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Why do a second PhD in a "neighboring" discipline?
I recently received an application for a PhD position from someone who is already working as a postdoctoral associate. The difference in fields is not particularly large—I work in chemical engineering and materials science, while the applicant originally is coming from computational chemistry.
So the obvious question is, why would someone want to pursue a second doctoral degree when they already have one in a related field, and why would I, as a potential advisor, want to consider someone interested in doing this? (For instance, it seems obvious that the person wouldn't likely need as much training as a novice, but there would also be the challenge of trying to find such a person gainful employment afterwards.)

Perhaps by pursuing another doctoral degree the person will get a study leave and a fully-paid scholarship with stipend?

And some people just collect degrees ...

@JoelReyesNoche: Except the person is already likely making more money as a postdoc than they would get, plus the additional career delay.

One of the best lecturers I've had did this. He did an applied maths PhD, went into industry as a statistician, and then went to get an econometrics PhD. He did this to switch fully into econometrics academic research which would've been a bit difficult with just an applied maths phd and no econometrics research experience. However he was getting paid full salary while he was doing it so it's not the same as a normal PhD student.

I know of a case where someone shifted from a tenure track job in area X to an MS in area Y, because area X didn't look like a viable career option compared to Y.

@John: No, I didn't.

I've seen two reasons for this.  The more worrisome reason is the one mentioned by EnergyNumbers in the comments, namely that some people just collect degrees.  In particular, they may feel having two Ph.D.s would look exceptionally impressive, or they may be unable to settle on a specialization, or they may feel that getting another degree is somehow preferable to getting a job.  These could be legitimate as personal desires, but they are counterproductive for a research career.
The other reason is to recover from a bad career start.  Sometimes someone's grades keep them from getting into a good graduate program, or they face other constraints (geographical or financial) in their choice of programs, or they fail to connect well with their advisor.  They may eventually get a Ph.D., but not under good circumstances, and a second Ph.D. might lead to a much better career.  The difference between this case and the first case is that these students don't actually want a second Ph.D. as such.  They regretfully feel they need one to achieve their career goals, but they wish it had been their first and only Ph.D.
Recovering from a bad start is a less worrisome reason to seek a second Ph.D., but of course the challenge is figuring out which students have moved beyond their past difficulties and which have not.

I would add that it might be someone taking the opportunity to go from a low tier school PhD to a high tier one.

You didn't mention what country you are in or the relative standing of the two universities & supervisors involved.  Sometimes people apply for a second PhD because their first one is not sufficiently well respected to get at good job.
Another reason is because the candidate really is just enjoying that stage of life.  In the USA, one can often stay a PhD student for years in a top institution, but in other countries there are hard time limits.  I also know of several people who took multiple PhDs at top universities just because they finished the first one too young to take a chair yet (and one person who didn't let that bother him & took a chair at 18, getting his father an office nearby!)
The most important question though is whether you want this person as a student – will they finish?  Do they know what they are getting in to?  If they have a PhD, they are in some sense a peer, and certainly should have a reputation.  I would spend more time than usual pursuing the references, possibly with phone calls, and I would certainly talk at length with the candidate about whether they would really finish writing up a second time.  I would only take them with exceptionally strong references from others and a very good personal narrative about why they want and would complete a second degree.

I think its all about the jobs that the first PhD could not bring to them. I myself have a PhD from an Egyptian university, but it seems that nobody is willing to offer me a post-doc position because I don't have 10 journal papers with extremely large impact factor as a PhD student from an advanced country would have. Of course the conditions are very different between a university in Egypt and another one in the United States or Europe. That's why I will keep looking for another PhD from a very high ranked western university.

You don't need "10 journal papers with extremely large impact factor." You do need strong letters of recommendation and good communication skills. Some record of publication in respected journals (not exclusively "high impact") is also helpful. I had two papers in a "mid-impact" journal published when I got my postdoc, and very few grad students have more than a handful of papers out.

well i still think it has something to do with "where did you got your PhD from?" it must be a high ranked university... however, i will try to follow your advice with post doc application, if not i will continue looking for another PhD in europe, america, or australia

I think the question people hiring postdocs are asking is "Who do I know that can vouch for this person?" Nobody wants to take a risk on hiring a weak candidate if they can avoid it. Having someone tell them the candidate is worth hiring goes a long way. Also, going for a second PhD is harder than you think: you'll need to give a very clear explanation for why you want a second PhD if it's in a field near the one you already have.

there are many reasons doing another phd. I have done a phd in chemistry, (one year postdoc and 2 years as a researcher in R&D). and today, applying for another phd. I have more than 10 papers (each one with impact higher than 2). what makes me to think for another phd, is not  job, it is knowledge. actually, I have a position as a lecturer, and have been offered a position fro assistant prof. however, I prefer to gain more experience and knowledge as I can. so I am applying for a position in interdisciplinary field (material chemistry). considering my experience in chemistry, I would be more successful in the future.

That doesn't necessarily make sense, though, as there are many ways to acquire knowledge other than going back and getting another PhD. In fact, part of a PhD is to teach you how to amass and sort vast amounts of knowledge, so a competent PhD-holder could segue from one field to another very closely related one without getting another PhD.

One of the reason why someone would like to do another PhD could be attaining a degree and knowledge is allied field as most of the current research now a days are focusing on multidisciplinary application based approached. This off course has to do with the field you are in and in this case mine being nano-biotechnology. As far as the OP's question is concerned the applicant had a PhD in chemistry and now he want to move towards computational chemistry. How I see this is that chemistry is quite focused and has set boundaries but if he manages to enter the field of computational chemistry his scope widens as computational chemistry is not only applicable in chemistry but also has scopes in modelling, biotechnology, protein chemistry nano chemistry and so on.
Also it could be a reason that from the previous PhD in chemistry the applicant only did basic research and now he is motivated to do application based research.
Other reason might be that he has less publication during his first PhD which he wants to improve with the second one.
And yes one very obvious reason could also be lack of postdoc position  due to recession and reduced government research funding as most seen in Europe now a day. Where many research are applying for a second PhD due to the lack of postdoc position......as fully funded PhD position are more available than postdoc position....

I am from Africa. None of my degrees (Bachelors or Masters) were recognized in the UK, leaving me with no choice but to study for the same degrees again. Not sure if this applies to PhDs, but I can imagine a similar situation.

Cleaned the answer up a bit, removed commentary. Question, though: what do you mean "not recognized"? What were you trying to do with your masters degree?

First why a Postdoc would consider a second PhD:
       TO SURVIVE
      Needless to say, how the existing system treats the Postdocs-Use   them, as a cheap labor and throw them. In almost all of the occasions, it is the Professor/Supervisor who is benefitted.
      According to Nature article, vacancies in academia is available only for 15% of the Postdocs. In addition to this, comes the problem of Visa and Racism. In France, it is impossible for one to get a job (even in Industry) let alone be called for the interview, without perfect French and a "French" sounding First & Last Name. Yet, French institution lure students from developing countries with their fancy programs. In one of the article on the "invisible" racism in Canada, one even acknowledged that the system is skewed in favour of Canadians (they want the good jobs for Canadians), yet they beckon PhD's and postdocs, from all over the world. Then, say the education is not enough, forcing them to work as bartenders and taxi drivers. Nature (Journal) itself points to some postdocs to have taken up the job of a forklift. Personally, I know a postdoc ending up as a stay-at-home Dad...And in almost all cases, none even spares a moment to think about the future and families of their postdocs or help them acquire skillsets that could help them move to industries, in the worst case scenario. Neither, opportunities in entrepreneurship is supported (National Laboratories, for example). In fact, Canada actively discourages it.
So, the best reason I think a person would choose a second PhD is to survive and since, PhD is usually longer than a postdoc could hope to acquire skillsets that could be used in industry and subsequently find a job. Personally, I would urge you to consider the postdoc as you'd be helping him and also prevent another "idiotic" bright student from wasting his life in the name of academic/knowledge pursuits  It is a beneficial proposition for you as well, as a postdoc would require less supervision and hence more publications could be achieved for lesser cost...!

Most of this "answer" is a complaint about the academic job market and postdocs in particular, that is unrelated to the question of doing a second PhD. Since (according to you) getting a job is all about having the right nationality, it's not clear why a second PhD would accomplish anything at all.

