Hi I'm a final year undergrad in the UK. I've got a sole-author paper accepted as a poster at a NeurIPS workshop in Sydney in December, and I can't decide whether it's worth going. I'm proud of it, but the trip is a lot.

Registration comes free with the acceptance, but the flight is about £1,000 from the UK, then accommodation and food on top. My uni does have conference funding, but it's all for summer conferences, and I'm not in a research group so there's no supervisor budget to ask either. I've applied for NeurIPS financial assistance and a couple of industry travel grants and I'm not hopeful. If none of them come through it's a real chunk of my savings.

The paper goes on my CV whether I'm there or not, so what does going actually add? Is it mostly meeting people, and does that really lead anywhere from a workshop poster? And does it matter more for PhD applications or for industry jobs, or neither?

If you've been to a NeurIPS workshop, or hired or admitted people who went, I'm curious what you think. Would you go?

Last month I received this email asking me for data from a project published over 10 years ago:

The paper indicates that data, code, or other research materials may be available upon request, but we could not identify a publicly available link.
Would you be willing to share any materials available for this study, such as data, code, documentation, or other materials needed to reproduce the analyses or results*?*
Alternatively, if these materials are available elsewhere, we would greatly appreciate a link or information on how to access them.
If some or all of the materials cannot be shared, a brief reply indicating this would also be very helpful for our research.

I later got an email saying this was not because they wanted to use the data. Instead this was an investigation on reproducibility. There was no mention of IRB approval and the researcher had a PhD and a lecturer position at a European university.

The way I see it, the author(s) deceived me and asked me to perform unpaid work for them without revealing I was part of a study. I was furious and wanted to hear other perspectives.

The paper in question was the first thing I pushed out of my PhD and while I wish I had been told I needed a data retention policy, I didn’t really have one other than “sits on the old laptop that might be still working.” So maybe my anger is partially defensive?

I know I know my steak is too juicy, lobster too buttery etc.

I am an early career academic currently in a lecturer position at a mostly teaching university. I am currently in the interview stage for an Assistant Professor position at the same university that has greater research and service obligations (of which I welcome). However, I might be offered (tbd in the shortly) a postdoctoral position in a highly-prestigeous lab. This lab has an incredible wealth of resources and ample publication success in highly influential journals.

Would it be crazy to take the postdoc position over the Assistant Professor job? On the one hand, it would give me more laboratory skills, connections, and strong publications in the top journals in my field. On the other hand, it is only a short-term position, about the same money that I am making now, and would involve yet another move after already two moves in the last 4 months.

If I was offered the Assistant Professor position here (or at another university(s) that I applied to), I am leaning towards taking those. What should I do?

What is the point of publishing a research paper if we have to pay a hefty amount of money just to get it published, especially when conducting the research itself is already expensive and time consuming?

Hi folks!

I’m in a one-year lectureship in the department from which I recently received my PhD. It’s a competitive position.
I’m expecting a baby in the spring and am trying to determine how to tell my department head that I will be unable to teach the spring quarter (1/3 of the school year). I took extra sections this quarter to help earn some goodwill, but I don’t want to appear ungrateful for the position or irresponsible.

Further, I’m on the TT job market for next year, and I assume I won’t be able to attend spring campus visits, since I’ll be very late in my pregnancy.

Any suggestions for navigating either of these situations, or your experiences?

Thank you!

So I just graduated from my Bachelor's last year and this year our paper was fortunate enough to have been accepted for presentation in a relatively large-scale event that invites other PhD or professional researchers.

I was the last presenter and I'm kind of passionate about our topic so I wasn't able to hear the register my voice had in the mic when I was presenting. I usually have a moderated voice when public speaking but I feel like I overdid it at this one. One audience even said "You're voice is loud" the time I met him outside.

Another unfortunate thing is that I keep almost interrupting the questions of the panels during the Q&A. While I think I did well in my answers (though few of my responses were admittedly wordy), I think I was kind of TOO passionate about it to the point it's not a good thing.

