Is there any (comparative) statistics on h-indices of old scientists during their lives?

As mentioned in comments, this is hard to estimate offhand, as it could depend on things like nationality, field of study, age, degree of "success", and so on. I suppose that's why a question is justified.

I'm less familiar with other indices, so I'll focus on the h-index.

h-index compared to age?

Nevertheless, some have considered this. Here's a quick post by Colin Mathers: H-index and age: a new criterion for success?. Among some commentary, Mathers suggests that having a h-index greater than one's age is a good sign.

Also in that post:

  JE Hirsch, the author of the h index estimated that after 20 years a
  “successful scientist” will have an h-index of 20, an “outstanding
  scientist” an h-index of 40, and a “truly unique” individual an
  h-index of 60.

Estimating h-index

  The h-index does not provide a significantly more accurate measure of
  impact than the total number of citations for a given scholar. In
  particular, by modeling the distribution of citations among papers as
  a random integer partition and the h-index as the Durfee square of the
  partition, Yong arrived at the formula h ~ 0.54*sqrt(N), where N is the total number of citations, which, for mathematics members of the National Academy
  of Sciences, turns out to provide an accurate (with errors typically
  within 10–20 percent) approximation of h-index in most cases.

  Source: Alexander Yong, Critique of Hirsch’s Citation Index: A
  Combinatorial Fermi Problem, Notices of the American Mathematical
  Society, vol. 61 (2014), no. 11, pp. 1040–50.

We can then estimate N as a function of time. Assuming academics begin publishing at age 25 yrs and publish an average of two papers per year and two conference proceedings (see also) -- which is clearly a very rough estimate -- P ~ 4*(A-25 yrs), where P is the number of papers published and A is the academic's age in years and must be greater than 25 yrs. One could apply some weighting function to estimate citations per year per paper and integrate, but for the sake of a crude estimate, we could assume the average paper garners roughly 10 citations/year (source). The number of citations per year for just Career Year t (where t~A-25 yrs) is then 10 * P(t) == 40*t. The cumulative number of citations N(t) is then the integral of that over the person's career up to year t: 20 * t^2. Finally, we plug this into the formula above (h ~ 0.54 * sqrt(N(t)) and get 0.54*sqrt(20)*sqrt(t^2) ==> h ~ 2.4 * t.

After Hirsch's 20 years, this gives an estimate of a h-score of 48.

Again, this is an incredibly crude estimate. It likely overestimates the h-index for older researchers because most papers receive attention in the first decade or so after publication, but the average number of citations per year per paper would likely decay off in subsequent decades after publication. It also assumes that the researcher is continually publishing.


How can I clear myself of emotional attachment when reading reviewer feedback?

Personally, I find that the following process works well for me:

Complain together with my co-authors about the blindness and foolishness of reviewers, the sorry state of publishing, and the general existence of injustice in a world not ready for the pure angelic beauty of our work.  Remember not to take this too seriously.
Ignore everything for at least 24 hours, letting my initial emotional response settle and giving space for rationality to return.
Copy the review responses into a template for a response letter, separating each statement for its own response.  This effectively forms a checklist of work to be done (or at least to be clearly explained why it should not be done).  I do this even with conference papers where there is no response letter, because of the organizing benefit.
When revising, focus on only one statement at a time, taking it in isolation and working until the comment has been fully addressed and I can write a clear and non-emotional response explaining what has and hasn't been done and why.  Depending on the overall tone of the situation, sometimes I will start with the little things and work up to the bigger ones, and sometimes I will do in the opposite direction.

Finally, as I work, I always remind myself that every statement by every reviewer can teach me something that will improve my paper, even when I disagree with it.  Sometimes, the reviewer has valuable insight.  Other times, their apparently "crazy" or "ignorant" reactions are instead actually showing me how I have not spoken well to the community of readers, have opened myself up to misinterpretation, or have allowed my work to be viewed as part of an intellectual battle that I do not wish to participate in.

We are emotional beings, and we have emotions.  Over time, you will hopefully learn to read the curve of your emotional response so that you can ride with it and manage it rather than fighting it or amplifying it when that would be counterproductive.  The process that works best for you may vary, but one way or another I think that it is best to acknowledge emotions and then find a way to let them settle before trying to work with the criticism.


Applying to Professional Masters Program after Working with Low Undergrad GPA

It depends. It all comes down to the program you are applying to and how much they rate your undergrad GPA vs work experience in the process. Just because the program guide or website says that you should have a 3.0+ GPA from a related undergrad field doesn't mean that it's necessarily a hard and fast requirement.

I was in a very similar situation and was rejected at my first application, but there was the possibility to appeal the rejection. I called and talked with what would eventually be my adviser and was allowed to reapply with 2-3 letters of recommendation from senior co-workers (you might want to do this at the first application) and allowed into the program on a probationary period. I had to complete a set of undergrad level comp sci maintaining a B (3.0) or higher GPA before being admitted to the starting the MS level courses.


Husband and wife publishing together - Problem for tenure-track jobs?

The problem of the two of you getting hired together in the same department is much harder than for each of you getting hired separately somewhere near each other.

The problem is simply that there aren't enough job openings for two people in the same field at the same time, or even near in time. There might be exceptions, such as if you are in a very competitive and hot new area in which universities are competing for faculty in that field, but that is also rare.

But, if you are in an area with a lot of universities, such as NYC or London, for example, you could probably find employment close enough to solve your problem. One of you might need to take a job at a lower ranked place to make this work, I suppose.

Being nearby, but at different institutions would also open the options for collaborations separate from each other, as well.

You can't really control how people judge your collaboration, but if you are being interviewed separately for jobs, each of you can stand on your own in your knowledge of the field and potential for future work. But, don't obsess over what you can't control.

I'll note that it is easier for a university to solve the two-body problem if the two are in very different fields. It gets harder the more similar they are, especially the same sub-field. But being "hot" helps if you can find the place that is trying to rapidly expand. That is rare for lots of reasons and it isn't a stable situation. "Rapidly expanding" today could be "saturated" tomorrow.


Why doesn't the university give past final exams' answers?

This depends on the institution & department and potentially the instructor/course.

The last two institutions I have been at (UK) have provided solutions to past exams. One only odd numbered years, the other all years.

I'm sceptical about the value of providing solutions to past exams for studying purposes. From my experience the temptation to look at the solutions instead of struggling through the questions is often irresistible for students, especially those who are struggling. This leads to the false impression of knowing how to solve the problems. Of course past exam solutions can be used effectively to study, for example by only using the solutions to check answers after completing the entire exam as practice. But I have rarely seen students do this.

Developing appropriate exam questions is difficult so instructors may also want to recycle past questions and therefore not provide past exams (questions or answers).


Research-methodology book in the form of a dialogue between professor and student

I found it. The title is:

Avoiding Thesis and Dissertation Pitfalls by Thomas, R.M. and Brubaker, D.L.


You only got a B- in his class and only talked to him a couple of times during office hours.  You sent mail over the weekend just before a two-day holiday and got an automated response that he was out of town.  It's
 the first day back and you're already worried that he hasn't responded.

In both cases, your expectations are unreasonable.  You didn't do very well in his class and he hardly knows you.  What exactly do you expect him to say that could possibly help your chances of admission anywhere?  He can't just make stuff up, he can only report what he actually knows about you, which is that your performance wasn't that good.  You need to request references from instructors who gave you A's, not B-'s.  And pick people who actually got to know you because you showed up at their office more than just a couple of times and for more than just help on the homework.

When you do ask, allow them time to respond.  Give them at least a week (longer if it's a holiday!) to say yes or no, and then at least a month (more is better!) to write the letter.  (Be sure to tell them the deadline and how the letter has to be submitted.)

You should also provide a set of materials to help your reference write a good letter. It should include a list of schools where you’re applying, copies of your transcript, resume or CV, statement of purpose, and a short reminder of who you are, e.g., the class you took from them, where you used to sit, why they might remember your work or some discussions you had, perhaps a photograph. It’s okay (and helpful) to suggest strengths you hope your reference can speak to, e.g., your creativity, ability for abstract thought, contributions to a group.

Depending on the privacy laws in your country, you may also need to state explicitly, "You have my permission to discuss my academic performance."  For example, here in the US, instructors are prohibited by FERPA from discussing a student's performance without explicit permission.


Is it possible to apply for a Master's programme then leave current PhD?

is it possible for me to submit my application first, if I could be really lucky to receive an offer, then I leave my current PhD?

I don't see why not! It seems like this good be a good approach for you to pursue your research and career goals. You can go ahead and apply and try to put together the best application possible.


Is it alright to skip problem solving sessions during coursework?

Yes, skipping the sessions is not only alright, but is in fact advisable. Will it be viewed adversely during grading, you bet yeah. The key thing to remember is that in grad school grades don't matter. If skipping the session means you can put an extra hour into your research, then that is better time spent.

