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Does a research group actually review every applicant's documents in case of overwhelming number of applications?
It's like the response to my PhD application usually includes something like "The number of the applications we've received is so high that we can't accommodate all of the qualified applicants." It's like outnumbering applicants is the general reason of rejection.
Besides that, they seldom address other reasons. Some responses of this kind were due to my enquiry after application, rather than on their own initiative. Some of them didn't bother to respond even after my enquiry.
So I wonder whether a research group or school actually reviews every applicant's documents if they receive an overwhelming number of applications compared to the vacancy number. Maybe they have a way to pick some among the large number of applications — like using the filter function of a computer to pick documents containing some kind of keywords, which may not be completely faithful — to actually review to consider who to admit and that's why they don't bother to reply to all the applicants they don't admit.
For example, recently I found the reason I was not admitted for an application to a fundamental physics research group in Europe four months ago is eventually the funding is only available for a research project which is not my research interest; thus probably they even didn't review my application as they, saying they received an extraordinary number of applications, only picked those whose research interests involve that research project to review.

thus probably they even didn't review my application as they only picked those whose research interests involve that research project to review 1) The only way they could know if you were interested in the project is if they reviewed your materials to learn about your interest. 2) Once they learned your interests don't line up with their funding, why would they go any further? That's a totally legitimate reason to be rejected.

Besides that, they seldom address other reasons. Some responses of this kind were due to my enquiry after application, rather than on their own initiative. Some of them didn't bother to respond even after my enquiry. Departments in my field regularly receive ~150 applications and accept <10. They are not going to take the time to respond to 100s of people and offering specific reasons just means people will argue with them and opens them up to suits.

From the last paragraph it sounds like you're "mass applying" for PhD positions, since you didn't seem to care/know that the project advertised wasn't related to your own interests and expertise. When we recruit in my university these applications are the first ones to get redflagged since a) there are plenty of actually qualified applicants to waste time with those who aren't and b) it denotes lack of diligence by the applicant (e.g., applicant didn't even read the list of requirements). We even got a biology major apply for a PhD position in physics (these come from India/Pakistan). 1/2

So it's a better use of yours and everyone's time to only apply for positions for which you have the expertise. It will help your chances if your application shows that you are a good fit for the project and took the time to go through the requirements and so on. It usually pays out to apply for less positions but making sure you're the right fit for them. 2/2

@Miguel The statement of rejection implies that funding was cut for a project that "was their research interest". Regardless being "outside of their research interest" does not imply that the research was outside of their expertise and that they were not aware of this. It's possible that the number of research positions in their exact area of interest is very narrow and so they are looking for jobs that may be outside of that in order to broaden that area of interest. For instance, an intern studying physics might do research slightly outside of their AOI because it's what they could find.

You really have multiple questions here -- at least one about reviewing applications and one about replies sent to applicants.  This site works better if you ask one question at a time.

If an 'overwhelming' number of applications is received then one option is to place them in two equal piles, pick a pile at random and chuck it in the bin. Repeat until the number of applications is tractable. The advantage of this method is that it also helps to get rid of unlucky candidates.

@TheGreatDuck That funding was not cut for a project that is not my research interest; the real situation is that project is the only one which was sure to have funding and the research group originally considered they can get funding for other research themes, so invited people to apply for that project and other themes beyond it. But it turns out they can't get funding, so they only admitted one applicant for that project. Besides, you are correct there are not many positions in my research interests and I am sure I can work on some other related areas but I just have less interest in them.

Well, there's an old HR joke about a two-man startup recruiting for its third employee and getting 1000 applications. The two founders were sitting at a table piled high with the applications wondering what to do. Suddenly one of them picked up most of the application forms and threw them out of the window. His colleague was horrified: "You might have rejected the best qualified candidate!" The reply was "True, but we can't afford to employ people who have a track record of being unlucky." ;)

@Miguel You really wrongly accuse of me. I have never mass-applied for PhD positions. I have never sent the same documents to different programs—I always tailored my documents for each application. That research group I applied to originally invited applications for that project not being of my research interest and what beyond it. I did check that research group has research themes which is greatly of my research interest so that I applied to it. If the research group only invited applications for that project, I wouldn't apply. It just turns out they can't get funding for other themes.

When I get applications to review, I usually do a pre-pass on every application. I look for GPA, test scores, and compliance with requested application materials (i.e. did they even have anyone write them letters of recommendation?). We usually have explicitly stated bottom line cutoffs for GPA and test scores. Those falling below these marks are automatically set to the side.
I next try to scan the research statements / statements of purpose. This eliminates a large amount of the candidates usually.
I then cut the remaining applications into about half. I select who I want to accept from this half stack and order them roughly from strongest to weakest. I then do a spot check to see if anyone in the other half stack is clearly superior to the weaker candidates in the already selected stack. If so, I do an insertion of the new candidate and the weakest person is dropped from the list.
In the end, yes, I've looked at everyone's application, and no, I have not given heartfelt and deep thought to each applicant.
We then send out an accept/reject form email to every applicant. I very rarely even reply at length to students who fight their rejection.

In applications to European PhD programs, I have never seen stated bottom line cutoffs for GPA and test scores. Some of them even don't require any grade transcript. So they should not have pre-passed applicants based on grades.

@CaptainBohemian I've also seen European PhD programs with entire websites written in German. I adjust accordingly to the specific situation in these cases.

Before application, I always check the requirement and research conducted in the group. I only make application to a research group, school, or institute if I find there are research themes which actually interest me or if the research projects for which they recruit applicants are actually what I want to work on. I usually write explicitly in my application which themes in their group are what I hope to work on. But I don't know if that's a big factor for their selection.

"I then cut the remaining applications into about half ... " Do you mean you divide the remaining applications into two portions randomly, rather than by some kind of qualification-based criteria? If that's the case, then in your way of selecting applicants, among the qualified applicants, only the strongest are certain to be accepted while whether those with qualifications between the strongest and the weakest would be accepted partly depends on which portion their documents happen to be placed in, that is to say, partly depends on their luck!

@CaptainBohemian Looking at only half of the stack gives me a bootstrap sample of what applicants there are. And it's sort of based on luck as to whether the middle tier candidates will pan out if accepted.  If there were a perfectly fair algorithm, we would write it into a computer and make the computer choose.

Hearing about your selection process, I think I should not take rejection too critical. In my country, from high school to MSc, there are entrance exams administrated to select applicants for admission. The admission by entrance exam is very rigorous–it selects applicants completely by the scores one gets in the exam, taking applicants from the highest-scored first then 2nd-high then 3ird-high ... until the vacancies are all filled; it's possible to be rejected by just less one score. Thus I tend to think that being rejected means not being good enough without considering luck factor.

@CaptainBohemian This of course assumes that tests do not have an element of luck inherent in them. Maybe I was slightly sick the day of the test. Or maybe I just happened to study one subject that is emphasized and someone else studied everything BUT that subject. In the US we use the GRE for most graduate admissions. It's one metric of course. But it usually is not a perfect classifier.

I have long been aware that entrance exam isn't completely free of luck factor, but it provides a convincible reason for rejected applicants. The admission committee announces they will admit applicants who get the highest scores in an exam in scope XXX. Applicants can try to improve their admission probabilities by studying XXX hard and finding strategies of guessing out the answers of selection questions when they can’t be sure the answers. In contrast to it, the research groups seem to never announce their selection rules so that applicants can't find a definite way of improving admission.

Besides all the correct answers (that you should not read too much into a standard rejection letter), let me also answer your actual question:

So I wonder whether a research group or school actually reviews every applicant's documents if they receive an overwhelming number of applications compared to the vacancy number.

In general, yes - for some definition of "review". Let me clarify: the number of applicants is typically overwhelming compared to the vacancy numbers. If I announce a PhD student position (usually a single position), I get somewhere between 10 and 100 applications. This is not unusual - all my colleagues report similar numbers. And yes, we do actually look at all applications that come in, but for most applicants we do so only very, very briefly. I have a number of knockout criteria that I use to do a first cursory assessment.
My (non-complete) list of knockout criteria includes: Does the candidate fulfill the necessary formal requirements? Are they in the right field? Is there some semblance of a research statement? Did they graduate from a school I know, or have they worked with somebody I know and respect? Are there any obvious red flags?
At least 3/4 of applicants do not pass this stage. For the remaining ones I typically take more time to review their application (i.e., I actually read their application material), and for a further subset (usually between 3 and 5) I schedule telephone interviews. The applicants I had a phone interview with I usually mail a (slightly) personalized response if I decide against them. Everybody else gets a standard email from HR.

This is exactly the same as reviewing CVs for "commercial" job applications.  You are presented with way too many applicants and have to look for reasons to reject quickly so that you can concentrate on those that may be most suitable.  Good candidates can often be rejected at the first scan just because their application is poorly presented or they miss out on some detail.