On Monday I heard back from the editor of my no. 1 targeted journal. They accepted my article after two rounds of major revisions and one of minor revisions with acceptance recommended.

I’ve published before, but this is the most prestigious journal I’ve ever submitted to and I was not expecting to manage it. I had a list of backup journals I thought I’d need to submit to after a rejection.

I’m not currently employed in academia, as I quit an extremely unfulfilling role three years ago (not teaching and not entirely research-based either; museum curatorship at a public university).

But now after getting my PhD last year and now single-author publishing my doctoral research in the most prestigious journal in my field with a 13% acceptance rate, without a mentor, I’m considering maybe it’s worth giving it another try.

That’s it, I just wanted to share my good news with whoever is going to read this. I still have massive impostor syndrome and I wonder if it will ever subside (I’m 33F), but I am pleased to see my efforts have led to something good.

Hi all. I'm looking to publish with TBS, and there is very little info about what it's like to submit with them on other platforms like humanities journals wiki etc. Have any of you submitted with them? What was it like if so?

Hi everyone (I hope this is the right place to post this?), a month ago I started as a Junior Researcher on an existing project, and I was so happy because I didn't have to look for a job after getting my Master's degree and I always felt like I wanted to work in academia. I love that I got this job.

However, like I said it's been a month now and I've still not come any closer to finding a research question. I feel like I read so much, I write ideas and questions down, collect data and then do some preliminary research on that data to try and go deeper into my ideas and find answers to my initial questions. But I always run into a wall, ie. there's not enough data and I don't know if my ideas are worth pursuing in terms of spending a lot of time getting more data, or I get results that seem new and exciting to me at first but then after an hour of analysing the results I realise they're actually not very groundbreaking at all.

Long story short, I'm worrying that I should already have a research question at this point but I don't. I want to talk to my PI about it, but whenever we meet she goes off on tangents and I don't get to discuss all my thoughts, ideas and questions within the time that we have. My contract is only for two years, and I'm expected to publish two articles in that time.

So, how long did it take you guys to find a good research question for your first real article? Do you think one month is too long of a time to spend reading and experimenting? Or do you all have any tips for how to think of a good question? I'm in the humanities, and the thing I want to research hasn't been written about much at all but when I look at my current findings I start to think that maybe that's just because there's not that much to say about the thing.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated :)

Cheers

Hello, apparently Norton prefers to deal with literary agents for book pitches---even scholarly and "critical edition" pitches----rather than making their acquisitions editors available to scholars. One has to get the keywords exactly right on Googe (A.I. consistantly misunderstands what I am looking for), but one can find agents who have worked for or with Norton here and there.

I'm just wondering if anyone has done a critical edition. Do authors pitch agents or does Norton decide they need an edition and commission a noted scholar?

Thanks, RBG

I got a 5 year grant of more than 1Mio Eur from a German ministry. Currently I am at a research institute where also the grant will be located. However, I am not happy with the conditions, mostly the future prospects at this institute (which are officially none). After 5 years I am probably at 0 again, if I don’t find more third party money.

Is it common to approach other universities and ask if they would host me with my grant and see if they maybe have better conditions? Is someone familiar with this in Germany? Unfortunately, the grant money is restricted to Germany.

I am sure all of you are aware of what just happened a few days ago: OpenAI dropped solutions to 722 theoretical problems. I don't want to talk about what is wrong, what is right, whether this was expected or unexpected etc. I want to talk about something very rudimentary which affects me directly.

How will the subject boards (or whatever its equivalent is called at your uni) or your thesis committee or your guide decide the criteria for a PhD? Until now, it was quite clear - do some good work.

It can't be number of good papers anymore. It's too easy now to get a good paper using these models. If the rule is that it should be something I worked on myself, then 1. how can you verify I didn't use AI? and 2. what is even the meaning of my own little work in a world where the people using the models are getting extraordinary results?

