text:
How long should one wait before submitting to another journal after a mistake in the decision-letter was made by the first journal?
I have received a decision letter with a rejection. The letter contained two reports recommending publication and two reports, with negative comments, which have nothing to do with the manuscript, and possibly belonging to another manuscript and were submitted to me by mistake.
I have contacted the Editor in Chief about it two days ago, explaining the situation and requesting further explanation.
I'm afraid that if I submit to another journal, I may get a response from the editor in chief and miss the chance of the paper getting published.
So, how long should I wait before submitting the paper to another journal?

By "two days ago", do you mean on Saturday? I don't know where in the world the editor is, but in many parts of the world Saturday and Sunday are weekend so the editor would not necessarily read or respond to their professional email.

From your description, there is a clear error and contacting the editor-in-chief is the right thing and it sounds like you should have a reasonable chance at having the decision reversed. The question is how to long to wait for a response.
Now, people may be on vacation. People may be sick. People have to grade exams and homework. They may have a family emergency. So give people a reasonable chance to reply before you walk away. Most of the time, people respond within 2-3 weeks even if they are on vacation for some time, so that seems to be a reasonable time frame to me. You worrying about not getting a response after two days (which, on top of that, were weekend days!) seems entirely too quick to me.

I agree with you, when it is a normal thing. But here the matter is a mishap, not a regular process. So I agree with OP about reaching quickly the editor, before the folder of this review is closed definitely, going to the archive of rejected paper (visualize it like the depot where all the strange manufacts are stored in Indiana jones: the lost ark https://youtu.be/FRP0MBNoieY?t=70 ) and If you try to reach the editor by phone (not private phone, purely by office phone or whatever Microsofts surrogate they are using) you would easily discover if the editor is on  vacation. sick or very busy.

I don't disagree with writing to the editor quickly -- and in fact, I take it that OP has actually done that. But you shouldn't just walk away from the process just because the editor may not be willing to read their emails over the weekend, or is on vacation. Let them have a life too!

If you call an office in the weekend, you realize how foolish it is to expect an answer in the weekend, because you will wait forever for an answer. If you write an email, you will be even foolisher thinking the other will answer during the weekned.
My point is not about weekend or whatsnot, my point is that the email is the slowest way to reach someone, and it is totally fine, but the phone call is the quickest way to reach someone ESPECIALLY BECAUSE NO ONE ANSWERS THE PHONE DURING WEEKEND AND HOLIDAYS. By phone you get thing done quickly, when they have to be done (during office hourse).

Since you received a clear rejection, you can submit elsewhere immediately. You don't need to wait. If you want to argue with them that the rejection may have been a mistake, then you should wait until that is resolved.
If you didn't get a rejection, but an offer to resubmit, or that is the resolution of any continued discussion, then before you submit to another journal, you first (first!) have to withdraw it from the current journal. You can do that with an email, which, after being sent, lets you submit elsewhere immediately. You don't really need to wait for a reply, since you are in control of your own copyrightable material. It is courteous to wait, but not essential.
But submitting to another journal while still under consideration by the first is a protocol violation (whatever that means), and perhaps an ethical one.
But your case seems clear that you can submit where and when you choose. The paper is yours.

Phone call the company during office hours[1], try to talk in person with the editor. An email is way too cumbersome, and slow, for such an urgent matter.
You clearly have all the rights to question the editor.
[1] your case is urgent, among the urgent things to be done by the editor in their duties as an editor. Do not expect answer to your email during the night/weekend/holidays, but expect an answer to phone call performed during office hours.

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text:
Can I contact the author of a paper for questions, even if I've never studied over high school?
I've never been in a University in my life, but I enjoy reading research papers to expand my knowledge and go deeper in the understanding of details which are not covered by books.
A recent paper shows that this substance X causes reaction Y. Many others have shown that reaction Y can cause a dangerous consequence Z. I'd like to ask the author of the paper if he thinks substance X can trigger consequence Z. No one seems to have answered this question and, if they did, they're out of my radar.
Many papers covers details and little aspects of how reaction Y causes consequence Z, however I've found that a Wikipedia article does a good job in summing up all of these papers:

Can I link the Wikipedia article to the Doctor?
Or should I link the 20+ papers?
Assuming consequence Z is well known in the field, should I give for granted that he knows of it (thus not linking anything)? Can putting the links to something that is well known make me sound like a pretentious prick?

Don't worry about your education level. If a research cannot deal with little scrutiny he/she might as well do something else. No need to link 20+, just 1-2 that indicate Y and Z. Also, check if any of those 20+ article has the researcher as one of the authors, or trace the work of the said researcher. Knowing some more of the work may facilitate the communication.

Be as open as you are here and keep it short.

About your questions:
1) If you want you can link the Wikipedia article or make a small summary explaining your thoughts, usually Professors or researchers do not have too much time to read long emails; so try to keep it up simply
2) explained before
3) It is nothing bad that you point to the other papers of consequence Z, if he knows about them he will tell it straightforward
In conclusion, do not feel bad that you did not have any formal education. Just address to the researcher in a respectful manner and tell him/her that you are interested about his job. You do not need to send your CV or a motivation letter just for asking something, but beware, you can or you cannot get an answer (usually depends how much interested of free time the researcher you are appointing has)
Good luck!

off course, I don't expect an answer... I've also tried to write nothing longer than 4 lines.
"hey! question! thanks! goodbye!"

You can contact any professor asking about they research projects, assuming you are polite enough and really interested in the topic, not just in talking with somebody from the "real science".
The kind of response (if any) largely depends on the personality of the researcher, how busy is he at the moment, how frequently he receives a contact requests of this kind and how good is your question (a really good question contains majority of the answer asking to explain which alternative is true or to clarify particular point).
There are no particular rules that would force a scientist to ignore or to respond your message.

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text:
Is there a financial benefit for PhD student to join a funded research project
I'm a first year PhD in Computer Science at a UK university. Recently, my supervisor has asked me to join a funded research project consisting of other post-docs and lecturers, i.e. I'll be the only PhD student in that project. My supervisor believes that it will be helpful for me to join since my research topic and a project's theme have many similarities, which I also agree. However, he doesn't mention anything about if I get paid to work in that project. So, I wonder if it is normal for a PhD student to work in a funded research project without getting paid.

In my field, funding and what projects people are effectively working on are sometimes pretty disjoint things. Do you currently get funding out of any project? If that is the case, I do not see a problem with you joining the new project. However, if you are not getting any money (or only a small stipend) I would certainly recommend negotiating.

Also, I should add that joining a project with many more senior people that is in a relevant topic to your PhD will likely be in fact beneficial to you.

@xLeitix: I receive partial funding from the university but not from any project. I also agree with you on that benefit, that's the reason I don't want to push or offend anyone from the project by asking about financial benefit :)

In computer science it is very common (one might say usual) to be paid as a PhD student (although as xLeitix said, funding is not necessarily related to the project you are working on). I suggest you talk to your supervisor about this.

@user12635 Well, asking for funding shouldn't offend anybody.

I'm not in the U.K., but in my part of the world, it's common (one might say usual) for computer science PhD students to be paid. Is the determination of whether a PhD student is paid related to whether the project is funded? Not necessarily.
When is it appropriate to ask about payment?
Should you talk to your supervisor about this? Instead of asking

Is it normal to not be paid?

ask yourself

Is it unusual to be paid?

In any scenario in which is is not unusual to be paid, it is neither inappropriate nor offensive to (politely) ask whether you can be paid for work you are doing.* In your case, it is definitely appropriate. So, go ahead and talk to your supervisor about this.

* Here is an example of a scenario where it is not usual to be paid, and it was therefore inappropriate to ask for payment. As you can see, it's an extreme example :)

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text:
Should I repeat experiment affected by external factors until achieving consistent result
I am doing an experiment assumed to be performed in ideal environment although it is not, e.g. resource is fully allocated from a resource pool shared between different organisations. As my experiment is affected by external factors (e.g. a shared pool may not fully allocate all requested resource) the result sometime is different from what I expect. However, since my model is proven to work in an ideal environment, I am sure that if I keep repeating the experiment, I will get a result which is consistent with my calculation, e.g. when a shared pool have enough resource to allocate to my request.
Notably, when I run an experiment, I do it few times to get the average result. Moreover, I'm aware that an environment is not ideal and planning to address it in my future research.
So, is it acceptable to keep repeating the experiment until I get the (average) result which is consistent with my calculation? Furthermore, should I mention in my paper how many times I perform my experiment to get the presented result or just mention briefly about the imperfect environment and a plan to handle it in future research?
Update: my research aims to use shared or volunteer resources to perform computation. It is in the early state when I calculate the required resource for a job prior to its execution. In other words, during an execution, I assume that there are enough resources for me, which doesn't always happen. As I said, I'm planning to investigate dynamic calculation in the future.

