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Is a late switch in your PhD topic detrimental to an academic career?
I did my undergraduate in math and physics with equal coursework from both. I am now a PhD student in a physics department with an advisor who is a faculty member in both the math and physics departments. I am starting my fourth year as a graduate student and I've been working under my advisor since the end of my first year. The first year we did traditional physics. I got one small paper out of that work, but at some point I realized that I'd be better off in a math department. I spoke with my advisor about this, and after telling him that I have a bachelors degree in math he was happy to put me on another project that is in probability theory. It has some vague connection to physics, but we are only doing math and I really enjoy the work so far.
I'm firstly concerned about my foundation in math. Other than a graduate course I took during my time as an undergraduate and two other courses I took from the math department of my current institution I am largely self taught. For example, I have taught myself measure theory, topology, functional analysis, probability, PDE, complex analysis, a bit of harmonic analysis...etc. I sometimes worry that I do not have as good of a foundation as a traditional math student who took courses and had to pass a qualifying exam. I've had no one "check" my math in the sense that I have not had to take any qualifying exam or do any graded homework problems. Based on the qualifying exams I've seen from other schools, I think I would struggle a lot if I had to take one of them right now without any preparation. In some sense I feel like I am a mathematician without any qualifications (for example, getting accepted in a math department or passing courses/a qualifying exam), no different than an enthusiast who studies graduate textbooks in their free time.
Secondly, I am concerned how this will affect my academic career beyond my PhD. I would like to become a professor in mathematics. Considering I have self-taught myself almost all the graduate math that I know, will I be taken seriously coming from a school whose physics department is not nearly as good as the math department? Due to my unusual circumstance I am having a hard time networking as most math graduate students/faculty in my school write me off since I come from a different department. I am also having a hard time within my own department as my work is not similar to anyone other faculty/student in physics. As a result I feel academically isolated.
I am worried that I've made the change too late. I've been studying intensely the last year and I feel a little behind; I think I am on par with a second year math graduate student but not a fourth year math graduate student. Is it worth chasing a career in academia as a mathematician or is it unrealistic given my situation?
I've already spoken to my advisor about my situation but I would like to hear some outside opinions as well.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/6032/switching-from-one-area-of-graduate-study-to-another related

Were you not taught complex analysis in your undergrad? It's my understanding that it's foundational in both math and physics.

@justauser Yes I was but it was an undergraduate course whose emphasis was more on computing things such as complex integrals, residues, Laurent series, etc. I studied Ahlfors book on my own.

"I would like to become a professor in mathematics" why?

In your question there are a couple of misunderstandings.

Based on the qualifying exams I've seen from other schools, I think I
would struggle a lot if I had to take one of them right now without
any preparation.

As any other students: people prepare a lot to take qualifying exams.

I am a mathematician without any qualifications [..] no different than an enthusiast who studies graduate textbooks in
their free time.

And you are exactly so, do not take bad feeling about that, you are what you are. If you feel your knowledge is not on par with the others, or if you feel that a piece of paper is important for your self-confidence, simply pursue a bachelor in Mathematics.
Since you are already an expert, what is usually spread out over 3 years can be easily achieved in 9 months full-time, max 18 months.
However, I would suggest to see yourself differently: you have been accepted in a physics department because you showed competence in physics and in maths. Insted of looking only in your department, broaden your search, look for conferences where you are a better fit, look for other research groups, check what are doing researchers that are influential to you (by their papers/textbooks).
A professor in Mathematics is a rather vague goal. To become a professor in Mathematics you need a solid research output, and you can have that only if you know in which field you can contribute (pure math? math applied to physics? math applied to engineering? math applied to physical engineering? the world is big ... )

You are suffering massively from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome. No one apart you cares about you being able to pass a qualifying exam. No one is able to do science alone. If you need to know something, you will either ask a colleague, a peer, or someone at a conference. If you feel that your questions to the others are too basic, try harder to work on your own. One can define research exactly as "getting stuck in solving trivial things, without loosing the big picture. Although it turns out the trivial things are never really trivial".


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Are there systems to automatically blind a paper?
I am looking for systems to make a research paper blind (i.e., remove all information about authors, affiliations, maybe even anonymize self-references to previous work) and do this automatically, i.e., without human intervention. Do such systems exist?
I have four main use cases in mind for this:

As a reviewer in non-double-blind venues, you may nevertheless prefer to review the papers of your batch by hiding information about the identity, affiliations, etc., of authors, to avoid biasing yourself. This probably wouldn't be easy in practice (as you often get emails about the papers, or see info about the papers on an editorial platform such as Easychair, which prominently feature the author information) but could be doable nevertheless (e.g., with the help of someone else to retrieve the papers for you). In this use case, the blinding system would take as input a PDF file of the article and hide author information, etc., probably using some PDF extraction tool such as Grobid.
As an editor of an overlay journal (where articles and submissions are hosted on a public repository), if you want your overlay journal to be double-blind, you will need to give reviewers a blinded version of the articles, but of course the original articles hosted on arXiv will have to feature the author information prominently, so you'll need to remove it. In this use case, for papers typeset in LaTeX, the blinding system could work from the LaTeX sources of the paper (distributed by arXiv), which is probably easier (but still tricky for non-anonymous self-references).
As an author, when (re)submitting your work to a double-blind conference, it would be helpful to automatically make the paper blind or at least have a way to flag potential violations of blindness (the most interesting ones being non-anonymous self-citations). Again this could work from the LaTeX sources.
Finally, when operating a double-blind conference, when authors submit their manuscript (as LaTeX sources or as PDF), it could be useful to automatically make it double-blind, or at least highlight possible double-blindness violations. (This is the previous point but on the conference side.)

[I am not sure whether this question is in scope here -- I hesitated with Software Recommendations but this is rather specific to academia so posting it here.]

No.
AI is getting smarter every day, but they're still not smart enough to realize that "In [paper] we showed [result]" is a self-reference that breaks anonymity. You will unfortunately have to anonymize papers yourself.
It's not a proof of course, but if such software existed, Elsevier would know about it. Since they didn't mention it in their "prepare for double-blind peer review" page, it doesn't exist.

Beyond such obvious mistakes, if the field is small enough you'll know either way.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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Is it okay to mention a mathematical fact that intrigues me in SOP when I don't understand its technical details?
I'm applying for Ph.D. in Mathematics and I'm writing a statement of purpose (or SOP) where I plan to express my interest in geometric representation theory and categorification. To me, an intriguing aspect of the field is that a mature understanding of mathematical objects sometimes results in their categorification, i.e. discovery of certain categories containing strictly more abundant information than the previous objects.
I only have advanced undergraduate knowledge of mathematics and the above statement is solely based on what I tried to understand from folklore and a few examples, such as Khovanov homology, which I heard of because they are relevant to my BS degree(physics). Technically, I understand the basics of category theory but not more.
Of course, I will be as honest about my current knowledge as I can. Is it favorable to state my attention to such topics when I have neither deep nor working knowledge of them?

Yes.
A major role of the statement of purpose is to allow whoever is reading your application to determine if there are faculty whose interests match yours and could serve as a suitable advisor.  I think it can only be to your benefit to accurately convey this information.

But keep it short and focus on your goals, which is the main purpose. Short and long term. It is more important if this is the thread you want to follow in grad study than if it is just "intriguing".

One issue is that if you present your interests as too specialized, and no one in the department works on them, they will think their department is not a good fit for you.

Indeed so.  But if your interests are that specialized, they will be correct.  So, convey your interests accurately.

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


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Can I include ideas from a referee report from a paper with a coauthor without involving the coauthor in the next project?
I am a young researcher. In the past, I have collaborated with someone a few times whose contribution was very minimal, and their claim to coauthorship is questionable (yet I let them have it). Awhile back, after communicating to them my concerns, I cut my ties and have not worked with them since.
Recently, with this collaborator, we had a paper recently rejected from a journal. However, in one my new collaborations with other researchers, I realized a way to leverage some of the ideas in the referee report to upgrade the new project. This makes the older collaboration a bit obsolete, and I would prefer to avoid merging projects for the mentioned reasons.
I have no idea how to proceed forward. Any suggestions?

"We had a paper recently rejected from a journal" Who is "we"? Does this include the collaborator you dislike?

I have edited the post! Thanks for pointing this out!

Okay, thanks. So your question is basically, "Can I include ideas from a referee report from a paper with author X without involving them in the next project?"

Yes! I want to be 'ethical' in every capacity with things like including ideas from a referee report on a separate project, but also not including them to keep distance.

Okay, thanks. By "obsolete," do you mean "I am no longer interested in publishing the paper [that was just rejected]?"