I hope the (un)known school / (un)known previous advisor are not your absolute knockout criteria (or rather, that you consider a known school/advisor a plus, but don't reject people flat out if you do not know it/them). I'd like to think that well-written, well-presented applications written by people with good research profiles would not be completely overlooked just because they happen to come from a lesser-known institution. Other than  you stating that "known school/advisor" is a knockout criterion, I really do like this answer.

@penelope I thought this would raise some objections. To be entirely honest, my bar for students where I don't know the school or anything else about the quality of their previous education is very high, to the extent that it might as well be considered a knock-out criterion. I would certainly further consider such a student if the rest of the application was extremely strong, but I have not yet had such a case.

@penelope It's a complex topic. I understand that I probably "lose" a certain amount of very good people in this way, but the risk I accept whenever I take on a PhD student is quite high. Basically, if I take on a student in Sweden it will cost me multiple 100k USD in funding, there is virtually no way to kick out an underperforming student, and I will have to work with them for 5 years. If this student ends up not graduating it will reflect extremely badly on me. In consequence, I, and most of my colleagues tend to be very risk-averse in hiring.

I'm surprised it didn't raise more objections. I'm glad you say "you'd certainly further consider such a student if the rest of the application was extremely strong", and I don't find it too hard to believe that you haven't seen any (yet). I get that it's complex, and that you observe a strong correlation between people from unknown advisor/institutions submitting not-as-strong applications. But I still hope that the decision is finally made based on the criteria measuring application quality, and not fame.

@penelope It has next to nothing to do with fame, to be honest. Let's be clear, people applying for my positions don't come with a Harvard undergrad. What I mean is that I often I get applicants from schools I have never heard of in India or Pakistan. I have nothing to work with when evaluating these candidates aside from a degree from a school that I know nothing about, a (more often than not) form letter of recommendation from a person I have never heard of, and a bland research statement. I am sure some of them would do great, but it's really hard to take this chance.

You encountered a standard phrase which is used to reject applications. This is useful for the institution, because

noone wants to write dozens of individual letters
you might get into legal trouble if you wrote something which might not be true in the eyes of the recipient of the letter.

Usually all applications are checked, some institutions might have automated systems to support the process (e.g. check for grades etc.), but most will do it manually.

If you saw how crammed the average professors calendar and how full their email inbox is... I would guess most groups simply don't have that kind of time.

From my experience this is true..however, this message is of course not wanted on this site.


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Is getting admission as a foreigner to a PhD program through a position within a research project of a principal investigator mostly hopeless?
There are generally two kinds of ways to get admitted to a PhD program in Europe or some other places—one is through a calling for PhD applications by a research institute, a university department or a research division therein consisting of researchers involved with closely related research topics, and another is through an opening of a position—which can be called PhD position, PhD scholarship, research assistant, or research associate as far as I have seen—within a research project of a principal investigator. The first usually administers once every a fixed short period, like a year, half a year or four months, usually has multiple positions and is flexible in research topics for PhD studies while the second only administers when an principal investigator gets the funding, usually only has one position each opening though it can occasionally have two, and the PhD research topic is confined to that project.
I have long heard that if one wants to pursue a PhD in Holland, they have to first look for a related job vacancy. I guess this means Holland mainly admits PhD students by the second way mentioned above. However, I also heard from activities regarding Studying in Holland in my country that it's almost impossible for a foreigner to win a PhD position through a job vacancy in Holland unless they have a network with related principal investigators in Holland, like they have pursued their MSc in Holland. I wonder whether this also applies to other countries, particularly in Europe, where a PhD position opening within a research project like a job vacancy, that is my aforementioned second way of admission, seems very common as a whole. I heard the reason that Holland rarely awards job-like PhD positions to networkless foreigners is that they don't have many vacancies of that sort and therefore they prioritize their compatriots. I wonder whether this is the same situation for other countries.

I don't know how it works in Holland but I'd be surprised that such policy exists: it's unlikely to be an official policy since it would certainly be discriminatory; and it's unlikely to be an informal practice because it's in the PI's interest to select the most qualified candidate independently from their origin. However everywhere there's a natural bias towards students who graduated from a local university, simply because the PI can evaluate their level more accurately. For what it's worth I'm not aware of any such preference in France or Ireland.

@Erwan Sometimes it depends on funding source. Discriminating based on skin color/ethnic origin may be illegal, but a government providing educational opportunities for its citizens and not for citizens of other countries isn't. I know nothing about education in Holland but in the US there are some funding opportunities that are not available to international students; related to that, some outside countries offer to pay for students to attend graduate school in the US if they agree to return home.

@Erwan I mentioned Holland because I've heard people in activities regarding Studying in Holland talk about the unlikeliness of winning Dutch PhD positions. These activities seem to be held often in my country, like a manifestation of encouraging our nationals to go to Holland to study. But since Dutch PhD positions are rarely awarded to us, who go to Holland to pursue PhD? I've seen a lot of job-like PhD positions in other European countries and applied some of them, finding this kind of application seems not easy to get response, so wonder if the Dutch situation applies to these countries.

@Erwan It's like not all job-like PhD positions select candidates by the principal investigators solely, e.g. some of them require to apply through their online recruitment systems—this is what Scandinavia countries typically do. On the other hand, I did see a job-like PhD position in Ireland and applied for it in May, but haven't got a reply. As for France, it's like their admission also needs to be initiated by contacting a principal investigator because I've never seen they have centralized openings, but I am not sure who are responsible for selecting candidates.

I'm still not convinced by the national preference policy, I'm not sure but I think it's illegal for EU countries to favour their own nationals over other EU nationals. I tried to give an overview of the system (as far as I know it) in my answer below.

TL;DR: No, its not hopeless.
In the United States, admissions often end up being more like the second way than the first way, even though they are the first way "on paper" (whether you are a foreign applicant or not).
The way to go about making this happen is by building a relationship with a potential adviser, and then when you submit you application to the department, your potential adviser can make it known to the admissions committee that they want you admitted so that you can work with them. I sent very similar applications to 8 schools, and the only 2 that admitted me with funding were the ones where I had a potential adviser who went to the admissions committee and said that they wanted to have me.
The process I described works whether you are from the US or not. I'll link to Matt Might's blog, where he gives a longer description of what the "getting into graduate school" process looks like: http://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-apply-and-get-in-to-graduate-school-in-science-mathematics-engineering-or-computer-science/

Most PhDs in the bio-molecular subjects in the UK are awarded through the "job-like" route (although that is changing in some places). For most of these the position will only be open to those that count as "Home" students. Until we leave the EU in October, that includes people from the UK or the EU (after that it will just be people from the EU).
The reason for this has nothing to do with already being part of a network etc, but simply because these positions might look like jobs, but they are not. They are usually government funded PhD scholarships (where the PI has been selected to stand proxy for the government in selecting the student). For better or worst (worst in my opinion) the government has decided that its job is to educate native students (and is forced to include European students by the EU).
However, such studentships will almost always state in the advert "Home/EU applicants only".

I have noticed a lot of PhD openings in UK through the first way I mentioned above note their funding is limited to EU applicants and some of them add that applicants outside EU may only be partially funded or need to look for funding elsewhere. I don't often see job-like PhD openings in UK. But with your information added, I think UK usually keeps their PhD funding for their compatriots no matter which way of admission. Though I have recently seen some PhD openings in UK which don't state their scope of funding, I may be afraid their funding doesn't cover non-EU applicants.

In general, if the funding comes from a governmental body, such as one of the UKRI funding bodies (BBSRC, MRC, NERC, EPSRC, etc), then it will be EU only. However there are also charity funders of PhDs in the UK, such as the Wellcome Trust that fund non-EU applicants. My experience of EU schemes, such as Marie Curie PhD fellowships, is that they also extend to non-EU applicants.

I can only answer to the modest extent of my knowledge, but my experience (France and Ireland) is that in practice there's no real "PhD program" to apply to, in the sense that usually one applies to do a PhD with a specific supervisor, either on a predetermined topic or a topic that the candidate and supervisor decide together. The funding may come from various sources:

Funding obtained by the candidate themselves and not attached to the specific position, for example a grant from the country of origin or through a scheme related to the candidate's current employment.
Various governmental and non-governmental funding bodies: often attributed to work on a specific topic considered as a priority by the funding body, but sometimes allocated to the person based on merit.
Funding from a pool of grants allocated by the institution, usually distributed to PIs before being advertised (this used to be quite common in France but I'm not sure if it still is)
Project-specific funding from a grant obtained by the PI (or in which the PI is involved). In this case the advisor and the topic are completely predetermined (this would probably be the most common case nowadays).