You should always mention that your result is a combination of runs if that's what it is. What sort of resource is this? Can you beg some dedicated time on it to verify that contention is the real problem?

You are attempting to achieve a desired result?  This doesn't sound like science to me.

I think what you are trying to ask is not "should I repeat until I get desired result" but actually "should I repeat until I get a consistent result"

@ff524: I've updated my question based on you suggestion, thanks ;)

I think this question is crucially missing the field of study and the type of experiment.

I have deleted my answer as it seems not particularly applicable after the OP's last edit / clarification. I will try to provide an update later. Actually, nevermind, @ff524 already sums up the main points nicely.

When you run an experiment that is expected to have some variability (because it is not in a perfectly controlled environment) then you must run it a large number of times. Not "until you get the results that are consistent with what you expect" but "until you get results that are reasonably consistent with one another."
Then, when you describe the results, you must say something about how they were distributed (not just give the average). For example:

"The average execution time of Protocol A was 4.72 ms, with a variance of 0.4 ms. The average execution time of Protocol B was 5.78 ms, with a variance of 0.3 ms."
"The measured results were clustered in two groups, with 75% of runs falling between 1.3-1.9 ms and 25% of runs falling between 10.5-13.3 ms. We speculate that this is because of X, but we cannot measure or correct for X at this stage."

You get the idea. The point is that you present not just a single numerical value, but also some measure of how consistent the values were.
And yes, you must describe how many times you ran the experiment, whatever you know about the conditions under which the experiments ran, and how you calculated the summary statistics.

In addition: If you report meticulously what you are doing and have "external" information whether the requested resources were granted (i.e. you get feedback on the actually granted resources), you can even say that for further analysis you separate the analysis for those k out of the n runs that meet your assumptions from those n - k runs where assumptions were not met.

No, you shouldn't do the experiment until you get the desired result.  This is poor science and borderline unethical.  (I'm sure you had no ill intent and that you are trying to deal with real-world complications.)
An experiment is flawed if it is run n times but only the results from n - 1 are used and reported. (Or anything less than n).  See Peter Norvig's page under the section "Warning Sign I2: Ignoring Publication Bias".
Beyond this, I believe that your experimental design is flawed.  You shouldn't run an experiment assuming an ideal environment when in fact the experimental environment is not ideal.  Only in theoretical models do you have the liberty to idealize your environment.  In laboratory experiments, you control the environment so you can idealize as much as possible. What you have is an experiment with confounding factors, which is not uncommon in real-world settings.
The best thing to do is to estimate the effects of the confounding factors through analysis of a theoretical model or a simulation.  In your case, which sounds like a queuing theory problem, a statistical simulation should be relatively easy.
With this estimate, you should be able to restate your hypotheses, essentially reducing the expected effects by the "loss" associated with "the shared pool not fully allocating resources when requested".

Considering that the question is actually asked immediately assuming that the OP's intentions are unethical is IMHO jumping to conclusions: without intention, the OP may be headed for wrong data analysis, but mistakes are not unethical unless there's an intention. Note that the OP is talking about averaging, which does not discard measurements. I come from an experimental field and consider it positively bad scientific advise to recommend against multiple runs (as opposed to a proper evaluation of the results of multiple runs): -1 for now, hoping for a revision that I can upvote instead.

It is perfectly OK to compare theoretical predictions to actual experiments in order to measure the domain of applicability of the theory, generate hypotheses about confounders, or just to measure the reliability of the predictions as they are at the moment. While the model may be expanded with known confounders, there is nothing nessecarily flawed in the DoE so far.

It is also OK to restrict the applicability domain to certain runs, e.g. those where feedback about actually allocated resources indicates that the requests were met as long as this restriction (clustering into separately analysed groups) follows criteria which are completely described.

As I understood, you are developing a parallel algorithm  (or a computation strategy) that is supposed to work on a highly non-uniform computing environment (both in time and "space" of a CPU network). At a current stage of research, you are not yet ready to address the non-uniformness, and have to make a (significant) assumption that your computational network is in fact homogeneous.
What I would suggest - do not repeat the experiment many time, until the (non-uniform by nature) network will suddenly become homogeneous. It would not.
Instead, you could go do the computations on a proper parallel (cluster) station available in your Uni or through a shared subscription. Make sure that during the computations all used CPU's are fully allocated to your problem only, i.e. your (significant) assumption holds.
Do the experiment once, report your assumptions and results clearly, explain which adjustments for the algorithms are required to put it on a heterogeneous CPU network. Hopefully this would suffice.

I understand the recommendation of a more stable computing environment, but running the experiment only once seems like a really bad idea.  Can you clarify?

@JeffE Happily, but could you clarify the question first? My general point is that a deterministic computation is not affected by outside factors, and should reproduce the same results. This also includes the computation time.

@DmitrySavostyanov in ideal conditions, yes; but running several times can give you a measurement on how ideal your conditions actually are. Even if you are alone in the cluster, caches, IO scheduling, random collisions between packets... can affect performance.

@JeffE I would agree with this. However, I'd like to epmhasise the difference between "run the code once, and maybe couple more times for piece of mind" and "repeat the execution many times until some condition is (magically) satisfied".

deterministic computation is not affected by outside factors — Uh-huh. Sure. Pull the other one.

@JeffE Let us agree to disagree on this. In my opinion, "the code does not work because the phase of Moon changes" is rather an undergraduate excuse.

"The code has the same performance every time it's run" is a hypothesis to be tested (and the test to be reported in the paper).  Assuming it holds a priori is, to borrow a phrase, an undergraduate mistake.

I'm with @JeffE on this one. Incidentally, I am currently working on some benchmarking research, and I can tell you from the experience of looking at thousands of benchmark data points in the last 2 months that on a real-life system literally nothing takes a constant amount of time, no matter how deterministic the input and computation.

@JeffE The critical position is very strong here, of course - the computation is a complex process determined by many factors. Although, if a code on a homogeneous cluster suffers from factors like "IO scheduling and caches" -- I would say the algorithm (or implementation at least) is not ready for non-uniform environment. Can we agree on that?

@xLeitix I have a habit of demonstrating the asymptotic complexity of the developed algorithms by numerical experiment in my papers. I realise that sometimes it is not possible to get the timings accurate down to milliseconds. But if they differ by a factor of two on the same machine, I consider this  disturbing, and I would do my best to "debug" such behaviour.

@JeffE I'd like to add, that to properly test a hypothesis on the stable performance of a code, one should assume at least the distribution of all factors that impact the timings (e.g. IO caches and such), and choose the number of tests accordingly. The report would be "the hypothesis is confirmed with probability 1-alpha". Do you really do this?

Do you really do this? — Nope.  But then, I don't write code.  I prove theorems.

...I just work with a few hundred people who write and properly test code.

@JeffE I see. Do these people "test a hypothesis" min mathematical sense, or do they simply run a code a few times and/or verify it on a number of tests?


text:
In US, is it possible to have a non-tenure position for the whole career
As it is very competitive to have tenure, I wonder if there is any case that someone holds a non-tenure position (e.g. associate professor) until the end of his/her career, i.e. until the retirement. If there is, is it a normal practice?

You could possibly expand on what you mean the "the end of his/her career". The obvious answer is "Many people fail to get tenure, and end their careers in academia as a result", but I suspect that you wouldn't consider that a real answer to your question.

An associate professor is a tenured position at most institutions. Even the ones that have associate without tenure (MIT, Johns Hopkins, Yale), it is a term limited position, you cannot be permanently in it -- you must be promoted to tenure or you will be let go.

At some institutions, there is no tenure at all, so yes.

In the US system, it is generally not possible for a person to hold a tenure track but non-tenured position, such as being a tenure-track assistant professor, for longer than a few years (I think the typical tenure clock is 6 years plus extensions for life events like new babies).  After that, the person will either get tenure or else they will have to leave or switch to a different class of position, such as "research scientist."
Research scientists or non-tenure-track professors, however, can easily have a full and comfortable career with nothing even vaguely like tenure involved, all the way up until they retire, go emeritus, or succumb to old age.  This can happen both in traditional academia (see, for example, Dave Clark, or non-tenure professors at medical schools) or in alternate academic settings such as national labs and research companies.

Lecturers in the US also typically have non-tenured positions for their whole career.

The question does not ask about the tenure track.

I think this statement is far too sweeping - there are a number of "Assistant Professor" type positions that are expressly not on tenure track, but may be effectively permanent positions. They're especially prominent in medical schools.

@Fomite Interesting: I didn't know medical schools used that term for non-tenure-track positions; the non-medical departments I've dealt with always seemed to reserve "assistant professor" only for tenure-track positions. I've updated the answer accordingly.