If you are able to publish the existing work with your coauthor, I think that ends your responsibility to them neatly. Most work comes out of past work of your own in some way, you don't need to continue including all past collaborators with each new work. The way to credit those past collaborators is through citation.
It gets a bit dodgy if you plan not to publish that work anymore, especially if the new project will then overlap with something unpublished. A middle ground option might be to at least have it released as a preprint with your original planned author list. Then, in the new work you can use citation of that preprint to credit their contributions, just as if the work was published in a journal.
However, I think if that's your plan it's still worth a conversation with all your coauthors to discuss planning to post as a preprint and then leave it there and not pursue publication further. If coauthors disagree, then they need to be willing to put whatever effort in that would make that paper publishable. I'm guessing they won't really want to do this.

This was very helpful, I appreciate it! I will surely try the first option before deciding to not publish.


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Is it fine to prefix a salutation like Dr. Mr. Ms. Prof. etc. with name in authors' names in research papers?
My question is about rules or formats regarding writing names of the authors under the title in research papers sent for publication in academic journals.
In most of the (research) papers published in academic journals, I haven't seen salutation like Dr., Mr., Ms., Prof., etc. before the authors' names (under the paper's title). Is there any rule about writing salutation before authors' names in research papers (if they really are Doctorate or Professor)?
I am from India, and I have seen authors names having such salutations before their names in some of the published papers, but I haven't seen such salutations in the papers of the researchers of other countries. I personally have heard Indian authors insisting journals to write salutations before their names in the papers they sent for publication. I know the mentality of Indians that they want to write salutations in their papers, and they feel too much proud and honoured when anyone call them with the salutations, even during informal social gatherings and events.
I want to let them know about writing salutations in papers before their names if there is any guideline or recommendation. I searched on Google, but found results only related to general usage; I did not found anything specifically related to research paper publication in journals.

I suspect that the format for author identification is determined by the policy of the journal. There may be conventions particular to a field that most journals in that field will follow.

I recently heard a mathematician, let's call them M, say "I never write my name as Dr. M unless I'm writing to a medical doctor"... ;-)

It really depends on field and country. In my humanities field, it used to be quite common to see "Prof. Rossi of the University of Bologna argued X, which became widely accepted due to the work of Dr. Smith at the University of Chicago" in journals until about 40 years ago, but it sounds very old-fashioned now. It was (and is) more common in certain languages than others. Sometimes, we still see titles/positions mentioned if it is germane to the discussion (e.g. if the relationship between several scholars' ideas can be explained by the fact that one of them taught the rest).
If you're asking about authors' names under the title, not in the body of the article, I don't think I've ever seen it in my field - but, again, this would be field-specific.

If you write it in a submission to a journal you can always remove it if an editor objects. Don't worry too much about such things.

I asked about authors' own names under the title in their own submitted paper. Sorry for the confusion. I have edited the question, and I hope now that all can understand my question properly. Thank you.


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What will be the consequences of this citation [?] error?
I have recently submitted my thesis but there are some citation errors [?]. I am really in a disaster and cant sleep properly. I think I will get sick soon. What should I do? Can anyone guide me? Do I contact with my supervisor?

Did you check the label of the citation ?

This kind of thing is not handled in the same way in all places, so you've got to ask somebody in your department, optimally your supervisor.

Most importantly I can not edit now because it was final printed version. So I am hoping I will fail due to this. Should I still contact with my supervisor?

You have not answered my question yet. Was it due to a simple typo or something else ? If it was a simple typo, I think everyone would understand, I don't think you will fail the exam. However, if it was something more serious, it will depend on your exam committee. You need to be ready to explain to them what really happened.

hi@Nobody sorry not to give the answer..yeah it was a typing error and thats why its appear[?].... later i have corrected. yeah it was serious but i was not.  So i have to get this consequence if i fail.

Your exam will not fail because of a stinking typing error. You show the committee the LaTex source why [?] appeared. They will understand. Why would they fail you because of that tiny error ? But, if you have more serious problems, it'll be hard to say. Good Luck !

Thanks@Nobody  i do not have serious problem except this..implementation has met all the requirements.

"Should I still contact with my supervisor?" If you can't sleep without doing that, it's probably the right thing to do.

You'll be fine until you become president of Harvard.

I am assuming you have submitted your thesis for examination, and noticed some errors.  An unresolved citation is not going to kill your thesis.  You will have a chance to fix any errors at a later date.

Thanks for your answer. This was the printed final version of my thesis and submitted to the exam office..do not know what will happen now...cant edit anymore

Have a look at the examination process of your university.

yeah no way to edit..

What I mean is that once your thesis returned from examination, you will be able to edit.  It is normal that you won't be able to edit during the examination process.

may i fail with this citation error?

@danobdon No one would know if you'll fail the exam except the exam committee. Did you check what caused the citation error [?] ? Was it just wrong label which caused [?] ? (assuming you used LaTex) Or you missed a reference ? It all depends on the seriousness of this error. Why didn't you answer my question right below your question ? If you answer it, we might have a clearer picture of what happened. Please do not put another question in an answer box of the other question. Thanks.

Yes I used latex.. I have checked and later l have corrected but date was expire..So they will not except it anymore.

Actually I a new here..So I did not know the rules..I have deleted that comment.


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Conference witholding reviewer feedback until registration - possible predatory conference?
I recently submitted a paper to a CS conference which was accepted after about ~2 weeks. Upon acceptance they notified me that reviewer feedback was withheld until registration was completed (~$490).
This seems quite predatory and a large red flag. I am fairly new to academia so my confidence is not absolute. Advice is appreciated.

We do not comment here on a specific conference. While withholding reviewer comments is unusual, in itself it is not a red flag or proof that the conference is predatory. If you submit a paper, you oblige yourself to attend the conference which means paying conference fees.
The short time to acceptance is however a "red flag" as is the wide-open call for papers. You can look at other conferences in the same line, look at some of the papers there and whether they are cited and you get a better idea whether this is a reasonable conference or not. You can also look at the sponsoring institution.

I find both the rapid acceptance and the withholding of reviews dubious….. especially the latter.

Looks like Springer publishes their proceedings -- https://link.springer.com/conference/sai
I recommend looking at the editors of previous proceedings, citations from the proceedings, ..., to try to gauge the reputation of the conference series.


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Guidance Needed on Teaching an Infinite Class
I am an instructor for a local CS class (online). We are trying something new. We are offering a 17 week program for CS (programing). The program is divided into 3 sections of 5 weeks each and then 2 weeks for the final project. Every 5 weeks, new students are enrolled. This means now I have students who are in week 6 and week 1 (newly enrolled students). Class happens Monday - Thursday 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM. Students are required to read online resources, watch videos before coming to the class.
How do I manage such a class where every 5 weeks different students are getting enrolled?
My idea is to treat it like Office Hours. So students (no matter which week you belong to) can ask me questions and I can help them.
Any other suggestions?

Is it face to face?  Is it in a lab?

This is an online remote class.

I hope that the administration views this as an experiment in which proven pedagogy isn't ready for prime time. If not, you will have some difficulty. If they do, then stay flexible and modify things as you learn more.
For an online class you can do the following with a bit of help from your IT department.
Establish a private mailing list. I suggest under the control of the university, not something like Facebook (privacy, security, ...). Subscribe every student to the list when they register. Unsubscribe them a bit after the course ends for them, say, when their grade is posted.
In addition to whatever you do online with zoom or whatever, have the students ask questions on the list. Everyone sees every question. Everyone sees every answer. If you can get the entire set of list interactions preserved and visible to all students, all the better.
I've used this in other situations with groups of widely varying background/experience. It is helpful even in more normal classroom situations because those when a question is asked it is often likely that others had the question and didn't ask it. The classes I taught with this tool met infrequently (once a month), but were 24 by 7 from the student standpoint. When they had a question, they asked it and got an answer, maybe from me, or not. But their progress was never blocked.
The list is used for everything except communication that is personal (grades ...). All content questions go to the list so everyone sees every interaction.
Encourage students to answer questions posed on the list - answers back to the list. This cuts your load immensely. You only need to respond to answers that might lead to misconceptions. But make sure that the list isn't used to pass answers to exercises to other students. Minimal hints are fine, but not answers. Perhaps questions about exercises can only be answered by yourself (or a TA).
Second, as much as possible, "flip" the classroom so that the real time sessions are not content delivery. Use readings for most of the content. Look for a way to encourage the readings on a topic prior to discussion in real time. A quiz on the readings is useful for this if you have the tools for it. The quizzes count somewhat toward the grade. Taking the quiz is the ticket to participate in the real time session if you can make that work. Graded quizzes might be enough. You might need three sets of quizzes, one for each "level".

Alternative to the open mailing list, if questions come to you and you post the important questions and your answers to a list so that all can see them. Then you don't get the same question ten times. But having other students answer questions is a big time saver, though you have to read the list frequently.

I could add more for a face to face situation.

Caveat. I can't predict how the students will benefit or not from seeing material "out of order" and with things at different levels "all at once". It might work fine, or it might be a disaster. You need to monitor that and give feedback to administration on your observations.

Wow! Thank you so much for all the useful suggestions. I am def going to incorporate your suggestions.