I'm not familiar with the distinction made by OP between institution-level funding and "job-like" funding in France and Ireland. The closest to this would be case 3 for the former and case 4 for the latter. In France a PhD funding is always an employment contract, in Ireland it's always a student grant (i.e. not a staff contract).
I don't have any statistics but a large proportion of PhD students in Ireland are non-nationals, and probably a smaller proportion (but still a significant one) in France. I'm not aware of funding restrictions by nationality. However it's clearly much easier for a local candidate (not necessarily a national but somebody who has studied in the institution) to get a PhD funding, because a lot of PhD positions are not advertised (at least not in any serious way), they are almost directly offered to the person the supervisor wants to fund. This is why most of the time the supervisor is the key: unless the candidate obtains their own funding (cases 1 and 2 above), all the other options depend on the supervisor. Some of these positions are advertised, but they can attract many applicants so the chances are limited. I think contacting a PI directly offers a better chance... especially a PI who has many projects funded.

There is also a list of funding ways in a Dutch university, Obtaining funding in University of Groningen (UG): 1. UG salary, that is like through a job-like position within a research project; 2. UG scholarship, 3. other scholarship; 4. employer; 5. personal funding. But I feel hopeless to get funding through either of the above because I've never seen UG announcing 1 or 2, it may be very difficult to find other scholarship, there can't be an industrial employer for academically oriented research.

It's likely that any list of available positions you're looking at is only a small subset of the available positions. And of course these positions are the most competitive. If possible try to contact somebody there, or at least find some field-specific advertising channels. If you are applying only on publicly advertised positions you should probably target more than one country in order to get a reasonable chance to be accepted somewhere (but it depends how specific is the field).

I think directly contacting principal investigators not having opening announcement is of little avail based on my experience. Most either reply me they have no position to offer currently or don't reply me. Few (like 3) directed me to a PhD program or a research project position of their colleagues to apply, and after applying, they didn't admit me. I did contact a principal investigator in France, but he has no grant and said if I can secure independent funding, let him know; moreover, he introduced me three of his previous colleagues, who have moved to Canada, in topics I wish to work on.

I know that it's a game of chance, but for better or worse direct contact opens more doors than just sending an application among a few hundred other applicants. Many PhD positions are obtained because the student has done an internship or master project with the supervisor, or has been recommended by their master thesis supervisor to their colleagues (including colleagues abroad sometimes).

My difference between institution-level funding and job-like funding is that by the former the candidate can choose their research topics and their supervisors among the principal investigators in that institute while by the latter the candidate can only take the principal investigators of that project as their supervisors and their research topics must be within the scope of that project. I like the former more than the latter based on my experience because the topics I greatly wish to work on and have related technical knowledge rarely lie in the scope of a research project with PhD opening.

Ok, it's understandable but be aware that this kind of open positions have a much lower acceptance rate than the ones tied to a supervisor.

Really? But would the principal investigator of a specified research project select an applicant without experience closely related to the project if there are applicants with closely related experience? This kind of opening usually has only one position, so if there are applicants who have closely related experience, I may not have a chance unless they give up, but I think it's very unlikely that all of them would give up such a good chance. That's why I think my applying for this kind of position directly to the principal investigator rarely gets a reply. How to cope with such nonreplies?

I'm not saying that your strategy is wrong at all, just that in general an open position receives much more applications than a specific one, simply because it matches more profiles and candidates are motivated by having more freedom about the topic. It depends on many things (field, institution, etc.) but it's easier to get lucky on a specific position, supervisors don't always find a perfect match.

Does a position within a research project really receive fewer applications? Maybe many people think as you and want to try the luck. The only reply I got this year to my application for such a position to the principal investigator said she received over 80 international applications in the field. She has only one position but receives over 80 applications! In contrast to the research project position, a research group consisting of about 8 principal investigators I applied to last year replied me they received close to 200 applications; however, I don't know how many positions they offered.

I might be wrong about this, I don't have any stats. Anyway it depends on so many other factors that it doesn't make much sense to talk about specific cases. What I'm quite sure of is that in about half the PhDs I know, the supervisor and the PhD student were in contact before the official application. Just keep trying your best and be persistent... Good luck!

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How to acknowledge a MathOverflow user?
I am writing a research paper. A small but important idea for the paper was found on MathOverflow. I know the real name of the user. I tried contacting him and offered him co-authorship, but I got no reply. How do I acknowledge him now ? Do journals encourage citations under pseudonyms?

Related discussion on MathOveflow Meta: How does one cite a MO post with an anonymous author?

Related question here, though it does not tackle the question of whether/when to use a real name. Attributing contributions to academic work that occur in Stack Exchange

Let's say it was a big enough contribution to require a citation. You could cite the MathOverflow post, as Massimo Ortolano suggests, especially if the entire conversation was generative, and it would be worthwhile for readers to visit.
However, linking to a pseudonym is not going to be clear or able to be attributed to that scholar. While William Sealy Gosset stuck to a pseudonym, he also had a non-academic job to protect.
There are citation formats for message board postings, etc. in various citation systems, as shown here for MLA from Purdue's Online Writing Lab:

Include screen names as author names when author name is not known. If both names are known, place the author’s name in brackets.
Editor, screen name, author, or compiler name (if available). “Posting Title.” Name of Site, Version number (if available), Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher), URL. Date of access.
Salmar1515 [Sal Hernandez]. “Re: Best Strategy: Fenced Pastures vs. Max Number of Rooms?” BoardGameGeek, 29 Sept. 2008, boardgamegeek.com/thread/343929/best-strategy-fenced-pastures-vs-max-number-rooms. Accessed 5 Apr. 2009

The best practice is to use both screen name and real name, "if known."
HOWEVER. I think the best practice, instead of violating pseudonymity, would be to send an email to the academic email address of the person you believe this is. Say that you are interested in citing this, and wonder if they would prefer this to be cited with both names, as "personal communication" with their academic name, as some closely related work they had on a blog post under their academic name, etc.
If the person declines to confirm that they are this person, you can ask in a MathOverflow chat or as a comment to that answer whether/how that user would like to be cited.
If you are truly hoping to honor and thank them--especially if it is an acknowledgement rather than a citation--then give them the courtesy of having some say in how they are recognized and whether their pseudonym becomes published knowledge.

EDIT specific to MathOverflow: MathOverflow is indeed cited fairly often, and it appears that most of the top citations are to real names, according to a Google Scholar search. One could avoid (newly) revealing the person's identity by searching to see if the person's real name is already associated with MathOverflow on Google Scholar, check the post to see if it's the same username/permanent identifier, and if so, cite in the same way the previous person did.
Discrete Lizard offers a Meta MathOverflow post dealing with a very similar issue, which suggests leaving a comment asking, and/or asking moderators to send a message to the user and ask. Finally, Peter Taylor mentions that the norm on MathOverflow is to use real names, such that many of the user names already reveal one's identity.

Actually I tried to contact this real person, but he did not reply. So in this case what can I do?

@user531706 Hmm... I was just curious how often Mathoverflow is indeed cited, and it appears that most of the top citations are to real names:  https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C3&q=mathoverflow&btnG=   The easiest answer would be to see if the person's real name is already associated with Mathoverflow on Google Scholar, check the post to see if it's the same username, and if so, cite in the same way the previous person did.

You could also (maybe???) ask on MathOverflow Meta what the norms are about pseudonyms and when/how to acknowledge someone's real name vs. their username.  @user531706

The norm on Math Overflow is to use real names.

@PeterTaylor But not everyone does that, there are pseudonymous or anonymous users.

@cactus_pardner What about offering the user co-authership?

@user531706 Based on the question, I think going from acknowledgement to coauthorship is far too extreme. :) I believe there's a question about anonymous article authorship somewhere on this SE, but that would definitely be a separate question.

@user531706 Also, I doubt that anyone will change their answer if they think it is a citation vs. coauthorship on the line. Younger scholars will probably appreciate the citation (and/or have time to write back), while older scholars who don't have time to deal with it / who highly value their pseudonymity for a citation are unlikely to be persuaded by coauthorship.

I thought Gosset was essentially forced to publish under a pseudonym by his employer, but in any case the wikipedia article you link to does not indicate a definite resolution to this question.

@Kimball Ah, you're right that it was Guinness policy; after Student, his colleagues published as "Sophister" and "Mathetes," according to this 1930 history: https://doi.org/10.1080%2F01621459.1930.10503118

Note that usernames may well change on stack-exchange, or be shared by multiple people. Without a link to the post, the username is meaningless, and with the link, the username is a little ornamental/appreciative, rather than functional.

@jpaugh Good point. On the MathOverflow Meta discussion, some people suggest documenting the unique user number from the poster's profile page. That would help if multiple people use the same username or the name changes, but sort of sidesteps the issue of anonymity/pseudonymity. (For instance, did the person purposefully choose "guest" or change username because of such issues?) https://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/3460/how-does-one-cite-a-mo-post-with-an-anonymous-author

@Discretelizard Thanks so much for the link to the relevant MathOverflow Meta post! And I am shocked that Discrete lizard may not be your real name! (Cf. http://www.mcescher.com/gallery/back-in-holland/no-56-lizard/)

Don't acknowledge, cite the Mathoverflow post!

