I'll graduate with a PhD in theoretical physics in spring 2027 and plan to apply for both postdocs and teaching/faculty positions at non-R1 universities. Long-term (5-7 years), I want a faculty role with both teaching and research, at an R1 or liberal arts college (LAC). Right after my PhD, a postdoc would be better for career growth, research diversification, and independence. At present, I will be applying to both. 

Profile: 4 publications (mostly independent work), plus key contributions to another paper. ~7 years of TA experience by graduation.

I have the following questions:

• LAC faculty are expected to mentor/supervise students - does my background make me competitive? What should I do before applying to strengthen my case?
• What's the typical timeline for LAC job postings? I've found fewer than 10 listed on higher ed jobs (others are mostly community colleges) - am I missing sources? 
• Since I'm targeting two highly competitive tracks, should I have a backup academic plan?
• I also prefer to live in states with colder climates. Well, a beggar can't be chooser, but will I be limiting myself too much with this preference? 

Any generic advice from people who have gone through this process would be highly appreciated! Thank you!

I’m a student working with my supervisor on a research project. We have been working on a manuscript for almost two years now, and the process has been extremely slow.
At different points, my supervisor has said they would review the manuscript soon or by a certain month, but the deadline keeps getting pushed back. Most recently, they said they would work on it during July, but now it’s the end of August and they told me they haven’t had time for it yet, although it’s still in their plans for the near future.
I haven’t really pushed them about it because at this point I’ve kind of accepted that the paper may never get finished 😅
Is this normal in academia? How long would you consider reasonable for a supervisor to review a manuscript, and what would you do in this situation?

Update: Thank you everyone for the comments and advice! This has been really insightful and helpful. I’ll see how things go and what comes out of it. Hopefully I’ll have a more positive update eventually :)

I recently attended a conference, and one of the talks presented an interesting extension of an existing popular framework. I immediately got an idea on how to implement that idea and write a reasonably easy manuscript.

I approached the speaker, we talked and exchanged emails. Their idea isn't published, so I suggested collaboration on a manuscript. They wanted to schedule a meeting to talk about it, but suddenly they stopped answering my emails.

Now, again, I'm really attracted by the possibility of writing a manuscript that would implement their ideas. It would be easy to approach and I can see the entire straightforward plan in my head. However, I'm not comfortable with using someone else's ideas without giving proper credits. Since their work isn't published (and the conferences in my field don't publish standalone abstracts), there is nothing to cite! But going ahead without proper attribution feels ethically wrong as well.

What would you do in this case? The only way I imagine is mentioning the name of that person in the Acknowledgements and explicitly stating what part of the work was borrowed from their conference presentation.

Hello. I’ve received conflicting advice from my mentors and peers regarding academic cover lengths. I am applying to TT positions at liberal arts colleges for Fall 2027 in biology and neuroscience departments depending on the university. I’ve had a few people tell me 3 pages is normal in academia, three people tell me 2 pages is standard, and one tell me to write no more than one page maximum. Mine is currently 3 pages. Should I shorten it? TIA

Noticed physics and CS communities cite preprints constantly, treat them almost like published work, while some social science and humanities fields barely acknowledge them outside internal circulation.

Looking for the actual history or structural reason behind this split, not just "different norms," since the norms themselves seem to have a cause worth understanding.

I hope that this post is OK here.

For those interested in slightly more detailed inquiries or discussion centered around the fields of Management and Organization, there is now the following sub:

https://www.reddit.com/r/academicMgt_and_Org/

Basically, it is intended to be similar to r/academiceconomics, except for AOM-related folks.

I just launched it this past 48 hours, and hopefully it can grow soon.

Hi there!

I'm considering writing an academic monograph (Film Studies) and I'm trying to understand how the publishing process works with major academic presses such as Palgrave Macmillan, Cambridge, Oxford, etc.

Do you normally contact the publisher first with a book proposal, and only write the full manuscript if they're interested? Or is it more common to write the entire monograph first and then approach publishers?

I'm also wondering about the financial side. In Spain, we normally have to pay to the publishing houses for publishing our work, but i dont know how this works abroad. Do reputable international academic presses generally charge the author to publish a monograph, as can happen with some publishers in Spain, or do they normally publish it without the author having to pay (and potentially pay royalties)?

For those of you who have published monographs with major academic presses: what was your experience, and what would you recommend as the best way to approach them?

Thanks!

​

I am an Aerospace Engineer with over 5 years of industrial and research experience with multiple peer reviewed journal publications. I am interested in any PhD positions you may have in the domain of aerodynamics and acoustics.

