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Could I work at a university in a Spanish-speaking country if I'm not fluent in Spanish? (Rhetoric & Writing / English)
I'm working on my PhD in Rhetoric & Writing (Dept of English) in the US. I am also a writer with enough qualifications to teach creative writing at a US university.
I speak enough Spanish to get by as a tourist but am nowhere near fluent. Would it be possible for me to get a position at a university in a South American country or Spain? I would be qualified to teach rhetoric, composition, and creative writing.
Any pointers on where to start researching would be appreciated!

I attended a university fair once with Spanish representatives and they said it's not a good idea. It was many years ago though, things might have changed.

This surely depends on the position as associated qualifications.
In the Canadian province of Quebec for instance, there are many universities where the language of instruction is French; I have several colleagues who emigrated to Mexico for position where the language of instruction was Spanish, and they were not initially fluent in Spanish.
So yes you can apply for such positions, but you might be asked to meet certain fluency requirements post-hiring.
Keep in mind that, even if you specialize in English creative writing, there is no guarantee you will be asked to teach in English.  Presumably you will need to interface in Spanish with students (and staff) who are not necessarily fluent or so comfortable with English (why would they be?).

It's better to contact the university where you are applying for a job and ask them about Spanish fluency requirements. It seems obvious, though, that if you are teaching in another country, that you should be fairly fluent in the local language.

That is not mecessarily true. There are quite a lot of programs in English in otherwise non-English speaking countries. Contacting the university in question still is a good idea.

But whether or not they require knowledge of the local language is not known. Not only will a person be teaching in these programs, but they will be interacting with staff who may not speak English and living in that country.

I recommend you think about this from the perspective of a student, if the shoe was on the other foot --- i.e., while you were doing your undergraduate degree, would you have been happy being taught rhetoric, composition, and creative writing (in an English-speaking university) by a university lecturer who is competent in these fields in their own language, but who is not fluent in English?  I certainly wouldn't.
Having said this, I don't think you should give up on the idea --- I just think you should practice your Spanish and become fluent.  In particular, practice doing some compositions and creative writing in Spanish, and explaning the techniques you used in Spanish, until you feel that you can teach the subject with appropriate fluency.

It is not really a "whim" to wish to be taught composition and writing by a person fluent in the very language of instruction for said composition and writing.  In the present case it is not merely that a lecturer does not have fluent command of the language, but that they are teaching a subject that is intimately tied to fluency in language.


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Doing a physical science or maths PhD with dyslexia
Some background
Dyslexia is a specific learning disorder, which is often characterised by a e.g. difficulty reading (e.g. comprehension), writing, and with pronunciation. A common misconception about dyslexia is that it has something to do with vision (it doesn’t).  Dyslexia is not correlated with intelligence
The question
What strategies can be used by a student starting a PhD in maths related disciplines who have dyslexia to reach their full potential?

I'm asking this as a follow-up to https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/178801/peer-reviewing-with-dyslexia (I don't expect it to do as well). It may be too broad for this site, in which case I can remove it.

I think this question should be closed because the answer is not specific to academia.  Any strategy an academic would use could also be used by a private sector engineer, etc.  This is really more of a question about daily living, which normally involves reading.

Reading papers
When it comes to reading papers, my strategy was simply not to. I find reading difficult, and if forced to do it I would not get anything from it. Instead I’d recommend:

Use lots of different resources of information, don’t use just one. Google Books is a life-saver in this regard.

If you have to read a full paper

Use text-to-speech software. This definitely leaves somewhat to be desired, especially in papers with lots of maths. I would recommend trying to find a HTML version of the paper for this - one can try https://www.arxiv-vanity.com, although I think they currently have problems with maths rendering.

Get access to the LaTeX source code if it exists - if the paper is on the arXiv, this information can be obtained from there. Use this to put the paper into a font and style that you want. One can go very far done this route if one wants, see e.g.: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/131883/

Getting your daily dose of the arXiv
The arXiv for certain disciplines may be the source of all important information. You will hear endlessly how it is important to make sure that you read the arXiv every day. For someone who struggles with comprehension, this can be difficult to do.

Find somewhere that produces the arxiv summary in a different format. I would link to some, but I actually don’t know of any. An example of what I have done to aid in this can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjIsl9vgzOW3YAHeek9KUog (though this is a working progress).
Form an arxiv discussion group with other people
(Rant: I wish video abstracts were as common in maths related disciplines as they are in  some of the biological sciences)

Writing papers
Despite been really bad at it, I do find writing to be an enjoyable part of academic life. Here are some strategies I’ve used when writing papers:

Use speech-to-text software. Dragon Naturally Speaking is the gold standard here, but annoyingly they have discontinued their mac version. That said the built in dictation software on mac’s is actually pretty good. This does require a quiet space though - for your co-workers' sanity.
Look at parts-of-speech. I found this helpful, one can study the parts of speech of different sentences, and can determine if one is using certain types of words too often. I once wrote a little LaTeX command to highlight certain parts of speech.

To be continued…

In addition to all the things you mention in your own answer, let me suggest that you find a way to depend on other people to help you with important papers that have to be understood.
There are a variety of ways to do this, but the best, I think, is collaboration and frequent discussion. Small working groups and seminars can help, even using things like Zoom. And, collaboration has its own benefits. These small working groups are unlikely to be all one sided.
I don't have dyslexia so can't offer deep help, but I wonder if you can make better sense of notes you write yourself. If that is the case, then a discussion over a paper, not just someone reading it to you, while you take notes might help.
Some professors, in fact, assign papers to students and then have the students explain it to them. Dyslexia isn't involved here but it is a way to get the students reading more as well as easing the path to understanding new papers themselves. So, it can have a mutual benefit.
You seem to have a good grasp of the needs and some solutions already, but for people struggling even more with this I'd suggest talking to a knowledgeable professional about techniques available. I suspect that there is research on this.

Thanks for this answer :). I should add that I'm actually past my PhD now, so in a sense this question is somewhat hypothetical - but I hope what you have written here, and what I have above will help someone in a similar situation.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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Screen readers for arXiv/ar5iv?
I am dyslexic and often struggle with reading and comprehension. Screen readers, such as VoiceOver on Macs, can be helpful in addressing these difficulties.
However, mathematics in arXiv papers can present a challenge for screen readers. A partial solution is ar5iv, which converts arXiv papers into HTML, improving accessibility (for example, see this ar5iv paper).
However, I have yet to find a screen reader or configuration of a screen reader that will read ar5iv papers in a natural, fluid way. For example, VoiceOver says 'maths' after every MathML equation, interrupting the reading flow.
Question: Is there a screen reader or configuration that can effectively read arXiv or ar5iv papers, with mathematics included, in a more natural and seamless manner?

I think asking for screen readers for arXiv papers is asking the wrong question. What you want is a screen reader for LaTeX.

@Arno A screen reader for LaTeX would be sufficient - I agree. However, I think it is more likely that a screen reader exists which works well with the html (inc MathML) of ar5iv papers rather then the pdfs of arXiv papers.

This is not a direct answer to your question, but defenitely somewhat related: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/454944/is-there-screen-reader-software-or-a-built-in-method-that-supports-latex-equat

Note: I am the creator and maintainer of ar5iv.
I think the idealized goal should be that the ar5iv HTML can be successfully used with all mainstream accessibility tools, including VoiceOver - which was mentioned in the original question. Maybe it is worth reporting the awkwardness of the verbosity of speaking "maths" to their team, with an example document attached?
Personally, I have successfully tested with two combinations of AT for proof-listening, one OS-specific and one cross-platform. But I have done this as a developer troubleshooting where to make the markup better, so I can not give you an unbiased assessment of reading quality.
If you have access to a Windows device, one could use NVDA with the MathCAT plug-in for mathematics, as described here:
https://addons.nvda-project.org/addons/MathCAT.en.html
On any device, you could use the recent versions of the read-aloud browser extension, which uses a different AT for math syntax called Speech rule engine (SRE). I have tried that with Chrome, read-aloud v2.5.0
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-aloud-a-text-to-spee/hdhinadidafjejdhmfkjgnolgimiaplp
Both seem to provide nominally acceptable readouts, but on a close listen we still have some artificial outcomes - sometimes due to not providing more in-depth markup, sometimes due to the tools not being sufficiently context-aware.
I welcome reports for such problems in ar5iv, when used with any accessible technology. An example of a VoiceOver report we still have to address can be seen here:
https://github.com/dginev/ar5iv/issues/95

I have not-so-long math code in the papers I read, so I rely heavily on a tool called SwiftRead. Maybe it is helpful for you? However, the voice-over only works in the paid pro version.

