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Do new professors typically get paid for course prep done prior to starting their job?
I will be starting as an Assistant Professor this fall (in the US). My official start date is one week before the start of classes. This means I will need to develop the course during the summer, before I have officially started my position. I asked the department if there was compensation for class prep, and they said there was not because it is included in my job requirements.
Q: Is this the standard for new professors in the US?
I think it's a little odd, as I'm currently working a full-time job and developing a course on top of that will take substantial effort. If I were being paid for class prep, I could leave my current position earlier. I'm not suggesting that I should be paid for subsequent course preps, but I have never been asked to put so much effort into a job before officially starting the position.
I don't hold it against the department-- I don't think they have anything to do with this decision. I would just like to know if this is typical or not.

Are you being asked to develop a new course, or teach one?

So for the first year, you get paid, but for each subsequent year, you have to pay back that same amount.

Are you really being asked to develop a brand new module in a week, having never taught before?  At my uni that would have needed a process of quality assurance and approval and this wouldn't have been possible.

I don't get paid for course prep. Luckily my department chair understands that means I prefer to teach courses I've taught before.

A student's perspective: I've often seen that a prof did not prepare the entire course, but only the first introductory chapters. This implied that the final lecture notes were available only at the and of lecture time, but, in reality, it did not impact much our possibilities to prepare for class.

Additionally, I should mention that this strategy led to a quantity of content which was well-adapted to the lecture time.

It's also my understanding that your situation is standard.
Basically, you're expected to know how to teach that class already.  Any prep you do before hand amounts to you getting ready to do the job they hired you for, which a normal private sector company doesn't pay you for either.
But really, the explanation doesn't matter so much as the fact that this is widely accepted as normal.

Your first sentence needs work. Paying is standard or not paying is standard? Also the last: "this" is widely accepted. It is a bit ambiguous.

I have to strongly contend the "which a normal private sector company doesn't pay you for either". In the private sector it's absolutely normal that the first weeks or even months on the job are getting you ready for whatever you need to do. My very first job ever would always start with giving each new employee 3 books on a specific technology they used and telling the employee "let us know when you're done". Even more importantly in the private sector in a lot of countries you have to pay someone for work (as this isn't overtime or freelancing), so minimum wage rules would apply. (cont.)

Obviously it does have to do with what the job requirements (not job description) asked for, what prior experiences you have, and how the candidate presented themselves. Assuming the candidate presented themselves truthfully then any work they need to do for their employer is paid for by the employer. No gray area.

@DavidMulder: he is hired to give a course on a topic they already know (if my understanding is correct). Not to learn anything specific to the job. If someone hired to code in Go would happen to never have seen Go code that would be very bad. If someone hired because he has experience in coding, not specifically with Go would be hired to code in Go, then yes - they would need time to learn.

But the time needed to prepare a course is not about learning the material, it's about preparing the course. I don't see how that's similar.

@WoJ That's why I said "Assuming the candidate presented themselves truthfully". If a company is looking for Go developers and you apply and tell them "I have 10 years of experience developing C applications, but no professional experience with Go" then you will be learning on the job, not before the job.

@WoJ You are describing a wrong analogy. The issue is not to learn Go, but that he has to write Go code for the new employer before he gets paid. Knowing the topic / Go was the job requirement, preparing a course / writing the code is what he is paid for.

When you're hired to teach a class, you're expected to already be ready to teach that class.  Full stop.  There's no sense debating the one line I (apparently shouldn't have) added comparing it to the private sector.  It's only tangentially related to the question, and my answer.

@usr1234567: his job is to teach [something]. It means he comes in and teaches [something]. Like the developer who comes in and starts, from day 1, to code. The dev prepared for that before (on a previous job, because he is passionate, whatever) and has the "materials" ready.

It's disappointing that this is the case. While it seems fine to expect a professor has the domain and pedagogical experience to teach a course, actually preparing slides, setting up course websites, assignments, etc. don't really seem like they should be on the prof's personal time, especially if the university will claim ownership on whatever you produce.

Aside from the practical issue of it being the universal (US, at least) standard to not pay new professors extra for prep time, it’s also logical not to treat this as a “new professor” issue, for the simple reason that the same issue also affects “old” professors. You will be asked many times over your career to teach classes you haven’t taught before. The fact that you’ll need to work a bit harder to prepare materials when that happens is factored into the job expectations, and the compensation for the work is factored into the normal pay structure. Thus, your idea of a special payment for new professors doesn’t make logical sense.
And speaking of things that are factored in, the assumption that you are a person who actually enjoys (or at least takes it in stride) having to delve into a new subject and prepare materials for a new class is factored into the department’s decision when hiring a new faculty member...
Congrats on the job, and good luck with the class! One week sounds like plenty of time to get ready for the first lecture. I’m sure you’ll do fine.

"One week sounds like plenty of time to get ready for the first lecture." One week does not sound like anywhere near enough time to come up with a plan on the content of thirteen weeks of lectures and tutorials, assessments and their criteria sheets, and then get the department to approve all of the above.

@nick012000 well, it all depends I suppose. At my department I don’t need to get anything approved by anyone, and I don’t write all the assessments or lecture material in advance of the semester starting, so one full week of work would be plenty. YMMV. And if one week were not enough, OP would indeed have to work on the course before the official start date of the job, but that doesn’t change the validity of the rest of what I wrote.

"I don't need to get anything approved by anyone" How do you calibrate assessments and perform moderation if you're not talking to the other staff about assessments? Is your university okay with one professor's "A" being another's "B"?

@nick012000 yeah, I guess you could say they are okay with it, to use somewhat imprecise language (although there is a small amount of pressure to conform to a reasonable grade distribution, to address your “A” versus “B” issue). And moreover I think this attitude is very common for US college-level mathematics instruction. Different instructors can be teaching the same course using different textbooks or generally different approaches, so coordinating doesn’t always make sense.

@nick012000 "one week sounds like plenty of time to get ready for the first lecture" so why did you change it to one week to prep for 13 weeks?

@SolarMike Because half of a week 1 lecture is a summary of what you’re going to be doing this semester, how the assessment will be structured, who the teaching staff will be, fire evacuation plans, etc.

@nick012000 Why on earth would you spent class time going over fire evacuation plans?

@TobiasKildetoft You can’t assume that students have had classes in that building before, or that they can remember the fire evacuation procedures for it if they have.

@nick Can I assume that they are adults who are capabable of being responsible for their own safety?

@TobiasKildetoft Probably, but I’m guessing there’s probably legal liability issues for the university if it’s skipped.

Even for a subject I know back to front and inside out (which is only a small fraction of what I teach) it takes me about 16 hours or two full working days to prepare a lecture the first time I give it. For a course that has three lectures a week, that's over a week already. It would also be kind of useful to have decided at least what the syllabus was  before starting to teach. Add in that a new hire will have to spend time finding their office and their lecture theatre, doing inductions and safety training etc and a week is really pushing it.

I've been a professor at three universities (one private university and two state universities), and none offered me summer pay for course preps before the start of my position. For my most recent position, I spent three months developing three new courses while also working another job full-time (which meant working from 8am-11pm every day Monday-Sunday), so I understand why you are asking. But, again, my own experiences tell me this is standard practice. (By the way, I absolutely love teaching. But loving what you do doesn't mean you're not allowed to occasionally get irritated when you're expected to do that thing for a new job for 3 months with no pay.)

Payment for something like this is sometimes done; if you negotiate for it when accepting your position.  From what I have seen in the US, it is somewhat common to be offered summer support (in terms of salary) without having any teaching responsibilities for some of the months leading up to your first semester, and/or to have a reduced teaching load during your first semesters to account for this. But this is something you need to ask for before you sign your contract.
Once you have agreed to take the position, there is 1. little motivation for the university to offer this to you, and 2. (probably more importantly) much less possibility of there actually being some money available to the college/department to be used for this purpose.

I think this is a misleading answer. Summer support, while indeed common, is never framed as payment for “course prep” as far as I know, so it’s not “payment for something like this”, and doesn’t fit what OP is asking about. Similarly for the mention of teaching reductions.

I agree with the answer, I was paid a bit to prepare material - first time in post so no material to fall back on... So they made an exception ie being nice... But it all depends on the department and the budget...