The way it will affect you in grading is you might lose some participation points and the benefit of the doubt for borderline grades. The instructor may be less inclined to write you a letter of recommendation, but ideally your letter writers will be talking about your research.


BA in the humanities - doing MA in Computer Science?

Yes, it is. The process of enrolling in grad-school is two-fold. First, the grad-school department (as an academic and administrative unit) verifies whether or not you're eligible to enroll as a graduate student (e.g., sufficient GRE scores, TOEFL scores - in case of international students, etc.). Second, the academic unit (CS in your case) verifies that the candidate grad-student is eligible to enroll in their program. Either you have a sufficiently robust CS background (e.g., you were a double major or at least you have a minor in CS) or you are willing to take fundamental CS undergrad classes (e.g., Data-Structures & Algorithms, Operating Systems, Theory of Computation, etc.). These options minimize the risk of floundering with relatively complex class-contents when you enroll in higher-level CS grad courses independent of your bachelor-degree background.

P.S.: According to my experience, usually you're awarded a M.S. (M.Sc.) degree when you finish a C.S. masters program. Are you planning on taking humanities-based courses as part of graduate courses (this is the only way I know you would be awarded an M.A. instead of an M.S. for C.S.)?


I unknowingly submitted plagiarised work

When the instructor said you could work "together", they meant together with a student that hadn't previously completed the assignment. They expect both students (when working together) to contribute equally towards writing an essay from scratch.

Basing your essay on another student's essay (that you did not work together on) is plagiarism.

The best you can say for yourself is that you didn't realize that what you did constituted plagiarism. The ethics committee might be lenient, however, they might also consider that you should have known what the rules were. To be frank, anybody should understand that you can't work based off material previously prepared by somebody else and pretend it's your own work -- that is the very definition of plagiarism.


How to reward students for learning from mistakes without penalizing those who didn't make mistakes in the first place?

At face value, it seems clear that the issue is that you're trying to mix measurements of two very different kinds of performance. I think the REAL issue is deeper than this, but let's start with the two things you're mixing up:

You want to measure outcomes. Did the group end up with "correct" results from the lab?
You want to measure a specific (learning) process. Did the group learn from mistakes and questions?

The first measurement is usually the default in classroom settings because it's the most obvious. The second measurement has value, though: You're trying to prepare students for life, not just hand them a set of answers. Measuring their ability to learn, and encouraging them to be learners, is important.

That said, measuring outcomes has the advantage that it's not dependent on the process. It's easy to see if the lab result is correct or not. I don't think that's the focus of your question, so let's concentrate on the second concept - measuring the learning itself.

That brings us to the core issue with your proposed process: Measuring learning from mistakes and questions is very, very different from measuring learning in general. You hinted at this when you said,

  For the majority of our students, there will be more than enough stuff in each lab to write about. However, this isn't universally true and some groups will do the lab just fine without asking any questions.

The issue here is that you've singled out a single type of learning to measure. The students who learned by failure and questioning are correctly being evaluated by your grading approach. This is good - you're encouraging that type of student to hone their skills. So let's look at the second group - the students who "did the lab just fine without asking any questions." The important thing to remember is that they weren't born knowing how to do the lab - they learned it too, just in a different way than the question-askers and mistake-makers. The reason why your new approach lacks fairness (as you identified yourself) is that it's only attributing value to one type of learning.

So - is it a bad idea to grade your students based on the questions they ask and the mistakes they make? If you're trying to grade them on their learning process, which is what I think you're trying to do, you need to make sure you're accounting for all types of learning not just the one style. This will be really challenging - people learn in multiple ways and transition between learning styles in a fluid manner, and many learning styles don't leave behind a "paper trail" you can measure after the fact. So let's get to your specific question:

  How can I reward the students who learned from their mistakes without penalizing those who don't make any?

I may be frame-challenging your question, but if you allow me that liberty, I would rewrite it as:

  How can I encourage students to be aware of, and work on improving, their learning skills, versus just rewarding them for getting the right answer to a specific assignment?

I think the answer to this will be much broader than a single stack exchange question, but some ideas to think about:

Include a discussion/presentation during/after the lab where a selected group walks the other groups through how they approached the lab, with a focus on how they prepared or learned the material beforehand and how they dealt with issues/challenges.
When a group asks questions during the lab, let the other lab groups answer it (instead of you). When an answer is given, have the answering group provide explanation of where they got the answer from.
Include an entire lab session, or elements of a lab, that are not part of the graded solution and are deliberately "unanswerable" in that they cover material you haven't taught or are otherwise deliberately difficult. Have the students come up with their own way to resolve this. This could even be a lab where the process intentionally causes failure, which would "force" the students to use your "learning notebook" as a tool to document and explain the failure and their approach to solving it. Purposefully cause them to go off-script and respond to the failure with creativity.

Basically, you need something that accounts for multiple learning styles, and something that encourages accountability instead of just allowing students to "cheat the system" by pencil-whipping busywork in order to get a grade. Notice I left your word choice of "reward" out of my re-worded version of your question - I think awareness and demonstration are probably more important than a reward - at the least because the reward just causes students to focus on the end, rather than the means, which totally dodges your goal of getting them to focus on learning skills versus just a final result.

Edited to add:

Let me further add: I don't think the "learning notebook" is a bad idea. It actually sounds like a great way to encourage people to recognize failure and accept it as part of a (positive) learning process, versus being afraid of failure. It would be great to include along with my three suggestions above. That said, I do think it becomes cumbersome to try to include it as a graded item, and more importantly, regardless of whether you grade it or not, focusing on it (as a graded item) misses the larger opportunity to consider and encourage other learning styles.


Asking a company for permission to use website data for research

Firstly, recognize that they probably placed that ToS there for some or all of the following reasons:

They want a legal basis for suing someone who tries to steal stuff from their site.
They want a legal basis for suing some idiot programmer who brings down their site because of a poorly programmed bot he wrote "for a project".
Their lawyer told them to put these ToS up because he saw them on some other large site and thought they looked good there.
...?

You likely fall in the second category (and maybe the fourth, I don't know what other things they're protecting themselves from). To that extent, you have to convince them that you aren't an idiot who will run amok on their servers. If you're aligned with a well-known university then maybe you'll have more luck, but even then it'll be a stretch... this is a for-profit company, not a research institution. Even if you can convince them that you're not a total idiot, they still have very little reason to want to grant you this permission. Your pet project will gain them nothing, and may in fact demonstrate something bad about their site that they don't want public. The "I'll share my findings" argument really doesn't go very far... companies have their own interests, governed by many things, including politics, agendas, egos, and what have you. Your powerpoint presentation that may be done in a year or two that will probably be too technical for a business VP to understand anyways won't give them any business value.

The point of all the preceding words is just to convince you that you have quite the uphill battle here.

All that said, I would just start calling every "contact us" number I can get my hands on. Definitely start with the numbers on the "Contact Us" page. Don't be afraid to send a written letter! For phone calls, I like the phrase Jack St Claire used in his comment: "I have a weird question."

Success is easy to determine. Check your mail... do you have a letter (written or electronic) from the TripAdvisor legal team permitting you to perform the research? If no, then you haven't succeeded yet. Keep trying! Perseverance will be key here.


How to get covered in non-academic media

I suspect the PR or Marketing department of your university would be very keen to help you place a story and advise you on writing for the media.

In every University I have worked in, this has been important, and media training was part of the staff development program. I was sent on a BBC media training course, for example, and can now operate a remote radio or TV studio, learn how to be an interviewee or interviewer and record students and staff for media inserts.

Tabloid writing was a skill I also picked up which is so different from academic writing. Learning to write in a style that the bulk media might pick up and use is not a natural skill for the everyday academic.

So go and ask. Might be fun.


Can a person taking their undergraduate degree in humanities, apply for a masters in scientific fields?

Check the stated requirements of the program you're interested in. There's no easy answer.

Example: if you're interested in a Masters in Biology @ Harvard Extension School, then you're in luck because their website says:

  Eligibility: Before enrolling in any degree-applicable courses, you need to possess a four-year, US regionally accredited bachelor's degree or its foreign equivalent. You cannot already have or be in the process of earning a master's degree in biology or related field.

So you should be in the clear. However if you want to do Aeronautics and Astronautics @ MIT, then:

  You must have a strong background in mathematics and physics, and, with rare exception, familiarity with an engineering discipline. In some cases, unfulfilled entrance requirements may be satisfied during your first year of graduate study. If you're radically changing fields, advanced study before applying is recommended. You should also address your reasons for changing you field when you are writing your Statement of Objectives, a very important part of our graduate application.

It's up to you to assess if you have a strong background in mathematics & physics from your humanities degree, and if so, to convince the admissions people.


Courses expected to take before graduation

The question is asking you to list courses you plan to take. Personally, I would avoid listing a course I didn’t know for sure I was going to take. If you listed a course in your major and then dropped it, it might cause problems later on. I doubt a grad school will complain that you took a course that wasn’t listed.


How do conferences detect double submission?