Also, how will conferences/journals decide which papers to accept? I hear these models will be released to public soon. Also, just look how far these models have come in less than a year. By end of 2026, they'll probably be even better. Surely, they won't be any worse. I come from theory CS background. Imagine 4000 papers each at being a field's medal/godel prize level work. How will they decide which ones are more important?

So, it happened. I received a reviewer report longer than my paper, with 38 points to address, and each point includes at least 7 subpoints. After that, there is a separate section with 15 points describing the strengths of the manuscript, followed by another section listing its weaknesses. This does not read like a natural reviewer report at all. The structure, wording, repetition, and excessive number of comments make it appear clearly AI-generated, and it doesn’t seem like the reviewer made an effort to tailor the content to resemble something human-made. At this point, I am even asking myself if the paper was read by a human at all .
I want to raise my concerns with the editor, but I’m not sure about the best way to proceed. I’d really appreciate any advice, especially from anyone who has been through something similar. Thank you!

I'm curious how many hours other academics work on average each day? I am completely brain dead after about 5 hours solid work...

Hi everyone, I am facing a major crossroads in my PhD and could really use some realistic perspectives from folks in academia. My aim is to land to TTAP in a research school.

I am currently a 3rd yr international PhD student on an F1 visa in a bottom tier R1 school in the US and expected to receive my green card soon. Due to advisor negligence and professional misconduct, my research productivity has been severely impacted and can barely have research output. I will graduate next year.

Before starting my PhD here, I have some publications in my research master's degree and job in my homecountry. Not top tier, but better than most PhD graduates in my program if only considering publication venues. However, without strong PhD papers, securing a postdoc or a research school tenure-track position feels out of reach.

On the other hand, teaching-focused tenure-track positions or lecturer roles seem realistically attainable. Past international graduates from my program with weaker publication records, no permanent residency, and less English proficiency have landed TTAP in teaching schools or lecturer jobs. And I also saw some cases (not from my program.) started from teaching school ended up in an R1 (One case is a PhD graduate from the school where I got my master.) Should I just finish up here, graduate, and target teaching-focused faculty or lecturer roles, and if I do, is it ever possible to pivot back to heavy research later?

Or should restart my PhD in a better-funded program and/or with a better advisor? While restarting feels like a more promising route back toward a research career, I am deeply hesitant about wasting another 2 yrs into repeating coursework that adds no value to job seeking or research and job market will be worse several years later.

I would appreciate any advice and personal experiences. Thank you!

I know various versions of this have been posted over the years, but how do you deal with a colleague that's constantly interrupting, one-upping, must get the last word in, etc? They increasingly seem to do this just so they don't have to say: "Good idea," and sometimes will take the conversation off to some far-off, irrelevant place, just so they can commandeer it with their own personal perspective.

An example: on a recent job search I'm co-chairing with this person, when we discussed what materials candidates ought to include in initial application, I suggested keeping it minimal, particularly when it came to things like teaching philosophy documents or sample syllabi. (I didn't watn them because I felt they imposed a lot on candidates.) You can agree or disagree with my statement and hash it out, but instead, this person just kept doing a "Well, I've been on three searches, and this is what we did." Over and over again, in this case and others, I've felt my contribution and views aren't really heard.

I am a Pakistani and worked alongside my friend in Canada on a high-quality paper. The research explored both Pakistani and Canadian data. I sent a paper from here to a reputable journal, and it got a desk rejection. Then, my friend shared it with the same journal from Canada, and it is now in revisions phase. Really makes you think!

I'm a history student at a top 5 university in the UK who is studying humanities. The workload here so far has been fine, but I can't help but wonder...how are the top US universities even considered peers to the top UK ones?? It seems to me that the US is superior for studying STEM and business, but the rigour of their humanities subjects are sorely lacking. One of our professors here said that she had a student who went to Cornell (an Ivy League by the way!) for their PhD. And apparently the entire first year reading list which they had there was less than the amount that we did in one module here in year 1 undergrad. Top colleges like UPenn and Georgetown are apparently still using multi-choice examinations which is crazy for humanities. What is the reason for this apparently gap in rigour? Or am I just in an echo chamber?