An alternative is to use opendyslexic for reading if you haven't tried it already. I've found it useful when combined with arxiv-vanity (which i believe is just ar5iv) and have switched my fonts over to it. First time trying to read a paper from it I found the complexity of the prose appeared to drop from researcher level, to year 12 level (explaining why I'd always had trouble writing papers)
However, I do find it can mess up with maths sometimes though, but if you reduce the effort in reading the text around it there is more brainpower to process the maths or to flip to the original text and read the maths in its original form.

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Is "top student in xxx module" worth writing on a grad school application?
So I'm currently a university undergrad, and I was notified that I was among the top students (out of ~200) in one of the modules that I took, let's call it CS4321. I'm also thinking of applying to grad school in an area that is related to the content of CS4321. Would this achievement be worth writing on my resume or somewhere in my application, or is it too minor to be of use?

For admission to U.S. graduate programs, this is something that it would probably be best to have mentioned in a letter of recommendation by the module's teacher who, given your performance in the module, one would expect to be one of your letter writers. However, this might not be appropriate in your situation, so it would probably help to include your university's country and the countries where you are applying for graduate work.

Don't put it on your resume as 'top student in CS4321'.
This has two reasons. First of all, it implies you were the number one top student in the course. Which is not the case, as you say in the question. Second, even if you'd write something like 'one of the top students in CS4321', this is not an official definition so this can mean anything or nothing at all. Top 1%? Top 10? 90th percentile? All different implications.
Like Dave L Renfro suggest in a comment, let the course instructor mention this in their letter of recommendation. Because it is of course good and notable to be a top students in a 200 person class.

The right approach probably varies by country. Here in the UK, you would typically get a score for each module, and 70%+ is considered a first-class grade. I'd rather hear about your score for the module rather than the percentile against your peers.
e.g. 'I scored 96% in my dynamics module' would look good when applying to grad school to study dynamics. I would prefer to see that rather than a comparison against the other students.


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Asking referees for help over a few months: one big request or many small ones?
So I'm planning to apply for a few different graduate programs, and the various applications will take place over the span of a few months. I have two referees who I plan to ask for all of these programs. They've already agreed to help me out as referees in general, but I haven't sent them any concrete information about the programs yet. Would it be more polite to send them all the information at once in one big request, or to make one separate request at a time for each application as it comes?

I would make one large request initially, setting out the approximate number of applications your going to make and approximately when they would be due. That way they can plan ahead.
After that make a separate request with the detailed information for each application one at a a time (or at least in small batches if the deadlines for several applications are at similar times). That way they don't lose track of one application that gets buried in a overly long email.
I've found sharing a google sheets where you can list each application, deadlines, who to contact, whats needed for each application etc helpful for keeping everyone up to speed (and keeping the information in one place). As well as tracking when they have sent each reference (so you can polity remind them if a deadline is coming up soon and they haven't submitted it yet)


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How to address the reader to visit our supplementary material? (is it okay?)
Because of words limitation, I put many of important things in supplementary material. So, is it okay to ask the reader to visit our supplementary material in manuscript? For example,

We encourage the one to visit Supplementary Material to avoid misinterpretation.

If it is okay, where is the best to put this clause?

The journal publishing your paper may have policies for maintaining access to supplementary material. As the editor.

thank you for your reminder. As I checked at the very first volume of the journal publication (2005), it still keep the supplementary material.

Concerning your main question: I would expect that you refer to every part of the supplementary material somewhere in the text. So yes, it is okay to direct the reader to the supplementary material. But I recommend to be specific.
However, it is not okay to "put many of important things in supplementary material". The really important things should be part of the main manuscript.

yes I refer every part of sup. material in my text. And I absolutely agree with your opinion that important things should be part of the main manuscript.
Long story short, my paper getting bigger and bigger, and I used all the given slot of sup. material. I finished my conclusion part and as I read again my manuscript, I feel like I need to emphasize the sup. material to the reader in the conclusion part.

Your paper, without any of the supplementary material, should be clear and not easily misinterpreted, even if it must be superficial due to word limits. It should also be clear as someone reads along when they can view supplementary material to find more depth if they are interested. You should not need to inform the reader separately that they should read the supplementary material, your references to it should be sufficient on their own.
An exception may be journals that move substantial entire parts of the paper to supplementary material, like all or most of the methods section. In that case, usually the journal has its own way to direct the reader to "supplementary methods section" or "online methods" or similar; look at other papers published in the same journal for guidance.

Thank you for your thought. In my opinion, my paper, without sup. material, is not clear enough and easily misinterpreted, and this is my big "homework" need to be done. :)


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MSc after Diplome d'Ingenieur
I am going to start a Diplome d'Ingenieur in Electronics in Bordeaux, France. Can I do a MSc in Electrical Engineering focused in Photonics after?

Do you mean an MSc from somewhere outside France? It is already considered to be a masters level diploma. So it would be like a second masters. Is that the question?

And would a doctorate in EE be preferable?

Depending on the school and the courses you take you can sometimes ask to swap the last year of the École d'ingénieur for a 2 year master abroad or for the second year of a master degree (M2) in France. That's what I did and ended up with both a french diplôme d'ingénieur and a MSc from a foreign university.

The school I am going to attend is ENSEIRB MATMECA. The electronics program is focused on RF and microelectronics. My goal is to acquire a solid background in these topics and pursue a MSc/PhD in Photonics to get into an R&D position. French Diplome d'Ingenieur is technically a masters degree, but does not have as much research as a MSc from Canada or US universities.

The university has exchange agreements with UCL and University of California, which have good photonics courses. I plan to take some of those courses to get basic foundations. Also, I decided to go to ENSEIRB MATMECA to get research experience in RF and microelectronics. My former university (I completed 3/5 years of EE there) focused on applied mathematics to computer networks and energy, quantum computing and DSP.


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What to do if my university doesn't have a research group in my area?
I am studying electrical engineering and I am really interested in electromagnetics and photonics. Unfortunately, my university doesn't have research groups in these fields so I am unable to pursue my final year project doing research in these areas. What should I do?
One possibility is to gain research experience in the research groups of my university, which are mathematics applied to energy and telecommunications, and quantum computing. I am not convinced about this option. This would only serve as an introduction to research and improve my chances of getting accepted for a good masters program where I would be able to study the former two areas.

In what country are you intending to study in grad school?

Getting research experience period is useful. And who knows, you might find that research quite interesting as well.

There is nothing you can do. You just need to make use of what is available to you.  This is the same everywhere.  I wish I am at a university with lots of $$$.  What to do if I can't get the resource I need to achieve my interests or research goals? same question.

@Buffy mainly Canada and US, although there are very good photonics programs in the UK and in switzerland at EPFL or ETHZ. These universities are very competitive though.

I know doing research in undergrad is a plus and not every student that applies to grad school does it, but I don't know by how much doing research in A will make be a better candidate for a masters focused on B. Maybe it's a big difference, maybe it isn't. If it isn't, I should be looking for a solution to my problem.


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Should I change college to have a better undergraduate foundation?
I am 21 and I study Electronics Engineering. I am at the end of my third year, and I realised where I wanted to put my focus in my graduate studies. What fascinated me the most about EE is the physics behind it, from mechanics to electromagnetics waves. The problem is that my university has absolutely no research on any of the EE fields that are close to physics: Photonics, Semiconductor devices or Electromagnetic Engineering. The focus of my university lies in programming and practical skills, rather than theory, and that worries me, because the field I want to specialize in require a good level of understanding and and really solid math skills. To put you in perspective the physics background that my universities offers is: 1 course in Mechanics, 1 course in Electromagnetism (with no vector calculus as a prerequisite...) and Electromagnetic Waves (the only challenging physics course I have taken and I absolutely loved). So no Semiconductor Physics, no Electromagnetism with vector calculus, and no optional courses on Optoelectronics, Fiber Optics or Laser Physics. That's why I am really worried about my career and considering changing universities. My questions or doubts are the following:

Supposing I would have to start EE somewhere else from start, I will be graduating with a BSc degree at age 24.5 or 25.5. Is this problematic to enter the industry or academia when I graduate?
I know that some people start later in life, but in general they gained work experience before, while I haven't (I worked as a TA in the Math department of my university but I don't know if that really counts as real world work experience).

Is it necessary to change university, or can I catch up my deficiencies later when I go to grad school? I think I can but it is not ideal. A part from that, it would be difficult to pursue a masters or a phd in something I would not be having any experience on, besides from learning on my own of course (which is not the same as being guided by world class professors).