"Actually care about it": Read the conference's rules.

"Can detect": Irrelevant.  Like many things in academic research, this is primarily honor system.  If your teammate thinks that whether something is acceptable is determined by whether you can get away with it, they need a serious attitude adjustment.

By the way: do you have a faculty advisor on this project?  They need to know about this.  They would also be the best one to give you advice on the specific norms of conferences and publishing in your fields.


How do I properly cite the amount of times an article has been cited on Google Scholar?

I don't find such citations to citation counts very helpful in reading an article. Assuming such numbers are reasonably accurate, they only represent a snapshot of the popularity of a technique at the time you wrote your article. I would recommend simply saying that it is a popular technique and leaving it at that.


What should a student do, when a professor delays submitting his letter of recommendation?

Politely and very gently remind the professor that the letter of recommendation is due. That's really all you can do. If your professors says they will submit it on time, try to believe them.

As you have found out after posting the question, to the extent that it doesn't hold up other parts of their process, people on admissions committees understand that your flakey letter writers don't mean that you are flakey and will usually do what they can to accept or consider late letters. Often, departments will remind students or letter writers that their letters are missing, at, or even after, a deadline.


Should I ask for confirmation of my admission from University academic department

Yes, in this case it is appropriate to contact the department/program head or admissions administrator and inform them that you have another acceptance. Rather than ask for them to "hurry up," it would be more polite to say, "I have received another offer of acceptance that requires my response within two weeks. Will your department be able to make its admission decisions within that time line?"


What is the preferable way to share data?

The most common and sustainable thing to do is to deposit the data in a research data repository. Depending on which one you choose, the data will get a persistent identifier, e.g. a DOI, can be cited properly in publications, might be reused by other researchers, ...

You can find a list of available data repositories at re3data, the registry of research data repositories. The number of repositories is still growing. Even your institution/university might offer an institutional data repository.


My advisor wants to publish my final year project; what will this involve?

I will talk about publishing as an undergraduate in a general sense. This may change depending on your field of study, where and how the work is published(journal, conference, workshop, etc) and what your level of contribution to the end product will be.

Let's start with the easy question. "Is this good for my career?" I don't know of many fields where having published work, perhaps especially as an undergraduate, is a detriment. As an undergraduate with two publications as first name (in my field the student/person who contributed the most / drove the ground level work is first name, the professor is last name and the names in the middle can range from "was vital to the success of the paper" to "they pushed a button a couple of times") and several acknowledgements having those papers gave me a definite leg up against my peers when it came time to search for jobs. Having publications under your name can be invaluable if you choose to apply to grad school but companies are often very interested to see what high-level, field-acknowledged work you have completed. It definitely makes you stand out in a crowd.

It may seem like nothing but puppies and rainbows but there's a darker side as well. Academic publishing is a lot of work. Depending on your level of contribution this can mean weeks of brutal work rerunning experiments, tweaking inputs/outputs, editing and documenting. Most of the people I know, their first paper was a brutal experience because Academic writing is unlike any other writing you have done and there can be a steep learning curve in both the technique and the tools. So, unless you have a burning desire for a publication for publication's sake, the deciding factors for you should be:

What is my expected contribution?
How and where will I be credited?
What are my obligations if the publication is accepted?

Let's break these down.

What is my expected contribution?

In my field a couple of professors coming up to you after the fact and saying "We are looking to get this published" is a bit weird. I'm assuming that these professors were in some way involved in the work as mentors or that this an extension of their work. It is unlikely that this work is fit to be published in its current state. That's not meant as a slam towards your work, rather it's a response to the specifics of publication. Academic publication is often fairly stringent in style and method. It is likely that parts of your work will need to be tweaked or polished for publication(this really depends on your field to be honest) and, in some cases, completely redone. It is very important for you to demand, in a nice way of course, a roadmap for what needs to be done to get this work published and what you will be expected to do. At that time you should also try to find out how much of the final publication will be your work vs work from others/the group at large. If you have graduated and are starting a new job or heading off to grad school you may have other demands on your time. Writing an academic publication, especially your first academic publication, can be a serious time sink. This will play into the next part...

How and where will I be credited?

Is your work going to be placed, whole cloth, into a template and submitted? Then you should expect to be first author(or your field's equivalent) and be given an appropriately large share of the credit. Is your work going to be used as a subsubsection, comprising all of 2 lines in the final publication? Then the credit to you should be, appropriately, smaller. But that's simplifying things a bit - author order and credit/acknowledgements should be explicitly discussed early in the process. Get it out on the table and nail it down because differences in expectations can definitely damage professional relationships which, to be honest, is probably the most valuable thing you will get out of this. Things like original contribution level, publication writing/editing contribution level, and time/effort commitment to the project should be taken into consideration. Additionally consider your future plans - are you planning on publishing again? Are you looking at going to grad school? Depending on the answers to these questions you may find that the most valuable things you get out of publishing are the experience of publishing and the strong network connections you forge with your coauthors.

What are my obligations if the publication is accepted?

This is the final piece of the puzzle. If your publication is a conference or workshop piece then someone will have to present at the conference/workshop. It should, ideally, be one of the primary contributors. If that person is you, will you be able to attend? Who will pay for travel and fees? Even beyond traveling for conferences/workshops - Who will pay for submission fees? Recently one of my papers was 3 pages over the limit (the conference accepted longer papers at a fee for each additional page up to 5 additional pages). This cost almost $400 (on top of the original submission fees). If this occurs who will pay? If the publication is accepted what does that mean about your ownership of the results of your work? If additional work is done on the project how will it be funded? It is likely that your professor(s) or your institutions has grants for all of this. But you need to find out before you agree to anything. Finally, the question a lot more people should ask, what happens if the publication isn't accepted? Will you be involved in making changes and attempting a different venue? How will the group handle revisions (which, with finished work, can be brutal as you're coming back to the submitted work several months after it was submitted  and making changes)?

All of this might seem like a bunch more questions to ask than answers but, really, that's the point. There are plenty who will disagree with me but, in my experience, the research was the easy part. Publishing is the hard, nasty, and occasionally obnoxious part(though it is pretty awesome too). In order to make the publishing part easier you need to have a clear plan for how you will turn this work into a publication and what everyone's expectations are.

I both love and hate my publications. As an undergraduate they gave me a definite edge over my peers in both grad school applications and the job market. I ended up with some very strong connections in my academic community that I can still leverage today. I am still involved as a researcher in my lab. On the flip side my first paper was a special kind of hell. It was two straight weeks of 20 hour days as we pushed to turn finished work into a publication before the deadline. I didn't sleep at all for the last 3 days of the push. My second paper was still brutal, but overall much better as I had passed the worst of the learning curve. I actually got some sleep leading up to that one. I'm incredibly proud of my work but, to be honest, doing those publications pushed me away from graduate school. They were a valuable experience in the world of academic publishing which, it turns out, is not something I enjoy enough to make it my career.

TL;DR: Make a list of questions, email/meet with your advisors/mentors, and flesh out the answers to those questions. If they're largely satisfactory - go for it!

EDIT Given your additional information. Unless they mean publish it on webspace they(or the university) controls OR as a book there is almost no way I can see a 40k word transcript being published as is. My rough estimates put that to be about 100 - 120 pages. I've not seen more than a handful of published papers (etc) over 20 pages long and most are under 10. This may mean they want to publish a portion of it or an heavily edited version of it. This adds a new question for you to ask, what do they mean by 'publishing'?


How to indicate shifting research interests on a CV or a website?

As suggested in the comments above, the answer will depend on whom you are targeting.

If you are a professor targeting graduate students in a new field, I would just list the new field as an interest on your webpage, with links to your few papers. It should be enough to indicate to potential graduate students that if they have an interest in this field you would be more than happy to work with them.
If you are a professor targeting grant agencies, then just write grants targeted at whatever field you're interested in. Note that, if you have a poor publication record in the field of interest, it may be a good idea to find a strong collaborator or co-PI (if applicable in your field) to boost the likelihood of acceptance.
If you are a post-doc looking for new positions, I think it's pretty widely accepted that your interests will and should be changing. I would indicate it explicitly on your CV in your objective statement (assuming you have one) that you're interested in branching out, and again in the cover letter. Regarding your previous research, just list it under "experience"; the reader will understand based on your resume, cover letter, and the fact you're applying to jobs in different fields that this was intentional. As you stated, there is a not-insignificant chance that your lack of publications in the new field will negatively impact your application.
If you're a student, then you barely have research interests; you just have the research you've worked on for 2+ years, which you did so you could earn a PhD. Your colleagues will recognize that you're still familiarizing yourself with the field. Unless the shift is so substantial that none of your previous expertise would be useful, I wouldn't even bother to mention shifting interests; it's healthy and expected.