@AnonymousPhysicist I find the "non-tenure" statement in the original question ambiguous as to whether it means only "non-tenure-track" or might also include "pre-tenure" positions, particularly given the use of "associate professor", which is often a pre-tenure title on tenure track.  My guess is that the OP may not have understood tenure-track, and answered accordingly.

@jakebeal It's fairly reliably tenure-track, but yeah, not always.

Yes, it is certainly possible.
It not not necessarily the most "iconic" track, as most people assume a "Tenure Track" -> "Tenure" progression, but it's certainly far from abnormal. Here are a couple ways this could happen:

Medical schools. I've applied for a number of jobs in medical schools, and seen others, where the position is not tenure-track for PhDs. Basically, this is because while they could make MDs make up their salary with clinic duty, the PhDs are utterly dependent on grant money, and in nearly/entirely soft money positions, the department wants to be able to fire them if they stop being able to support themselves.
State institutions. There are some institutions where tenure implies an obligation by the state, and when the state isn't going to support a position, the institution may list it as non-tenured position that may still be permanent.
Soft-money research institutes. Where I work now, which is somewhere you could absolutely have an entire career, doesn't have the ability to give tenure, and as such, unless you've got a joint appointment with a tenure granting department, tenure simply isn't a thing.
It's entirely possible to have built a career out of adjunct positions, lectureships, etc., none of which had the prospect of being tenured.

Another way this can happen is via "professor of practice" positions. Some departments/schools, usually explicitly professional in orientation (e.g. business, information studies, some health fields, social work, sometimes even law), recruit full-time instructors from the ranks of practitioners as well as from Ph.D-holders. These positions are never (that I've ever seen) tenure-track/tenured, but they certainly can be long-term, covering the rest of the instructor's career.
(At most US institutions, since most professional schools issue graduate-level degrees as well as teaching undergraduates, the requirement is that an instructor without a Ph.D hold the "terminal degree" for the field, so, an ML(I)S for an information school, or a JD for a lawyer.)


text:
I'm not comfortable traveling for routine events anymore
As the news on the climate front keep getting worse (not that it's unexpected, but it's still depressing), I would like to minimize my travels and consequently my carbon footprint. Naturally this includes my professional travels.
I assume that most institutions nowadays encourage this kind of effort, if only because many governments and organizations have committed to drastically decreasing their carbon footprint. Moreover in the past two years Covid restrictions have demonstrated that conferences and other scientific events can be organized remotely (with limitations, but it works).
I was hoping that remote/hybrid academic events would become the standard given the climate emergency (not sure whether this is the case?). At the individual level, I think I'm going to refuse traveling to on-site conferences in general.
I don't know to what extent this view is shared, encouraged or discouraged in the community:

Is there any institutional/grass-root initiative about this topic in the scientific community?
Is this encouraged? Is there any advice or support for individuals who choose this?
Is this on the contrary frowned upon, considering that physical meetings are traditionally an important part of the academic process.

I retagged this since your new tag is orthogonal to academia.

Related: What practicable alternative do I have to not fly around the globe to present a poster/pollute environment?, Academic career without travel, How to promote reduction of carbon footprint for conference participation?

I feel the same as started to get tired of airports and going through customs etc.

In my field (mathematics), there were some efforts in this direction already before Covid. Some organizers started an online seminar, and cited reduced clarbon emissions as one benefit.
Now, there are more online events and to some extent it is possible to participate in the community online. However, in-person events have resumed, and many people are eager to get back to normal. I have seen little enthusiasm for "online by default".
My sense is that you would have a lot of support if you reduce your travel -- if you pick and choose what in-person conferences you attend, with a preference for those without long plane trips.
If you eliminate all conference travel, people might admire your principled stance, but in practice you might gradually lose some of your ties to the community, or not forge them in the first place -- leading to fewer opportunities to talk and collaborate with others. This could be harmful, especially early in your career.
So my advice, if you want an academic career, is to travel at least a little bit but you certainly don't need to spend all of your time on airplanes.

This question is research-community-specific and opinion-based, so you likely will not receive a canonical answer.

but it works

I can report what I observe within my own community (in computer science): enthusiasm for switching to hybrid or online conferences has significantly declined during the COVID pandemic, due to weaknesses in the online model that were revealed when theory was put into practice. In particular,

an in-person conference forces you to disengage from your everyday life: you stop answering emails, cancel your classes and meetings, ask your partner or other caretaker to handle childcare, etc. While in principle you could do all of these things also when attending a virtual conference, in practice doing so is currently much less socially acceptable. As a consequence engagement at virtual conferences is typically poor.
serendipitous conversations---the kind that happen in the hallways or at meals of in-person conferences and often lead to new research collaborations---are difficult to replicate in a virtual environment. I've seen conference try to organize virtual social events but I've found these to be poorly-attended and ineffective (see previous bullet).
even when meeting with existing collaborators, working together online (on Jamboard, Mira, etc.) has significantly higher friction than working in-person around a table or at a whiteboard.
many find that N hours of Zoom is significantly more draining than an equivalent N hours of in-person meetings.

Note that none of these weaknesses are insurmountable; but it seems significant additional cultural shifts and technological innovations are needed before virtual conferences become as effective as in-person conferences.
All that being said, I know some researchers in my field who have made a principled decision to stop attending in-person conferences, and their reputation has not suffered negatively as a consequence. But they've lost out on opportunities to network, build new collaborations, and strengthen existing ones. You'll need to make a personal decision about the tradeoffs.

what do you mean by friction?

In my university there is an effort to reduce the amount of flights to conferences. Going to conferences if you can get there by train seems like a more reasonable alternative to not going at all. This ofcourse depends on the availability of train infrastructure near you.

Much harder in a place like the US where public transport is underfunded and mostly lacking. Plus we are a lot bigger so distance is an issue. I once traveled by train from the midwest to California and it was about three days traveling. East coast to Chicago is as much as two. I've also travelled very happily by train in Germany.

@Buffy - Travel time also raises questions about your carbon footprint while traveling. It might make you feel good about your lack of carbon spend on the jet fuel, but what about the carbon that it took to bring you the food, water, etc that you consumed while you were en route?

I also drink and eat when not traveling...

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text:
Teaching the daughter of a lecturer, while being simultaneously enrolled in his course
I'm a student in a bachelor program at a local university, while I'm also a teacher (professional school) of apprenticeship students within the same sphere of study.
A few days ago I received the participants list of a class which I going to teach next semester. I went briefly through the names and one quite unique name caught my interest. After a quick search on the web, I'm sure that one of the participants is the daughter of a lecturer who gives courses in which I'm enrolled at the university. He was grading my work and he will probably be grading my work in the future for one more course.
I had a few intense discussions with this lecturer about some topics of my studies. He also felt a bit insulted once because I missed some of his lectures, but we always stayed professional. I also feel that he graded my work and exams like the ones of any other student.
It's too late to find a replacement for me and this class? I'm wondering what should I do with this situation -- should I notify the school where I'm teaching about this?

Wow, this situation sounds almost too fantastical to believe. But: I have a friend that had almost the same thing happen to him (and coincidentally that friend’s name is Theo).

Ideally, use anonymous grading. Also, sometimes names happen to be the same, but people are unrelated. This is the assumption I would make.

Does your school have a policy about this? My experience is it varies per school whether it's acceptable or not. On some schools it's not unheard of for parents to teach & grade even their own children while on others it's absolutely not done.

Seems like a couple of A grades in the making ;)

I asked a follow-up question on whether looking up the student on the Internet is acceptable. Please take your stance on this aspect there. I will delete all comments pertaining to this issue. (@user96140)

I’ve had to teach colleagues children, nephews, and even the son & daughter of the Dean.
Be professional. Treat and grade them the same as any other student. They also think “oh sh*t s/he knows my Dad / Mum so I had better be careful”... :). Don’t call them out in class, but don’t avoid them either. If you do random questions and it’s their turn, then fine.
Don’t worry, they don’t go back to your Dean talking about your teaching performance. They just want to benefit from your wisdom / experience / knowledge same as the other students...

Hopefully! :)  Yes, it is worth making the point that the kids themselves, if they are not entitled brats, etc., will already be conscious of the potential issues, and accommodate. It's the now-and-then entitled brat who creates difficulties, so a "paper trail" of awareness" is appropriate (with due account of FERPA, in the U.S.)

@paulgarrett Question is tagged [tag:europe], and I'm not familiar with any similar laws in the EU. Although GDPR as a general rule comes close I guess.

