text:
How have perceptions of ResearchGate changed from 2014 to 2018?
About 4 years ago, a question was asked about usefulness of ResearchGate for academics. Judging by the most upvoted answers, the portal had a rather negative opinion back then. However, social media trends tend to change on much shorter timescales, and my experience with RG has actually been slightly positive. This makes me curious as to how the perception has changed since then.
To quote the previous question, I would be very interested in knowing if, as of 2018, ResearchGate is a good way of increasing the visibility of your publications and finding fellows with common research interests, or is it just a "waste of time"?
Since the above is - as many have rightly pointed out - too opinion based, I would like to ask, more specifically: In what ways has ResearchGate changed over the last 4 years? How do these changes affect perception of ResearchGate in the academic community?

I would very much like to see an A.D. 2018 update on the linked question, since it is the only (but dated) resource I can refer to when asked, as I was just recently, about pointlessness (or pointlesslessness) of ResearchGate. Perhaps the OP could rephrase his question to "what exactly has changed" regarding the issues with RG raised in the answers to the old question (spam, fake profiles, indexing, available content, low and low-level participation) and regarding the advantages that some have seen (visibility, networking, stats, Q&A). This seems a less opinion-based angle.

@lemon314: Thank you, I've edited the question accordingly. Also - thanks for the input to those who pointed out that the question might be too opinion based.

What I am wondering if having a profile in RG increases your citation count.

Since I never use it, I won't write an answer; but I do have a profile (one that I think was made "for" me rather than by me) and I get occasional completely useless emails from them. Everything I hear from them suggests they are aggressively useless, ignorant of academia and unwilling to learn. For the fanboys who wish to disagree, explain why they think it's reasonable for an academic with publications dating back 30 years to constantly be showered with "We think you may be interested in this position!" for post-doc positions.

This is not an answer, but I just want to mention that I find it utterly disgusting that there are no links to the original sources of any of the papers on researchgate (neither to arxiv nor to the journal). They actually show the DOIs but don't make them clickable! That really makes their priorities clear.

I have a Researchgate profile, but I only see my activity decreasing in the near future. To me, the issue with RG is that it only appeals to junior or unknown scholars. While it is great that they now have a way of disseminating their research, RG doesn't help reaching the "big names" because most don't use the platform. Most fields are sufficiently small that people reasonably know each other or can ask someone else to be introduced. Hence, RG doesn't help narrowing the gaps between academic circles of "big names" and "unknown researchers", although this is something urgently necessary.
Additionally, many of the services that RG provides are subpar compared to competitors. I already have a number of ways to keep updated with the current literature in my field, and most of the recommendations that RG sends me are unsurprising or duplicate. The citation/read count is mostly useless, and many services such as Google Scholar and Scopus are much better at that. The platform for including current projects is also fairly inflexible and generally asks to share more than what the researcher is comfortable with---lab webpages are much better at that. I also don't see RG as a reasonable platform for uploading preprints, and like many uncurated venues, most people who do resemble cranks, and I don't use RG to look into someone's publications because it looks messy and incomplete. I use Google Scholar, Scopus or personal webpages for that.
I have never used the "Questions" section of RG, but the few times I glanced it, I expected to see some sort of a forum for academic discussion over some topic, but it seemed more like a watered-down version of SE minus the efficient curating. And most questions remain unanswered.
I do keep my RG updated, and every week or two I receive a request for a pdf of one of my papers. I suppose easing this request process is an advantage over other means of communication, but I don't think many people who use RG attend those requests anyway. I have also never received a request to collaborate through RG, but I have received such requests through e-mail.
I think the rationale behind RG is interesting (i.e., connecting researchers online), but it just doesn't work well, and doesn't appeal to most of the relevant people in (my) community. Collaborating in science is incredibly difficult and time-consuming. I don't see how an online platform that connects people who don't know each other and have no way of knowing how each other work can reasonably help at that.
I do think one aspect of RG is fine, which is post-publication peer-review. But while it does allow people to publicly comment in publications, the platform is also not built for long comments, only back-patting, and most people don't use it for that anyway.
In general, it seems that maintaining your own webpage, even if with much less functionality, appears to be better than having a ResearchGate profile. But two things that RG attempts to implement are worth pursuing: 1) post-publication peer-review, and 2) some way to connect people from the same field but who belong to different academic circles.

I tend to agree that I don't see the big names on RG, but those are not the people who cite you, not necessarily.

@HermanToothrot I don't really see why there would in general be any relation (in either direction) between how big a name someone is and how likely they are to cite you.

@Stefan my definition of collaboration is pretty standard, I suppose, i.e., working on a project and/or publication with someone else. I never said I find collaborations "dreadful", I said that I don't see how RG significantly helps collaboration.

@HermanToothrot in using RG, I am not particularly interested in getting more citations, but I would expect it to help me reach others in my community, get some sort of feedback, and narrow the gap between different academic circles. It doesn't help me in any of that. Moreover, given that there are many more efficient (cleaner, easier, more direct, more complete, etc) ways to get up to date with the current work in my field, I doubt it helps increase my citation count.

@Stefan you are misrepresenting my point. I never said I expected to use it to "fish" to the big names. What I am saying is that RG appeals to specific academic circles that are already isolated from the leading people, and that RG does not help their collaboration, and that other means (eg, email) are more effective at that. I also don't see how RG helps collaboration, and I have never seen anyone who benefited from it. But of course that's just anecdotal evidence. Arxiv, for instance, is MUCH better at fomenting all of the above even though it was built to be just a preprint server.

You correctly tagged this with social media, because RG does share one quality of social media - it's useful only if like-minded people are already on it. In certain fields you will find a lot of relevant people signed up already, so there's a good chance RG will be helpful. In others, you may end up with irrelevant answers/article suggestions that could put you off.
I always recommend first finding out if researchers connected to your field, or researchers you know are already on it. If they are, it could be a great platform to connect. I have personally been able to get very specific inputs from very senior researchers, who may have otherwise been difficult to reach. You can't generalise though; different people visit at different frequencies.
The same holds for the Q/A section. You shouldn't go expecting an efficient answering system like SE, especially if there aren't many active researchers from your field already signed up. Think of it more as a shot in the dark, there is a chance you end up with valuable inputs withon a reasonable time. My personal experience over 3 years indicates a roughly 60% satisfaction level with answers/discussions.
As for 'whats new', there is an option for users to indicate labs/groups they work in. This can help you reach out to non-corresponding authors of work you may be interested in (possibly corresponding authors are too senior/busy to expect a short turnaround time).

First paragraph seems like a comment and makes no mention of this question being a repeat, which would be greater grounds for it to be removed.


text:
How does ReadCube compare to Mendeley?
Currently I use Mendeley. I have heard some stuff about ReadCube, but they don't have a Mendeley quick import tool, so… before I go through the hassle of resetting up my library with them, I wondered how it compared to Mendeley. What are its extra features? What is missing? How smooth is it to use, how widely adopted is it, that sort of things…

Hi Keevs, and welcome to Academia Stack Exchange! “Is X better than Y questions” are frowned upon around here, as they are quite subjective (different people want different things in a reference manager). I've edited your question a bit in order to make it more objective, I hope you don't mind! (and if I lost any of the original meaning, please feel free to edit it back in)

I think this Q is a poor fit for SE, since program features change over time (ie the Q is localized in time and answers may quickly become obsolete) and answers are likley to be based on personal preferences.

@fileunderwater many questions are localized in time (policies change, application procedures evolve)… that doesn't necessarily make them bad fit for the site. Answers have a date on them, and can be edited (or new answers posted) if things change drastically.

@F'x true that the problem of "too localized" depends on the question. However, I dont see how this question differs from a shopping question, also program features can change very rapidly.

From a short comparison of the features listed on the website here is list of Mendeley features that ReadCube doesnt have:

In-text citation insertion and formation: Mendeley has Word and other plugins, ReadCube only exports to Endnote and "your favorite citation software"
Sharing and collaboration features
ReadCube is only a desktop app (no web app), and it doesn't work on Linux
Mendeley has an open API to query its huge database

On the other hand:

ReadCube is used as the online reader for a few publishers: Nature, Frontiers and Wiley.
ReadCube suggests personalized article recommendations (dont know if they're good, though)

Mendeley also suggests article recommendations based on my library via email. For me they are quite relevant, albeit a bit old.

Note that when getting articles via Readcube from the journals that support it, you don't actually get a copy of the article. It seems Readcube is one way big publishers are trying to "contain" their copyrighted articles and prevent readers from having a true copy. This article explains some of that:
http://rossmounce.co.uk/2015/03/19/how-to-block-readcube-and-why/

So I'm a ReadCube user who was a Mendeley user -
ReadCube does have a citation tool for Word and their apps make articles interactive - things like references, authors, figures are clickable - which is pretty neat. Their recommendations are pretty good too if you have enough in your library - otherwise the results can be pretty generic. I guess that makes sense.
I personally prefer it to Mendeley - though I do miss Mendeley's web access part of it. ReadCube has a much better interface. It's like what you'd expect for mainstream tools - intuitive, slick, streamlined. I find the other tools in comparison "science functional" - they work - but look cludgy.