Updating a paper on arXiv that was accepted by a non-open access journal

[The comments mostly answer this, but posting an answer as well for completeness]

AM - Accepted Manuscript (you may see the term AAM/Author's Accepted Manuscript or "postprint", as well). This is the version of the text at the point the journal accepts it - so with any revisions that were requested by reviewers, but before any final copyediting, formatting, etc.

VOR - Version of Record - the final published version from the journal with pretty formatting, pagination, and so on.

You should add the credit line (effectively a citation to the final version) to the arXiv landing page, but it's always a good idea to put it on the paper as well - perhaps a note on the first page to ensure that the reader has a handy reference for the correct citation.

The credit line should be to the published version (with DOI etc) but if this has not yet appeared, then something like "Accepted for publication in the Journal of Widgets, copyright the International Widget Research Society, posted with permission" will do - you can then update this as and when you have the correct details.


Should professors with Chinese names be addressed with surname only or both names?

Being an Asian myself, I'd use 'Dear Prof. Zhang.'

In Chinese culture, it can be considered rude for a junior to address their senior by the full name, that's just the way we're brought up to address our seniors, well at least for me...


Make it easy for your reviewers to get what you are saying. Just a DOI is really hard for a reviewer because they have to walk to the computer, look up the DOI, and all that.

If you don't want to provide the full reference, just say "see Schneider et al., cited in the paper". That way, there is an easy place to go to to find the full title and reference.


Difficult student would dispute every grade in the course and now wants letter of recommendation

It sounds like you've agreed to write a letter so I think you are committed unless the student releases you from your commitment.  (Personally, I'd have said no in the first place and explained if asked that, based on their behavior, I could not honestly give a favorable recommendation.  But that ship has sailed.)

But what you haven't agreed to yet, I hope, is a favorable letter.  What I would do in your situation is contact the student to explain that on reflection, you've become concerned that the only honest letter you can write will not be helpful.  You don't feel you can honestly ignore that the student is a difficult, argumentative, confrontational and disrespectful individual.  To be an honest appraisal, that has to go in there.  You cannot write an honest letter that only recites the good stuff.

At that point, you can ask, do they still want the letter?  I'm sure they'll be difficult and disrespectful once again but that's nothing new and if you stand your ground, I think they'll decide to go elsewhere.  Problem solved.  (And maybe they'll learn something from the experience, though, from what you describe, probably not.)


How to add a paper to google scholar as "to appear"?

Meanwhile, I would like to cite mentioned paper in another paper. How do I do it? I want it to be added as "to appear in ..."

Cite the paper as you would any IEEE conference paper, omitting any information that you don't know (e.g., page number) and tagging "to appear" on the end.

Can I add the article manually to google scholar?

If you want.

If I do so, what happens if the proceedings out eventually? Will it be merged automatically?

It may or may not be automatically merged, we cannot predict how Google's algorithms operate.

Because of copy right I can not publish the pdf in preprint,

Actually, you likely can, since many publishers let you publish preprints on personal websites.


Is there any unwritten rule against hiring already unemployed PhDs?

I don't think there is an unwritten rule, precisely, but I think once you are not employed in academia (even if you have a job somewhere else), your chances of getting a position in academia decrease extremely rapidly.  Competition for positions is so massive, and there are so many well qualified applicants that I think someone who is not currently in an academic or research position is unlikely to be taken seriously.  Not to mention that you typically aren't doing the kind of research and networking you need to get a position if you are unemployed (not always, but often).  I think some fields where it's very hard to get work are a bit more forgiving (though, of course there there is even more competition), but this is part of what keeps people in adjunct positions, since it is a way of staying "in the game."


I am confused if this professor will fund me or not, I feel it is rude to ask directly

What does he mean by "host"?

Host means (at a minimum) that you can work in the lab - the professor will provide space for you during the internship.

  Does it mean funding?

It is ambiguous. This partially depends on what you asked for in your original letter asking for an internship.

  How do I go on about asking him politely about it?

Being hired is still contingent on a good recommendation letter from Prof XXXX. Assuming you can wait for that letter, I would ask about the terms of the internship after the letter is delivered when you confirm that the professor has received it and is still interested in hiring you for the internship. You still need to confirm that you are interested in working on the topic in the provided paper.

Asking about a list of different things can take off some of the stress around asking about funding directly. You can, for instance, ask about dates of employment, expected hours, whether there is a travel or housing allowance, and whether there is a stipend. You might also ask about whether you'd work with others in the lab and expectations for publishing.


Are there any accredited universities in the world offering students the option of acquiring a BA/BSc in psychology completely online?

Yes

There are likely hundreds of programs. How well they meet your needs will be determined by 1) What you mean by 'accredited', and 2) residency restrictions.

  Accreditation

Are you interested in accredited institutions or accredited programs? Institutions are accredited by organizations recognized at the government level as being able to guarantee that all programs at the institution meet some minimum standards. In the US, regional accreditation is king, while the more prestigious sounding national accreditation is generally viewed as easier to get and less rigorous. In Canada, accreditation appears to be handled through membership in the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.

Again, in the US, many of the large flagship state institutions have an online campus to accompany their bricks-and-mortar traditional campuses. For example Univerity of Maryland University College appears to offer an online BS in Psychology. UMUC is regionally accredited in the US by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, just like the the bricks-and-mortar campuses of the University of Maryland system. Certainly, some of the larger schools in Canada also have a similar online presence.

The on-line for-profit schools in the US tend to be nationally accredited, with the notable exception of the much maligned University of Phoenix, which offers an online program in psychology. University of Phoenix is regionally accredited by the Higher Learning Commission as part of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

Individual programs may also be accredited or certified by various professional organizations. If you are looking for an online psychology program certified by a professional psychology association, try starting at the website of the association and look for lists of certified programs.

  Residency

Attending an online only institution should not have residency restrictions based on your country of citizenship, but it probably does. For example, I would imagine you would need to have a US education visa in order to be admitted into some US institutions, even if the program is entirely online and you never need to step foot on campus.


Is it a good idea to include my professor who left academia as a reference in my PhD application?

It seems unlikely that it would have any effect. I assume that he knows how to write a letter and explain things appropriately. The fact that he isn't an academic any more is less important than the relationship you once had and what he can still say about your prospects.

Of course, it is best if he has left a trail of accomplishments behind in his own work that will reflect on you. But he will likely know to point to that in his letter.

Don't depend too much on a single letter, however. You will want several if the institution will accept them.

People also retire, of course, and sometimes get asked for letters.


I submitted a paper to two journals, and the first published it, but I agreed to publish in the other; what can I do?

The fault here is yours.

You should never have the same paper be submitted in two different journals at the same time. This is an absolute rule that protects both you as an author and the journal as the publisher from duplication of effort, as well as avoiding situations like this.

If you had wanted to stop the publication in journal X, then you should have sent them a letter clearly retracting your submission. This would have ended the process at journal X, and allowed you to submit the paper to journal Y with a clear conscience.

Now, however, since the paper has been published by journal X, you are stuck. If journal Y publishes your paper, you will have the same article published in two different journals, which is also a violation of ethical standards, and could lead to both copies being retracted by the publisher. So, unfortunately, you are stuck paying the fees to the journal X, and the work you've done to improve the paper with journal Y is now "lost" to the literature.

As has also been pointed out, journal X appears to be quite sketchy, and I would avoid any future contact or involvement with them. But for now, consider this a lesson learned for the future.


Should I change my proposed solution for paper rejected because of lack of novelty or originality?

Lack of Novelty is an ill-defined statement. If you and your co-authors believe the manuscript has good contributions (compared to similar papers in the field) then probably the reviewers are just not expert in the area and thus thought of your work as marginal contribution. I would suggest addressing the reviewers comments to your best and submitting to a new venue.


Is it okay to request to do a reading project with a professor at a later time if he had politely denied it before?

Yes, it is fine to ask.

However, if you want to increase your chances that he will agree, make it a formal and specific proposal with stated goals. In other words, make it easy for him to say yes and to create criteria for your evaluation. Say what things you will deliver at the end.

That way, even if he is busy, he might just decide that you won't add enough to his work to cause issues elsewhere.


Yes, it is appropriate to explore the situation. I doubt that the offer would be rescinded, but who can say except them. They will need the personnel now as much or more than ever.

You have a signed contract so they are bound as well in all but the most extreme situations.

But timing and such might be disrupted. And if you aren't already in the US, note that border crossing is very difficult if even possible.

But ask, and ask to be kept informed.


Money is only a part of equation in academia. Other constrains are the following:

Supervision: A PhD student should be supervised, which requires a commitment of a Professor and often one or two co-supervisors. Supervising a PhD project is very time-demanding process, and even the most experienced professors can not efficiently manage ten or more PhD students without compromising the quality.
Space: A PhD student needs time in a lab, access to computing resources, or at least a desk allocated for them. Funny enough, even the latter can be a real issue and a good reason why universities can not hire twice as many PhD students as they like.
Success rate: Universities are keen to improve their position in various ratings, especially international. The success rate of PhD programs is a very important factor, which directly impacts the funding which university gets from funding bodies and (sometimes) government. Hiring a student who is happy to pay for their tuition is of course nice; however, if they do not complete the program, more money can be lost in the following years as the university goes down the ratings.