Consider that I am currently in a university where the electronics degree takes 5 years (it has a theoretical thesis at the end), so I will be graduating with the degree at 23 years old. Next year I have the chance to go to EPFL (very highly rated engineering school in Switzerland) where the bachelor takes 3 years and the path to the masters is direct. However, it is with the masters that you become a qualified "Engineer".
My other path option is to go to UOttawa in Canada. This university is not as good as EPFL (this is just based on ranking of course, real life is different) but it still is an amazing university and MUCH better than the one I'm currently in.
To finalise I would like to be clear with what my goals are. I am passionate about learning as much as I can about Electrical Engineering, and want to specialize in Applied Physics of EE as I mentioned before, although I do not know in what particular subfield exactly. When I get my masters degree I don't know if I would go straight into industry or do a PhD, but my dream would be to do both!

Too personal for a good answer here. But I don't see any age issues. Maybe if you were 81, but not 21.


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PhD student who wants to stay for a tenure position
I am finishing my masters, and my advisor wants me to stay to do my PhD. My advisor is also the department head. We have a very good relationship, he’s invited me over to his house for dinner and even thanksgiving.
Here’s the dilemma:
The city I am in feels like home, my long time girlfriend has a career in CS in the private sector in our city that pays close to what my advisor is paid,and this is her first year working. I would like to stay for my PhD, but I also know that I want to stay in academia, and really love the department I am in. I actually have had the pleasure of teaching 4 sections of elementary statistics during my masters, and absolutely love teaching. I have received a lot of praises from my students, and my advisor says that I check all the boxes to continue on for my PhD.  So my question is to everyone is:
Should I be blunt with my advisor and tell him my wishes that I have concerning staying upon finishing my PhD, and also how does this affect me doing a post-doc? Is it possible to skip the post-doc and continue on as a Professor but put on some type of probationary period before tenure track?

What part of the world are you in? How prestigious is your school?

We're in mid-covid era, things change. I know it's not common in academia but is remote an option? If you say you have a very good relationship ..

I don't really understand what the problem is.  You and your advisor both want you to stay and do a PhD.  What do you mean by "tenure position" in the question title?  What does a future faculty position have to do with your decision to do the PhD?

If it was that easy to get a tenure track position I think everyone would be doing it. You can't just ask; you will have to apply, interview etc. There are no guarantees in academia.

In the UK, at least in physics, it's not uncommon to become a lecturer in the same department you did your PhD in, though it is generally expected that you went elsewhere for your post doc.

I don't understand what your question is. You were offered a PhD in city X, and then you explain how much you like living in city X. Where is the problem? And what does this have to do with tenure?

I think the problem raised by the OP is "I'm afraid if I do my PhD here, that means I won't be able to stay here after the PhD, because the custom is that researchers move to a different university after their PhD". But I'm just guessing. It's not actually stated in the question and the question currently reads like there is no problem at all and everything is perfect.

The vast majority of people after they finish a PhD do go somewhere else for postdocs or tenure track positions (assuming one even gets one).  Worrying about this now doesn't really make sense. If you are comfortable there and work well together, then you should strongly consider finishing your PhD there, and worry about anything else when it is much closer to happening.

This a good direct answer.  Just to add: I think a PhD is a long process, and it's quite rare to have an opportunity to spend five years in a department (any job, really) with both people and work you enjoy.  Making a decision about the next 3-5 years of your life because of what might happen 3-5 years from now is good way to have a rough 3-5 years of your life.

"Worrying about this now doesn't really make sense."  But forming a realistic plan in advance does make sense.

You really cannot predict what your situation will be in 3-5 years, other than it is likely you will have a Ph.D - if you go that route.  Not to be too pessimistic, but you may not even be involved with the same person by then.

I mean, worrying about this now makes some amount of sense, if OP is not interested in doing a PhD if they can't stay in academia afterwards. The reality is that trying to become a prof without moving at all is really playing an already challenging game on nightmare difficulty. There is a (very) high chance of things not working out that way.

"The vast majority of people after they finish a PhD do go somewhere else for postdocs or tenure track positions" that really depends on which country you are in, no? AFAIK, at least in some departments in universities in Japan, PhD students are expected to stay and continue as assistant professors, at least for a while.

In software engineering there is the notion of premature optimization, which is when a programmer spends much time and effort on code and design decisions that are supposed to lead to hypothetical performance improvements to the software at some unspecified time in the future (which often never materializes), when it’s more productive to focus on more immediate concerns.
I feel like your thinking about this situation is the real-life analogue of this pattern — a type of overthinking, or of putting the cart before the horse.
You do have a reasonable concern, in the sense that people in academia generally do not end up in the department where they did their PhD. In the US it’s vanishingly rare to see someone pull that off; in some other countries it’s a bit more common.
On the other hand, you need to take into account that in fact the likelihood that you’ll end up with a tenure track position in this university that you like, or even in the same city, is already very small whether you stay there for your PhD or not. Even the chances that you’ll end up in academia are not as high as you think they are — a large fraction of people starting a PhD say that they want to stay in academia, and most of them don’t — some change their minds, and some are unable to find a position that’s as attractive as they were imagining.
To be clear, I’m not saying that you’re wrong to take the future into account in your decision-making. Just be aware of the pitfalls of premature optimization. People are generally pretty bad at predicting what choices they will be confronted with a few years into the future, and what preferences their future selves will even have.
And yes, it’s perfectly reasonable to discuss these issues with your advisor, who is best positioned to give you accurate, locale-specific and discipline-specific information about the career implications of any choice you make. Good luck!

Trailing spouse is a rather common problem in academia: while one person engages in building their academic career, having to move between the universities and countries every few years, their spouse is obliged to follow, looking for local short-term jobs or being a house-spouse. The alternative is living separately for many years, before securing a permanent position.
I concur with @JoshuaZ that doing one's PhD, postdoc, and securing a permanent position in the same university is extremely rare and is usually viewed with suspicion by peers. On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with continuing for PhD with the same supervisor that you had during your masters, and many things may change/clarify in your life before you graduate.
Finally, an alternative is leaving the academia and looking for a job elsewhere - there are plenty of opportunities out there, and people with recent masters or PhD degree (without postdoc luggage) have good chances to build a career. Don't expect it to be easier than getting a tenury though.

If you would like to pursue the PhD, and it sounds like you are in a very good position to do so, then go for it. If after 4-6 years you obtain your degree and still don't want to move, then you'll probably have to look for a job outside academia. But that's a long time away and there are no guarantees, so you have to be prepared for the fact that you'll have to make that decision when you come out the other side. The chances that you have a strong postdoc and then get hired all at the same institution are vanishingly small, practically unheard of.

Staying in the same institution is more or less likely depending on the field one is working into.
However, if OP identifies as a woman, she has a lot of chances of obtaining a future grant just playing good the statistical cards (if 25% of PhDs are women and the positive discrimination action enforces a 50% of women winning grants and co ... suddenly a woman has a lot more chances to get a grant, almost as many chances as a man in the past 60 years :D )

In general, starting a PhD is not the time to carve your own career path in the way you describe.
#1 the probability of your opportunity to stay is low. there are only so many positions. those positions are competitively awarded. Right here, your plan starts to wobble.
The real problem is
#2 No No and Nope. Once you get a PhD, its time to go. If you stay in your home institution, the system has broken. Once you finish, it is time to bring your knowledge to the world and and the world to you.
What you describe is possible, but be weary of anyone that chooses to go along with it. Additionally (honestly), it sounds like a bad plan with low chance of success.
Definitely have this talk with your mentor, she/he sounds nice and willing to work with you on a plan that is more likely to succeed. My approach would be a focus on funding, rather than appointments. You demonstrate an ability to attract funding, and your options get much better much quicker. This is a conversation your mentor would likely be happy to have.

This career path applies to the top 2 percent of the people in academia. These are the people who, even as PhD students, are stronger researchers than the average assistant professor. I know of a few people like that in my field. Even those people did one postdoc stint somewhere else before returning as professors to their alma mater.
But, the situation is different if you move from US to Europe. For instance, in my eastern EU country, it's unusual for a university to hire professors who didn't graduate there. Most of them have been with their university since undergraduate.
To answer your question, I think you should be very clear to yourself and your adviser about what you want. I do not agree with the advise that you should wait for a few years before you formulate a plan. You should have a plan, and it should be updated at least once a year. The plan should also have a B option: what will you do if you can't take you favorite A option. Without the B option, you set yourself up for a ton of stress, that will reflect negatively on your family relationship.