The following theorem is taken from [1] ...
[1] A. User, blah blah,

Mathoverflow has also a cite function at the bottom of the posts to retrieve a possible reference in various formats (e.g. BibTeX).

Most journals may not appreciate citations from Mathoverflow. Will it be a problem if I don’t cite it?

@user531706 I know no journal that wouldn't appreciate such a citation.

But what if the Mathoverflow link is dysfunctional later? Or edited greatly later?

@user531706 That's why there's a "Date accessed" field in bibliographic software as a parameter related to URLs. If this is a key resource, and since there is some possibility of it changing, I recommend you take a screenshot and/or save the webpage as of your official date accessed.

You may also request that the Web Archive store the page for that date. See the "Save Page Now" in the lower right.

Something is not clear to me here, it means you disclose your stackexchange account name to everyone who reads that paper. Not everyone may like that! And I guess that may be among the reasons why people don't use their full names.

@Abdulhameed if you're quoting someone else's post, you're disclosing their accountname, not your own.

In many cases, the author of the paper could have asked the question

@user531706: MathOverflow (along with the rest of the SE network) is better at archival than many journals around. The specific link might change in a generation, but the content is no less likely to remain available (and findable) than any other content.

@MassimoOrtolano I know of several journals that would accept such a citation, because I have cited StackOverflow posts in my journal papers, and my StackOverflow posts have been cited in others' journal papers.

@user531706 But what if the Annals or Nature are dysfunctional later?

@JAD Not necessarily. I am not sure if that's what Abdulhameed is referring to, but there is a weird feature in the link obtained by clicking on 'share' on Stack Exchange: it includes the account id number of the person who clicked on 'share' --- and hence it can accidentally reveal the identity of this user.

@FedericoPoloni that's only if you use the link supplied by the share button. Any other links won't include your own user id.

I would cite the contribution.  Web citation is common.  Yes, it is NOT as good as citing archived paper journal literature (web is very unarchival).  But so what.  You do the best you can.  People cite personal communications, unpublished work, etc.  You do what you can.
You could also acknowledge the person in the "Acknowledgements" section.  Most people just list funding agencies here, but I ended up having a lot of great mentor type conversations with people during my Ph.D. (more so than with my advisor).  So I just acknowledged them.

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


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Asking for an unpaid postdoc position. Will it be rude?
I am planning to start a tech company and raise some funds from investors. Unfortunately, the school where I did PhD is not well known. I have a fairly good track record of research, but sadly the investors only see where I came from. So, I thought about adding an extra line on my bio with a prestigious school that every investor love.
One of the professors that I know (I just met him a couple of times) runs a lab in a good school.
Would it be rude to ask him if I can do a short-term (3 months) self-funded postdoc at his lab?
I will bring him two papers that are likely accepted at the good journals in his field and coauthoring the paper is what I can do as his postdoc.
What do you think?

This may differ by culture (US, for me), but as long as you are honest about what you hope to accomplish, I don't see how it might be rude. If the professor agrees, you get what you want. If they don't, you can move on. Perhaps it might be advisable to use a little tact -- eg., find out if he is currently looking for postdocs; or if you graduated recently, you could also request your advisor to make an introduction. Also see: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/23639

I certainly don't know the VC industry well enough to answer whether a postdoc would actually help in this situation, but I do want to ask, for clarification -- [assuming the premise, that investors strongly favor some schools over others, is true] do you have any particular reason to believe that a short 3-month stint is sufficient to please the investors?

Why do you think this would be considered rude?
Beware that being employed at a university with 0% salary may  still cost some money.  At my university, 0% employees are estimated to cost 3000eur/year - the only ones in this situation are the colleagues hired by the hospital side, the 0% employment is just to provide them access to the university's infrastructure. Some postdocs that ended their contracts and wish to finish papers using the university infrastructure are also granted this scheme. Short term visiting scholars get only a visitor's card and no affiliation.

@Ivory Tower Good point! When you send cold emails to investors with IR deck, what they see first is the founder's bio page. By having a good school name on the bio page, the investors are likely to continue reading the rest of the pages. A simple trick to surviving in the Asian startup market:)

@The Doctor Very useful information. Even a visiting scholar would be enough. Thanks!

"Self-funding" refers to being a student, and paying your own tuition, instead of the department paying it. You cannot "self-fund" a job. You wouldn't "self-fund" employment at Google. You are volunteering to work for free, which is immoral and may be illegal, if you are on a visa.

Not all investors are alike. You may have had a pleasant experience with the recent you had. But the ones attracted by big uni name can provide big funds ... they do not care about you or your company, they want to see their funds multiplied in short time. You and your CV would be the catalyst of that multiplication, but they do not absolutely care about what is left of you after their exit.

@EarlGrey True! But one exit is not the end of an entrepreneur. That's just a step for the next startup. A founder with a successful exit history sells.

@ChanohPark true, but a founder with a broken soul by the exit with pushy investors barely breath ...

Instead of trying to do a postdoc before founding the company and looking for investment, why not use the money you would have spent establishing the company, and then get the company to collaborate with the professor?

That's a good point too. But I have enough funds earned from another startup that I own and aiming for a very high amount of Series A for the new one. The lesson earned through the other startup activity is that my background is sometimes stupidly important to raise a good fund and gather talent. So, I am trying to be perfect in every aspect of the new company.

@ChanohPark what you are trying to do is to game the system, not to be perfect in every aspect. My forecast if you stick to your plan is that you will easily attract big funds, especially the one which will provide you absymal exit conditions and the ones that will make your life painful with their push.
Since you have some money on the side, what would really be impressive to good funders is if you had some patent on your own/in the company. Spend the money to fund some research, get the patent, get the funds.

My feeling is that professors are unlikely to view it as rude if you ask to do an unpaid postdoc, but for a range of reasons, there is very little chance of them saying yes.

Investors will still want to have your company funded before funding it. So the money you would spend in a 3-months postdoc is probably best spend already investing in your company.
Or towards funding some research to get your innovation patented.
Since it is your company, if you are smart in the way you put the money in the company and you do not spend them, you will recoup a large part of them quite soon.

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why does google scholar find a paper I wrote for a course?
I just found a [citation] result on google scholar listing a paper I wrote for a seminar as an undergrad. The result isn't a link, it just lists the title, author and year. This can't have been cited anywhere because I only turned it in for a grade and my professor didn't do anything with it afterwards.
Did scholar pull the data out of my email and count email discussions as "citations?" I might have mentioned the paper by email to two people besides the professor.
EDIT - this is a screenshot:

it's possible but I'd be very surprised. I submitted it as PDF and I worked fairly closely with the faculty person before handing it in. I don't think he would have taken the time to upload it anywhere.

Isn't there usually a "Cited by" link for those results?

Did you try googling for the paper to see where it might be mentioned online?

@Maeher, only when the hit is a link with more information. EDIT: actually I just found one that isn't a link but also has "cited by." The result I'm talking about just has the star icon, the quotation mark icon, and the related articles link

@Kimball, I just did and I couldn't find anything

@Maeher The absence of a "Cited by" link in a Google Scholar record usually indicates that it has zero citations, which would render this particular Citation record inconsistent.

Is or was it hosted, or at least listed (i.e. just your name and its title) somewhere on your university's website? We've had a lot of fun in the past with unrergrad seminar papers (i.e. documents that often do not contain any research, let alone anything novel, and just look like papers in terms of structure and formatting) that Google Scholar decided to count as PhD dissertations by seemingly following an "everything mentioned on an academic website must be a scientific publication" approach.

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


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Leveraging offers
I am currently working as a full time lecturer after two years of unemployment post disatorous tenure denial.  I have two on campus visits lined up for associate professor positions.  The lecturer position I currently have was advertised as an assistant/associate position which I applied for initially.  The Dean asked me to apply for the lecturer position because she wanted to offer another candidate (different specialty) the tt position.  Turns out the other candidate was abd and the provost insisted on hiring that position as a lecturer until dissertation was completed.  Other candidate not only has not completed dissertation but teaching performance was so poor that they have decided not to renew contract.  Meanwhile, my concentration has exploded with quadruplethe number of students from previous year.  My teaching evaluations were glowing and they have offered another year as a lecturer.  I want to reopen the possibility hiring on tt track and promotion to Associate before I get counter offers from campus visits.  Pretty sure the Dean wants to keep me as a mule but the Provost might have very different ideas.  Any advice on strategy?
addendum

The plan is to rehire next year but the position is open now.
I do not have offers now but I am a finalist for two separate positions, campus visits this week.  I would like to give the Dean a letter now requesting negotiation to get the idea on the table.  I'm assured work as a lecturer, want to float the possibility of getting more.
There may be a more general question you could ask, such as “What factors determine whether a university will consider its non-TT lecturers for a TT position?” Noted, will consider.