I doubt you could expect to be paid for anything prior to formally starting your position and there might be rules that forbid it, especially in, say, a State University in the US.
But, if I were the department chair, and I was very happy to have "caught" you as a new professor, I'd try to find some pot of money to give you a few silver pieces to make you happy as a clam as your first experience. I might fail at that, but I'd try.
I hope, at least, that they are working to make your entrance a happy and easy one otherwise. But all funds expended need to be accounted for and if you aren't actually on the payroll it is a hard game.
Some faculty get an initial grant of funds to get things going - mostly research -, but none of that happens until you are on board.

Employees are paid from their contractual start date, employers don't expect work before this date.

My official start date is one week before the start of classes. This means I will need to develop the course during the summer...I asked the department
if there was compensation for class prep, and they said there was not
because it is included in my job requirements.

Your employer doesn't anticipate a need for course development before you start, you needn't work during the summer; the department expects you to prepare your classes once you've started, for which you will be compensated.

Your situation is utterly standard in the US.  I’m not going to try to make any arguments for why, you’re probably right that it’s unfair, but it doesn’t matter because it’s how it is.
One thing that is common at top universities is to give new faculty one fewer course in their first year in recognition of the fact that they’re likely to be doing more prep than returning faculty.

As a counterpoint to the other answers: yes, you will be paid for that time. But not today. You will be paid when closing in on retirement / job change. During your last semester at the university, you will not be asked to prepare a course for the next year. But you don't expect your salary to drop accordingly at that time to account for that, do you? Your salary is simply differed to that moment if you really want to know what and when you are paid for discrete tasks. In fact, your salary will certainly even be higher when you near retirement than it is today, so you can rejoice in the fact that you are paid extra for that prep time.


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Choosing a reference letter recommender
When choosing a recommender for a graduate fellowship application, do people generally request a reference letter from the professor in whose class they received A's? I am considering asking one of two professors for a reference letter for a fellowship application. I took a 1-credit professional skills course in which I received an A in, and in the other more academic 3-credit course, I received a B. However, I have had a few conversations with the professor who teaches this 3-credit course. Generally, in any circumstance regarding a fellowship application, which recommender would people generally choose, the professor in whose course they received an A in or the professor whose office hours they have visited?

I wonder this too. Of course, I do have classes in which I received an A in and had some interactions with the professor.Could we perhaps attach a resume and maybe a cover letter of some sort to help the professor should he agree to write you a LoR?

You want a recommendation from somebody who can speak to your strong qualities.  This means faculty members you have interacted with; the more substantial the interactions, the better.  However, you also want the interactions to have demonstrated your existing skill and future potential.
If you took a one-credit class from a professor and have had little interaction with them otherwise, they probably cannot write you a strong letter.  The one-credit class probably had more limited interactions between you and the instructor.  if you were very active in class, that would be good.  But if you were not an extremely active questioner and class participant, that means the professor will have very limited basis for evaluating you (especially since one-credit classes tend to have rather little homework on the basis of which you can be evaluated).
In contrast, a professor you have taken a full three-credit course from and also interacted with outside class will probably have a much better idea what your skill level and potential are.  The downside is obviously that you earned a lower grade in the class.  Unless you had a lot of in-class interactions with the first professor, I think you should get in touch with the second professor and simply ask them whether they can write you a strong recommendation.  If they say they cannot, I would go with the first professor.  Otherwise, I go with the second professor.

First - second - first etc.  It's confusing.  Could you edit and say "The A Professor" or "The one-credit professor"?

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Will papers published in other sub-disciplines matter for graduate admission?
I am currently a second year physics student from an Eastern European uni, that is thinking about doing a PhD in the US. I've done some research on the matter, but there are still a few aspects that I don't yet fully understand (graduate  system is rather different from Europe):
I saw that they value research experience of the applicants. I have co-authored a paper with a professor that has been accepted for publication in a national journal, one with another professor that will probably get published as well in a national journal and I may have found something that will maybe result in a paper in a more known, international journal. The thing is that this is not really "hot shot" research, i.e. not the kind of research that you would normally do for a PhD,  as I can't even tackle very advanced matters so I did something in areas that I can have a good grasp on (classical mechanics, finite time thermodynamics).
My question is how will the admission board regard these papers? I mean it can't be bad, but will it give me an advantage over other applicants?
Also, will it seem odd if I have research experience in a few unrelated areas? (as an undergrad I think I should explore as many subjects as possible)

Undergraduates are not generally expected to have already figured out exactly what they want to do in research, so it's unlikely that there will be any concern about the fact that you've worked in multiple areas.  The fact that you've been involved in research and published papers at all is a very good sign, even if it's not in exactly the field you are applying to be in: it means you're motivated and inclined toward research and have been able to accomplish significant things already.  In short: don't worry about it, but celebrate that you've got such a strong background!

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Negative marks for mistakes
I just got the grade for a problem sheet that we had to hand in. The grading of the TA seems really ... odd, to put it nicely (for example, 1 exercise consisted of 3 basic computations - I got the correct values on 2 of them, but on the third even though I plugged the good numbers in I just typed a wrong number for the final result for some reason and this "mistake" got me only half the marks for that entire exercise).
However, the following thing really baffled me, I have never encountered anything like this in my education so far: one of the problems had a maximum grade of 0 points (which I got). Furthermore, for making a mistake you would have ended up with negative marks. To me, this seems very unfair (basically taking points away from other questions which were solved correctly) and highly not pedagogical as I don't believe that students should be punished for making mistakes.
I was planning on bringing this up to the professor tomorrow, but I thought it would be good to get some opinions on this matter. Is this kind of behavior common? The field is Astronomy/Physics and the country is Netherlands.

The one problem with max 0 points seems weird and unusual to me. Surely, the best tactic would be not to answer it all, or does that also result in negative points?

It could simply be a typo.  Or it could be that this problem is effectively scored on a scale of, say, -10 to 0, where leaving it blank also results in some negative score (not necessarily -10).  That would be a little odd but mathematically equivalent to a scale of 0 to 10.  I wonder if perhaps this resulted in the total points possible coming out to a nice round number (100 vs 110 say).

I forgot to mention that I already spoke to the TA about this and he was the one who told me about the negative marks for mistakes. He "justified" this by saying that the problems are easy and that he compensates this by being "strict". I don't see how being strict implies taking points away from correct answers. The total number of points for the problems was 100, and in order to achieve this score you had to get "0" on that problem. Skipping it/making mistakes would result in a maximum score of 90/95 (I forgot the exact number).

Grading from -10 to 0 is perfectly mathematically equivalent to grading from 0 to 10. I’m reminded of that prof whose complaints vanished when he started grading every test out of 117...

I agree with the equivalence but the TA did this only half-way. Grading from - 10 to 0 is like grading from 0 to 10, so a grade of 0=10. That makes the total number of marks=110. However, our grades are always converted on a 0-10 scale in the end. My grade was 7.2 (out of a total of 10), but we just agreed that what the TA did is equivalent to a 8.2 on a 0-11 scale. Which translates to a 7.45 on a 0-10 scale.

I once had a course (physics) where correct/incorrect multiple choice answers earned two-thirds/zero if you ticked that you were not sure and 1/-1 if you ticked that you were sure. Even if you got everything right, if you weren't sure you only got 66%. It seems like in cases like this, when you will be penalized for attempting to answer, you should always be told this up front.

I've seen such grading used for true-false and multiple-choice questions in an exam, where a right answer gained you points and a wrong answer cost you points, but I've never heard of a problem worth "nothing" that cost you points if you got it wrong.
Personally, I dislike such systems—I'd rather give credit than subtract for mistakes—but instructors often have broad latitude in the design and scoring of exams. Some schools do have rules with regards to specific situations (if I remember, there were some weird regulations regarding all multiple-choice exams at my old institution), but in the absence of those, professors are free to set grading criteria as they choose, so long as they are applied consistently.

Having done a bachelor, master and PhD in the Netherlands, I have never come across a scoring tactic like this. It is definitely odd and I understand your annoyance.
However, as one of the comments correctly points out, the negative points are mathematically equivalent to only giving credit as of a certain amount correct (which I have seen more often, and done myself in the past).

So although that is arguably a harsh way of grading (depending very much on how "basic" the knowledge is that does not count towards a score yet), what seems to get to you is mainly the negative point value. That is a matter of reference point (see Prospect Theory, especially on loss aversion) and thus very subjective.
That said, your TA's scoring does sound a bit harsh. If you genuinely feel unjustly treated I would certainly advise you to discuss it with the professor as you plan.