What a horrible idea! You have students at three different levels in your class:
You can give it a lab like structure. Students work on their tasks and you can go from student to student, supervising, correcting, and mentoring.
You can give two groups a few tasks and then give a short lecture to the third group. After the lecture, you explain the solutions of the task. You repeat with another group being the focus group. This is close to a flipped class-room and you can pick up techniques from this setting.
If you make it like an office hour, you are going to miss out on the shy or lost students.

I like your idea of lab like structure. This way I can see who is struggling and then help them out.


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Someone I don't know contributed to my program on GitHub. Can I still present that program as my Bachelor thesis?
I am a third-year computer engineering student at a university in Croatia.
In 2020, my Computer Architecture professor asked me to make an assembler and an emulator for PicoBlaze that would run in any modern browser. In return, he would excuse me from the assembly language exam (meaning he would give me an A, even if I didn't show up for the test) and let me write my Bachelor thesis about that project. I did that, and you can see the work on my website.
A few months after I made the PicoBlaze assembler and emulator, I had some mental health issues preventing me from attending the university and working on that project for almost a year. Not long before my absence, I added the MIT license to my project.
In the meantime, my work began being used at a university in Argentina for introduction to embedded systems. Recently, I received pull requests from a GitHub user named agustiza, who claims to be from the university in Argentina where my project is being used. At first, the pull requests were small bug-fixes, but soon they expanded with agustiza adding significant new features. I accepted those pull requests.
Can I still present my PicoBlaze assembler and emulator as my Bachelor thesis, or will I run into problems because a part of it was written by agustiza? Do I need to write a new Bachelor thesis?
UPDATE: I got a C from my Bachelor thesis, and the fact that not all code was written by me didn't create problems.

You need to talk with your Bachelor's thesis advisor. It's clear you did a lot of work on the assembler and the emulator, and it sounds like you already had a working piece of software before this other contributor got involved. Present it in that light to your thesis advisor/contact person, and see what they have to say. In all likelihood, you'll be fine.

Well done! You are now leading an international collaborative open source software project, rather than just being the typical individual Github user who posts their personal repositories online. Great validation that you are doing good work. In terms of your thesis, this only strengthens it, as a marker of quality. An advantage of git is that your contributions and others are transparently and inherently documented in terms of what portions of the code you might wish to personally claim credit for. As another user notes, you can make a tag to indicate the original state of the project.

I'd like to highlight and agree with A N's comment below : put a git tag on your personal last major commit, and you can present the code as of that tag as solely your work. Your thesis advisor may also let you write one or two chapters analysing the next contributor's code (just not presenting it as something you wrote).

Congratulations! It is very rare and impressive for an undergraduate's open source project to attract that kind of interest

I don't know how things are at your institution, but in my experience the requirement for originality is not that high in a Bachelor's thesis. You say that the course is "computer engineering", and collaborative working is a key part of software engineering; I would put a chapter in the thesis explaining the nature of the collaboration from an engineering process viewpoint.

Managing an open source project and merging other people's code is arguably more work and more responsibility than working alone so I would be surprised if this is a concern so long as you are crediting other people's contributions. Personally I would be very impressed if an undergraduate thesis reached that point.

Can I still present my PicoBlaze assembler and emulator as my Bachelor thesis, or will I run into problems because a part of it was written by agustiza? Do I need to write a new Bachelor thesis?

First of all, you can just choose to make a branch solely for your thesis, and without any of agustiza's changes. It's not as if anyone forced you to present those changes in your thesis. Git makes it super easy to attribute the work exactly, and to choose what commits any particular branch includes.
When presenting the project in your thesis, you can choose to use a branch with only bugfixes and no feature contributions. You'd create such a branch from some point prior to the contributions and cherry-pick them as appropriate
You should also include a "field experience" chapter that describes how the project is used by others, and what changes they made (!). There are not all that many bachelors' thesis projects that find outside users, so if anything you should be very proud!

Alternatively, if no additional work was needed on the project in order to use it for the bachelor's thesis, the last version that was 100% your contribution can be simply given a tag in GitHub instead of a branch.

While this is the most clear-cut approach, acknowledging the fact that other people found your project useful enough to work on it is a chapter that I'd proudly write into my thesis

I would also suggest using SmartGit (free for noncommercial use). Meh. Could you please remove this infomercial? There are many open-source alternatives which look just as good or better. If OP wrote an assembler and emulator, they probably don't mind using git in a console, or lazygit, or TurtoiseGit, ....

@EricDuminil Mot much of an infomercial if the thing is free for use described here. I am intimately familiar with the alternatives, and they are miles behind. I am not in any way associated with the company that makes it, this is my honest assessment of how useful it is.

First, congratulations! The code you wrote for your bachelor's thesis was useful enough that other people used it to teach classes at a university level and added new features. This is a major positive point for the impact of your work and you should be proud to say it in your thesis. Not very many bachelor's thesis code projects are ever touched by anyone other than the author.
Generally, the rule in academia is that you can use other people's stuff as long as you cite it and make it clear what was their work and what was your work. Plagiarism is presenting someone else's work as your own. So you don't have to worry about plagiarism as long as you are clear that others (such as GitHub user agustiza) contributed to the code.
Copyright is a legal issue and handled by the license that you chose for the GitHub project. This is mostly irrelevant to the bachelor's thesis as the thesis will presumably be a document, written by you, describing how you designed the code and what it does. Here you could also mention the contributions of GitHub user agustiza. The copyright of the thesis is yours and separate from the copyright of the code itself.

Given how Git works, it should even be pretty straightforward - line by line if you like - to indicate which portions are your own work and which portions are by pull request.

And you can easily cite the specific branch and revision that's OP's work, and there would absolutely be no confusion as to what was changed and what wasn't.

Just as a starter: with git blame source_code you can reveal quickly the last author of the lines, with a pipe (similar to git blame source_code | grep "name" -c) quickly count how many lines of the present form of file source_code are the result of name's work.

Most of this is a fantastic answer. I also decline to give legal advice on this site. But at least under U.S. law the bachelor's thesis may not have an entirely separate copyright from the program if the thesis primarily describes how the code was designed and how it works. The thesis in that case would likely be classified as a derivative work, which while having a separate copyright would not be separate in the way an average non-lawyer thinks of the term. It probably will not matter in practice, but if it's significant then OP may wish to consult with a lawyer in their jurisdiction.

What happen to you is awesome. Now you can write another chapter about open source collaboration, how your software have been used by others and their contributions. The fact that they contributed to your project and not any other is of merit by itself!
Just, maybe review your whole thesis to check that you never say that you are the only author, but that you started, wrote most, leaded, etc...

There are tools built around git that provide very elaborate statistics regarding contributions to a repository.  https://github.com/vifactor/repostat is one example that comes to mind.

@estebarb if the thesis refers to the code at a previous version, it is totally fine to write OP is the only author. A note (or a chapter) can be added to describe further developments.

Can I still present my PicoBlaze assembler and emulator as my Bachelor thesis

Yes absolutely. Just make sure to mention that not all code in that repository is exclusively yours and that you only write about features that you implemented as if they were your work.
Apart from that, Git blame makes it quite easy to discern who wrote what code so I wouldn't even go into the hassle of detailing that.  Just write your thesis (the writing is usually more important than the code behind it anyway) and maybe add a section about collaboration (aka what they added).
If doubt still remains, talk to your supervisor or your corresponding examination office, they are the ones making the calls at the end of the day and they know how to deal with it all.

Short answer is Yes. And that's the sign your work is already making an impact. Exception may be if GitHub you designed to be specifically like the way you designed but someone changed it significantly so it looked totally different and you are no longer a primary contributor .

It's awesome that someone used your code and repo already. You should talk with your supervisor about this.
Any code written by you is only your work. You have to take full ownership of those parts and reason about what you did and why.
If somebody else contributed to your codebase you need to mention the author. You can not take ownership of that code. But it's your project so you still need to reason about the code that was added. And how you interact with that code. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Do you keep it?
A great way of dealing with this would be to test the code. Then you can argue the following: this is my project, this is the overall design, those parts are mine, and those were contributed by XY. To ensure quality I decided to run this set of tests. As they all passed I decided to keep this code. In those sections, you are not only an engineer but a manager of an open-source project.
If you decide to test this code make sure to test your own code in a similar way so the argument of ensuring quality holds somewhat equal over the whole codebase.
The goal of a thesis is to present the work you have done and back it up with research and evidence.
It's also great for your career, you will most likely work in teams later. You already have some experience with that in your open-source project. Not many people can say that!


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Does a PhD student need approval of their supervisor to gather data?
Is it necessary for a PhD student to obtain their supervisor's approval before gathering data through interviews?
How can you handle a supervisor who takes a longer time to respond to a student email?

These are quite some different questions and details are missing. For example, gathering data can be anything between looking at a measurement device or conducting an expensive medical study requiring ethical oversight, etc. Please [edit] your question to focus on a more specific problem and specify your goals (e.g., avoiding stagnation). Please also read this FAQ.