This will depend on the country, the field, the University, the persons you are talking to… You are looking for an advice no random stranger on the Internet can give you, I'm afraid. You are including aspects that are irrelevant to your question ("I am currently working … tenure denial." and "Meanwhile, my concentration … previous year. "), which makes it hard to understand what exactly is your question. Maybe you are really asking this question?

Are they rehiring the line right now? Or is it on hold for hiring next year? I think it makes a difference, because of hiring policies. Furthermore, it may matter the general type of institution...

There may be a more general question you could ask, such as “What factors determine whether a university will consider its non-TT lecturers for a TT position?”

Wait, the title says “leveraging offers,” but the text says you have visits, not offers. Please clarify.

I don't feel confident in this as an answer, but I would expect that that the school can't hire you without a full search. So at the most you will get big promises that you will be the top choice for the position next year. Then next year you will have a decent shot at the position, but you will also have the drawbacks of an inside hire. If you get another position, I would take it (bird in the hand worth two in the bush, etc.).

But what is your ultimate goal?  Do you have some particular reason for wanting to stay where you are? After your bitter experience, I'd imagine you'd want to leave. // Typically, leverage is done with a bird in the hand (not in the bush). // In general, if a candidate has been bumped out of the tenure track, it's probably better to try ot get back into a tenure track position elsewhere.


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How do US professors consider about Chinese undergraduate candidates’ application for theoretical physics?
I heard they like students from their own university, and there is little chance that students from other colleges can be part of their research. Is that true?

If two candidates look equal on paper, but you have met in person with one, or s/he attended your courses, you have evidence about whether the candidate meets their "on paper" description. Someone you have not interacted with is always a question mark. Also, it is difficult for a Western academic to judge Chinese and Indian undergraduate CVs (once the candidate has publications it becomes much easier). This is due in part to the large number of universities with wildly varying quality standards, and also to the large number of spam applications received (especially from India and Pakistan).

The best way to answer this question is with data.  Most US universities are very open.

Assemble a list of US theoretical physics departments.
Scrape their respective web pages for information about their current post-graduate and alumni post-graduate students - specifically look for their undergraduate degrees.  I think this information is publicly available but not in a convenient format.
Can you find out information about all applicants? I don't know if this information is publicly available, but if it is you will definitely have to work on it.  You might need to email some universities and push them.
Perform statistical analysis.
Summarize your findings and submit to an appropriate journal.
Congratulations you have a publication credit which will strengthen your application.  The analysis will also help you known which departments are most open to Chinese undergraduate students.

Good Luck!

"Research by yourself and publish the results" may answer any question in StackExchange. However, I doubt that it meets the OP's needs or any future reader's needs in any question.


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What to do about not receiving credit in a paper (lack of acknowledgment)
Recently there have been a few instances of preprints I've seen on arXiv where I felt that I didn't receive due credit (an acknowledgment or at least a mention) for certain things. Here are a couple examples:

I mentioned a fact to a collaborator at a conference. It wasn't a deep, just an interesting construction that was surely bound to be useful in certain situations. A year or so later I see a paper by the collaborator on arxiv, where one section of the paper involves developing this construction and applying it (in ways that were certainly new to me). However I wasn't acknowledged or mentioned.
To another collaborator I wrote an email, with another construction and a formula that I expected it to satisfy with some strong evidence. Several months later I saw that the collaborator wrote a paper where the definition plays an almost central role and a version of the formula is proved. No acknowledgement again.

Basically my question is what is the best way for me to deal with situations like this? I am a young post doc recently out of Phd. I don’t like to be the one who wants credit for everything. However it does feel annoying when even close collaborators don’t have enough respect for me to not steal my ideas (ok, maybe that’s a harsh wording choice). But the core of it, now that I write this question, is really that I feel disrespected. Especially, since I tend to acknowledge people quite freely.  It’s obvious to me that if I was a senior and/or well-known mathematician, they wouldn’t have “forgotten” to acknowledge me.  The only options I can think of are:

ignore and move on. Don’t change my behavior, just learn to accept this accept of academia culture.
Ignore and move on. Be more protective of my ideas in the future. Be more proactive about writing down and publishing my ideas as soon as possible. Choose different people to collaborate with.
Confront the people in question and ask them to acknowledge me. I don’t like this option because I’m a non confrontational person. And I don’t want to damage good relationships. Also, i don’t want to get a reputation for being someone who asks people to credit him with things.

By my nature I’m leaning towards option 2. But it saddens me to realize how cynical I become since starting my Phd when I imagined the mathematics community to be so kind and generous.

I'm having a hard time seeing how (1) deserves acknowledgment, to be honest. If I mention something to somebody at a conference and they use it, well, great. For (2), it would depend on the actual content of the email vs what was done.

@JonCuster I admit that surprises me. It’s one thing if I tell someone a well known fact, it’s another if it’s something I discovered which was not in the literature yet.

Perhaps I misunderstood one of (1) or (2). I've mentioned a variety of interesting 'things' to people over the years, often because I think they are better positioned to do something with it, or I think it is interesting but have no interest in following up on it. Ideas are easy, implementation is hard.

Ignore and move on. Don’t change my behavior, just learn to accept
  this accept of academia culture.

This one. If a single person remembers you as a helpful, insightful or otherwise useful figure and thinks highly of you at any time in your career, that is likely more valuable than any "credit" that emerges from the acknowledgements section of a paper.
Though

Be more proactive about writing down and publishing my ideas as soon
  as possible.

Isn't a bad habit to get into. It's hard to be "missed" in the acknowledgements if you're in the author list instead.


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Mendeley - References in Bibliography that I did not insert (MS Word 2016 plugin)
I have references in my bibliography (that Mendeley automatically generates for me) that are not in my paper. How do I get rid of them? MS Word 2016, Mendeley Plugin, Windows 10.
I have tried:

Clicking the Refresh button
Deleting the bibliography and re-inserting it

I (kind of) solved the problem. I removed citations in earlier versions of the document and for some reason they were still being inserted into the bibliography. All cases were cases in which a there were multiple parenthetical citations. I deleted the entire set of citations and re-inserted them, and it's working again.

So, unlike the question title, you had originally inserted them, ie Mendeley was not just putting them in by magic...

Yes and no. They were once in there, but deleted long ago and did not show up in any parenthetical citations.


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Should I reply to Editor of a journal after acceptance?
One of my papers got accepted yesterday. We had received conflicting opinions from the reviewers even after three rounds of revisions. We also had written a rebuttal directly to the Editor in response to one of the reviewers' comments in the last revision.
I never reply to an Editor after receiving an acceptance letter. However, this time I am sure the Editor had to take a decent amount of time to review our responses and reviewers' comments and make an informed decision.
Is it common to thank the Editor after acceptance email?
Thank you for your comments!

Is it common to thank the Editor after acceptance email?

It is uncommon, but this review was also an uncommon one.  From your description, it sounds like the Editor would have done a substantial amount of work considering the competing merits of conflicting reviews and your own rebuttal to a reviewer.  That is work in excess of what would normally occur in a review process, and so it would not be out of place to email and thank the Editor for his/her work.  It is nice to get thank-yous for doing your job well, so I would recommend you go with your instinct and send a thank-you email.

Is it common to thank the Editor after acceptance email?

It's uncommon. I've handled hundreds of papers and I think I've seen this only a few times.
Aside from that I agree with Buffy's answer - write a thank-you email or not, you are just fine. I generally just smiled and moved on to the next paper, after all.

Yep. I ended up just smiling. No reply.

I don't think it is essential unless there was something left unresolved in the last communication. Of course it is always polite to thank people. But to the editor it is a business decision, rather than a personal one. So, either way, writing or not, you are just fine. And congratulations on the acceptance.

"to the editor it is a business decision" Usually the editor is unpaid.

@AnonymousPhysicist, probably, but the journal is still a business. That is a different thing altogether. Even paid editors make business decisions that don't impact on themselves directly.


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Can you appeal to the associate editor when given unreasonable requests for revisions?
We submitted a paper and got two rejections (from reviewers 1 & 2) and two acceptances (from reviewers 3 & 4) after the first round of revision. Now we have received a letter from the associated editor asking us to again revise the paper, and to include a response letter addressing the concerns of reviewers 1 and 2. Hence, the paper is not rejected or accepted.
We feel reviewer 1's comment to include a new case study is not reasonable, and reviewer 2's comment fundamentally changes the problem structure. We explained our reasoning in both cases in detail in our original response letter (especially in response to reviewer 1).
Is it reasonable to appeal to the associate editor at this stage (i.e., before rejection)?
UPDATE: The paper got published in the next revision. We took a middle path strategy: I wrote directly to the associate editor and briefly discuss my objections with the reviewer 1 & drafted my response letter to reviewer 2.