As of now, one feature that has kept me in Mendeley is that, unlike ReadCube, Mendeley can can keep a bibtex file with all your library references. This file is updated automatically. Readcube requires manual export of selected references.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Is it okay for a thesis to have sections of very different lengths?
I run into a situation where the logical division the material in the thesis I'm writing forces me to create sections of very different lengths. Matters are further complicated by the fact that the short section does not naturally divide into subsections.
Is this bad style to divide material like that? If so, what are some good techniques for correcting it?
Also, should the shorter section have exactly one subsection, or should it not have subsections at all?

The layout I have right now looks perhaps somewhat like this:
Section 1 (where I prove Theorem 1)

subsection 1 [10 pages]
subsection 2 [10 pages]
subsection 3 [10 pages]

Section 2 (where I prove Theorem 2)

subsection 1 [10 pages]
...
subsection 4 [10 pages]

Section 3 (where I prove Theorem 3) [8 pages total]

What is bad is if the formal structure doesn't match the logical structure of the material, or if one section is extremely short (like one paragraph).

There's typically a great deal of flexibility in your thesis presentation, and as long as the lengths don't disturb you or your committee, there is no reason to force your work into some Procrustean bed of perceived length balance.
In my own thesis, the number of pages per chapter were approximately: 12, 4, 8, 8, 36, 12, 44, 16, and 6 pages, respectively.  While there may have been problems in the document, chapter length was not one that either I or anybody who encountered it ever had any complaint around.
In short: let the sections be the length that is best for them, and don't worry if they are different.

There is simply no problem here.  You're writing an academic paper, not a poem.  There is no expectation or need that different sections have the same length or the same number of subsections.  If you're in doubt, just read some other theses and other academic papers, and you'll see this for yourself.

Most poems won't have a problem with different section length either.

@jakebeal: Perhaps I should have said "sonnet" or "villanelle" (although in the latter the sections must be mildly unequal). Anyway...

Yeah, I put on my pedantic hat, but still voted you up.

Maybe limerick or haiku.

In short, for your particular case,

It is OK

Each section of a thesis should bear a logical coherence connected to a single topic. Each subsection would relate to subtopics. There is no hard and fast rule stating the distribution of volume of pages for sections of a general thesis. But it would be advisable to consult your advisor for any other guidelines set by your University.
Just to ease mind and get a clarity for what and how to include sections,
you may envision your thesis like a tree structure with the root being your main title of research on which you write an abstract about. Then you diverge to branches of topics that your research is built upon. These might become your sections. Each topic is bound to have subtopics which might further divide amongst themselves giving rise to subsections and sub-subsections (if necessary).
So if you have a topic that is not much connected to the topics under the existing section, it ought be presented as a separate section per se -- even if the content is comparatively smaller to that of the other sections.
But if you still feel that your sections might look better when balanced, there is always something you could add to; algorithms could always be expanded and well explained, figures can be textually illustrated more and results can be thoroughly discussed. In such ways, you can extend the overly small section to a more pleasing volume (provided you do not exceed your page limit if set so by your University/advisor).

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


text:
Is jumping PhDs frowned upon?
Long story short, I am a PhD student at a University and I want to leave and start a PhD somewhere else. I am in the process of applying right now.
I do not think it is super relevant to this question as to why I want to leave my present PhD education, but let's just say that is has economic, political and scientific reasons
economic - I am not getting paid enough to make ends meet,
political - my country is going down a dark path and I want to get out asap,
scientific - in all honesty, I am not interested in my current research to the point I am getting significant burnout from it and I don't want to risk getting stuck in this specific area  (I would imagine jumping ships for PhD is easier than for post-doc since before PhD most people don't do that much actual research) + my university is not super-prestigious and I hear that a lot of post-doc applications just get thrown out if you don't have a PhD from a top university

So anyways, anyone who does a search on my name will see that I am a PhD student at my present place and I don't even want to keep it a secret, I just want to know how likely it is for this to affect my impression negatively and whether I should mention this/go over the details as to why I want to leave in my motivation letter.
On the one hand, a PhD is basically a job and people leave jobs all the time, on the other hand, one can also view this as a kind of commitment to my group that I am breaking by leaving and thus I have no idea if this is frowned upon or even a common thing or not.

Your mental health is much more important than anyone views quitting a phd. And, to exploit a trope, if people don't accept your decision, you don't want to work with them anyway.

However, how people view this is really dependent on the country, the industry, the people itself (and, of course, if they really "know" what phd study is -- many non-academics don't).

There are plenty of questions already about changing advisor, schools, whatnot.

What will the answer tell you? Would it stop you from leaving?

@AzorAhai-him- No, but I have actually noted this in the question itself. If abandoning a PhD in the middle of it and starting anew somewhere else is a common occurrence then I wouldn't even need to mention it in my application. If this is highly unusual and raises questions about my reliability then this is something I should address heavily. On the other hand, if it is unnecessary to address it then elaborating on this in my application could be seen as weird or too personal. I am inquiring about the commonality of such a thing and how to address it to my potential future institute the best.

@BenceRacskó Maybe you should edit your title to match your question "Should I discuss it in my materials?"

Seeing that someone is already a PhD student during the application process, or later seeing that someone was a PhD student at two different institution always raises questions. But these questions are easy to answer in your statement of purpose or later application documents, and being in a country that "is going down a dark path and I want to get out asap" is a perfectly good reason anyone will understand.
In other words, I would not worry about it: Whatever questions anyone might have, you have a good answer for it and, moreover, your own personal happiness/mental health is more important than anything else anyway. So do it, if you can!

being in a country that "is going down a dark path and I want to get out asap" is a perfectly good reason anyone will understand Not everyone, apparently - https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/105451/are-political-ideological-reasons-for-career-moves-acceptable-in-academia

@Allure -- the top answers over there seem to be accepting. What specifically are you referring to in that question/those answers?

Well e.g. the answer I accepted says not wanting to work in the US because one disapproves of the Trump administration is "much more divisive", but your answer says it's a perfectly good reason that anyone will understand. Ben's answer also expresses skepticism about political objections on a country level, as opposed to on a university level.

@Allure I think there is a difference between agreeing with someone's opinion about the politics of a country, and being able to understand that people often feel strongly about it. Most US faculty probably felt rather bleak about the country over the past few years, but if you're a faculty in TX and you talk to a student who wants to get out of CA because "it is just too liberal", you might get that some people feel that way even if you might personally don't agree with it.

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


text:
Missed to add the name of co-author
I submitted a conference paper to an IEEE conference via edas system. I included the details of  co-author in the uploaded document but missed to add in the system. I noticed it when I received the acceptance notification. When i read the Commsoc policies, it says "it is not possible to add further co-author to a an submitted document". Is this means, I cannot add the co-author name? What will be worst case?
Thank you

I would contact the organizers and explain the situation. The submission process is different from publishing process.

Contact with the IEEE conference mail and the edas system as soon as possible.

The edas mail is: help@edas.info

The IEEE conference you should search in its website. At contact section probably.

If there's an incongruence between the document and the system they would detect it, but there's no guarantee. So, notify them there was an erratum before the publication is done.
Despite it could have author's incongruence, the document might be published with or without the forgotten author in the systems.

In the best case, it will be accepted, added the author at the systems and published the documennt including the author.
In the worst case your document will be rejected.

The worst case is that you are accused by someone of plagiarism. And that is pretty bad. But you don't ask for solutions, though user Younes provides one in a comment.
Contact the organizers, explaining the situation, apologizing and asking for a correction. The organizers, if they have any experience, will have dealt with submission problems in the past and so expect them to happen.
However, if I read it correctly, the paper itself contains the correct author information in its header. The effect, then, of not having entered the co-author into the system is just some confusion on the part of readers who notice it. Conference advertising and such may include less than complete information for example. So, it may be that the "worst case" is an inconsistency in what appears in conference documentation and in the paper itself.
If the paper is correct there will be less of an impact, except for people searching for papers by your co-author and not finding this one since the conference docs are incorrect. If the organizers understand this, they should have an incentive to make it right.

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


text:
How was plagiarism checked before the Internet?
In the days where many prominent researchers we know today started their journey in Academia, what was the likelihood that some of their publications were alternated versions of what was already published by other researchers from other countries beforehand? Since most research is already published on the internet, and the existence of advanced plagiarism checking tools, has there been a recheck of authenticity of difference in papers that were published pre-1980s?
This is likely a dumb question since I am still learning the ways of Academia so don't get offended.

@DanielHatton, how does that relate to plagiarism, which is not the same as parallel research.

Tom Lehrer had a bit to say about this... But how do you plagiarize with no access to somebody else’s work? Parallel development is a totally different thing.

Please ask only one question per post.  There has never been a systematic method of plagiarism checking that actually worked.