Are there other ways to contact your supervisor such as calling them or turning up in their office?

Well, it depends. Where I live and study, I do the research. The supervisor is more of a consultant.

Gathering data through interviews will need ethics approval.
Consult your university's guidelines on how to obtain that. I would expect that typically you will need your supervisor to sign off on your application for ethics approval. Of course, it is also possible that your data collection is part of a project where your supervisor has already obtained the necessary approvals for, but in that case you will still need their confirmation of this fact and agreement that you can indeed collect data for their project in accordance to whatever application they made.


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How to list paper on CV where one is not listed as author
I used to be in the lab of a professor at a top 10 US university with an h-index of 90+ (essentially very well respected). I was working with a PhD student in the same group on a paper (the professor was not an author on this paper) and later found out I was not included in the authors list by the PhD student. I contacted the professor, who acknowledged that I should've been listed as an author but that it was too late to change at this point. I talked to other professors at the same institution who said that, realistically given who the professor is, it would be best not to poke the bear and doing so would likely not result in a positive outcome for me.
In this situation, how would I list this on my CV? It is a fairly significant work and thus I would like to list somehow. I can certainly answer questions in detail about any part of the work. However, I feel weird about listing a paper where I am not listed as an author.

Are you at least mentioned in the acknowledgements?

@Sursula - No, nowhere in the paper or any related works. The github has code that I authored and sent to the prof, who pushed it (although I think without malice - github is not an attribution source normally) so my name doesn't even appear there

Ignore those who say don't poke the bear. You have earned the right to be credited as the author and have the evidence to prove it. If that bruises this prof's ego, so what? Too many people pussy-foot around arseholes so they continue being arseholes.

@ScottishTapWater - While I like this idea, I think it may be detrimental long term. Other people who know him for longer than I recommended not to poke the bear. Given his previous behavior, it is not hard for me to imagine a situation where I apply to a PhD program/some academic role in a year or so and ask him for a rec letter given my work in his lab, at which point he writes a poorer rec letter (or even if he hears that I applied somehow and emails the relevant department). His word carries a lot more weight in the community and I worry about long term ramifications of antagonizing him.

As much as I hate to say it, if there is a real prospect of getting a positive rec letter, I think the tradeoff may indeed favor listening to those who advise you not to "poke the bear".  Obviously the prof should issue a correction and should still give you a good rec letter, but don't delude yourself that you can magically stop "arseholes" like this just by refusing to "pussy-foot around" them; it could very well make him a bigger arsehole and leave you without anything at all to show for it.

You should listen to the people who know the professor well. In your position I would consider uploading the code that I have written to my personal github along with the entire revision history going back to when you began developing the code. I am assuming that the professor only received the final product. I would develop good documentation of the code using a tool such as doxygen. Then you can point the software as a well documented quality product that you have written from scratch and you can cite the paper as project that made good use of your software.

I don't understand, you said the professor in not one of the authors. Shouldn't it be for the student who published to request the change from the journal? Have you contacted them? Or is what you need from the professor that they put pressure on that student?

In this situation, it would be reasonable for you to create a section of your CV (say, just after publications where you have authorship) where you can list research projects you have worked on where you are not credited as an author.  You could title this latter section something like, "Other research projects (not credited as author)".  List the paper there and include a description of your contribution to the project.  This might raise a question at an interview, but your explanation is perfectly adequate.
I see this type of thing largely as a stop-gap measure for someone who is fairly early in their career.  As you progress in your research career you will probably obtain authorship credit for a substantial number of papers, so you might later make the decision to drop the uncredited items, simply to simplify your CV.  However, if you don't already have a lot of authored papers then it is probably reasonable to list this one as an uncredited research project and give a description of your work.

Does it not look somewhat unethical/poor to be claiming a non-authorship research project as one's own?

So long as your description of your contribution is accurate, I wouldn't consider you to be claiming it as your own.

If I put myself in the interviewer's shoes, as soon as I see this type of non-authorship research section, alarm bells start going off in my head because I assume the person writing the resume is more likely to be exaggerating their claim rather than the professor being unethical. Is this not a real concern?

Why would I be such an arsehole to a job candidate by speculating like that without taking any action to confirm the information?  If I have any concern that the candidate might be lying/exaggerating, I contact the paper authors and ask them.  According to your question, they would then tell me that yes, this person did indeed contribute significantly to the research and it was our oversight not to list him as an author.  (I then chide myself for being sceptical of the claim in the first place.)

Apologies for the lack of clarity; I was referring to non-academic roles where one likely does not have that much time pre-interview. I think if they are sufficiently willing to interview me/email paper authors, they will find the truth. I worry more about the people I will not hear from who just desk reject me based on this worry. Is this worry unfounded?

My view is that a person who will desk-reject you based on their own entirely-speculated concern that you're lying (without conducting any check of this) is an (extremely rare) arsehole, and you have dodged a bullet by not working for them.

Bear in mind that in almost every job application process in academia, people list a large number of papers on their resume.  I have never seen an interview panel actually go through and check that these papers exist and that the person in question is in fact listed as an author (at most they might read one or two of the main papers).  So if people want to lie about their research contributions, they can do this much more simply than by adding a special paper where they say they worked on it but they are not listed as an author.

Since they have already agreed that it was an error I would ask the Prof to issue a correction adding you as an author.  It's a simple enough process and how to do it is well documented by most journals.  Refusing to correct the record would be a publication ethics issue.
Why do you think that doing this would make you lose standing in a Professor's eyes?
I am a research integrity lead at my institution and I would be appalled if a Prof refused to do this, or other senior staff were advising a post-doc or student not to pursue it.  Rightly or wrongly publication is our currency and refusing to acknowledge junior staff contributions is extremely poor.  I would almost think that issuing a correction would help the Prof to get the reputation for doing the right thing by his team.

Do you have experience with changing the author list on a published paper with a single email to the editor?

No but COPE explicitly defines the process by which this should occur, and I've just checked a couple of journals and the process is very straightforward in each.  In any case the substance of my answer is correct, it's a simple process and advising anybody not to pursue it is a breach of publication ethics.  I have edited the answer accordingly.

I see. I agree that this is the best option, then, I'm still a bit skeptical it will be that easy but hopefully some changes in journal processes have occurred.

@BryanKrause I have the experience of adding an author to a paper with a single email to the editor. It is that simple. A correction was published, the original paper remained as-is (can't change something that is already printed). So even though the added author's name will not be seen by most people reading the paper, they can at least officially claim it as their paper in their CV.

I think it would cause me to lose standing because 1) he told me it's too late to correct (he doesn't want me to), 2) if I go behind his back and correct, he will hear about it, 3) he is known for being egotistical and would likely take this as disrespecting him (based on my understanding of how he would react given working in his group for ~1.5 years), 4) other professors who have known him for longer (who have nothing to gain by leading me astray) told me I would be in the right to ask for a correction, but given his personality, it would likely be worse for me long term

@CrisLuengo unfortunately if that's happening the editor(s) are not doing due diligence - because authorship is currency, it cannot be modified this easily; the journal needs to be sure the new author deserves to be an author + has consent from the remaining authors to be listed.

@Allure check the COPE guidance, if nobody objects it really should be that easy. With respect to due diligence, how can editors know who should or shouldn't be an author?

@olivarb I do not suggest you contact the journal on your own, the request should come from the corresponding author. Obviously I don't know the people involved but it really is a grave ethics violation for him to refuse to add you. Can you get another prof to ask on your behalf?

@GeorgeSavva right, but then it won't be a simple email to the editor, c.f. https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/authorship-c-addition-after-publication-cope-flowchart.pdf (it requires written consent from all authors).

@Allure The editor might have contacted the other authors, I don't know. I honestly don't remember most details of the process. Maybe there was a second email?! But I do remember it was very easy and very little work on my part.

@GeorgeSavva - It wasn't so much as a "I will not add you despite you doing work" as it was "Oh that was a mistake. Unfortunately can't do much about it now" verbally. The prof will not really gain reputation by issuing this one correction (he's very well established already). Realistically, no one will make moves against someone as well established as him

@olivarb Clearly we don't know the person involved.  But it's difficult for me to understand how a polite message asking him to issue a correction and explaining why its so important for you would be seen as 'making moves against him'.  As I say though, maybe there's stuff we don't know why this would be a bad idea.  Just seems a shame senior people can act like that and people continually defer to them.

You really can't list a publication that you are not an author on, at least not in the way you would list other publications. The best you can do is list the experience with your other education/research/employment i.e., you worked in the lab from date xxxx-yyyy and did a,b,c things that resulted in z publication. It's not ideal, but depending on what you plan to do, might be okay.
The larger issue here is that you were improperly excluded from the author list - your former professor even admitted that. I suspect your former professor does not want to be bothered jumping through the necessary hoops to get you on the author list (you'd need the agreement of all authors, possibly a letter, probably some paperwork). Journals can update author lists if there has been a mistake. I'm sure most major publishers have an official process for this.
I would pursue that a bit more before giving up, despite what your other professors say. You don't have to "poke the bear" necessarily. Just check the publishers policies and if they have a process you can send and email to your professor offering to do the leg work. If that doesn't pan out, it's up to you how far you take things. I would argue that it wouldn't be wrong to contact the journal directly - you have email proof indicating you should be an author. This is the nuclear option though and would definitely be poking the bear.

