not that important? Would making a big deal out of this look like I'm not as interested in teaching as in research?
What are external grants typically used for as these type of institutions where you don't have grad students or post-docs? Besides travel/conferences would it be to funding undergrad research and summer salary?

Which SLAC/PUI?  I suspect Amherst, Western New England, Framingham State, and Stonehill (to stick to colleges in one state) will view this quite differently from each other.

A common strategy for bragging about things you're not sure you'd want to brag about is to ask for them to be mentioned in your letters of recommendation.  Your supervisor is allowed more cluelessness in their letter than you are in your application.

I suggest asking the second question as a separate Q as grant usage is entirely unrelated from how to emphasize this in the CV.

Four-year colleges are extremely diverse as to their educational philosophies, attitudes toward faculty research, and financial stability. Do you want to
begin your career at a place that would react unfavorably to this potential
opportunity of yours? @AlexanderWoo's suggestion to 'outsource' the bragging
to your supervisor's letter of recommendation seems sound. But you should
be able to mention this research connection in your cover letter in an
unobjectionable way.
One hopes that cover letters will result in interviews. A common question
in interviews has to do with your ideas how to balance teaching and
research. Your continuing research connection provides a fine opportunity
for you to think how you will deal with that question when it is asked.
Professional travel and participation in conferences can be crucial to
your continuing professional development at a four-year college. You can
hope that the subaward can help with that. On an assistant professor's
salary, you may be very happy for the prospects for some additional
summer salary.
I wonder whether it's possible to know in advance if or how
you can use these funds for undergraduate research. Obviously, that
depends heavily on the nature of your research and on the quality and
interests of individual students. Not so obviously, it may depend even more
on whether the financial officer handling the subaward at the
four-year college is knowledgeable and flexible enough to handle
paying appropriate students out of subaward funds.


text:
The mathematics GRE score Advice- Should I send?
My GRE Score is 740(68%) and is only recommended when applying for a Ph.D in statistics. Is sending this score disadvantageous to me?
I did not take mathematical classes that are strongly required for admission. So, I studied those math subjects by myself and took GRE exam. By sending my score, could I prove I have some mathematical knowledge to admission committees?

If the schools you will be applying to require Math GRE, you won't have choice.


text:
Is Academia really just a huge competition?
I am currently an undergraduate student. I noticed that regardless of what courses I'm taking, there are always a handful of people who view everything as a huge competition. That is, they would do anything possible (other than committing academic offenses) to ensure that the final grade they receive is higher than everyone else's. They create a rather hostile environment.
However, I always thought that Academia is about advancing knowledge, which means we need to help each other, not put each other down.
I am still young, but I have been thinking of pursue an academic career. So my question is, are there any reasons for this competitive behaviour? Is this just an undergraduate problem that will go away when I enter graduate school? Or am I just way too naive of how the world really works?

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

What you observed is a standard human behavior. Moreover, it's a standard living organism behavior, shared with pretty much everything alive that participates in a process of sexual selection. It has very little to do with Academia per se. You'll find people who earn to win anywhere from *cough*Stack Exchange*cough* to kindergarten.

Also, it would significantly improve your question if you explained in particulars in what way "They create a rather hostile environment". Is there some tangible hostile behavior that you can demonstrate, or does the environment merely seem hostile to you because you don't want to compete but feel that you must in order not to look like you lost the competition?

You need to explain what "They create a rather hostile environment" means. It's hopelessly vague. You could be talking about a hundred different things, some of which are good, some of which are bad, some of which are not even applicable in grad school. How can we know what you're asking about?

Welcome to the world of business.

I have 3 brothers. 2 of us, are HUGELY competitive &  always have been -- we pushed each other for years! We both excelled much more in school (& now in our post-academic jobs) than our other 2 brothers who avoided the competitive nature of academia. My point is, it's a dog eat dog world and those not willing to put in the extra time and effort will likely not excel as well. (This doesn't equate to happiness by the way!). There is a growing trend of young students feeling entitled and trying to find ways around actually doing work. Not going to fly - sorry, the competition never goes away!

You've asked a question that is both very important and very difficult, as well as one that is likely to draw different answers from different people depending on their own experiences in academia.
This is because there are both competitive and cooperative aspects to academia.  Different people take different strategies with respect to the balance between these two, and that affects their communities as well, so that the mixture of competition and cooperation that you encounter will also radically differ between different academic communities.
Some of the key factors for inducing cooperation are:

Science is hard.
Working together, people can accomplish things that they cannot possibly accomplish alone.
Cooperation in a team gives you an advantage when competing with other teams.
Many people enjoy working together in teams, and this is just as true for science as it is for any other human endeavor.
Scientific discovery feels awesome and it can be really fun to share that feeling with other people.

Some of the key factors for inducing competition are:

Inherent conflict of ideas: when theories compete, people often become polarized and begin competing based on the "team" they support intellectually.
Limited resources: you've got a good idea, but a lot of other people have good ideas too, and there is not enough funding to support all of them fully: some people will not get what they want.  Likewise, the Hubble space telescope can only point at one thing at a time, and there are a lot more things people want to point at than time to point at them.
Explicit competition set up by external agencies. For example, DARPA will sometimes make scientists in the same program compete with one another, and the loser gets their funding cut off.
Many people are just plain competitive, and want to "win" over other people in various different ways, and this is just as true for science as it is for any other human endeavor.