There is not a real activity as a priori plagiarism checking. There is not a real activity for fraud checking. Given the right time, science adjust itself. Of course trouble of all sort can arise from misconduct, but this is just at our miserable scale. What is true that a simple software can now do things that weren't possible before. Like asking on this site.


text:
Is a low undergrad GPA a career killer?
I graduated with a 6.4/10 GPA from a Non-IIT University in India - BE in CS in 2019. I pretty much messed up during my early 2 years of UG while taking part in non-academics such as workshops and research. Only later I have realized that it was too late to improve and now I am facing the consequences of neglecting good grades. I wasn't a lazy student, I worked 16 hours a day learning something new for research, solving math and leetcoding because I couldn't stand the classroom environment.
I hate blaming the University but they were rather a scam ridden cash cow run by unprofessional people and did not encourage any sort of research activities or any funding for it. Luckily, my time in research did not require much funding yet I have managed to publish 12 papers during my 5 years (9 during undergrad) at well reputed domestic and international conferences - IEEE, Springer, etc, 3 winning awards. I frankly enjoyed the lab work and research part of my UG because it gave me complete freedom to explore my skills and work, yet it's frustrating how marks is always given the first preference. I have graduated with most publications compared to anyone who have studied in my University. I feel really cheated as I was told publications were preferred over GPA.
I was an aspiring MS and PhD candidate for Natural Language Processing. And now I'm seeing that I have been rejected by ASU and I'm pretty sure it was because of my GPA, which probably never made it to the AdCom. This is my first post on stack exchange and I really want to know whether my career has hit a dead end here. I'm feeling tired and frustrated, thinking about a career change since a second chance elsewhere to prove my worth would at least take me beyond a bachelors degree.

For context, what is ASU. Worldwide it probably has several meanings.

The publication obsession is certainly a lie, if your gpa isn't 3.2+ you might as well not bother. Frankly that it's from India makes it even worse from a US perspective.

The most important determining factor in graduate admissions is neither GPA nor the number of publications, but rather letters of recommendation from well-known established researchers in the field that attest to your research potential. Depending on where you are in India (you say you didn't go to IIT so this is a possibility), the professors you have access to through your research might not have enough name recognition for their letters to contain meaningful information. [cont.]

However, as FourierFlux mentioned, Americans generally seem to agree that grades from Indian universities carry some useful information, maybe because there is less grade inflation than in the USA. So in this sense, a high GPA was perhaps one of the best chances you had to get noticed. As for the publications, you haven't told us how many other authors they had, who those coauthors were, and whether you had letters of recommendation that talked about them.

The statement that research is the primary purpose of graduate school is wrong, all have a minimum course requirement with a certain GPA requirement. No research but high gpa will usually give admission but maybe unfunded. Poor gpa gets you nothing.


text:
Is it necessary to wear a white shirt inside the graduation gown for Masters degree graduation ceremony?
I have my graduation ceremony coming soon. The graduation dress usually consists of the gown, the hood and the mortar board. however the hand sleeves of the gown are a bit short and hence a full shirt is to be worn inside the gown (gown is black in color). In most pictures I see a white shirt within. Is it necessary to have white shirt or I can go for a blue or black one too?

I do not think it is necessary, and my memory suggests that many people wear other colors. I would probably wear a white shirt, but I doubt you would stand out very severely if you did not. Light blue would work pretty well I reckon.

I generally wear jeans and a Threadless T-shirt (aka my Teaching Uniform) under my robe, at least during summer graduations.  A couple of friends of mine at college wore, um, considerably less; everyone (including the parents) pretended not to notice.

Most people have only one masters graduation ceremony unless they study a second masters. In my humble opinion, this is a good question although it sounds a minor issue.

This depends on the rules of your particular university and will vary from place to place. Consult your university's rules.

Faculty do not ask and students do not tell what they wearing under the robes.
Actually, I find that since graduations are in May, the robes are often swelteringly hot (especially PhD robes) in many parts of North America, so the lighter the clothes and the more sweat-resistant and breathable the better. Women can get away with wearing summer dresses. From what I can ascertain (remembering the Don't Ask/Don't Tell rule above), male students tend to wear khakis and comfortable dress shirts underneath. No need to wear long-sleeves if it's going to be hot.
Many students often change into other clothes for the receptions after graduation -- men into longer pants and a sport jacket, women don a light jacket or change into more formal attire. They often keep a change of clothes in their parent's car or in their advisor's office if the dorms are shut.
tl;dr: It's your graduation. No need to be uncomfortable.

But do remember that you'll be photographed, probably during hooding and again when you are handed your diploma.  Whatever you wear for a shirt, think about dark trousers and leather shoes.  I have a pair of black tropical wool trousers that are even cooler than khakis.  (I attend six commencements a year, too, though.  Gripe, grumble.)

I know of at least one person who graduated wearing nothing under their robes.

Those cheap polyester rental robes don't breathe well and can get sticky. I don't recommend wearing nothing...


text:
Does it matter from whom we receive a letter of recommendation?
I am wondering is it important who is writing our letter of recommendation? I mean, does it matter whether the faculty is assistant professor or distinguished professor?

@shane I think in all cases, the answer will be yes.

I think this question is close to a duplicate of this one: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12959/who-should-write-a-recommendation-letter?rq=1

If all of your choices wrote the same letter, then of course the letter from the distinguished professor would carry more weight than that of f the assistant professor.
However, often the letters from assistant professors are much more detailed and insightful than the letters from distinguished professors, because they have usually worked with the applicant much more closely. They can therefore offer more detailed insights than can more senior staff. This is not always true, but it is at least mostly the case in my experience.

I agree that a more insightful letter from a younger professor should often be balanced out against more standard letters from senior personnel (and I think this type of issue is exactly why we ask for more than one letter).  However in my experience assistant professors do not work with undergraduate students any more closely than more senior personnel.  By "work with", do you mean "do research with"?  Because that is very rare for undergraduates in my discipline (mathematics), so I don't have much to compare with.

@PeteL.Clark: I meant "have direct contact with": an assistant professor is more likely to have directly observed the work of the undergraduate (through presentations, through meetings and emails, etc.).

Hmm.  I don't doubt your experience; I would be interested to find out why it's different from mine.  In the US, there is really no difference in the job description between assistant professors and tenured faculty that would lead the former to have more exposure to undergraduates.  In fact, most assistant professors I know are so research-intensive and focused on that that they interact with undergraduate students less than certain tenured faculty who have decided to concentrate on teaching and undergraduate mentoring.

On the other hand, in many top US departments undergraduates can build closer relationships with postdocs: at such places postdocs teach a lot of the courses for undergraduate majors, some of them really enjoy doing so, and it is easier to build relationships with those who are 5-10 years older  than with those who are 10-50 years older.  That can be a problem, because while undergraduates may not even clearly perceive the distinction between postdocs and permanent faculty, admissions committees certainly will.

@PeteL.Clark: In my area—engineering—I believe it's probably because groups tend to get larger as professors progress in their careers. You simply can't get to know everybody working in your group well when there's dozens of them.

@PeteL.Clark It's the same in CS. Around here, good full profs. routinely have groups with 20+ members. As a master student, I literally did not meet with my formal thesis advisor during the entire process. I only met him in person when I mentioned that I was interested in doing a PhD.

That's interesting.  As you may know, math departments in the US are not organized into "research groups" (other than as a heads up as to what individual faculty members are interested in: some will belong to several groups).  I think there are no research groups in the humanities either, and not in all of the social sciences.  For that matter, what makes a good PhD candidate is someone who has taken (and completely mastered) the right classes and perhaps done some independent reading...which full professors are just as happy to supervise as anyone else.  It really is different.

(Lest anyone think I am knocking the STE (= STEM \setminus math) model: I have recently organized a "research team" of my own and am describing it prominently in my current NSF grant proposal.  I now have four PhD students -- which may be the most in my department -- and one postdoc.  I am seeing if I can work in an undergraduate to spend 3 hours a week working on my lecture notes and webpage.  In the American math world, all this is rather unusual.)


text:
In what cases is Ethical Committee approval not necessary for a study?
We intend to perform a study with a device we developed (approved for medical research). The tests are non-invasive and only require a very low power laser to be exposed to the skin (complying with all the existing norms).
People will have to travel from their place to our facilities periodically to perform this test.
We want to publish the results of our study, but we are afraid that at the end the journal might require an ethical committee approval (which costs a lot of time and money).
In what cases shouldn't be necessary an ethical committee approval?
Are there dermatology journals where this is not an issue for publication?

If you have an ethical committee at your university, then it should not  cost money. It may still take time. Other than that, if you do stuff to humans it is usually hard (and unethical) to avoid an ethical committee approval. We are usually very invested in our own research, which means that we are not the best judge of ethical issues arising from that research. Having a set of independent persons look at these potential ethical concerns is helpful.

I would think the best place to discover an answer regarding dermatology journal policies would be from the websites of such journals -- specifically the ones you want to publish with. (It doesn't matter what random strangers on the internet think if the actual journals disagree).

I am not in this field, but I'd be really surprised if any reputable journal would touch your study with a ten-foot pole if it didn't have ethics approval before it was begun. Not to mention potential legal consequences. I'm actually pretty startled that you would even consider proceeding without it.

Some years ago, a research project in my department involved having some people fill out a questionnaire. That was the only "human subjects" aspect of the research. Not only did this require IRB approval, but later, when some of the questions were modified, IRB approval was required again.

The exact regulations differ per country, but prospective studies with human subjects almost always need approval.
Since you tagged your question with "Netherlands", the relevant law is the WMO = "Wet medisch-wetenschappelijk onderzoek met mensen". Any research that falls under this law requires approval.