You should see one of my comments above. I understand the equivalence of this grading but the TA didn't account for it when computing the final grade

Then we agree. What I tried to show with the graph was that it does have an impact on the grade, same as saying "0-1 out of 3 correct ==> no points, 2/3 => half-points, 3/3 => full points" on a given question. I was merely assuming this was intentional on the TA's part. In my opinion that's harsh, but not intrinsically unfair.

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How do I answer a question on graduate school applications on textbooks used in my classes, when my class didn't use a textbook?
I am an undergraduate math major interested in applying to graduate school. Almost all of the applications have a form I fill out where I am supposed to list the textbooks used in my classes, along with chapters covered. However, all of my real analysis and topology classes did not use a textbook, and instead the professor wrote his own extensive notes. How do I handle this on the application? And to what extent will it negatively affect my admissions decisions?

Then say that! Tell the instructor's name, and give a link to the instructor's notes. If the notes are somehow not publicly accessible, then, yes, it'll be impossible for anyone else to know what is in them.
The point of such a requirement is to give much more detail than saying that you studied "algebra" and "analysis" and "combinatorics" and ... since these labels are far too vague, and also do not indicate the level at which the course was conducted.
EDIT: Contrary to a comment, I think that being able to describe the source(s) for one's study is very important. E.g., the author. If the notes are/were in a language other than English, that hardly matters, if the note-writer is known to the international mathematics community, and, again, if you can provide a link to the notes. Most older mathematicians can read French, German, and fake a bit of Dutch, Italian, Spanish, maybe slavic languages. Just be forthright: tell who the instructor was/is, and show the notes.
Again, the real point is to describe what was actually studied, since there is no universal syllabus, nor universal standard for level of rigor, abstraction, etc. Just saying "Algebra" communicates almost nothing, and admissions committees want more. An answer of the form "I can't describe what I studied/learned" is unhelpful, and will not gain you much, as you can imagine.

Maybe yes, but honestly a dumb question to ask in an application, if there is one. As I commented above, what if you are a foreigner student who studied on books in your own language?

It's helpful to know (and potentially a reason to downvote your application)  that you haven't studied mathematics in English.  If English is the language of instruction (meaning that the lectures and text were in English), then you should make that point in your application.


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Students not engaged at all - despite the efforts of their instructor
My institution moved all courses online this term. I spent a great amount of efforts:

Pre-recording 3 hours of lectures (accompanied by 2% weekly asynchronous quizzes on Moodle)
Holding two 1.5 hours of live Q&A sessions weekly on Zoom

However, the attendance of the Q&A sessions have been embarrassingly low (less than 30 out of 320 students). Although students attempt to follow the weekly lecture videos, the vast majority of them only do so about 1 or 2 days before the weekly quizzes are due.
Nonetheless, students simply just complain about the workload in general (not just because of this course, but for the accumulated required screen time from all other courses).
The end-or-semester course evaluation will start soon. While I am confident that I have done all I could have creating quality learning materials, I am pessimistic about that the majority of students might just put very negative comments just because they are not happy about all courses moved online, not because of my teaching quality.
Is this something I shall expect in this very difficulty time? To me, it is just unfair to receive evaluation from students who mostly do not even engage in the content in the first place.
Let me know how you folks think?

There isn't really an answerable question here. Needs a rewrite.

And a zoom session with more than 30 students seems pretty unmanageable. They probably have a right to be frustrated.

@Buffy  Managing Zoom sessions with more than 30 students requires planning, discipline, and (ideally) more than one human being running the show—You can't just pretend to be standing in front of a lecture hall—but it's definitely doable.

@JeffE, but much harder for a question/answer session where you can only respond to one person at a time. Why would the come if they are pretty certain their own concerns can't be met. And the 30 that do show up may well be those who need it least. The system described is broken.

@Buffy "you can only respond to one person at a time" -- I am curious, how is this aspect different in a live session?

@GoodDeeds not much different actually. A room with 320 students is not very conducive to questions. But the OP doesn't say how many TAs might be involved to be able to provide meaningfully sized sessions. However, zoom and the equivalent are much less effective than face to face in general. Easier to get lost, distracted, bored, etc.

If attendance for office hours is an issue, you may consider the timing of your office hours.  Ask yourself when you think your students are doing their work, and plan your office hours with this in mind when possible.  Constant reminders about office hours, and what they are for is a good way to boost attendance.
Expecting your students to watch 3 hours of lecture video is just not reasonable for most college students - regardless of topic - in my opinion.  This may be the same time as you spend face-to-face, but their level of interaction is much different.

@Buffy Larger classes call for different types of interaction than smaller classes. Not worse, just different. If you walk into a class of 100 expecting to do the same thing you did with 20—or vice versa!—you're going to be disappointed.

My impression during the last semester was that students don't like prerecorded lectures and Q&A sessions, but rather prefer to have live lectures with the possibility to interact directly.

Have you asked the students what would be good for them?

@Buffy During the last semester I had Zoom sessions with around 60-70 students. It's manageable and we had quite lively interactions. Indeed it requires planning and flexibility.

As a student: although I appreciate your efforts, you'd immediately lost me at the 3-hour-lecture point. For many students, it is extremely hard to concentrate at something like that on the screen, even if it is not pre-recorded but live. Other teachers probably do the same and I cannot tell you how exhausting it is. Think about hands-on assignments, very good written material (for many students they are much easier to digest than oral lectures anyway), etc. Whatever that does not require looking at someone talking at the screen for hours.

I'm not sure that you have a specific answerable question here, but here are some things I did to improve my online teaching in the current environment:

Prior to the start of the semester I send out a survey to everyone registered for the class, asking about their preferences for course delivery methods. I gave a few options like a) live (synchronous) lecture sessions, b) pre-recorded (asynchronous) lecture videos, c) live Q&A / recitation sessions on Webex.  There was a very strong preference among the students (by 2:1 margin) for certain modalities versus others.  I started the first few weeks of the class using the method preferred by the students

After about three weeks of the class, I send another survey, asking how they liked the class delivery.  I thought they might change their minds after actually seeing how their choices really worked out.  Majority of the class liked format.  Several students did not like the format, but they offered helpful suggestions on how to improve and I incorporated those (e.g. switching from one video conferencing system to another one, changes to homework assignments).

10% of the grade in the class is based on class participation.  Students get class participation points for things like a) attending live recitation sessions, b) attending office hours, c) posting on the class discussion board, etc.  This gave them incentives to stay engaged with the material, even though the class was online.

I can't really answer the question, which seems to assume (and presents as the major issue) that you get bad feedback which may not be true (the students still have what the other lecturers do to compare, so I wouldn't assume they use your specific feedback to complain about the general situation).
I wonder if you had to do pre-recorded lectures. We do (and record) lectures in real time with students present online, which has the advantage that students can ask specific questions on issues that may affect their understanding of what follows when they arise. (I do realise that this could be problematic with 320 students, however it may work in your favour that only a small number of them appear to be willing to interact.) Surely it makes things somewhat more lively.
One thing you could do is to have online surveys about their satisfaction, how they perceive the course, what they like, and what can be improved. You don't seem to have a clear idea on how students use and perceive your course, and you could do something to improve your knowledge on this.
To some extent online teaching encourages students to hide and not participate and do things last minute. However I'd think something more can be done to encourage interaction. I also have a written questions and comments forum, which is well used (if mostly of course by a minority of active students, but that's how these things always are and were before the age of Covid) on top of being available for online Q&A.

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Ethics for trip reimbursement from multiple parties
When doing e.g. a seminar talk, it is customary for the hosting institution to pay for the speaker's trip. If it is just an isolated trip to a point A, life is simple; so far, so good.
However, I usually try to lump different talks together. The simplest case is where I go from home to A (where I do a talk) to B (where I do a talk) to home. In this case, I have to choose between having the A -> B segment reimbursed either by institution A or by institution B. (Assume that every segment is on an undivisible, nonstop ticket. I think it is usually not possible to split 50/50 in such a situation.) Based on what criteria should I make this choice?
For example, what if B is much closer to home than A, basically a small detour on the way back. Is it more fair to charge the intermediate leg to A (on the grounds that if I did not have to go there, I would not have made such a long trip) or to B (out of a desire to split the costs evenly)?
Or if A and B are roughly equidistant from home, are there any factors I didn't think of that could tip the scales in favor of one or the other?
(There are countless other configurations one can think of, possibly involving much more than two institutions!)
(I am aware that I am probably overthinking it, and that I probably not such an important decision after all. However I would be curious to know what are the possible arguments to consider, if only out of purely academic (ha ha) interest.)