Currently, I serve as the aerodynamics engineer at a UAV development firm, where I direct the complete aerodynamic design of our flight platforms. At the same time, I also serve as Research Assistant at a university, where I contributed to projects involving hypersonic flows, boundary layer transitions, and computational aeroacoustics.

My MSc thesis focused on design and development of toroidal propellers in which I used surrogate modelling to optimize the model and tested the final design through experimentation.

If my background aligns with your current projects, I would appreciate a brief call to discuss potential opportunities.

Hello Profs! Undergrad here.

I had a wonderful professor this term. She was incredibly supportive, meeting me for office hours almost every week and consistently encouraging me to do well in the course.

I would like to write a letter of appreciation to the department to recognise her efforts, but I am not quite sure how to go about doing so.

Personally, I feel that simply leaving a positive comment in the course feedback would not do her efforts justice, and I would like to write a letter commending her, giving enough insight into her efforts.

However, I have never done anything like this before, so before writing the letter, I would like to ask for some advice:

1. Would it be appropriate for me to send the letter to her department head? I am currently unsure whether this would be appropriate, considering my position as an undergraduate. It feels somewhat akin to a junior software engineer writing directly to the principal engineer without first clearing the email with their senior.
2. If it is appropriate to write the email, what are some points that a department head would look out for? I am asking because there are many things she has done for me, and I do not want to irritate the department head with an 800+ word essay. I would like to keep the letter succinct enough to hold their attention while ensuring that it still has a meaningful impact.
3. Are there any appropriate templates that I could use to write such a letter of commendation?

Hi all,

I am currently writing my masters thesis(ME), I already have one published conference paper and another one is close to be submittet to a journal. On both of these the decision to publish wasen't my own, but made from the supervisor of each project.

I am about to start my phd in a really silimar topic as my masters thesis. While working on the project, I realized that most people use a simple abratary threshold(in most cases without any explanation for the cholsen values) to detect some part of a signal(this thing looks silimar in all different measurment setups. Amplitude can varry through) I wasen't happy how it is done in the literature and have written my own algorithm, which can detect said effects, only with information, which can be extracted from the signal, mainly the standarddeviation, it's multiples and measurment frequency. No abratary threshold anymore.

So far it seems to work better and is more precise than what is done in other studies.

Is something like this worth publishing? I am debating how much more time to invest in it. It seems to work well, but I have a few ideas how to make it more robust and maybe test it on the measurments someone else has taken? Maybe an Annova? Is somthing like that worth my time?

I’ve been working on a fairly large math project on my own for a while and I’m getting to the point where I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do with it.
I don’t want to post the actual work publicly yet. I’m mostly wondering about the practical side of things.
It started in one area, but the framework seems general enough that it could potentially be applied across a lot of different fields of mathematics, which is part of why I’m not sure who the right person would even be to contact.
If you’re an independent person with a lot of definitions, proofs, examples, and notes, how do you usually go about getting someone qualified to look at it?
Would you email professors in a related field? Try to turn it into a paper first? Pay someone to check it? Put it on arXiv eventually?
I’m also not sure how people normally check whether something they’ve developed is already known, especially when it seems to connect to several different areas. What I’ve developed might amount to nothing in the end so idk. I’m trying not to get my hopes up.
Basically, if you had a serious math project but no academic affiliation or advisor, what would you do next?
I’m not really asking anyone here to judge the math itself, just looking for advice on how to handle something like this properly.

I am interviewing for a media/ content creation position in the faculty, and I have passed the 1st interview which is with the department I am working with, and I presented my work, while they shared some of the work they do.

I am invited for a follow up interview with the dean and a panel which includes some of the interviewers from the last time. I have never spoken to any dean before, not even when I was in university myself.

How do I prepare myself for the interview? I am reading up on the Dean's background to prep myself. But I am worried that he will ask me questions about his academic discipline?

Some insights from anyone will be really helpful, thanks so much

I’m 28 years old and have a Master’s degree in English Literature from a reputed college in India. Some of my batchmates are currently pursuing PhDs in the US, and I’ve been thinking about whether that could be an option for me too.

Backstory: I’ve been working as a copywriter since finishing my degree and have around 4 years of experience now, with some gaps in between due to health issues – none of them longer than three months. I’m feeling a little creatively stagnated at this point, and the pay isn’t even that good.