Bottom line: just like everything else, academia can be a competition, and everyone faces some aspects of a competition.  But it's not just a competition, and I feel sad for anyone who experiences it in that manner.

+1 for looking at cooperation as well as competition, and for the last sentence. One more factor for competition might be the (non-academic) job market. I only have anecdotal evidence for this but at my university the level of cooperation between students seemed to correlate to the job prospects for graduates of that subject.

+1, I think you have highlighted all the major points, except maybe one: the perceived nobility of a field: the more the field is perceived as "noble", the more hard competition is to be expected. For example, from my experience and what I've often heard, medical and mathematical studies are known to be very highly competitive (even avoiding sharing data), while human studies are often open and highly collaborative. It would be interesting to have some studies on that.

@gaborous That is interesting. At my university, math was one of the most collaborative departments. They even had a large homework room with 6 big blackboards and lots of chairs and tables and a few computers, and students were encouraged to form homework groups and work there. They did it, too - between 10am and 6pm there was no time when the homework room was empty.

"just like everything else, academia can be a competition, and everyone faces some aspects of a competition" Still on average academia is far more competitive than the average workplace, simply due to the fact that everyone is to a large extent fighting their own fight.

When you're fighting for multiple $500,000 a year grants for your teams to fund your research and pay your PhD and Master's students, you're going to constantly strive to be at the peak of your abilities. There's no shiny silver medal for finishing second. One other point to note: science is indeed hard (ie: difficult), but to further draw on that, STEM fields are "hard" as opposed to "soft" sciences (ie: rigore scientifico), meaning that the answer is cut and dry, and there's no room for bull****ing. This means only the best get the top grants, funding, acknowledgement, etc.

People will be people, in short.
Some people are competitive.  Some of them fiercely so.  And some people are jackasses.  Some of them fiercely so.  Some are both at once.  Some of those, fiercely so.  They'll all be pretty much everywhere you ever are, being the people they are, because what else can you really expect them to be or do?  Academia, offices, your family, the corner gas station, even your friends probably...they'll be everywhere, living their lives, doing their thing.  I suggest you just get used to this facet of the tapestry of human personalities.
If you happen to think they have driven things into a violation of university rules--sexual harassment and discrimination could certainly cause a hostile environment--then you should report it to the appropriate authorities, as that is not okay and is not something to simply "get used to".
You may also be experiencing the typical shock of reality from an idealistic view of "college will be totally different from high school."  It's really not that much different, especially for Freshman, other than that most of the students have easier access to sex and alcohol (and drugs, honestly).  All of your fellow undergrads were high school students not too long ago, after all.
Lastly, depending on your college or the grading policies of your specific courses, the competition may be actively encouraged.  Some universities have held policies such as "Only the top 10% in a course can get an A, no matter what," which means even if the class is nothing but Einsteins then only 10% of them will get an A and they will obviously have to compete for those positions.  This can be even more pronounced when the number of B's is also limited, which can mean students may find themselves with a very bad-looking grade if they aren't willing and able to compete for a better one.

To somewhat intensify your last paragraph: Such grading schemes mean that you do not have to be good but only better than others. Hence, if you can make somebody score worse, it’s also usually good for you.

I mostly like this answer, only the penultimate paragraph ("You may also be experiencing the typical shock of reality ...") seems to strongly depend on location/culture-specific properties of highschools and colleges. Personally, I felt university to be fundamentally different from highschool, and looking back now, I can still see so many aspects that are objectively different that I could certainly fill an essay with them (although exactly the points you suggest are not among the differences I perceived).

@O.R.Mapper I may have been a bit heavy handed with that one.  What I really wanted to point out was that the range of personalities, and general behaviors, does not differ significantly between high schoolers and (new) undergraduates.  There are definitely many differences beyond that, but in my experience there is a certain set of freshmen who are expecting a massive shift away from the personality spectrum they were used to in high school.  Frequently they are expecting it to shift towards their personality type or ideals thereof. Reality has a tendency to then shock them.

@zibadawatimmy: "expecting a massive shift away from the personality spectrum they were used to in high school. Frequently they are expecting it to shift towards their personality type or ideals thereof" - it seems to me that this is indeed what can very well happen. In high school, there are still people with vastly different interests. Whoever had a strong fascination for any topic used to be mostly alone with that fascination and tried not to let that fascination show too much, lest they be labeled as nerdy about whichever topic it is. Enter university, where they are suddenly ...

... surrounded exclusively by people who have the same specific interest.

Well not everywhere. I'm grateful to pretty much have no in-family competitive jackasses. It also seems to be possible and desirable to exclude competitive jackasses from friends, associates, loved ones and in many endeavors, from co-workers, business associates, vendors, clients, patrons...

The world is one big competition. However, as privileged individuals, we can choose how much we participate in that competition.
In general, when something is described as top something, it's a sign that more competition lies that way. By steering clear of such places, you can live a less competitive and less stressful life.
Academic research is interesting and fun. Unfortunately, the rest of the world isn't willing to provide for everyone who wants to be an academic. As a result, there is always going to be more competition in the academia than people would like.
The best way to avoid excessive competition is being flexible. Don't work on the fashionable topics everyone else is working on. Find your own niche with some low-hanging fruit, and become the expert in that niche. Don't be too eager to get into the best positions at the top universities. There are hundreds of good universities around the world, and most of them can be good places to conduct research. The world is full of opportunities for those who can find and catch them.

