As we all know, all academic professors or students who want to submit an article (research or review) to a journal should write their affiliations (their institute name and job there) on the first page of the article. All of the articles I have read till now were from academic authors and I haven't met a single article from an independent researcher yet.
3402
Recently my paper is reviewed (by a professor from independent third party) and accepted by a journal. But, my employer allows me to publish this paper only without its name there.  Publishing house is expecting affiliation for each author, i.e. I can not leave affiliation as blank.   What should I write as the affiliation?
23777
I'd like to know your opinion on citations in abstracts. At my university, there is no rule on that matter so it's basically a question of preference.  Do you think it's okay to have citations in an abstract or do you  personally prefer to have the abstract be a ``stand-alone'' piece of  work?
48906
I recently submitted an article to a math journal and got a response from a reviewer, with an attachment. In it, I have found some good  advice that could improve my article tremendously.  I am a bit suspicious of its accuracy since it could resolve what I have been working with for some months in a few  sentences.   But anyway, it was enough for me to ask the reviewer for coauthoring with me.   My question would be, does it often happen that an author asks a referee for coauthoring during the review process? Or could it even be possible?  I was given a month to revise my article, but the chance that I could revise successfully by myself seems to be fat.  I would be looking forward to any advice.  Thanks in advance.
41806
This question is, honestly speaking, probably somewhat opinion-based, but I still want to give a shot.  A professor acceded to my invitation of writing a reference letter for me. Nevertheless, unlike the other professors who also acceded to write a reference letter for me, he asked me to draft it on my own. Originally I did not feel anything "wrong", and I just felt embarrassed to recommend myself. But yesterday a friend told me that a professor would ask you to write her reference letter for you when she does not actually think that you are "worthy" enough for her to write you one on her own.   What is the probability that such viewpoint is true? Any opinion is greatly appreciated!
94268
At what stage of research career one can write a 'review article'?   Obviously a graduate student in the beginning stages cannot/may not write one. But how experienced does one need to be before attempting to write reviews? Does authoring a number of papers in the relevant field equips one for that?   Can a graduate student publish a review article? Do acceptance of review article (for publication) depends on the reputation of the author or co-authors?  EDIT:  As @JeffE has pointed out anyone can write a review article; the question is about getting this write-up published.
17374
When you look at a paper, what order to you assume the authors are in? Most important/most work done first or alphabetical? In my group we usually use alphabetic order, but I've been wondering if that might create a misleading impression with lots of people.  On a related note, would you expect the name of a PhD student to be always first on publications related to her/his work?
7846
I (an undergrad) and 2 other profs from my department have been working on something and we were thinking of submitting our work to a conference (a pretty well known one) this week. The fact is there is no related work that has been done on the problem we are solving and therefore there is no paper which we can cite as a starting point for our work. The only existing things that we make use of are trivial definitions from mathematics (like Riemann Integral) and also definitions that are pretty well known in my area (CS). So again, we do not think there is a need to cite any particular papers for that.   Now my question as stated was - is it acceptable to have a paper with no references? Or do you think we should just mention some papers (we never had to use them) where those definitions were actually proposed?  PS: I'm sure some of you might suggest me to ask those profs. But quite frankly none of them have much experience as far as publishing papers is concerned. So it would be great if some one could give me a good advice and help me out.   Edit: Thanks everyone for the answers. Of course somewhere a little sarcastic and ridiculing, but I can understand since this is a little weird. Actually yes, I had the notion that a paper wasn't worth citing unless I use some results from it (say an algo or some theorem). But I guess that isn't the only reason why I should be referencing as many seem to suggest here. The fact is we had seen quite a few survey papers before we started this out and I was under the impression that there wasn't a need to cite them since anyone could find them. But now, things are bit more clear and I guess I should cite them and I will :)
82345
If I were asked to review a paper, under what circumstances would I be expected to decline out of a conflict of interest? Could I review a paper for someone...   I have collaborated with N years ago? Who I am currently collaborating with, but we have not yet published a paper together? Who is currently or was once in the same institution as I?
103291
During my undergrad (past 3 years) I worked in a niche ecology lab and during the time generated some data. The work I did was not exactly groundbreaking but I think it was solid publishable work and could find a home in a decent journal.   My PI is encouraging me to write up my work and submit it for publication in the next few months but I have just started graduate school and am working in an entirely different field (Biophysics with a sprinkle of cell biology).   Considering that I expect writing up the work for publication will be a significant undertaking (seeing how it would be my first time writing a paper for publication), and the disparity between the subject of the paper and my current/future research, would it be worth the time commitment to follow my PIs advice and write the paper? Would there be any real benefit for my career in a different field if this work does get published?
68541
I am a post graduate engineering student(Computer Science). I have only one conference (not very good) publication in my name as a first author.  One of my seniors labmate, worked on a very good research project a few months ago and wrote a paper. I have been approached by him to generate a few more results for his paper and proof reading and extending his paper with literature survey and elaborative explaination of results. I have been offered co-authorship(2nd author) for this paper. Now, though I can dedicate some time to do that work, but is accepting 2nd authorship worth.   I would like to ask in general as well, that is it worth to put effort in papers and get 2nd authorship given that the paper is not related to my primary area of research or rather work and dedicate time on one's own research and get papers as a first author ?  Note: I have seen that in academia (where I want to go), usually advertisements call for applications from people having at least X no of papers as first author.