Yes, you should notify the school. However, part of being a professional is just being professional. You don't indicate any issues that seem to imply anyone behaving badly, so I think you should go ahead. But not notifying the school (and probably the lecturer as well, if the daughter is a minor) would be a mistake. If something bad happens in the future, you don't want that incident to be the first indication that there might have been a conflict of interest from the start.
I would answer quite differently if you thought there was a likelihood of conflict with the lecturer.

I don't think you should email the lecturer, at least in the US. It sounds like it is two different institutions and could be a FERPA violation (imagine the lecturer doesn't know his daughter is enrolled in a professional school).

@StrongBad, I assumed the daughter was a minor child. If not, you are correct. I made an edit.

I asked a follow-up question on whether looking up the student on the Internet is acceptable. Please take your stance on this aspect there. I will delete all comments pertaining to this issue. (@Beska)

Personally, I think this is slightly more serious situation than just teaching colleagues children as the lecturer in your university will be grading your work. That means there is direct power and benefit structure existing. The angle I would be worried is that someone else will claim you are grading the daughter more positively to gain better grades from dad. I don't think that's too high of a risk, but still worth to note.
I agree that you can notify the school. In addition, if your course has assignments you are grading, I suggest that you ask colleague who has relevant enough knowledge about the topic to take a look at the student's work and give approximate grade for it (obviously without knowing what you gave). If you have TAs, one of them can do it. In case somebody brings up claims that you are unfarily grading, you have now something to show for your defence. Other possibility is to take blind grading as a policy on your courses, so that you never know who you are grading. But it might be harder to prove that you really did not know who you are grading.
In my opinion, one should disqualify themselves from grading preferably bit too easily than take changes. On the courses I have grading responsibilities, we generally try to assign the grading in such way that if you know a person (outside the role of them being your student), you won't grade their work. If everybody knows the person taking the class, then we try to have two opinions on the work. It does get difficult if you are only person working on the course without TAs.

Worth noting that the power/benefit conflict can go both ways here: besides the direction you mention, the father might favour OP in order to get favourable treatment for the daughter.

I agree, but I can't think easy way for OP to do anything about that (except if he would propose such thing, to clearly decline), and if OP is grading fairly, then the unprofessionality is on the father.

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


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Professor not responding to LOR email after initially agreeing
My situation is a bit tricky, and I'm not sure if I'm reading too much into it.
I asked for a letter of recommendation from two professors at my university. They both replied yes to the initial email. After about a month, I sent them another email with my personal statement and resume attached, and told them the deadline. I asked them to let me know if they received everything, and if there's anything else they need. One professor responded immediately saying he got my email, but the other professor still hasn't responded 5 days later.
I am worried, because the second professor usually responds very fast. Also, the email I sent necessitates a response, so it doesn't make sense for him to not respond to it. I don't know if I'm overthinking this, but I accidentally called this second professor "Professor" in my email even though he's technically a lecturer so I always address him as "Dr. So-and-so" in my emails. I copied and pasted the email content from the first professor's so I forgot to change the title from "Professor" to "Dr." I'm not sure if he would necessarily take offense at this?
Any recommendations? Please let me know your thoughts! And thanks in advance!

It's a busy time for most academics now. Perhaps that is it. Perhaps he took a late season vacation as is typical in the US at least. If you are near the deadline, write again, otherwise you can probably afford to wait a bit. Don't let the deadline pass and possibly line up another recommender just in case. The mistaken title is unlikely to offend.

When is the deadline? 5 days is not very much time, unless the deadline is imminent, in which case you are providing this information to them too late.

I'm not sure if I'm reading too much into it.

I think you are.
My guess is that Professor #2 received your email, saw that it contained information for your letter, remembered that he had already told you he would write the letter, and set the email aside, planning to read it in detail when he got around to actually writing the letter.  He probably didn't read far enough to see the part where you asked him to acknowledge the email.
So, if you're concerned, simply send a second email:

Dear Dr, #2,
I just wanted to make sure you had received my email of August XX with the information for my letter of recommendation.  Please let me know if it looks okay, or if there is anything else you need.  As a reminder, the deadline to submit the letter is October XX.
Thanks very much for writing a letter for me!
Sincerely,
Lily

As to your other question:

I accidentally called this second professor "Professor" in my email even though he's technically a lecturer so I always address him as "Dr. So-and-so" in my emails.

Don't worry about that.  It happens all the time and most professors eventually just stop noticing.  It's certainly not the kind of thing that would offend someone so much as to affect their decision to write a letter.


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Does considering someone's work regarding a piece of literature constitute plagiarism if you knowingly derive/spark ideas from it and don't cite it?
Is reviewing with/considering someone's summary/analysis of the events of a piece of literature plagiarism if you write a piece that has ideas which may have sparked from considering that piece?
Put less abstractly, for example, if some scholar (call him: John) were to be writing a piece on Catcher in the Rye, and made a web-search for "sad moments" in the book Catcher in the Rye and came across what some author expressed as sad moments (call it: Sad CITR Moments) in the same book would it be(?) plagiarism if:

A. John reads Sad CITR Moments and it reminds them of something he too recalls being sad, and then goes on to write about it without citing the paper.
B. Same as A, but John forgot one detail which makes it more/less sad, hence he goes on to write more/less strongly about its emotionality.
C. John didn't consider something before, but the argument put forth in Sad CITR Moments on the matter convinces/de-convinces him and he then goes on to write about it in the affirmative/negative position.

I'm sure one could think up more cases (and do share if you do) but I'd hope the basic idea to be clear at this point.

This question is more about citation ethics than about plagiarism.

Why not cite things clearly if you know where your own idea 'derives/sparks from'? Laziness? Shyness?
Citing somebody else's work won't diminish the quality or significance of your own contribution, on the contrary.
And readers will be able to understand your foundations and line of thought better as a result.
And ultimately it saves you a lot of headaches, as you don't have to worry if you should - have - cite(d) other people's work that stimulated your thought.


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Getting a letter of recommendation from a new professor
I've read in multiple places that it is important that your recommenders be known to the admission committee. If I were to have a letter of recommendation from a professor who is quite new (Assistant Prof), would their recommendation be discounted due to their lack of reputation or stature in the field?

An unestablished professor that knows you well, and writes a fantastic letter, is far better as a letter writer than a famous professor that will just write a generic "he was 3rd out of 38 students in my class" kind of letter.
There are two types of letters that will really help you in general. (1) A great letter from a professor who knows you well, regardless of their stature. This is likely someone you did research with, and (2) A famous professor that will write you a decent letter, saying you did well in his her/class and you show real potential, ideally you should have done a class project for them, so they can say something beyond basic things like class rank. Letters of type (1) are the most important (if the professor is famous that is a bonus). But you need 3 letters usually, so you are not likely going to have 3 professors that know you well (if you do you are in great shape). Type (2) is another good option for filling out 3 letters. If all your letters are of type (1) and (2) that is a really good sign. Most people will have at least one lackluster letter from an unestablished professor.
The next best bet is an unestablished professor that you did a good class project for or knows you well from a class. Generic letters really do not help your cause.

As you said: Someone who is well-known is a good choice. If the new professor already has a good reputation in her field, it will most probably be a good decision to ask her. It's better to have a letter of recommendation from someone who knows you and who writes somethong personal, than a letter from someone just looking at your marks.


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How to do on-site institute evaluation as a member of the evaluation panel?
Many academic institutes are routinely evaluated by an advisory board. In addition to the public performance metrics, such as publications and funding, the board usually goes on site to meet the personnel and get a better picture of the institute, its culture and its performance.
As a panel member, what information should we try to obtain in priority during the site visit? How should we evaluate what we see and hear, and how much importance should we give it?

Are you asking what an on-site inspector should look for to evaluate an institution, or are you asking what an institute should do to look good for the on-site inspectors?

@David "As a panel member" clearly indicates, that the former is meant.

I would find it rather odd, to be on such a panel without having either guidelines to follow or experience with on-site visits (on one side or the other).

@Dirk I'd disagree that the meaning is clear. The evaluating board is going to send a panel or committee to do the evaluation, and the institution is going to have a panel or committee whose job is to ensure that the evaluators wind up happy. The follow on questions could apply to either party as well.

@Dirk That's one of the reasons I'm asking.  My uncertainty mainly stems from my perception that hopefully the evaluator already knows what they're looking for.

@David The question is from the point of view of the "visitor" panel. The title as edited by Dirk corresponds to what I meant.

Can you get a copy of previous site visit reports, so you can follow up on reported strengths, gaps, and areas for growth?

@aparente001 This is a good point. Unfortunately this is not always available (at first evaluation for instance).

@gui11aume - I see.  I suppose you've already read some other reports, to see what you can glean?