I've found it also depends on the culture inside the university. Some of the universities I've studied in (and frankly and ironically, the ones that provided a better overall education) were non-competitive. There was no one-up-manship as you describe. Some of the classmates were clearly excelling beyond the rest, but there was no competitive spirit displayed.
Other universities have a more competitive spirit displayed. This comes from the level of the professors and is fostered by the overall culture.
An anecdote: I've noticed that lower-quality schools including some state schools seem to foster the competitive style. This is unhealthy and reduces the quality of the education. I have not noticed it as much - ironically - from the best schools like MIT and Stanford.

Apart from what @jakebeal has posted, I have one more point to add: crowd mentality.
When the major portion of people who enter a field tend to excel, the rest of the population are pulled towards it. This is what leads to the resource conflict problem in the first place.
This comes under the Law of Supply and Demand. In today's world where education itself is considered as a commodity, we are considered as supply entities. When prices of the commodity increase, the supply also increase in the same direction. Sadly this also leads to the decrease in demand of the commodity. When only proportionately lesser entities can be allocated to the resources (jobs), the rest is up to the survival of the fittest.
One may not to keep all of the above in mind. As one of the comments stated, it would just ruin the rationale of education itself. If everyone just go for the field that interests them most and work at it, they would succeed regardless of the feeling of contest.

I think that academia, as many things in our life, is a rather complex phenomenon. As such, it very much depends on how you look at it. By "how" I mean from which perspective as well as at what level of consideration, usually referred to in academia as unit of analysis. Based on this framework, one can discover, as is expected for a complex system, that academia exhibits both aspects you've mentioned (advancing knowledge and competition), along with many others. It seems that levels of those aspects are different both in nature and effects, based on perspectives and units of analysis.
For example, at an organizational level, we see generation of significant advancements in knowledge, but also some, and sometimes significant, competition for prestige, funds, talent, etc. Similarly, at an individual level, there is both advancement and competition, but their nature, intensiveness and effects. It can be argued that, under specific conditions, competition positively affects advancement of knowledge to some degree, directly and indirectly, at the various levels of analysis. More generally, it can be argued that those aspects, along with other related factors, affect each other and provide an interesting and important area of research.
In regard to the competition, especially, on an individual level, I think that it represents a complex phenomenon as well, combining internal psychological factors (i.e., proving one's worth to yourself, natural evolutionary "survival of the fittest" instinct) and external economic (i.e., career advancement as a safety net) ones. Considering the subject at higher, organizational levels only adds complexity to potential analysis. Your question is indeed interesting and important (hence +1), but large and complex, so my answer hasn't even scratched the surface in terms of comprehensive description. However, I hope that it will provide some food for thought and further discussion.

No, universities (academia) generally aim to educate for the sake of it. By definition, this is the goal of academia. This is usually reflected in their admissions requirements, which are purposefully low enough to only pose a barrier to those who are unlikely to benefit from the education offered. This often puts universities at odds with prospective students who feel entitled to displace others based on having exceeded the admission requirements to a greater degree. This competitive attitude is encouraged by society's promotion of higher education as a mere vehicle for attaining greater relative wealth, and not as a worthy pursuit in and of itself.
Graduate school will be better.

What is "academia" in your answer? Who is representative of it? I know for a fact that students are not in it for the sake of education per se, and neither are the teachers. Honestly, people who want to learn for the sake of learning usually do it in the local library or over the internet, because college costs a lot of money and time which is a pure waste if you just want knowledge.

@Davor: I agree with your two initial questions. However, I doubt that none of the students are in it for the sake of education per se, and I doubt even more that none of the teachers are. Lastly, "college costs a lot of money and time which is a pure waste if you just want knowledge" is clearly contradicted by the hordes of pensionists who decide to attend university after retirement to get another Bachelor and/or Master degree in a discipine they are simply interested in (often, but not exclusively, in something humanities-related).

@O.R.Mapper  You are probably correct about the "more than none"s, but your proof seems flimsy. I personally have not seen "hordes" of pensioners and have very, very rarely seen them last more than a couple semesters.  They tend to wise up when they see the bill.

@ZachMierzejewski: Granted, where I live, there is no bill for studying, or at least none of any substantial sum. Hence, this might be region-specific.

academia is academics. "a teacher or scholar in a college or institute of higher education."

I am currently an undergraduate student. I noticed that regardless of
  what courses I'm taking, there are always a handful of people who view
  everything as a huge competition. That is, they would do anything
  possible (other than committing academic offenses) to ensure that the
  final grade they receive is higher than everyone else's. They create a
  rather hostile environment.

Unless you're enrolled someplace like ancient Sparta, if this behavior is causing problems ("rather hostile atmosphere" sounds like it is), you might report it to their teachers or other appropriate people at your college. If they're not sympathetic to your concerns, you might consider another college.

However, I always thought that Academia is about advancing knowledge,
  which means we need to help each other, not put each other down.

I'd say that's a good principle. All such principles are just single perspectives, though. Real people and situations can be seen usefully from a variety of (often contrasting or even contradictory) perspectives.

I am still young, but I have been thinking of pursue an academic
  career. So my question is, are there any reasons for this competitive
  behaviour?