Cool question, I've mulled over this myself at times. If you want to be serious about analyzing the dilemma, another factor to take into account is the relative wealth of both institutions. If one is a wealthy private school and the other a more modest public one, there's a good case to be made that the socially optimal allocation of the costs would involve more of the reimbursement burden falling on the wealthier place.

... and if you want to be extra serious, take the question to MathOverflow and brainstorm a full game theoretical model of the situation. I'm not an expert, but I think it's conceivable that similar questions might even have been discussed in the game theory/economics literature.

I would imagine that there are jurisdictions where getting reimbursed for costs that you have already been reimbursed for is illegal. It is at the very least unethical, so I think that thinking about this is certainly the right thing to do.
If you make a trip that includes more than the bare minimum "getting there and back" in travel (e.g., a personal detour on the way home, staying for the weekend after a conference for sightseeing, etc), many reimbursing institutions require you to hand in the receipts for your actual travel, plus estimates of what the bare minimum trip would have cost. For example, you could have printed out a screen shot of looking up a flight that just gets you there and back. They will then reimburse you for the smaller of the two amounts.
Likewise, if you have a multi-stop trip, you can certainly ask to be reimbursed for an even smaller amount, as long as the total reimbursed amount does not exceed what you actually paid. How exactly you split the total is up to you, as long as no institution pays more than it would have if you had just traveled there and back. That's also ethical: if they invited you to a talk, they did so on the understanding that they will cover your travel cost to get there and back; if you are asking for less money (whichever those savings are split among all institutions), it's to their benefit, whether or not they get exactly half of the savings, or a different amount -- it's money they had budgeted for you, and are now getting back, nobody can complain about that.


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Should one thank colleagues for interesting discussions that have not actually achieved anything?
I am currently finishing a paper, and I am writing the acknowledgements section.
There is a colleague with whom I have discussed several times about the question answered in the paper, who certainly spent some spare time thinking about it, and suggested some interesting ideas. However, none of these ideas actually turned out to be fruitful. While I appreciated their interest in this question, and things definitely might have turned out differently, the paper as it is has not actually benefited in any tangible way from my discussions with this person.
Do you think it is appropriate to thank them anyway? (And, if yes, with what formulation? just the standard "I would like to thank Prof. Smith for some interesting discussions", or something else?)
If it matters, the field is pure mathematics.

Related, but does not fully address the question about formulation: How to acknowledge unhelpful conversations as well as Acknowledge somebody whose advice is not relevant to the current manuscript anymore?.

If one of his ideas had made it into your solution, your colleague would probably even be qualified for authorship.

I've thanked my SO for her delicious brownies on my articles. While not exactly directly research-related nor a common thing to do, it made sense to me 'cause she was spending her time to make me more comfortable, so I could work better. Acknowledgement isn't about repaying, is about showing gratitude.

@Ilia Smilga If you are looking for an academic objective reason, I feel one reason could be - she/he contributed to your paper by 1.  Sharing their thoughts (intangible) which resulted in something tangible(results, though only partly contributed by them) - would you have thought about it had their contribution been absent.  Like we have opportunity cost, think about opportunity contribution!  2.  You got more time to focus on things that mattered because they helped you realize things that you can negate.  If you look at it subjectively, I feel we should help those who help us!

The acknowledgement is not just for the results you get ultimately, but for the time and effort spent by your colleague in discussing your problem. Research is not deterministic, so you can rarely know beforehand what  approach will work; you need to try different methods and then see what gives you the results. It's unfair to credit only those which ultimately worked. (Also, what didn't work now could work in a different scenario, with a different approach.)
To offer an experimental analogue, often we need to use several different instruments or techniques to get a result. This means we need to collaborate with different people for instruments and inputs; once they give time and access, they are acknowledged irrespective of the results.
As for how to acknowledge, the standard line is safe and respectful, unless you want to highlight a specific contribution.

It is worth to note that sometimes publishing failure (as in, highlighting  a specific strategy that doesn't work well for a given problem) can be as important as publishing success. Learning how not to do something is also learning!

@T.Sar See https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30995/what-to-do-when-you-spend-several-months-working-on-an-idea-that-fails-in-a-mast/31082#31082

Those discussions were “fruitful” in the sense that you cleared them off the list of avenues to pursue and were able to spend that time on other avenues.
So, yes acknowledge them.

Eliminating things that won't work is often the most valuable part of the process -- the earlier, the better.

Be generous in your praise of others! That person has inspired you, and adding someone in an acknowledgement costs you absolutely nothing. You accrue good karma if you show appreciation for the time others have offered you, and we can all use some good karma every once in a while!

I agree that it costs you nothing, but I find the idea of thanking others for the sake of karma slightly horrifying! I'd like to think we could be pleasant to others for its own sake!

@Sparhawk: But both sides were: They had interesting and inspiring conversations about the topic at hand!

Yes, it is perfectly acceptable, and I think a good idea, to thank people for interesting discussions that helped you along the way. This doesn't mean that they helped with a specific result in the paper, but that it was part of the longer term project. Here's an example from a Journal of Climate article by Hingray and Saïd:

We thank also Jerome Buzzi (Orsay, Paris), Douglas David Baptista De
  Souza (LTHE, Grenoble), and Jean-Philippe Vidal (Irstea, Lyon) for
  interesting discussions on this work as well as Michel Slivitzky for
  his enthusiastic appreciation of a former manuscript version.

And if it was part of a workshop and you don't want to have to acknowledge all thirty people you talked to individually, here's an example from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (paper by Holtsag et al., 2013):

This paper benefited from discussions at the ECMWF-GABLS workshop in November 2011.

Great job in supplying real examples!

As has been mentioned by the others: yes, acknowledge them for the time and effort, and generally out of respect.

And, if yes, with what formulation?

Depending on the actual situation, and on how close you are to the professor (in hierarchy or familiarity), you can certainly pick a range of sentences. For example, if I were to read any of the following, I would not think any worse about the author at all.

"I would like to thank Prof. Smith for interesting discussions."
"I would like to thank Prof. Smith for his thought-provoking impulses regarding ..."
"I would like to thank Prof. Smith for being the 'devils advocate' regarding ..., hence keeping me on the right path."
"I would like to thank Prof. Smith for enduring my thoughts on ... and pointing out several dead ends I was in danger of getting stuck in."

Even a kind of high-brow tongue-in-cheek (as in #3) should certainly be acceptable.

I'd be a little wary of #3 maybe. In one breath you [sort of] dismiss Prof. Smith as a devil and call his opinions "the wrong path". Just sayin' ;) If he was actually only playing devil's advocate you'd probably just use one of the other formulations, and if he actually held a contrary opinion then there are probably better ways to describe how that went down.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit: I'm using it in the sence of In common parlance, the term devil's advocate describes someone who, given a certain point of view, takes a position he or she does not necessarily agree with (or simply an alternative position from the accepted norm), for the sake of debate or to explore the thought further. (Wikipedia), quite fitting and completely positive as far as I can tell. Whether it really is bad, the user should be able to decide - it's just a more relaxed, slightly tongue-in-cheek variation on the theme...

Right, if that's what Prof. Smith was doing. But there's no indication in the question that this is so. And discarding someone's honest-to-god opinion as "they differ from mine so must just have been playing logic games" is liable to raise eyebrows when that person reads your paper...

Err, yes, of course only if that was what he was doing, same for all other variants I gave. The spirit of the answer is that while much in papers is very earnest (i.e., the "science" part), one can certainly relax a bit on the intra-human stuff...

The spirit of the answer is good and you have some good suggestions here.

I've tried to make it more clear, hope it's better now @LightnessRacesinOrbit.