Research falls under the WMO if the following criteria are met:

It concerns medical/scientific research and
Participants are subject to procedures or are required to follow rules of behaviour

There is a lot of information on the website of the Central Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects (CCMO).
You can usually also apply for a waiver from the IRB (at least in the Netherlands). You submit a request with a description of your intended research and the IRB will review your plans to determine whether your research does fall under the WMO and needs approval, or whether this requirement can be waived.
From the description of your plans, it seems likely that you need approval. Not having approval would not only mean that journals won't accept your paper, it would also mean that you'd be doing something illegal.


text:
Where is the best places to find faculty job postings in physics?
I'm currently a postdoc interested in finding a tenure track faculty position. What are the best places to find job postings for such positions?
Seeing as this might be a very context/field dependent question, I am specifically looking for appointments in physics departments (preferably in the US).

If you're a member of the American Physical Society (APS), I would recommend looking there first (http://www.aps.org/careers/employment/index.cfm). Many universities will post here, as it's the official representative of physicists in the United States.
In addition, I recommend looking at university department webpages. If there is a certain region or state you'd like to work in, narrow your search to universities there.

There is no need to be a member to look  for jobs.  In my opinion, it is not worth joining, unless you have to go to one of their conferences.

Though not specific to physics, I think The Chronicle of Higher Education job search site seems to cover several fields fairly well, and I looked there often when I was searching. In fact, narrowing down the search at the Chronicle job site for physics faculty/research positions in the US yields several relevant hits.
For completeness, here are a few other job sites that I've used that you may find useful:

AcademicKeys, with a listing of current physics openings in the US here.
HigherEdJobs, with a listing of current physics openings in the US here.

One of the best sites for job seekers is the Academic Jobs Wiki.  Not only does it have postings, but people also update whether they've gotten past the first round, second round, phone or physical interviews, and other status changes including searches being shut down by provosts, etc.. This lets you know whether to keep hoping or to give up.
http://academicjobs.wikia.com/wiki/PhysicsPositions
There are academic job wikis for other fields, I've only posted the physics one above.
Update 2019.7: please note that in the four years since posting this, I’ve heard several reports of people gaming the wiki jobs system: reporting a position closed when it isn’t, reporting a different direction to the search to throw off competitors, etc. As with all crowdsourced systems, use with some caution and only as a supplement to other sources of information.

Brightrecruits is a UK based website, run by the Institute of Physics, which advertises jobs in physics worldwide, in both industry and academia. There's also jobs.ac.uk; also UK based, also has adverts for jobs in academia globally.


text:
ZbMATH and conflict of interest
ZbMATH sent an article for post-publication review. As of a little more than a month ago, I worked at the same department in the same university as one of the authors. We have not cooperated on a paper, but have otherwise interacted.
Should I decline to review the paper due to this conflict of interest (as I would do with a peer review for e.g. a journal article), or do zbMATH reviews have more lax standards for conflicts of interest? The reviews are post-publication, and for a review database and not a journal, and furthermore they are not anonymous, so they are quite different from journal peer reviews.
The review guidelines of zbMATH did not mention conflicts of interest.

Can you elaborate about the purpose and impact of the requested review? Is this like a book review?

Zentralblatt used to publish reviews written by the author of the paper. I don't know whether that's still the case.

ZbMath is like Math Reviews in concept. It publishes summaries of already published articles, to help those perusing the literature to find articles of interest. These summaries are, generally speaking, not evaluative, rather informative (in some cases the published reviews are simply quotations from the article's abstract) and they are signed. Since there is no evaluation, there is not much likelihood of conflict of interest. A reviewer could downplay an important paper by writing a short succinct review, or exaggerate the importance of a minor paper by writing a long review, and one perhaps occasionally encounters things like this, but neither really does much damage, except perhaps to deflate or inflate an ego.

I don't know about ZbMath, but some reviews on Math Reviews are, let's say, very "evaluative"...

(A few examples: http://www2.math.ou.edu/~kmartin/mr2006.html)

@FedericoPoloni: These examples are relatively rare, and I think at least the negative ones would not have been published were their evaluations not essentially correct. Said another way, they fit in the scheme of providing a guide to the literature. Pointing out demonstrable plagiarism is a service. The cited examples do not seem to me evidence of conflicts of interest.

Well, Mathematical Reviews review are sometimes quite inaccurate and and can negatively impact the way a paper is viewed (e.g., by making it sound like the main results are already known when they aren't).  However, I agree this is quite rare and is more likely to happen when the reviewer inadvertently misunderstands the paper/literature, rather than by malicious design.  And authors can contact the AMS if a review of their paper is really inaccurate.  (As I recall, there was such a dispute for at least 1 example on my list that @FedericoPoloni linked to.)

I posed the question to the editorial staff at zbMATH and got the following response:

We think that being employed at the same institution as one of the authors is not per se an instance of conflict of interest for a reviewer. However, if you personally feel uncomfortable with reviewing the particular paper assigned to you, just let us know, and we'll ask another reviewer.


text:
Criteria to evaluate consulting opportunity
You're an academic researcher who has done some work in a particular topic.  You receive an email from a stranger, working at a small company, interested in your work and wanting to discuss possible consulting.  Sounds interesting, but you have research to perform, grant proposals to write, classes to teach...
What criteria should you use to evaluate whether or not this is worthwhile?  What are things you look for in possible consulting work? And what are turn-offs and things you want to avoid?

Balance is always tricky but basically the guidelines that I follow are:

If the consulting will help me learning something new, +1
If the consulting will pay me a lot of money, +1
If the consulting will improve my reputation, +1
If the consulting will allow me access to something I want (new data), +1

On the other hand,

If it takes a lot time, -1
If it offers little or no pay, -1
If it could damage my reputation, -5
If it would be a bit boring, -1

In the end, I just do the math.

How would you preliminarily assess the expected value of those, before committing a lot of time to investigate?

I'd start with a simple telephone conversion where they get to tell me what they have to offer. It might take 15 minutes to get to the point where I could see if it is worth investigating more.


text:
Can both a grad. student & faculty member cosign a recommendation letter?
Can two people, a professor and a graduate student, sign a recommendation letter? The concern here is that the professor knows little about the student and the graduate student knows all about the student.
My concern here is that if the professor is contacted, he will not be able to provide further information, where as if I was listed as the primary contact: I could.

Incidentally, unless you have specific reason to think you will be contacted for follow-up, I don't think this is an enormous concern.

My concern here is that if the professor is contacted, he will not be able to provide further information — Then he can't sign the letter.

Like Noah, I had a situation where two advisors co-signed a letter of recommendation. I should mention that the people reviewing the letter found this an unusual situation—and had claimed that they had not seen that in twenty years of reading recommendation letters. So this is definitely not standard practice. I suspect it would be memorable, but I am not sure it would be actually useful.
However, the difference was that my two co-signers were equal in rank. Your situation has a professor with a graduate student providing most of the insights. I suspect you will need to have the professor adapt the graduate student's comments, and then sign the letter. In the case where feedback is needed, the professor would then need to get the relevant details from the graduate student.

Please see the slight change I made to the question, about being contacted post-recommendation letter.

You can have more than one person sign a recommendation letter.  I had one letter signed by two people.  But it is unusual.  My understanding is that the usual approach in your situation would be for the graduate student to help write the letter, but only the professor to sign it.

(My situation was a teaching letter, and it was a somewhat odd situation where each writer outranked the other under different measures of rank.)

My concern here is that if the professor is contacted, he will not be able to provide further information, where as if I was listed as the primary contact. I could.

Um... Having anyone but the actual author of the letter sign the letter is totally unethical in my opinion. If a professor can't formulate a recommendation on their own, they shouldn't "write" one.

@JeffE I understand your point, though sometimes you do just have to write letters for other people to sign or they won't happen.  That said, in this situation (which I have been in in the grad student role), I think it's better to say that the grad student can supply the professor with their assessment, and the professor can use that to fill in some details in their letter.  If they happen to do some cutting and pasting, that's between them and God.

@JeffE Broadening from the specific context of recommendation letters, it's ubiquitous for letters to be signed by someone whose subordinates had input into it.  The signer is taking responsibility for the content of the letter, not promising that no one else contributed.

@JeffE: This also ignores the reality of how things are done in other countries. In Germany, for instance, the head of the institute may have to sign lots of documents on behalf of underlings without full knowledge of the contents, because only the head's signature is "acceptable." (It's situations like this that also tend to leave "letters of reference" as statements of job duties, without critical analysis of the quality of the work.)

@BenWebster I think it's better to say that the grad student can supply the professor with their assessment, and the professor can use that to fill in some details in their letter — I agree that is better, although better still would be "The graduate student (or other subordinate) provides relevant raw data, which the professor uses to formulate the actual recommendation letter."

@aeismail Yes, I'm familiar with official administrative letters from department heads, expressing the Official View of the Department, that are actually written by subordinates; I've written a few of those letters myself.  But even then, the department head is expected to have "full knowledge of its content"; that is, they always read and approve the letter before signing it.  Also, reference letters for graduate admissions (and for faculty hiring) are not official institutional pronouncements, but statements of personal opinion; having anyone else write them is dishonest.