First it is not a complaint. If at all, it is because the professors hide the truth. Even when having the right nationality is a requirement, as I mentioned earlier, it (PhD) would give the postdoc some time to add some skills for his future (1st line)... Anyway, the professor is going to gain more... what is the big deal..?


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Mentioning student name changes in a letter of recommendation
What is the best protocol for handling a student whose name has changed from the time when a letter writer knew the student. For instance, suppose Pat Jones has become Pat Smith. Do we write

Pat Smith (né(e) Jones)

or is this unnecessary? I would think that the name should match what's in the rest of the application, but I would imagine it would also be helpful to make sure that the name change is noted, just in case there's some inconsistencies in the overall record (for instance, I doubt that all universities would change transcripts of alumni).

If the name change occurred during a career (education) it would be reflected in much of the paper work and hence something the applicant would need to explain as well. So I do not think it is necessary to do much about it. The suggestion you make is fine as a signal, once, early on in the letter but not necessary.

I'm talking about cases where, for instance, an undergraduate has gotten married following graduation, and then asked for a letter after that.

Without addressing the question: if you do reference the applicant's name change, I would advocate "previously Pat Jones", rather than "né Pat Jones" (assuming the letter is written in English).

Why not ask the student what they would prefer?  I can imagine situations (for example, if the student changed what gender they identify with) where they might not want the name change mentioned too much, or they might appreciate you explaining the circumstances.  You're writing the letter for student's benefit, after all.

In the specific case of an undergraduate who has gotten married after graduation, I think it would be unethical to mention the name change unless the student specifically asks you to.  It's emphasizing information (marital status) which the people receiving the letter should not be considering when making their decision, and in fact are legally barred from considering in the US.  In places where it's not illegal (and where marital status is mentioned elsewhere on the application) letters should still be concentrating on data relevant to the job and not things like race, appearance, or marital status.  Furthermore, given many people's prejudices (both conscious and unconscious) it is likely to actively harm female students.  Even if the student you have in mind is male, mentioning marital name changes in general will be harmful to women.
In the case of someone who has a publishing record under a different name, the issue is more complex, and I think it would be reasonable to ask the candidate if they'd like you say anything.

+1 for mentioning unconscious prejudice against female students...this is a genuine concern, and one that should be considered when including the information in a letter of recommendation.

Your suggestion of using the né(e) construction is the traditional solution in English, i.e. the solution suggested in etiquette manuals. I would do it once at the beginning of the letter to avoid confusion then revert to the current name. Just because the student should mention it elsewhere does not mean your letter should not contain all the information you can reasonably provide.
As a side note I would doubt that any American University would retroactively change transcripts. However, being a person who has never changed his name I have no relevant experience to back that up.

If the student is clever enough, he has both names written on his CV. In some systems, it may even be built into the application software (in France, universities online applications typically ask for both family name and birth name).
So, I wouldn't bother with it, unless the student asks you to do it. And yes, I would use the student's current name, even though he may have been named differently when you first met him.

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What are the health impacts of standing / sitting while lecturing?
I often find myself lecturing for 7 hours in one day. This question is not about how to reduce my hours, it is about making healthy choices with my existing constraints.
I am lecturing to different classes during the day (it is not a single group of students for all 7 hours), in case that makes a difference.
I realize that during my lectures, I must choose what to do with my body. Should I sit (blood clots, deep-vein thrombus) or do I stand (I've heard non-lecturers complain about swelling legs when standing too much).
My questions are:

What impacts are known from standing while lecturing for 7 hours per day, 3 days per week?
Is it better to stand or to walk around?
Is it better to sit for the whole time?
Is it best to do a "little bit of everything?" If so, where is the optimal balance?

I realize that this might be specific to the person but I am hoping to find some experiences or, even better, research, which will indicate the best choices to make when one must lecture for many hours.

This is really more of a general health question, but there currently isn't a suitable site on SE at least for such a question. The new Heath site in commitment would be suitable once it gets going. Regardless, 7 hours of lecturing sounds like a whole lot of lecturing. Is this an average or an exceptional day? "often" is a bit vague. Not really relevant, just curious.

@FaheemMitha I understand your perspective but I believe the physical aspect of lecturing is not repeated in many professions. Therefore, I believe it does fit here. BTW, I often lecture 7 hours per day, 3 days per week (yes, it's a lot).

I agree the question is on topic here. It was just a suggestion/comment. Though people do lecture outside universities. E.g. in schools.

I'd be more worried about the impact on my throat...

@MassimoOrtolano You mean like this question? :-)

@earthling Ha ha, yes, exactly. Actually I had that same problem when I had to lecture for 20 h/we: at the end of the semester I had no voice, but the legs were ok ;-)

The health impacts of standing while doing a job are known to be strongly positive, compared to sitting while performing a similar function. For the seminal paper on this, see Morris et al., 1953 in the Lancet (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673653914950). Morris examined the incidence of heart disease in bus drivers vs. bus conductors. The former spend the day sat at the wheel while the latter spend the day walking around the bus collecting fares and enforcing the rules. This occupation was chosen because drivers and conductors come from the same socio-economic conditions and were expected to be fairly similar in every respect except for their working activity. Naturally the incidence was sharply reduced in the conductors. A casual Google Scholar search will pick up more recent references, and the health benefits of standing vs. sitting are widespread.
One can imagine that standing for very long periods of time repeatedly might cause problems, particularly on the feet or ankles, but seven hours a day a few times a week is not really anything to be excited about. Many people work in bars or restaurants, on building sites, in hospitals and so on doing much more labour intensive work with shift lengths exceeding twelve hours, six days a week.
All I would say is ensure you wear comfortable shoes!

Bus conductors do walk (as opposed to e.g. surgeons who are forced to stand still), and even while they stand they use different muscles to keep equilibrium with the accellerations of a moving bus.

Yes, of course there will be differences. In general though I would be surprised to find any situation where sitting is healthier than standing. [ Except, perhaps, riding a horse. ;) ]

@cbeleites Once you lecture standing, you'll move, too.

Calchas: I wouldn't be sure forced sitting still (bus driver) is better than forced standing still (surgeon). But I'd attribute the problems to being static. But as @yo' correctly points out this needn't be the problem in a lecture. Though lectures often don't come with that much movement, so I'd say that trying to move more is good.

I don't have hard evidence at hand, but I'd guess

a bit of everything is probably good
Walking around is better than standing still or sitting only. One way of doing this could be to walk back and forth between slide changing (keyboard) and a lecturing position somewhere forming a triangle with students and projected slide.
Some colleagues of mine who have to stand a lot in somewhat similar settings  like unstable "rocking chair" shoes.
AFAIK, people who get swollen feet while standing tend to have the same problem when sitting for a long time. Which is plausible because the swelling has to do with the valves in leg veins and lymphatic vessels not working properly. Walking is better because the calf muscles help getting the blood back up. But for optimal results you need to use all kinds of muscles of the calf and foot, which you normally don't do on flat floors (this would be an argument for the rocking chair shoes, but I have no idea whether they actually help).  OTOH, sitting on a table with legs dangling is really bad with resped to swollen feet: the edge compresses the veins in the upper leg. The same can happen with chairs that have the wrong (backward) seat slope and/or height.
Making good use of breaks could also help without distracting students from the lecture because you do funny gymnastics. I knew a teacher who spent the lunch break doing a power nap with the feet up to prevent/alleviate swollen feet.
I don't lecture long times, but: my natural idea about lecturing is to do it standing: this way you are better seen by the students, gestures work better and the voice is better as well. Standing still becomes uncomfortable very soon (=> walk). I take this as a (possibly rather late) sign that the body needs to move, so walk. Obviously, you cannot hike or run around the lecture hall, although this would be more healthy than walking a few steps every once in a while: it would make the students crazy.
Going on with this train of thought, I sit down when standing becomes uncomfortable. Again, I take this as a sign that some (back) muscles get tired from the standing position, so having some other posture for a while is a good idea.
I call this primarily standing even if you walk a bit back and forth from the observation that I find it much easier to hike a whole day with a substantial (e.g. 25 kg) backback than to keep on my feet in these standing plus a tiny bit of walking postures.

The only time I have seen a lecturer give a lecture sitting down was when he was extremely hungover. It does not encourage the students to listen!

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What is an academic sabbatical?
The Wikipedia definition of sabbatical doesn't match how I think of an academic sabbatical. What does it mean to go on academic sabbatical, and does it depend on the country?