I suspect the professor would not want the annoyance either. If I contact the journal, word will definitely get back to him. I will likely get the authorship given the evidence but lose standing significantly in his eyes. He is, despite being extremely smart, very egotistical and would definitely take it poorly. I worry about longer term consequences where his opinion about me would likely be respected; the other professors sympathized but said given his tendencies and his reputation, it would be a poor idea despite my being in the right.

If you contact the journal word will get back to him - the journal will likely reach out to all the authors. However, most journals and publishers have the process outlined online. I was suggesting doing some research and suggesting to the lead author that you would handle all the annoying work. I can't imagine how this would bruise even the most delicate ego - you can always butter him up a bit.

I would not assume that journals have a process for adding authors that does not involve retracting the original publication. While it seems like it should be simple to change the author list, it really isn't, since it changes how everyone will refer to the work in the future and creates conflicts there. Certainly unfortunate for OP's situation.

It's simple enough to check the process for post-publication change to authorship on a journals website.  It doesn't seem complicated.  There is also COPE guidance on the process journals should follow, and in the case there is no disagreement amongst the authors it should be straightforward https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/authorship-c-addition-after-publication-cope-flowchart.pdf

I'm a prof with h-index 80+ at a top-5 university in STEM, first time posting here. Maybe I can speak to the prof's perspective.
The short answer to your question is, if you're not on the author list, you cannot list it on your CV.
That said, it's VERY odd that "the professor was not an author on this paper" if it's from their lab. In that case the prof has no way of helping you, so I don't see why you'd complain about poking the bear. It's not the bear's paper!
The best you can do is: 1) talk to whoever is corresponding author on the paper and explain. 2) talk to whoever is going to write you future rec letters and explain. If you did the work, they will gladly write about it in their letter, and that's more important than having the paper on your CV if you're just in the middle of a long author list.

Perhaps just at my school, but the prof heading the lab is not always on the research paper. I talked to the main author, who admitted fault and brought in the professor. Professor basically said "mistakes happen, move on". Professor offered to make up for it in rec letter privately. I'm also concerned about if I want to move into a more research oriented position outside academia, it may be detrimental

What do you think about the accepted answer (by @sErISaNo) of listing the experience as a "worked on this paper" without listing it in the publications section of the CV?

@olivarb, I think it's a fine suggestion, but if you apply to PhD programs the admissions committee will put FAR more weight on your advisor's rec letter than on some paper you aren't listed as author on. I've been evaluating PhD applications for nearly 20 yrs, we basically look for GPA and then the rec letters, ever since GREs have been disallowed or made optional. Then we decide who to interview, etc.

So this compromise by the professor actually makes sense assuming I apply to academia and I just list as per @sErISaNo if applying to industry?

Yeah, surely if you apply to PhD programs you need a strong rec letter. That said, I worked in industry for a bit and I would always check for references there too. Easy to do and helps one filter out (some) weaker candidates.

Btw, this is also a lesson for all researchers of any age, that YOU are responsible for staying on top of things and making sure your name is on papers you contributed to, because (sadly, perhaps) others may simply forget to look out for you and to remember if your name should be on the paper.

I was given a copy with my name on it. Seems like it accidentally got commented out in the anonymization process. By the time I followed up and talked to the prof, the professor said it was too late


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How to resolve accidental double submission
I submitted a paper a couple months ago. I wasn't super happy with the results I published and ended up rewriting major sections of the paper (mainly for clarity rather than content). I got some better results to a point where I was happy with the results. I then submitted it to another conference. I forgot I had submitted to the first conference (partly due to medical issues, partly my fault for not having a system in place considering the issues), thinking that I had not submitted since I got the better results/did the edits. Looking back, the methods aren't that different (mainly hyperparameter optimization in ML that led to better results). How do I address this double submission?

Are you still waiting for submission to the first conference? Whenever they get back to you, you can decline being included in the conference.

@Parever - Is it as simple as that? No need to mention double submission or try to withdraw right now? I am waiting on the decision from the first conference, but the paper has likely gone to reviewers at both already.

You could:

Withdraw the earlier paper (I'm assuming that's the one you care less about) now
Withdraw if/when it is accepted
Depending on how different the papers are, do nothing

You mention you have new and different results and revised the paper significantly. Is it possible that they could be considered separate works?
If not, take your pick of option 1 or 2. I would slightly prefer 1, only because it might be more respectful of the time and effort of the reviewers/conference organizers. You don't necessarily need to give a specific reason, just withdraw. I suppose if you were trying to be as ethical as possible, you might inform one or both conferences of the mixup. I'm not sure who that would benefit though.

How do I find out if it passes the bar to be considered separate? I don't think hyperparameter tuning and rewriting of the paper is a high enough bar for a new paper, although I'm unsure. In other terms, if both got published, I would never expect v1 to get cited and always assume v2 was cited assuming perfectly rational behavior

That probably depends on the details. I would say that if all aspects of the paper have been significantly updated/changed and new results are presented (without repeating old results) the papers are different. If the 2nd paper is just a revision of the 1st, then I do not think they are different enough to leave.

I will say though, I have seen plenty of "version 2's" of models published. So I wouldn't worry about that in and of itself.

Is #2 not the safest option that occurs without leaving a mark on my record? I presume the paper is mostly through review at this point, given the timelines of the conference. Why would anyone admit to double submission/how would they get in trouble for it then. I am trying to follow the ethical path but I would also not like to ruin my name without reason

The difference is that "version 2" papers generally mention that a version 1 exists, cite it, and explain what the difference is. I would argue that the second and third option are not ethical choices, based on the information we have.

@lighthousekeeper that is very true. I hadn't considered that and I think you're right.

@olivarb I think 1 is the safest and probably most ethical, whether or not you disclose the mistake. I would be worried (depending on the size of your field) that both papers would make their way to the same people. That is certainly the worst outcome.

I see. Thank you. I will go ahead and retract version 1. Should I mention the reason or is this not required?

That's up to you. You can always be vague. I can't imagine a conference would press you too hard.

@olivarb You could mention that you are no longer satisfied with the submitted paper, as you have developed an improved version of your work that you would like to publish about instead.


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How to proceed after paper submission on Number Theory rejected by arXiv?
This is the first time I am writing here and I hope not to be very repetitive with regards to similar topics already covered, so I will try to be as much specific as I can. Before all, I am an undergraduate in physics and I have an institutional email.
Some days ago I uploaded a paper related to the field of Number Theory. Specifically, trying to provide a solution to Riemann Hypothesis. The paper is well-structured, with neutral tone and using Lyx-AMS template. It has its references and I am solely the author of the paper.
As it may occur, my paper was rejected with the standard sentence "Our moderators determined that your submission does not contain sufficient original or substantive scholarly research and is not of interest to arXiv".
Then I appealed and I am waiting for a final decision but, according to other users' experiences I have been look at, it does not seem to be very likely to be succesful. The thing is that I have a real conviction that my paper could represent something important to this topic, and I have been looking around and I have the following options:

I remain quiet and wait for their final answer without doing anything else.
I start looking for new ways to let my paper be known to some scientific community in the area of Number Theory. That includes to submit to other journals, in which case, should I choose first conventional journals (any of them that I could manage to submit to) or pre-prints repository (and which ones would you recommend?
Should I talk to someone from the area to get an overview of the paper if worth it (a bit risky)?

If the paper is wrong, I want to make sure that this is the case and that, therefore, could not go all along.
I thank you in advance for your constructive answers.

How do you pay your bills (rent/food/electricity)?

"If the paper is wrong, I want to make sure that this is the case and that, therefore, could not go all along." It's not clear what you are trying to say here ("could not go all along"). Also, it's not clear whether you are actually claiming to have proved the RH in the manuscript or not.

Also read Terry Tao's advice on this topic: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/be-sceptical-of-your-own-work/

Yes, I am claiming to have proved RH but it  is a preprint. You do not upload the manuscript to arXiv but the preprint. What I mean by "could not go all along" is that if it's wrong, it's not worth to move forward (unless someone can help me in something I overlook and then it can be fixable, but as it is known, no feedback is usually provided bu arXiv).

Thank you for providing me with Terence Tao guidelines, I highly appreciate it.

"no feedback is usually provided bu arXiv)." You already got the feedback - "your submission does not contain sufficient original or substantive scholarly research and is not of interest to arXiv ."