I certainly didn't mean to imply, and I'm sure Ben didn't either, that it would be ethical for the professor not to even read the letter!  In my opinion that would be obviously unethical.

If a person's signature is on the letter, they obviously should be reading it. If they're not, they're putting themselves at liability. I would prefer to have both signatures, again for the exact reason that is being brought up. Even if only raw data is supplied, the 'Signer' cannot supply more than he/she wrote or has available. Whereas the Grad. student can.


text:
Hiring a faculty consultant
We need to hire a computer scientist with a very particular specialty as a consultant for a long term industrial research project.  We've read the relevant papers and so know who does good work in it.  But we don't know the first thing about hiring a professor as a consultant.

Do I just email them and say "Hi, Dr. So and so, I've read your paper about X and want to discuss hiring you as a consultant"? Or do I need some type of introduction?  Specifically, if I'm coming from a small business (with the funds to hire them, mind you, but a small business nonetheless), will they take it seriously?
How can I evaluate their abilities to be a good consultant? I know they have the brains and the know-how, but I need more than that: I need someone who will work on the problems we have, giving us a reasonable assessment of their likelihood to solve them, keeping us up to date, and clearing communicating their results.
Once hired, how do we effectively manage them towards our goals?
Currently, we have funding to hire them only for the initial stages. With good results, we have investors to approach, and we'd like to say "We're working on this problem; we have Prof. X on it, who's done this so far; with another $1M, we could get here." Will academics be supportive of such an arrangement?
How do we protect our intellectual property? Our plan is to leverage existing research towards new technological applications.  What's to stop our consultants from taking our ideas on their own? This is especially a concern in the initial evaluation stages, where we don't have a business relationship, but need to discuss our applications in some detail nonetheless.

Finally: Are there any resources on how to do this? Books, articles, services? We'd really like to benefit from someone's experience on this.

As an academic with a history of consulting, the proper way to approach the person in question is to contact him directly. Email might work but for initial contacts phone might be better. If he/she is geographically close, a face-to-face would be even better. The initial conversation is really about whether he/she is interested in consulting in his/her area of expertise. If yes, then you can start to dig a little deeper into the project.
Be clear and up front with what you have and what you hope to achieve. Make it clear what the limitations of the project are and that the project might or might not move past the initial phase.
It is unlikely that the size of your business would be an issue but that really depends on his/her personality. You'll know when you ask.
About evaluating if he/she can be a good consultant, explain very clearly what your concerns are. There is no reason for the Prof to be concerned since you do not know each other there is not an issue of personalities and you are not doubting him/her, you are simply saying what you are concerned about. If you have read this person's work you should have an idea of his/her ability to communicate clearly.
As far as managing this person toward the goal, handle him/her as you would any other employee. Normally consultants expect a little bit more freedom but, to repeat myself, be clear with what you want and that might include an update every 2-3 days (more or less depending on the nature of the project - you might want daily updates).
As for protecting your intellectual property, have the Prof sign an NDA/non-compete. This might be an issue if it will in any way limit the Prof from exploring his/her own work. For this, you will need to negotiate what kind of legal protections you feel you need. If you write the non-compete in a narrow enough way, the Prof might feel comfortable enough (he/she is getting something out of the deal).

Thank you - this is truly helpful.  In short you are telling me: Treat it like any other employee, there's nothing to be afraid of.  Even though Prof. Johnson is a world renowned scholar, if he's a consultant, it means he's happy to act as an employee.

This answer was very helpful.  I posted a follow up in http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11737/very-large-consulting-projects since I thought it was an independent question - Would you be able to take a look at it?

One key question to keep in mind is why someone would want to work as a consultant, since that determines how you interact with them.  You're hiring someone who already has a full-time job, and who has chosen to work in academia despite having skills that are valued by industry, so you need to convince them that this is worth their time.  It's possible you can find someone short of money who is specifically looking for a part-time job on the side, but that will greatly limit your choices.  (The best consultants are often already the best paid faculty to start with, and they generally have many consulting opportunities to choose from.)
In practice, I see three main reasons why someone might value a consulting job, in roughly decreasing order:

You offer something they just can't get in academia.  For example, unique data or experiences, extensive resources, dramatic real-world impact, etc.  A computer scientist might work with Facebook to get access to their social network data, or Google to be able to study search and indexing on a vast scale.  This lets them advance their understanding of the field in ways they could not have done otherwise (and hopefully they can publish the results).
Even if you can't offer anything unique or unavailable in academia, you may still be working on cutting-edge problems that help inspire and shape their academic research program.  The difficulty here is that the world is full of cutting-edge research problems waiting to be solved.  To convince someone to work on your problems rather than their own ideas, you need some argument.  Maybe your problems are especially exciting or important, maybe they are a perfect match for this researcher's background and interests, or maybe you are offering enough money to outweigh other considerations.
If what you want is really routine (with little or no academic research significance), then you may need to offer a lot of money.

This only deals with the first part of your question, on approaching faculty, but I see that as critical: once you establish mutual interest, you can work out the other details.  Getting to that point is the hard part, and how you frame things can make a real difference.  When you first approach someone, it's much better to say "Here's an opportunity in which we'll pay you to do exciting things that will advance the field and your own research" than "Here's what we need and how much we would like to pay.  Would you be willing to do it for us?"

This is a really interesting point - What type of variation is there among consultant motivations? Is the first question always one of intellectual interest? Or does being able to apply their knowledge to practical industry, and get paid for it, suffice?

@SRobertJames: Hmm, it probably varies from person to person (as well as between fields).  I don't have a good feeling for overall statistics.


text:
Applying for masters again, will the application be evaluated on the basis of undergraduate/Bachelors or the most recent postgraduate grades
Applying for masters but have a previous uncompleted masters on my profile. Will that grades from that masters be factored in when the admission committee evaluates my application. What if i have very good GPA is Bachelors, but got bad grades in Masters due to some circumstances.

Your entire record is usually considered.

The admission committee will see your entire record.  It is up to them to decide how to consider and weigh the various parts of it - different people will feel differently about this, and there is no way to know what the sense of the committee as a whole will be.
If you had special circumstances that affected your grades, you should address them in your statement of purpose or cover letter.
See also:
How do you get a bad transcript past Ph.D. admissions?
Should I mention a "math depression" I went through in my letter of motivation?
Applying for PhD after a poor master's


text:
What is the industry equivalent of a post doc?
I've just finished my PhD in Genetics, and I am looking at moving into industry, as a scientist.
"Senior Scientist" seems to be the closest match, because the salary is slightly higher than a junior post-doc.

In some fields, it's called a "postdoc".

I am not sure how much sense this question makes, given that no position in a research lab is really comparable to a postdoc position.
That being said, I have seen the term "research staff member", or just "researcher" or "scientist" being used a lot as an entry-level, permanent position in a research lab which requires a PhD. "Senior scientist" or "senior researcher" is typically a bit more advanced ("researchers" become "senior researchers" through regular career progression). However, concrete names of course vary between companies, so you should never assume much of anything about a position purely based on its name.

"Senior Scientist" seems to be the closest match, because the salary is slightly higher than a junior post-doc.

That's a very bad heuristic. Too many other factors influence salary for it to be of any worth for judging the level of a position.

Some companies, including the one that I work at, actually do offer positions that are explicitly postdocs and fill the same type of role as postdocs in academia: a limited-term position connected to some specific set of projects/responsibilities, with the expectation that the person will move up or move elsewhere at the end of the period.
Beyond that, industry titles tell you nothing, because there is nothing even vaguely like a standard.  Where I work, "senior scientist" is approximately equivalent to "associate professor" in academia.  At a smaller company I know of, it means "has a master's degree." At yet another company, it might mean "has been here for 30 years."  You just don't know.
Instead, look at the background required and responsibilities associated with the job, and see if they match what you have to offer.  Beware that position postings are often the result of a mangled committee process, and if it calls for a long laundry list of skills, you're probably in good shape to apply if you have at least a couple of them.
Salary may also vary wildly, depending on the sector of industry and particular company, but as a rule of thumb it should be well above what you would be paid as a postdoc in academia.  In computer science, for example, a Ph.D. entry-level position in industry gets somewhere between 1.5x and 4x a typical postdoc salary (it's one of the compensations of stepping off the traditional track).  Sites like Glassdoor are a good way to tell whether you are being made a fair offer or not.


text:
Can too many credits force you to graduate early?
I'm about to enroll at a local university as a mathematics major, with a view to later transferring and studying engineering.
I can receive enough credits through AP, CLEP, and credit by exam to cover 1-2 years of study.
However, I'm unsure of how many years I would like to study at university.  Likely 3-4.  Could receiving enough credit for 2 years hurt my chances of being able to transfer and spend 4 years total at university?
I'm relying on federal grants and state and university scholarships to fund my study; could those be withdrawn if I have enough credits to graduate but choose not to?

At my university, as soon as a student satisfies the graduation requirements for their current degree program, they are done, thank you and goodbye. So students who enter with lots of AP credit (most undergraduate majors in my department) often put off an easy distribution requirement until their last semester.