This can explain why the numbers of PhD students are not as important as their skills, excellence, and commitment.


What's the best way to get academic references for a masters program 2-3 years in the future?

I would strongly suggest that you make the connections immediately since you are moving out of the area. Take this time to meet with three or four of the professors in whose classes you did the best or got the most out of.  I would see if you can get some face to face time so that they can put a name to a face.  You might be surprised that they actually do remember you! And then explain to them your dilemma and ask them what you asked here... Would they be comfortable giving you a reference?  I've found in my experience that most people want to help when they can... they just need to be asked. Good luck!


How do I cite same reference multiple times in a paper?

The most important principle to follow is that the source of the information that you are discussing should always be clear to a reader.  I thus find the following citation heuristics useful:

When you present a single statement in isolation, as in your example, each such statement should be individually cited.
When you are presenting a few statements in a chain, the first should have a citation, and the others be connected by prose.  For example:

  The Toast-o-matic processor has an unusual 19 bit word size [1].  It is also notable for its grilled cheese coprocessor and unusually high power demands.  Strong cooling is required, as the specifications note that its browning module is capable of attaining temperatures of more than 500F.

For larger contiguous blocks, such as a full paragraph or section, there should be an explicit delineation of the region covered by the citation.  For example:

  In this subsection, we briefly review the specifications of the Toast-o-matic processor[1].  The Toast-o-matic processor has an unusual 19 bit word size.  It is also notable...


What is the difference between this "book" and a research paper?

Springer publishes books as well as journals. This particular item is a reference book published by Springer. You can certainly cite chapters of a book like this.


How do I cite two quotes from the same author in one sentence in Harvard?

How about something like:

X paradoxically demonstrates both X approach ("blah blah blah") [1] and Y approach ("blah2 blah2 blah2") [2].


Plagiarism is passing someone else's work off as your own. As long as your paper makes clear exactly what is new and what is borrowed from previous work, and cites the previous work accordingly, there is no danger of plagiarism.


How much advanced notice is expected for faculty interviews?

It's totally reasonable for you to want to plan your schedule at least a week ahead.

Contact them and ask if they have the date yet, or if not, when they expect to have it.


How much time should be allocated to supervising undergraduate researchers?

One person cannot possibly supervise 200 undergraduate research projects per semester of any substance. This sounds more like a term paper with a research component than 200 fully-fledged research projects. When I did undergraduate research, it was a 20-hour per week job that I got paid for, and even then my supervisor and I rarely met for more than half an hour per week.

There are only 168 hours total in one week, and only 40 working hours in a week. If you spent your entire job meeting with all of the students every week, you could give them 12 minutes each. This is clearly impossible. 200 students is so many that giving them each a 30-minute kickoff meeting to discuss their initial idea at the beginning of the semester would take you two and a half weeks. This would put some students at a serious disadvantage over others by potentially delaying their project start or leaving them confused about what is required of them.

If these are not much more than a term paper, then one person can probably do this by putting the assignment together on paper or in email and only answering questions during normal office hours. These kinds of assignments have clearly articulated goals and guidelines and apply techniques as laid out in lectures and homeworks. If you want a more substantial, independent project, then you need TA support, at least 6 and as many as 20 TAs to cover 200 students.


Interviewing for teaching position in a department that is similar to, but not exactly, my own field

For a teaching position, it should be much more important to your interviewers that you have a firm grasp of what you will need to teach for them than that you be current on the most cutting-edge research in the field.

Spend some time looking at syllabuses for the courses they want you to teach. Syllabuses from the school itself, of course, but also a few from other similarly-situated schools if possible. If the department's own class materials aren't publicly available, don't hesitate to contact them directly and ask if they could share this with you. It should be a good sign to them that you want to do a bit of research into the position.

Of course if there is anything in the basic classes that is currently really beyond you, you can do a bit of background reading. This shouldn't involve entire books or fields of literature, just enough so you know what more you would need to do to prep the class.1 Again, you don't need to be ready to teach the class when you arrive at the interview, but you should be ready to explain what steps you will take to get ready before the class itself begins.

If I were interviewing you, a great answer to this question would be something like (assuming these are the right topics, scholars, etc.):

  I feel like my training in Field N has really prepared me for [these specified aspects of the course] as there is a lot of overlap with [these theories/methodologies/methods/scholars]...I do need to brush up on Scholar X's work and also get a better grounding in Scholar Y's theories.

Also acceptable would be:

  I'm well prepared for [these topics/methods] and will need to delve a bit deeper into [these very specific sub-topics/methodologies/methods].

A less comforting answer:

  I can teach anything; I just need to learn more about [the main topic of the course]

And this answer:

  What does that class cover again?

would be a big red flag.

You should also be prepared to answer questions about your future research interests, what kinds of advanced topics you might teach, and how those interests would fit with the needs of the department's students. Be honest here, but see how you can tie your expertise and interests to the subject at hand.

Finally, if you really want to be sure you at least know major journals and names in the field, you should ask a subject specialist. Either a friend or colleague in the field or, barring that, a subject-specialist librarian can probably give you the top-5 titles and names you should know, as well as any recent controversies or important advances in the field, just so you aren't left nodding along if they come up over lunch.

Good luck!

1 It doesn't sound like this is your situation, but if you need to do a LOT of reading for even the basics, then this may not be the position for you. For example you don't want to be in the position of needing to take the intro course in order to be able to teach it, just for your own sanity's sake. (Though this does sometimes happen...my high school French teacher told us that she learned right along with her first class of students, as she hadn't ever taken a French class before she was assigned to teach it!)


Applying early as a postdoc + two-body problem

I'm a little confused about your thinking on this matter:  given that hiring for the sort of job your wife has generally happens on a shorter timeline, how could you ever know that your wife will have a job when you have to make a decision about an offer?  I think you may just have to go for it and hope for the best. You can always apply for jobs again if things don't work out (I've done this twice); if you can afford to be choosy about jobs now, then likely you can get another.  The one wildcard is that if you get an offer, you may be able to negotiate a job for your wife before you accept.  A non-academic position is an unusual request, but on some level its a smaller ask than, say, a TT position for her.  The situation might be clearer if you said more about your wife's experience and skills.  About your specific questions:

Well, it's not a good move.  Probably the interview and offer process will move too quickly for your wife to reasonably expect to have found a job for six months hence, and people in the department might reasonably ask why you applied and went through the interview stages if you weren't willing to take the risk of moving there.
If you make the decision before you accept the job, this is a reasonable (and often made) request, but probably not after (and I'm a bit confused as to why you would ask).  As with 1., the timeline on TT job offers (often 1 week) is too short to really know anything about her job prospects, so I assume you mean after accepting.  Negotiation about start dates should happen before you accept the offer; of course, you can try to organize it after, but that is more likely to be received poorly (of course, it all depends on the situation, how much they are counting on your teaching, etc.), and you've lost all your leverage.  Given that your wife's job search will be easier once she's in the location (and can network, etc.), it will seem like an odd request and will likely give your colleagues the sense that you already have one foot out the door.


Is the author obliged to answer all emailed questions regarding his or her paper after it had been published?

From a formal or legal perspective, there is no requirement that an author do anything: you can go full J.D. Salinger and vanish into a hole if you want.

From the perspective of scientific ethics and custom, however, an author is expected to share sufficient information in order to support their colleagues in understanding and building upon their work.  This does not mean they need to answer any and all questions, however, but only those that are a reasonable part of the process of scientific information exchange.

Among questions that a scientist should answer would be help with interpretation, methods, and replication (e.g., "I can't track down the reagents you used: can you please tell me where you got them?").  Just like on StackExchange sites, it is reasonable to expect the asker to show evidence that they have worked to understand on their own before asking.

Among questions that a scientist a not obligated to answer would be:

Requests for pre-publication information (e.g., "Can you please give me your next unpublished dataset so that I can try to scoop you?")
Requests for remedial education on a subject (e.g., "You wrote a paper about protein evolution, so if people evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys?")
Requests for personal or otherwise scientifically irrelevant information (e.g., "Do you have a crush on any of your co-authors?")
Straight-up craziness (e.g., "Given your expertise in artificial intelligence, will you please help my trash-can robot learn to irrigate the Sahara Desert from Archie Bunker?" [this one is from personal experience])

Now, many scientists are generous with information and will still help with remedial questions, share pre-publication information with people they trust, etc.  I would consider many of these things a matter of ethics on a broader stage and of good citizenship, but not so much something that colleagues are likely to look down on you for not doing.


Indicating a name change after publication

I know 2 female professors personally who clarify this fact very similarly. What they do is this:

They cite the relevant publications as they were with her maiden name and her new last name.
They add a * at the beginning of the "Publications" section in their CV which refers to a footnote to that page which then says something like this "* Last name changed to Smith from Doe in 1988"

That seems to work very well so far.