Be blunt with yourself: apply for the PhD, if you get it, in 3-6 years from now you will have to figure out your options. If you want to have an insight, check how many of the current people in the department (assistant professor, postdocs) are from the city you are now and transitioned from PhD to PostDoc in the same department or university. If more than 2 (two), then you have some chances in pursuing your plan (but do not forget surviorship bias, and the fact that for every 5-10 PhDs there is 0.5-1 position as assistant professor ... worldwide).
However, if your main concern is staying in the city where your partner is having her/his career, the academic career is probably one of the worst possible choice. The fact that you have a great relation with people at the department does not mean that they are the only great people in the city.
Plus, if you have a good relationship, you will be able to keep the connection if you start woking in an area closely related to this department in your city (you will be able to offer small contracts, thesis, internships from the industry side...).


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How to seek Professor's "advice on how to proceed"?
Answers to my previous question stated:

It may not be a good idea to send the translations upfront; rather try to email them about your interest and seek their advice on how to proceed. Seek their permission to share your work; don't assume it beforehand.

How exactly do I phrase the sentence "seeking their advice on how to proceed"?
Thank you.

You could think of the communication as having three parts:
(1) Introduce yourself and your interest. Minimal details about yourself, possibly just your educational background. A sentence or two about your interest in the subject, and how you came across the professor/their work.
(2) Convey your work in the area of mutual interest, in a sentence or two.
(3) Request them for guidance in how to improve grammar (or whatever specific area you're looking for help in). Convey where you have already searched (effort taken is generally appreciated), and what you still have problems with. Finally, mention that if they are interested, you would be happy to share samples of your work with them.
The shorter the email, the more likely they are to read fully and respond.


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What things must international students take care of while writing a Masters SoP for a US drama school?
I am only looking for tips on how to best direct my SoP in the right direction so as to not digress and stay on point with my material.

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

I don't think the SoP is any different here than for the general case. It is a statement of what you want to achieve in the degree program and what your longer term goals are.
In particular, it isn't a statement about your skills and past accomplishments. Use the CV and letters of recommendation for that. Note that letters of recommendation are relatively important in US admissions.
If you intend to specialize in some aspect of your field (in the program and later) then say some things about that. But this is the same for everyone.


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Answering a reviewer when I am not sure if I am right
One of the reviewers has asked a technical question that is not related to the main scope of the paper that I submitted. On top of this, I am not sure if the answer I am going to give is correct or not (I have tried it but the technicality involved is not my area of research, so I am hesitant whether I am even correct or not). Can anyone suggest what one should do in such cases? Should I write what I have tried or get external help (the latter is a bit difficult at this stage)? Any ideas would be great.

Is it a question regarding the methodology, the conclusion, the discussion, the data collection, the state of the art? add these details, please help us help you.

Adding to @EarlGrey's suggestion, could you mention the type of question- is it something you can find in a book, or something you need to do some experiments or other research for?

The question is regarding the discussion, like what more can you say about the methodology, how efficient is it, can you give a precise expression for the efficiency? The method is efficient: this part comes directly from literature, the next part is what worries me.

Hmm. Sounds like a valid question to me, one that shouldn't go unanswered. I suggest you include these details in the question so that the context is well established.

The best approach to interacting with reviewers is usually honesty rather than trying to be adversarial or evasive. In your situation, I think a paragraph like the following is entirely reasonable:

Regarding your question about whether our approach could also be useful to applications in X: We don't really know. We're not experts in X, and we don't feel like we have a sufficient background to tell one way or the other. We have, however, given this a bit of thought, and here are some ideas we have come up that could go in this direction: [... some (educated) speculation ...]
That all said, as this is outside of the area where we feel competent, we have chosen not to address this in the paper.

And then you just don't mention it in the paper at all.

This is such a well-written answer that now I cannot think on any way to say this rather than plagiarizing:)

@Miguel: Call it "folklore"...

I think "lack the expertise to definitively answer" just sounds a bit better than "not experts", which, for some reason sounds too much like a snide "How should we know?".

The best course of action for these types of questions along with the "what do you think of" questions, is to avoid giving answers you're not sure of, as this might give the wrong impression to the referees and even question the reliability of your other results. Don't forget that you are addressing experts in your field, if you are absolutely sure that the question is outside of the scope of your paper, then, you have nothing to worry about, and the effort in your answer will not be in answering the question itself but rather explaining why this question is outside the scope of your paper, along with the references, if any, justifying your claim.
However, things are different if you are unsure that the question is outside the scope of your paper. That's why I suggest you give the question more time, especially if you were given a long time to accomplish revisions. In case you find out that the question is not outside the scope of the paper, but rather hard. Then, you can respond to the referees by mentioning that due to the complexity of the question, you have decided to leave it for your future research. Once again, the claim of the complexity of the question must be justified.
Finally, from my personal experience, referees usually don't insist on having an answer to these types of questions as long as your argument for not addressing them is solid and as long as you have addressed their other concerns well.

I don't like this answer because people usually understand quite well if someone is evasive in their reply. I also don't like the hint that "Don't forget that you are addressing experts in your field" because as the author of a manuscript you are also an expert in the field. The response to reviewers should be a conversation between experts. You aren't answering to a judge about what you did wrong.

The reviewer is making comments to the editor, suggesting refusal or acceptance. You have to reply to the editor, to address (or to confute) these comments.
It would not be nice to ignore the comments, but if you think that the question is outside the scope of the paper, spend as less time as possible.
If you honestly think that not knowing the answer is not an issue for what you present, that even if you do not know the answer to that question you master the methodology presented in the paper and the data collection has been sound ... then just write this.
Contrary to my opening statement, reviewers are doing the reviews to help your product to be as relevant and correct as possible, not to help the editor/journal/publications indexes.

The other answers are great, but I'd feel remiss if I didn't point out that the reviewer might believe you are in a great position to advance an idea.  Thus, they might ge offering you a license to publish a wild guess in your discussion section.
Of course, such discussion would require caveats, and creates the risk of kicking up trouble in the next round of review.  It's not the safest course.


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acceptance of precision in research papers
I am implementing a few numerical examples in MATLAB, and I am getting some solutions in which instead of getting exact value 0, I am getting a very small number, such as $10^{-6}$. This seems to be a very common problem Here1, Here2.
So my doubt is, is there any standard rule for journal and conference papers, that states upto what precision we must consider the values. (like, in my example I want to consider it as 0, is it allowed)? Should I explicitly state in the paper that $10^{-6}$ is what I got, but I am considering it to be 0?

"Numerical examples" of what?

The required precision depends on what you're doing or claiming. Probably best to discuss this with your advisor.

@AzorAhai-him- I am solving an optimization problem (Cone programming problem), in which one of the solutions is 10^(-6), am I allowed to write it as 0?

Independent of what your research is about: As soon as you work with floating point numbers, there will be an error. Your responsibility should be to formulate the problem as good as possible (well-conditioned) and use methods that are numerically stable (if available). If you can ensure that, I think a disclaimer that the results are the best possible with respect to floating point arithmetic should be fine. You should not, however, manipulate computation logs and just replace small numbers with 0.

Read this: Cole TJ. , "Too many digits: the presentation of numerical data", Arch Dis Child 2015;100:608–609. This paper has some nice rules of thumb.

@DanielHatton There is no configurable tolerance.

The right question to ask is 10^{-6} what? If you are determining the best trajectory for a space probe to get from Earth to Pluto, and you choose to measure distances in lightyears, then $10^{-6}$ is a very very large number definitely not equal to zero. But if you choose to measure distances in meters, then 10^{-6} is a very small distance and you can safely assume that it is zero. On the other hand, if you were dealing with atomic distances and measured in meters, then 10^{-6} is again not a small number at all.
In other words, it is all relative and there can be no answer independent of what the meaning of the corresponding variable is, what its units are, and how the number with units relate to the typical values of variables with these units in your setting.

Tysm for answering, it is really helpful. In my case, the solution is to be seen as a probability value. Could you please suggest, in this case, is it acceptable to treat it as 0? I am asking just to get an opinion. It would be great if you reply!

The same applies. If you are interested in the probability that it will rain today, then 10^{-6} is zero. If you are interested in the probability that the nuclear power plant next door will blow up today, then it isn't. It is all about context. Numbers only make sense in context.