I stand by avoiding #3 and we're probably not going to agree on that but that's ok :)

Cheers, @LightnessRacesinOrbit. :D


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When is it acceptable to issue an update to a manuscript that is still under review?
16 months ago, I finished a paper A and submitted it to a journal X. It is currently still under review. (For the journal's defence, it must be said that the paper is quite long - 89 pages).
This paper contains a proposition (let's call it A.1) whose proof relies on a lemma (let's call it A.2). However neither this proof, nor even the statement of Lemma A.2, have been given explicitly in paper A. Instead, I just wrote: "the proof of Proposition A.1 is analogous to the proof of Proposition a.1 from my earlier paper a".
(That earlier paper contains a detailed proof of Proposition a.1, which is done by using a lemma a.2. The results a.1 and a.2 are basically special cases of A.1 and A.2; the statements, and proofs, of the results A.x are very closely parallel to the statements and proofs of the results a.x - you can obtain the former from the latter by a simple search-and-replace.)
In the meanwhile, I wrote another paper B, that heavily relies on the results of paper A. In particular, at some point, I actually needed lemma A.2. So I made explicit the statement of A.2, and refered to paper A for the proof.
I submitted paper B to a journal Y, where it was rejected. The editor said that the result was not good enough for the journal (fine; I'll aim lower next time), but also said that the reviewers complained about the reference to paper A for the proof of A.2 (which did not explicitly appear there). They were understandably confused by this; reading my paper failed to convince them that my argument has no gaps.
Is it acceptable to email the editor of journal X and send them an updated version of paper A, where I make explicit the proof of Proposition A.1 (by stating and proving Lemma A.2)?
Now to rebut some of the obvious answers:

Redoing the proof of lemma A.2 in paper B is of course technically possible, but would require reintroducing a lot of formalism from paper A (Proposition A.1 appears on page 83 of paper A... and the whole paper B is only 26 pages long!) Besides, I feel that Lemma A.2 really belongs in paper A (it is after all an essential step to prove Proposition A.1, so it is already implicitly present there). I would really like to avoid this option at all costs.
Waiting for the answer from the journal X would mean holding up the publication of paper B, which is very costly for me: in the current climate, I feel that publishing as much as possible as early as possible is critical to secure a permanent job.

Is there some reason you don't just update paper A on the ArXiv for now and incorporate the changes into the revision you'll send Journal X after you hear back from the referee?

I think you are focusing too much on the details, which may be confusing the issue.  It sounds to me like your goal is to make sure reviewers of paper B are convinced by your arguments, rather than to write up a proper proof of A.2.
It is a perfectly acceptable and common thing to refer to paper A for a proof of say Lemma 1 even if Lemma 1 is not explicitly stated or proved in paper A.  (E.g., "by a mild extension of the proof of X in [A], one gets...")  What is important here is two things:

your explanation of exactly how it follows from [A] is clear to someone who has not read [A]
that there really is nothing new to check and you are not just being lazy

From what you wrote, it sounds like at least the first part was an issue for you.  And if you can't make the proof of your lemma transparent in such a way, then you should write down the proof, either in paper A or paper B (possibly in an appendix).
Since you've made it clear you don't want to do the latter, and this sounds like a minor change to paper A (just adding in a small amount of details), it's fine to revise your paper A and update it on the arXiv (so make sure your paper B references the new arXiv version) but there's no need to revise your submission of paper A for a minor change.  You can just point out you made this change upon resubmission after getting the referee reports.

OK, this is helpful! For some reason I never thought I could update the paper on arXiv without notifying the editor. (In fact, I did not think of adding a proof as being a "minor change".)


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How to fix arxiv primary category
When we submitted a paper, the arxiv recommended math.PR as primary category. I think I have declined that. But somehow it got changed anyway. Now the paper is about to be announced, how to change it?
We have tried:
1.Replacement. This operation does not allow one to change the primary category.
2.Cross list. Only allow adding category.
3.Withdraw. It should work, but will generate too many announcement (withdraw and resubmission).

I guess this is caused by an ArXiv moderator.


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Will it be difficult to get a PhD position if the economy enters into a recession?
Due to the outbreak of Covid-19, it is possible that the economy will enter a recession. As more people will want to get into grad school, will it be more difficult to get a Ph.D. position?

This might vary somewhat by country. Where are you asking about?

I think it will also be dependent on the field. At the same time, I don't think anyone can really give a useful answer at this point.

@Buffy I am asking about the US

@Bernhard My field is electrochemical energy storage

Actually, @Bernhard, there is probably historical information on such things, such as on university enrollments during the 2008 recession. I don't have the time for a search, but it is probably readily available. I'd expect doctoral positions to be highly correlated with undergraduate admissions in US (need for TAs).

The simple answer is that, generally over the last 40 years, if the economy is bad the number if grad school applications goes up. Makes sense because if there aren’t lots of jobs students think about going on in school.

There's no way we can answer this question now, we just have no idea what's happening, and would just be guessing.  Maybe ask again in several months?

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education suggests that the overall enrollment picture for undergraduate education was only mildly effected by the 2008 recession.
However, many of those students chose community colleges rather than traditional four year colleges. This might suggest a downward pressure on doctoral admissions as there might be a lesser need for TAs in such a situation. This might affect admissions in such fields as mathematics that depend heavily on TAs for undergraduate teaching and teaching support.
Of course there is more to the picture. Research needs go on and it might matter more whether governments (the NSF, say) can maintain funding for doctoral students. If a recession is mild or short lived, expect small effects, though more negative than positive. But it also depends on the attitude of those in congress who provide the funding levels for such things.
Moreover, if there are fewer positions open for doctoral education, and more applicants, the competition might increase and it might be harder for any given individual to find a slot. Unfunded slots are probably easier to come by, of course, since the student helps fund the education to a greater degree than one who is grant or university funded.
But in this case there are effects beyond the economic ones. In a pandemic it is hard to predict what might come. Some pandemics (bubonic plague and the arrival of Europeans in the Americas) have been devastating.
Finally, the outlook for graduates of doctoral programs might be clouded in such a complex situation. But, the economy is cyclic in any case and some of us graduated into terrible academic economy conditions and others not. It is hard to predict what will happen over a five to seven year period.
Your own field is probably a good one to be in, since many trends seem to imply an increase in the need for non-fossil energy production and storage. And in general, the effects can vary tremendously by field.
But competent government helps.
But all of the above is crystal ball gazing with not a lot of hard evidence. A deeper plunge into the question will likely reveal some research on the topic. But with the caveat that things that seem the same might be quite different. There are a lot of variables.

"Finally, the outlook for graduates of doctoral programs might be clouded in such a complex situation." Indeed. I think  nobody really knows right now.

@WolfgangBangerth, the future will only be revealed when we get there.

It's hard to predict, in particular the future :-)

Recessions with elevated unemployment increase the number of applicants for each PhD position (and any other position that pays or has opportunity cost).  This makes it harder to get a position.
All other factors (undergraduate enrollment, subsidies, grants) are relatively minor and slow to respond.

Well, in the case of my university, the availability of state funding (which is a significant source of grad student funding) is "responding" pretty quickly, in a negative direction.

@NateEldredge Many universities no longer get much state funding, so it can't be cut.

Just to be clear: in the U.S., given the bad handling of The 19, there is awful uncertainty about many things... in particular, about the economics related to universities. It's not literally about "if the US economy enters a recession": I think it is worse than that.

I think that it is truly an unprecedented situation.


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Will I be accepted into another PhD program if I leave my current group in Europe in which I don't fit in?
I am now doing my Ph.D. in Europe and I think I am not a good fit for my research group. It is not possible to change to other research groups in Europe and I was planning to drop out of my program and then reapply to some other group working on a different topic. I need some advice on whether it is possible to do so?

Any reason you cannot apply first and drop out later?

@Erik I am in a project in Germany.

@AnonymousPhysicist, yeah I need to take recommendation letters

Context: I have had candidates in similar situations apply to positions I offered in the past.
It's certainly possible - you are not a slave to your current group, and there is no law that says that we cannot hire people who have already started (and quit) a PhD elsewhere.
However, in practice, applicants in your situation raise an interesting question for the hiring person. On the one hand, you already have some experience in research, potentially decreasing the amount of training required before you will become effective. On the other hand, people will be wondering what went wrong the first time, and whether the same is likely to happen in your next PhD position.
In truth, most such candidates end up not being accepted. There is normally at least one other highly qualified candidate who is perceived as lower-risk. However, oftentimes this is also because the candidates don't do a particularly good job explaining their situation, and transparency (and plausibility of the story) are key. The instinct of many candidates seems to be to try to keep the topic out of conversation as much as possible, and only provide highly generic answers when probed. This is not a good strategy, as it keeps people wondering - and wondering people make up their own explanations (or they simply decide that the risk is too high).
I feel that before you go back onto the PhD student job market, you may want to head over to the Workplace.SE and carefully study the (many) questions there related to how to, and how not to, talk negatively about previous employment. Your challenge will be to convince your next advisor that you are quitting your previous position for good reasons which are unlikely to repeat in the position you are applying to, without thrash-talking your previous research group. It's certainly a capricious edge to walk.