"Should I talk to someone from the area to get an overview of the paper if worth it (a bit risky)" If you already have an established in-person relation with a mathematician (I imagine almost any mathematician will do, they don't have to be a specialist in number theory), such as one of your professors, then it makes sense to ask them for some feedback. On the other hand, sending out emails to people you don't know is very unlikely to be a successful strategy. Note that it is virtually impossible that you have proved the RH.

On the balance of probabilities, given the fact that you're a physics undergrad and that you yourself do not seem to be entirely sure whether or not your proof is valid, my best guess as to what's really happening here is that you don't yet have a solid grasp on the "rules" of mathematics and on what constitutes valid proof in mathematics. This is not meant as an insult: I do not think there's anything to be ashamed of if it turns out that a physics undergrad does not yet have an entirely solid grasp on how things are proved in mathematics.

Thank you for that, before closing, should I then post it there in the same way?

@MiguelSeisdedosGarcía You are an undergraduate, presumably without extensive math background, claiming to have proved the most famous open problem in the entire subject. I'm afraid that no one outside your university will believe your claims, take you seriously, or read your paper. Seek mentorship where you are, from faculty at your own university. I recommend that you approach them with humility: you are sure that your paper must be wrong somehow, but you can't figure out why. Good luck.

@academic " no one outside your university " on what ground do you state this?

@MiguelSeisdedosGarcía you should look for similar questions and/or ask for a canonical answer. From comments to my answer it seems that proving the Riemann Hypothesis is a magnet for novices, so you are not the first claiming to have found a solution and I expect there are questions about that. As far as I know, you may be the last, but I am a random stranger on the internet and no, I am not a mathematician.

Did you have a number theorist, or any mathematician, at your university review your paper and provide feedback? If not, why not?

Here is an analogy of this situation in the world of physics: Imagine that you are an editor of a physics journal and you received a well-written paper from an undergraduate engineering major with a proposal of a perpetual motion machine. Sure, there is a tiny chance that the student had disproven the 2nd law of thermodynamics. However, would you spend time reading the submitted paper and then writing an explanation of where the mistake is, or just reject the paper? ... Right... This is exactly how a professional mathematician will react in the situation described in the post.

Option 3: Why is it 'risky' to ask someone from the field to tell whether or not your idea has some worth? Option 2: you can always make it available somehow on Academia.edu for example (I don't think there is any form of moderation there). Option 1: Yes you could just wait and see. That probably won't be long. Option 4 (mine): you could submit to a mathematics journal that uses double blind peer review. That would avoid the prejudice of being rejected just because you're undergrad in physics.

If you seriously believe your solution is correct or are looking for feedback, I'd recommend you submit a pre-print to researchgate and then submit to an undergraduate journal in the relevant field. I've got a paper under review myself, and that will get me back in depth feedback once the review is completed.

EDIT: This answer is wrong for the specific mathematical problem under discussion (RH hypothesis).
It seems you are doing your work without any affiliation, and that you are ready to invest time & money on it.
Look for a suitable conference close to you (close as in geogrpahically and regarding the topic), send a contribution (I would suggest a poster contribution), upon acceptance explain briefly your situation to the conference organizers (briefly as "I have no money, no funds, I am a young scholar and I would like to share some results with the community").
Good luck and do not be take down by the arXiv rejection.
Editors and curators work on a voluntary basis, they may be a bit uptight with respect to unaffiliated unknown researchers, you may have better luck with local/national mathematics venues.

Thank you for your answer. I am undergraduate in physics and I have institutional email (I also hold a bachelor's and master's degrees in areas not related to the topic). I have been diving into this topic profoundly and I think the paper worth it.

please add the information "I am an undergraduate in physics and I have an institutional email" to the question., Do you expect that the paper is not desk-rejected  because of that? add that information as well.

In principle, authority principle is a sin in science, but unknown authors without traceable publication track in a certain topic are usually facing an uphill struggle to publish their first paper.
On a parallel note, can you give the name of 5 possible reviewers of your paper? If you are not able, it may be true you miss some of the people working on the topic and/or the latest advancements on the topic.

Please do not encourage people to submit their "proofs of the Riemann hypothesis" to conferences. Firstly, it wastes people's time. Secondly, the answer that the OP is going to get will not be any more encouraging that the answer they got from the arXiv. Thirdly, it encourages the OP to believe that they may have actually proved the RH.

My belief will not change as long as I can get a clear and unambiguous answer related to one of the three points stated above and not getting answers to subcomments that beat around the bush.

@AdamPřenosil as long as it is an issue limited to Mathematics, please ask for the question to be moved to the specific Mathematics:SE . Correct until proven wrong is the right attitude in science. But I agree one has to try very hard to prove onself wrong, being right is very easy!

This answer is wrong, for mathematics-specific reasons. Replace "Riemann Hypothesis" with a more modest claim, and I would agree, but a claim to have proved RH will (I'm sorry to say) be instantly dismissed by any mathematician.


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How to mark paper as mainly my work before moving institutions
I have a paper that has some important work. I recently graduated and am about to work at a top 5 tech firm's AI research division. As part of the interview, they seemed really excited about this work and the results I got. They also work on something extremely similar that I improved on (their paper was considered best-in-class in the space and I'm improving on that). Part of the joining agreement was that all papers submitted post-joining would be from that institution (fairly standard in AI) but I also suspect there will be some "coauthor pressure" from people in the same division that worked on the paper I'm building on.
Is there any way for me to notate that I did most of the work myself (ie. quickly write up a rough draft of the paper and submit to arxiv before I join) or is that not advised?

You absolutely have to credit coauthors and institutions that support your work before you are hired; you don't have permission to sell your institution's support for a salary from someone else. The paper is "from" the authors, including those with affiliations not at your new company. The new company also does not have any intellectual property rights over work you did at another institution.

@BryanKrause I understood this as the opposite; that the OP wants to make sure those at the new institution do not get too much credit for a paper the OP is currently working on.

@BryanKrause I think overfullhbox is correct in their understanding. I am concerned that the new institution will either try to put coauthor pressure or that the paper will seem less “my work” because the main paper it’s building on is from the group I am joining

What is the timeframe here? Can you reasonably finish writing the paper prior to joining?

I think it would be helpful to be explicit about your concerns in your question: what exactly are you trying to prevent from happening? Are you currently the sole author on the paper? Will you be doing work on the paper as an employee of the new company? Will any of your new coworkers be working with you on it? Why can you not simply say "no" of your concern is that someone wants to be a coauthor that hasn't contributed?

@Anyon - I can finish a sloppily written methodology and some results. I’m don’t think I can get the full paper out before I join

@BryanKrause Yes currently the sole author. Perhaps doing work insofar as fixing bugs in some of the testing script if needed but not making large changes in methodology. Most of my results are in, but I haven’t written the paper formally yet. I don’t want to ruin relations with new coworkers by setting a hard “no” if they want to suggest modifications/new tests such that they request 2nd author, but I’m also concerned about how the paper is viewed for later jobs. For example, if I make an improvement in LLM but join OpenAI, it’s viewed less well then the same result alone bc OpenAIs prev work

I don't know why you think doing good work for a competitor employer would be seen as not useful for hiring, the highlights of most resumes are the achievements at past employers because it says "this is the sort of thing I'll do for you". If others contribute to your work so you're not the sole author anymore, then yeah you have to work out coauthorship with them, that's not specific to this job. I doubt they hired you because a couple coworkers are trying to snag a 2nd authorship on work you already did, and if I'm wrong, won't they be just as upset by a "no" as anything else you do?

@BryanKrause - That’s a fair perspective. Perhaps this is not a correct way of thinking, but I thought that the paper would be valued less for me if it’s marked as from OpenAI because they already have the tooling/resources/background for this, but if done in academia, the work is much more solo without the background from coworkers.

@BryanKrause - it may also be my bias that when I see a paper from a company, I tend to think the paper came from the company, but the same paper from academia and I think it is from the authors/group


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Removing name post-publication (moral objection to research)
I've been struggling with this issue for quite some time. I'm a postdoc who recently switched fields. I transferred from a field that had numerous ethical complications to a field that has almost no ethical complications.
I deeply regret the fact that my name is on two papers from my previous field. Both have been out for ~3 years. For one, I'm a first author (~25 citations) and for another I'm a second author (~15 citations). I'm much more upset by the second author paper. Very soon after publication, I felt intensely morally opposed to the projects. I tried to "move on" -- but that did not work. I feel a very deep sense of unease, knowing my name is publicly linked to these works. I was so distraught I moved back in with my parents as I could not concentrate for about one year after my PhD. I finally mustered enough energy to accept a postdoc, but now remain (extremely) mentally ill with panic attacks multiple times per week and problems eating/sleeping. I can't focus on my postdoc, and I worry I may be fired. I am still all-consumed with an intense feeling like I need to "fix" these two papers.
Recently, I've pondered attempting to remove my name from the papers in the hopes that it could allow me to move on. I've seen related questions before (about removing names from published papers), but not for the same reason as me. Usually, people want to remove names because they think the work is scientifically flawed, poor quality, poor journal, or that they did not actually contribute any work.
This leads me to many questions, which I've been agitating over for more than one year now.