Further note: even the very same quantity may need to be treated differently depending on the field. In most areas of physics, it does not really matter if the neutrino mass is 0.05 eV or exactly 0, however it is absurd to equate them if this is exactly what you're studying! So much so that this very problem has branched into a whole research field with a Nobel prize awarded for this specific thing (and some three more neutrino-related prior to that). So yes, the probability of rain being $10^{-6}$ might be =0 or extremely important, and it is up for you the researcher to tell whether it is.


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Does extensive peer-reviewing service help with faculty job applications?
I am sent a lot of papers to review, from an expanding set of journals. Currently I am a postdoc on the job market, with little time. Even though recently I only agree to review for better journals, or for journals that haven't asked me before, reviewing still takes too much of my time. Is it worth doing it at all at this point? Do hiring committees care about my reviewing record? If they do, do they ever look at sites like Publons, or is it sufficient to list the name of some journals I reviewed for in my CV? Publons being a commercial company, I never agreed to "get recognition for my review" there, even though most publishers offered it.
One of my concerns is that some of the journal editors are likely to be on hiring committees, and it would be viewed badly if I refuse too many review requests. On the other hand, the editors might judge me by reading my reviews, so I feel pressure to spend more time on writing a good review than what I am able to afford ...

Refuse away. As Buffy mentioned, the sad fact is that peer review has a terrible return on investment for the reviewer (particularly in the early career). It’s not just unpaid work monetarily, it also has negligible return in terms of career progress.
While we’re on the topic, don’t organize any conferences either.
Research is the cake, presentation & collaboration skills are the plate and table you serve it on (as opposed to serving handfuls of it off of the floor), and review/organizing/being the lab’s safety officer are the little decorative plastic bits you stick into the top and discard before eating.

It is a bit negative of an answer. Reviewing helps in self-development, especially in early career stage.

@IY2, I definitely agree with you, and it is a bit of a negative answer. However, the question is asking about how it factors into hiring in the academic job market.
The (sad) state of current hiring priorities values publication far higher than service of any kind. As a result, there is a huge opportunity cost associated with "extensive peer-reviewing service".

Overdoing it is bad, but doing some demonstrates competence and is good to keep in touch with what others do.

You are overthinking it. In your CV list the journals for which you review. The fact that you do it a lot could be either a positive or a negative in the mind of a reader.
The issue is subtle since spending too much time reviewing (as opposed to your research) is bad also. But if you review at all, and give helpful feedback it would be a minor plus to anyone who follows up on that.
But, I think, very few would pursue it.
Don't be coerced into reviewing, either mentally or externally. Put your best efforts in to your own work and review as you have time and interest. It is what most academics would do.
I also suspect that the overlap between editors and academic faculty on hiring committees is pretty small.

I expect most active researchers get more review requests than they can reasonably accept, and journal editors understand this. If you decline promptly, in a way that suggests you don't just decline everything (such as "I'm sorry, but I have too many other papers to review at present"), and make an effort to suggest alternative reviewers, this won't reflect badly on you. Personally, I try to avoid declining consecutive requests from the same editor/journal (if I realise).
Of course, by declining you may lose the chance to make a positive impression, but the way to make a positive impression is by delivering a careful, helpful and timely review. If you take on too much, you won't be able to do that anyway.


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Do academics make decisions like other humans?
There are now 100s of studies from behaviour change sciences that show that humans take mental shortcuts to make decisions.
For instance we eat at a busy restaurant, because, as a rule of thumb, they will be better (social proof). Or we are more likely to trust somebody in a white coat (authority).
Has anybody studied academics to see if they make these same mental shortcuts?
Or do academics genuinely think and act differently?
This is prompted by articles below on predatory journal findings influencing government policy and Retraction Watch as well as research I've seen on the correlation between social media impact and citations.
If scientists do behave more like other humans, then there are substantial implications, not least for scientific communications.
https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-leaderboard/top-10-most-highly-cited-retracted-papers/
https://blog.overton.io/do-articles-from-predatory-journals-make-their-way-into-policy
https://www.annalsthoracicsurgery.org/article/S0003-4975(20)30860-2/pdf

I would say we don't, on average, act substantially differently to the general population. Academics are human too and have biases and flaws just like everyone else. Even if we know better it doesn't mean we necessarily act differently (medical doctors smoking for example). The near universal (and usually mandatory) training in unconscious bias, diversity, etc which faculty are required to complete is further evidence that we still need to work on these things. I would argue that with any communication we need to keep in mind that humans are doing the communicating and none of us are perfect.

Thanks - nice example re medical doctors smoking.

That busy restaurant? “Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.” ~ Yogi Berra.

@henning there's an interesting bit of research I've seen in one of the Robert Cialdini books on this. It suggests that sticking out from the crowd is an efficient behaviour in good times - it's a differentiation play. But in dangerous times we default to the herd.

It's one of the catchphrases of Academia SE that professors are people too :)

It may help to define your target class more precisely. You mention both "academics" and "scientists" -- is the latter because you are asking about people familiar with psychology, or did this word inadvertently exclude the rest of academia? More broadly: are you using "academic" as a proxy for "smart, well-educated people", or are you intentionally making a distinction between academic research/teaching and other "cerebral" fields like law or medicine?

Amplifying @cag51, it's also worth noting that a great many scientists are not "academics" (i.e., not at a university or similar).

Very good point @jakebeal about many scientists (including most I work with) not being at universities. I was unconsciously grouping them together though - probably because, in my experience, they tend to have similar points of view on how you communicate to your peer group.

@cag51 that's an interesting point - instinctively I think this would apply to all experts.

Of course scientists are not super-humans. They are just as flawed as everybody else.
The point of the scientific method, however, is to use processes that make it harder for these types of failures to persist despite the fact that we are all merely humans with cognitive biases operating in a context of social, economic, and political pressures.
Things can get horribly distorted by those contexts, sometimes for long periods of time and at terrible human cost. At the end of the day, however, reality persists and science is the word we use for the methods that let us come to consensus on its nature.

All true. I wonder though if 'just as flawed' has been quantified? ie Can we simply have a rule of thumb that scientists should communicate to other scientists as if they are also like other humans?
If so then there are some big things to change. Starting with making academic papers massively more readable.

I believe that you are under-estimating the capabilities of non-scientist humans. We are all quite capable of scientific thinking, and scientists are quite capable of lucid communication when their peer communities demand it.

Daniel Kahneman talks about thinking fast (ie intuitive, short cuts) and slow (consciously thinking things through). I think this is a good model - ie all of us are capable of sophisticated thinking, but our default is to take short cuts.
As I understand it (I'm an economist by training, not neuroscientist) this is probably because it takes less energy for your brain.

@RobBlackie and probably because when the saber-toothed tiger comes round the corner, thinking slowly about the best way to get out is an evolutionary disadvantage in most cases :)

@MishaLavrov Fair points - good writing is certainly an extra challenge for people to get over.


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How essential is having my advisor's letter for postdoc application (and, in future, for tenure-track positions, etc)?
I am a PhD student in Economics at one of the top five universities in India. I am on the job market now, applying for postdocs pretty much anywhere in the world (as long as there are people with overlapping research interests).
Situation: After a few years of lowkey power abuse, it all recently escalated to textbook workplace harassment, and my advisor (the abuser) has now decided to withdraw all his support from my future job applications, notwithstanding the following facts: (a) out of my eight papers, six are 100% my work, the other two he made at most 5% contribution, and yet he has imposed himself as a co-author in all of those (five of them are already published/in the arxiv), (b) he has also made me do his referee work in the past.
In effect, he won't be writing me any recommendation letter. Not only that, he went out of his way and falsified information about me to some higher authorities in my university (not that that harmed me in a major way, because some faculty here know me better). So after all this, I probably can't even ask for letters from him in the future should he happen to change his mind; I am almost sure he would write downright lies about me.
Problem: Despite having a very good track record of publications, I am facing the possibility of being forced to leave academia for no fault of mine (well, except naivety).
Sidenote: Some of the higher authorities in my institute know about this, and so do my other letter writers; and they expressed sympathy and support towards my cause. However, at this stage of my PhD (my thesis has already been submitted) the faculty members who know the details of my case and support me are powerless to help me in any practical way. We don't have a clear-cut HR either.
So, my question is this: if the postdoc selection committee (and, in the future, for tenure-track positions etc) comes across an applicant, who doesn't have his PhD advisor's letter (an advisor who happens to also be the co-author of at least five papers), but all the other letters are mostly positive, what are his odds?
P.S: I know this doesn't speak well for me; after all, how did I let something like this happen? How did I not see the red flags and switch advisors when I still could? I won't get into the details and defend myself, but I'll just say that mistakes happen, and this time I made the mistake of not switching advisors when I still had time and now I'm beating myself up over it.
P.P.S: I haven't gotten into details of abuse but if it comes up in the comments, if anyone asks, I will edit and add some examples.