The definition of sabbatical in Wikipedia refers to labor terminology rather than academic sabbatical leave. As a privilege to employees, they can have temporary unpaid leave (for any personal reason) without losing their job.
However, academic sabbatical historically is somehow different. When a scholar needs peace of mind to focus on a challenging issue, s/he will visit a new institute to experience a new atmosphere. While still being in the academic environment, not having heavy official duties.
There are several motivations for a sabbatical leave (at least as I have seen):

A manager finishes an administrative position (e.g. Dean), and wishes to rest in a different atmosphere, but not far from academia.
A researcher working on a new idea, prefers to focus on his/her work somewhere with less commitments on everyday responsibilities (e.g. teaching, advising, etc).
A researcher is exploring new possibilities and opportunities, spend some time in a new department to live with new colleagues for a while.
A researcher is collaborating with another group and spend a year in the host research group as a visiting scientist/professor while being on sabbatical leave from his/her institute.
A professor in a mid-level university finds a temporary position in a top university. This is the base for many visiting professors in the US universities, e.g. international professors can experience working in the US universities. Even there are associate/assistant professors who find a post-doc position in the top universities, and use sabbatical leave, not to lose their job at home.

In any case, sabbatical allowance mainly depends on the university employment rules.

Situations will depend widely on country and on the employer, because a sabbatical leave is something between you and them: it's an arrangement between an academic and her employer  that lets her “take a break” without fully losing the benefits of their position.
The nature of the break, the activities one has during the sabbatical, and the benefits retained during the length of the sabbatical can vary completely. For example, a sabbatical can take the form of an unpaid leave for six months or a year, during which the researcher will sail around the world. However, in the modern research system, sabbaticals generally consist of periods where the academic gets time to:

focus full time on a given research project (most often, an emerging project)
visit another group to advance an existing project or help create a new collaboration
spend part time or full time launching a research-related business

It is common for universities to support those researchers who are granted sabbaticals with some income, typically somewhere between half salary and full salary.

You can browse the web to see sabbatical policies at various universities. Here's the description at U. Oregon:

Sabbatical leave is a paid period of released time designed to reinvigorate and restore one's academic energies, and to provide a base for future intellectual development and achievement. During the leave period, a faculty member may receive between 50 and 100 percent of salary depending on the length of the leave and the school, college or other administrative affiliation.


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What Plagiarism level of master thesis is acceptable?
I am checking plagiarism of my master thesis.  It comes out 32 percent.  So upto what level of plagiarism is accepted?
My master thesis is on the topic of homomorphic encryption in Cloud and I uses turnitin online service for plagiarism checking.
Edit: I apologize that I do not included the detail that plagiarism level comes out 32 percent when I include my research paper as it is in my thesis. The paper are going to publish in IEEE conference. If I exclude this research paper, The plagiarism level is 12 percent.I also posted question related to it on academic stack exchange and if anyone interested, you can check the link
Can research paper information be used in thesis writing?

None, if it's real plagiarism. If it refers to standard definitions (vector space) or references, this may indicate false positives. Anything else should be close to 0.

What do you mean "it comes out 32 percent?"

@CapeCode Presumably that some undefined automated check resulted in 32% copied text.

This cannot be answered without knowing the tool you were using, what this "32%" means, and what the conventions in your field are, but in the dark I would assume that you have a big problem if a third of your thesis are verbatim copies from existing sources.

@xLeirix I uses turnitin online service for plagiarism check.

The acceptable "plagiarism level" of any academic work is 0. Why would you need a software to test your own work? You know if you plagiarized or not... If you're question is "What is the maximum level of detectable plagiarism that will not get me expelled?" I think this website is not meant to give that kind of advice.

Rewrite everything in your own words and with proper citation and it will be zero. Don't play with it, it will hunt you in your career, it doesn't worth it.

vivek also asked about including his/her own research in his/her thesis
(http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/72676/can-research-paper-information-be-used-in-thesis-writing), perhaps "32%" is due to turnitin detecting his/her previously published research.

@user2768 Thanks for pointing out.  I have to ask them separate because of nature of both questions.

You wrote in this comment that the overlap percent is 12 when you don't include your own published paper, and only goes up to 32 when you include it. That's very relevant information and you should include that in your post.

@ff524 Thanks for suggestions.  As it's a comment of different question, I don't want to mix these two questions to increase complexity.

You should include that detail here because it's very, very, very relevant to this question. See all the people saying that 32% seems very high (this answer, this comment)? They would think differently if they knew that it was 12% before you added your published paper. As a question-writer, you really need to give people all the information that they need in order to answer your question.

The turnitin tool is saying that it thinks 32% of the text of your thesis could have been taken from other sources.
The software is a very blunt tool, and often has difficulty recognizing common turns of phrase and specialized terminology (e.g. I've seen "Without loss of generality we can assume that"  and "Traveling Salesman's Problem" flagged.)  It also doesn't recognize situations where there's a direct quote (properly delineated and cited) from another source.
Thus it's necessary for a human to review the report generated by the software to see what's going on.  Without seeing that report, no one can give you an authoritative answer to your question.  However, in my experience, I've never seen a paper with this high a score that didn't have significant problems.
To directly answer your question, no amount of plagiarism is acceptable in a master's thesis.

To add to your observations, when I sat on my department's academic misconduct committee, I had to reviewed the turn-it-in reports for all assignments in our department. I have also never seen a paper with a similarity index in excess of 30% that didn't have problems (although some did properly attributed the large block quotes and therefore did not plagiarize).

I have had a report over 30% that was basically fine. It was a fairly short assignment, and about 20% of the flagging was made up of tiny snippets.

To answer a now-included question: there is no computer tool that can correctly identify all plagiarism. To decide whether you have plagiarised, you need to answer the question 'have I included text, images or ideas that are not my own without making that clear?'

Thanks for answering. According to our college norms, we have to generate the report and submit it with our master degree. The tool for generating report is Turnitin.

@vivek Something of that variety is pretty common. But it doesn't affect my answer. Turnitin is one tool that detects some plagiarism. It is not a redefinition of plagiarism.


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Is there an equivalent in another country of the French "CIFRE"?
A "CIFRE" in French is another type of doctorate where the French government helps to fund a company to hire a doctorand.
There are several differences between a CIFRE and a "doctorat" in France, or PhD, as far as I know, the main are more are less those following:

You are hired within both a company and a laboratory for a CIFRE instead of only a single laboratory for a "doctorat"
You are generally better paid with a CIFRE, slightly more than a "doctorat" but still less than a regular position within a company as an engineer for instance
You are suppose to do more theoretical and less applied work for a "doctorat", CIFRE aiming to apply your researches for the company that hires you. Also meaning you'll probably publish less while doing a CIFRE.
You have to teach within universities or Engineering/Business schools for a "doctorat" while it's not mandatory for a CIFRE

Here I'm not focusing on doctors of medicine at all (a French distinction exists).
I was wondering if this kind of huge distinction exists in UK or US and if not, in any other country.

Is this actually a separate class of degree, or a separate funding model/scholarship for the same degree? Note that both the US and UK PhDs are more student-like than many PhD models in mainland europe.

@origimbo I think it's a separate funding model for the same degree, implying not only a laboratory but also a company. It aims to strengthen the link between French public research and industrial companies.

@origimbo, Alright! That's interesting to know!

it looks like it is a funding mechanism for a PhD http://www.anrt.asso.fr/sites/default/files/plaquette_cifre_en.pdf

Yes.
CIFRE is a mechanism for PhD students in France to be funded and work with industry.
The US NSF offers similar opportunities through the Non-Academic Research Internships for Graduate Students (INTERN) Supplemental Funding Opportunity.

From the description in the comments, the closest UK equivalent might be the CASE studentship (CASE once stood for Collaborative Award in Science & Engineering, but now probably doesn't stand for anything). These studentships are funded jointly by the UK research councils and a second party, who provides a "top up" of at least 33% to the student's maintenance stipend, additional supervision during the ordinary course of the university study and will be expected to arrange a short internship for the student of about three months during the (maximum) four year degree course.
The value to the government is the targeting of research at problems UK companies care sufficiently to throw money at (a small amount by industrial terms). As far the the actual period of study goes, there will be relatively few functional differences, beyond the (significantly) higher income.

This is the most relevant answer. Indeed, the US NSF funding mentionned in the accepted answer does not lead to an actual pHd but is rather a funding scheme to do research within a company.