Good question. Each situation is different. Perhaps it could be interesting and useful to discern what's happening in the cases around you. Various possibilities have been suggested in answers here. Could be the academic structure (grading curves, limited slots) or the ideas (and sicknesses) your culture, school, teachers, or maybe just certain students have.
You might also consider whether it's really a problem worth worrying about. People who think that "life" or "the world" are about competition, tend to express ideas designed to convince (themselves and) others, and this can suck others into needless concerns or arguments.
A perspective that can be useful is "what we resist, persists"; it may be best just to ignore or avoid such people. I'd hope that (outside Sparta) just being a good student will still be effective, regardless of their competitive antics.

Is this just an undergraduate problem that will go away when I enter
  graduate school?

It could go away by going to a school or class that isn't like that. Few I've known would I call "extremely hostile"! Some graduate programs may be like that, but you can try to detect and avoid those. Subject can also tend to correlate to a difference (e.g. law school, business school, and limited (enrolment/grant) programs, versus humanities or less-overly-popular subjects).

Or am I just way too naive of how the world really works?

No. Even if one were to adopt a selfish competitive philosophy (which I don't recommend), it would still be foolish (even in Sparta, or a sports program) to treat small-scale tasks as competitions and to fixate on beating everyone else and so create a hostile environment. That's undermining one's own learning environment, and to me indicates sickness.


text:
Why was it a problem for an unmarried man to be a tutor to women in the early 20th century?
I read on JRR Tolkiens wiki page that he was asked to be a tutor in the early stages of the women's colleges at Oxford because he was married. This was apparently not common for professors at the time.
Why would marriage status have anything to do with his work as a tutor? Did the people who thought it good for women to go to college not realise there were men working there? I would personally be highly offended if the presence (or lack thereof) of a wife affected my job prospects. Seems pretty sexist to be honest.

More to consider: Married women were commonly barred from employment in Western countries up until the 1970's.

Yeah, it was sexist. Women didn't have the right to vote in the UK when Tolkien began his academic career. Who knows what would have happened if they were tutored by (gasp!) an unmarried man?

Presumably it was not considered proper for an unmarried man to be spending a significant amount of time alone with a young woman.

The history of Oxford is wild. I would strongly recommend reading about it, that your relationship status qualified or disqualified you from certain posts is by far not the worst example of things that look extremely weird to the modern eye. If you read their "house rules" you would be led to believe you are reading about a cult, not an institution of learning and scientific progress.

@AdamPřenosil seeing as these men were gentlemen questioning the integrity of a man by insinuating that he cannot be trusted around women would be an insult. Unless he has given you an actuall reason to doubt his integrity.

@Neil Meyer You are looking at it from a contemporary perspective, where being with a young woman alone is a Normal Thing and if someone suggests that you should not be left alone with a young woman, then that may indeed be an insulting insinuation. I would think the perspective was more that spending a large amount of time with a young woman alone is simply Not Done. In the same way that woman spending time alone with a male stranger in some Muslim cultures is simply Not Done. The point is not that you personally are a threat, the point is that you are breaking a strong cultural norm.

@Neil Meyer By the way, you may be imagining some sort of sexual assault when you say "cannot be trusted around women", but the woman's parents would (in my largely ignorant understanding of how things used to work) probably instead have been imagining the threat of a romantic relationship as a result of this situation.

@DanielR.Collins  "Married women were commonly barred from employment in Western countries up until the 1970's"  I don't think that is right at all. The Wikipedia page you linked to just says that some employers banned them. It gives the impression that the number of such employers was very small after WW2.

@toby544: the number of such employers was very small after WW2 -- I agree, strongly.

At the time, Oxford was indeed very, very sexist, although certainly not unique in that way.  It was a different society from the one we have now. Note that the female students mentioned would not have been able to gain a degree at the time - that only became possible in 1920. Even their limited status was controversial enough that it was important to avoid impropriety, as opponents of women's education were  suspicious of their effect on the male students and faculty. They had to be seen to be behaving respectably and certainly not having illicit sex with young men.
The Wikipedia article cites the story to J.R.R. Tolkien's Double Worlds and Creative Process: Language and Life by Arne Zettersten (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), which further quotes an anecdote in The Tolkien Family Album by John and Priscilla Tolkien (HarperCollins, 1992), as follows:

He was interviewed by the head of St Hugh's: years later he described her as a formidable woman, dressed in the style of his grandmother, buttoned  top-to-toe in an ankle-length dress. He  remembered the severity of her expression as she enquired, "Are  you  married, Mr Tolkien?", and her relief at his reply. Thus Ronald gained some employment tutoring her students.

This would have happened between Tolkien's arrival in Oxford at the end of 1918, and his departure for Leeds in 1920, so the interview must have been with Eleanor Jourdain, who was particularly strict in discipline. At the time, St. Hugh's, like the other women's colleges, operated strict "chaperon rules" concerning how and when women were allowed to be in male company. You can read about this in The History of the University of Oxford, volume 8, chapter 13 ("Women" by Janet Howarth; ed. Brian Harrison, OUP, 1994), which chronicles their detailed development, selective enforcement, and protests. As of 1919, the rules included:

[Women] must not, among other things, enter men's rooms nor go to the theatre with a man without their principal's permission and a chaperon approved by her, nor go to a cafe with a man, nor on the river, nor for walks, bicycle or motor rides unless with principalian permission and at least two women in the party. Mixed societies required permission, to be renewed annually, from the women principals as well as the proctors, and meetings in men's colleges must be chaperoned. Mixed parties in cafes were allowed only between 2.00 and 5.20 p.m.