I have been on two such panels, both for departments in my field,
one at a 'sister' university within the same system as my own, and
another at an unrelated institution in another state.
My first observation is that you need to understand who will receive,
evaluate, and perhaps act upon findings and recommendations of your
panel, and what criteria they will use. If you are not personally in substantial
agreement with stated institutional goals, you should probably decline the
opportunity to serve on the panel. You might be able to 'score a few
points' for an alternative institutional policy in the panel report, but typically
these reports are not made public and it is unlikely a lone voice will have
much effect changing goals. Also, there may be an element of unfairness
in judging a program by goals at odds with stated institutional goals.
Before your visit you will probably get a huge packet of information about
faculty achievements, student and researcher outcomes, enrollment and employment trends, and budgets.
Beware that the most important information may not be highlighted, and
look for obvious gaps in this information. Omissions and inconsistencies
can be a guide as to what questions to ask when you get to campus. Of course,
the institute, school, or department under review has a right to present
its best case, but you will do your best job if you look beyond the PR gloss.
Focus on what is actually going on, as well as historical information and
stated goals for the future. It is easy for a faculty member or researcher to claim
a passionate interest in various trendy fields, but you should look at what she/he
has actually published in the past few years and evidence of current activity.
It is easy for a department to claim increased student and staff diversity as a goal,
but you should look around to see what is actually happening. You should
have as many one-on-one meetings with faculty, staff, and students as possible.
Ideally, some of these meetings will not be pre-arranged. On your own,
have a slice of pizza at a local hangout; sometimes that can give you more
information (or clues to search for information) than prepared binders of documents and fancy receptions with carefully chosen people.

I would like to guide you on this errand. However, my answer is applicable from the point of view of a student of life and not indicative of this specific evaluative experience. Firstly, one should not indulge oneself in mystery shopping in such a position. That means one must formlly ask the host at the beginning for each required data point / meeting and should not walk into these places looking for hidden secrets. Such responsibilities will likely be part of larger teams by accreditation agencies. Evaluations should also rely on one to one meetings and in the little time possible build trust with the agents being interviewed. Its not very hard to make your interviews about the other person's comfort and realising his grounded point of view. Then one can proceed to realising if they set the right objectives and how much they can and indeed do achieve. Most of your evaluation report would thus like to be positive while pointing out real improvements required and you can choose to be critical exactly where it needs to be said. Also, you should probably want to work in smaller groups and not alone in discusing issues within the evaluation team and probably initiate a discussion to firm up each sub group's responsibility.


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Trouble picking a major
I am an incoming freshman and I am in a tight spot in terms of picking my major. I personally want to work with companies like Tesla and SpaceX who use code as a basis of physical things.
I want to double major in Physics and CS, but is that a good idea, or should I minor in one?
I do not just want to be a programmer sitting in an office coding all day, I want to build software that creates actual physical things like Tesla cars (fully electric car, everything from suspension to performance is powered by code). When I get a Masters, what would be most appropriate? A degree in Applied Physics or Computational Physics?

A tangential comment: just because your code is used in a car doesn't mean you won't sit an office coding all day.

I believe that double majors are for the most part a waste of your valuable time. This is coming from someone who did a double major. Man do I wish I could go back in time and take out some of the boring classes I took just to satisfy the beuracratic requirements of my second major for more interesting graduate and upper level classes of my choosing (some of which actually being in that major's field) and more time spent on extracurricular research/internship projects.
My advice. Outside of the first major, take the classes that interest you. If that allows you to get a second major or minor, great! If you have to take a bunch of basic classes that don't interest you just to satisfy the requirements of the second major, don't do it!
Usually you can use a personal statement or CV to show people that you are the right one for the job or graduate program you want. Degrees in Applied Physics and Computational Physics are close enough that it shouldn't matter if you do go the double major route (I'd lean towards applied Physics given your interests though, comp physics doesn't say much more than your CS degree already does). However, in my opinion if you are set on C.S. and are just looking to do something related to the physical sciences/engineering, I would get a C.S. degree and then take a bunch of physics classes that interest you and build a portfolio of physics related projects you have worked on. Maybe apply to physics REUs that sound exciting. Many schools have undergrad research projects on electric, hydrogen and solar vehicles, so look for those if thats what excites you, and if your university doesn't have them look for summer opportunities that do.
I'd say for at least 90% of students, a double major is a bad idea. I'd discourage it!
Note there are some cases where a double major may be a good idea. Say your first major is History and its your love and passion, but midway through school you realize that you likely won't get a good job with that major. Getting a second major may be important in this situation because the fields are almost complete opposites, but if the majors are somewhat related I still hold on to my general opinion.

I wish I'd read this before I did my double major application. I don't regret my decision (yet), but I've become extremely frustrated with bureaucratic requirements and course conflicts. Either way, I wouldn't recommend every thinking about declaring a double until you've dabbled in a few classes from either field and are sure you can handle the workload.

Thank you for the explanation. I will probably do double major in math since I could just take 2 extra classes to get the degree, then focus on masters studies in physics.

Do you "want" to take those courses in math, rather than just need them for your double major? I'm all for taking more math courses (that was my primary major after all), but in my opinion you should do those courses if you would want to take them even if you weren't doing the double math major. One major is plenty, focus on what you are passionate about. Take the courses you want to take.

Yeah I have a love for math and it should go great with computer science.


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Co-authors/PIs in a grant are misrepresenting their CVs. Any suggested actions?
I am currently part of a larger and quite broad in terms of expertise research group that is preparing a proposal for a grant / research center. Part of the proposal is a summary of the CVs for the co-investigators (CIs) of the project which also includes successful grant applications and previous funding.
There I noticed that some of the CIs have included grants and funding from foreign agencies (some of which more than a million dollars) that were not awarded to them or they were not involved in the application, they were just part of the research center that the grants were awarded to, or grants that were awarded to their supervisors.
This obviously makes their CV appear a lot stronger than it actually is in the application but it appears to be quite unethical to include them like that (the phrasing in the CV does not state that they actually got the grants but does not represent their actual contribution). As these are CIs that I do not directly work with and, for example I have not met one of them, I am not sure what the best course of action would be.

Are these suspicions confirmed, or just that, suspicions?

@FrankFYC They were never suspicions. They are confirmed.

I think you should bring this up. The motivation to bring this up is, that a tampered CV will most likely be detected by the referees or the agency and if so, this may most likely affect the chances for getting the grant negatively. Since the overall goal is to get the grant, you should bring this up.
So, you could approach your supervisor and note that you are not sure if the CVs are clear enough about these grants and that it currently looks a though these CIs won these grants personally which seems implausible to you. If your supervisor agrees, you (or they) can simple ask the respective CIs to clarify if these grant were actually awarded to them or their institution and, if applicable, be more clear in their CVs.
Including grants where you have been only one CI of many and that have been awarded to an institution in CVs is common, but I advise to be precise  here. Something like

Grant XYZ from agency B, 1.000.000$ (contribution of Prof A: subproject 300.000$ and design of general strategy)

could be appropriate.

Maybe I did not explained it correctly. In one case, the person was just a Master's student to an awarded project, yet the project is included in the list.

Is the master student claiming that he/she won the award? The key work here is what kind of claim, if the student is claiming that he/she was part of a team that won or worked with a team that won, then the statement is still valid. This is leagues different than an individual effort.

The key issue here is that wrong or imprecise data will jeopardize the chances of getting the grant. This should be your main concern and this is what you should bring up.


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Does PhD work experience (scholarship was tax free) count in Postdoc Salary contract (TVL-13) in Germany
I did my Ph.D. from Germany where I received a tax-free fellowship, and now I got a postdoc offer in Bremen with salary range TVL-13. The 'Stufe' depends on the previous experience of the employee, but since I was not paying tax and was on a student visa during my Ph.D., will my previous research experience count in this case?
Would be great if somebody could answer.
Thanks.

Effectively the decision is in the hands of the bureaucracy and from what I have heard in similar cases, the answer will depend entirely on the daily mood of the bureaucrat assigned to you. You should ask your potential new boss about it as he might know what happened in similar cases. However the only big jump in salary is from Stufe 1 to 2, which will be reached after the first year anyway.

Okay, I understand. Thanks a lot.

In general, no. The previous work experience you can claim for a higher entry point on the scale needs to be relevant for the job for which you are applying. There are very general rules about this (since the TV-L covers everything from dishwashers to head physicians) so there is some leeway in interpretation, but the basic assumption is that the duties of a postdoc are different enough from those of a PhD student that experience as the latter does not count for the former. Time in education (which a PhD counts as) are also explicitly excluded by the regulation.
It might be possible to claim that even as a PhD student, you already performed duties of a postdoc (independently organizing tutorial sessions for a large class, say, or managing the IT needs of your department), but the usual case for a higher entry point is if you previously were on a fixed-term contract of, say, five years where you received your PhD after year four. Then you could claim the last year as previous experience for a postdoc position at another university.
EDIT: See also my previous answer to a similar question. In short, you need to distinguish between times which must be counted by law (which your PhD experience definitely doesn't fall under) and times which may be counted if argued for specifically, e.g., with arguments as in my second paragraph.