I guess "rev" stands for "review" here. I read it as revision and was thoroughly confused at first... Still, there isn't a lot to go on in your question, so the answer at this point basically is "maybe". Perhaps you could read Paper rejected. Should I appeal against biased reviews?
 and see if that answers your question, or helps you formulate a sharper question.

I also thought Rev. in the question stands for "Revision". 2. Please clarify if your paper has been rejected or not. Vote to close as "unclear what you're asking".

The question was indeed ambiguous. I clarified it now. The paper is not rejected.

I think the question is different because the paper is not yet rejected or accepted.

If the question is now clear, please don't put it on hold. I think many people face the same issue and they want to know how to deal with an appeal before rejection/acceptance of a paper once the paper receives conflicting reviews.

In order to "appeal" X, first X has to happen, where X is some kind of decision.  In your case it sounds like the decision hasn't happened yet, so it is too soon to appeal.  You needn't make all revisions requested by reviewers.  If you don't, it's good to include some kind of response as to why you're not doing that.  If you feel that some of the reviewers' suggestions are especially out of line -- yes, you may want to write to an editor and mention that.

@user2512443 - questions here are opened/closed by vote (you'll be able to vote once you have sufficient reputation). I have edited again to make it clearer (please correct my edits if necessary; a few details were still ambiguous) and voted to reopen; your question will be reopened if we get ~2 more reopen votes.

Not a journal editor, just a researcher.
I would respond to the reviews directly. You don't have to accept all the proposed changes; you can simply say "We feel this fundamentally changes the problem structure...." and give a paragraph or two on why.
That said, I might also reply to the AE. This can be very brief, something like "Our updated draft and responses are submitted. Note, however, that the two negative reviewers requested significant changes that we do not feel are appropriate; we reiterated our objections in our response." That way there is no formal appeal (yet), but perhaps the AE will review more carefully if the reviews come back the same as before.

Thanks for this comment. It was indeed invaluable.

Thanks for the update, always nice to see how things turn out.

In my experience it's reasonable to appeal to the associate editor IF you can convincingly respond to the reviewer comments. In this case it sounds like you think the reviewers are asking for too much additional work that either distracts from your main question, or is simply not practical to perform. You might think from their perspective, why might they be asking for these additional things to be added to your paper? Is there a common underlying flaw that could be corrected such that the reviewer concerns could be addressed without performing the additional research?
In my experience as an author and reviewer (i.e. from the outside looking in!), the editor seems to have established protocols in the case of an appeal, it's not necessarily just "at their discretion." Since there are split reviews, the editor will likely simply invite a 5th reviewer, or else kick your response letter back to the original 4 reviewers to see if your arguments persuade them.
I don't see any harm in filing an appeal if you think you have a strong case to make, but make sure you word your appeal carefully, addressing the substance of the reviewer concerns as thoroughly as you can with the assumption that at some point the reviewers may see the appeal letter. The only thing it will cost you is time that could have been spent in review at another journal if the editor ultimately upholds the rejection.

Thank you for your detailed response! I liked your point that editors have established protocols. We plan to craft a letter to the associated editor and keep that in mind that it could be handed out to reviewers. We are still fully okay if it will be handed out to Rev 5, as well.

One thing that I had not mentioned in my original post is that the paper is not yet rejected or accepted.


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What to do if the corresponding authors do not share the referees' response?
My PhD advisers and I have an under review paper in a top tier journal. Recently, I received an email from the chief editor of the journal informing us that the paper has been reviewed and they encourage us to re-submit it.
After one week, I asked my advisers to share the response of the referees with me. Two weeks passed and I did not get a response. So, I sent another email and did not get a response yet.
To give a bit of background, I had informed my advisers that I don't have time to continue working on the paper. That said, it seems unreasonable to not share the referees' response with me (this is primarily my PhD work). I want this paper to be published.
I'm considering directly emailing the chief editor (cc'ing my advisers) and asking for the referees' comments. What do you suggest?
I would appreciate your thoughts and comments.
Edit: I got a response after several weeks. That said, as mentioned in the comment section, I successfully checked the reveiwer's response by logging in the journal website.

You sound contradictory. You want it published, but you don't want to work on it. What will you do if you get the referees' comments from the editor? Your advisors' behavior does not sound right, but neither sounds your approach. Imagine they want major revisions - what would you do? Also, for 2 weeks and 2 emails I think you are over-reacting.

You might check the journal's online submission system. Sometimes (often?) you will be able to see the records for any manuscripts you are associated with, including any reviews.

@avid Do you know of an example?

@user151413 I think I've done this in the past with journals using the ScholarOne system. However I don't have any current active submissions as non-corresponding author, so I can't now verify this.

Most journals now have an online submission system, and most journal webpage have a link to this system.  Access to the manuscript file might require a password or some other form of authentification provided to the corresponding author, so you might still be outta luck there if this was not shared.

@ZeroTheHero Or, more likely, it is linked to the account of the corresponding author.

@user151413 American Physical Society does it with some manuscript # and name of 1st author; now whether or not the manuscript # was communicated to all authors is another matter but with APS it’s automatic.

If your co-authors are really ghosting you, then access to the referee report is the least of your worries - you can't publish the paper without the consent of your co-authors, and it sounds like in any case you wouldn't want to do it by yourself.  But unless there's already some bad blood between you and them, it seems unlikely they would intentionally ignore you.  More likely explanations are that they are busy, or disorganized, or are on vacation, or have had some sort of emergency.  I would just keep trying to contact them, perhaps through other means than email.

@avid. Yes, it did work. I just needed to log in to the journal account with my log in info. Thanks

@ZeroTheHero But this does not give you access to the reports, just a general history of what happened (sent for review, report received, etc., which the OP knows). With the APS, the corresponding author has to log in with their account to access the reports.

@user151413 I think you’re right..

@ZeroTheHero. It is perhaps journal dependent. In JMLR, I can see the report of all referees when I logged in. That is exactly what I wanted.

@user2512443 nice.  That solves part of your problem then.

Just some possibilities that may or may not be realistic: Advisers get too many emails and this one was overlooked, or classified as spam (I had some pretty important emails classified as spam recently), or they are on holiday or ill? Some people in academia need to be shouted at to get a response out of them...

Are you not getting a response at all, or are you getting a response that says "we can't give you the referee report"?

It is certainly your right as an author to see the referee report(s). After all, you need to sign off on the final version that the journal publishes, and should want to know that any issues raised by the referee(s) that you agree with were adequately dealt with in the final version. I echo the advice in the comments that you might be able to see the referee comments by logging into the journal management system. However, I've also been a non-corresponding author on papers where I did not have any way to log into that system.
If the corresponding author doesn't respond, I'd try again after a week or so. If they continue to not respond, you can ask again in the moment when your signature is required on the final version of the paper. That's when your request really cannot be ignored.
What I would NOT advise you to do is write to the editor asking for the referee reports. It's good to present the editor with a united front, rather than show them interpersonal issues among the authors.


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My adviser is leaving: what should I do as a third year PhD student
I am a third year PhD student at one of Universities, say school A, in the USA. I've already taken my qualifying exam and I'm planning to take my general exam next quarter. My adviser notified me yesterday that she accepted and offer from another university, say school B, and leaving my school in Sep.
She gave me two options:

Apply for school B. She said "Given the rules at school B, you have to start from scratch i.e., I have to take course and take qualifying exam again". In addition, I have to take GRE and TOEFL and go through the admission process. Still, there is no guarantee they will admit me.
Stay at my current school and she continues supervising me. However, my department at school A does not guarantee the funding (in the form of Teaching Assistant).

It is worth noting that I maintained a very good relationship with my department and my adviser and I have a good research record and TA evaluation.
In general,
how do you think I need to approach this situation?
In particular,
 - does that make sense that school B say I have to start from scratch even if I am a third year PhD student who passed qualifying exam from an equally reputable school?
After pondering this situation for a little bit, I came with a plan. That is,

I take my general exam next quarter,
I stay at my current school for two quarters (because I have to pass a certain dissertation credits)
Move to school B as a PhD visiting student for one or two  semester.
Get my PhD from my current school

Does this plan make sense?
I would greatly appreciate if you share your thought and experience with me.

As for "does that make sense that Northwestern University say I have to start from scratch even if I am a third year PhD student who passed qualifying exam from an equally reputable school?", this depends on the school's policies, and is unanswerable here. The rest of your question is essentially a duplicate of this question: Advisor moving to a different school, should I move with him?

Possible duplicate of Advisor moving to a different school, should I move with him?