These strictures were motivated by wanting women to be seen as respectable, and in particular to shield them from sexual life or the hint of impropriety. Being alone with an unmarried man was a potential source of scandal. At St. Hugh's, a woman could receive a male visitor in her college rooms, but only so long as he was her father, uncle or brother, it was in daylight hours, and she dragged her mattress into the corridor for the duration.
As a tutor, Tolkien would have mainly received students at his home on Alfred Street: he moved there for that reason. A female student coming to his house, where his wife was also present much of the time, would be acceptable - compared to the student visiting an unmarried fellow in his college rooms, for example. The setup made it respectable enough for Jourdain to feel comfortable with the arrangement.

Great answer! Curious that women were allowed to meet Tolkien even without any guarantee that his wife would be present, but a visit from dad is suspicious enough to require moving your mattress to the hallway.

@cag51 My grandmother, who was at Cambridge a couple of decades later, reports that my grandfather had a great deal of practice in saying that he was her brother. Some gentlemen were several students' brother in the same week. The rules may not make objective sense partly because they're the synthesis of ideas from people with quite different views about the whole deal.

Things were different in the past. If this is not obvious to you, I recommend reading https://www.ox.ac.uk/research/engage-with-us/local-community/part-of-oxford/history. Until 1877, university fellows were not even allowed to marry.

I don't think this answers the question of the OP at all.

Who are university fellows? Students? Lecturers?

@Nobody Tutors, professors, and what we now call postdocs. Afaik everybody except students.

@AdamPřenosil OP seemed to have very little knowledge of history so I thought they needed to be told the very basic fact that things were different in the past.

"University Fellows" doesn't make sense in the 19th C. There were Fellows of Colleges, most of whom did the regular teaching/tuition of the undergraduates  and had to vacate their fellowships if they married; and there were (far fewer) University Professors who gave lectures/did research  and who could continue in office even if they married, and Heads of Colleges who could likewise marry.

@erstwhileeditor The webpage I cited uses that phrase. I guess it must mean fellows of colleges.

@toby544 Oh I see. But sixty years experience at f the U of O has taught me not to believe everything it says  ;-)


text:
Placing large figures at end of paper
I have some elaborate drawings that need some space.  I think putting them "inline" would  break the flow of the (mathematics) paper.
Questions:

Where exactly should they go?  Just before the References? Do I have to make a section header for them, like Figures or Appendix?
Some of my figures will remain inline.  Do I number the figures in order of appearance, or in the order they are referenced?

Thanks!

Is it a paper for a journal? Note that wherever you put them, the typesetter might put them otherwise, according to the journal's guidelines.

what does the journal style guide say?

Yes it will be submitted to journals. I'm not sure which one at the moment.  Let me phrase it this way: Assuming they will go at the end of the document, what are the standard practices?

Journals in math might be different, but the way journals in biology operate, you typically submit everything in a particular order as dictated by the journal, with figures usually coming last or in separate documents, and figure captions usually in the primary document but also last. Only during typesetting, done by the journal, are the figures actually placed anywhere in the paper.

The journal you are submitting to might have a style guide which will tell you what to do. If not, do what you, your advisor, or a different journal style guide suggests. Your paper may get administratively rejected if they do not like the formatting, but they will tell you what to fix and let you submit again. In my field, all figures go at the end, one figure per page, in the order referenced, after the references and appendices when submitting. The copy editor/publisher deals with laying out the manuscript once it is accepted.
Basically, it doesn't matter, just do something reasonable.


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Bad student evaluations
So I just read my evaluations for this past semester, and they are absolutely horrible.  The worst I've ever gotten.  I put so much effort into teaching, but almost nobody thinks I did a good job.  Do you think this will prevent me from teaching next semester? I have a 9-month renewable instructor position that goes through the Spring but I'm really worried.

When you say that they're the worst that you've ever gotten, do you mean that in the sense that they're significantly worse?  If so, it'd seem like there may be some sort of factor behind 'em that you'd want to figure out.

@Nat Well, I went from a 6 (out of 6) in the Spring to a 2 this Fall.  Granted, I did teach the course differently because of the huge number of students... guess I learned not to do that again.

Please specify the country or other context for your question. Are the evaluations part of the university bureaucracy or something you gather of your own volition? To whom are the result revealed?

That you have strong differences between semesters makes a huge difference. It’s a sign that there might be something else going on—perhaps it’s been known as a bad course in the past, and people are going in with preconceptions.

The first thing I'd do in your situation is to get as much information as possible from the evaluations, especially from the students' comments. What exactly did they not like? Was it something about you or about the course?    There are lots of reasons for bad evaluations. Some reasons are things you should pay attention to and change. Other reasons are beyond your control. Did the student population consist mostly of students who didn't want to take the course but needed it to fulfill some requirement? Did the course meet at 8 a.m. (or earlier)?
If you haven't taught this course before, you might want to get some statistical data on the evaluations other instructors got in the same course. Some courses are just really unpopular and produce lousy evaluations even for the best instructors.
As for renewal of your appointment, that depends on your department's administrators and the numbers of students who need to take your department's courses. The administrators may know that the course you taught always yields lousy evaluations, in which case there should be no problem. Other presumably relevant factors include your general reputation as a teacher (e.g., your past evaluations) and the actual evaluations that you just got.  (You said they were "horrible" and "the worst" you've ever gotten --- but might it be that your past evaluations were excellent and these new ones are mediocre, so they're your worst and they look horrible to you but might not be horrible on an absolute scale?)  But in general, the only way to find out about your situation is to talk with the relevant administrator(s).

