It would be more 'normal' to add the name of the developer into acknowledgements, with brief detail on their contribution. The idea of a reference is something someone can find and read; it's a bit odd to make an email exchange publicly available (and if it's not, what's the point of referencing it). Whilst it's possible, you'd envision an email exchange to be referenced if it's something social-sciencey reflecting on context and perspectives; not because it explains how something works.

This does put it on you to convey how things work themselves, but if you're confident to publish you should be confident to describe how you got the results, so it should - hopefully - be straightforward.

The risk you run if you cite it as justification/explanation, is it being interpreted as 'we didn't know how the black box worked, but we got the explanation of the guy who made the box, and present it here as fact'. This may not be as problematic as it sounds, but is it probably the reason it's rare.

It's great to hear this.

It's a sad fact in academia often subscribing to unobtainable targets is a lazy way to boost a grant's success chance. Why propose a 10-person study when you can add a few zeros on a page then rely on a PhD appointee to pull it off?

In my experience some (and I hesitate to say it, but - EU/H2020) schemes are very vulnerable to this. It's seemed par for the course to me that successful grants promise the moon then result in 3 years of delivering well below target whilst scraping through review.

This is perhaps the way of the world but a supervisor's willingness to over-commit should not be something they pass on to their PhD students.

I can't really speak so much as an applicant (though I did a long time ago get an academic post), but I've interviewed/appointed PhDs in the past.

At my Uni, and I suspect many others, a reference is required by HR, but rarely viewed by the actual panel. It's often at Prof level or above that references really count (in some cases); usually at PhD stage unless HR flag a really bad reference ('this person is a convicted criminal who embezzled £40k from us'), it's unlikely to be a major deciding point. This means a generic 'to whom it may concern' reference is not going to have any real impact on whether you get the post when compared to a compelling, handwritten document - because it won't have been read by the decision makers at the point the decision is made.

I would always in a PhD application say references available 'on request', rather than supplying them unsolicited - because as above they're not going to be make-or-break. But it's not unusual to get a lot of reference requests as an academic, and in honesty these do indeed become copy-pastes of the original reference with slight tailoring to the post, if the applicant provides this information.

In short you shouldn't hesitate to ask a previous supervisor for a reference, but I'd be aware there's no gain from asking them to supply one before it's required by HR for rubber-stamping, as they're seldom even involved in decision-making, let alone a major factor.

It's a given continental thing; it's just how the system works. In the UK it's the opposite; it's rare for them to be published and I generally counsel students to consider it carefully if approached as publishers will sometimes opportunistically raid your wallet in an elaborate vanity scam.

Considering you have a copy yourself and can submit it or link to it on an application that's what I'd recommend. If you think it's useful and could be cited, then ResearchGate etc. would provide you with a means for making it accessible. Few (no) employers will actually read it in full, but the majority will (hopefully) dip in if it's available, and if it showcases your ability to write and present research it's a good thing to have, but not a deal-breaker.

He sounds like a jerk frankly.

I can't comment on the actual quality of the work, and there's always the thing that what a student hears vs what a supervisor says are often not the same thing.

But honestly; I'd make sure your co-supervisors are onboard, work hard, spend the rest of the PhD proving him wrong, and at your graduation speech slip in comedically 'I remember, last year, my supervisor said...'. The best way to deal with jerks is to channel the energy they generate by winding you up into proving them wrong; this will help you a lot with resilience if you stay in academia.

That said, if he's exceptionally backstabbing and will e.g. go to lengths to pick examiners to fail you, then you should get shot of him. But before doing so I'd have a meeting in which you explain the impact of the last meeting on you and that you're considering if a change in supervision would be the best way to go, as you may find it was a misunderstanding or you're misjudging his opinion.

Either way you will get the best result by standing your ground professionally rather than trying to administratively avoid him.

The crown copyright is not something to worry about. It's if you're a public servant (like work for a government department) Her Majesty technically owns the copyright which I think makes a headache for publishers.