What skills can I get during a PhD to be competitive on the job market against non-PhD holders?

This question is too broad, but I have a feeling it's a commonly asked one, so I'm going to try to answer it anyways.

To address (what used to be) your second question first: holding a PhD does not make a job candidate any more desirable for the vast majority of positions. Indeed, it can be a factor against the candidate, as they will be perceived as more expensive. For positions where a less-qualified candidate could also fill the role, being overqualified is rarely a good thing. Jobs that are specifically looking for a PhD will typically state that in the requirements. For example, "Masters required, PhD preferred" is a common one in certain parts of the banking sector. However, for entry-level positions (data entry, lower-level analyst roles, etc), you may be at a disadvantage.

Regarding your first question, though, you're being overly harsh on yourself. The process of earning a PhD is significant work experience; indeed, that's your main selling point when looking for your first job. Depending on what you did, you will have some or all of the following experience:

Identifying, clearly stating, and figuring out how to address a problem - this alone qualifies you to be a consultant at any large firm; this is all they do, all the time, for different clients
Project management
Advanced technical writing - your thesis, academic publications
Communication skills - working through the peer-review process
Public speaking - presenting at conferences
Experimental design - your research project
The art of researching - the simple knowledge of how to properly find articles, sources, etc
...

Even better, you've been doing all that for four years. You should be selling every single one of those points as hard as you can when you move to industry.

EDIT: The above answer stands for the edited second question as well; as a graduate student, you will want to learn all of the above if you wish to enter the workforce. More specifically, though, almost industry positions seeking PhD candidates will apply to value the following three above most else:

Self-starter - shown in that you got your work done
Collaborative - demonstrated through successful collaborations with other researchers (successful = researched together, published together)
Good communication - demonstrated through publications, public speaking, conference presentations, teaching, etc.

During the PhD, aim to do those things, and during your job search, emphasize all those traits in your resume and during interviews.


What is "shared governance" and how does it work in practice in academia?

The term "shared governance" seems to date back to a 1966 statement by the AAUP. It was apparently a push for reform and liberalization in the management of colleges and universities, which had traditionally been run in a more top-down fashion. The legal structure of a school is usually that there is a governing board, and the trustees on the board make general policy decisions but delegate day-to-day authority to college presidents. However, there are some areas in which faculty and students should not just be treated as serfs by administrators.

Faculty are the experts in their academic subjects, and therefore they are supposed to have primary authority over curriculum and grading. This authority is not absolute. At my school, for example, the physics faculty initiated a process to delete several courses that we thought were not needed, had not been offered in a long time, and had not worked out well in practice. To get this to happen, we had to shepherd the deletion through many bureaucratic steps, and we encountered opposition from the vice president of instruction, which we had to deal with through a long process of negotiation.

The AAUP statement also says that faculty should have "primary" responsibility for decisions about "faculty status," i.e., hiring, firing, and tenure. But "primary" doesn't mean that they control it completely. The responsibility is shared with administrators. For example, when we hire tenure-track faculty at my school, a faculty committee picks three candidates, who are then interviewed by the president, and the final decision is made by the president.

There are some areas, such as budgeting, where control would traditionally have been exercised completely by management but the AAUP statement recommends that faculty have a role because of their expertise in their academic areas.

Shared governance is generally expected to cover academic and professional matters, but not workplace issues such as paychecks and working conditions. If there is a faculty union, that would be the union's bailiwick. In practice, however, faculty senates may work fist-in-glove with the union on these issues.

Shared governance is not supposed to be a process where management accepts "input" from stakeholders and then makes decisions based on that input. That would be more of a corporate model.

For students, the AAUP's statement makes some very limited recommendations, which are clearly described in the document itself as a political compromise reached during a period of upheaval in American education (the Free Speech Movement and the Vietnam War):

  The respect of students for their college or university can be
  enhanced if they are given at least these opportunities: (1) to be
  listened to in the classroom without fear of institutional reprisal
  for the substance of their views, (2) freedom to discuss questions of
  institutional policy and operation, (3) the right to academic due
  process when charged with serious violations of institutional
  regulations, and (4) the same right to hear speakers of their own
  choice as is enjoyed by other components of the institution.

Note that it does not, for example, advocate giving them a right to speak freely on social issues. In 1965, one of Ronald Reagan's promises in his campaign for governor of California was to "clean up the mess at Berkeley." Since then, things haven't changed very much. For example, my school does not allow people to gather signatures on a petition except by standing on one specific patch of grass, and they have to register in advance and state what the petition is about.

For public schools, some of these issues may also be regulated by state laws. For example, in California, title 5 of the state ed code requires governing boards to "consult collegially" with faculty senates and to make room for "effective participation" by faculty and students. California state law also severely limits the circumstances under which a grade assigned by a professor can be changed against the professor's wishes.

  How does it work, on a practical level? (I understand what a session of the U.S. Senate looks like, I have no idea what a session of a faculty senate looks like.)

Elected faculty representatives from various departments meet and discuss items on an agenda. For the most part they can only make recommendations on policy -- they can't set policy directly. They can form committees and decide to accept or not accept the committees' reports and decisions. There are also advisory bodies, e.g., at my school we have a President's Advisory Committee, and one of its members is the faculty senate president.

  What are the benefits and disadvantages of this approach to governance?

Compared to a more top-down decision making process, it's intended to protect against political or short-sighted interference in academic matters. For example, it's supposed to prevent administrators from firing a professor who has controversial social views. Anecdotally, the main disadvantages I've seen are (1) that the quality of the decision making in a faculty senate is often extremely low, and (2) that the faculty senate may not show sufficient independence from the union.

  What kind of hierarchy typically exists? (Who reports to who?)

It's a structure that bypasses the hierarchy defined in an org chart. Faculty senators don't report to anyone. The org chart only includes management.

See also:

https://chronicle.com/article/Exactly-What-Is-Shared/47065/

http://facultysenate.tamu.edu%2FQuick_Links%2FShared_Governance_in_Colleges_and_Universities.pdf


How is an engineer's degree viewed among the admission committee for PhD applicants?

It's going to be a big old "that depends."

In the case of a very similar undergrad subject to grad subject, as electrical engineering to electrical engineering, the engineering degree will be looked on favorably. Especially if the undergrad school was a high ranked school.

The farther the subjects are apart the less weight the engineering degree will hold. For example, electrical eng. undergrad to computer science PhD is possible, if the undergrad had lots of computer science type classes. And so on. If the undergrad degree had a strong emphasis on courses that are relevant, then it is possible. You will be facing stiff competition, so you would need to have some reason to be picked over more directly relevant students. High marks or relevant work experience or special projects or really good letter of recommendation or some such.

If the subjects are very far apart then you will be facing a very high barrier. Especially if you didn't take a lot of relevant classes.

It is possible to jump specialties. But it's a tough thing to do.

My PhD supervisor did his undergrad in Engineering Science. This is a very unusual degree in that students basically pick a science area, and double up. They must pass all the requirements for the other department, and all the requirements for an engineering degree. My prof did physics. So he got all the core courses for a physics degree, and all the core courses for an engineering degree. And he aced it all.

One of my co-students in my PhD did an undergrad in languages. He could speak five, and write four, including Mandarin and Russian. But he also loaded up on math and physics. So he fit in well in a particle physics PhD.

My prof's prof was John Moffat. Moffat had no undergrad degree. He was living in Paris and making a living as an artist, learning physics in his spare time. Then he wrote Einstein a letter asking him how to solve some tricky problem. Einstein wrote back. After a few exchanges, Einstein asked him why he didn't ask his own prof these questions? And when Moffat explained he was just an artist living in Paris, Einstein got him into Cambridge in the PhD program.

So it's possible. But it takes unusual circumstances. And you need to do a lot of prep work before you go.


Which is the best way to present speed benchmarking along with speedups?

I agree that tables seem to be more effective in conveying the information you have. In order to make the speedup clear, you can add a column to indicate the relative speed:

Method         Runtime [s]       Relative runtime
-------------------------------------------------
classic        134               7.9
fancy 1        23                1.4
fancy 2        17                1

You could scale to the fastest or slowest depending in which direction you want to put your argument in the text, and you could use logarithmic scaling if the benchmarking results are orders of magnitudes apart.

Hans Mittelmann's simplex LP benchmarks have something like this across the top row of the result table.


What is an academic's responsibility when a high-level administrator makes false statements to the media?

no changes to any [current] credit-bearing courses

but

  new, easier, credit-bearing courses be developed by our department and others

is not precisely a contradiction. Though in the context of academic integrity, it's certainly misleading to the public.