It was a required course for freshmen.   Many of the comments were along the lines of "worst teacher ever", "can't teach", "hated this class".  There are a few constructive things I learned from the comments, such as things I can change along the lines of format/presentation.  Honestly I've just about had it.  I did the best job I could do under the circumstances, without knowing that so many students were disgruntled.

The only question I see in the post is whether or not a person, given no other details, thinks that a round of bad (by a measure which we don't know) student evaluations will cause a department to not renew your contract.
At my school, all temporary faculty meet with at least the Dept. Chair at the end of every semester to go over student evaluations (I am in math). I have learned in these meetings that many types of "bad" comments from students are not interpreted so seriously by the department. Students can sometimes make extreme claims that are not true, and the department knows this. You say that you put a lot of effort into the course, so presumably you have some course materials to back that up. If a student says, "The instructor never did bla bla," I bet you can provide evidence that you did do bla bla.
If you were respectful of your students, behaved appropriately, met the standards of your department in terms of work you put into the course, and had one of two semesters with great evals, then I would be inclined to say that one semester of bad evals would probably not solely  cause your dismissal.
If your contract is not renewed, I recommend asking for a meeting to discuss the reasons for this. You will want to know (for the future) whether it was a result of the evals or not.

It honestly depends. The biggest issue is if your department needs teachers or not.
If you have reason to argue that the reviews are wrong—that is, if comments are provided—then you should document those as evidence that your reviews were "spiked."


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Sending multiple revisions to editor/referee
I'm finding that this is a problem for me.
All of my papers have been solo efforts so, naturally, nobody else is really invested in them before I submit to journals.  After I submit a paper, I either notice mistakes or cannot resist making significant stylistic changes.  Then I send a revision to the editor to forward to the referee.  This has happened multiple times, sometimes more than once for a particular paper.
I would like to hear from other researchers:
(a) Do you have similar tendencies?
(b) As a referee, how frustrating is it to get these revisions?  On one hand you're getting an improved version (in the eyes of the author), but on the other hand some of the referee's work may be wasted.

Even for a solo effort, getting a friend (or one of your students, who might learn something from it) to proof-read the paper before submission will catch a lot of these.  Not all, of course.  This can take place in the waiting period @corey979 advises

(a) No, I don't have similar tendencies. When I submit a paper for publication, I'm so relieved to have finished it (usually much later than I had planned) that I usually ignore it until I get the referee's report.  I usually have plenty of other tasks that need my attention because I had postponed them while finishing the paper. (b) As a referee, I don't mind getting an improved version of the paper provided it comes with clear information about where the changes are. I don't want to check the part of the paper that I've already read (and my notes on that part) against the new version just to find that nothing has changed in that part.

(a) But what if a reader points out errors?

@darijgrinberg Good point. Unfortunately, my errors were pointed out only after publication, but if I were informed of an error while the paper is being refereed, my reaction would depend on the severity of the error. If the error is trivial, I'd probably take care of it later, when I prepare the final version of the paper. If the error is nontrivial but I know how to correct it, I"d inform the editor and prepare a corrected version of the paper as quickly as possible. If I don't know how to correct it, I'd withdraw the paper. (In all cases, I'd thank the reader.)

@darijgrinberg what readers - during the author - editor - referee - editor - author cycle there aren’t any, readers comment after publication.

@SolarMike: Readers comment on arXiv preprints a lot.

@darijgrinberg arXiv seems to be fairly limited in fields offered : so is it representative of the bulk of papers published worldwide or only a fraction? A quick look and I did not see CFD Computational Fluid Dynamics for example.

@SolarMike Note that this question is tagged "mathematics", which is well represented on arxiv.

Even in the pre-arXiv era, I used to mail preprints to people at the same time that I submitted the paper for publication.

@ArnaudD. Yes, I also note that it is tagged publications - are you suggesting a new category of “mathematical publications” or shall we use what we have?

@SolarMike The question has several tags, one of which is math. All of the tags apply at the same time.

@SolarMike: arXiv's categories are somewhat a historical artefact and often broader than they sound. Put it under numerics or somewhere reasonably close. arXiv is meant for all of Mathematics and TCS.

@TommiBrander I know all tags apply at the same time - I was making a point.... which obviously got missed ....

@darijgrinberg if the category descriptions are not correct then that is likely to limit the functionality....

Please don't do this. Especially multiple times for the same paper. It wastes the referees' time and I'd be very annoyed by it.  Don't keep moving the goalposts.
If you find an actual mistake that requires significant changes to the paper, contact the editor. For anything else, wait until the referees have finished their job and then fix it. That includes any kind of stylistic change and any minor mistakes that don't have significant effects, unless you think it would take the referees more than a short time to figure out what's going on.  (For example, if your paper claims that 2+2=5, that's not going to cause much confusion to the referees so you don't need to send a new version. However, if you make some long argument based on the "fact" that 2+2=5 and that argument requires significant changes to cope with the correction, you should talk to the editor.)

IMHO I think you should let the referee read and comment on the original version, then you can include the revisions asked for as well as the errors you wish to correct as well as your stylistic changes. This is what my supervisor did with me when we had errors we wanted to correct.
This minimises the work of the referee on your paper, also you should perhaps be more critical / thorough on your original before submitting it.