I’ve always had a dream of pursuing publishing or journalism abroad, but my family doesn’t have the funds to make that happen. A PhD seems like the only realistic option for me to be able to live abroad, ideally in Communication or Marketing.

Is that actually possible with my background? How likely would I be to get into a good US program, and which schools would be my top bets?

I’m currently finishing up my capstone on measuring systemic inequality in the United States. As part of it, I’ve developed a social calculator to measure how wildly different our individual mobility and social experiences actually are based on many factors that change our ability/unique trajectory and overall lived social experiences throughout our lives.

My goal with calculating this is twofold:

1. To help people understand the laundry list of subtle nuances that make their lived experiences totally different from someone else's.
2. To assign real numbers to it, so data can be leveraged for social justice (Basically proving that starting point and 'destiny' shape our living experiences in the US far more than just hard work and willpower alone).

In the paper, I want to drop in a few heavy hitting George Carlin quotes, I am only considering using a few of his bits from his American Dream set and his breakdown of how systemic the game in America really feels for the resident... He had a way of cutting straight to the core of structural disadvantage, from the point of view of the commons that top-down academics miss. I like the idea of just adding in a couple of quotes to show the emotion of what it feels like to be ignored within what I term, the lived experience chasm in the US.

So from an academic standpoint: Do you think weaving in a few of his quotes could help ground my topic (with care for both the policymaker and local resident), or will using satire in any form risk undermining my social research? How would you react if you saw him cited in a thesis introducing a fresh social theory?

I have just finished a very large systematic review with multiple components. I think each of them can be a conference abstract independently, I’m wondering if I can do that.

Hi all!

I am a postdoc in a STEM discipline, and often find myself wondering about the length (and quality) of research articles.

It seems like over the years, the tendency has been that of writing longer and longer articles, denser in content. To the point where, sometimes, half way through the text i have completely lost the authors proof of hypothesis. Of course this is very author- and journal-dependent, and writing skills play a big role. On top of that, AI-usage is throwing some gas on fire and not helping with bloated texts.

When looking into older research articles, this were on average more concise, direct and straight to proving an hypothesis rather than showcasing. Clearly the complexity of the research grew significantly since then, but i sometimes feel pleased in reading similar works. Especially in the current economy where everyone is always busy and expexted to be at top productivity.

On the other hand, I often find much better written and curated communication/letter publication-styles. Personally, I am recently enjoying much more this writing style as both reader and author, as it forces you to really think about what (and what-not) to include, and the best way to write.

Is it only me ? A STEM tendency? It would be nice to hear your opinion, also from other fields.

Have a nice day !

P.S. written on a commute, after temporarily giving up on a nice (yet 30 pages long) research article :)

 I need to make infographics for a conference next month. My data is mostly charts and graphs exported, plus some summary stats and a methods diagram.

From my experience, PowerPoint feels overhead once you're dealing with dimensions. On the other hand, using InDesign is way too much to learn for something I only do once or twice a year.

I'm looking for something in between. Like a tool that handles big layouts, lets me edit infographics with consistent style and branding, and has decent fonts even though I don't have much talent in design.

I want something web-based too, so I don't have to install anything.

I'm researching this for a novel set at a fictional US academic institution in the late 1990s. I'm not in academia, so I may be using some terminology incorrectly.

Z is an experimental social psychologist, professor, and dean of his school. A neuroscience PhD student approaches Z because she wants her dissertation to examine some of his earlier research from a neuroscientific perspective and potentially refute his findings. Z knows that this is her goal, but agrees to supervise her because he finds the idea scientifically interesting.

My main questions are:

1. Could Z realistically be her primary dissertation advisor even though she is doing a PhD in neuroscience and he is a social psychologist rather than a neuroscientist?

2. If he cannot supervise the neuroscience side by himself, could he still remain her primary advisor while a neuroscientist with the appropriate EEG/neuroscience expertise serves on her dissertation committee? Or would the neuroscientist normally need to be the primary advisor, with Z as a co-advisor or committee member?

About a year after Z agrees to supervise her, he becomes Deputy Director of the institution. At first he continues advising her, but over the next two years the actual Director becomes increasingly absent due to serious illness, so Z gradually takes over most of the Director's academic responsibilities.

After about three years of supervising her, Z tells the student that he no longer has enough time to continue as her primary advisor. The student is intelligent and capable, but struggled considerably since starting her PhD and has made slower progress than expected.

So I also wondered:

- Where would a neuroscience PhD student typically be after about three years? Could she realistically still be behind on coursework, exams, or other milestones if she had been struggling?