One possibility to look into is going for a B.A. degree rather than a B.S. degree (assuming what I say next applies where you're at), which could require a larger number of non-major elective courses, and by putting off taking those non-major elective courses, you technically will not have enough credits to graduate. I actually did this (finishing with over 160 credit hours), but not for the reason you'd want to, but instead because I was not able to satisfy the more stringent foreign language requirements for the B.S. degree (the degree those planning graduate study nearly always got).

Yes, this is a potential concern, particularly with regard to financial aid.
US financial aid sources are commonly restricted to be used only for education that is leading toward a particular degree.  You can't take random courses indefinitely and expect the government to keep paying for it.
My institution's financial policy has the following clause:

Only course work that is required for my degree will count towards my enrollment status. Once I complete the requirements for a single degree, even if I haven't applied for graduation, I am no longer eligible for aid for that program. The fact that I might be getting a dual degree and haven’t completed the requirements for the second degree doesn't change this.

Sometimes this can be "gamed" by completing the actual degree requirements very slowly while taking lots of other courses in the meantime; but there are likely to be limits in place.
You should discuss your plan of study carefully with both an academic advisor and a financial aid officer at the university you plan to attend.  (The academic advisor might not be an expert on financial aid details, and vice versa, so it is important to consult both.)

You might want to add that, absent financial aide concerns, the norm is to apply for graduation (some students may be doing a double baccalaureate, so there's no reason to force someone to graduate upon initially receiving the requisite number of credits), so he could otherwise probably go as long as he wants

@guifa: Perhaps, but still, it needs to be checked. Another institution I know has a rule that nobody can enroll for more than 10 semesters, regardless of aid.


text:
Engineers/Scientists to break into management consulting
Engineers and Scientists are probably not the kind of people management consulting companies look for. But I think many of such would be highly qualified and a good fit for management consulting positions, especially where vision and strategy are needed.
What would you suggest for a scientist or an engineer to succeed in getting a job, considering that the hardest part is to even get a phone call?

I'm afraid I've got to say that many of the things that one might consider an asset, are in reality going to be a hindrance.
Rigour, consistency, reason, domain knowledge, ability to describe uncertainty, always prepared to put appropriate caveats on findings: these are all encumbrances in almost all management consulting.
What you need to cultivate is the ability to form strategy on the basis of a fairly superficial understanding of a business; and the ability to persuade people to pay you lots for you to borrow their watch and then tell them the time.
Oh, and do watch House of Lies through, end to end, a couple of times, to get a feel for it.
Having said that, there is a tiny niche in management consulting available for the skilled technician who's prepared to say no to clients who want "regular" management consulting, and only take on clients who want a thorough, rational, informed job done. There aren't many of those clients, whch is why it's a tiny niche. And it's more likely to be a boutique subject-specific consultancy. But if you find one (or found one, i.e. you are the founder), and it gets the right kind of clients, you'll be very happy (and completely exhausted much of the time), and financially very comfortable while the clients are there.

Your most likely bet is to sell yourself as an operations management specialist. There's an entire field called Industrial Engineering, which is essentially business optimization techniques. There are many aspects of this field that you've likely covered in your coursework, such as optimization methods and probability theory. Emphasizing this in your portfolio can help land you positions in a vast array of fields, ranging from broadly-defined operations management to process engineering to personnel management.

I guess the problem is to even get a call from them, since I have no background in business, and it won't be sufficient to say I believe I'm the right person for them. Do you think reading books about management consulting and mentioning them on the CV would help?

Looking at the current set of responses, they seem to be heavily biased. As someone having spoken to several PhDs in management consulting, let me try to clarify some of the nuances.
First, it is not true that you have to let go of rigor, but rather need to be time-sensitive. This is because the management consulting model works on an hourly-basis and therefore, while consulting on a project, your time determines your payment. Most companies, have several reasons to hire external consultants. At times for the expertise, sometimes for an external perspective, and at other times for helping them communicate capabilities and constraints to their superiors. Regardless, one thing is sure that the time-sensitive nature of the field leads to shorter project life-cycles and at times lack of implementation, which is a stark contrast from a PhD experience where the candidate is the sole worker and implementor.
Second, it is completely false that consulting firms consider PhDs as overqualified. In fact, in top-tier management consulting, advanced degree holders (PhDs) enter at the 'associate' level rather than the 'analyst' level, and generally speaking, move up faster.
Third, and logically following the last point, it is a misconception that consulting firms do not entertain advanced degree holders. In fact, the last I checked, ~10%+ of Mckinsey & Co's total employees were PhDs (as listed on their website). Further, most top management consulting firms have a special set of recruiters meant to be hiring advanced degree holders. You may find them on the company websites.
Finally, I admit that as a field, management consulting has its lows such as those mentioned in the answers thus far, but it would be naive to think that other fields (specially academia) do not have their own shortcomings. Overall, I think that the world needs more PhDs and the management consulting world needs more PhDs working to make corporations better, especially since corporations affect several aspects of our lives.

A management consulting company once tried to recruit me (I have a PhD in computer science). They said they wanted me for my brain and they didn't care so much about my background. That said, I didn't have a PhD at the time, so maybe my brain is now spoiled.

I have a PhD in ECE from an Ivy League school, and yet, noby ever called me for a phone interview...

Other than Sheth's answer, all the responses (including the green checkmarked one) are misleading.  25+ years out of date and written by people hypothesizing versus having experience.  I recommend to any students looking into this avenue to talk to your college career center and to just read some recruiting websites (start with McKinsey).

In the late 90s, McKinsey was bringing in 1/3 (real number) of US associates as APDs (alternate professional degree, non MBA).  And the global percent was higher.  They had a well established recruiting and training process.  Other firms were slower but starting to do the same (more the top firms than the lower tiers).
Even for top tier MBA students (HBS, etc.) the odds are hard to get consulting jobs, especially at premier firms.  Same applies to Ph.D.s, perhaps made more difficult that they have less option to go to lower rung firms (that just bring in MBAs).  Note, there's a 2012 comment about "I had a Ph.D. and no phone interview".  So?  Just having the union card itself is not distinctive.  Most ballplayers don't get a combine invite either.  It's just odds, just numbers.  If you don't get it, you don't have the case interview solving analytical instinct they are looking for
They're just looking for willing, trainable brains and the ability to do the work.  Figure something out from a blank slate.  Problem-solve, etc.  Specific technical or field training is irrelevant.  They will put the English major into a fab or the material scientist into a film studio in a heartbeat.  After all most of the MBAs are generalists without specific industry focus also.
Sameness:  Job is the exact same gig as what an HBS MBA gets.  Same salary and bonus.  Same assignments.  Same offices.  Learning curve is fast so after a gig or two, there's no difference.  Plus the case interview selection process has already screened for candidates with qualitative analytical ability within the Ph.D. pool.
Slight differences:  They do/did have a 3-week training program to give the MBAs the basic toolkit (learn some micro, learn how to do DCF and what goes into the WACC).  Good deal.  There's maybe a slight disadvantage in not having the MBA for some post consulting interviewing (just dependent on HR departments), but still plenty of options where they just look at people post consulting, not worrying about the MBA.  Also, maybe the MBA students sort of "want it more" as their dream job.  That was Marvin Bower's observation. One other small difference is that most MBAs have pre-MBA working experience (often at the sort of client you serve) so at least they've had a "real job".  Plus, you can consider the argument that it's a waste of a Ph.D. (the actual subject matter technical training).  And that you ought to be "curing cancer", not analyzing merger synergies.
Note that consulting has its good/bad aspects, including for the MBAs.  Sure, read House of Lies book.  Author was a Booz associate so he'd seen the sausage get made.  (He was also the popup video show producer for MTV, which explains the zany writing style.)  It's an OK expose and anyone who has been there will read parts that ring true to them.  But I also wouldn't assume you know what it's like from a book versus from doing it.  Like all the 23 year olds who think they know what an I-bank is like because they read some Michael Lewis.  If anything we need a trenchant expose of academia.  It's not like it's all daisies there either...


text:
Should you revise a manuscript when only two of the three reviewers provide a positive review?
The title is a bit vague by design. What I was actually wondering is, what happens if 1 out of 3 reviewers decides that the paper should not be accepted, but the other 2 reviewers find it interesting and suggest for it to be accepted? Must all 3 reviewers suggest that it is accepted or is that up to the editor? What is the most common outcome in situation like this?
I'm stuck in this situation now - all 3 reviewers suggested some changes; while 2 were quite optimistic and also said that my work is interesting, the third one was really against it and suggested that we rewrite article anew, thus semi-rejected it; the reviewer really seems determined that our paper should not be accepted. Now, if I waste 2 months applying the changes and then wait another 3 for a review only to find out that the third reviewer still thinks it should be rejected, I've wasted almost half a year on nothing. The alternative is to resend the article to some other journal.
Any kind of feedback will be appreciated.

Do the suggested changes improve the paper?  If they do, you should make them whether you're continuing with this journal or not.  If they don't, you shouldn't make them and explain why you think the changes don't improve the paper to the editor.

Ask the editor. You can say that you will try to address not only R1 and R2's comments, but also R3's comments as much as possible, and they may be able to give you an indication whether they feel this being worthwhile.

Referees only make recommendations.  The editor always makes the decision.  In particular, the editor has the right to decide in opposition to the majority opinion or even the unanimous opinion of the referees.