The question you referred contains very good information. Thanks for that.  However, the nature of my question is different although the title is similar. I want to to stay at my school and do a visiting PhD later with my adviser. And, I want to see the viability of getting internal fund from her from her school as a visiting PhD student.

How can we know if it is possible to use funds that way? That depends on where those funds come from and the local rules and regulations. Moreover, even if that were possible, we have no way of knowing if your advisor wants to use those funds that way. The only answer we can give you is talk to your advisor.

Can an adviser use internal fund of the department he/she is at to fund PhD student for visiting from another school? This seems to me a general question.

I don't  know why this question is on hold. This contains a practical example. I understand that a similar question is already asked but the way that this situation unfolds over time varies significantly depending the decisions a student makes, how a faculty behaves, and how the department behaves. Hence, existence of multiple somewhat similar questions in this context is in fact beneficial.

Your comment above tells me that answer to this question strongly depends on individual factors such as a certain person’s preferences, a given institution’s regulations, the exact contents of your work.

Certainly it does. But, it does discredit the question itself. I am asking what would be the best course of action in this situation. Yes, there is not black and white answer here and I do not expect to get such answers. I am interested in knowing different viewpoints.

I think even your adviser is not able to answer your tricky question because she is not at the new university yet. So, no one here can answer it neither. My advice to you is, save some money in case she cannot provide you the fund.

That is a good advice. Thanks :) My school provides funding though as I indicated in my comment to @mathsguy

This situation is very tricky.
It is not clear what is your current school level, if it is above or bellow NW (NW is a decent school, but definitely it is not say UChicago).
If you are from a bellow or comparable level school, I would say to go ahead with the transition.
The tricky thing in that case would be to get admitted, but as your advisor is moving, unless it is a very steep jump in the rankings, most likely she can talk to the co-director of graduate studies and pull some strings.
Regarding the formalities you've mentioned, in my experience, there is a big difference between plain rules and practice. There is a chance that NW thinks highly about itself and formally will not recognize your credits (again, it depends where you are moving from). Nevertheless, you might get over that. Most likely your studies will be expedited, you will be able to retake generals pretty soon (if you even have to, maybe they'll just setup some committee and you just need to give a short talk to present your research, as you already do research probably), so nothing will be from scratch and your studies haven't been in vein, the nullstellensatz is the same no matter if you are in Chicago,Boston,Princeton or Palo Alto. and you will have the bonus of graduating from a better school, which is a huge aspect if you are considering academic career. GRE should be extremly easy for you by now, and if you are able to do proper TA job, you should pass Toefl as well, those should be very minor problems from your perspective (how did you got into grad school without GRE?).
If you are from a better school, this is kind of tricky, maybe there's another prof. who can step in to be co-advisor? You are only 3rd year, not  4-5th year, probably you invested less than 1.5 years in research so far. Being stuck without funding for the next 3 years (either way, NW or staying, you will probably finish up in 6 years, maybe even 7, sorry about that, not fair, but that's life, this is a major implication over your studies).
I don't understand your relationship statement, you didn't know that your advisor is considering moving? The application process for academic jobs usually takes more than 6 months
All those hopes about your advisor funding in NW is wishful thinking that can have really disastrous outcomes. The startup grant most universities give to incoming profs are usually for moving, setting up office and some research visits, those are not in the level of NSF grants (or better - Simons/ERC). NW is located on Evanston - affluent suburb of Chicago, cost of living there is not zero (that's not CAL, but still not epsilon, 1 bdroom can easily go for $1800+), and considering this moving situation, are you sure she will commit so much of her own funds to bring you over? I guess support from your home institution is not a possibility as this are planning on terminating your TAship. Regarding the other funding options, some NSF stuff have strings attached (RTG, or supporting only students from their own school), it is too risky to consider this, especially as you are speaking about events which are probably 2 years into the future.
I believe that for the time being, you should continue with the application procedure to NW and if and when the admittance letter will come, set up a conference call between NW director of grad studies, your advisor and yourself and try to setup a better plan for you. If NW decide not to admit you, all those talks are hypothetical, either you will have funding for a visit or not, but you will need to stay in your own school.


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Problem with online class
I am a student at my local community college taking pre-nursing classes. My professor for A&P II requires a 360 camera while taking all the tests online on response. I have two small kids who I take care of solely because my husband has to do multiple jobs to keep us alive. we also live in a very small space and I can't have any privacy for tests or a calm environment. Last year fall was my first semester and I had instances where I had to do an exam while feeding the baby or have them play next to me while I do my assignments. I was lucky on instances that something happened while taking tests and had to attend to kids immediately because the professor was understanding and would allow me to finish the exam.
I feel embarrassed about having to explain my living situation to my professor. I have tried to avoid anything that would make me have a virtual meeting and this camera issue make me think if I should stop school for now or reach out if I can get help
What should I do in my situation? Any advice will be appreciated.
NB: I'm a new immigrant and I have no support here not even anyone to help me think through this process.

I can understand your embarrassment, but you may have to overcome it and just ask for an accommodation. A reasonable person should agree.
But many colleges and universities have some sort of office of student assistance for making such requests and passing them on. If that is available it would free you from having to discuss your situation over and over. See if that is a possibility.
And, for what it is worth, I find such requirements to be offensive. Instructors need to find a better way to evaluate students than to intrude on their homes and families. Few students have the capability of setting up a secure testing space and finding others to manage their children, etc.

Thank you so much. I will try to ask the college administration if they have a student support service and see if I can get any accommodation regarding my situation

good luck to you and hugs to your kids.

I think this is great advice, but you might try asking your professor directly for the accommodation as well.  I also agree that secure exams are problematic in today's environment, but I can't say I've found many profs who have adequately solved this problem (if any).


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Are 16 schools too many for a professor to provide recommendation letters to?
I plan to apply to approximately 16 schools and am wondering whether that's too many for my recommendation letter providers.
It's happened before that a professor of my friend refused to provide all letters for him because they're too many. They refused to send all the LoR and cut it from 10+ to about five finally. It would be a disaster if the LoR provider changes his/her mind in the end. Also, I don't want to bother my professor that much.
I believe my professors are nicer than him, but still don't know what's a suitable amount of required schools.
I'm applying for master programs and the 16 selections are range from dream to match to safe, with about five in each category. I failed last year and thus I chose a safer (and might be a bit unnecessary) plan.

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

As other people have mentioned, the problem with 16 schools is that a professor cannot, either truthfully or operationally, provide customized letters to 16 different schools. By "customization" I mean more than changing the name of the school and program. Good letters of rec use professor's familiarity with their field to speak to applicants' specific strengths with regard to the program, or referencing previous students of theirs who attended the program in question.
In honesty, I wouldn't expect to ask a professor to customize a letter for more than two or three schools, plus a generic one for the others. Maybe four custom letters if you have worked very closely with them.
You could let them know what your top few choices are, then acknowledge a generic letter can be shared among the rest.
I would also reconsider whether 16 is a necessary amount. In my field, 10 programs would be a lot.

The discussion about the costs of applications in the US has been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

Looking back at my recommendation requests, I get the feeling that the students who apply to the most places seem to be foreign nationals who might have trouble staying in the US unless they can get enrolled.  Getting an appropriate education might not be the only issue driving the application count.

I can understand this motivation, and am willing to support it through the recommendation process if I'm in a position to do so.

Tell your professor of your plan to apply to 16 schools, and let them decide if it’s too much. They are capable of making their own decisions without you doing that on their behalf. It’s nice of you to worry about the professor’s well-being, but unnecessary, and counterproductive if it ends up undermining your own success.
And as for the professor regretting having to send so many letters, well, yes, I think that’s something that many of us experienced. It’s unconscionable and stupid that the system works that way. But that’s not your fault. If it’s really a lot of schools and a big time sink for the professor, perhaps they can arrange to delegate the task of uploading the letter to a clerical staff member at their department. That’s their concern, not yours.
Edit: I see that several of the answers and comments are discussing whether the number of schools you’re applying to is appropriate, not from the point of view of your specific question about the professor’s letter workload, but in the sense of whether it’s generally in your interest to be applying to that number of programs.
It seems to me worth acknowledging that this sort of gratuitous advice has nothing to do with your actual question and was not solicited by you in any way. In particular, there is no need for you to explain the reasoning that led you to that number or what mix of schools you’ll be applying to, either to the people here or to the professor you’re asking for a letter from (although if you want to seek advice about such things, it’s certainly fine to discuss it).

Not only ask about 16, tell your professor your top four choices.

If I were the professor I would encourage the student to focus on the top choices and spend their time increasing the application essay quality.