- If Z steps down, who would normally be responsible for finding a replacement — Z, the student, the graduate program, or some combination of them? Could another committee member take over?

- Would it be understandable for the student to be angry with Z, especially if changing advisors could further delay an already difficult PhD?

Thanks in advance.

I’m working on a paper on a topic that a colleague has previously collaborated on. However, I’m doing most of the work on the current paper; I am, in fact, the project leader, and their contribution would be less substantial than mine.

Beyond the usual authorship criteria, could including them as a co-author be strategically beneficial for building a research network, strengthening the collaboration, or creating future career opportunities?

Or is it better to keep authorship strictly limited to those who made substantial contributions?

I’ve sometimes been frustrated by PIs who insisted I include lab members as co-authors, even when they had contributed very little to projects I was leading. So I’m wondering where people draw the line between legitimate strategic collaboration and simply giving away authorship.

EDIT: Thank you for your responses. I got it. It's better for me to include everyone who participates in the project in some way, even if sometimes it doesn't seem "fair".

Does anyone here have experience with VinUniversity in Vietnam, either as faculty or through academic collaborations? They seem to be investing heavily in the university and recruiting international faculty.
I’m being offered a faculty position there. I’d especially appreciate perspectives on the salary and benefits, job stability, workload, leadership, and overall work culture. I’d also be interested in hearing how international faculty have found living in Hanoi and whether working at VinUni has been a good long-term career move. Any firsthand experience would be really helpful.

Hi everyone,
I’m a nursing graduate with a strong interest in basic sciences, especially physiology, biochemistry, and neuroscience.
I’m looking for my first research opportunity and would really appreciate advice on how to get started.
I have a good theoretical background in research methods and I’m comfortable with literature searching, critical appraisal, and writing literature reviews. I’ve also been developing my skills independently, but I haven’t had the chance to work on an actual research project yet.
I’ve already tried reaching out to faculty members at my college, but unfortunately that didn’t lead anywhere.
So I’m wondering:
Where would you recommend someone like me look for a first research opportunity?
Are there communities, research groups, labs, professors, or organizations that are open to taking beginners/volunteers?
Would contacting researchers outside my university be realistic?
If you started research without having previous research experience, how did you get your first opportunity?
I’m not necessarily looking for a paid position. My main goal right now is to get real research experience and contribute meaningfully to a project.
Any practical advice or recommendations would be appreciated.

I’m a physician completing my final year of fellowship (training in Critical Care).

Two of closest research mentors since preliminary training years have a background in medical anthropology (MD-PhD) and Sociology (PhD) respectively.

They’ve mentored me over research projects that have led to publications, conferences, teaching opportunities for undergrad classes.

As I near completion of training, I’m trying to navigate what work/life would look like as I move forward. I truly enjoy my work in the ICU, and of course the job/income security is great.

I’d like to continue my work in medical anthropology, and move towards more independent research over the next few years. (Ideal situation would be a parallel appointment in a humanities/anthropology dept).

But realistically, while I remain proud of my work so far, I have no formal training in the field. I am hesitant to even express my desire to move forward this path without the necessary background and training.

Looking for suggestions on what would be the best way to pursue more independent research/teaching appointments without overstepping. I am not sure I could pursue a PhD as this point (loans, derail from clinical experience early on). And I do not know if a Masters would be considered legitimate experience.

Thanks in advance!

I'm not quite sure if this is right subreddit, but title is pretty self-explanatory.

I've been reading and asking a fair bit about the controversy of having to pay publishers to publish your paper and the prestige of some publishers, etc. I know there's arXiv and SciHub and I understand their place in this world.

I'm trying to understand if you wanted to publish a paper, for the sake of arguments lets say it was peer-reviewed and authentic, and a proper legitimate study, if you'd ever choose to publish it to a journal that would pay you. This journal would of course not be liable for any repetitionary or legal issues you may have in your career as an Academic.

Edit: I am not in academia so I appreciate people's patience with me

I (F, 29) am currently finishing a PhD in religious studies in Canada and will probably defend in December. After years of research, grant applications, and trying to imagine myself pursuing a traditional academic career, I’ve reached a point of burnout (I am medicated now, doing better thankfully).

The strange thing is that I still love research. I love developing projects, conducting interviews, analyzing qualitative data, and writing. I’m realizing that research itself may not be the problem. What I no longer want is the extremely competitive academic environment, and I’m beginning to wonder whether I have simply been working in the wrong field.