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Do I need to have a well defined PhD Research proposal before contacting a supervisor?
I am in the UK and I am looking to contact a supervisor about starting a PhD.
First, I know the area that I want to focus on but I don't have a defined research project just yet. I'd like to define the proposal once I know who my supervisor will be and I would look for his input into the proposal. I can come up with a proposal myself now but I think this is sub-optimal. Should I indicate this in the email? Something like:

I am looking to do a PhD in field X. While I have ideas about a
research proposal, I would value your guidance in producing the final
proposal.

Second, I don't really need funding. I'm a working professional and I wouldn't need a stipend. Should I indicate this in the email? I don't want to be distasteful and talk about money at the beginning. At the same time, I don't want to get a "No" from a supervisor that I like because they don't think they'll get funding for me.

This is a UK (and maybe Europe as well) question. In the US, the answer would be no, you don't need anything specific here. It might even be counterproductive to be too committed to a specific thing.

Also, see this answer for UK to our canonical question on doctoral admissions: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/181161/75368

I think these are two interesting questions and would benefit from being separated out.

I would not agree to supervise a student who is a working professional unless I had a long discussion about their priorities during the PhD.

How are you going to work full time and do a PhD? A PhD is a full-time job, not a hobby.

The correct answer to the first question will depend on the field. In more science oriented fields, particularly lab based sciences, then the answer is no, you shouldn't have a fully worked out research proposal in mind. It is likely that the supervisor will only want to put the work into supervising a student who can work on things they at the supervisor's priorities. This is particularly the case where the research will cost money.
However, the tone of your post suggests to me that your are not thinking about lab sciences. In which case I think it might be slightly different. I think here, you will want to have more of an idea about what it is you want to do. I'm sure a supervisor who decides to take you on will help you hone and polish the idea, make it more specific. But I think you should have at least some idea of what it is you want to do.
For your second question: Yes, I think you should tell the supervisor up front. Generally being unfunded rules somebody out, and I throw emails from students who don't say how they will funded their students straight in the bin without further consideration.
Be aware that as well as a stipend, funding also includes tuition fees, which will have to be paid, as well as, in some subjects "bench" fees (which are supposed to cover the cost of the research).
I wouldn't be too worried about @DanielRCollin's point. In the UK, students must successfully graduate after 4 years (or the equivalent if part time). Failure to graduate or graduating later than 4 years is a black mark on a supervisor's record, and if more than 20% of students fail to graduate in 4 years, the department by be blocked form taking government funded students. There is a strong incentive not to do this.

Q2: Second, I don't really need funding. I'm a working professional and I wouldn't need a stipend. Should I indicate this in the email?

Two things here. Are you contemplating part-time. Your "I'm a working professional" would be construed as seeking PT.
There's no rule, AFAIK, that stipulate indicating outright from the onset.
Nonetheless, often, if a potential supervisor is interested in you, (s)he/they will set up a short session with you. Both parties will get to engage on interest and key areas. Issues of stipend can be engaged on here.
Be it as it may, whether you indicate in your 'introductory' email or not, keep it succinct and polite as you can.

Q1: ... Something like:
I am looking to do a PhD in field X. While I have ideas about a research proposal, I would value your guidance in producing the final proposal.

In my view, there's no clear cut approach.
You may consider along the line
I'm looking at PhD in field X ...
I have looked into subfield X.1 ...
I have researched into subfield X.1
... ...
Your work in subfield X.1 caught my interest and I'm keen engaging further on subfield X.1, X.1.1, X.1.2 ...
... ...
In essence, simply mentioning I've ideas in X without a 1 or 2 sentence of what that/those idea(s) is/are might not suffice. Of course, you are not compelled on specifics: you can be broad (within field X).
Just to mention:
In the UK, some universities list

studentship (with awards/stipend)
open PhD research projects (funded or unfunded)
units/centres research areas/interest

PS: Each has its own dynamics within the interested candidate and potential supervisor/advisor.
In certain instances, not all, for competitive studentship, the dept/doctoral school/college might request you submit a formal application. Post interview and upon acceptance, the proposal writing process takes place with (possible) supervisor/advisor.
One writes and submits around the studentship's research topic

Taking it from a computer science/information systems background I would say that in your case (without a very clear idea of what you really want to do) it is better not to have a full proposal. Instead you should identify a supervisor/supervisors that you are interested in and contact them (this must be specific and details relating to this professor). Then you can work on looking at a proposal (and whether there is a "click").
Overall the vast majority of student PhD proposals are not fit for purpose, but they may convey the message that you are very stuck to the topic or approach chosen. This may disqualify you for many supervisors (either because of the topic or method mismatch, or because they think that you are set on a way they don't believe in). It is better to work with the supervisor to actually get a workable proposal that fits shared interests. This is especially true if you are not actually that invested in a specific topic.

Regarding the second question ("I wouldn't need a stipend. Should I indicate this in the email?"), from experience I would suggest no.
I have a family member who let slip similar information in an interview for a PhD position (U.S.) and the effect was that they were eagerly admitted and then indefinitely delayed in being able to graduate (and so, contributed to the department's income stream out-of-pocket as long as they were there). After an extended number of years, they were compelled to drop out of the program and switch to a different department at the same university, from which they ultimately did receive a PhD (after several more years).

Thanks, first - I am sorry to hear about this unethical behaviour. That's a very good point. In the UK there is a time limit most universities will ask you to complete the PhD within but some might jerk you around. I've heard in the US it is a bit more common to take advantage of students. I mean, in the UK stipends are ~£13000 which isn't exactly not taking advantage of the student. It's under minimum wage.

In the UK, not only is there a 4-year limit, but students must submit a thesis within this time that is successful. Failure to do this has consequences for both the supervisor and the department.

@IanSudbery The limit (and maximum registration) are different for part time students. There are also ways that things can be extended.

@PauldeVrieze - the time limit is different for part time students, but its pro rata - thus a student registered as 50% would have 8 years. My expereience is that it is very difficult to extend things beyond the limit (this was relaxed a bit during and immediately post pandemic) as if the number of students successfully graduating within limit drops below 75%, the department can no longer supervise government funded students.

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


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Only one co-supervisor is supervising, but my project is in other co-supervisor's field
I'm currently a PhD student at a US-based university in electrical engineering.
I started my PhD in 2021 with co-supervisors A1 and B1. However, I found working with A1 and B1 to be very difficult due to severe personality conflicts. Therefore, I pushed through until the end of my first year, submitted a paper with them, and then left them to move to a new pair of co-supervisors A2 and B2.
Before I started working with A2 and B2 in 2022, I was told by A2 and B2 that the project that I will be working on with them consisted of a mix of theory from field A and field B, and that A2 will provide advice on field A and B2 will provide advice on field B, which are their respective specializations.
It is now 2024, and what happened in practice is very different. First, the project that was supposed to be a mix of field A and field B turned out to only involve field B, with no involvement of field A whatsoever.
Second, over the past two years, supervisor B2, who is specialized in field B, was not involved in the research at all. They would not read any of the papers, they would mostly ignore my emails to them asking for advice, and when I was eventually able to ask them for advice, they told me to go talk to another faculty member in the department because they themselves cannot help me.
Instead, supervisor A2 decided to take over supervisor B2's role as an adviser for field B, which is not their specialization. This, however, had disastrous consequences from my perspective. Supervisor A2 would consistently provide incorrect information regarding basic facts in field B, and I had to correct them every time.
Moreover, supervisor A2 would consistently not trust me when I told them that something in field B that they are proposing would not work, even after providing a formal mathematical proof.
At this point, I had studied field B for two years to be able to perform the research myself without any guidance from supervisor B2, so I had some level of experience in this field. I would go back-and-forth with them over email over several days explaining why something would not work, and even when I do try it after giving up, it still wouldn't work as I previously said.
At this point, it has been 2 years and we have not published a single conference or journal paper. In my department, this is rare at the PhD level. Additionally, supervisor A2 has very little experience publishing papers in field B, which is the field that this project is in.
Therefore, I see the following three options ahead of me (feel free to suggest others):

Cut my losses: I cut my losses and try to find a new single supervisor (not a pair of co-advisers like my previous two experiences). Also, my two experiences so far with PhD co-supervisors has been with tenured professors, and I suspect that this is the source of the problem. I will also try to find a young assistant professor to join who is eager to publish and will need to graduate PhD students, unlike tenured professors.
Stick with it: My funding from the department ends in 2026, but can be extended on request. The initial plan in 2022 was that I would spend at most 4 years with supervisors A2 and B2 before graduating in 2026. However, it does not look like I will graduate in 2026 based on the slow progress so far. To be honest, from my perspective, we could easily spend another year on this project without making any progress whatsoever.
Bring on another co-supervisor: I previously requested from my co-supervisors to bring on a third supervisor who specializes in field B. However, supervisor A2 rejected this idea, saying that having three co-supervisors is "unusual".