Is it ethically justifiable to remove my name in this situation?

Does anyone know of examples of where someone removed their name for this reason? Or for any reason? (Maybe even with someone I could speak with)?

The first question is particularly difficult for me, as I think and care deeply about ethics. I imagine it could be deemed "unethical" for me to remove my name, as it puts on a pretense to "change history" and hurts my co-authors. At the same time, I imagine it is unethical for me to keep my name on the paper, as the papers encourages more work in the area, and so as long as my name is on it, it is another name encouraging folks to do this type of work. Also, it is preventing me from living with purpose and joy; I really cannot overstate the negative impact this experience has had on me. If it were a blog post, I would erase it, and move on; but traditional publications are not that simple, and that causes some folks immense harm, especially if they feel ethically repulsed by the content.
Thank you.

You have two separate questions in here: What, if anything, you can do about your publication, and how to find someone to talk about your situation with. These are separate issues, and should be asked separately.

Thanks, Arno. Should I close this current post, and then create two separate ones? Happy to do so.

Asking for examples or someone to speak to is not permitted here.

@flyingsquirrel44 I'd say edit this one to be about the name removal only, and make a separate one for finding someone to talk to. For the latter, be advised that trying to find someone via this website is certainly inappropriate, and that too specific advise is also off-topic.

I cannot help but notice the severe mismatch between the supposedly awful breach of ethics and the utterly piddling nature of the proposed remedy, namely removing your name from the list of authors. The idea that you on the one hand have done something so grievously unethical that you still need to torment yourself about it, but on the other hand an action as piddling as removing your name from the paper (which, let's be, honest will not have any actual causal effect on anything whatsoever) would fix it, honestly makes no sense.

This is not a therapy site, but I still cannot help observing that it feels very much like you may be using the authorship issue to avoid (or to redirect energy from) dealing with the actual underlying issue, which is your unhealthily strict sense of ethics. The solution to the actual problem of the extremely OCD person who keeps having panic attacks due to returning a library book to the wrong shelf does not lie in figuring out how they can break in to the library and reshelve the book. Similarly, the solution to your actual problem does not lie in the mechanics of paper authorship.

Thanks, @AdamPřenosil. The main casual effect of removing my name is removing the cognitive dissonance I feel to be attached to a paper I find immoral. The work is not grievously unethical by institutional ethical standards, but it is by my personal morals. Hence my thoughts of removing my name, but not recommending the entire paper be removed. As long as my name is on it, it implies I support it, and I no longer do. (I do data analysis and did not realize exactly how the data was collected, and that is the part I find immoral).

@AdamPřenosil, I highly appreciate your suggestion about seeking therapy if I have an unhealthy strict sense of ethics. I think there may be truth to that, based on conversations with others and previous issues I have had, so I think it is an astute observation that maybe I can work on with a therapist.

"As long as my name is on it, it implies I support it" But it really doesn't. It implies that you supported it when you wrote the paper. There is no established practice of people going back and retracting their names from papers they no longer agree with. If there were, the scientific literature would be a big mess. Because no such practice exists, there is also no implication that every author continues to support the positions and methodology of every paper they've ever written. If you want to clarify that you had a change of heart about the paper, there are more appropriate ways to do so.

Too long for a comment.
I sympathize.
First: get help with your immediate problems: (panic, difficulty sleeping). If no one at your university is useful you may need to find that help elsewhere. In either case that may call for more than discussing the author problem. Take care of yourself before trying to take care of the world.
Second: I think that removing your name from the published papers is probably impossible and certainly difficult and time consuming.
Third: Consider writing about the ethical issues you have belatedly realized and publishing those reflections. Then folks who encounter your name in professional circles will see both positions.

Thanks, Ethan. I have been in contact with the journal and they are willing to meet next week. I may find out more then. It seems it will be difficult and time consuming though.

Get help with your health concerns from a health professional before you do anything.
Assuming you published two papers which you now feel are unethical:  I see no use in removing your name from the papers.  Removing your name does nothing to help people who may have been or will be harmed.  It will not help you either, as the connection between you and the papers cannot be erased from the internet.
COPE provides a recommended process for this situation: https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/concerns-published-data-risk.pdf
The most common outcome of the process would be the publication of a notice describing the situation.
If you published your work in a reputable peer reviewed journal, it's probably not unethical.  Peer reviewers check for ethical problems.

Thanks, Anonymous Physicist. I agree it is not unethical based on common ethical standards and guidelines. However, I am morally against it (subjectively). Nonetheless, I thank you for your views.

Three points:

By your own admission, you are "(extremely) mentally ill." It is therefore impossible for you to know (and correspondingly more impossible for us to know) how much of this perceived issue is a real issue vs. a complication from your illness. This does not seem to be a particularly urgent situation, so I would urge you to take no action until your mental illness is better under control.
As you say, trying to remove your name from a published paper seems a bit like attempting to rewrite history. It can also lead to ethical problems, such as hiding a conflict of interest. Even in the absence of such problems, I would not necessarily expect journals or co-authors to accommodate you.
Rather than removing your name from the paper, I suggest putting a brief, well-written note on your website. For example, if you have your CV posted online, you could list these papers with a hyperlink, and the hyperlink leads to a brief paragraph describing your concerns about this past work. This seems like a more appropriate, and more easily reversible, way to go "on the record" with your ethical concerns.

Thank you, @cag51. These are all helpful points for me to consider.

From a publication ethics standpoint, removing your name from a paper where you were rightly included is unethical.
Imagine this. A paper is written about a drug by a number of scientists from the  pharmaceutical company that manufactures it, with some outside collaborators. Would it be ethical to publish the paper without showing the contribution of the company's scientists? It would be equally unethical to erase evidence their contribution.
The authors of the paper must include anybody who has significant control in the conduct and presentation of the work. It is a matter of transparency.
It may be possible to add a statement to the work. In some cases, the entire work could be withdrawn. Regardless, hiding authorship is unethical.

This is wrong.  Conflicts of interest should be disclosed in the conflict of interest statement, not the author list.

@AnonymousPhysicist You are incorrect. See this paper. Nowhere in the disclosure statement does it name the authors being employees of Merck; that is done in the author list. How are you going to disclose an author had a conflict of interest without saying they authored the paper? "Here's some random scientists who work for Company A?" What's that supposed to mean?

I said should not always is.  "Present and former Merck employees may own stock and/or stock options in the company" obviously means the Merck employees were authors.

"How are you going to disclose an author had a conflict of interest without saying they authored the paper?"  You say "An author was employed by Merck."  Nobody cares which author.  You can see in my answer I did not advise removing the author's name.

Thank you both. I wonder based on comments by Federico and Shankar if removing a name from a paper due to ethical conflict is unethical, as you suggested here. It seems Creative Commons licenses have a clause that allow for author removal from published content, so one could simply be exercising their right in that case. It also seems there are Name Change Initiative that gives authors a right to remove their name if there are ethical conflicts. I can think of this arising many ways - for instance one author adding new statements last minute that others find ethically questionable etc.

@flyingsquirrel44 Copyright and academic ethics are two different things, something may be legal but unethical, especially under academic norms. You certainly have a right not to work on research for ethical reasons. What you do not have the right is to tell people something, particularly in published literature, then hide from it. People already relied on your statements, you can't shirk from the responsibility inherent in that.

@user71659 It is interesting to think about. Because academic norms establish a protocol where peer-reviewed publication in a journal is so final (and perhaps hence your view that redacting my association from it when I no longer believe in it is unethical). However, in other forms of academic publication (like blog posts where one discusses academics and even academic interpretations of works or preliminary academic results and their interpretations) one can remove their name if they no longer believe in it, and that would probably be considered normal (and probably ethical).

@user71659 This is to say that I don't know how much our sense of "ethics" in regards to one removing one's name from one's previous academic works is based on the norms of different mediums of academic publication. (i.e. doing so in a peer-reviewed publication would be "unethical", but doing so on a blog where the exact same comments/statements that one wishes to redact would probably be considered "ethical").

@flyingsquirrel44 It's nearly explicit in that normal journals are "archival" and normal articles are "citable" (along with things like some conference proceedings). The point of both is to allow others to rely on your work. Blog posts and personal websites don't purport to be either. Reputable preprint servers say they are archival (it's usually in the name), and by general conventions, citability is meh.