REF returns are limited to staff, the fact you're a student makes you ineligible to return. If you are staff, then there are further complicated rules. Universities extensively game their ref-returns based on these rules (the government pays them cash-in-hand based on their result). It's generally better for them to have a small number of staff returning high-quality outputs, they can do this in a range of ways some of which work better for the academic (suddenly promoting them from RA etc. so they qualify), and some which don't (deliberately trying to manipulate them into teaching-only roles so they can focus a group's output on one individual).

The truth is;

- As a PhD student, you will not be returned.
- If you produce outputs on which a co-author is eligible (an academic at the University) this can be returned. Hence your supervisor and the university in general will want you to produce these outputs and add an eligible academic as a co-author. They may not be transparent about this.
- There is still benefit to you, as when you apply for a job after your PhD you can transfer your outputs into the new post. You can also in this REF submit the same output as your previous institution. E.g. if you co-author a paper with your supervisor which they return, then move to a new university, you have an eligible paper to return too. This means a prospective employer will be 'buying' your return for ROI as much as employing you. It's for this reason that REF outputs are very important for getting job offers.

Just wanted to add to this as an academic;

I think we all agree. The sector chasing of league tables in an absolute joke.

This is not entirely an issue academics can fix, though, unless we manage to pull of some kind of mass action, and even then, we'd need to know exactly what we want instead.

The problem for me, in the UK at least, stems from how these league tables translate to money for Universities; it's easy to rail on overpaid VCs etc., but ultimately they have boards to answer to and these boards want income and growth.

REF is the prime example, which is a direct paycheque based on a (arguably suspect and certainly cliqued) peer-review against which seeks oddly to derive foremost the vague, manipulable criteria of whether work is 'nationally-leading' or 'internationally-leading'. It breaks not just because of the review criteria, but also - how does a University self-evaluate its staff in anticipation? If you internally peer review on a faculty scale, the level of in-fighting, 'so-and-so-isn't-in-my-field-so-how-can-they-judge-it' moans, and outright corruption is easy to forsee. So a flawed bibliometric is often the lesser of many evils.

The only complete solution is to ditch the concept of the government paying universities based on league table performance; under the acceptance they can't measure research institutionally in a sensible way. Funnel the money into grants instead and let academics compete for it (and maybe fix the issues there too) rather than institutions. Yet of course this will not happen, as government are disproportionately alumni of the institutions that benefit most from the status quo.

The typical level of support you get at PhD level is 'not much'; partly this is reasonable (you're expected to be a capable learner who is steadily becoming independent), sometimes this is unreasonable (disappearing supervision). The realistic expectation is a bi-weekly 1 hour meeting with a supervisor and feedback on written work around the same timeframe.

I think it important to add a PhD will not necessarily help with a job down the line; unless the job you envisage is an academic one. This is not obvious, since as a student you've possibly been through 18 years of being told grades and qualifications are everything, but this ceases to be the case in a lot of postgraduate circumstances.

Negatives out of the way; you can always quit at any point and if you're not enjoying it there's nothing stopping you applying for jobs and being able to pick and choose (since you have a fallback). It might be a PhD is not for you (or you could find you love it), but you're in a better situation having something paying the rent than not. A mistake I see early-career academics (or employees) make is a misguided sense of loyalty to their employer; like they're doing something wrong if they look for other opportunities whilst in-post. For people with an ounce of experience, this is a normal thing to be doing and not traitorous/unfair/unreasonable, and whilst you might think the University and supervisory team are having sleepless nights if you quit, the honest fact is in the grand scheme of things it's next to nothing.

Give it a chance; the things that make a PhD a good experience are often not the topic or your ability; but the lab/group environment and relationship with supervision. These are impossible to guess at until you start.

If this is a UK question, it's unfortunately rare that extra work or income generation = bonus. As a prof, you can bring in a million+ grant, and probably will not see any of it directly - rather some of your existing hours will be assigned to manage it.

If you weren't stipended, you might have a case to ask; as you are, it would generally be unlikely you'd be able to argue for extra money, unless the work is completely unrelated to your PhD.