I would prefer option (1), but at the moment, there are no suitable professors that I can join. However, my department will hire 1 assistant professor in field B next semester, so there is a chance that I can join them next semester. Option (2) if my least preferred, since I'm also starting to get exhausted from continuing to work with supervisor A2, which is affecting me mentally.
Any suggestions on how I can proceed?

I'm in a similar situation, but I'm still in my first year. My supervisor suggested a research topic he didn't know much about, so I got minimal help from him, but had to explain to him why it didn't work instead. When I discussed my idea with him, he simply said it wasn't worth publishing.

@JackBlack Thank you for sharing this. Unfortunately, I tried this with my co-adviser, but they didn’t agree.


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When does an explicit hypothesis need to be stated in a paper?
In secondary school, I was taught that all laboratory experiments must include an explicit, a priori hypothesis statement with an associated theoretical foundation. For example, one of my lab reports might explicitly state, "I predict that the test tube of xenon will not demonstrate any observable reaction to the heat of the Bunsen burner in the presence of oxygen because xenon is a noble gas and noble gasses do not react except under extreme circumstances." At the end of the paper, we were required to explicitly state whether or not the hypothesis was supported by our findings, e.g. "The results above clearly demonstrate no reaction to applying heat from a Bunsen burner to a test tube of xenon in the presence of oxygen for any of the time intervals in Table A. It has thus been demonstrated that the hypothesis has been shown to be true."
What I've found in the real world is that actual, published studies generally do not include such an explicit hypothesis. The hypothesis may be implicit in the study's formulation or background, but at no point do the researchers actually come out and say, "This is what we think will happen". That is, someone who knows enough about the research field will have a good idea what the hypothesis probably was, but it is not formally stated in the paper. I do see a lot of papers with implicit hypotheses that look something like:

Understanding whether reticulating the splines of wooden spoons produces a GHV value that is positively correlated with the price of rice in China is important to proving the No Free Lunches conjecture [McGillicudy & Jones 2013, Smith 2015, Lopez 2018]. We use the Glover-Branch Method [1995] to apply positive pressure to the negative gradient of our standardized set of wooden spoons to determine the second coefficient....

At no point in this do the authors come out and say, "We think reticulating the splines of wooden spoons produces a GHV value that is positively correlated with the price of rice in China", but rather we perceive it as implicit in the narrative.
When publishing research, when (if ever) is it required to explicitly state an a priori, theoretical hypothesis rather than leaving it implicit?
To be clear, I'm not asking whether it is ok to proceed with research without first identifying a specific hypothesis, but rather whether it is essential to state or disclose the hypothesis to the readers upon publication or whether explicit hypothesis statements are really only a pedagogical tool for students.
In many cases, of course, the hypothesis will be supported by the data and there should be no problem stating so, but I'm thinking about cases where the researchers' hypothesis was found to not be supported. In that case, is it required for the researchers to "admit" that they jumped to a false conclusion in their initial hypothesis or is it sufficient to simply publish the results?

I don't know whether you are an scientist/experimentalist, but you've hit upon something that is a problem in the modern scientific community, at least in the so-called "softer" sciences, I confess I don't know what physicists do.
The short answer is that, yes, people frequently write their paper to "tell the best story," and often that involves stating a hypothesis that is supported by the paper, or,  if you have a little bit of shame, only hinting at the idea that you had an a priori hypothesis. [I might come back and add more about why this is bad, statistically.]
To answer the title question, "When does an explicit hypothesis need to be stated in a paper?," it doesn't, which is why many advocacy groups and journals encourage preregistration, that is the explicit statement of a hypothesis before data collection or analysis.

Preregistration separates hypothesis-generating  (exploratory) from hypothesis-testing (confirmatory) research. Both are important. But the same data cannot be used to generate and test a hypothesis, which can happen unintentionally and reduce the credibility of your results. Addressing this problem through planning improves the quality and transparency of your research.

In short, one publishes a hypothesis and analysis plan. Usually it is not peer-reviewed, just time-stamped for posterity. Some journals will peer-review your analysis plan and accept a paper based on this, and promise to publish the results even if your hypothesis is not supported.

In that case, is it required for the researchers to "admit" that they jumped to a false conclusion in their initial hypothesis or is it sufficient to simply publish the results?

No, I don't think this is quite right. A hypothesis isn't a conclusion - I don't think a paper needs to contain some admission of error. A good paper would explain how a hypothesis was generated based on the literature, and explain what the consequences are for the field that your study was not consistent with what an expert would expect from previously published research.


text:
What other models are in use for evaluating faculty candidates?
A recent question mentioned the importance of citation counts and impact factor in evaluations of faculty candidates. There are some good answers explaining why this is the dominant model today.
I'm curious if any other models have achieved a reasonable amount of use today, even if they are not remotely the most common ones. That is, are there models that either do not take into account citation count and impact factor, or where they are relatively minor factors? For example, something like this could match:

Welcome to the Slightly Northwestern South-By-Southwest University of Central Eastern Ruritania. As you wrap up your PhD, note that if you want to continue on as faculty here, your citation count and impact factor are less than 5% of the evaluation. Nobody here worries about them. If you want to get an appointment, you need to spend at least 75% of your time studying for the New Faculty Literacy Exam rather than doing research not strictly required for your degree! Write one trash paper for a third-rate journal if you must, and then start studying! The exam is really tough! Here's an exam syllabus to get started.

To be clear, I'm not asking about alternative pathways to degrees (e.g. degree by exam, degree by prior publication, etc.), and I'm not asking for a list of universities that disregard citation count, etc. in favor of other factors. I'm simply asking if this is actually a thing in 21st century academia.

Problem is, doing research and beeing a good exam taker are two pair of shoes. The transition from being a good exam taker to become a researcher is what shd be achieved during the PhD.

Seems relevant: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4471/academia-varies-more-than-you-think-it-does-the-movie

Here's what my department will do before offering you a tenure-track or tenured position: Our personnel committee will get informal opinions about you from colleagues in or near your area. You will be invited to give a colloquium talk and possibly also a more specialized talk, and to meet with faculty members here (usually including the chair of the personnel committee and the chair of the department). All of our faculty will be invited to give their opinions after your talk(s).  We will, after getting your permission, solicit letters from experts in your field about your research; these will not just be the ones you listed as referees. After these letters are received, the personnel committee will vote on whether to make an offer to you. The committee will also prepare a report about your record and reports on two of your (more important) papers. Then the department's elected executive committee will vote, and finally the whole tenured faculty of the department will vote.
The preceding is what the department will do. If the decision is to make an offer, it still needs to be approved by the college's executive committee and, in the case of a tenured position, by the provost.

While the general gist of this is accurate, I think this is more effort than most departments will put into the hire of a tenure-track candidate, though probably accurate for a tenured candidate.

"vote on whether to make an offer to you" or "vote on which of the N shortlisted candidates to make an offer to"?

@avid We vote "yes or no" on each individual candidate whom the personnel and executive committees have proposed. (Often there is only one such candidate, but other names may come up in the discussion.)

Blimey! This really is the gold standard, but i've never been involved in any department that goes to that much effort (or has that much democracy).

I concur. This is similar to how we proceed in the university I work in ( Canada )

At my institution (a research-intensive Canadian university), the "evidence of scholarship" component of assessment for tenure and promotion is not based closely on numeric summaries of citation count and impact factor. It is more holistic/subjective (which could be argued to be a bad thing, as it is less transparent and allows more scope for bias, but I personally think it's a good thing). For the "publications" component, some of the criteria considered are:

volume (number of papers, and consistency of output)
authorship (first or last/senior? out of how many authors total? we also value co-authorship with a candidate's trainees, but this falls under "mentorship" rather than "scholarship")
quality of venue: we don't usually look directly at impact factors, but rely on the judgment of someone who knows the field (a reference or committee member) about whether the journals are high-quality/high-impact journals for a particular field. For better or worse, "tabloid" publications (Science/Nature/PNAS/etc.) do carry some weight ...
judgment of reference letters about the quality and impact of the work, either of individual papers or as a body

We don't request any that candidates include information about impact factor, total citations, or h-indices in their folders, although this information is sometimes provided by candidates or by reference writers — we try to take this information with a grain of salt.
You could say that the criteria listed above are basically the same as "citation counts" and "impact factors", but subjective.
There are also criteria other than publications (presentations at meetings, invited talks).
Similar criteria are used for hiring decisions (especially at the state of preparing a short list of candidates to invite for an interview, before the process described in @AndreasBlass's answer takes place).
See also this answer.