There are two parts to your question, and others have already commented on your personal well-being. You definitely should get support, your health is the basis for everything else you decide to do. If you are ill, you can not think, reflect, decide and take action. So, care about your health first, before anything else. This is the key for everything you are going to do, whether or not you wish to take my remaining advice into consideration.
To the second part. Personally - and that's my own opinion with no claim for universal validity, and you are invited to fully ignore it if you feel it is somehow misplaced - I find it problematic that you wish to erase your name from work you have done before that you find objectionable now.
It is not that you were part of work that was methodologically flawed and was then published without your consent (in which case, you have all right to demand removing your name). Also, at that time, your ethical considerations were either not there at all, or not strong enough to stop you from actually doing and publishing this work. In other words, at that time of your life, you consciously did contribute to this work and its publication.
People make mistakes, sometimes huge ones. Now, we have no idea how big your ethical problem really would be in the eyes of an uninvolved observer (not just in your subjective view). You may perhaps gauge it through your most trusted friends and whether they agree with you in the severity of your judgement.
But let's assume for the sake of the argument that it is really massive, in an objective sense that, say, main newspapers would agree with you.
Now, erasing your name is like an attempt to rewrite history. The work is there, and whether your name is on it or not, the damage is done and you, say, have contributed to it, whether your name appears or not. Pretending it did not happen with your complicity is simply untrue.
Now, it is possible that at that time you did not see the danger, or that, at that time, your ambition or political considerations were stronger than your ethical qualms, if you already had some. We do not know, and it's also nobody's business but yours. What matters is that it was a decision you took at that time.
You have now changed your perception for one reason or the other. So, rather than trying to get rid of your name in such a publication, what I would propose is that you embrace the fact that you were co-responsible for the work and you no longer are of the mindset that would want to see such work pursued further. You did it, true, but you have changed your views drastically. Face your - as you see it - ethical mistake and make clear, if prompted, that you learned from it.
You cannot change the past, only the future. However, you can change your perception of the past and demonstrate that you learnt from it. Be gentle with yourself in the past. You had your reasons to work on this. Your knowledge, or your priorities have since shifted.
Caveat: The only constellation that would be disingenious is if it was this your past work that gave you the possibility to pivot your career to your present, more desirable, field. In that case, you are probably better off just to stay silent to others (and in fact to yourself) on the matter and accepting the moral ambiguity of life which is rarely black and white, but unfortunately often grey. One secret of keeping integrity is being able to both foresee the consequences of ones actions on others as well as on oneself and having the fortitude to act in concert and consistently with the desirable moral outcome.
If you failed on that - forgive yourself and learn from it for the future.
One more thing: you worry about your name encouraging others to work on the field. Do you really suspect that your specific name carries so much gravitas that it being on the paper will invite others into the field? If so, you are probably better off speaking publicly against it and use your reputation to fight the field.
However, if the number of citations is something to go by with: while it is a respectable number of citations, certainly so, it is nowhere indicating a massive influx of work - in fact, your attempt to remove your name may cause the opposite of what you are trying to do - it may trigger a Streisand effect and in fact attract unwanted attention to the work through the scandal.
Sometimes not acting is stronger than acting.
TL;DR: You cannot undo the past, you can only change the future. It is better to accept the past and your role in it, to accept the responsibility, and move from there to the future. This makes you more believable. Forgive yourself, but learn. And, sometimes, not acting trumps acting.

And some of the citations may be to point out the failings of the paper.

Can you elaborate @JonCuster? I just want to makes sure I understand.

Thanks, Captain Emacs. I can verify it is not at all a gravely unethical problem for most people. There is nothing objectively wrong with the paper. I also did not use the paper to make any career progressions or move into my current field. It is just simply that my ethical views changed almost immediately after publication, and I just feel haunted by it at a personal level. I've tried to move on for 2 years now, but it has actually felt worse for me. I do plan on therapy -- but that does not always help.

@flyingsquirrel44 Forget all the stuff about the paper and ethics. Get to therapy. Let them help you figure out reasons for symptoms you're experiencing, rather than acting on your assumptions.

Removing your name might be hard, but changing it to an arbitrary name of your choice might be good enough for your purposes.
Whatever anyone's personal views on "rewriting history" or whatever might be, the institutional position seems to be strongly in favor of allowing this, evidenced by the list of signatories to the Name Change Initiative. As noted on that page, "Authors may need to change their name on already-published articles for a variety of reasons," and being "ethically repulsed" by their content sounds like one of them.

Thanks so much @Shankar Sivarajan. This is an incredibly helpful resource and give me something tangible to think about while making my decision.

Is your paper open access under a Creative Commons license? If so, removing your name from it is easier, as CC licenses have a clause that allows you to remove your name from any published content:

3.a.3 If requested by the Licensor, You must remove any of the information required by Section 3(a)(1)(A) to the extent reasonably practicable.

Since it is explicitly allowed by the license, it is harder to blame you for exercising one of your legal rights.

Thanks @Federico Poloni. This is incredibly helpful to know about. It also makes me lean to the possibility that authorship removal may not be "unethical". I can think of many reasons why someone would ethically object to a paper after publication. For instance, if one author adds questionable sentences at the last minute without others seeing. Or, if a data analyst author does not realize how that data was collected (if it exploited a group of people etc) until after the publication etc.


text:
Can an article include "A Comparative Study" in its title if its main purpose is not comparison?
If the main purpose of an article is to present/introduce a new method, can it still be entitled "A Comparative Study"? Or does it depend on how much of the article is devoted to the comparison of related methods? I am asking from the perspective of a reviewer.

You can call the article whatever you want.  But why would you want to use a name that only refers to a minor part of the work?

Thanks. I am actually reviewing such an article. I found it odd but I was not sure if it is "wrong".

In many ways, the title of a scientific work can be thought of as a super-short abstract. In other words, it should tersely summarize what a reader is likely to find most salient in that work.
Thus, if you are a reviewer encountering a title that you find misleading as relates to the content, then it is entirely reasonable and appropriate to suggest that the title be changed.  As flaws in a paper go, however, I would find it pretty minor from a reviewing standpoint, since it doesn't much affect the content and is very easy to fix.

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


text:
Do I have to sign a recommendation letter that will be submitted online?
I am a lecturer at a public university in Bangladesh. I am going to give recommendations for students from my class who are going to apply for graduate admission to some US universities. These letters will be submitted online.
My problem is related to the signature. Please check the my recommendation style: I have written my name as a recommender. Is it essential that I also sign the recommendation?

To who it may concern,
[actual letter]
Regards,
Maria S. Sultana
**** University
email: ****
mob: ****

I am talking about a signature like this (below red marked): I will upload a letter in the style of that shown below in the (online) recommendation  form.  Is it necessary to put a signature on a letter, like the one I have marked below?

Personally, I always sign my recommendation letters, including the ones submitted electronically.  In fact, I'm not sure I've ever submitted a physical recommendation letter.
I do this for two reasons:

In the United States, at least, it is still quite strongly the custom for such letters to be signed.
It at least proves that the person writing the letter has access to a copy of my signature.

Now, both of these might be a bit archaic in our modern networked world, but the customs haven't really shifted yet, and until they do, it's good to keep doing it the way that will be expected by many recipients.
That said, you certainly don't need to go through the hassle of printing, physically signing, and scanning: if you have a high-resolution image of your signature, you can affix that as an image in the appropriate part of your document.  Some word processors or PDF editors will also allow you to "digitally sign" and associate this with some form of cryptographic signature.
In short: sign your letter, but do it the easy and electronic way if you can.

If you have access to Adobe Acrobat (not Reader) it is extremely easy to turn a scan of your signature into a "signature stamp."  Thereafter, affixing a signature is a matter of about three clicks.  I made my signature stamp a medium-blue color, so it's a good facsimile of a pen-and-ink signature.  No one has ever questioned my stamped signature.  As Jake says, you could also use a cryptographic digital signature, although I haven't bothered with that yet.

@BobBrown The "Preview" PDF viewer on Macs has this same capability.

At this year (2016), most mathematics graduate program applications in the U.S. seem not to really require a (graphical) "digital signature", and I think this is because the population of letter-writers has not quite caught up to the technology to create such things. Instead, the on-line interfaces sometimes ask that you type your full name "in lieu of signature", supposedly as confirmation that you are who you say you are, and so on. Currently, it does not appear that an imbedded graphical signature is acknowledged to suffice...
Currently, the genuine security, such as it is, in these applications, is that a password is sent via email to the email address of the recommender, provided by the student. Completely unclear how fraud is promised to be avoided, since a student could provide emails that went to someone else...
Also, at this time, there appears to be no genuine (cryptographic) digital signature (e.g., md5) of content of these letters, etc.
In summary, at this time, for U.S. math grad schools at least, there is absolutely no compulsion to imbed graphical signatures in PDFs for letters of recommendation.
(I do have an imbedded signature in the letterhead template I've constructed, etc., which seems necessary for some other purposes (NSF, in the U.S.), but currently irrelevant for grad school applications, apparently.)

I do not think you  will require a sign  on the top of your name. It is because, you will send the letter  via  email or online recommendation form. The graduate committee will understand this. :)

A signature is just a means to verify that it is indeed you creating and verifying the letter. The letter is being uploaded by you, which could serve as a digital signature. The written signature in this context is a formal nicety (I would do it anyways). I would add a line that indicates that the letter is original content produced by you.

But this is rather easy to fake, normal network security being what it is...

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