I can confirm this for Austria, too.

But PhD students in Germany are often also paid according to the TV-L E13 scale (although usually for a 65% position or so), so it would be strange to claim it has nothing to do with the jobs of a postdoc who are paid in the same scale. Of course this does not apply for postdocs with more responsibilities who are paid according to TV-L E14.

Yes, but so are high school teachers and translators, so you can't just argue with the scale but with the specific duties of the job. I didn't say it's impossible, but you need to make a specific case for it. (The clincher is usually the education clause rather than the lack of duties, though.)

The answer is a clear "it depends". For instance, the DFG has a document explaining this available here, where it is stated that this is decided on a case-by-case basis.
During the hiring process, there will be a form that you will have to fill out about your previous working experience. Feel free to list your PhD studies under a scholarship there as long as you don't make it appear like you were salaried. The decision whether it counts will be based on the information that you provide. If you can prove that the work you did was equivalent to salaried position (e.g., involving teaching and research, both with provable outcomes), this may work.
Bremen has the reputation for being a bit special, though, as they involve the "Personalrat" in many decisions during the hiring process, which most likely includes determining whether your previous experience counts, so the rules of thumb from other German universities should not be relevant for you.


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Is a reviewer allowed to delegate their peer reviewing task to someone else?
I have been wondering lately if a person, who has signed up as a peer reviewer at a journal (or multiple), can then delegate their duties to someone else (think senior scientist tells lower level researchers to do it)? What are the possible implications from doing so?
Reason for asking:
Me and my colleagues are getting peer reviewing tasks multiple times a year from our senior researcher, who always complains he doesn't have the time for it. Quite often, if taken seriously of course, such a task can be quite time consuming and collide with other tasks one has to do (think contractual obligations).
UPDATE
It has been pointed out that this is a complaint about being forced to do something I don't want to. That's not it and I should have been clearer on this. It is about whether it is actually allowed. @PsySp (thanks for the hint) points out one of several possible issues (I don't know what issues ergo the question) - plagiarism, if the peer reviewer does not fill the form for review submission in a way that makes it clear that they were not the reviewer but person X was.

Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.

Common, but it needs to be done the right way -- Contact the editor, and ask if it's OK.

As editor I would in that case want to invite the person who is "recommended" by the senior researcher directly, and deal with them directly. In the system the review should be associated with the person that actually did it, and also normally review tasks are confidential, so I don't think it's correct that the review by the "junior" person reaches the journal through the "senior" person. The "senior" person can recommend a reviewer to the editor but shouldn't handle the review of that person themselves.

@ChristianHennig -- absolutely.  There is every reason to make the new reviewer the "official" reviewer, and that's one major reason to do this through the editor.  The big bonus for the editor, of course, is the addition of a name to the potential referee list.

@ChristianHennig I've seen it done both ways. When recommending "mature" junior staff (e.g. excellent last year PhD students, postdocs, early career academics), then a full transfer is probably appropriate (often there are automatic "suggest an alternative reviewer" boxes you can fill out when refusing to review). However, I've also seen academics offer their PhD students to review, but then still read the paper themselves and "review their review" -- as this was done more as a guided exercise for that student, I think it was appropriate for the academic to stay on as the main reviewer.

(in all cases I agree that the editor should be notified of the situation and approve first)

@penelope OK, yes, I see that this makes sense with approval of the editor. the "junior" person needs to acknowledge any rules about confidentiality of course.

This advice may ruin the supervisor-student relationship when the supervisor finds out.

@Robin, how so?  There's zero need to hide anything from anybody, starting with when the supervisor recognizes the ms as appropriate for the trainee to review?  It's  done all the time

@ScottSeidman - But the world is not as simple/pure as you say. Most likely, such a person (like my supervisor) is a bully and knows well how to mentally bully to misuse of others. This is my (also some of my friends) experience.

@Robiin --- training students to serve as referees is an important job for a mentor.  Some would even say it's irresponsible not to train them.

Similar to @penelope's comment, I often make this explicitly part of the training I give to my PhD students (with the editors permission) - I get the student to review the paper in parallel with me and then discuss the differences/commonalities/issues with the student before combining to make the overall review.  Most students don't realise to begin with the main point of peer review is to make the paper better.

@Robin there is very little credit for reviewing papers - anybody that bullies a colleague for so small a benefit is not even acting rationally.  Having said which "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law) I seem to have been very fortunate with my colleagues!

Speaking as someone who's sent thousands of reviewer invitations, it's not rare for reviewers to respond with "I can't review this paper but try my student/postdoc". Sometimes they don't say it's their student/postdoc, but it's possible to tell from Google (or from the fact that they've written papers together and those papers say they are at the same institution). It's not common, but also not rare.
It's definitely rare for a review to be returned with "this review was written in conjunction with my student/postdoc", however (I think I've seen it only once). I also cannot tell if the review was written by someone other than the invited person unless they say so, as well.
Broadly speaking there's nothing wrong with redirecting reviews to someone else, especially since it's desirable for graduate students to learn to do peer review. However, you definitely should tell the editor if someone else wrote the review. It's plagiarism otherwise. Furthermore, if the paper is controversial the editors will likely want to know that a reviewer is junior, and there's one publisher I'm aware of (MDPI) that simply will not accept reviews from people without PhDs.

reg. MDPI: very nice from them to avoid asking reviews from Nobel prizes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kilby :)

A review is a personal invitation from someone to a certain person.
If someone proposes to you, do you say yes and then send someone else to the next date with this someone?
Usually when you refuse to review you are invited to suggest other possible reviewers.
Refuse to review and suggest to the editor (either with the automated form or per email) the lower level researchers as reviewers.

The other side of the coin is this: if someone that is not the editor invites you to do a review, and then you do not get any thank you note or at least acknowledgment of receival of the peer review directly by the journal/editor, you can be 99% sure that the same someone that asked you to perform the review is taking credit for having done the review.

This is one-sided. I wrote reviews for my advisor and toke it as the basis for his review. He threw out a couple of comments and added valueable remarks by himself. I learned to write better reviews and to concentrate on important stuff. I think nobody got real credit, I perceived it as a win-win.

@usr1234567 "I think nobody got real credit" your advisor may have got free access for 1-month to all the publication from the editor, or something like that. Even if it was only an automated "thank you" mail from the editorial system, that "thank you" went fully to your advisor, not to you.
Did you learn something? it is a side effect, there is no need to do free work to learn something. Since your advisor modified, but did not reject your work, it means it was of decent quality ---> you did some work! I agree that there may not be a way to share the credit of a review (see other answers).

It happens, and it can be a good thing and bad thing.
As to how it can be a good thing: PhD students are supposed to learn how academia works. An advisor can first write a review together with a student, explaining what her/his/their choices are, for the second stage let the student write first drafts which she/he/they than review, and finally refuse request to review certain papers but tell the editor that they know someone (the student) who can write that review instead.
As to how it can be bad thing: it can be just so the senior person gets to do less work.

"Review together with" doesn't mean delegating the authority and the final decision-making, just some of the work.

Absolutely, it is the second stage that can be interpreted as delegation. Especially when the first stage was successful and not much review by the advisor is needed.

In my subfield of computer science (computer vision / machine learning), this is fairly common. It is probably connected to how quickly the field has been growing over the past few years (for example, the number of submissions to CVPR has tripled over the past five years).
It is then very common for senior researchers to get a large reviewing load, which is often partly delegated to students and other junior researchers. However, there are now mechanisms in place to give due credit to such reviewers; for example, some conferences have a field in their review submission form that allows one to specify if someone else performed the review that they were invited for, so that the actual reviewer can be acknowledged in the list of reviewers.

Even though it's a conference, you could consider adding this information as an answer to Are there major non-APS/AIP journals that do not practice confidential peer review?.

@Anyon It might be the phrasing in the title of the question you link ("Which journals/confs do not practice confidential peer review"), but on first glance I wouldn't find this relevant. "Not practicing confidential peer review" would, in my opinion, mean that the journal publishes the manuscript publicly, free for anybody to access, while still under review. Allowing people to delegate to junior colleagues is... not quite that

@penelope Maybe the title isn't the best possible phrasing.