What do you do when you don't have enough people on the committee that know the field. I doubt anyone on the committee knew anything about my field,

@IanSudbery: rely more heavily on the letters of reference (which are, by definition, from people who know the field well)

HR departments hate references as it opens them up to all sorts of issues with accustations of discrimination.

To echo the other answers: at least in math, in the U.S., appraisal of candidates for faculty positions is much more holistic than just a bunch of numbers. If nothing else, various candidates typically have very different trajectories, making any simple "scalar" comparison ridiculous and meaningless. (Well, sure, unless we just give up and "declare" some number created by a corporate publisher to be what we care about!)
In math, citation indices are a very, very volatile measure. For one thing, after a breakthrough paper that is refered-to for a while, the myriad "secondary" papers will have more relevant technical details... and the original is not cited any more.
Also, nowadays, quite a few people have realized that, for example, a "good mathematician" is more than "just a good theorem-prover". Plus, why hire someone, pay a salary, given them an office, and put up with annoyances, if we can just read the preprints and papers for free? :)
Yes, some people (not only administrators) over-simplify by using grant numbers as a bottom line. This has never made much sense in math, since we don't really need giant machines, etc. Still, some math people like "number of dollars" as a measure, because it is a scalar, and numbers of dollars can be compared... and context ignored, "for simplicity". :)
For that matter, even now, and quite a lot more so 30-40 years ago, the contribution that a math person might make was very subtle to judge. Some things were never "published" at all, but had huge influence. Sometimes people gave unrecorded talks that gave evidence of terrific ideas, and experts had heard the talks, and could strongly recommend the person for jobs. I think "expert opinion" is still the fundamental criterion, not paper-count nor impact...
(Yes, "expert opinion" can also become caricaturized/parodied, into insisting that only far-away big-shots' opinions matter... Nevermind.)

The majority of universities in the United States have teaching as their primary mission and hire professors accordingly.  While a PhD is required (or de facto required) for most positions, and having a publication or two is an advantage, the people hiring are primarily hiring based on how good an instructor you will be for their students.  This is based on some or all of:

The teaching experience you have.
What you write in the statements with your application about how you teach and why you teach that way.
Teaching materials you may be asked to provide with your application.
What your letters of recommendation say about your teaching.
How you respond to interview questions about teaching.
A teaching demonstration, meaning a lesson you give either to a real class or to a pretend class, when you interview.
A presentation to a general audience you give during your interview.

Note that students at different institutions are different, and hence someone could be a good or great teacher at one university and merely mediocre at another.  This means the evaluation of teachers is localized; the hiring committee will be trying to discern from the information above whether you would be a good teacher at their university.

Yes, this is absolutely correct, for the majority of subjects! Certainly for mathematics. For engineering programs it is a little trickier, given the enormous costs of equipment.

This is a fair question, however it is based on a wrong assumption as I've explained in the original question referred to.
To repeat: NO credible university I am aware of, globally, considers directly impact factors of journals as a measure by which faculty members are being assessed.
All universities asses academic staff by intertwined, multivariate, different metrics:

reference letters and peer evaluation
places of publications: prestigious or not
acquaintance of existing faculty members with the candidate (for recruitments)
number of publications in selective places (not number of citations)
service and teaching
outreach
international recognition based on invited talks, editorial membership etc.

I must admit I don’t quite follow.  You claim on the one hand that no organization considers directly impact factors of journals yet isn’t your second item basically just that, except you don’t put a number figure to “prestigious or not”?

"NO credible university I am aware of, globally, considers directly impact factors"  should read "NO credible university I am aware of, globally, admits to considering directly impact factors"

@ZeroTheHero, No. Prestige is a pre-determined set of journals and conferences. It has nothing to do with published impact factors (which are many times fake). Everyone knows that Nature and Annals of Mathematics are prestigious. No one checks their IF. And the same goes further down the line in journal prestige.

@AnonymousPhysicist, no, I actually think that almost no one checks the published impact factors of journals. These are unreliable numbers.

Well, you are right that they have poor reliability (at least as a measure of quality), but you are wrong that nobody checks them.  In my field, it is difficult to view a journal's website without seeing the impact factor, so everyone is checking them involuntarily.

well...  I don't know (nor care) what is the numerical value of the impact factor of Nature or Ann.Math, but I'm sure it is high, whatever that means.  I agree there is a good measure of hysteria with the actual number, and that IFs are misused, and will join you in denouncing such reduction to mere digits as harmful.  Forgive me if I'm misrepresenting your position, but I still think you are implicitly assigning an IF to journals by coarse-graining places of publications into "prestigious" at one end, and "not prestigious" at the other, with no doubt others in the middle.

@ZeroTheHero, I'm not against rankings and linear-orders of journals and universities. My claim is different and specific: Impact factors are not used nor regarded as an important ranking. Other measures are important, but not IFs that are ignored in general.

Thanks for the clarifications.

Others have covered most of the obvious points.
In addition to those, we try to find someone who we can get along with and who will likely do well by themselves.  Thus, beyond being a “good fit”, we look for compatible personalities and evidence of independent work.
We do this through the cover letters, by asking candidates to supply samples of their papers, by reading reference letters, by reading other recent papers of the candidates.
On the research side, is the candidate a cog in a large machine or was he or she significantly involved in the work?  We often ask candidates to describe their role in these publications, to clearly understand attribution.  On the teaching side, how well does the candidate interact with students in the “mock lecture”?
We have had candidates with very strong research CVs but obviously not so interested in teaching and student side of the business.  On the other hand, we’ve seen extremely charismatic candidates with solid CVs leapfrog candidates that looked better on paper.

I don't think your example makes much sense. Your question seems to be asking how might universities evaluate research by methods other than crude citation counts, etc., whereas your example seems to be a case of not evaluating their research at all.
Of course, if you don't care about research there are many ways to evaluate candidates without using citation counts, limited only by exactly what it is that you do care about (and any applicable laws about things you're not permitted to care about).
If you do want to evaluate research more carefully than just using these metrics, then this is going to involve a more detailed look at candidates' track records, taking e.g. journal reputation into account rather than just numbers, looking at numbers and range of co-authors, getting opinions from people familiar with a candidate's research (including, but not limited to, their letter writers), and, in extremis, actually looking at the papers themselves. In fact universities already do all this, but it is much more time-consuming than looking at crude metrics, so they probably do it at a later stage after many candidates have already been eliminated (whether by doing badly on the crude but quick measures or for other reasons).


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Using an English or French presentation to a French talk?
I'll be defending my Ph.D. this October. I submitted my dissertation in English and prepared an English presentation, but my supervisor along with the jury members surprised me by saying the defense speech cannot be in English and must be in French (“since we are from a country that has the second language is French”). Actually, they don’t mind an English report. In fact, they are very proud of the report.
So my question is, what would be suitable in this situation, keep the presentation in English and talk in French, or, I will change the presentation to French since I talk in French?

you should consult your department graduate adviser. There are usually rules involved in presentations, i suspect especially in multi-language environments

@aaaaaa Not necessarily. In many places, presentations aren't subject to strict rules.

@MassimoOrtolano It certainly sounds like there are strict rules in this case, and in particular strict rules that the OP was not aware of.

@StellaBiderman My impression from the description is that the board doesn't want to listen to a presentation in English and made up an excuse.

I would put the presentation into French, for two basic reasons:

just to make sure that when you glance at the screen any word triggers a train of thought in French
the audience also has the French ppt to look at matching what they hear from you.

I understand that the thesis is in English, but they won't necessarily open that until after depending on the questions - which they have probably already prepared...
Also, anytime I have to listen to one language and read a second (and I have a DUT to go with my BEng Hons) I always change to comparing the errors in expression / translation and loose the real message.
So, go with French ppt & language and BEST OF LUCK - you will be fine.
Autrement dit : Bonne chance Chef !!