Short answer: address all the comments.  Many times, a reviewer is negative initially because the paper is not written properly or the reviewer missed some key information.  On the second pass, things may change for the better or worst, assuming the paper has improved.  Another aspect is that you don't know how much weight the editor places on the negative reviewer.  If said reviewer is an established researcher, then his/her comments will weight more, especially if the paper is on topic.  Otherwise, it bears little weight.

To add to the other answer that has been posted so far (from @mgbdog), I will add something from the perspective of a past editor in chief and frequent associate editor, in the field of computer science.
Generally (look at the various posts about journal workflows) the reviewers provide their feedback, an associate editor recommends, and then the editor in chief either accepts that recommendation or pushes back in some fashion.  So the comment about the editor wanting to proceed is accurate in the aggregate but it really refers to multiple people as a rule.
But the key here is that when one reviewer recommends rejection, and other reviewers were more positive, I assume that the OP received a "major" revision that means it will be returned to the reviewers.  Two already liked it so probably will be in favor of the revision.  The one who didn't, if they were negative enough, may actually not be willing to review it again (after all, the editors didn't listen to them).  I have encountered that several times as an associate editor.  If they do review it again, hopefully they are professional about it and read it with an open mind, and you get your opportunity to improve the paper and respond to their criticism.  So hopefully they are convinced to accept.
If they don't, there is indeed a chance the paper will be rejected after revision.  Just because the editor said to give you a chance to fix it doesn't mean in the end it is fixable.  I once did a journal article that got back extensive comments and a very specific warning from the associate editor that we should not assume that the major revision we were doing actually would result in acceptance. We must have worked on it for another year and with a second minor revision after that, but it got in.
But just because it may be rejected doesn't mean you shouldn't try.  With 2/3 favorable, you seem well positioned, as long as you believe you can either fix what #3 complained about or make an argument in your response that they have it wrong.

The editor will make the final decision, not the reviewers.  Often you will receive a message (either via email or on the journal's submission site) from the editor that summarizes the reviewer comments and either outright rejects the paper or asks for a revised manuscript.  Sometimes, it will specify "minor revision" or "major revision".  As long as that message does not outright reject your paper, the editor wants to continue considering your manuscript for publication, and you should submit a revised manuscript.
Even if you choose to submit to a different journal, you will need to disclose whether the paper has previously been submitted elsewhere.  As such, the second journal can contact the first journal for reviewer comments.  Thus, the negative reviewer's comments will sort of "follow you" regardless of where you try to publish this paper.
Best bet is to stick with the first journal -- most journals that do not outright reject a paper after the first round of reviews will eventually accept the paper after reviewer comments are properly addressed.

The comment that previous submissions must be disclosed has to be a domain-specific issue -- in computer science, if you submit to a new publication from scratch, you get a clean slate.   Sometimes I wish that past reviews were available ... and if you get a reviewer (for a journal or conference) who has seen it before, you'll have that effect anyway.  But there is nothing that says you have to tell them where else it was sent, or the reviews they received.

Disclosure of previous submissions is also unknown to me. Which field does this apply to?

@silvado check author guidelines for IEEE Signal Processing Letters


text:
Can you exclude issue numbers in references based on APA 6th edition?
I'm currently working on my thesis (communication science), and I'm wondering about the issue number in the reference list.
A teacher told me that I don't need to include the issue number. But I can't find anything about it, so I wondered if somebody here knows about it.
The current mark-up that I'm using now is as follows (I mainly cite scientific journals):
Lastname1, Initials.,  & Lastname2, Initials. (Year). Title. Journal name, volume number (issue number), page-page. DOI / Link
Can I exclude the issue number or is imperative to include it?

If there is an issue number, you should include it. That's how APA6 is defined.

The general rule in APA 6 is that if the journal is paginated by year, then you exclude issue number and just report volume number. From my experience, just about all journals in psychology are paginated by volume/year (and not issue number), so you can almost always exclude issue number.
There is a general discussion here on how to determine whether a periodical is paginated by issue.
However, I honestly can't see myself going through every reference and checking whether it is from one of the rare journals that is paginated by issue. And presumably if there was occasionally a journal that happened to paginate by issue, it would not be the end of the world if the issue information was excluded from the reference. You still have authors, year, title, and so on. So, that's enough to identify the reference.

Thanks! That makes sense. The blog post is really helpful!


text:
How to choose salary of principal investigator on NIH grant?
I am writing a grant for the NIH, and I need to put a salary down for the PI. I was wondering, do I choose how much to put down, or is there a specific pre-determined amount?

Your university's grants office will know.

Are you that PI? In general, for a proposal, you need to develop a budget (and a budget justification) that lists how many months someone will work on the project; the person's monthly salary equals what their employer pays them as part of their regular contract -- i.e., you cannot just "choose" a salary. (In the case of NIH, there is an additional complication in that NIH has a cap, but that is a separate issue.)

Thank you. No, I am not that PI. I am the poor fellow who does all the scut work. I am pretty sure my PI gets paid something like $200,000. 5% of that amount is a huge amount when the grant we are applying for is only $150,000....? I can't pay them less?


text:
Whether to publish one big paper or many smaller papers for a given research project?
Let's say I invented a system to solve a problem. To run this system, I made my own algorithm.I also created some other things for that system. The main contribution was supposed to be the system.So is it a good idea to have as many research papers out of the project as I can? Or to publish a single research paper?
I have seen a lot of researchers where they were targeting a single problem and they proposed a single solution. Now, what they would do is write a research paper for every component separately. Then they would write a single research paper showing how all the components would fit together.
So is it a good idea to try and increase the number of publications you can have out of a single research project?
My own personal opinion is that the quality of your research matters not the quantity. But I have also seen a number of institutions requiring a specific number of publications to even apply for their jobs.

For once it is obligatory SMBC not XKCD http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1624#comic

The way I see it, there are a number of factors at play:

Your goals: Do you want your paper to be published in a high-impact journal? If so they will most likely be interested in the whole story rather than a small piece of it.
Readability/General appeal: Can you make a coherent story with individual components? Will they all be interesting for wider audience on their own? In other words, if you opt for multiple papers out of one project; can you make sure these will be able to stand on their own? I personally think going for multiple papers is only valid when combining them into a single big paper would push aside some of your interesting results (or methods) to a metaphorical corner
Limitations imposed by the target journal: Can you actually put together all that in a single manuscript? In biomedical research you always get a limit on the number of words in the manuscript, and there is only so much you can put in supplementary.

With regards to quality-vs-quantity, I heard that early on in your career quantity is more important while as you become more and more senior, quality becomes the main concern. I am often told that as a PhD student I can, and should try to get involved in as many papers as I can. Around the time I do post-doc, however, it's time I pay a lot of attention to where I put my name and try to work on a good paper, preferably in a high-impact journal.

I think we all want fewer but high quality publications but many aspects of academia seems to favour quantity. We should also not forget that apart from numbers of publications, the impact of them through different index measures such as the "h" and number of citations play a vital role in evaluating your output. A paper with no citations is not "good" for your record. I think one has to consider when our publications count and I can think of two and a possible third case (in the following I am concentrating on numbers/quality not impact/h but one could (should?) argue that quality = high impact/h):

Publications count when you seek employment. The publications will be scrutinized by peers and in this case the quality definitely counts since the publication will be the key evaluation parameter of your scientific capacity, possibly in parallel to your ability to attract funding.
Publications count when you apply for funding. In this case it is not likely that your publications will be read and evaluated; your proposal will. And, your publication list will be looked at as a sign of productivity. So in this case I would argue that numbers count (not even first/leading authorship may be critical although must be present).
Publications may be important when it comes to promotions and particularly salary discussions. Here it is less clear if quality or quantity counts but I would argue that quantity is more important since your productivity can be shown as a statistic ( by the dept. and univ.) whereas quality is more difficult to quantify directly.

Since you are likely to seek funding more often than switch jobs, one might suspect that quantity is a must. In my funding system, a certain productivity is expected and in this case it is merely a number/year (on average; if you fall short it will be taken as a negative). At the same time you may lose opportunities when applying for jobs if quality does not enter the picture.
So there is need for a balance between quantity and quality. Very few can survive in the long term by writing few but high profile quality papers and it is also not likely you will survive only on quantity if that is at the expense of quality. We of course need to remember that all papers that count are peer reviewed and as such have formally passed quality control.
My personal reflection is that most of us do as much as we can to produce good quality science. If one were to try to constantly push low-quality manuscripts to gain quantity, ones reputation would probably soon suffer, so there may be additional equalizers at play.
So to answer the question: yes quantity counts but cannot be gained at the expense of quality. To "squeeze" as much as possible out of your research is good in the sense that your experience gets out to the public but negative if your research becomes fragmented across several publications that are lost in the background noise. Finding a good balance and seeing how many quality publications can be produced from a project idea is important.

The UK is rapidly moving to a low quantity high quality model. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is an exercise that is conducted every 4 years and is used to rate the research quality of "departments" (they are not truly departments, but the details are irrelevant). For the REF each researcher is expected to return 4 items (i.e., 1 per year on average) and these items are rated on a 4 star scale, with 4* being the best and encompassing about 10-20% of the submitted work. Given how REF computes value, an person who publishes a single 4* paper and nothing else over a 4 year window is more valuable than an individual who publishes 100 3* publications. For the REF quantity above 4 is completely valueless and quality trumps all.
Research councils in the UK are following suit saying that they are uninterested in funding 2* research.