111773
My university's subscription is really limited (I come from Lebanon). I never found any paper related to my research or essays using the database that my university is subscribing to; even the basic pioneering papers in business. Yesterday, I started writing my master's thesis and the very basic papers behind my topic cannot be accessed through my university's portal (cannot simply ignore them) and I, obviously, don't have access/cannot pay for individual papers. What to do in this case? Someone here recommended a Reddit page that provides and shares papers upon requests. How legal/ethical is that? The page claims that all the shared papers are based on the concept of fair use.  Eventually, I have 3 options: Follow this way, adopt a bad scholarship behavior by not tracking down original references to check myself (which is out of the question) or I just go home and forget about writing a master's thesis or a literature review because it's almost impossible to access those papers without the help of option 1. As for emailing individual authors, well none have replied so far so it isn't always a practical option as I cannot wait days for 1 particular paper to be received (if any).
50410
I joined a research group of a faculty member in 201x, and worked with her for three years. During that time, I collaborated with a large hospital to perform research in the domain of medical informatics. I spoke about my research at two conferences; one was a talk, and the other was a poster presentation. My advisor asked me to write up the research in a paper around the second year, which I did. Around the third year, I decided to switch research groups, because of the relationship between me and my advisor going sour, and not having funding from her (I used to work part-time to fund my PhD research).  Once this happened, she withdrew her support from me publishing my paper and ordered that I give up my work to a fellow grad student. I told her, that my manuscript is in its Nth revision, and that I would like to take it to completion as first author. She was dismissive and didn’t offer any comments on my work. I told her, that, should I pass on my work, I would like to discuss authorship issues in advance, which she wasn’t ready to discuss. She ganged up my new advisor against me, and together they forced me to give up my code, results, paper drafts. I had to then leave the university without a degree.  Fast forward couple of years, I receive an email from a student in her lab (the student whom I had to hand over my work to), saying that they are publishing a paper, and have decided I am the fourth author. I read the paper and found out that it uses my experimental setup and design, data collection, and one of the ideas I had presented (the idea wasn’t the main crux of my paper, but I believe it was novel).  I want to   Publish my original draft in ArXiv/BioArXiv, as first author. Request my advisor to cite my work in their publication.    Given how she behaved with me, I know that despite what I am asking for sounds fair, she is likely to object.  I am asking the community: Can I go ahead and ArXiv it without her permission? I could add her as an author, but not take her permission. Also, if you have any other ideas on how to deal with this situation please let me know.  (For the record, this was at a top-10 school in the US in an engineering department).
113656
We are two students working in the same field under the supervision of the same professor within his chair and all of our publications are done together.  Hence I am curious: Is it generally possible in academia to submit a PhD thesis with two authors?
4555
Call it stupidity or bad luck but I am guilty of submitting my research article to a journal which is listed in .  It is my first article and I don't have much experience publishing articles. I was searching for a top impact factor journal and found this one on Google and in excitement sent my article (word and pdf files) in this journal a few days ago, only to discover later that this might be a bogus journal.  Now I am worried about that what will happen to my article. What if they plagiarize my paper, or send it to another journal not giving me credit?   My question is that what should I do now? Should I send my article to a reputable journal now? What should be the process? What if it is flagged for fraud by that journal? What are my options?  Any help would be appreciated.
10123
My first advisor wants me to include my second advisor's name in a paper that I worked on before she (2nd advisor) came along.   Should I include her name even though she didn't do anything in that paper? I don't think she even read it.
71854
Someday, as strange as it feels to me right now, I might be asked to review an article for publication. A while ago my advisor and I were talking about this, and it hit me that I don't really know how to be a good reviewer, beyond the basics:   Respond timely to things, Make your report clear and detailed, Have actually read the paper, Etc.   Beyond this, though, I'm completely in the dark. So I'd like to ask:     What's some good advice for a first-time reviewer?   My field is math, but I'm really interested in general advice (although advice specific to math, or another field, would also be interesting and useful).    I'd like to make this question "community wiki" or analogous, but I can't seem to figure out how - if someone can do so, please do, and then I will delete this paragraph.
120305
Point 1: At my university, it's a practice (not compulsory) to submit our conference/journal paper first to a department where it is checked for plagiarism and quality. Then it's sent to professors in the university to confirm that they don't have any authorship problems with it (ie: that the student didn't copy one of their ideas, unacknowledged). It's only then that the student gets approval to send the paper to a conference (specifically ) or journal.    Point 2: A journal or conference has it's long procedure of reviews and only some papers get accepted. If rejected or un-published, the author can send it to another conference or journal and there's a similar lapse of time.    During both above situations, isn't it possible for someone else to  the idea? Does the academic community have any provisions to prevent a planned scooping? ie: Someone reviewing the paper purposely rejects it and during the time that elapses, publishes the same idea or allows one of his/her other students to publish the idea.    A teacher of mine says that it's because of these fears that she directly submits papers to conferences without going through the university's process. Also, the same reason she submits to conferences instead of journals, because the journal review process is much longer, increasing the scope of the idea being scooped.    So are there any safeguards? If I see my idea scooped somewhere, would it help if I can show proof that I had already submitted the idea at a conference and the paper was rejected? Will the person who supposedly scooped it, get blacklisted?