As a stipended student you probably also signed an agreement that the IP you generate belongs to the University. You're then trying to negotiate backwards from an existing arrangement - this can work if you're willing to walk away from the table, but rarely will if you aren't.

In terms of actionable advice:

> The first thing in project management that academics are terrible at is identifying sub-tasks and costing. Work out exactly what you're expected to do (this will probably take some effort in itself; expect woolly, frustrating answers), and 'cost' it in hours.

> Look at this and ask 'does it help my PhD'. If yes, then it's probably still worth doing for free.

> If 'no', make sure you have a strong argument why it's irrelevant. Take it to PI/DoS, and explain 'I'm happy to do x, but y seems like a lot of extra work, which is not related to my PhD because of z'.

> Follow up with, if you wish 'But i'm happy to do y, it fits my skill set; however, it would have to be on a contractor basis and I could only work n hours on it'

It's important if you do this you don't propose unrealistic hours, considering your PhD is already an FT job.

I'd be inclined to push for a stipended extension, and collate evidence as to why you weren't able to work.

University polices are seldom rational, but academic dispute panels usually are, so if you raise a dispute and clearly evidence that covid didn't just mean working from home (as that's not alone a great reason to be delayed); but that you were unable to collect primary data, access essential lab equipment, or pastoral reasons such as a sudden caring responsibility etc., you should hopefully find common sense prevails.

A non-stipended extension doesn't seem fair to me since it's effectively furloughing you without any income. The UKRI policies are broadly reasonable so if you're funded by one all you should need to do is ensure your Uni doesn't administratively drop the ball in administering it (sadly, likely, and you'll need to send multiple emails typically to ensure they don't screw up).

If it's an an institutional level, evidence of how this affected your research is key. Collect and collate. Universities in general have been bombarded with extension requests, and often have to sift legitimate reasons vs an assumption covid = free 6 month holiday. This is not as good a deal or policy as blanket extensions; but it's always worth arguing your case as the squeaky wheel very often gets the grease.

Let the inner critic come out at viva. The worst thing you could do would be overcompensate for your own self-criticality and try to 'overdefend' - invariably people that do this is come across as scientifically naive.

PhD students often over-worry about the 'contribution to science' part, at the expense of the 'showing you're a good scientist' bit. They big up findings, or over-defend flawed aspects of their work. The ability you have to identify flaws in your own work is a strength.

I don't mean go in there and be immediately 'In case you didn't notice, Chapter 2 is rubbish...'. But your answers to questions don't need to be on the basis 'my thesis is perfect, and therefore I shall rebut'; rather on the 'this is a rational limitation, and I agree with it' side of things.

If you are self-critical you are not an impostor. The best researchers will more aptly and readily shred their own work than that of others. Viva fails (exceptionally rare though they are), are often not due to the work being flawed, but the person defending it showing utter naivety when it comes to the flaws.

I would think less in terms of bits of paper.

What matters when starting, or applying for a PhD, is a) knowledge, and b) passion. b) is considerably more important, because whilst knowledge is inevitably gained during a PhD, passion is usually more likely to be lost. It's very hard to gauge what you do or don't know, but I'd imagine in terms of optometry you know far more subjectively about patients, conditions, and their experiences, than many academics around the field.

I'd suggest you start reading academically on the field, and define a research question. This may seem little guidance but it's effectively what you'll get in more verbose form if you start a self-funded PhD. If you apply for a funded one and can say 'well I had this great RQ in mind - "...", but can see the interest in x... actually I remember reading an article that discussed x...', this will come across very well. If you find this reading painful/tedious (it is) it might help you decide if a PhD is a good fit before you commit. In general, if you can demonstrate knowledge and passion in the application and interview, most academics will listen regardless of 'on-paper' stuff.

You may find at some places there's an initial HR 'sift' that means lacking a piece of paper means an academic never sees your application, though this tends to be at the 'no undergrad degree' rather than the 'not quite the right degree' level. Irrespective I'd think very carefully before spending money on more qualifications if you're not convinced they'd be of intellectual value.