+1: Simultaneous processing in multiple languages can be more difficult, especially people who only have one native language. Doing the sides in English seems like it has the opportunity to throw the OP or an examiner for no benefit.


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Benefits of Academic Research
I'm in a Ph.D program and feel like I'm trapped inside of a bubble most days.  Attending lectures, daily research seminars, meetings, etc is all very interesting to me and I really like what I do.  However, all the fancy models, theory, and discussions only pertain to those of us in the position to be talking about such ideas and can actually understand the concepts.  To a general audience it seems like a bunch of fancy equations that don't apply to the real world and I have a hard time explaining my side and why it is important.  In turn, I start doubting the importance of academic/non-academic research.  During my first year, I felt like my professors who were theoretical were just creating their own jobs;  of course you can prove that theorem because of those assumptions.
So my question is, what are some tangible (or non-tangible) benefits of academic research?  Why should research exist when most of the papers will only ever be read by academics, while a very select few will be accepted by the general public.
Disclaimer : please don't take this as an elitist post.  I wouldn't be able to understand a carpenters way of thinking.
Edit :
I want to add, what is the incentive to invest so much in research that doesn't go anywhere in hopes that decades down the road one paper will be recognized?  I'm having a hard time understanding the billions of dollars funded in research each year in hopes of a significant achievement.

Euler Theorem was just a fancy equation for more than 200 years, until it became the key for RSA encryption. While this is not considered secured anymore, in  the early days of internet, this was the key for security online. Without this Theorem, which for more than 200 years was just a "fancy equation which would never be applied in real life", internet would probably not be this spread today.....

@NickS Great example.  This and jakebeal's response below got me thinking about what the incentive is for to invest so heavily in research that may possibly go no where, or not be recognized for decades, or centuries, down the road

Voting to close as too broad.  There are far too many answers for this to be a good question for this site.

@JeffE I don't think this is too broad.  Too broad would be, "What are the benefits of research?"  My question poses a more specific question about the incentives around funding research and the delayed benefits.

It is worth noting that research investment is not heavy: in the US, for example, one of the largest research spenders in the world, last year only 3.4% of the government budget went to R&D, of which the vast majority is for applied work (e.g., new military field systems), not basic research as you are asking about.

The reason we do lots of strange and probably useless research is that predicting which bits will turn out to be important is only possible in retrospect.
Consider, for example, the internet on which we are discussing the apparent uselessness of research. It is now driving a significant fraction on the world economy. Twenty years ago, it was just starting to be publicly noticed. Twenty years before that, my company was playing with the prototype versions in experiments you likely would see as largely useless and known only to a small niche audience. Thirty years before that, in 1945, Vannevar Bush laid the basic principles of hyperlinked text, in what was clearly an ivory tower fantasy... and yet here we are.
Almost everything ever done in science is useless... But the parts that aren't make a real difference. Sometimes only a little, sometimes a lot, and sometimes they shift the fate of civilizations. You just have to hold a vision of how it might matter, and chase that dream with all your heart.

This is a great response.  Thank you.  I've updated my question to reflect what the incentive is for an institution to invest so much in hopes of a significant achievement that may be recognized now, or decades down the road, such as the internet, in your example.

This is why research is mostly funded by long-sighted government organizations and foundations, not private companies. Much work on the Internet, for example, was funded by (D)ARPA, an agency whose mission is to avoid strategic technological surprise, and which has played a significant role in US technological power in the 20th century. In short: it costs a lot, but it really pays off long-term.


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I spotted a paper which has six pages worth of plagiarism: should I report it to the editor of the journal?
I spotted a 2019 paper which literally copy-pastes paragraphs from a 2011 paper and doesn't cite them. The author (who is different than the 2011 paper's) claims that as their own research paper. Should I report this to the journal?
The paper has six pages of copied content. Out of 46, 6 pages are complete copy-paste.

I'm 99% sure you already know this, but make sure the following two facts are true before you report the paper.  1) This paper was published AFTER the other paper.  2) The two papers do not share a common author.

Copied from a paper published in 2011. The paper which plagiarized in 2019. 2) Not the same author

@James A common author does not make plagiarism okay.

Even when it's the same author a copy-paste of substantial text is questionable. The text is usually copyright of the journal.  If there is "boiler plate" that an author wants to re-use, they should publish a review article and then cite that.

If it is so obvious that this is reprehensible behavior why ask? This question seems designed to elicit certain types of automatic responses.

@AnonymousPhysicist - a common author makes it not plagiarism.

@Davor, that is not true. Self-plagirarism is still a thing, and is still a form of plagiarism. Even a blanket "This was previously published in ..." is pushing the limit when it is 6 pages long

@Davor https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/2895/13240

For the discussion going on in the comments, see Attitudes towards self-plagiarism. Opinions vary but many people oppose referring to such a mistake as (unqualified) plagiarism.

Call attention to the 2019 paper authors' academic institutions' departments of research integrity/academic conduct as well.

Yes. Such a grave case of academic misconduct should have publicly visible consequences. Let the editor know; the journal should issue a retraction as the whole article can be deemed to be unreliable.
As retractions can take a long time, it would also be useful if you comment on the suspicion of plagiarism on PubPeer. (The authors could respond with a defense there if needed.)

Few questions:-  • Is the entire paper unreliable because of the following?  •The author has been cited and told his study(review paper) is noteworthy. Should the person who has cited be made aware ? •What exactly should I write to the editor?

@Hihwsjai I think the theory is that if he would copy 6 pages, he'd likely copy others, we just don't know where from yet. Everything is tainted by this obvious misconduct.

@Barmar Copy or fabricate. Once someone is confirmed to be dishonest in one way, we can't safely trust anything they write.

Yes, draw it to relevant attention.
Not least because if its a mistake the authors should have a chance to fix it; if (more likely) it isn't then who knows what the implications will be, down the line, of dishonest papers. People could spend years of their life doing work, only to find its invalidated and wasted, because underlying material was unreliable. Or, you don't say what the field is, but real harm could arise in many cases. People getting hurt or at risk, due to faked or inappropriately copied material (do you know what a plagiatlrist - a dishonest academic writer -will do next?!). Businesses and products based on these in part,not knowing the authors are dishonest.
You may want to consider best ways to disclose - who to tell and how to best approach it. This falls under academic whistleblowing.
But that's a different question.
Should you make the publisher, or some other relevant academic/s aware, in some suitable way - absolutely. Even if at worst, its simply an anonymous post showing the 2 papers side by side so it's unmistakable, and a link sent to various places where it'll do good.
(I don't necessarily know if that's the right way, but I use it to show that even if fearful of repercussions, there's a way. You need to ask how to disclose, too, but that as I said is a different question.....)

Calling the plagiarism to the attention of the publisher as well as the editors is particularly appropriate.

As others suggest, I would report this, but - depending on the circumstances, and if you want to help the author save face somewhat, you might contact them first. You wouldn't ask "Have you plagiarized this section from that paper?" But rather "I've been reading your paper X and believe that sections Y might be a verbatim quote from paper Z. Is this correct?" ... then depending on their answer you'll know how to report this to the publisher.

How can we help the author save face when he is stripping himself? 6 pages!!

@FailedScientist: 1. I said if. 2. But why would someone flaunt 6 copied pages? Maybe there's some misunderstanding. Or maybe not. I don't know.

@einpoklum Its probably a mistake but I think not. Because he claims he has cited everyone but the sentencing has itself been changed and the sentence makes a wrong claim. So I'm not sure in the plagiarism was intentional or a mistake.

@Hihwsjai: If you're not certain, it's probably better to ask first and accuse later rather than the other way around.

Oh yes I did ask. The whole article seems to be just copy pastes from other articles. I'm not sure so I'm not gonna report

@Hihwsjai: Mind that it’s the journal’s responsibility to hear all sides involved, correctly judge the case, and take appropriate action – not yours. You do not have to present irrefutable proof, just sufficient evidence to justify an investigation (by the journal). This certainly applies if a substantial part of the article is copy pasta. Contacting the author may even be counter-productive since it gives them a head start, which they may e.g. use to retract the paper for a less damning reason. At least, contacting the author is something that any responsible journal should do again anyway.

In cases of academic misconduct where you are not personally involved, it's often better to go do something useful instead of filing complaints.
There's lots of plagiarized papers out there that nobody's going to read.  Limit your complaints to academic misconduct that involves you personally or has importance to research or safety.