Are there any similar trends in other countries? In Europe, say? Also, do you have a link or further information about how quality is evaluated?

@FaheemMitha Australia has ERA. I am not sure what other countries are doing, but I think other countries are adopting similar frameworks. As for the evaluation of quality it is purely up to the review panels and kept secret. We have been told that quality is evaluated on an individual basis such that not all papers from journal X will get the same ranking.

Hi, Daniel. Thanks for the information/clarifications.

Sadly, Italy is going in the opposite direction. Grossly simplifying, the first criterion to apply for promotion is achieving a certain number of publications (anything indexed in Scopus counts 1) and of citations over time (anything, including self-cites, counts 1).

Australia has a simultaneous Quantity system (HERDC) plus a Quality system (ERA); these are both conducted at the Institutional level.  Individual researchers still need to match the appointment and promotion criteria that differ based on disciplinary expectation.  So there's still a quantity push in Australia.

This is quite a complex issue. Because I feel both systems are not ideal. Encouraging people to only publish 4 extremely good paper could be worse than 10 very good paper. However this reduces the danger of predatory journals. Whereas what @FedericoPoloni mentioned is even more problematic, because this would actually encourage researchers to go the predatory journal route...

It depends on many factors. People may love to have a single "great" article, but there can be obstacles:

Many institutions or countries have objective measures such as the number of publications, being published in a journal which is indexed in Web of Science, and has a high rank among the competitors, etc. These limit the authors.
Journal limitations. I personally love to have perfect articles. But those will be very long, Journals would not love them very much because the reader gets bored. So a way is to split it. As a matter of fact in some instances, it was the reviewer or editor who asked me to remove many parts of my article. I could not stand seeing they are going to be flushed away forever, so I published them as another article.
And finally, note that it is difficult and sometimes impossible to "subjectively" judge the quality of a paper and say "well this paper is high-quality and is worth three average papers"... I have seen strange judgments from senior researchers. For example, I have seen the results of a nation-level contest, where a very poor paper was selected as #1 by 5 judges and another paper which was absolutely unique in its field and very high-quality, was chosen as #2, because the judges were not familiar with the content of the latter (or whatever other reasons they might have) [they later changed their minds when the researcher explained the research to those idiots! but the grant was already given to the poor research!]... So in such situations, objective scores are the only tool for qualification, and the notion "quality" is not even applicable! This is why some researchers would prefer split

two comments regarding the first and the second point respectively: 1) I could, and probably would, argue whether or not # of publications is an objective measure of the quality of research. But yes, it is used often. 2) Perfect articles != long articles, IMHO. What makes them "perfect" could be the fact that they express the same idea with much less but well chosen words. Or that it the paper is based on a well-formed question and well-executed series of experiments. So I do not think that length goes hand in hand with quality

I think they are "positively correlated" but the correlation is not 100%. At many instances, a perfect article needs a perfect discussion as well. With too many variables to be discussed, no matter the discussion is polished in an excellent way to be as concise as possible, it would become long. We are talking about the report, not necessarily the research. But again I agree that the correlation coefficient between paper length and its quality is not 100%, meaning that there are papers which are perfect but still short (such as the 1-page paper on the discovery of DNA, published in Nature).

But I can't agree that perfect article != long article. I have the chance to have both of them, bit sometimes you have no other choice rather than ignoring many worthy items or split your report.


text:
How to determine the number of citations an author had on a given date using Google Scholar?
Is there a way to learn the number of citations by author on a particular date in the past? For example, how many citations did Author X have on 1/10/18?

If you want to do it for a particular researcher in the future, you can start now by tracking their profile and recording their citation data every month/day. Doesn't work retroactively, though.

Assuming they have a public scholar profile, I imagine the closest thing you can get is  the number of citations the person has at the end of a given year. You can float over a given year to determine citations per year and then subtract the required years from  "all citations". This will provide a cumulative total for a given year.
For instance, the person below had 1215 - 248 = 967 at the end of 2019. And 1215 - 248 - 245 = 722 at the end of 2018.

You could probably also interpolate specific dates to get an estimate. Note however, that there is a difference between a 2019 citation and a citation received in 2019. For instance, a journal article that is first published online in 2019, but then gets a canonical publication year of 2020, will probably count as a 2020 citation. Google scholar can also vary in how long it takes to index a reference. For instance, by my guess, academics get about 20% of their citations for a given year in the year that follows (i.e., 20% of 2019 citations are added to Google Scholar in 2020).
As far as I can tell, Internet Archive doesn't index Google Scholar pages.


text:
Fastest way to browse journal papers (from Web of Science)?
The search engine which I typically use to browse journal papers is WebofScience. It allows me to sort by times cited, and check out who cited what.
The problem is that to get to the actual article once I have found one I am interested in takes many clicks and loading time: 1. Click FindIt button, 2. Click a link from my library access, 3. Click view full text. 4. Maybe save the article too, and import it into my reference manager.
i.e.
Step 1)

Step 2)

Step 3)

Other options...
Previously, my fastest process was to import the a list of selected references from WebofScience that I want to check out into EndNote by clicking the 'send to EndNote button', and then clicking find full text in EndNote to batch find the texts (works about 90% of the time, otherwise I had to manually click view PDF, save to my PC and then import).
Now I have discovered that Zotero can download a reference and the PDF with a single click from my browser, but only when I am searching on Elsevier or Scitation websites directly (but cannot select multiple articles for import at once, and means that I will usually have WebofScience open in a separate window to do the searching and then ctrl-c/v the article names across).
Is there an even faster way?

Do you use http://apps.webofknowledge.com/ ? When I use this, in the results list there is a button which takes me directly to the publisher and the article.

@Martin: yep that's what I use... maybe it is university dependent, but for me there is a number of intermediate steps before I can get to the article (updated above with screenshots)

Have you tried Google Scholar?  It often has direct links to PDFs in the search results.  But the fraction of papers for which it has the links varies a lot by field.  It's very high in fields that use the arXiv, for example.

@DavidKetcheson: Google Scholar is a good suggestion, but the problem is that it doesn't have sort by citation count or filter journal title?

It seems in fact to be dependend on the subscriber, sorry to hear that. I would not recommend google scholar for any deep research. Filtering and refining is very uncomfortable to use.

@James I believe Google Scholar always sorts by citation count.  It is the only tool I use to find research, because in my field Web of Science is completely missing a large portion of the literature, whereas GS is very complete.

@DavidKetcheson: Not quite. I am not sure how the "relevance" is calculated, but I often see higher cited articles further down on the list then they should be. However after using GS for a few days I think that it does deserve to be my primary research tool because of the speed and extra literature. Thanks again for the suggestion.

Use Google scholar instead
Advantages over Web of Science:

Less clicks to access full text, or to save a citation
More literature (including books) is available

Advanced search options (e.g. filter by Journal) can be accessed by clicking the arrow at the right hand side of the search box


text:
Type of non-university, research jobs suitable for a mathematician turned computational neuroscientist, with coding experience
I've asked the same question on Math Overflow
Background:
I'm a Ph.D. in pure mathematics (late '13, related to differential geometry, low dimensional topology) turned into computational neuroscientist as postdoc. I've been coding in matlab for the last 9 months, this being my only serious coding experience. I'm also doing some differential geometry and longitudinal statistics and have a minor in statistics. I'm neither an American nor EU citizen, but a research position in the European Union would be ideal (although I'm open to other options.)
My postdoc will not be extended beyond September. So, apart from searching other postdocs, which are the only university positions I can get at this moment, I am therefore also looking for non-university positions (it could be still academic, but the stress here is outside universities) in industry or research labs (e.g. MITRE), preferably permanent. I prefer a research position where I can do pure mathematics and continue coding.
Questions:

Which types of jobs are there?
Which role do the hired candidates play in them?
How can I find about their job advertisements?

Asking about non-academic jobs seems to make this a non-academia question...?

In this question, it'snot exactly non-academic that I'm after, rather non-university jobs. Could be still academic!

It might help people to answer if you explained why this needs to be non-university.

@Tobias: You're right. I did the corresponding modification of my question; indeed my best choice is postdoc, but the next best choice is non-university research in lab or industries or elsewhere, and then industrial jobs.

"Industrial research" barely exists these days... or ever did. Bell Labs, IBM'S T. J. Watson research center.... It takes a big company to be able to afford stuff that doesn't have short term product value, and the stugf that is short term tends to be development rather than research.  Engineering,  not science.

Your questions are rather broad, so let me just point you to some resources.  For the first two questions (and possibly some info about the third) check out some info from the AMS:
http://www.ams.org/profession/career-info/math-work/math-work
http://www.ams.org/profession/career-info/new-phds/new-phds
For 3, some online academic resources to find jobs both in and out of academia are: mathjobs, the AMS's EIMS, the LMS site, the EMS site.  Some universities also have Career Fairs and Career Service Departments which may be able to give you more help in your job search.

authors: Μάρκος Καραμέρης