It's interesting that this appears to be opposite than in the corporate world.  It's generally thought there that you're better off if you keep the topic out of the conversation as much as possible, giving brief diplomatic answers to such questions.   "Less is more" is what they tell you there.

@Tharpa I see similarities and differences. What's very similar is that you should resist the temptation to crap all over your previous advisor / employer, while still communicating why you are looking for change. The difference is that in the regular workplace, changing jobs occasionally is expected, while quitting your PhD earlier requires explanation.

It depends a lot on which university you apply at and what the new supervisor thinks about it.
In most cases you would be asked if you have been enrolled in a Ph.D. program before, wether you finished it or not and if not, why you dropped out. In many cases it would be up to the new supervisor to make the decision. It's generally not seen as something positive, but if you are the best candidate, then it shouldn't be a problem.


text:
Applying for a PhD - how and when to broach the fact that I have previously left a PhD program
I am applying for a funded PhD project for which I am quite well suited in terms of academic record and experience. A few years ago I began a PhD program which in hindsight was not a good fit and I decided to leave that program at quite an advanced stage. I am personally secure with this decision and think that in some ways the experience even strengthens my application, and I want to be open about it. However, I am not sure when or how is the best way to bring it up in the positive light in which I see it.
On the one hand I could place my enrolment on my CV under PhD Student or similar and discuss some of the advantages in my cover letter, but neither of these seems an appropriate place to discuss my reasons for leaving and I don't want to raise a red flag without having the opportunity explain.
The other option is to not mention it until the interview stage. This I could easily do as I was also employed throughout the time that I was enrolled and so would have no employment gap, but this feels dishonest and also denies my the opportunity to capitalise on some of my skills in my cover letter.
My preferred solution is to put it on my CV and discuss it in terms of skills and experience in my cover letter but not to broach the question of why I left until it comes to interview. My hope is that in the right light it will not in itself prevent me from getting to the interview stage. I am looking for a bit of feedback on that plan, or some alternatives if it sounds career-suicidal. I am particularly keen to hear from academics or admissions tutors as to how you would look upon such an  application.

For a variety of reasons you should reveal it early as part of your education in the CV or other materials. But you don't need to give any reason there. Just that you were in a doctoral program (and maybe ABD) from such a date to some later date.
You are probably required to give transcripts of all educational endeavors, and it would be a lapse to omit any.
There are a lot of reasons for leaving a doctoral program and only of a few of them reflect badly on the student. Not passing comprehensives might be a negative and being expelled for ethical lapses would certainly be. But those are only a few of the possibilities, including just becoming disillusioned with the program or with an advisor. Money. Family. Medical.
But later, in an interview, you will probably be asked and then is the time, IMO, to give reasons.
And, if you think the experience strengthens your case, then, in a Statement of Purpose you could say how it supports your future goals.

Thank you @Buffy, that is really helpful


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When doing comparative evaluation among different research tools should we debug others research tool?
Researchers propose software tools as part of their research work to gather some metrics about application performance. I intend to propose a tool with better features and capabilities. For comparison I am using publicly available tools of other researchers.
The difficulty I am facing is that other researcher tool crash for some applications of benchmarks. Different tool crash for different applications. So when reporting the comparison what should I do? List applications for which other researcher tool did not worked or try to debug other researcher tool and then report the comparison?
The benchmark applications used for testing the tools are large scientific applications. The tools are written using complex software frameworks. In short, debugging either of them will require substantial effort. Before committing I would like to have some advise.

You could do that, but then you wouldn't be doing a comparative study anymore. You would, in effect, be comparing one thing you created with something else that you modified. It would bring your comparison into doubt even if it didn't invalidate it.
Report that your tool produces X and tool A produces no result for such cases. That is a valid comparison.
But improvement of the tools of others can also be a valuable contribution, though of a different sort. Decide what it is you are after.
You could also point out the flaws to the developers of the other tools and see if they wish to update. If so, you can compare with their new versions.
You can also, perhaps, enter into a tool-building collaboration with some of the others.


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Should I structure my CV in sections for relevant experience to PhD and day job work if the two are unrelated?
I am applying for my PhD currently [in Music]. Part of the application concerns sending a CV. When I applied for my master's I just sent them my normal work CV [which had nothing to do with music] and that seemed to do the job to get the application through.
However, I have done many music-related things over the years [A&R, promotion, journalism etc] and have constructed a CV around these for my new application as 'relevant experience' to the PhD. Should I include another section for my day job[s] as well [which have nothing to do with music] or should I just keep to relevant to the academic application?

I've been applying for PhDs in a completely different field, but was advised to leave employment history out of the CV unless they're relevant to the PhD.

Thanks, Katy. I was thinking this too. I mean, I've done my fair share of paid painting and decorating over the years but won't be including that...


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In a literature review, should I focus on how much my work will contribute to the discipline?
When I have previously published papers, I have written about how much my work contributes to the discipline and builds on the work of others. I am currently writing my literature review for my PhD upgrade and even though I am featuring a lot of work, I am not focusing that much on how my work builds on those of the cited authors. My research is multi-disciplinary, covering three fields.
In a literature review therefore, is my job just to review the literature? Or should I also mention how my work builds on the literature I have mentioned?

You would usually not just review "the literature" (How would you do that anyway as there are thousands of papers coming out everyday in most fields).
I like to see the literature review like building a pyramid: You start broad and then narrow down and come closer and closer to what you actually did. Your thesis/paper should then come as the last stone on the top of the pyramid. Along the lines of "This is what other people did, this is how it all builds up but in the end a very important part was missing (= your thesis!) and here it is! Then you start describing your actual work.
In other words you can see the literature review as something what helps to emphasise how important your work is. Literature review is not something that you have to do but something that you want to do because it makes your own work shine.

This is a useful metaphor (+1). However, PhD theses often need to show off a bit more knowledge about the existing research than papers and books. That's because the former speak to the defense committee, while the latter speak to a broader scientific audience.


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How to explain to my supervisor that her style of input is hindering my progress?
I am in the fourth year of a part-time PhD. I have at least another couple of years left, the next two years are for writing up and this year was supposed to be for data collection.
I hit problems with research and data collection because of COVID, a lot of us did. But one of the things that has come to my realisation is that it is my supervisor who chiefly hindered my progress.
I cannot blame her for this, she is just doing her job and she is very respected in her field. I do like her. The main problems came in November 2020. I had a tutorial and I said, "I want to do X this way", she came back with "why don't you do it this other way?" I initially agreed but then, a few hours after the tutorial, I felt like the wind had been taken out of my sails. I didn't know it at the time, or understand it, but she had totally killed my enthusiasm, not only for the piece I was working on, but for the project. This has been going on since November and I have found it very hard to produce anything. In fact I haven't written anything since November apart from one piece.
The crunch time came a few days ago. I wrote a paper plan for her, something that I was interested and intrigued to get on with. The same thing happened again, she wrote back and said, "this is too broad, remove this [very interesting] part and focus on this [not so interesting but practical] part". Try as I might I could not muster the enthusiasm to continue and the paper has been shelved.
I had a discussion with her yesterday and we have agreed for me to take three months off. It occurred to me after our talk yesterday that the problem is that I am not given enough freedom to do my work how I want. YES she is the supervisor, and I am here to learn, I understand that, but this is not working for me this way. I now have three months 'off' but I am thinking of not not doing any work but doing things how I want to do them: I have enthusiasm again for the PhD and am starting to get filled with ideas. I have a research blog which I haven't updated for months because she wanted to vet anything I put on there, but, I asked her yesterday if I can put things up there ANYWAY in the next few months regardless of her input and she said yes.
I am worried that, after these three months, I will have put entries on the blog - much of the content/themes of which I want to put in the final thesis - but we will just go back to doing things the old way and she will say a lot of the stuff I wrote isn't that relevant and she will want me to focus on authors I am not interested in and for me to remove ideas I had.
How do I explain I need more freedom and her management style/suggestions are not working for me? Or should I not say that at all? I respect her and want to put this point across in the best way. Or do I just do three months of work my way and then, when she sees how effective a more hands-off approach is, she will agree to do things that way?

Your supervisor vets your personal blog? Out of everything you've written, that's the biggest concern for me.