(a) I occasionally edit my preprints after submitting them to a journal, although not nearly as often as before that. As you guessed, this might confuse referees, and most likely they'll want to know what exactly has been updated. When I'm the sole author, I solve this problem by complete transparency: all my changes go on a public git repository, and I tell the referee which commits have happened between the previous and current revisions. (Example git repository -- but this one is nowhere near getting submitted yet. Note that using git is extremely easy if you're the only author and are only using it to keep track of your own changes -- in this case, you don't even need the commandline; everything can be done by point & click on github.)
(b) Yes, as a referee I am often frustrated when I don't know what exactly has been changed (PDF files are painful to compare, if the changes aren't completely minor). Authors should strive to make changes as transparent as possible; but this doesn't mean that they should avoid making changes.

But is it a good idea to share publicly before the paper is accepted ? Would you accept the same as a supervisor or project investigator ?

@NeelBasu: It's utterly standard in mathematics (this question is tagged mathematics).


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Will journals care if I post a "collected works" on my homepage?
I am considering posting a "collected works" which incorporates all of my papers (up to this point) on a particular subject. This way, someone new to my work can get it all in one document. I plan to update it as I do more research.
It is not intended for publication (and will never be submitted for publication).
Much of the content will be copy/paste from papers which have been published. I'm thinking something like one chapter for each paper. My formatting will be generic; I'm not grabbing screenshots of the published edition or anything like that.
Is this typically something that would be allowed?  Does the content of my papers belong to me, so long as I do not try to publish it elsewhere?

I don’t understand the point - people will want your actual papers so they can cite them, not a huge file of everything. Have a list of publications, with links to the journal/DOI. Done.

@JonCuster Because I can add context, re-organize and assimilate the content.  Same reason we have textbooks.

People will want your actual publications.  They do not want this.

I agree with the others commenting. It sounds like what you want to do is write commentaries (in the Greek classics sense) on the papers, and this is fine, but people interested in citing specific results in specific papers will want the actual unaltered published versions (or links to them; or at least an accurate bibliographic citation), not your commentaries. However, such commentaries would probably be useful to anyone interested in updates (and this includes stuff other people might have done) on research related to your work. (continued)

For a rather marginally related example, see this web page, which near the top says: My book Educative JEE (Mathematics) covers nearly all problems in Mathematics at the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) upto the year 2002. To supplement this book, I have been writing educative commentaries on the JEE Mathematics papers from 2003 onwards. Those commentaries are posted at this web page. Incidentally, I've never previously heard of the JEE tests, although I probably should have.

Maybe nobody wants it, but that is really beside the point.  My question is asking whether it would be allowed.

Unless I'm missing the point, the issue of whether it is allowed will depend on the various publishing agreements between you and the publishers of your papers.


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Is it reasonable for an author to withdraw an accepted paper because they have since done better work?
I submitted a paper to a good journal, it was refereed, and after a year it got accepted for publication.
But now that a year has passed, I no longer find the results or methods of that paper to be that great (novel?). And much of my more recent work, which has been submitted to other good journals but has not yet been published, is of greater quality and improves on the earlier methods.
Should I withdraw the paper, or just go ahead and publish it? To me it seems that there are negative consequences either way:

If the paper is published, then the readers may perceive the author to be shallow or inferior in some ways. Also, if the more recent work is published then people may think I'm over-using a particular method, or "salami slicing". Of course, the latter would not be accurate, as the most recent work was begun several months after the first paper was submitted.
If the paper is withdrawn, then the referee and editor (whom are very respected) may hold a grudge, or simply have a lesser opinion. That could impact future submissions and my reputation.

Although, if I formed a habit of submitting and withdrawing because of better and better results... my work would eventually be so wonderful that nobody would know about it!

If you worry about your papers losing freshness by the time they're published, just publish your preprint in a suitable open repository as soon as you submit it: https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/How_to_make_your_own_work_open_access

The work obviously will be less novel (particularly to its author) a year later, but that does not seem like a good reason to withdraw it. If the paper contains good and useful work, withdrawing it at that point is just wasting everyone's time: the authors', the editor's and the reviewers'. Unless there are substantial errors in the paper, or the journal demands too taxing changes before publication, I'd say go ahead and have it published.

And much of your more recent work, which has been submitted to other good journals but has not yet been published, is of greater quality and improves on the earlier methods.

There is no guarantee that the more recent work will be published in good journals, so why risk the old work as well?

Also, if the more recent work is published then people may think the author is over-using a particular method, or "salami slicing".  Of course, the latter would not be accurate, as the most recent work was begun several months after the first paper was submitted.

Usually the submission date is included in the published version of the paper, so it should be easy to disprove this.

Although, if I formed a habit of submitting and withdrawing because of better and better results... my work would eventually be so wonderful that nobody would know about it!

It would also be a good way to annoy editors (and possibly reviewers) making it harder to publish those eventual, wonderful results. Not to mention that never publishing is rather bad for future funding opportunities.

I doubt that reviewers hold grudges. Many won't even know whether a paper they reviewed was ever published. Editors may be a different story, if they expect the paper for an upcoming publication.
On reason your older work seems "shallow" is that you have advanced in the art since you wrote it. You would feel the same if it had been published long ago. Celebrate your growth. Poets and other writers often feel the same way about early work, though that isn't universal.
But if you don't think your newer work is an improvement over the old, then you haven't grown much.
My advice is to publish it. One important reason, in my view, is that the ideas in it may inspire some future student to advance along similar lines. The journal editor will be happier, as you note.
I doubt that most academics are judged by their earliest work, or by the work they have grown beyond, but rather by their overall contribution to the field and by their best work.