Often, the lesser the journal, the stricter the count, but with some important provisos. I say this because a good venue won't kick out good science because it's expensive to print; a bad venue will accept bad science but only if it's cheap to print (or the author pays $ for extra pages).

Provisos: the academic reason for minimising word count is that good science doesn't need waffle. To an experienced academic, wordiness is often equated with 'there's no actual novel science here but they're trying to hide that fact in words'. There's an old quote I think attributed to Pascal - 'I'd have written a shorter letter, but didn't have enough time'. Point being, it's harder and more time-consuming to write succinctly. The clearer you are, the more any flaws are laid bare. As an author it's a routine struggle to cut things you've written, and appreciate the time wasn't wasted, but it's necessary if you want to write really good (or in target driven culture speak, 'well-cited') articles. The best articles start off far too long, and are carefully edited down.

Consider how long you, as a reader, spend reading articles in the same journal. Do you really appreciate - or even read - those extra 2000 words (which often repeat literature you know), or would you rather see clear and succinct method, results, & evidenced conclusions? Reducing length rarely makes an article lower quality, it's usually the opposite.

I would not aim to hit the word count out of fear of arbitrary rejection if it's a good journal, but because it's a likely indication your article is longer than a typical publication and therefore, unless there's (comparatively) some groundbreaking science going on, probably isn't as concise as it could be.

The general principle around anonymity is usually you should not blatantly or obviously disclose it, but you should not worry about going to great lengths to mask it; i.e, you shouldn't expect the reviewer to go to any lengths to identify you, as it's their job to assess in the spirit of anonymity. It's not usually meant to be a case of you preparing a paper that's bulletproof-anonymous, more that you shouldn't be sticking your identity/institution in the face of the reviewer in the hopes of preferential treatment.

It would, in my experience, be fine to mention the prior study, and that the work uses its data. You're still not stating you're the person that led both and it's entirely plausible a different researcher (or institution) used the data. The only times this has led me to reject are when the submission completely fails to notice it's meant to be anonymous and has names and affiliations on Page 1 (which is, sadly, not uncommon, though often the papers themselves that do this are typically either outright bad or rejects from elsewhere).

If you want to play it really safe, replace "Bloggs et al" with [redacted for anonymity] or similar on the submitted version. Unless the validity of the work utterly hinges on the reviewer being able to read Bloggs et al., this is a consistent and 'safe' way to handle it.

The other obvious fail-safe is to ask the journal editor, since ultimately it's going to depend on the journal.

It's normal to feel like you hit a brick wall in the first year of a PhD. There is a 'hump' you need to get over, which is partly about developing your expertise, but also realising what you'd previously considered 'expertise' to, in fact, not be as total a mastery as a layperson expects ;)

It is essential to get over this hump, because students that struggle never really do; they lump together a thesis from general reading and a small user-study, but never develop the expertise and passion for a niche.

To try and give some practical advice, if you want to shape the PhD around web development, you could consider;

- Implementing (with a clear framework/underlying theory) an e-learning, e-health, or e-whatever intervention and assessing it's efficacy.
- Anything on e-learning obviously works well in a Uni setting. It's over-researched for this reason but there are gaps and it's legitimate work.
- Web usability isn't something you can approach naively (lot of work done), but it's not a solved problem.
- Web accessibility - same applies.
- You have a huge gap at the moment on covid + web use/habits!

It's tempting in CS to think programatically harder=better. Sitting up all night for 0.1% performance gain on a stack lit shader, genetic algorithm, or semantic query is very legitimate work, but it's not all CS is, and often understanding users might seem 'easier' intellectually, but it's very demanding work deserving of a PhD.

I'd say the important thing throughout is to understand that making something can be a big part of a PhD (and, to be honest, for a talented developer doing a PhD it's the bit they enjoy), but it's often not the most critical in a research sense - whatever you do should be fundamentally grounded in theory/methodology.