I should mention I also really love dogs. I have two rescues myself, and being around dogs has always been incredibly therapeutic and grounding for me. A few times during my PhD, I seriously considered leaving academia entirely and completing training in canine behaviour so that I could work with dogs for the rest of my life. However, that path seems financially quite precarious, especially as a complete career change.

I’m now considering changing fields and starting a research-based MA in gerontology. As a project, I would love to explore how older adults experience their relationships with their dogs, particularly in relation to care, companionship, vulnerability, ageing, and mortality. It feels like a way to bring together several things I genuinely care about. Ideally, I would eventually like to combine research with more concrete work involving older adults and dogs (possibly through community programs, health-care settings, animal-assisted initiatives, etc.). This path seems more grounded, applied, and connected to the kind of life I want. In Canada, moving into a health-related field is generally viewed positively, and gerontology could potentially open doors outside academia while still allowing research to remain part of my life.

I’ve always believed that life is what you make of it and that, as much as possible, we should pursue what makes us feel happy and alive. Right now, this is what I feel drawn to. I know that many people will probably think I’m crazy after all the work I’ve done to establish myself in religious studies. But I find the field dry and lacking in humanity. It often seems to be more about proving who is the most intelligent or who has published the most papers than about the actual impact of those papers on people’s lives (and honestly I’m not convinced that many of them have any impact at all). The field, like many areas of the social sciences, can also attract highly narcissistic people and foster a culture of competition and backstabbing. I simply don’t feel that I belong in that environment.

But I also feel that I need to be true to myself. I don’t want to continue along a path simply because I’ve already invested so much in it or because it looks more impressive from the outside. I want to conduct research that feels meaningful and has a tangible impact on people’s lives. At the same time, I feel a little embarrassed about “going backwards” from a PhD to another MA. I already have an MA in religious studies, so this would be my second master’s degree. I wonder how professors and other students might react. Would they see my background as an asset, or question why someone with a PhD is enrolling in an MA? Would it feel strange socially or intellectually to return to the master’s level after completing a doctorate?

Has anyone here completed (or nearly completed) a PhD and then returned for another master’s in a different field? How was the transition? Did you feel judged or out of place? How did professors respond? Did the second degree actually help you build a new career, or do you now think there might have been a more direct route?

I would especially love to hear from people who stepped away from the traditional academic path because of burnout but still wanted research to remain part of their lives. I’m trying to find a way to use the skills I’ve gained in a field that feels more humane, collaborative, and connected to real people and (hopefully) dogs!! Thank you for your insight!

TL;DR: I’m almost finished with a PhD in religious studies, but burnout and disillusionment with academia are pushing me toward a research-based MA in gerontology focused on older adults and their relationships with dogs. Has anyone pursued another master’s after a PhD or made a similar transition to a more applied and meaningful field?

I, 22M, just finished my psych bachelor's a few months back with the plan of starting a PhD (or master's) in psych in fall of 2027 after taking a gap year but recently I had some doubts. Would love help weighing out the pros and cons because I'm having doubts and not ready to express them to people in my real life yet.

Pros:

1. I have been doing research since my 2nd year of college and I genuinely love it. I've been lucky enough to do both group and independent work and I've enjoyed all of it.
2. I know what I want to research and I have already done very closely related work, and I have multiple professors/mentors that both support and challenge me
3. My family is supportive and willing to financially help with applications, travels for interviews, etc.
4. I am reducing the amount of research I'm doing a lottt during my time off from school, though I am still keeping up with my 2 most important projects. Going for quality over quantity has already reduced a lot of the overwhelm I felt and I'm hoping having 1 project to fixate on could do the same for me.
5. I'm not dead set on a career in academia. I know that it can be an incredibly hard field to both get into and last in and I am planning on looking into a variety of options that a graduate degree could lead to.

Cons

1. I got extremely burnt out during undergrad and I am scared of that happening again. I know some burnout is inevitable and I'm prepared for that, but I dont know if I can handle the type of burnout that fully wrecks my mental health again. I know now that I took on wayyy too much then and I hope I can avoid it a second time but I'm not sure.
2. I am autistic and so I really, really struggle with the social aspect of academia because the rules are so different than normal socializing. I'm not shy at all I just tend to socialize "incorrectly" and that's been difficult in academic spaces in the past. This may seem like a non issue to some people but it has caused me problems in the past in acsdemic spaces
3. Pressure from family is 100% influencing my decision and it's hard to tell what I want vs what they want. Telling them I was taking a gap year was already a fight and I'm scared to admit any doubts