@astronat this was one of the main things that maybe contributed to my lack of productivity. I wrote a blog post back in October and then put it online. We had a tutorial after and she said, "you should have run this past me first". I said yes, of course, sorry. But then that just stunted my enthusiasm to post anything else afterwards. What's weird is when I said yesterday "in the next three months can I put something on my blog without approval?" she said, "of course, I'm not here to control what you put on there" which slightly confused me. But at least it gave me the control again to do so.

Surely there must be arguments for doing things you mentioned "your way" and "her way"; one or another method might be better in various conditions, under different assumptions or if applied to different systems. It is never just "I want it this way". Your question could benefit from mentioning this.

It's common in some fields and for some advisor temperaments to challenge a student in many of the ways you illustrate. It forces you to think on your feet, to analyze quickly, and develops those aspects of you. It also tests the depth of your understanding, your ability to communicate, and your independence. Unpleasant no doubt, a form of tough love.

I felt like the wind had been taken out of my sails. ... she had totally killed my enthusiasm ...

This is a very strong emotional reaction to just a suggestion back in November. I'm not excusing your adviser of anything, but it doesn't sound like a normal response at the time given your description of what your adviser did then. I would recommend talking about this with a counselor - it is possible your loss of motivation has internal sources as well as external too. (I myself am going through therapy for similar issues)

Re the blog issue: The most common thing I learn from reading papers (and even more so going to conferences) is that "if you try this approach to solving a problem and have an average amount of background knowledge and common sense, you will solve the problem." The specific details don't matter so much. So, your blog may have inadvertently "given away" your research before you had got the credit for it by formally publishing it. If another research team is thinking about using methods A B C or D, and your blog  tells them "method B works", they may well finish and publish before you do.

There are several intertwined issues here, and it is going to be difficult to sort them out:

Your supervisor is an expert.  She likely knows things you don't.  So if you suggest one way and she suggests another, it may be because she has seen that way tried before and knows that it doesn't lead anywhere.

Your supervisor doesn't seem to be great at leading, or doesn't recognize that you are not her colleague yet.  If two people at the same level are trading ideas, shooting them down or poking holes to patch can be a very useful exercise.  As a new researcher, you aren't at this level yet, but she may be treating you as though you are.

What you consider interesting and what she considers interesting may not overlap

What you consider interesting and what is actually publishable within the scope of a single paper or blog post may not overlap.

Let's treat these individually.

I have seen many grad students (and I have been one myself) who don't fully grasp the field.  I've read papers, thought "Oh, I can fix that problem", then gone on to work for a week and then find the paper written 20 years prior that solves it.  She has a much broader understanding of the field than you do, and she knows what's been done.  Take her suggestions helpfully: "I want to do X, but my supervisor suggested Y instead.  I'm going to compare and contrast the two methods in a literature review and see which is best".  That's your job as a PhD student anyway.

This is time for an awkward conversation.  Depending on your personality, I personally suggest being a bit blunt but polite.  Tell her what you told us: "When I suggest something and you change it, it takes my enthusiasm away.  Can we work together to make sure that my ideas are fully explored, even if they aren't the best?"

This is up to you two to figure out.  This is more fun.  Ask her what she thinks the big problems of the field are, why she's in the field, what interests her about new research etc.

My supervisor was phenomenally good at writing.  I am not.  He was also very good at focusing a paper onto the key relevant points.  I was not.  We fought over papers a lot, to be honest, and to be equally honest it was a mutual problem.  Both of us had reasonable ideas, but he was better at it and knew what it took to get published.  I did not.

If your supervisor thinks that you are proposing something too broad, that's a very, very good indicator that you are.  Think of those broad ideas as your research program, and the individual smaller ideas as your research projects.  Projects lead to papers, programs lead to careers.  Don't take it as "this is a useless idea", but more as "this is not suitable for publication because you haven't actually solved the big problem.  You have, however, solved a smaller problem that moves us towards the bigger solution.  Let's publish that and keep making progress"

+1 for “Projects lead to papers, programs lead to careers.” Each paper should contribute to the research conversation around an important topic, but each paper needent (and probably cannot) resolve the conversation. I often have students who propose something that is a lifetime career sized problem rather than a paper sized problem. Some of this, I think, comes from reading pop science books which bring together 30 years of past research vs new work.

The final paragraph needs to be foregrounded. A part of a PhD education concerns narrowing your ideas into chunks that can actually get accomplished. Grad students have very little conception of this coming in--they underestimate what it actually takes to implement their grand ideas. They think the supervisor is diminishing their vision rather than drawing you to understand what hard work a real scientific vision requires. The supervisor may be doing you a big service here by showing you how to keep your grand ambitions in the background and tackle small parts....

...And, yeah, not every aspect of that is going to be exciting work. Some of it will be boring. But every job, including being a researcher, has boring work-a-day aspects that you'd rather not have to do. You can't expect that all of your productivity will issue forth from an ever-flowing fountain of inspiration and excitement. You need to find methods for being productive even when you aren't bursting forth with enthusiasm.

This is a great answer, thank you. Especially the last paragraph is very helpful. Maybe what I am proposing is too broad and I like to cram more in to a paper than I realise, rather than working on smaller issues which fit into the bigger whole.

Re point 2, I'd add that the purpose of supervision by someone more experienced is not just to do as you're told, it's to ask why and start picking up their institutional knowledge of the field.  And if their reasoning doesn't hold, to push back against it with your own reasoning, which is preparing you for life outside of just being a taught student.

I agree with everything in the excellent answer posted already, and would like to add another aspect to consider.
As your PhD progresses, you are expected to grow into an independent researcher. And this includes a number of skills, one of which is to be able to explain, and defend, your ideas in front of others.
From what I see in your question (as it currently stands; this would become a bit different if you actually toned down how the supervisor addressed you), your supervisor wasn't impolite, and offered what seem more like discussion points than "orders". As an expert in her field, they are likely giving you comments representative of potential reviewers and readers of your potential publications. Your supervisor is just the first in a line of people you need to convince of the validity, importance and interest of your research.
My suggestion would be to try and treat it as an invitation for a discussion: an opportunity to better explain the nuances and the reasoning of the approach you propose as well as a chance to compare to different approaches to the problem.
Let me try and use the examples you provided:

You said you had proposed to explore an approach X, and your supervisor suggested you try a different one Y.
If you had actually went on, used your X to obtain some results and submitted a publication, how would you react to a reviewer saying "I see that Y could also be applicable to your problem. Have you considered comparing your results with Y?"
Instead, if you treat this as an invitation to explain your reasoning, it will only strengthen your work. Why did you chose X over Y? Do you think X has more desirable properties, or Y has shortcomings?

You proposed to work on a problem A, and the supervisor proposed to focus on a sub-problem B.
Is B a very important factor in A? Is it possible that using sub-optimal B would change the performance on A substantially? (In which case, if you do not do B well, maybe your work on A wouldn't be valid?) Or, do you instead think that your supervisor misunderstood the proposed scope of A, which you believe is a well-rounded and self-contained research question?
If your own advisor does not understand you well, it is an indication that the reviewers or readers might misunderstand you too -- and it is on you to express your ideas clearly.

In both of these cases, and in general, as a researcher you should not take things at face value. In addition to communicating your ideas clearly, this also means trying to understand why your supervisor proposed Y/B. If you do not explain your reasoning to your supervisor, or understand theirs, it is difficult for the supervisor to guess you do not agree with their proposed plan. Discussion with your supervisor is the best way to refine how clearly you express your idea, and how convincingly you can demonstrate it.

As a personal anecdote, I had a similar situation during my postdoc. As I was polishing our accepted publication, we had a discussion about future directions. I wanted to do A, and my supervisor wanted to do B. We had a passionate (but polite and respectful!) discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of A and B. As I realised I still have a few weeks to finish up my current task, and the prep work that would be required for either A or B could easily take another few weeks, I agreed to get started on it and asked if we could discuss it again after this prepwork was done. The next day, my supervisor called me back to their office and said that they have thought a lot about our discussion, and told me they would support my opinion as a researcher and that he wouldn't want to force me to begin a research direction I do not agree with. Firstly -- best feeling ever, I was beaming for days. Secondly -- this never could have happened if we didn't have a detailed discussion about A and B, supported by arguments from both an extensive literature review and our past experiences in our respective fields.