Thanks @No-One, for your kind words. Unfortunately, as I said we don’t have such things. Mine is a renowned institute in my country, one of the best, but things like HR or ombudsman are very uncommon in most institutes in my country.

This is a situation where you should explicitly ask one or two of your letter writers to explain the situation in their letter.  A reasonable hiring committee will accept this explanation for why your advisor has not written a letter.
Now, if none of your letter writers know you well enough to write about you and your work in a way that an advisor normally would, then a committee may have difficulty hiring you because of a lack of information.  However, they will not specifically hold the lack of a letter from your advisor against you.

Thank you for your suggestion!
Two of my letter writers wrote something like this (and also told me to add something along these lines in the cover letters): that the missing letter from my advisor is not in any way a reflection on my academic abilities and performance, nor on my personality.


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How to add research position promotion to academic CV?
I have been having a lot of trouble trying to work out a CV update that seems like it should be pretty simple and straightforward, but I am just not sure on what the correct format should be!
I have just been switched from a Research Associate to a Senior Research Associate at the research institution I work for and I really want to add this update to my CV to last minute send as an update to the admissions offices of the engineering PhD programs I applied to. However, I am confused as to how I should best update my CV in a way that still fits with the format I was using. If I change it too much, it might look like I had not sent them a finished/polished CV to begin with, so I simply just want to add that I am now a Senior Research Associate.
My current CV work/research experience is formatted like this (just a made-up example to show formatting):
Research Associate                                               July 2017 - Present
Awesome Science Lab                                                     New York, NY
Physics Department
- Physics things I did
- More physics things I did!
Chemistry Department
- Chemistry things I did!
- More chemistry things I did!

That is how all my work/experience entries are formatted: title first, then name of company/institution, then department, then experience bullet points. But where would I fit in my new title?
I was thinking maybe:
Senior Research Associate                                    December 2021 - Present
Research Associate                                         July 2017 - December 2021
Awesome Science Lab                                                     New York, NY
Physics Department
- Physics things I did
- More physics things I did!
Chemistry Department
- Chemistry things I did!
- More chemistry things I did!

But I feel like the name of the lab/company gets buried under. But then switching it looks awkward to:
Senior Research Associate                                    December 2021 - Present
Awesome Science Lab                                                     New York, NY
Research Associate                                         July 2017 - December 2021
Physics Department
- Physics things I did
- More physics things I did!
Chemistry Department
- Chemistry things I did!
- More chemistry things I did!

But leavings the name of the lab/company in the middle of the positions looks so inconsistent and awkward there. Also, December 2021 - Present just sounds weird! But how else would I mention the time frame if I just started? I have gone through many CV/resume writing articles, but cannot find a clear straightforward explanation for how I should format a promotion within the same company, but where the responsibilities are really pretty much the same. It's really just the title that changed. How can I best update my CV? My professor of interest told me that my last application to be their PhD student was rejected because I did not demonstrate research experience, so I feel this is really important.

How is this specific to Academia (that is, on-topic for Academia.SE)? Wouldn't anyone with a promotion in their workplace have exactly the same resume formatting issue, and aren't there a million different ways to represent this?

I have noticed different formatting for trends for workforce resumes vs academic CVs highlighting research experience, particularly for graduate admissions vs applying for a non-academic job.

@LostinSpatialAnalysis even in the case of academic CV's and industry resumes, there are still some similarities, including with how experience is listed/summarized, such as the case you mentioned above and like I mentioned in my answer below.

So, there are a few things I am confused on looking at your initial post:
First is that your position is listed as:
Research Associate                                               July 2017 - Present
Awesome Science Lab                                                     New York, NY

This would make more sense (my CV is more formatted like this):
Awesome Science Lab                                                     New York, NY
Research Associate                                               July 2017 - Present

I would definitely list different stages or roles I've heard, especially if I was promoted from an Associate to a Senior Associate (I am actually trying to do the same thing in LaTeX with my current consulting role), like this:
Awesome Science Lab                                                     New York, NY
Senior Research Associate                                    December 2021 - Present
Research Associate                                         July 2017 - December 2021

I would also list what you did below that, obviously.  I'm not sure though what the "Physics" and "Chemistry Department" are for though, or is that just as an example of that?
As an addendum to the last part of your application, "December 2021 - Present" is just fine.  Many people do such a thing on their resumes/CV's.  The way I listed the "Research Associate" and "Senior Research Associate" positions above makes it more organized, so the first thing that the person reading your CV sees is where you worked, along with the position(s) (starting with the first, then going up to any positions you were promoted to) that you worked in during your time at that company or lab.

Ah, ok, I was unsure if the position or the name of the lab/company should be first, but I see it is better to put the name of the lab/company first. I agree about your order suggestion: name of lab, and then list/stack positions. Regarding "Physics" and "Chemistry" departments, I am just trying to show that in my roles as a Research Associate and now as a Senior RA, I worked/will be working between multiple research groups within the lab (huge institutional lab, not like a professor's individual lab). So I am thinking I will just list all experience under my listed positions.


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My co-author mispelled my name while submitting an article to the Arxiv yesterday. How do I get this fixed?
My co-author submitted our paper to arxiv.org yesterday, and they mispelled my name. My name appears correct on the manuscript itself, but incorrectly spelled on the website.
I have claimed authorship using the paper password, and asked arxiv's help to fix this using the Help form. Will this be enough?
This is my first ever article, and my name got mispelled, so I am clearly feeling horrible.
Additional question to someone in High Energy Physics - An author page got automatically generated on InspireHEP too with my incorrect spelling, will that get updated too if arxiv fixes my name?

Just re-submit a new version ASAP. You can change the authors, so you can have the correct name appear. Google scholar doesn't crawl arXiv on a daily basis, so if you resubmit today chances are that it will only ever find the version with the correct spelling. (Regarding InspireHEP, I cannot say.)

My co-authors are unwilling to resubmit, idk why. They seem to think that just asking the arxiv help will do, but even they aren't sure. They said that if that doesnt work, we'll resubmit with new revisions which will take time. This is why I am asking that is asking the mods at arxiv enough? I am junior to both my co-authors and so I do feel pushed around.

I assume that they will, but corresponding with the arXiv staff often takes very long (multiple weeks) as they are pretty overworked. By then, the wrong name may have appear in a lot of different places.

You could offer to do the resubmission yourself (which you can do after claiming authorship), then they don't have to do the work.

Maybe they dont want to create new versions without considerable change? idk why they wont resubmit. It shouldn't be so difficult right?

Maybe, you would need to ask them. But it actually happens quite often. I have had to immediately submit an update before, and I've seen it numerous times in the version history of other people's arXiv papers.

Thanks for the help, mate! I am panicking a lot less now. :)


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Requesting editor to transfer a manuscript to another journal
My manuscript has been in review for several months. I would like it to be published soon because it is supposed to be part of my thesis. I have already contacted the editor and was told that they are having trouble finding reviewers. At the same time, there is another journal within the publisher, even more relevant to my manuscript, in which, from what I noticed, the review time is much shorter (probably they have a larger base of reviewers). Am I allowed to ask the editor to transfer my manuscript to this other journal in order to speed up the review process?

Does this answer your question? How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55665/what-does-the-typical-workflow-of-a-journal-look-like

Review time is pretty noisy.  Be patient.

Is it required for your work to be published to be part of your thesis/to graduate?  (I'm trying to understand your second sentence.)

What is the standard time for reviewing a paper in your field?  It is hard to answer this without know that.

@Kimball FWIW, in Russia the entirety of the PhD thesis is supposed to be "peer reviewed", with key points being (ideally) published or, at least, presented at conferences. And it's all too common for PhD students to find themselves needing 2-3 published papers and only a few months before graduation... And I'm suspecting a similar issue on the OP's side.

I wouldn't do that at all.  Firstly, I think there's a small chance you'd be burning bridges with the editor and that journal, and secondly because reviews take time and you probably have little real reason to really need your thesis published quickly.
Lastly, if you really wanted to move your manuscript to another journal, the right way to do it is to contact the current editor to withdraw your submission, and simply resubmit to the other journal.  There's zero reason to ask for a transfer.  There is no set work flow for that.