I'm a bit surprised that I haven't found any answer mentioning the concept of Secondary Reviewer, a concept which exists in my field (Computer Science - NLP).
For example, here's an excerpt from the reviewing guidelines of ACL (emphasis mine):

Q: Can I designate a secondary or substitute reviewer for ARR?
A: An assigned reviewer may wish to recruit another individual—often a mentee—to help with the review. This is called a secondary reviewer. You can involve a secondary reviewer by coordinating the review offline and submitting it in OpenReview as your own. In this case, we encourage you to leave a confidential note to the action editor indicating who the secondary reviewer was (see the question above for how to do this). However, they will not be acknowledged in OpenReview as a reviewer.
Alternatively, if you wish to hand over full reviewing duties to a colleague or mentee, you can ask your action editor to reassign the paper to a substitute reviewer in your stead. They will be acknowledged in OpenReview as a reviewer. You will no longer be listed as a reviewer of the paper and will be unable to access the paper and its reviews in the system.

So at least in this field, it's not uncommon to delegate reviewing task to a mentee (as explicitly mentioned as an example in the ACL guideline above).
But as always, this depends on the specific journal/conference's reviewing guidelines, so do check your journal/conference guidelines whether they allow such secondary reviewers.

Some journals (e.g., APS ones in physics) have a checkbox in the referee response form saying something like 'I prepared this report on my own'. If you don't tick it, you need to add details of anyone who helped you.
This suggests to me that some journals (and certainly APS) are fine with referees using help, so long as it is disclosed.


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Is there a viable path to a top Math PhD program through a non-flagship state school
I know this is a topic frequently talked about here, but I'm coming from a different point than any of the posts I've found so I figured I'd ask.
This post is less of a "can I do it?" question and more of a "what do I have to do to do it?".
Currently I'm finishing up my 3rd year of high school, but graduating a year early because my school doesn't have any more courses along my paths of interest (Math, Physics, Comp Sci). While applying for colleges, I decided to go to UTSA because of some meetings I had with a few of the professors there who said they'd be glad to mentor me into mathematics and that there would be plenty of research opportunities (one of the main focus's of their honors college), and while I know it's not a top 20 school, I really enjoyed my experience there. I'll be entering taking Calc 3, Linear Algebra, and a Proofs course because the school wouldn't let me skip any more than that on my first year before I prove that I can handle it.
Over this last school year I've taught myself Calc 1/2/3, Linear Algebra, and basic proofs and set theory. (Apostol Calc 1/2, Spivak Calc, Velleman Proofs, Greub/Werner Linear Algebra) and want to continue self studying (under supervision of a prof hopefully) while taking my courses. If I spent a solid 6-8 hours a day basically everyday working towards progressing so I can take graduate courses as soon as I can, do you think this would be enough to be able to weasel into a good graduate program assuming I have good test scores, GPA, as much research as I'm able to help with, and participating in the campus math clubs.
Basically, I'm wondering how much I have to make up for a lackluster high school career. During middle school I was near the top of the state in UIL and Mathcouts consistently, but my high school did not have any academics math teams so I missed out on all that.
Another possibility would be to transfer to UT Austin after my first year to their mathematics program, but I'm not so sure that would be beneficial.
Ultimately, academia is the dream, so I'm willing to dedicate myself to seeing it happen if it's possible.
Thank you for your help!

Results at school make zero difference to PhD applications. I doubt if there's even a section on the application form for them. Also, there's no prize for getting into a PhD as soon as possible. Take your time and develop your mathematical maturity.

@astronat friendly amendment: "Results at high school make zero difference to PhD applications."  Welcome, Quinn! Academia Stack Exchange generally doesn't answer "what should I do?" questions, or highly specific-to-one-person questions. However, I can see it being on-topic as: "Is there a viable path to a top Math PhD program through a non-flagship state school?"

@cactus_pardner Thanks, I'll edit that right now

@astronat For me, it's less of my high school results affecting my chances as it is not being as far along as I could/should be. Many of the top programs are highly selective. Also I'm not trying to rush through my courses, just trying to open up opportunities quicker so I have things to put on my resume such as quality research. I still value comprehension over speed due to my innate love of understanding why and how in math, but realize the necessity for some speed.

@cactus friendly rejoinder: I'm trying to reduce the USA-centricity of this site one comment at a time.

@astronat Ah, a worthy effort! Hmm... maybe "results prior to university"? College/university still counts as school in at least US usage, and I don't think you're saying that marks at university don't matter. ;)

@cactus yes, I like "results prior to university". Indeed, school and college here in the UK are both things that happen before uni.

If I were you I'd have stayed one more year in HS for a better undergrad institution...Some people say otherwise but unfortunately names do matter

Personally, I think if you have what it takes to get in and succeed in a top math graduate school, then there are relatively few colleges in the U.S. where you would NOT be able to demonstrate this as an undergraduate. You'll want to do very well in at least some courses (by "very well", I mean far beyond being the best in that particular course) and you'll want to distinguish yourself in some non-course achievements, such as a strong REU performance, a top 100 Putnam score, attend Budapest Semesters in Mathematics, etc.

It's too early to stress about grad schools in your situation. But let me share a few observations I have made being a student at a top 10 Math PhD program in the U.S

In every incoming class of last 3 years, there were a number of American students that came from a no-name schools such as a tiny liberal arts college nobody heard or a low ranked stated university. This means that if you are the best student in your university and make good friends with your professors, there is a decent chance to go to a much better school. I specified American students because international students pretty much all come from premier institutions.
Do an REU in your sophomore or junior summer. The point of REU is not to prove something new, but to expose you to the research world. Ideally, impress your REU supervisor well enough to ask for a recommendation letter from him/her.
Do not underestimate the Math GRE. Take your time to practice and get 800 minimum - 760 at the very least.

Thanks for the advice, I know I’m stressing too soon, and we’ll see if I’m cut out for it during my undergrad, but it helps to know that not everyone at the top 10 comes from a top 10


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Does the Admission committee care about my google scholar or related profiles?
I am in the process of applying for a US PhD program in the TOP50, majoring in Chemical Engineering. On the admission websites, I was asked to mention the number or list of all the papers I have published in my undergraduate study. I have about 20 publications, some of which are not significantly related to my target graduate research area (or I have insignificant contribution <50%). So If I just list some of the most important publications to that I have a significant contribution (>50%) to the admission profile, will the committee care about others that have been presented in my personal profiles, and can these negatively affect my potential to get the acceptance?

I was on an admissions committee in PhD program in Math for many years: We never looked at anything which is not mentioned in the official application file.

You have around 20 publications as an undergraduate!? Wow. I would certainly mention all of them, why leave any out?

I also want to list all of them lol. However some of them are not really related to my main research area and I do not have a significant contribution to them. I obtained the authorships of those articles due to my collaboration with some sub-groups for 3 years in terms of writing and revising the manuscripts. Some senior researchers said that the large number of pubs may be a red flag to many universities so I am really afraid to add them to my CV :(((

Are these all peer reviewed in legitimate journals and at least of minimal scholarly quality?

Absolutely, all of them are peer reviewed and indexed by scopus or WoS

Unfortunately, indexing by Scopus or WoS does not guarantee quality/lack of predatory nature, and for some journals peer review is just "peer review". It's hard to judge without actually reviewing your publications, but I do wonder if senior researchers warning about the numbers are actually gently warning you about the quality.

I agree. So that's why I wonder that if I just list some papers that I believe are the most qualified, will the committee care about the others that have been listed in my Scopus or google Scholar? Btw thank you very much for your comment <3.

I don't know if this helps but I usually split my CV publications into 'key publications' (either highly relevant to the role or I'm first/senior author) that I want to reader to focus on and 'other publications' where I can say have less of a meaningful contribution or they aren't relevant.  Everybody has this problem to some extent.

Maybe detailing your role in each paper would be helpful---say in your CV? That way you explicitly state the percentage contribution and what you did. Was it just lab help in some and primary author in others, e.g.? Just be open and honest about all. That would easily explain the quantity.

It's really impossible to give a 100% definitive answer about how an admissions committee would feel about all those publications. My gut reaction is that they would be impressed but skeptical. 20 papers over 3 years is very productive for anyone, let alone an undergraduate student. I suspect that your professor (who advised you not to list them all) is concerned that someone reading your application will assume you were involved in some unethical authorship-sharing ring - whether or not that is the case**.
Probably no-one will take the extra time and effort to search for and evaluate publications you don't list on your application. But obviously it is possible that someone does do that. I imagine that if someone did look you up, they would wonder why you didn't mention those extra publications. It might raise some questions.
If someone were to look up your publications specifically, the only reason that it might harm you is if they are in predatory journals or if there is clearly something off. Again, it's unlikely that someone would take the significant time and effort to evaluate each and every publication (and the journals they are in).
All that being said, if there is nothing sketchy about the publications, there is no reason not to list them, even if they are not the focus of your application. In my opinion, it's better to just explain your involvement in numerous projects than it is to appear to be "hiding" things on the off chance someone Google's your name.
** I won't comment on this too much but I do think it's worth addressing. How fast publications come out is field dependant and, to an extent, lab dependant. But, in my field, if a student showed up with ~7 publications per year over 3 years I would be very suspicious. It is almost impossible for a student to be involved in so many projects in a meaningful way. To me this sounds like a situation where everyone's name goes on every paper regardless of contribution. I'm not saying that this is the case, but it does set off my spidey senses.