You didn't ask, but your ethical duty is first to your own behavior. So long as you're not creating/teaching courses which don't merit their credits, you'll be OK on that front. I wanted to mention this because it's simple, and it provides a good contrast for the answer to your question:

Your ethical duty with respect to the administrator's misleading public statements are a responsibility shared by the entire group of university staff. Note the distinction between something that's your personal responsibility and something that's the responsibility of a group you belong to. Because this is a group responsibility, you need to try handle this as a group. If the group disagrees with you, and you feel the lie was significant enough, your only real option may be to leave the group or leak, but that should definitely be a last resort.

Things do first:

First talk to other professors (especially tenured ones) and see how they feel about it. Maybe you missed some things and they can point those out. Or maybe everyone agrees with you and you can approach this collectively which will help avoid costing you your job.

IFF you have a good enough relationship to do it effectively (and avoid getting yourself fired), it would also be best to talk to the administrator personally. Be sympathetic to their need to portray the university in a positive light both in words to the media and in graduation rates, but share your unease with the contradiction in message. Listen to their response, try to understand their viewpoint and how they rationalized their behavior as acceptable. It sounds like the best case would be for the administrator to change the internal behavior to match what was shared with the press. Persuasion is hard, but it really is the best option.

If other professors feel you're overreacting, but have no new information or can't convince you things are fine, and if you can't reach an understanding with the administrator in private, then you have to decide whether this is ethically compelling enough to require yourself to risk your career. There's no hard and fast answer for that. You have to weigh your ability to be successful against your need to not associate with people who aren't flawlessly honest/upright.

If you do decide you must risk your job, I would recommend roughly this order of operations:

Internally (but public to other professors), point out the contradiction as kindly as possible and ask the administrator for a solution. Don't threaten to leak or quit yet. Explain you want to understand and keep things internal.
If your concerns are dismissed, either resign quietly or leak the memo AND all internal communications about it to journalists you believe will be able to present the story well. And expect to be fired.

It's hard to predict what effect this may have on future employers, as that will mostly depend on the fallout and how well you're able to convince future employers both that it was the right choice and that nothing they do is likely to require you to do it again. Try to be as complete and fair to the other side as possible as that will help somewhat. Remember that the goal here isn't to expose a liar or shame the university, but to promote academic quality and accountability.

It sounds like a tough position to be in. Good luck.


What masters degrees can I apply for with an undergraduate in Computer Science?

There are many kinds of masters program you can apply for with a degree in CS, ranging from more "technical", specialized programs to non-technical ones like an MBA. Restricting the possibilities to more technical master's programs "that involves some maths" and/or advanced programming still cover a large number of potential programs, especially if you're willing to go abroad. Examples include master's in machine learning, bioinformatics, financial engineering, embedded systems, information security, data science, and scientific computing.

It'll be best if you first consider clearly which specific area you want to specialize in. If you are still uncertain about this part, it'll be good to work for a few years first. Working also serve as a kind of reality check -- you may think that you will enjoy a specialization based on your experience with a related module during your undergraduate years, but later discover that you don't really like the job scope of a typical professional in that field, or any of the potential employers in your location, or the overall long-term prospect of that particular field. In that case you can still adjust your plans before investing more time, money and effort to get a Master's in that particular specialization.


What type of Grad School if I'm interested in Quantum Computing?

You should aim for whichever department has people working on the topic.

Quantum Computing is somewhat multidisciplinary, and not present in every university. So, before applying, check where are the quantum computing groups and follow them. Your background seems to be a good fit for either side.

By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if there was somewhere a department dedicated to quantum computing. Recently I saw a "department of glycoscience".


I bought a cat recently - I'm in the 4th year of my PhD, but I wish I had done it sooner. Particularly if you are working at a very high intensity, a pet provides 3 incredibly useful things:

A reason to go home. Many students, particularly international PhD students working at top-tier institutions where 18hr work days is not uncommon, tend to spend their entire life at work - after all there's nothing else to do. If you have a particularly one-sided work-life balance, a pet will force you to break up your day into work time and home time.
Time management skills. Before I had a pet, I would go to sleep when I was too tired to continue working, and so it doesn't really matter when I go to bed or when I wake up, so long as that period of time spent asleep is short. However, doing this for several years can enforce some pretty bad habits! With no strong circadian rhythm and poor eating schedules, you get worn out faster. Having a pet forces you to adopt a healthier schedule, for your pet's sake. New mothers/fathers often say the same thing, although a pet is certainly less work. It's not just sleep though, it filters down into everything you do - because you're responsible for two now.
Perspective. If the other two were wishy-washy answers, this one certainly is - however it's also the most important. I don't know about other pets, but cat's don't live all that long, depending on the breed. Mine has about 10 years, which means for every day I am alive, my cat burns up 7 or 8. 'Is he getting the most out of his life?' quickly becomes 'am I getting the most out of my life?'. Another similar but slightly different emotion that you get when you are the only person responsible for something else is, "am I being responsible with his life?". If I was to get hit by a bus today, there's a good chance the cat would also perish. Asking yourself how responsible a pet-parent you are, forces you to ask yourself how responsible you are being with your own life too.

There are obviously a bunch of practical reasons like time, energy and money (although honestly its not so bad), but im sure you have considered all those things already.


You are asking two related but distinct questions here. First:

  Is it cheating for Shion to see the exam taken on Tuesday April 12
  2016?

No, unless she promised that she would not see the exam (for example by signing a form to that effect as mentioned in The Fire Guy's answer). And it is not clear that there is any reasonable basis for the professor to ask her to make such a promise, unless the professor is giving her the make-up exam as a special favor that he/she is not required to do.

And second:

  Student taking a make-up exam sees exam she would've taken: Unethical?

Yes, this could very well be unethical, but it is the professor who may be behaving unethically, not the student. I see several issues here: first, the professor allowed all the students to keep their copy of the exam, which makes it easier for them to share that information with Shion. Second, the professor is planning to give Shion a make-up exam in which knowledge of which questions were on the original exam could give her an unfair advantage (at least I'm assuming that's the case, otherwise the question wouldn't really make sense). And third, the professor is planning to give Shion a make-up exam which is "significantly more difficult" (note that although this goes in the opposite direction from the first two items, it is still unfair and the three sources of unfairness do not necessarily cancel each other out).

All of those things point to the professor not really thinking through very carefully his or her approach to fairly assessing Shion's performance. At the very least it seems like sloppiness on the professor's part, and depending on the level of negligence involved could potentially rise to the level of unethical behavior.

Summary: It is the professor's responsibility to design a make-up exam that assesses Shion's performance and knowledge as fairly as possible compared to the other students. Different professors may take different approaches to doing so. Some would find a way to ensure that Shion cannot look at the original exam; others would write a make-up exam that is of the same level of difficulty as, but different enough from, the original exam. Creating a situation in which Shion can easily have access to the original exam and benefit from this information is a recipe for trouble and probably means the professor is not doing his/her job as well as he/she should be. In any case, Shion could only reasonably be accused of cheating if she made an explicit promise that she would not look at the original exam and then did so anyway.


Should a phd student try present a review paper in a conference?

What is the contribution of your paper going to be? It's a review paper, so you're not going to be contributing any new techniques or results. You say you're not an expert so you're not likely to make any deep connections between different areas of the field or between your field and other areas of study or present any great insights about why things are the way they are, where the field has come from, how it got where it is and where it's going to go next. So what is the contribution?

The usual deal with a conference talk is that you stand up and tell people about your work. They want to listen because they don't know about what you did and you understand it better than they do. What you're proposing is that you stand up and tell them about their work. They already know what they did and you're not an expert on it, so they (at least, some of them) understand it better than you. Why do they want to listen?

Your main motivation seems to be to score "CV points" by presenting at the conference. That could easily be nullified by giving yourself a reputation for not doing research and giving superficial talks with nothing much new in them.


Is time from acceptance to publication purely a matter of space issues?

I'd say your second option, various factors impact the progression of an accepted paper.

Commissioning editors might decide that they commission an edited issue with academics deciding on the selection and groupings of articles, and that will disrupt the 'queue' of all accepted articles you mention.

Otherwise, commissioning editors might notice that some recently-accepted articles fit nicely around a specific theme or share a common characteristic that make publishing them together valuable, regardless of the order they were accepted.

Essentially, publishing is a human process, with the advantages and drawbacks that entails. If publication was only down to space, things might be very different.


I would expect that it almost certainly does not hurt your chances. Many people proceed their academic education or career after professional experience. In our Master programme, this is treated as a significant plus, and I would be very surprised if companies wouldn't do the same.

But for the non-academic portion of the question (I infer you mean a job outside academia), you might want to ask at The Workplace and get opinions there.


What is the best methodology to select a major? (Diploma and academic courses)

You first must determine your values, as ultimately any answer you'd find convincing must satisfy your values. Then, the problem becomes more a question of how to best satisfy these values.

Decision making skills can be useful in choosing a major, and will be useful for almost any choice you make. I'd recommend taking a decision analysis class, as I did during my PhD. The principles involved with making good decisions will be valuable in almost any endeavor.