This is a very useful answer, thank you very much. My supervisor has, in the past, mentioned to me about defending certain ideas I've had. My initial response, in my head, has been, "I don't think that's entirely necessary" or "this person is asking the wrong question". I think this points to the failings in me in this regard. Before I started this degree I was engaged in a more journalistic aspect of writing and am used to being 'right' a lot and uncriticised. I think I really need to adjust my attitude and see that these issues have multiple perspectives. A PhD is very unlike a master's.

I'm glad my answer has prompted you to see things in a broader perspective. If you finish your PhD "uncriticised" -- you probably did something wrong. Just wait for Reviewer #3 :) And you are absolutely right -- a PhD is nothing like a MSc. In a Masters, the goal is still basically to get in-depth knowledge about a topic X. A PhD is about the ability to get up to speed with a topic quickly, spotting gaps in the current literature, seeing ideas through and communicating all this to others. You do all this on some topic/problem X but the goal is developing good research skills.

An aspect that I haven't seen addressed in the other answers is the fact that you appear to struggle to maintain motivation and are easily deflated by contrary opinions even when these are offered in a constructive manner. This could be indeed a problem that is specific to the current situation - it's very common for the relationship between students and PIs to be tense near the end of a PhD, in part due to the significant external pressure (completing your training, submitting and defending, future career decisions etc.) and in part because increased independence from your supervisor is precisely what a PhD is for, and can change your dynamic in ways that make you less accepting of micromanaging.
However, nothing you mention about your supervisor suggest to me that she is behaving in an extreme or unreasonable manner, so chances are that you might have a better long-term outcome if you work on your own response. A couple of ideas from my personal experience:

Try to make yourself more resilient to criticism. Easier said than done! I have ADHD, one symptom of which is Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, an incredibly intense and physical reaction to even very mild criticism. I am not suggesting that you suffer from the same (I  hope not!), but I have found some help in trying to detach myself from the immediate response to a critical comment, and try to avoid discussing it while still overwhelmed by negative feelings ("Hmm, that's a really interesting idea. I need to sleep on it before I can give you a good answer." Optionally, follow up with "For now, do you mind if we go back to my original idea?" if you think this can be constructive). Later, when you're on your own, try to consider the idea more neutrally. You need to consciously fight the knee-jerk response to oppose any idea that is not your original one and I find this is harder when in a conversation that feels confrontational.

Identify and cultivate academic partnerships with people who don't make you feel deflated. Others have pointed out that the dynamics of shooting down other people's ideas change enormously with even small differences in status. Do you get deflated if a peer tells you that they think you should work on something else? What about someone with seniority but no direct power over you, like another PI? Being able to have your ideas challenged by colleagues is incredibly important in research, both for interpersonal reasons (people who offer you well-thought-out advice are giving you their mental labour for free; even if you decide not to use it, it's important to acknowledge this graciously) and because it enhances the quality of your research (they may point out weaknesses or possibilities you hadn't though of, reveal different ways of looking at the problem, etc.). However, there will be people with whom you "click" better scientifically - try to identify what their traits are and how you can seek out these types of people for future work (the trait shouldn't be "always goes along with what I say", ideally).

Learn to work productively on topics that you're not that fired up about. There's a lot of drudge work in academia. There's the project that was really promising and turned out to have a trivial solution but you still need to write up. There's the collaboration set up for networking reasons that nobody is terribly invested in. There's the half-finished project that needs quite a lot of tidying up and the main author's now left. You need to find a way to make inroads into these things that don't make you particularly excited. Excitement is a poor long-distance fuel and research, at the end of the day, is a job.

All of this comes from an assumption that you want to pursue academic research longer term. Another possibility is that perhaps you would find it easier to maintain your excitement and motivation in a less hierarchical and more bite-sized approach like science communication, which you have already started with your blog. You could do a combination of novel research (e.g. analysis and visualisation of data using freely available datasets, of which there are many these days) and reporting on new findings from others that you find exciting. My suggestion is that you try to place yourself in a role that you find rewarding and motivating, rather than try to change the behaviour of individual people, not all of whom may be able or willing to meet your needs.

It's also worth mentioning (and perhaps adding to your nice answer) that our resilience and energy are probably significantly diminished right now because of the pandemic.

This is a very interesting answer and very useful to me. It foregrounds my attitude as being the primary issue rather than my supervisor's. What has really been the sticking point in my research is a] comparing this a lot to my master's and b] putting off the smaller things that don't interest me and ignoring, as someone else put it in another question, "the tedium of research". I am thinking the only way I am going to get through this is by just doing those things that have to be done. You are right, I cannot always rely on excitement and it's possible that my ego is getting in the way.

Right now, you and your advisor share the same goal - produce publishable research. Since you aren't an expert in the field, the advisor's job is to guide you towards research approaches that will lead to publishable work, i.e. papers that will be accepted by reviewers. It sounds like she is trying to do this, although I cannot tell whether she is doing it well from the information given.
From your post, I got the impression that you believe you know how to research better than your supervisor. I have to wonder why you are still choosing to be advised by her when it sounds like you don't respect her advice.

I didn't know it at the time, or understand it, but she had totally killed my enthusiasm, not only for the piece I was working on, but for the project.

I wrote a paper plan for her, something that I was interested and intrigued to get on with. The same thing happened again, she wrote back and said, "this is too broad, remove this [very interesting] part and focus on this [not so interesting but practical] part". Try as I might I could not muster the enthusiasm to continue and the paper has been shelved.

These statements are concerning to me because as a student, it is your responsibility to produce enough research to write a dissertation. Your advisor is trying to guide you towards approaches that she believes will produce research, but it sounds like you're losing enthusiasm and not producing anything. If you don't find a way to achieve a dissertation, you will eventually fail out of the PhD.
Also, enjoy the flexibility of research. Most jobs have a direct supervisor, and while you don't have to agree with them, you usually have to follow their directions if you want to keep the job.
Overall, I see only a few paths going forward:

Find a new advisor whose advice you respect.
Learn to work with your advisor and incorporate her advice into your research.
Figure out how to write papers independently without your advisor's ideas. If it's good enough for a good journal, it's good enough for a dissertation.

This is much more of an interpersonal relations question than an Academia one. How to let another person know you would like them to behave differently? The best way is to just tell them, politely but directly! How will they take it? Can be anything, depending on what kind of a person they are, and also on how they see the situation.
But here are a few points, from her perspective:

I don't know the country or the field, but typically she's on your side. She has invested a lot into you over these years: time, research ideas, possibly her grants, lab resources etc. If you fail, this is all wasted. Of course, as always, there's a point where she might decide that she should stop investing and write off the losses, but that threshold is fairly high.
She is likely aware that Ph. D. studies is a marathon that can be hindered by burnout, lack of motivation leading to procrastination etc. So, I think that if you honestly admit to some of that, if she's a reasonable person, she will be oriented towards finding a solution.
If my Ph. D. students had too many ideas of their own, that would be least of my problems!

That said, she might see the things differently than you. For example, it might have been that your idea was indeed flawed, and her "this other way" was superior, it was obvious to her, and she thought it was obvious to you, but it wasn't. When you talk to her, it's a good idea to explicitly admit the possibility that her suggestions were right, but you couldn't see why, and that hindered your enthusiasm. So, suggest that she lets you do things your way if the difference is minor, and request that if she thinks she really need to override you, she explains in more detail why.
Of course, if her suggestions were right and you understood it, but it still killed your enthusiasm, that's another story altogether, and you have to learn to deal with your idea being not-so-good as it looked to you. But that is and entirely different question well covered in other answers.

As a newly graduated PhD, my advice would be to understand and follow your supervisors' advice if they are really experts in your filed. What you considered as interesting might be something not achievable for a PhD project and for a student who just started to build up their expertise in the field. Experienced supervisors have the ability to look at the forest but not the tree, and yet we as students may only look at the tree.

Choose one of two options:

Get out as fast as you can by finding a new (synergic) supervisor and, likely, a new research topic. It also may mean moving to a different department or even University.
Continue grinding until you get the degree done.  Does not look as an enjoyable option given your experience with the current supervisor.

I would say this is an over-reaction. After four years of PhD research with your current supervisor, I would call this really extreme. Besides the vetting of the research blog (which could be legitimate, if she is just trying to avoid being scooped), I would say everything here is totally normal feedback from an advisor. If you collaborate with someone, you have to expect them to have their own thoughts and suggestions. Like any collaborator, your PI won't let you just say and do whatever you want and put their name on it!