I've never filed a complaint for plagiarism with a journal, but I image it would take the amount of time required to write one email and then possibly follow up replies once or twice. This to me does not seem to be a large investment of time

If you're not personally involved, you suggest not doing anything; but if you are personally involved you're biased and there are risks to you, so the same suggestion might be made. The result is that you should never bring this up.... not buying it. "There's lots of plagiarized papers out there that nobody's going to read. " <- Well, due to OP there may be one less.

@einpoklum "if you are personally involved you're biased and there are risks to you"  Not a valid reason not to address the problem.

@AnonymousPhysicist: It doesn't seem more or less invalid than the reason you listed...

@einpoklum "because it's useful" is much more valid than "because you are biased."

@AnonymousPhysicist, "useful" can be malicious, such as spreading false information about where a fact was originated. If the paper in question is cited for a plagiarized section, then it becomes useful, but in the wrong way. Correcting that citing will be much harder than preventing it. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

@computercarguy I cannot understand your comment at all.

@AnonymousPhysicist, if you cited a plagiarized section of a paper, you are making that paper "useful", but you should have instead cited the original paper that was plagiarized. Trying to correct your cite after it's published is much harder than knowing not to cite a paper that's plagiarizing another. As for it being malicious, there's plenty of examples of "news" media that try to cite scientific/medical papers specifically to twist their meaning. If the author of this "news" simply doesn't cite their sources (as many don't), they are maliciously trying to become the source of a fact.

I would also try to check if the 2 papers are both graduate student papers where the 2 authors were graduate students at the same time for the same advisor. There are some subjects where the first 6 pages is boilerplate as things are getting set up. If the advisor tells the 2nd student to copy the first 6 pages from the 1st student's paper, that is lazy but not exactly dishonest.

Scholarly dishonesty (plagiarism) is separate from intentional (personal) dishonesty. This type of "laziness" is still plagiarism and the same consequences apply, including the author gaining a reputation of untrustworthiness.

It depends on the subject. In science it is the results which are valued, specifically the new results. It is not the exact configuration of words to convey a basic idea which are important.

For example, in several mathematical papers on mean-field spin glasses, the first few pages are the definition of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model, and the description of interpolation and Gaussian integration-by-parts. It is not really even lazy to cut-and-paste those sections, it is just smart.

Verbatim cutting-and-pasting without attribution is always plagiarism, even in mathematics, and even if it is "standard material". The SK model shouldn't need "a few pages" to describe, and even if it does, why not play safe by saying "the following standard details can be found in e.g. [name of source]"?

"In science it is the results which are valued, specifically the new results." There is some truth to this, but in the more pure-leaning areas of mathematics part of the new work is the new explanation. Authors who just recycle other people's insights as their own, without attribution, may rapidly get a bad reputation.

@Yemon-Choi The first however-many-pages of SK papers are not recycling other people's results as their own. They are definition of the Hamiltonian, notation/definition for the partition function and setup of interpolation. To somebody outside the field they could (maybe not?) be surprised to see that various papers have practically identical set-ups. It is the ideas after those initial pages that are important. Hi hwsjai did not disclose their subject paper or offending pages. In the types of papers I have described the intro is ok.


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Mathematics paper in arXiv general math section
When does a math research paper get uploaded into arXiv math.GM, the general mathematics section? I have seen some papers in math.GM claiming to have solved some open problem (which are obviously wrong). Besides this what would be the other reasons?

Afaik, this is usually done by people who barely know what they are doing. A serious mathematician will avoid math.GM.

As far as I know, this may happen in two ways:

The author (or authors) of the paper barely knows what they are doing, hence, cannot figure out what kind of math category their work belongs to and use GM. A variation on this theme is that they wrongly assume that classifying their work as GM, increases the readership (in fact, the opposite is true).

The decision to reclassify the work as GM is made by arXiv moderators, who sense that the paper is junk but are not entirely sure; hence, instead of rejecting the paper outright, they do the reclassification (see this Wikipedia article about the arXiv).

A serious mathematician will not use the GM category.

That last is a bit strong. There are serious mathematicians who do write for a general audience. Just as there are in physics, etc.

@Buffy: Of course, just they would not use the GM arXiv category (as things currently stand, I am not talking about papers from 20-30 years ago).

@Buffy Even writing for a general audience normally involves some specific mathematics. Of course, writing about e.g. what mathematics is can fit the "general mathematics" tag, but when serious mathematicians do that sort of thing they tend to put it in math.HO ("history and overview") instead.

For what it's worth, the converse of 2. happened to me when I uploaded my first paper to arXiv as a beginning PhD student 9-10 years ago. It was about totally ordered (algebraic) semigroups, which is quite of a niche topic (and it stemmed from my Bachelor's thesis and wasn't really related to the field my PhD advisor was used to). It didn't seem to fit any of the algebraic categories but, to my unexperienced self, didn't really feel like "analysis" either - so I selected "GM". The arXiv moderators were kind enough to reclassify it as "Classical Analysis and ODEs".

@JochenGlueck: also could have been Rings and Algebras (which includes semigroups).

@MoisheKohan: Yes, indeed. I guess my reasoning back then was that there was too much "topology on the real line" in the paper to classify it as "Ring and Algebras", but (a priori) too little structure from the real field to classify it as "analysis". The bottom line is, of course, that I misunderstood "general mathematics" as a category for papers that are "in the middle" between two other categories, rather than a category for dubious or crank papers. ;-)

I classified my paper as Classical Analysis and ODEs and they put it in GM. Now I understand why they did that;-; I did realize that the way I wrote my paper made them think it was junk right away. I hope a new referee sees the update and realizes that it isn't as bad as they thought ;-;


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Meaning of defer for graduate application
I applied to graduate school in USA for Fall 23. Recently I got an email from the director of graduate admission saying that there is no TA/Funding available and initially all the offers are made for this year. I was too late in submitting my application for some reason. I had applied to this university in mid-March and the application deadline was in January. In the email, the director asked whether I would like to defer my application for Spring 24 or not. What does "defer" mean? Is there any chance of Funding/GTA in Spring 24?

Defer usually means delay and that they will hold a place for you. But...
Ask the director. There is no way to know in general what the policy is. I suspect that it means you can get funding then, but don't depend on that guess. Ask.
And your acceptance into the program isn't clear from what you write. If you have been accepted, it is easier to defer the start date than funding.

You should ask for clarification, but it appears that the department is willing to keep your application and consider it again for admission in the spring of 2024.  At that point, if there is a TA/RA available, you might receive an offer for a position starting in the spring of 2024.
Assuming that this is what is being offered, you should probably say that you would like your application to be considered for the spring of 2024.

In my math department, "deferring" an application does not mean anything about admission, nor about funding. It means that they'd consider your application in a later round, and consider you for funding at that time. No promises of either one, just that you missed the deadline for Fall 2023.
(Yes, in the U.S., in math, the application deadlines for Fall semesters are 8 or 9 months prior, essentially early in the preceding January. Also, in my dept, we typically commit funding for a 9-month school year, so there is no new funding available for Spring semesters. And we try to avoid admission-without-funding, so we rarely look at applications for admission to Spring semesters.)

Basically it means they're saving you the trouble of resubmitting next year.

And, in line with @Barmar's comment, you'd save the application fee! :)


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How to react when the editor responds to a withdrawal by asking for the LaTeX file?
I submitted a manuscript to a journal, but due to an issue with that I asked the Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editor to withdraw the manuscript from further consideration. The response of the Editor-in-Chief was:

Thank you for the message.
Please send the latex file of the paper urgent to expedite the publication.
Sorry for the delay

Now, what should I do?

Possibly relevant: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/83764/how-do-i-identify-predatory-and-low-quality-journals-with-bealls-list-gone-ho

I submitted a manuscript to a journal, but due to an issue with that ... What you should do would surely depend on what the problem you had was.

Just resend your email highlighting that it is a withdrawal.

Likely the editor got confused somehow, or hit the wrong button on the auto reply page. But if you withdraw you probably won't see any reviews.

When someone writes you an unexpected message, you should write back and ask for clarification.  My guess is they have accepted the paper, but it could also be they got you confused with someone else.  I can think of a few more possibilities.
I have no idea if you think having an immediate acceptance in this journal is a good thing.  If you do, write back with the latex file attached and thanking the editor for dealing with whatever problems you are not telling us about. If you do not, reiterate the withdrawal.