If you want to improve the world in a very utilitarian way, the website 80,000 Hours should prove useful. The organization is affiliated with the University of Oxford and focuses on helping young people make valuable and satisfying career choices. Of course, education is a major part of this. They have a career guide that I've read a large fraction of, along with a decision tool.


Can frequent messages to an editor about the status of a paper under review be a cause for rejection?

It really should not be a reason for rejection.  But the world of journals (even restricted to mathematics, which is my field as well) is vast and variable, and no one person gets to see more than a small part of it, so could it happen that repeated messages to the editor are a proximate cause of a paper's rejection?  Unfortunately it could and probably has at least once...but all kinds of crazy things have probably happened at least once.

What I want to convey to you is that you are perfectly within your rights to check in with the status of a paper at appropriate intervals.  In fact it is often wise (or even necessary) to do so, because a lot of processing jobs get done slowly on the part of the referees without specific reminders.  (I am speaking in particular both about my experiences as an author and as a referee.)

There are better and worse ways to deal with editors -- as a quick example, when I submit a paper I like to suggest that I will inquire about the paper after N months (I fill in a value of N, never less than 4) and see what kind of response I get.  I have never been told not to do this; at worst, I get a "contact us whenever you like, but don't expect expedited service because of this" type of response.  As ever, being polite and professional catches more flies.  But fundamentally: no, it is completely unprofessional to reject a paper because an author wants it to be processed in a timely manner.  Reputable journals and editors should take it as a point of honor not to do this.

It would be different if you gave the editor an ultimatum: e.g. "I need a report within three weeks or I will withdraw the paper".  Many editors will respond to that by cheerfully accepting your withdrawal.  But that does not seem to be the situation you describe.


How to reply to an email from a student who wants a reply instantly?

Two words: "Office hours."
I say to students that, if they need immediate feedback, then they should come to my office hours, everything else will be processed as its turn arises.
[During the pandemic, of course, the office hours would be virtual]


Difference between paper and master thesis presentation

In a thesis presentation/defence you are talking to a jury who has already read your thesis.

In a conference talk, your goal is to get an audience who has mostly not read your paper interested enough to get the general ideas and read the paper in more detail if they care.

The thesis defence protocol depends on where you are, but if you get 20 minutes or so to present, then you don't have time to get into many technical details. However, since the jury has read the thesis, the presentation is mostly a formality, and is a chance for you to show them the big picture, and how your work instantiates the expected research methodology: problem - state of the art - solution - validation.

To "show off" you should have one or two slides explicitly listing your research contributions, and the publications derived from them (if any).

Regarding the problem of looking like you don't understand the math, don't worry about it. If the examiners are in any doubt about that, they will ask specific questions after you have finished presenting, and they will refer to the thesis, not to your presentation. if you have some ideas of what they will ask, then prepare extra slides to be able to answer those questions.

Here is also some great advice from a prof in my department. (note that the first 8 slides or so refer to the specifics of the protocol in use here, duration, jury composition, etc. But what comes after is more generic and useful for anyone, I believe. Also, take it as "do as I say, don't do as I do", since these slides are choke-full of text!)


Would requiring students to use Twitter as an integral part of a course potentially conflict with FERPA?

To elaborate on @Danny Ruijters comment:

The acceptableness of using Twitter as a course requirement greatly depends on the course itself and how Twitter will be used. Courses which could easily integrate Twitter are business courses focusing on topics such as:

Marketing
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SMO (Social Media Optimization)
SMM (Social Media Management)

If a course wanted to use Twitter as a form of communication (could be an argument to make with a business communications course depending on the syllabus) then there's no reason to use Twitter. I don't know a single school that doesn't have a student email system and more and more schools have online learning centers used by both virtual and ground (in class) courses.

In a case where Twitter was acceptable students should NOT be forced to use their own personal accounts or even release the name of their personal account.


Tips for moderating a panel discussion: Optimum number of panelists?

4-6 sounds right, but you have to have a good moderator.
Don't let them ramble for 10 minutes, or you will burn all time on the intro.
Prepare good questions, slightly controversial or provocative is ok, but don't force them to become defensive, that's no fun, this is not "The Weakest Link" (a show where more and more  "weak" candidates are dismissed, usually condescendingly, from the selection)
You may want to try out the topic with your organizers and see how it works. Practice the moderation and the transitions and how you will handle the audience. Ramblers are not exclusively on the panel.


Applying for faculty position --wondering how long to expect to wait

I am the chair of my department's faculty recruiting committee.  Yes, you should definitely feel free to contact the search chair to ask about the status of your application.

My department started accepting applications last October for faculty positions beginning in Fall 2016.  We automatically solicit reference letters for all assistant professor applicants, usually within a few days of the application.  We have invited almost all of our interview candidates at this point, but we may still invite more, and in principle, we can even continue accepting new applications.  Except for interview invitations, we normally do not contact applicants until the search formally closes, which will probably happen in mid-April.

It's probably safe to assume that if you haven't heard from a department (at least in the US) by now, they're probably not interested, but there are certainly exceptions.  My own job search is an example.  My current department invited me for an interview in late April, three weeks after sending me a rejection letter.  ("We changed our mind; we'd like to interview you.")  The framed rejection letter is hanging on the wall in my office.


What are the reasons for journals to have a policy against publishing material available as a preprint?

A a chemist, I'm very well aware of this.

Here's the ACS Journal Editors' Policy on Preprints' point of view about the disadvantages of preprint servers:

  The disadvantages of preprint servers include: the potential for flooding the literature with trivial and repetitious publications, thus making extraction of reliable and valuable information more difficult; absence of peer review; possible premature disclosure with inadequate experimental details or supporting data; premature claims of priority; potential lack of proper references and credit to prior work; abuse of multiple revisions or updates; possible lack of duration and long term archiving.

Personally, I find the two concerns about

"premature claims of priority" and
"abuse of multiple revisions or updates"

the most relevant points.

"flooding literature with trivial publications" is IMHO an issue with and without preprint servers,
"repetitious publications" for me fall into the same category, as do
"inadequate experimental details or supporting data".
"absence of peer review" is clearly visible with papers from preprint servers - which is IMHO an advantage over journals where the peer review is uncritical.
"long term archiving" depends IMHO more on the responsible organization behind the server (I'm not any more concerned that arXiv could shut down than e.g. Langmuir, Analyst or Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry)

There have been "experiments" with preprint servers for chemistry some 10 years ago [1] but AFAIK they did not develop the momentum e.g. arXiv has, and they seem to have died meanwhile.
See also: Cecelia Brown: The Role of Electronic Preprints in Chemical
Communication: Analysis of Citation, Usage, and Acceptance in the Journal Literature, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 54.5 (2003): 362-371.
(the discussed server seems to be down - or at least I can't get a response).

Personal point of view on the problem

The possibility to be able to publish a manuscript on a preprint server before submitting it to a journal is not as imortant for me personally as the possibility to make the final contents of the paper publicly accessible.

Thus I can live quite well with not being allowed to submit manuscripts that are already available on preprint servers as long as I'm allowed to also publish the manuscript (preferrably the final version after peer-review) after I submitted it to the journal.

either at a preprint server (arXiv), or
on institutional, personal or project web pages
(preferrably both, of course)


How can I support myself by doing research?

Here are some options to investigate:

Find a funding source. As suggested in a comment by ff524, your advisor may be able to help.
Consult your manager. Your employer may be willing to reduce your hours, and salary, for the duration, in the hope of getting an EE with a master's degree at the end of it.
See if you can extend the deadlines on the project. This is the option I used to complete my master's degree in CS while working full time. I did some research in parallel with the courses, but not enough to finish. After the last exam I put all my study time into research, and took a few months extra to finish my project and submit the thesis.


Postdoc job market in relation with PhD topic

Everything in academia (as most things) becomes more and more competitive. You are facing economic pressures of course. Some academic fields draw a lot of interest because the problems there are seen as useful to solve.

However, I worry that you are chasing a job - any job - rather than a profession. I'd advise you to think about how you want to spend your life  rather than the next job. The economics and the "trendy jobs" are bound to change and it is difficult or impossible to predict what will be "hot" next year.

As to your statistics question, it is relatively easy to learn provided you have an adequate maths background. There are a lot of books. You need at least a bit of the underlying theory (including probability) so that you understand the principles. You also need a grounding in how statistics are applied in scientific endeavors (experiment design). But there are, as I said, plenty of books for that. You needn't try to pursue another degree or anything like that. It is the knowledge you need, not some certification.

Finally, yes, your topic affects your job prospects in the short term. However, no one should choose a topic based on what is hot today since it may be lukewarm or cold by the time you finish. Find something satisfying to do and then find a way to do it. But keep some flexibility in your plans so that if you fall into a poor job market for your skills you have other skills you can apply.

I graduated into a very poor job market in mathematics. I quickly taught myself computer programming and later computer science. I had a very successful career after a slow start.

Self study in statistics is normally sufficient to use statistics for other things. I don't imply it is sufficient (necessarily) to do research in statistics itself.