If the other journal is published by the same publisher, there's a high chance that the two journals use the same editorial management system (EMS), and furthermore the EMS might even already be configured to facilitate easy transfers between the journals.
So yes, you can ask, and the editor might even be able to do the transfer for you (or if they can't, the publisher can operate the EMS for them). I wouldn't mention review times though, just say the other journal is more suited and you would like to transfer there.

You can ask, but generally speaking you can ask anything. But an alternative would be to suggest reviewers to them. That is also normally acceptable and common practice for some journals.
If you ask for a transfer you might phrase it as a question rather than a request: "Would it make sense to transfer the paper to X, and is that even possible?"
And note that starting over with another journal might not actually speed it up, since it will be starting over.
But, talk this over with your advisor, who might, among other things, provide suggestions for reviewers as well as general advice.


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How do I post publication just submitted on my CV?
I have submitted my publication to a conference awaiting review. I was wondering how do I mention it on my CV, and precisely what the format is.
I completed my undergrad in CS and this is my thesis work. Want to prepare my CV for MS/Ph.D.

One way is to put a section in the CV "Work in Progress", list the title as usual and add (submitted for conference). You can name the conference or not.
Adding it to "Publications" could be confusing to some, but if marked with (submitted...) then it is probably clear enough though probably best to put it elsewhere.
It is a short term issue and will change when you get accepted (or not). If not accepted, it is still in progress.
My own view is that having work in progress is a positive thing for most academic applications.


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How to find research gap?
I would like to know if there is an easy way to find the research gaps and the new possible development track in the subject, apart from reading hundreds of articles.
Indeed I would like to elaborate a research proposal without some additional added value (not doing what others have already done)
Thank you!

Are you still working towards PhD? If so, it is critical that you find a good advisor to guide you.

I'd like to chime in with an important caveat to what you said - it appears you want to avoid reading "hundreds of articles". The purpose of reading an article is not just to understand what is left to be done. Rather, it is important to understand the field, its lingo, what has been solved, common research methods, expected level of discourse and analysis etc. Although it has been said that academic papers are how scientists obscure their research from one another, it is also true that academic papers are how new researchers get introduced to the field and existing researchers keep abreast of it.
When I was a masters and PhD student, I would spent a lot of time reading the introductions of papers, since it was there that I found the most interesting overview of the field. As I progressed, I skipped those sections because, for the most part, they became all the same ("X is a problem, however, Y. Therefore, Z is needed").
In addition, papers often have a background section and their own reference lists, many of the references are absolutely crucial to understanding the field. I've read many bad papers that turned me on to a set of gold references.
Research problems are not found simply by looking for things no one has done before. That is just chasing novelty and the problem often is that novelty isn't enough. For instance, it's true that no one has tried to put a motor into a pork chop, but that doesn't make it a relevant robotics research topic. Reading a paper to find research ideas should be more like "Oh, they did XYZ. Interesting, because that method has a deficiency when dealing with the following class of outliers. I wonder why they didn't explore that?"

(+1) You had me at “no one has tried to put a motor into a pork chop”!

As I progressed, I skipped [introductions] because, for the most part, they became all the same - Maybe this is a field difference, because I feel like in pure math most people never read more than (part of) the introduction.

You can't put a motor into a pork chop. But you can put a pork chop into a motor

@Kimball for sure it could be a field difference. In my field (robotics, and specifically robot grasping), the introductions are just the same "X is a real-world problem that humans are good at, but robots aren't". However, as a new grad student, even learning the application domain was important. Those introductions really helped to ground me in the field, but then...I started writing my own papers and uh...my introductions all sounded the same, so I stopped reading the intros :-P

Knowing engineering students as I do, I'm not certain that no-one has ever tried putting a motor in a pork-chop.

(-1) for a "you shouldn't want to know the answer to your question" answer. The OP did not state that they were not going to read papers, only that they'd like answers posted about methods besides the obvious.

That depends a bit on the field, especially on its "maturity" and on the number of people interested in it, not just currently, but in the past as well. In a new, fresh, hot field it will likely be easier than in an old, well travelled one since people may be skipping a lot as they push on.
But for most people, no, there isn't an easy path. You gotta do the grunt work to root out the gems.
You can ease the task, however, if you have a group of collaborators who meet fairly regularly to kick ideas around. Some of them will be trivial, others very hard, some just right (three bears problem). For a student, the advisor, who should have more breadth of knowledge in the area is a useful resource.
Experience also helps, but it takes hard work to get that experience. If you have insight into a range of problems the missing chinks might be more visible.
And it takes more that "reading". Careful, critical, reading is needed.

Thank you I can't upvote your answer because it´s my first post.

Welcome to the site.

@Ama I can and have upvoted. Unlike the other answers (which I've down-voted) this one recognizes that you don't need lecturing about reading papers; you didn't say you wouldn't, only that you're asking about other methods besides the obvious. In the world of intellectual property (IP, patents) people use all kinds of software tools to look for IP islands and IP gaps, and the lager companies (and patent trolls) will try to pepper or fill in those gaps with lots of low-quality but irritating patents. Of course you're not trying to do that, but there may actually be software solutions here.

Thank you so much , you got my point!

Focus on your own curiosity and knowledge gaps --- some of these will be research gaps
In my experience, one of the most effective ways to find and plug research gaps is to ask yourself questions that are of interest to you as you read through the material in a field and play with problems for your own enjoyment and interest.  When you read a paper, it ought to spark a few questions you have that are of interest to you, and you will probably be motivated to play around with the problem and see if you can figure out the answer.  This will also lead you to see if these questions are already answered in the literature, and if so, whether the answers in the literature are the same as your own answers.  If your question is already answered in another paper, you then read that other paper and it then sparks new questions, etc.  If your questions are not answered (or if they are answered in a different way, such that your own alternative answer is a useful new perspective) then you have found a gap in the literature relating to a question that is of interest to you, which then gives you an opportunity for a publishable paper.
In conducting this exercise, I find it best to ignore consideration of wanting to find research gaps and publish things, and instead just focus on satisfying my own curiosity about problems.  Plenty of times this leads me to solve problems that I initially think are original work, but which turn out to be re-discoveries of material that is already published (for some examples, see this related answer).  That is okay, because it was still interesting to work on the problems and it is heartening to rediscover valuable results in your field.
You should not impose preliminary limits on how much you ought to have to read to perform this process.  If you have an aversion to reading a large number of papers in your field then it suggest that perhaps this field is not something you're passionate about, so a research career in that field is probably a poor choice for you.  In my own field (probability/statistics/data science) I can happily read hundreds of papers because I find them interesting and they lead me to interesting problems that I can toy around with for my own amusement.  (In practice I would probably start toying with problems before reading even ten papers, let alone one-hundred.  Comprehensive reading of the literature tends to occur when I'm doing a literature review after having found a specific problem I want to write about.)

An example: At the risk of being self-ingulgent, I'll give you an example of a recent paper I've written that came out of this kind of inquisitive process.  (Some field-specific jargon used here, but hopefully you get the idea.)  A few years ago I got interested in occupancy distributions in probability, which came out of asking a simple question about random sampling.  This led me to an interest in a probability distribution called the "classical occupancy distribution", so I started reading a bunch of papers about this distribution.  One thing I noticed in the papers is that they all gave the mean and variance formula for the distribution, but did not give formulas for other properties of the distribution called the skewness and kurtosis.  So already I had an immediate question of interest to me --- what are the formulae for the skewness and kurtosis.  I also noticed that the papers mentioned that the distribution converges to a normal distribution under broad conditions (so you can use the normal distribution as an approximation in some cases), but the papers did not really attempt to describe how fast this convergence occurs and how accurate/inaccurate this approximation would be.  So I then had a second question of interest to me --- how accurate is the normal approximation as I change the distribution parameters, and how large do those parameters have to be before we get really good accuracy?  Finally, I had some questions about computation.  The distribuion can be computed recursively, but this is slow when the parameters are large, so it occurred to me that you could compute recursively when the parameters are "small" but then switch to the normal approximation when the parameters are "large".  But where is a good dividing line for this change in computation method --- i.e., what is a good point where you should change from recursive computation to an approximation method?
As I read through more papers on the topic it became evident to me that these questions did not have answers in the existing literature, so I worked on them myself, mostly out of personal interest and a desire to compute the distribution effectively.  Had I worked on this and figured out the answers, and then found out they weren't novel, that would have been okay, because playing around with those problems is interesting and good fun.  But in this particular case, once I'd figured out the answers I then had the material for a publishable paper that plugs a research gap (O'Neill 2020).  This paper answered the above three questions I had asked myself while I read other papers in the field.  I've since done more playing around with extensions and variations to this occupancy distribution and I've found more interesting questions that were not answered in the existing papers, so this has led to more publications in the field.  This is the type of process that I find leads to my research --- reading papers, asking myself questions, and toying around with problems.

