Yes, you have a great chance at getting a PhD. You don't need a masters for a PhD and you have plenty of real world experience. Plus enthusiasm will count a lot in interviews. Although are you prepared for the drop in earnings? As PhD students do not get paid well at all and I have seen people drop out due to unstable finances.

Sounds like a normal research lab to me. Most labs are dysfunctional in some way. I don't know anyone who likes there lab environment, you just get used to it. So I wouldn't worry unless you are getting zero results.

That is very serious but what does leaked mean? Was it just a presentation or have they published it? If it is just a presentation you can still salvage it by publishing ASAP. Presenting intermediary results generally doesn't lead to scooping unless someone else is already working on it. If they shared a hard copy, I would raise it further.



Every paper author is allowed to write as much or as little of the paper as they want. It doesn't matter the supervisor writes all of it, as long as his name is on the paper it is fine. I have seen several papers in which the supervisor writes the entire publication because the student is too lazy. In my opinion not publishing the research is unethical.



Have you told your supervisor this or have you made any suggestions to him? Generally if you make sensible suggestions you can change things. A lot of the time people don't even know there is an issue and being proactive can yield significant results. I would recommend you make some suggestions to your supervisor of what you think will improve the lab environment and see what he says.

I would ask for a second or even third supervisor. It is becoming more common to have extra supervisors and you are prefect example of why you need them.

If you current supervisor agrees you could potentially choose your second supervisor and find the right relationship. Your supervisor might suggest a few people but you might be allowed to ask someone yourself and establish the work relationship you want/need.

Ask the editor if there was a small mistake or tell him that you cannot be as thorough without suitable referencing options.
Don't waste your time reviewing the paper in detail if they can't be bothered to add the line numbers.

I can share a story I heard first hand about this issue;

In my field there is a well known professor that received a 8 million euro grant a few years back
As part of the grant his research group has published a lot of high quality papers that have redefined the topic
This professor has won awards based of his research groups work
When you talk with the professor you will realise he doesn't understand the basic chemistry
The professor did not write the proposal
Before the grant one of his PhD student got sidetracked and his research went into a different field
The PhD student wrote his thesis on a topic outside the professor's main field
The PhD student became a postdoc and wrote the 8 million euro proposal based on his PhD project
When they won the grant the postdoc became a lecturer and virtually ran the research group
The professor only did the paperwork and occasionally did presentations on the project
Both the professor's and the PhD student's names are on every journal paper
The original PhD student is now a professor
The original professor still doesn't understand the chemistry
Everyone is happy

The original PhD student had a great idea but he personally could not get funding. So by using his supervisors name on the proposal the great idea got funding. The PhD student and the professor both got something out of the arrangement.

Hi Chinnu,

I am still a bit lost and I should have worded my previous post better. Are your experiments working and do you have data? As if you have good results, it means your PhD is mostly going fine and you don't need to change institution (in my opinion). I personally think that getting data is the most important part of finishing a PhD, as if you have data you can write up at your leisure and it makes writing easier. Simply, good data makes writing your thesis easier. If you don't have enough data or don't have a plan to get data, you need to worry. Data is king.

Just submit a draft paper to the journal anyway. To me it sounds like you have no confidence in yourself and anxiety has taken over. It happens to all of us. You cannot let the fear of failure stop you from progressing. Most PhD students get very little feedback on their writing and learn by experience. So the only thing I can recommend is to keep trying and learn from setbacks. The journal review process can be very helpful in improving your writing and your confidence.

Yep that is the norm. The funding system is skewed towards permanent members of staff and deals like this allows you to skirt it. Generally if you write most of the application the supervisor will give you more freedom to do it your way, so it is your project in all but name. I know it might sound wrong but writing an application in your supervisor's name is a lot easier than applying in your own name.

It sounds like your supervisors are super awful at feedback and under appreciative of you but that shouldn't be the only reason to quit. How are your supervisors excluding feedback? Does your PhD have any positives or are you close to finishing? Or how is your PhD going in general? Feedback may seem super important now but if the rest of the PhD is going well, I would try and work around it. However, if everything else is going badly, I would consider leaving.

I agree with pm133, if they give you implicit corrections you should apply them throughout the manuscript. Although I know some supervisors who are similarly awkward with paper drafts. Some supervisors are perfectionists who are never happy, so you have to submit the paper regardless of what they say. I have a friend who's supervisors cant agree and always give him conflicting corrections. My supervisors give awful feedback (very vague) and I have used the journal review process instead of relying on them. So what I am trying to say is that we all want more feedback but sometimes we have to learn somethings ourselves.

If you don't like the revisions requested you can always submit it somewhere else.

I think it is slowly becoming more prevalent. In my field it is common for the article to include thbe corresponding author's ORCID. I know it is not everyone but I can notice a slow improvement over the last few years.



I have a weird anecdote about this. My name was on a paper that had 12 authors and the journal had requested everyone ORCIDs. The corresponding author went to a huge amount of effort to get everyone's (there were foreign exchange and masters students involved) but the journal didn't include them on the article. It was a huge amount of effort that got wasted but I think there must have been a reason that the journal didn't include everyone.

I have seen private conversations in a reference list but it may vary between fields. If you unsure, choose a couple of respectable journals in your field and see how they do it. If the journal has previously let someone cite a previous conversation in a particular format, that should be a good enough standard for your work.

If you are only looking for gestures/speech combos you could use basic software to find the important segments and then properly translate the important bits. I would assume that most of the audio will not be that important to your research question and it would be easier to focus on the important gesture parts. Also translation bots might be good enough to understand the speakers mood/topic that won't require high level translation like idioms would require. So if you can't properly translate everything I think you could design a system to narrow down your focus.

Thanks for sharing a positive success story! It is nice to hear a happy ending and I wish you all the luck for your viva!

I would start the PhD and treat it as job while applying elsewhere. There is nothing wrong quitting a PhD halfway through if you don't like it and at least it is an income.

You can ask your referees to give you written references so that they don't have to duplicate it.