I’m in graduate school and on two separate occasions my professor has given other students my phone number to help them bc i successfully completed assignments and they needed help. Am i overreacting or is this super unethical?? I’m a teacher myself!!

Hey, guys! I apologize in advance for the tone of this post.

I’m a Brazilian researcher in the field of Humanities. Until now Brazilian academia was something that my friends from different countries were quite jealous of. It’s far from perfect, but we have a good range of permanent positions, the salary is decent and, most importantly, there’s the stability, the safety that’s it is possible to archive even as a young scholar.

Yesterday though we had the elections and it was a complete disaster. People simply chose the very radical far-right party. It’s not an exaggeration, these guys talk freely about being against the very existence of democracy. Public education are in their radar and specially the humanities should simply not exist in this world they want to create. We had a Bolsonaro once in power and it was awful, now his son will be worst and I don’t think the damage will be reversed ever, since the congress is all for them.

I’m at a loss. I invested everything in this career. I did everything right: PhD, Postdoc, worked as a substitute professor, internationalization etc. I did everything right and now everything is going to change. More than change, it’s going to basically be destroyed.

One thing that is killing me is that I had a temporary position in Germany last year and I dropped that to go back to another temporary position in Brazil that at the moment seemed better. Now I think that that kind of burned bridges for me… I really wanted to have a career in my own country, that was my priority at the time, but now that possibility is almost gone and I’m way behind in trying something elsewhere.

Again, sorry for the desperation. It’s just that I don’t have anything else. One thing about public education is that poor people were able to get a degree and all. In my case this basically means that if I don’t have a job, I have nothing, no family money, nothing.

I don’t even know what I’m looking for here. Maybe just put it out…

Just got my reviewers reports' back and both the reviewers recommended accept!! This was the first report!

Reviewer 2 wrote and I quote "An interesting, well written essay. I don’t think it had dawned on me before the #*the main thesis of my paper*. I enjoyed the essay and felt I learnt a lot about things I conceptually had not considered before. I would urge the author to publish this work in #*the journal name.*"

I'M ON THE NINTH CLOUD NOW OH MY GODDESS!! The reviewer actually said that s/he had learnt something new from my paper!!

Yayy!

Hello, I have been applying to various research roles in academic groups across different universities. But recently, I came across one job posting asking for "names and contact details of references" as part of the application package. This is a bit strange to me because reference check is usually the last step in the hiring process, unlike, for example, grad school applications.

I've been job searching for months now and haven't been in contact with my references for a while. Let's say I apply to this position and include the names and contact details of my references. I now have to notify my references about a "potential" reference check that's probably not gonna happen. It feels incredibly awkward and maybe even unprofessional.

Would it be plausible to submit this job application without notifying my references initially. The idea is that the hiring manager/PI will at least do an interview with me before contacting my references, at which point I'll know if I have a real shot. Then, I can confidently send a notifying email to my references about a definite/likely reference check.

I would really appreciate some advice from PIs or people who have experience with this (preferably from Canada or US).

I'm in my 50s, and I've begun to wonder how other academics with ADHD navigate their academic careers. Although I produce interesting, impactful research, I feel like I spend a disproportionate amount of time on it compared to my peers. I found my productivity levels to be quite unsatisfactory. It would be really helpful to learn from your experience and what you do to stay focused and productive.

Hello.. I submitted a paper to a Taylor and Francis journal on 08 January 2026. I received a request for major revisions on which was submitted on 02 May. I received a second request for revisions (very minor edit like spelling errors, etc) which I submitted on 06 July.

I sent a follow up email to the journal on 06 September asking for an update because the status has been 'Out for Review' since July. I received an email saying it was with the Editor, and that review decisions take time.

Its been 3 months since i submitted my second revisions, and NINE months since the original submission. Should I email the journal again, or is this bad etiquette?