Of course, if you find errors in a paper that were missed by the reviewers it is a different story. The editor should be informed, at least.

It is completely normal for papers to describe work that's at least a year old by the time they're finally published. It is completely normal for the authors of papers to continue working on the topic and obtain new results. Of course your work today on this topic is better than the work you did a year ago.
No reasonable person is going to accuse you of salami slicing if you produce multiple papers on a topic over a period of years. Salami slicing is dividing a single piece of completed work into more papers than it needs to be. That's not what you did: you took a finished piece of work, published it and then extended it. If everybody waited until all possible consequences of their work had been fully determined before publishing then, for example, the entirety of physics would consist of a single (as-yet-unwritten) paper called "How the universe works. No, really, we figured it out." Meanwhile, you'll find it hard to get your next job if you never publish anything because there's always some way of extending the work.
It would be completely inappropriate to withdraw your paper, unless you've found that it's incorrect. The referees have spent considerable time reading it; they and the editor have decided that it is interesting and novel enough to publish.  Good luck with your next paper; it sounds like you've already made a lot of progress on it.


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Dollar amount of NSF grant
How do you decide how much money to request?  Must you have a detailed list of costs?  How much money can be taken by the PI, for instance, for summer pay?  I really don't understand how the numbers are reached; they seem totally arbitrary to me.

Typically there is a dedicated office at your institution to help with this sort of thing.

For senior personnel (like the principal investigators) the NSF limit salary to 2 months salary for each person per year, which is held across all NSF-funded grants (so if you are listed on 100 NSF grants you still can only get 2 months per year for yourself in total).
As to the budget questions - yes, you'll need a budget, plenty of supporting detail and reasoning, and yes there are lots of rules about everything from computer equipment to salary for clerical workers. Most common questions can be answered by reviewing the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide. There is no single rule of thumb on how much to ask for, as the range of awards varies quite widely (and for the NSF is usually stated in Dear Colleague letters or public grant invitations on specific topics), but in general if you don't have a really good idea of how much things might cost to go into the budget for what to ask for, the panel will probably quickly notice you haven't thought things out in enough detail and reject it easily in an early round. You can be reasonably assured that someone - and probably many people - will look at each line item in a submitted budget, so they will need to be sensible, clearly defined, and obviously necessary or highly desirable for ensuring the success of the project. If the budget given does indeed seem arbitrary to someone who has looked at hundreds of grant requests in the last month (or week), that will not bode well for the likelihood of success.
If you are affiliated with an institution that applies for NSF funding in general, there is probably a dedicated staff member (or a whole department) dedicated to supporting grant requests, so you should also definitely reach out to them to get information on what sort of support is available - which is much easier than trying to figure out everything on your own. They may have templates, workshops, guides, internal reviews, etc. - or at least, some institutions have all that. Check to see before doing it all the hard way.

As a research administrator who has worked in CS, Electrical Engineering, and Chemistry and submitted applications to more than 15 federal sponsors in the last eight years, I recommend all PIs do four things when unfamiliar with a funding announcement:
1) Review the program announcement, BAA, RFP, or solicitation for any explicit limitations.  Pay attention at the beginning to see if there are additional rules you must learn and adhere to-- NSF, NIH, DOD, and NASA all have additional rule books that are referenced in the solicitation.
2) Go to the data repository for the sponsor (if federal) to see what kinds of projects are funded at what level.  (NSF is here:  https://nsf.gov/awardsearch/advancedSearch.jsp)
 Some programs will be easy to search for with the advanced search.  E.g., "CAREER" requires the program name in the title.  Make sure you limit by directorate if applicable, as they do not have the same funding policies.
3) Contact the program officer and ask what the expected funding levels are.  NSF is famous in some directorates for not posting a max, and yet actually having a maximum. I have heard faculty joke that NSF means "Not Sufficiently Funded."  It's not a joke.
4) Contact your assigned research administrator and ask for a budget.  You need to know if you are being realistic in your demands for your scope of work, but also for the specific program you are applying to.  Institution rules may limit your effort to an amount (perhaps 3 months, maybe more) or time frame (summer vs. calendar).  You may have to contend with a large IDC rate, and the choice of sponsor will change the role IDC plays in your budget--NSF awards inclusive of IDC; NIH awards IDC on top of direct costs.  Engaging your research admin will elucidate these issues for you.  Being inquisitive and letting them know you want details will be very helpful; many admins truncate advice to PIs, because they assume they don't want to know too much and are very busy.  Budgeting is highly complex and should not be done by a PI (although that can happen at smaller schools).  Consider also taking time to look at your sponsored programs website for more help on policies, including effort policies, rate agreements (fringe and indirect costs), computing policy, and policies on user fees or other facility costs if applicable.  This will facilitate your conversation with your research admin.
Final note:  take the budget justification seriously.  I saw a senior PI this week get their entire 15k for foreign travel (conferences) cut by DOD due to lack of justification.  OTOH, I recently got my more junior PI approved for double that amount on a DARPA I submitted in June (also for foreign conferences).  Convince them you know why you are asking for money and that you actually understand what things cost, and you are less likely to see budget cuts, particularly in the case of NSF and DOD.