Thank you so much!

(-1) for a "you shouldn't want to know the answer to your question" answer. The OP did not state that they were not going to read papers, only that they'd like answers posted about methods besides the obvious.


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Which area has more research scope: neural networks or cryptography?
I am from Mathematics Background. I am getting an offer to a phd in cryptography but am also thinking of going in deep learning theory- which area has more scope in future in research?

Both are pretty hot at the moment and will likely stay hot for a while, but the future remains unknown to us. Some truly key breakthrough in a field can quiet interest in it, or expand it.
But you will have an opportunity to re-examine the question over the course of a career and make judgements about whether to continue a line of research or move to another.
A decision made now isn't necessarily a "forever" decision.
"Prediction is hard. Especially about the future." (Source unknown)


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Proof of a corollary
Suppose we have a Corollary 1.3 evidently implied by Theorem 1.1 and Theorem 1.2.
How should one go about proving Corollary 1.3?
Can we say: Theorem 1.1 and Theorem 1.2 evidently imply the following corollary:
Corollary 1.3
Or should we write:
Corollary 1.3
Proof. Corollary 1.3 evidently follows from Theorem 1.1 and Theorem 1.2.

Both ways are fine and very commonly seen, so it's up to your personal preference.  And "opinion poll" questions are usually discouraged on Stack Exchange.

Just make sure it really is "evident"!  Few things are more frustrating for a reader than spending a lot of time verifying details that the author said were "evident" or "obvious".

Either will do, but the second probably is closer to the style of the rest of the paper. The reviewers may have suggestions that you should follow, but don't obsess over it for a submission.
If the proof isn't obvious from your hints they will likely comment on that as well.
Write it as you like.


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Arrangement of references in math papers
My question is the following. Should references in math papers be arranged according to author’s last-names or first-names?

This seems like the kind of thing which should be answered by the style manual of whatever journal you are hoping to publish in.  That said, I can't say that I've ever seen references arranged by first name.  I've seen them ordered by when they are first referenced in a paper, by author's last name, and even by publication year, but never by first name. :/

Thank you! The paper I am talking about I only plan on submitting to arXiv

I'm not quite sure why you would only post something on arXiv (since arXiv is not peer reviewed, hence material there is not really part of the accepted scientific record), but if that is the case, you are pretty much free to do whatever you like.

If "should be" means to be received as useful or standard by mathematicians looking at your document, then references should be ordered by last names, not first names.
Also, in the contemporary style of ordering authors alphabetically, you'd order citations by the last name of first author.
And, indeed, I strongly endorse this, as, otherwise, it's stupidly difficult to understand the bibliography directly, especially if it's large.

As the other answers said, by last names.
Generally speaking, a good way to answer questions like this is to browse through other math papers on the arXiv. Essentially all of them will be formatted very similarly, and will illustrate common conventions for how to format a paper and how the bibliography should look.
Your content should be unique of course! -- but on stylistic questions I recommend simply imitating what others do.


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How can I pursue academic side interests during my PhD?
I've come out of undergrad (during COVID, too) with a degree in science, unsatisfied with my general knowledge and work ethic outside of the sciences. I especially regret not pursuing a minor in a humanities field (COVID depression, lack of connection over Zoom, and my laziness especially really interfered with that and really did not even make me think of this). Is there a way I can pursue this interest further in graduate school? I am going to attend a liberal arts school for a degree in STEM but I really want to somehow make up for this loss and grow in an area outside of the sciences, because I feel like a very "flat" person right now.

Ask the school.  Where I went to graduate school, I was allowed to register in courses in other departments.  (Of course do not do it so much that it interferes with your main studies.)

It's often possible to attend classes without officially registering for them (but with the permission of the instructor).

I think @AndreasBlass's comment is exactly on-point: if you don't demand resources from people, you can sit and listen to what they have to say. In fact, it does often happen (in math, too, in not-necessarily-"applied" grad courses I teach...) that "outsiders" have very insightful questions! :) So I don't discourage "outsiders" asking questions, at all. Indeed, "insiders" should be able to cogently answer questions from supposedly-amateurish "outsiders", one might think. :)

Oop, forgot that, in some countries/unis, non-paid attendance is supposedly strictly prohibited. It is my impression that this is not the case in Germany, though, for example. In the US, I have the impression that it is most typical that the Central Admin "strictly prohibits" people from listening without paying. Even "auditing" (not for credit or grade...) requires a fee. At the same time, in math, in the U.S., in upper-division or grad courses, I'm not aware of anyone who'd enforce such an externally-imposed rule. Especially, at publicly-funded places???? :)

Thanks guys, I was definitely planning to audit courses. But I really want to dig deeper (i.e., project work? I really feel like I missed out not doing a senior thesis for a major/minor in a humanities during undergrad). I really want to make this happen in grad school...


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SAGE embargo policies for accepted manuscripts
So I published an article in a journal published by SAGE in April, 2023 (this year). The article was published in the restricted access condition. I know that Taylor and Francis has an embargo period only after which the researchers can post their accepted manuscript on to repositories like reseachgate.
Do anyone know the current embargo policy for accepted manuscripts that have been published in SAGE journals? Any links would be helpful too. Thanks in advance.

It may depend on what type of journal. I found info on Green Open Access and Gold Open Access and Sage Choice.

Have you asked the journal this information? They probably want their authors to know what the conditions are.

Sage publishes their "reuse" policy on their website, but it is country-dependent. mkennedy's comment should be the answer, as you can find it from there link very quickly:
https://in.sagepub.com/en-in/sas/journal-author-archiving-policies-and-re-use


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Coauthorship for answers on Stack Exchange
After spending some time on math.stackexchange, my impression is that a substantial part of the questions is asked by active professional researchers (PhD, postdoc, prof., etc). Let's suppose such a person is stuck in his/her research, asks a question on stackexchange, gets "unstuck" because of a good answer, and writes a paper about it. Shouldn't the person providing the helpful answer (however small the contribution in the overall paper) be offered co-authorship? More generally, is it ethical to crowd-source research on stackexchange without stating one's professional interest in the answer?

(Browsing recent questions on math.SE regularly, I think it is inaccurate to say professional researchers make up a substantial part of the question askers there. On MO, maybe.)

Also related (but closed): Do I have to make someone coauthor if he/she solves a problem in StackExchange, asked by myself, which is later used in my paper?

is it ethical to crowd-source research on stackexchange without stating one's professional interest in the answer? Can someone translate this question into the plain English? I understand every word and the grammatical structure, but the meaning totally eludes me :-)


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Tools to easily navigate references in research papers
Often times while reading academic papers, I need to check the citations referred to in the text, and so I naturally end up scrolling to the last page of the paper, finding the appropriate citation, and looking it up on the web. And then scroll all the way back up.
Is there any tool where in I can see the citations of a paper in the sidebar, so I can quickly refer to them while reading the paper.

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

Different PDF tools have different options. One way is just to have multiple windows open, with one down in the reference section and one where you are reading...

Why not just open up the pdf in an additional window, where it is scrolled down to the reference list?

A PDF viewer like Skim on MacOS has a split screen feature that you can use for this.

I currently do what others have suggested -- have two windows open, one with the paper and one with references. Was wondering if there is a better way than that?
For e.g., a PDF tool where the citations can be shown with a mouse hover, or if I click on it, the citation gets displayed in the sidebar etc.

If your field uses the arXiv, the arXiv Bibliographic Explorer from arXivLabs may be useful. It is a browser extension that allows you to view the references and citations for a paper on the arXiv without having to e.g. search for the title of the paper on Google. If you have the PDF opened in one tab and the arXiv page in another, then you can quickly find hyperlinks to relevant papers through the search functionality.


text:
Is there a way to get a list of citations for a web page URL?
Sites like Google Scholar track citations to academic articles, however it doesn't do the same for web page URLs. Academic text often cites web pages using their URLs, for e.g., links to GitHub repos, blog posts, even stackoverflow posts.
Is there a way I could find a list of academic articles citing any particular URL?

This paper (Enrique Orduña-Malea & Rodrigo Costas. Link-based approach to study scientific software usage: the case of VOSviewer, 2021) deals with your exact question.
The approach is fairly straightforward: just search in GS for the relevant URL substring.