I think I should make it clear. I'm applying for master programs and the 16 selections are range from dream to match to safe. I've failed last year and thus I chose a safer (and might be a bit unnecessary) plan.
And I meant the professor of my friend refused* to send all the RL and cut it from 10+ to appr. 5 finally. Anyway, thanks for the reply :)

I fully agree with the last two paragraphs (post-edit)

Unlike the other answers, I do not think the professor's time spent customizing is an issue.  Customizing a letter does not take that long.  Professors have lots of practice.  Submitting it can take longer due to low quality submission systems.  But writing the first letter is most of the work.
The issue is that only one of these letters is worth submitting:  the one for the place you are going to enroll in.  We don't know which of the sixteen is the right one, but it should be easy to identify several that are the wrong program for you to enroll in.  Ask yourself:  Is it realistic for me to get in?  Is it unlikely that I will get in to a better program?  Is the program able to provide realistic funding?  Is this a place I am willing to live for years?  If the answer to any of these is no, don't apply.
There's no prize for getting into a lot of graduate programs.

I think I should make it clear. I'm applying for master programs and the 16 selections are range from dream to match to safe. I've failed last year and thus I chose a safer (and might be a bit unnecessary) plan.

@outsider That's fine.  Two to three schools in each category should be enough.

@AnonymousPhysicist actually there is a (small) prize for getting into a lot of graduate programs.  The prize is choice.  If you only get into one program and they offer financial support then you either take it or leave it.  If you get accepted into two programs they are in competition.

@emory That's mostly not true because it's mostly possible to determine which choice is better before you apply.  Once you have three reasonable offers, there's little benefit to getting more offers.

Graduate student pay is only negotiable within a narrow range.

Determining which is better doesn't matter if you don't get in in the first place. If you're applying sequentially, then  yes, you can afford to not apply to everything once you have offers, but if there is only one application period, you can't really filter much beforehand. You can reduce the number of "safe" schools, but I see no reason to reduce the number of dream schools (other than the high costs here in the US)

@Mars There aren't 16 dream schools to apply to.  And since the decisions are correlated, there are diminishing returns on the effort.

OP mentioned ~5 dream schools, and with the low chance of getting in, there isn't really much diminishing for the return. The only reasons not to apply to all of the dream schools would be application fees and application time. As for the safe schools, consider what the chances are of getting in, consider what your safety threshold is, then apply to enough schools so that your chance of getting into at least 1 is above your threshold. The middle tier is a bit different, but I doubt that at 5 schools you actually see much diminishment there either

@Mars again you assume the probabilities are independent, which is not true.

Can you elaborate? Unless schools are jointly handling admissions, I don't see why they wouldn't be independent.

@Mars They all have the same applicant.

If you start with an assumed probability of entering that accounts for the applicant's grades, etc, then I think that still makes it independent. If your probabilities are just based on enrollment rates, then yes, I suppose it's not independent, as knowing OP was rejected once suggests they'll be rejected by similar schools

@AnonymousPhysicist We would like to believe that they are somewhat correlated b/c as you say it is the same applicant.  However, we are confident that they are not perfectly correlated.  There is as you say a diminishing return.  The applicant has to decide for themselves how many applications to make.

@AnonymousPhysicist it is true that graduate student pay is only negotiable within a narrow range.  However, if salary is the most important thing then most graduate students would be better off in the private sector.  Schools can compete with each other on other factors (and if there are no other factors to compete on then the applicant really should not be going to graduate school).

You can ask him, of course. But the problem with asking for too many is that you will get a general letter sent to all, rather than a letter tailored to each given position.
I realize this is hard if all schools have similar deadlines, but if possible you should spread it out over time, with your professor's OK. You can also have a different professor write some of them.
If your professor has any sort of secretarial service then a lot of letters isn't burdensome as long as you are happy with the same general letter going to all schools.
You should also ask yourself whether sixteen schools is really too many to apply to. If you are a marginal student then it might be, but you should also ask for advice about whether some of the applications are just wasted. Your professor can probably help you choose a smaller set of schools without lessening your chances of acceptance. But, work out a plan with your advisor to make your application process effective.

Just speaking for myself, I would vastly prefer my students not spread the letters out over time. I save the requests to a folder as they come in and then pick an evening and spend two or three hours uploading them all; I'd rather not have more come in after I think I'm done.

By the way, I don't know if my personal opinion is worth more than anyone else's, but I don't think of 16 schools as too many -- it's just part of how the game works. And I don't have a secretary; are there actually departments that will let professors use secretarial time for this?

@DavidESpeyer Very wealthy departments do have secretaries that help with letters.  Life is different if your endowment is billions of dollars.

I plan to apply approximately 16 schools and wondering whether they're too many for my recommendation letter providers...It's happened before that a professor of my friend regretted to provide all letters for him because they're too many.

You needn't necessarily require a letter to support each application (unless that's strictly required). You may be able to submit an application that lists referees, whom schools will contact if interested. It's likely you won't be short-listed by all schools and those that don't are less likely to request references.

I'm applying for master programs and the 16 selections are range from dream to match to safe, with about five in each category.

Please for simplicities' sake, choose your top one out of each category, and save yourself so much time and stress.
That would be 3 recommendation letters.
If you must, add 1 or 2 backups and have a max of 5 needed letters.
If you need help narrowing down the choices that is understandable, but you really should take the time to determine which schools are the best fit for you and your goals.

Consider how long it will take for your professor to write one great recommendation letter for you. Next, consider how much time it might take your professor to produce 16 fantastic recommendation letters for you. Most people will do a fairly awful job if they feel they are being undervalued or asked to serve unreasonable requests.
That you are asking the question should be evidence enough requesting 16 letters is unreasonable. It shows you were raised right.

Thanks. But the reason I asked is simply that I don't have much information about how the system works and how the professors write RL, given their familiarity with RL. The peers I know often apply 12-20 schools so tbh I doubt that 16 school is a rare decision. The only difference might be whether they assign all selected programs to 1-2 professors or spread them to more providers. Also, I don't expect my professors would and should provide a great RL for EACH of my programs.


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advantages in applying early to PhD programs
I am applying to PhD schools in physics in the United States. I would like to know if there is any advantage to applying early rather than just before the deadline. Honestly, I was trying to focus on research and I was also trying to write a good statement of purpose, hence this delay.

"Early bird catches the worm". Sometimes.

The only likely advantage to applying early is that you won't run into unexpected events that make it difficult to meet the deadline, and that this could improve the quality of your application (especially the written/essay portions) as well as avoid simply failing to meet the deadline at all.
That said, this can be a very valuable advantage. You'll find a lot of other questions here from people panicking about having missed application deadlines, having deadlines approaching too quickly, being unable to reach their writers for recommendation letters, etc.
I would not recommend applying extremely early (as-in, months in advance) - in that case, you'll instead be regretting having missed your most recent accomplishments. Give yourself some cushion against the deadline, and don't worry about gaming the system beyond that. No one cares (or probably even knows) if your application is officially submitted 0.01 or 1 or 2 or 3 weeks before the deadline: the deadline is there so that the admissions committee has a known day to start the job of reviewing while being fair to everyone. That's the only game.

Probably there is very little advantage. Committees are likely to only start considering candidates after the deadline anyway. Likewise not much disadvantage in being close to the deadline as long as you beat it. The committee will be made up (almost) entirely of faculty who want to schedule time and get through the pile of applications.

It is unlikely there is any advantage of applying too early, because unlike undergraduate admissions, there is usually no "quotas" to be filled here.
Contacting prospective supervisors early, however, is a very good idea. (1) They would give early feedback/pointers given your research statement, (2) They might give you advice if they're not themselves accepting new students (e.g. check out this recent paper and if you like considering contacting this or that supervisor).
And if you do contact them early, be sure not to make a commitment too early as well, as your research interest might shift after talking to a few professors.


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regarding a graduate program research methods course
To whom it may concern,
I am a graduate student in my didactic year of physician assistant school, and am currently taking our research methods course.  Normally our course was spent the way most research methods courses are- developing a research question, conducting the research and writing the results, with no publication.
However, this semester, we have a new program director who is absolutely head over heels in love with research and has entirely changed the curriculum to include additional papers, assignments and exams, so we don't have time to conduct an actual experiment.  Instead, they want randomly generated data to represent 'results' to our research question and study.
My question is, is this ethical?  Even though we aren't publishing this or presenting this as genuine data to anyone other than our class, it's my understanding that fabricating data is taboo and is a clear violation of everything research stands for.  Insight would be appreciated.

Using simulated data in a course training students on other aspects of the research process is not unethical. Simulating data is done all the time, for example in testing algorithms or implementations: you often need to start with some known ground-truth so that you can find errors or measure performance.
Representing such data as genuine results is unethical. I would recommend making the data generation process transparent in any written summaries to avoid confusion in the unlikely case the written work is found outside the context of the course.
To be clear, in the situation you describe, you are not doing research. You are only learning about some of the steps involved.

It might actually be more ethical than dealing with some sorts of data involving human subjects. Especially in a medical program.