+1. Corollary: OP should make sure that some (or all) of the letters come from supervisors or senior collaborators who can testify to the significance of the publications and what OP's contributions were. The application will be stronger if, for some of the publications, the letters describe this in specific detail.

It depends upon what kinds of journals and how you got involved in   publication. Large number of publications without being a first author means sometime just adding your name on someone's work which is unethical but very less likely to be identified as noone else knows about it. Predatory journals may not help but harm. If publications are genuine works in non predatory journals considered by departments you are applying, generally it helps.


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How to cite AI generated images in a presentation?
I’m making a presentation, and wanted to use some images from an AI tool as sort of stock imagery. How would I properly cite them? I’m making them myself using Midjourney, but could find no guidance on this. I would also be curious if that’s different from images made with other models such as a public open source Stable Diffusion model.

I think that in the short term it is best if you just name the tool(s) you used. Longer term there may still be a question about who/what the creator of such an image should be. Where does any "creativity" lie?
I'll note that in the US, at least, the copyright office of the government has decided that AI generated images can't be copyrighted, implying that the AI itself isn't a creator. Whether creativity will be attributed to the person directing the AI, when that happens, might still be an open question.
But you lose nothing by mentioning your tools, in any case.

Gratefully thanking our soon-to-be AI Overlords might curry some favor...

The authorship and citation quagmire will remain with us for some times to come. Until then, we continue with principle of ethics.

making them myself using Midjourney, ... I would also be curious if that’s different from images made with other models such as a public open source Stable Diffusion model.

Irrespective of Midjourney, Leonardo.ai, or even visualgptmaking extensive use of Stable Diffusion under the hood, the question remains, who is the author/owner.
For now, one might play it safe with

... image generated by author through AI generation using [tool] ...
image AI generated by author using [tool]

This approach will not be far off from how we handle Tables and visual representation of models/concepts that we use in our manuscript.


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Accidentally overlapping research projects
During my research, it appears that I have managed to stumble upon a new kind of solution for a problem that our lab has previously worked on. My classmate in the lab worked on that problem prior to me and developed and implemented a solution to that problem.
To clarify, I was not deliberately aiming to address that particular problem. It just turns out that the primary problem I was working on included this particular problem as a sub-problem, and it was almost immediately solved as a consequence.
The solutions are distinct, but presently, I am leaning towards mothballing my results for this particular problem. There are no personal conflicts presently, but I am worried about the possibility that this might engender some negative feelings in the lab. What is the best course of action?

Are you and the colleague both graduate students, or both post-doc or faculty? If you're both PhD students, how close are each of you to finishing, and has your colleague published their results/solution?

We are both PhD students, and will probably graduate around the same time. My colleague has written up a draft of their results and I can see them publishing within the next half year.

A similar issue arose in CS several years ago. Two students from different universities worked on exactly the same important problem independently and finished at the same time. They actually knew one another (conference meet ups) and their advisors knew one another quite will. But nobody on either side knew of the work of the other. There wasn't even any hint that either "should have known" of the work of the other.
There was a fairly long investigation when this came to light, but the end result was that it was determined that the work was independent. Both students earned their doctorates.
And they published a joint paper. That may be the solution you need here.
Your problem is a bit different if you have extended their work but it might be worth having a discussion between yourselves and the advisor(s) about how to maximize the outcome for everyone.

First thing I'd do is to talk with the classmate and your supervisor. It may benefit all of you to put something together that can become potentially even better than any single approach seen as isolated. Science is collaborative by nature.
Furthermore, there may well be space in the literature for two different approaches to the same problem, and the community may learn from them both, although of course this can't be assessed without knowing and being expert in the field. One more reason to talk.

Go ahead and publish --- advance the science
I recommend you proceed with research and publication for this result.  If the result is new and advances the field (and it certainly sounds like it would) then it is desirable for the advancement of knowledge that it be developed and published.  Depending on the overlapping research by your classmate, there might be scope for a fruitful collaboration, or it might be best to go ahead and publish your existing result without further input.  The ideal ethos for science is one that recognises the value of that knowledge as being something above the importance of personal advancement and careerism.  We all need to get used to the fact that scientific advancements may occur in ways that retard our own personal career advancement, but which give broader social benefits.  Your classmate will have to get used to this fact, and there is no better time to start getting used to that than now.
If you were to mothball your result in the interests of keeping the problem open for your classmate then you will be delaying a scientific advancement in your field, purely on the basis of careerist considerations (albeit for him, not for you).  There is no guarantee that your classmate will rediscover your solution, and his work might not be as good a solution as your own.  The longer the publication of a valuable solution to the problem is delayed, the more time and efficiency is lost when others encounter the problem you have solved.  It is also a loss of efficiency if your classmate continues working on his own solution without becoming aware of this new solution, which might render some of his research redundant, or set him on a path to further improvements.  Publish your solution and give him the chance to adapt his own research to the new state of the science, without delay.
It is likely that your classmate will indeed experience some negative feelings about having someone else solve a problem he had been hoping to solve.  It is perfectly natural to feel disappointed when you work hard on something and the output of that work turns out to have less value than you thought it would.  (I once spent a summer researching and solving a problem that I thought waas a big deal and would be a great paper; to my disappointment, it turned out that I had rediscovered an old result.)  Your classmate will need to adapt his own research to take account of your solution, which might or might not set him back in his PhD candidature, but which will give him an opportunity to advance further from a higher state of knowledge.  If he is mature enough to see the bigger scientific picture then his negative feelings will be limited to his own disappointment, and will not manifest in any negativity or ill-will towards you.


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After a successful appeal and resubmission, the same reviewer rejected our paper again, what can we do?
The last time I submitted my manuscript in 2022, it was rejected by the newly added reviewer x after major and minor revisions. The reason was that the method of one of the sections was questioned incorrectly. After detailed inspection, we found that what he said was wrong. We have theoretical basis and experimental verification. Then after submitting it, he still argued that there was something wrong with my paper and questioned my method. As a result, AE rejected the manuscript. We appealed to EIC at the beginning of this year, and EIC agreed with our appeal. During this period, the original AE also sent a review invitation to reviewer x, but he did not accept it. So we were told to resubmit the paper, and the AE and reviewers were changed. Four new reviewers were invited in the first round, and the result was an major revision. The weirdest thing is that in the second round, the AE invited reviewer x again. He still did not recommend publication. He copied all previous opinions without touching a word.  Does anyone know what to do about this matter?

Did the new AE give an indication they were aware that the reviewer just copied their original reviews, without engaging with your revision? If not, I would reach out to the AE and discuss exactly this with them. "The reviewer already commented Y on an earlier version, which we addressed by Z. Now they again comment Y, without engaging with our Z. What should we do?"

Thanks. This journal is double-blind and may require contact with EIC. What I'm not sure is whether I need to directly contact EIC to explain this issue, or wait for the response letter to be uploaded. I am quite worried that something bad will happen.

Which response letter do you mean, yours to the last round of reviews? I would clarify this issue before responding to (possibly erroneous) reviews. Also, unfortunately "bad things" as in "rejections after three review rounds" can and do happen... best to tell yourself that the three rounds did help you improve your paper, and submit elsewhere.

The decision for this round of review to be a "major revision" was made this morning. I have not yet submitted my response letter. I agree to clarify the question before replying to a (possibly erroneous) comment.

I sincerely hope that EIC can give a good answer, because this is really not easy....

Can we introduce the acronyms before their use for the people new to the publishing process?

It is editors, not reviewers that make publication decisions. The editor could accept or reject your paper whether the reviews are positive or negative, though the tendency is to go along with consistent reviews.
(A) You can appeal to the editor that the review is faulty. (B) You can revise the paper and resubmit unless final rejection is in hand, or (C) you can withdraw the paper and submit it elsewhere. Those are your main options. I suggest that you first try the first option and see what the response. Then consider one of the others.
For the first option, give your arguments that the paper is correct and point to flaws you see in the reviewer's comments.
Also, consider the possibility that your phrasing of some key ideas has misled the reviewer, which will probably require updates to make things more clear. I don't (can't) claim that as a fact, but it is worth looking at.

Thanks. After discussing with my PHD supervisor， we decide to try the first option for the this round of review.